We enter the realm of the betwixt and between, the space where time becomes more elusive and the potential held within more available. Samhain (pronounced sow-en), the midway point between the Fall Equinox and Winter Solstice, is the Celtic holiday that marks the beginning of the darkness, when we’re invited into the rich and bewitching world within with all its secrets and mysteries. What I love about this holiday is that it actually marks the first day of the Celtic new year, which just happens to Fall on the Scorpio New Moon this year. As such, we are invited to even more power and empowerment as this potent portal opens.

The “thinning of the veil,” as Samhain is oft described, reminds us that the magic of who we are and have always been is never far from us, for in fact, we carry it within us: in our bones and blood, our DNA and lineage, our life force and its expression. Yet aspects of this potency have been hidden for longer than we might imagine, embedded more deeply into our cellular memories to be concealed until the time comes for the reclamation of our true and full potential. This day marks an auspicious one in the retrieval of who we have always been, and as such, we are given full access to the spaces and places where the shrouded parts of our ancestral stories have been secreted away, only to be beckoned forth to reveal their truths through us and our own transformative capacities.

This pivotal process entails engaging in rituals and meditations that draw us into the richness of our inner worlds, deepening our relationship with the power they hold. While each of our ancestors did the best they could with what they were given while they were alive, the stories they lived and patterns they created have been passed down to us through time and its cadenced movement. Some of these are exactly what we need to live in the modern world, while some still hold us captive from afar, binding our energy in a certain way within our systems and minds — energy that would otherwise be free to do as it would. In order to liberate this energy, reclaiming it from the ensnaring patterns that keep us beholden to their whims and ideas, we must open the door to the internal world that awaits us. Shining the bright light of our awareness in the hidden corners and crevices of our own bodies and psyches — for each hold these handed-down stories in their own unique ways — allows us to see and know parts of ourselves that we had forgotten were with us, or pieces of our ancestral stories that we didn’t know existed at all.

Part of this path certainly involves probing the depths of reality for all of the clues and pieces of information we can, using the intensity of our minds to uncover what we haven’t known. With access to DNA tests, family trees and lineages, and old family records that are now available online, we have been given excellent tools to uncover what we have yet to know. Of equal importance, if but of a differing nature, is the capacity each of us has to go within and sense what is there — the places where our energy gets caught up in a story that continues to steer us in a direction in which we aren’t happy with the outcome; the patterns that persevere in seemingly overtaking our lives without us even recognizing them before they’re well-established; the stories that take up far more space in our minds than we let on, keeping them incessantly moving without letting up, so that we stay confined within their surface meaning without looking to see what might actually be underneath them. Yet when we close our eyes and connect to the bigger energy of the Whole — call it God or Goddess, Source or Creator, divine, or ‘the spirit that moves in all things’ — we are more able to see and feel, to sense and know, these deeper places within ourselves, those that have been waiting to be revealed for goodness knows how long. In choosing to see that we’ve been carrying a pattern of “Protestant Work Ethic-ing” or a story of “I disappoint others when I choose to take care of myself,” or, “I never get what I want so should just stop trying,” or even, “I have nothing valuable to contribute to the world, so I may as well not attempt to offer anything at all,” we’re in the betwixt and between place, the one that wants us to know who we are beyond the story we and our DNA have been telling for a long time, a place where the transformative work that Scorpio finds necessary can happen.

“Energy is neither created nor destroyed; it is only transformed.” It is in these powerful spaces that an alchemical process can take place, for the energy that has been caught up in a centuries-old story can be shifted almost instantly! If this is what we choose, this energy has the opportunity to then move freely and well, allowing us to truly be the divine beings having a human experience we came here to be, living our full potential in the face of anything and everything we brought with us that’s hidden within our limiting belief systems and patterns, our karmic and epigenetic stories that can no longer hold. And Scorpio is master of transformation, for it makes its life work all about going into the vulnerable yet powerful places of metamorphosis, a place where a part of us must die unto ourselves so that awareness can be reborn from within our very experience, and where we transmute what is certainly no longer us into energy that can be utilized to tell our stories in more inspiring, enlivening, beautifying, and compelling ways. It is in and through this process that we call our power back to ourselves from what certainly once was, but is now ready to be transformed and fully integrated into the updated, empowered, and brilliant version of who we are meant to be. Without saying ‘yes’ to this potent portal, we continue on a path whose outcome is much the same as what our ancestors and likely even we, in another time, have known, one that keeps us from actualizing our full potential in ways that a deeper part of us has always known we can. Of course, saying ‘yes’ to this process is an option that may be uncomfortable at junctures here and there, ones that invite us moments of “breaking down and breaking through,” but ones that ultimately allow us to call our life force back from the wounding and fears we’ve known throughout time so that we live as our truest, most authentic selves.

May this portal of power and empowerment bring the transformation and insight you need to show up as your most radiant self. May the betwixt and between space provide you with all the fodder necessary to go on the radical journey of metamorphosis. And in this, may you call yourself home, tapping into the life force in ways that enliven and inspire you and the world around you.

Wishing you immense Samhain and Scorpio New Moon Blessings!