The Celtic New Year is upon us, and with it, an inevitable return to the dark. By this, I mean nothing macabre or negative, eerie or otherwise, but it’s interesting how our minds can go there when we speak of what some consider to be ‘the dreaded dark’. Yet this is the place where dreams gestate before becoming known in the world of shape and form. It is here that we are given the opportunity for quiet and introspection, attuning ourselves to the mystery that holds and nourishes us, guides and supports us along our paths—but only if we let it. These are the times when we light candles and turn on twinkling lights, make the hearth fire bright and cover with our favorite blankets. These are also invitations to deeper contemplation, longer sleeps, and cozying up in just the ways we like.
Still, so many loathe the darkness, pushing it away as though they had a choice. As though it had nothing to offer them.
Have we grown so disconnected from ourselves that we’ve lost the capacity to sit in silence? Have we become so enraptured with our minds that we can’t stand to turn them off—even when they are the cause of our suffering? Or have we just forgotten how to commune with the sacred dark?
Don’t get me wrong, I love to use my mind. I love stories and myths, lore and legend, non-dual philosophy and astrology, alchemy and transformation—really anything esoteric or mystical, I’m down. That’s my particular flavor, and I get lit up whenever subjects like these come up. But I also know how to sit quietly with myself. To see beyond the veil of what my mind just has to communicate and in this very moment. Of course it hasn’t always been easy, but it’s something I’ve committed myself to for over a couple decades now—and I’m so thankful I have. Call it what you’d like, but sitting in silence with ourselves and the fertile dark, perhaps with a single candle burning, has become a practice I don’t abide without.
When we’re beckoned into the darkness that’s just behind our closed eyelids—it’s that easy!—we open ourselves to a world of possibilities. It is definitely not the hottest trend, nor the most exciting option—at least it doesn’t appear that way on the outside or in the beginning. Yet once we’re in the practice of being quiet with ourselves in the dark, amazing things begin to happen. And they continue from there. We see through the plots and ploys our minds have to tear us down, to sabotage our plans. Those that keep us stuck and fighting our circumstances no matter what they are. We also see the brilliant reality that is playing out through us, an infinite continuum that’s constantly unfolding from within our very own selves. We make space for wonder and awe as we witness and embody this incredible life. We also make space for wherever we are, no matter how intense, learning how to be present with all that life encompasses, and trusting the way it shows up in the here and now.
We realize the identity our minds once labelled with our own name, now a shell of a thought that could never limit who we truly are. We learn for certain who we are not.
This is what sitting in the quiet dark reminds us. These are not things we don’t already know, but they are things we have to forget when we take on a human experience—if only so we can remember again. But it’s the remembering that holds the keys, and this endeavor, though more fulfilling than most, is not a requirement. It’s an invitation.
And this cross-quarter day, the mid-point between the Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice, is a time when moving into the darkness is not only a good thing—it’s an amazing portal into a whole different reality. The Celts knew that these special turns of the wheel, and this one in particular, were times in which the gates to the Otherworld opened wide. At this one, Winter begins its descent on the earth’s Northern hemisphere, bringing with it longer nights, colder days, and a beckoning into the realm of mystery and magic that’s always just a breath away. But only if we make ourselves available to it.
The Celtic Otherworld is the home to our ancestors and our guides, a realm where time and space cease to exist, where answers to issues we grapple with here show up readily—albeit in different ways than we may have imagined. And while this betwixt space is truly available in any moment, it is at this time when the veil turns so remarkably fine that it becomes like the gossamer wings of a dragonfly, palpable to even those who would deny its existence at all. Why do you think this time has become such a celebration of the spooky?
When we open ourselves to all of the gifts that lives within the fertile dark, we might be surprised. Here, we realize that we are never alone—though this is a common enough story in the human world—and those who live just beyond the veil between this world and the other are waiting there to remind us of this fact. The ancestors whose stories are woven into the very fabric of your being are here, more than willing to show up to support you when you need it most. Because of their trials and tribulations, their learning and suffering, their triumphs and celebrations, you are here too, weaving your own into this long lineage that you have been gifted with. And yet some of their stories are ready to be healed and integrated, and because you are in a human form, you are the right one to do this work. If not, the patterns may just as quickly ensnare and entrap you, keeping you in an ongoing cycle of something that is very close to working but keeps getting stymied. The ancestors want you to remember them, just as they want to support you to live out your truest dreams and your soul’s reason for being here. It is their blood, sweat, and tears that got you where you are and can also carry you forward to where you’re going in just the right way and time. And now is the time to remember them, to call upon them, to offer your thanks to them, and to heal what is ready to be integrated into your own beautiful line.
Yet the magical beings whom we might call Fae or Pixie, Brownie or Elf, Nix or Nymph, the Síddhe (pronounced ‘she’) or Túatha dé Danann (too-ah-day-dahn uhn), as well as every sort of animal, and the deities you find within any and all traditions, also inhabit this Otherworldly realm. They, too, are available to support your journey—but only if you approach them with an open heart, a loving mind, and a humble willingness to receive their messages. Some of them may already serve as guides, and perhaps you know them well as part of your own path. And if you don’t, now could be the perfect time, as they are ready and willing to provide assistance on your life journey, be it through a shamanic ceremony or initiation, meditation and prayer to move beyond the veil in a life-enhancing way, or through energy work and healing that welcomes them as guides and friends. I have been deeply humbled to offer Celtic Shamanic Sessions for my clients, and I must say that the guides are more than willing to work with us when we approach them in this way. Whether they offer a spirit guide, a Faerie blessing, a psychopomp ceremony, or a soul integration (amongst other things), the beings inhabiting the Otherworld are respectful, powerful figures who work with the human realm for us to more clearly live our potential here. If you’re interested in booking a session, please visit: https://evolutionmedicine.ca/celtic-shamanism. And for those of you who are curious to learn how to journey yourselves, my teacher, Jane Burns, offers excellent courses through the Shift Network that can be found here: https://theshiftnetwork.com/shift_teacher/16146.
If that feels too daunting, this might feel a bit easier. An 8th Century early Irish text known as, The Cauldron of Poetic Inspiration, talks about the three cauldrons that live in the body, quite similar to the dan tian of Chinese Medical thought, or the chakras of yogic understanding. The first cauldron, Coire Goiriath, lives in the belly is said to be turned upside down when we’re born. As the vessel of warmth, it is turned right-side-up through the process of connecting with our ancestors, giving ourselves a steady foundation to walk our personal spirit path, and doing the work that transforms us from shadow versions of ourselves to healthy ones. With this, we move from a place of primal fear to one of embodied security. Once this foundation has been established, this cauldron supports our continued evolution and feeds the next.
The second cauldron at the heart, Coire Érmae, is that of motion, for it sloshes back and forth with the joys and sorrows, the ebbs and flows of life. Resting on its side when we are born, it is balanced when we take responsibility for what is ours—in this incarnation, karmically, and epigenetically—in order to experience this existence without the guarding or armor that so many of us feel we need to wear to just get through each day. We are meant to feel the rise and fall of life within us, yet when we create an openness within ourselves to do our work, feel what is ours to feel, and transform what is not serving us or reality, this cauldron grows full, also feeding the next.
The third cauldron, Coire Sois, at the third eye or head space is that of wisdom, as you might imagine. This one is already upright at birth, but because the world is loud and we often forget our own capacity for truth, it sits empty, waiting to be enlivened. When we open to living our best lives—and not just egoically, but spiritually—this cauldron grows full of the nectar that connects us with divine inspiration, or awen—poetic illumination. We are able to let this flow through us as our thoughts and ideas, words and insights. In other words (pun intended!), we are able to live our true nature, all of the cauldrons bubbling and flowing into one another to support our connection with all of life.If that feels too daunting, this might feel a bit easier.
The magic that is available to us here, in this world, is made more profoundly real by reconnecting with what many of our ancestors knew to be true. Creating space to go within and honoring the beauty that lives in the sacred dark allows us the support so many of us yearn for in the here and now. How do you make space for your own hearth fires, your own bubbling cauldrons, tending them in the ways that keep your heart and spirit burning brightly in the months ahead?
May your descent into this potent time be filled with insight, inspiration, and nourishment, and may you reconnect with the truth you’ve always carried inside.
Blessed Samhain.
