Happy New Year

It is Samhain (pronounced, sow-wen) , the highest holy day on the Wiccan calendar, New Year's Day, the day when the veil between us and the Spirit World thins to mist, and our sacred ancestors and beloved dead are readying to pay us a visit tonight, if we will have them, watching to see if we are making a Place for them, looking for the candle in the western window that guides them home to us. I don't know about you, but I am grateful for the chance to have the company and council of the Ancestors. I am grateful to have remembered the Old Religion, grateful for its modern revival, because the ceremonies and celebrations touch my heart and make me glad, in them I am reconnected to my ancient past, to my modern day global community of Earth Worshipers, my identity as an Earthling at home is restored to me. My identity as an eternal spiritual being is also restored. All feelings of isolation are gone and with them, all feelings of powerlessness too. Gone away is the hopeless resignation instilled in me by a hateful mainstream culture, that lie that says all is lost, nothing can be done. Goddess religion has taught me that there is always something to be done and that I can do it. In the rituals of laying the altars, carving the jackolantens and festooning the Bulgeria tree with beautiful black witch hats, of the costumed theatre we'll put on for each other and for the children who come trick or treating, all in the ringing company of the loveliest and dearest of our spirits, I am happier, ie, stronger, than on any other day of the year. I am happy because Earth Magic is strong, nothing can stop the wheel from turning, not even the fearful fundamentalists in this neighbourhood who will set off explosions to frighten the traveling ghosts away, and others who will close and darken their houses against the families that persevere and will trick or treat tonight and pretend they are not home. None can stop the cosmos from her dancing, none can stop me. This is the last thing the conquerors want to see in me, a joyful sense of personal empowerment. They will ask, Who does she think she is, being happy, and making such a spectacle and show of it? I think I am a child of the Great Cosmic Mother, I think the life I live is awesome and worth celebrating, I think tonight I might fly on my broom for true, just to startle the neighbours, how bored they must be. I think it's time to carve the pumpkin. A happy new year to all, with many bright blessings.