Three Days as an Earthling

Connecting with All Hallows, All Saints and All Souls

Dear Rosies,

Tonight is All Hallows' Eve. Yes, there will be sexy vampires, miniature Almond Joys, elaborate costumes and perhaps a questionable amount of candy corn. But beneath the commercial Halloween festivities lies something much older and far more profound.

The name itself holds a clue. A hallow is an old English word for a holy person, a saint, from the same root as "hallowed be thy name." All Hallows' Eve, shortened in Scotland to Hallowe'en, means the holy evening before the feast of the saints.

Our evolutionary bodies carry an ancient knowing that this time of year matters. Long before calendars and electric lights, before the illusion that summer strawberries should be available in January, our ancestors watched the shortening days, felt the temperatures shift, gathered the harvest and prepared for winter. They understood themselves as participants in its great turning.

Some of that knowing still lives in us. We are seasonal creatures. Our bodies evolved within the rhythms of light and darkness, growth and decay. We are processes nested in larger processes, cells within bodies and bodies within ecosystems, all of us turning with the earth and the heavens.

The same elements that make the trees drop their leaves are at work in us. We, too, have seasons of expansion and contraction, ripening and release.

We have become remarkably good at living as though none of this matters. We keep our lights on and our calendars full, regardless of what the natural world is doing. We have invented a kind of perpetual summer, or at least the expectation that we should perform as though it were summer all year long. Our bodies know better.

That is why these days carry such a particular charge. Something in us recognizes the threshold. The harvest is in, and the darkness is lengthening. The season invites us to turn our attention toward what lies beneath the surface, and inevitably toward the dead.

The ancient calendar beneath our modern one

Long before Christianity, the Gaelic peoples of Ireland and Scotland observed Samhain (pronounced SOW-in, rhyming with "cow-in"), a seasonal festival marking the end of the harvest and the beginning of winter. It traditionally began on the night of October 31 and ran through November 1, turning the year from its lighter half to its darker half.

Families brought the cattle in from summer pastures and lit communal fires. People understood the season as a time when the boundary between the human world and the Otherworld grew more permeable. In Irish folklore, spirits and beings from the Otherworld could visit the world of the living.

Much of what we now call Halloween grew from this night. People in Ireland and Scotland disguised themselves so wandering spirits would pass them by, and carved faces into turnips to keep away anything unwelcome. Those turnip lanterns became our jack-o'-lanterns. In the Middle Ages, the poor went door to door around All Souls, offering prayers for a household's dead in exchange for small soul cakes, one of the roots of trick-or-treating. Irish and Scottish immigrants carried these customs to America in the 1800s, where costumes and candy slowly crowded out the holy part. The ghouls and the saints have shared this night for a very long time.

The Christian calendar developed its own observances around these dates. November 1 became All Saints' Day, or All Hallows, honoring all the saints, known and unknown. In 998, Odilo, Abbot of Cluny, established a commemoration of the faithful departed on November 2, which people came to call All Souls' Day.

Across the Atlantic, Christian observances encountered the diverse ancestral traditions of Indigenous Mexico. Through centuries of cultural exchange, Indigenous practices and Catholic observances shaped the many regional expressions of Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead).

Families create ofrendas (pronounced oh-FREN-dahs), or offerings, with photographs, candles, favorite foods and treasured objects. They lay the golden-orange cempasúchil (pronounced sem-pah-SOO-cheel), or Mexican marigold, on altars and pathways. Many believe its vivid color and fragrance help guide the spirits of the beloved dead home to their families.

Across different times and places, human beings have marked the turning of the year by remembering those who are no longer physically among us, and so many traditions place that remembrance at the threshold of winter.

The veil is thin

There is an old belief that the veil between the worlds grows thin at this time of year. The feeling arrives with or without a belief in ghosts. Grief rises unexpectedly in November. A familiar song or the taste of something once cooked by someone you loved can bring them back so vividly that, for a moment, they seem almost present.

The thin veil also describes the closeness of memory: the sense that those we have lost remain near, because something of them continues to live in us.

Women at the threshold

Across many cultures, women have held important roles in the rituals surrounding birth and death. They have attended births, prepared bodies for burial, kept family histories and tended the rituals through which the living remember the dead.

In Ireland, women traditionally performed caoineadh, or keening, a form of sung lament at wakes and funerals. In many Mexican families, mothers and grandmothers help prepare the ofrenda, remembering the particular foods and flowers that belonged to those who have died. In Gaelic folklore, the Cailleach, the powerful old woman of winter who shaped the landscape, embodies the formidable wisdom of the cold season.

Our bodies, too, have rhythms of turning inward and letting go. The days before menstruation are a kind of autumn, when energy turns inward and the body prepares to shed its lining. Menopause is a profound life threshold, where a woman's vitality moves into another expression of itself. These seasonal traditions honor descent as sacred and the older woman as a keeper of knowledge.

What these days might bring us

Remember. Name the women in your lineage, as far back as you know them, and say their names aloud. If you know little about them, make room for the unknown grandmothers whose lives helped make yours possible.

Release. Autumn teaches us that letting go is part of renewal. Choose one habit or old story that has finished its work, and allow yourself to set it down.

Rest. The earth enters a period of dormancy, but beneath the surface, life continues its quiet work. You are allowed to slow down, too, and ask less of yourself as the days grow shorter.

Listen. Notice your dreams and the people who come to mind unexpectedly. Whether you understand this spiritually or psychologically, make room for what rises from the deeper places within you.

The ritual: Earth, Heavens and Body

This ritual moves through three evenings, with one element for each day. Before you begin, clear a space on a shelf or table and lay down a cloth. This will be your altar for all three nights. Light a candle each evening. We made our Surrender Sandalwood & Honey Ritual Candle for evenings like these. If you would like to bring more ritual into the rest of your year, I wrote Reverence: Creating Ritual in Modern Life as a companion for exactly that.

October 31, All Hallows' Eve: The Earth
Meet the shadow, meet the fear

Tonight belongs to the ghouls as well as the saints. Go outside at dusk, while the light drains from the sky, and gather a handful of soil or a fallen leaf. Hold it in both hands and feel its weight. Then name the thing you have been keeping in the dark: a fear, a grief, a part of yourself you would rather not look at. Say it aloud or in silence, and let it be as large as it is.

Give it to the earth. Bury the soil, or lay the leaf at the foot of a tree. The ground takes what falls and makes food of it.

Bring a leaf or a small pinch of soil inside and place it on your altar.

November 1, All Saints' Day: The Heavens
Meet the exalted, meet the holy

After dark, step outside and look up. Find the moon or a single star, and rest your gaze there until your breath slows.

Call to mind the holy ones who have guided you, whether or not you share their blood. Some are saints or teachers. Others are women whose words or courage found you at just the right moment. Feel how high they reached, and how much of their light already lives in you.

Write their names on small slips of paper and place them on your altar. Thank them quietly for what they have given you, and ask for a blessing for the year ahead.

November 2, All Souls' Day: The Body
Meet the ordinary, meet mortality

Today belongs to the ordinary dead, the grandmothers and neighbors no calendar of saints will ever name. It also belongs to the plain fact that one day you will join them.

Place a photograph or written name on your altar. Prepare a dish someone you loved enjoyed, and set aside a small plate as an offering. Eat slowly, remembering them. In many Mexican Día de Muertos traditions, cempasúchil flowers and favorite foods help welcome and honor the departed. If you can, place a marigold on your altar.

When you have finished eating, rest your hands on your belly and heart and feel your pulse. This body is mortal, and it carries what they passed down to you through blood and bones, and through stories, gestures, recipes, ways of loving and ways of surviving.

Tell your beloved dead what this year has held for you and what they taught you. Then sit quietly for a few moments.

To close

On the final evening, thank those you have remembered, by name if you can. Extinguish your candle safely. Return the soil to the earth and the leaf to the wind. Keep the names and photographs somewhere you can revisit through the dark months.

To your most beautiful, valued, sacred embodiment,
Christine