If your in receipt of this email you know my ever insatiable craving for research AND my obsession with the occult. Well lucky you, I’m gracing you with yet another one of my rants. I swear if I could find the time to live yet another life in addition to my already double lifestyle I would become the modern day alchemist of the occult in secret! But my obsession with research will have to suffice. Yesterday I read a quote about-facing your personal hell from author Clarissa Pinkola Estes Ph. D, and this morning stuck on my morning’s spiced cappuccino cup was a quote by William Shakespeare who I can appreciate but do not adore…. “Tis now the very witching time of night. When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out contagion to this world” Wow what a lovely image that is to have doled out with your morning java eh? Especially when the guy making it is wearing a voodoo medallion that is supposed to ward off evil, he claims he got in Louisiana and he swears Turquoise wards off evil, he thinks I am a snooty yuppy chick and fails to notice any different so I leave well enough alone. Sort of made me smile to myself and I thoroughly enjoy him flexing his paranormal cerebellum for me. But it also got me to thinking – about what a witching hour really is with respect to our lives in a timeline?

Now the witching hour is supposed to be at midnight, as one day passes and the next is birthed – where us witch folk gather together, call a circle, chant, whatever the world thinks it is that we would do. Well I will tell you what I do at midnight and that is SLEEP! But let’s let the muggles have their fun shall we? All things considered and in the flavor of Halloween the witching hour is an interesting thought as when we pass into into the sign of Scorpio, the demon slayer of the Zodiac. The origin of Halloween itself pretty expansive but here ‘s a slimmed down version, Samhain pronounced Sow-En, the mind reels that the Irish can get “Sowen” out of that spelling, but then again they drink whisky like water so maybe there is a correlation between their pronunciation and slurring. I think it helps to study this language after a pint and a swig… It morphed to All Hallows Eve, Hallow meaning (“hallowed” = “holy” = “saint”). Yes the mind reels yet again and bet you wonder if I myself have had a pint and shot of whiskey – oh I wish!

This time of year marks the end of light, and the beginning of dark. A time of celebration for some of us that aren’t afraid to face our shadow side, as it’s a time to harvest what we’ve sown over the summer and store up for winter. Harvest time is time of plenty if you’ve worked your tucus off all summer to have lots of things to carry you through the winter. A time when Druids would sacrifice some poor innocent to the fields or burn a wicker man to honor the gods. As a modern day gal with an open mind the thought of burning a wicker man in honor of the harvest time seems to make more sense to me that dressing up a child like a creepy plastic action figure and sending them off in the dark to knock on strangers doors for liver and tooth decaying treats. But then again I’m weird and what do I know?

So to get to the point of this rant… I have always loved this time of year, its almost like you can feel some folks minds wanting to expand themselves – hence the bohemian java dude’s willingness to share his wealth of knowledge with me. So if the witching hour is the time when that “other” realm is closest to this one, let’s think in terms of our lives when we can make this occur. At what time in your life have you encountered your own witching hour and felt closer to your own personal demons? Because as winter creeps up on us, we tend to feel more isolation, the world around us becomes more womblike sensation. It’s a good time for us to work on ourselves so that next spring we have seeds to planet to grow new and beautiful things.

I think I’m going to enjoy Halloween this year by taking the time to honor the harvest of my own summer (no wise cracks please or you’ll get the evil eye), the time when the barrier between the living and the dead is the most open to travel and search out my soul to find serenity and agreement. Because that’s what I’d like to incubate over the winter is serenity and agreement. Over the last year of my life I have slayed enough demons, now is the time for peace…. What will you incubate this winter?