October Retrograde

Tonight is Halloween, the beginning of the Celtic New Year, Samhain (Sow-in), and the start of Mercury in Retrograde. That’s quite a combination! It’s a time of year when traditionally we hear about the thinning of the veil between worlds, and when we feel the shift into a different season and a different place on the wheel. As every plan I made for the day went awry, I decided to do something to slow down and lean into the day. I sat with what kind of ritual that might be, and I remembered a course I’d previously enrolled in by the wonderful One Willow Apothecaries called “Herbs for the Otherworld,” and yet had never started. Perfect.

Listening to the beginning of the course, I was reminded of how much I love the synchronicity of different lineages of shamanism, when the same concept or practice emerges but perhaps in a different way.  In the case of Asia Suler’s course, it delves more deeply into Celtic shamanism, particularly Samhain. She said that “beginnings actually start in a dark place,” and referenced a seed being placed in the ground to germinate. Samhain, after all, is the beginning of the Celtic New Year and yet in a dark time of year more often associated by many with an end, or death. 

In shamanic work, we have to get comfortable with the death cycle, with shadow. A caterpillar makes a cocoon to transform and emerge as a moth. How often have we experienced this same feeling in shamanic work ourselves? Retrograde itself has a pre-shadow and post-shadow stage, where we prepare and then process or integrate the shadow work. For those of you who have had the Bands of Power installed, what is the first band? The black band, the element of Earth, the one that grounds us and where we plant the seeds of our becoming.

It’s interesting that we are so conditioned by popular culture and other programming to fear darkness, to mistrust it and ourselves. We find ourselves so disconnected from our own consciousness and the consciousness of the Earth that we are disconnected from the cycle of life itself and end up in a state of imbalance that gets reflected in our external world.

It is that disconnect that needs to heal. Asia Suler talks about the creation stories in the Celtic tradition that describe a split into two branches between those who chose the physical (human) and those who chose consciousness (the fairy folk, ancestors and more). The Otherworld is animated by Spirit and consciousness and is where these fairy folk and others reside. As opposed to being separate, it is “interwoven with the fabric of the earth itself” forming a parallel reality.

Listening to this story, it reminded me of how humans are generally stuck in the Literal (in their head, or physical) and Symbolic, and shaman help guide people to where they can heal by working at the Mythic and Energetic. In this way, and through that work, people remember who they are and begin working with what Asia calls the Otherworld in ways they perhaps weren’t ready or able to before. That change in perception from separation to being one opens up a whole new world of guidance and possibility, offering an opportunity for ayni, or right balance.

So as we move into this period of Retrograde shadow, perhaps we can treat it as a beginning. A cocoon, or chrysalis. In darkness, our senses become sharp and we are forced to tune-in in a different way. Listen and feel where you are in relationship with yourself and with the Earth. Ask yourself what areas of your personal work made themselves known in the run-up to this Retrograde and what the opportunity is during this shadow or darkness to transform. Celebrate the change in seasons and drink deeply.