Samhain Winter Moon
Winter Solstice. It comes with silent steps, the moon shining through leafless trees, scattering the snow with shadows. This is a moment between one turn and the next, a still point, a dark still point out of which will come light, enough light to thaw the ground, lure plants from beneath the earth, give them strength and plump up their fruits. But now, this night, is the culmination of darkness coming toward us one minute at a time until we reach the longest night of the year.
This waning of the light has killed back the plants of summer, shucked the leaves off the trees, frozen the rain so it falls as snow. This is the season that shows the other face of nature. This is earth as a receiver of the dead, as a particle disaggregator, a rapacious devourer of life. Earth as scavenger, cavern, dark sea bottom. This is the earth as whole, not only giving, but also taking.
When Hades comes for Persephone, he takes life back inside the earth. He changes her, makes her a part of his realm. In this marriage of Hades and Persephone we see death preceding life as the Mexica poet said.
In the dark and the quiet of the Winter Solstice night we can draw near to this truth. We can know that even our own death will do no more than take us back to the earth from which we came and that even that death will not be final as our consciousness is born anew with each birth and our physical self is born anew as plant and animal. What more wonder do we need at this time of year, in this, the Holiseason?
(Hades and Persephone: King and Queen of the Underworld)
