The Art of Not Knowing

Every year we experience the Samhain tide – the time between Samhain and Yule. It is a time where the cycle of growth has ended and the new cycle of the year has yet to begin. Natural death in Nature comes with the first killing frost. Our harvest is in or it is lost. The temperature grows colder as the winds come down from the North. The days continue to shorten, falling ever more into darkness until Yule when the light begins to return and the hope of a new growing season can be held. Such is the nature of this season here in my beloved Maine.

This time between the end of the growth cycle and the rebirth of the sun at Yule is a time of deep unknowing and chaos. It is time to indulge in dreams, to dive into Ceridwen’s mythological cauldron, dreaming without limits. As the darkness grows, we instinctively go inward, exploring our inner landscape. It is a gift Nature gives us every year.

The leaves have fallen off the trees, sloughing off the dead flesh of last years growth. They aren’t needed. Their purpose served, they return to the source of Mother Earth, their creativity coming apart as they become leaf mould.

There is a profound lesson in this – that of letting go of the past that no longer applies to our life today. Following the wheel of the year, the Craft offers us an opportunity to look in the mirror and see ourselves in the present, to stop long enough from our toils to take an assessment of our life. As we face the long winter, the harvest in, Samhain is the perfect time to do so.

During the Samhain tide, I take the time to review my life and rid myself of everything in my home that isn’t beautiful, useful or valuable. In Maine we will be spending the next six months inside for the most part and I don’t want to spend it surrounded with useless clutter that has no place in my life anymore.

Nature has shown us what natural death is, the dead vines in the garden once so vibrant with green now lie brown, dried and crackled, decaying into source that will feed next year’s garden. Our death will come too at some point, our cycle of growth coming to an end. While I don’t know when this will be, I want to be prepared. So at Samhain, I take the time to review the Death and Dying package that I put together with my wife and another pagan friend. In this package I put all my personal information regarding my eventual death. I put in personal contact information, financial contact info, obituary details, burial plot location, my Advanced Directive, funeral wishes and on and on. The idea being that should I pass suddenly, those left behind won’t be scrambling trying find all this information at the worst of times.

One part of this package involves an activity which I think is a beautiful gift to those who will survive us. I write farewell letters to those people important in my life. Imagine having a letter left to you from the person you loved most after they passed suddenly. Writing these letters is a deep look inward at what we value most. Perhaps we keep the letters or perhaps we burn them in next Samhain’s fire and write new ones, honoring the ever-changing nature of relationship. The act itself is highly freeing and I can not recommend this mediation enough. It is a powerful act to own one’s death and to prepare for it. The final step is one we make alone. I want to be prepared to take that step when the time comes, and to do so without worry that I’ve left a mess for those I leave behind.

This cleaning out, letting go and preparing for Death is extremely freeing. We don’t know what life holds for us in the future but freeing ourselves to face the present as consciously as possible is a powerful step toward approaching the future with courage and enthusiasm. We become unchained and the not knowing becomes an enticement instead of a fear. Samhain offers us a powerful yearly opportunity to reach for more freedom. Although death may be all around us, assessment, acceptance and release can free us like leaves swirling in the wind taking journeys of flight they couldn’t dream possible while attached to the tree.

So embrace the darkness. Open your arms to the cycle of death that comes every autumn. And most of all use your freedom to dream in endless potentiality. Time will move potentiality towards possibility and then into opportunity. But now is not the season for deep plans. It is a time to just dive deeper than ever into the cauldron, dreaming your life into being. Free yourself to dive without the chains of the past tied to your soul, holding you in the realm of the known. The unknown path is always the safer one.

Blessings of Samhain,
Release, freedom and ecstasy,
Snowhawke /|\