Happy Halloween, witches.
This week it's Halloween, the next day is Día de Todos los Santos, the Day of All Saints, and the day after that is Día de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. That's three days in a row of mainstream acknowledgment of the dead, of the realm of the invisible, and of witches in general. I love it, because it's the only time of year when witches are socially acceptable and nobody finds us scary, since we're supposed to be out and about.
All of these celebrations are combinations of Indigenous traditions and church traditions. Halloween comes from Northern Europe, from Ireland, and it has to do with the beginning of winter, the harvest, the people who might not make it through the winter, and the celebration of the new year. In Chile, where I'm from, Día de Todos los Santos is an actual national holiday. People go to the cemetery and visit their dead, and the next day is the Day of the Dead, so it's a thing.
I hope you'll be dancing, wearing fun costumes, eating candy, and watching little children run around being all cute, and I hope you'll also take some time to honor the dead.
What I mean by honoring the dead is spending some time in reflection, in ritual, in a trance, in whichever way you connect, thinking about your ancestors. That could be your actual family, or your ancestors more broadly, because you had parents, whether you knew them or not, and they had parents, and those people had parents, and those people, of course, also had parents. There's a whole lineage of humans behind you. Whether you like them or not, whether you knew them or their histories or not, there were humans who got together and had children, and those children had children, and so on for thousands of years until you showed up on Earth.
So whether or not you think you have a good relationship with your ancestors, you have them, and you can be in relationship with them now, even though they're no longer here in human form.
You can also be in relationship with your descendants, meaning all the humans who will come after you. They could be your own children, or your children's children, or just future generations. You don't need children of your own to have descendants, because every human who comes after us, anybody younger than us really, is a descendant.
And because we're sandwiched between the people who were and the people who will be, we have a role in the chain of human evolution. We owe our ancestors a debt of respect and gratitude, because without them we wouldn't be here (even if, bleh, all the things). And we have a responsibility to our descendants to be the kinds of ancestors we wish we had, whether we had them or not.
So this weekend, in addition to partying, dressing up, eating candy, celebrating in the streets, and people-watching (the people-watching on Halloween is kind of extraordinary), I want you to take some time to think about your place in that chain.
What do I do, as a witch, for this super magical time? First of all, I make time to spend in ritual, in silence, communing with the dead and with all the souls who may not be incarnated right now. I think about where I come from and where I'm going. I think about my ancestors, and my ancestors' ancestors, and their ancestors, and if you keep going back all the way, you get to the question of where we actually come from. It's a mysterious moment in the history of the universe, and it's really beautiful, because that's when we realize we're all family. We all come from the same ancestor, because we're all earthlings.
Previous generations have done beautiful things, horrendous things, and everything in between, so this is a moment to reflect. What do I want to bring forth from the ancestors? What do I want to let go of, because it doesn't work for me anymore or doesn't work for this moment in time? And what kind of ancestor do I want to become for those who are coming after me? What legacy did I inherit, and what legacy do I want to leave?
If you don't know how to do this, lucky you, because on Monday, November 2, I'm hosting a Día de los Muertos ritual where I'll guide you into a trance to connect with your ancestors and your descendants, and we'll do some magical work in that realm. We'll get clear on what we want to honor in our ancestors and carry forward, what it may be time for the lineage to leave behind so we can make new choices, and what we want to offer our descendants and bring forth in this Witch's New Year.
If you want to pay your respects to your ancestors, to humanity at large, and to what it really means to be alive (and to be dead) as part of this human family, I invite you to join me. We meet on Zoom on Monday, November 2, from 6 to 7pm PT (9 to 10pm ET). It's $10, you don't need any experience with magic, and it's recorded, so sign up even if you can't make it live. It's gonna be super magical, that I can promise you. Register here, and I'll see you on Día de los Muertos.
Courage, truth, and infinite love,
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