🌑 SAMHAIN/VEIL-TIME EDITION

It’s that time again! Samhain, Halloween, All Hallow’s Eve (evocative! let’s bring this back!), and my favorite “spiritual practitioner on Instagram bingo card answer” the thinning of the veil.

How have you been celebrating?

I’ve been in a fall-inspired frenzy, snapping up gourds and pumpkins at every opportunity, harvesting and hoarding poignantly withered dried flowers, and indulging in a squirrel-like anxiety to find, consume, and put away all sorts of seasonal treats (my favorite being those pumpkin-shaped Reese’s cups).

This morning, I bit into an apple so good I yelled about to no one in particular. It’s chilly enough that my fingers are numb at the tips as I type in my unheated outbuilding. Things are changing.

I’ve also been - sometimes gently, sometimes impatiently - feeling into just what this time of the year means beyond the usual assumptions, both out of curiosity and a sense of obligation. I don’t want this space to be where we rehash the usual; I want to explore new territories together.

We spent a lot of our Fall Equinox post exploring the themes of descent - traveling downwards, following the path of the sun, and moving towards the contrast made possible by dimming light.

This particular time of the year, however, is more about proximity, reminding us that we’re always adjacent to another world: If the veil thins now it implies that it’s usually thick other times. At all times, however, it’s right by our side.

As if we’re next door neighbors to spirits, rather than residents isolated at the very top of a high rise.

We know Halloween is eerie. We know the lore of the season and the tropes of a million horror movies like the back of our hand: seances, cursed antique dolls that would be frightening without any supernatural interference, bare batches scraping against windows at night.

What I don’t think has been brought up nearly enough is that, whether we’re aware of it or not, and whether we cultivate it intentionally or not, we’re always in relationship to this other world. It’s a facet of our existence, the norm rather than the exception.

I get a lot of questions about this in my line of work - do I have special psychic powers? Do you have to by psychic to read tarot?

I’ve always had a very clear intuitively and experientially backed answer: No.

Everyone, in my experience, has access to spiritual input, however you choose to define it. All of us are in touch with spirit. It’s where we come from and where we’ll go, and in this sense, the other side of the veil is as common (and as sacred) as dirt.

So, with this grounded (heh) approach, let’s set off and explore the space behind the veil…

This reading is unique to say the least, dear readers!

The process of writing this edition has been one full of intuitive input, most of it based around waiting. Is this the time to write the intro? Not yet. Is this the frame the moment is demanding? Not quite.

It’s all very aligned with one of our cards appearing today, The Magician, whose approach is to tune into the creative current of the universe. Yet it’s only when the current comes alive that they spring into action, transforming the inspiration into something tangible.

So while we’re in a season of darkness that’s tied to the shadow and the places beyond the veil, our reading is all about illumination, inspiration, and magic.

That is to say, this moment is one when the current comes alive and, like The Magician, we’re called to step into action and let things flow.

We have another Major Arcana card leading the charge in our reading and it's the charismatic, irrepressible, and authentic Sun. Something about all this brightness during spooky season is making me laugh, but should I really be so surprised? I won’t go too deep into this connection since we’ve covered it so frequently, yet this does tie in wonderfully to our card of 2025, The Hermit.

What I’m feeling is this: the end of October, Samhain, Halloween, “spooky season”…. there’s something happening during this time that has the star that’s been flickering gently in our Hermit’s lantern all year bursting forth into the self-assured and authentic Sun card. It’s full illumination time, baby! What are we going to see?

Well, some “good” and some “bad.” For those of you who’ve been around for a while, you know that my quotation marks are a knowing wink and that I ultimately find this binary silly, yet I think this energy is appearing here more as a first impression: We’ll be wowed and charmed by the flexible structure of the Four of Wands and upset and confronted by the pain and suffering of the Three of Swords.

The Sun, with its ties to the authenticity of early childhood, is dispelling illusion with joy. Lean into however you’ve been healing and expanding into yourself. This card is not subtle; trust in boisterousness, enthusiasm, and passion that has you feeling inarguably like your true self. Bright and almost preverbal, The Sun is undeniable.

Keeping in mind our long, steady, and sometimes plodding work with The Hermit throughout the year, we can rest assured that the breakthroughs of this card aren’t merely impulsive behavior or wishful thinking. Especially when it comes to newfound clarity around parts of our life that have felt off, in progress, or unexpectedly tricky.

Experiencing and acting from The Sun is also bringing us towards the power and skill of The Magician. Expect to, after thoroughly enjoying yourself and reexamining these parts of your life, feel decisive, empowered, and itching to make things happen.

Because the two cards are sandwiched by bright and powerful Major Arcana cards, this moment seems blessed with the potential for transformation:

One fun perk of being a publicly-identified tarot reader is that you get to hear everyone’s ghost stories. And most people have one! Even that guy at the daytime craft fair who insists that “he just doesn’t believe in that stuff.”

And while moments when a straight-up apparition waltzes onto the scene are tantalizing and spine-tingling, they’re not the only way we encounter the “other world.”

As I’ve grown older, I’ve widened by definition of visitations significantly, another way to acknowledge our experience of spirit in the everyday.

When a person present or departed pops into my mind, I consider it their energy making an appearance in my life. I say hello, listen to whatever the memory evokes, and weave it into my day.

I love hearing about these symbolic associations from people. A bluebird for their grandmother, a driving rain for their aunt. These pop up like the fruiting bodies of fungi: visible manifestations of energy from a place just under the surface.

“Phantom scents” are absolutely fascinating to me and a space I love to work in magically because the sense of smell completely bypasses rational thought - delightful!

A guiding hand, a sense of warning, a mysterious pull towards something new… all of these can show a connection to something or someone beyond.

Reaching its closest point to the sun on October 29th, this interstellar object (thought by some to potentially be an extraterrestrial visitation) inspires us to look to the incomprehensible mystery of our universe and for messages that could come to us uninvited across vast expanses.

This fairytale has inspired so much! An amazing Kate Bush song and music video (see above), the delirious and transfixing film from 1948, and more, but it’s the interpretation of analyst Clarissa Pinkola Estés I’d like to highlight here. In it, she explores how the enchanted shoes that the young protagonist covets represent the seductive power of external validation. If we pursue and put on the red shoes we become possessed and swept away from our unique and sustaining life force. Where do you feel the call of the red shoes in your life? How do they seduce you to act as if possessed? And what keeps you grounded in your individual experience and magic?

▶ Themes: Death and rebirth, ancestors, release, shadow work, divination, endings, reflection, mystery

▶ Direction: West - sunset, descent, ancestors

▶ Elements: Water and earth

▶ Symbols: jack-o’-lantern, cauldron, crossroads, candle, key, mirror, veil, bones, falling leaves

▶ Colors: Black, orange, gold, dark purple, red, brown

▶ Food: Apples, pumpkins, squash, sweet potatoes, root vegetables, nuts, grains, corn, mulled cider, pomegranate seeds, wine, honey, stews & soups

▶ Stones: Obsidian, jet, smoky quartz, labradorite, onyx, carnelian, amethyst, hematite

▶ Plants: Mugwort, sage, rosemary, wormwood, apple, pumpkin, cinnamon, clove, marigold, pomegranate, cedar, yew

▶ Animals: Crow, owl, cat, bat, spider, wolf, dog, toad, deer

▶ Gestures: Ancestor altars, ancestor dinner/”dumb supper,” tarot readings, scrying, pendulum work, dream journaling, candle lighting, bonfires, night walks, grave tending, making protection charms