Samhain and divination
When I moved into my new place this summer, I decided to reread all my spiritual books, starting with The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess by Starhawk, which I read for the first time exactly thirty years ago. I cannot stress how much this book changed my life. A good friend loaned me her copy and I literally copied it almost word for word by hand and then later typed up my handwritten notes. This was the basis of my original Book of Shadows.
Written basically as a manual for group instruction, I used The Spiral Dance to teach myself how to be a witch. I rewrote the rituals for a solitary and I practiced the exercises until I could do them at will – visualizing an apple, throwing a stone into a stormy sea, tying a knot – anywhere, anytime. After I gave the book back to my friend, I took books out from the library and read everything I could about the history of modern witchcraft, Wicca, neopaganism, and women’s spirituality. As a feminist, I was most attracted to goddesses and the religious veneration of women and the feminine form. I eventually bought my own copy in July, 1990 – the tenth anniversary edition, published in 1989. A third edition, celebrating the twentieth year of its publication, was published in 1999, and is available (of course) on Amazon.
One of the things I noticed this time around is that Starhawk doesn’t always say why this is this or that. For example, during the Samhain ritual, which is quite involved, using blindfolds and apples – the fruit of death – and some kind of “ship”, which is supposed to sailing on a “sunless sea” – after which all the coveners take off their blindfolds and gaze into a crystal and scry. Starhawk writes, “This is the best night for scrying in the year.” (The Spiral Dance, 195) But why? Why is this?
According to Amanda Linette Meder, the veil between the physical world and the spirit world is thinnest between October 8th and November 11th of any given year, so it just stands to reason that October 31st through November 2nd would be the most powerful days within that time frame. This is why this is the best night “for scrying” in the entire year.
However, Barbara G. Walker asserts that pagans believed that all the junctures between the seasons opened cracks that allowed contact between “the ghostworld and the mortal one” (The Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 372). Four times a year this happens – at Samhain, at Yule, at Beltane, and at Litha. So using that logic, all the cross points of the Wheel of the Year are times when the veil is going to be thin and you can ask the spirits of your loved ones to help you in your divinatory endeavors.
With this in mind, I cast a circle early this morning and sat in silent meditation. I thought about my grandmothers and my grandfather MacDavid, who was always so supportive of my writing. And I thought about my novel, which I have been working on diligently for this past year. I created a blog for it on WordPress and accumulated a bunch of followers. I had originally thought of the novel-in-a-blog like the serial novels of Dickens and Dumas. But in the past few months, I have been unable to write. I haven’t written much of anything other than my personal diary and nothing on the novel at all. The other day, I changed its status on WordPress so that nobody could read it anymore – if I do continue with it, it will be after a major overhaul of the entire thing.
These were my thoughts as I sat in meditation. A red candle smelling of cinnamon burned on the table next to me. My black cat Bobby sat nearby. The fan whirred in the window.
I asked out loud: “What should I do with this novel? Continue with it or set it aside?”
I have numerous divinatory ways of answering my psychic questions but I admit cards are my favorite – tarot, oracle or even just playing cards. Today I used the Motherpeace Tarot Cards. I haven’t used them in a very long time. For some reason, they called to me this morning.
My Motherpeace Tarot cards, wrapped in a cloth I tie-dyed in 1990
The Motherpeace Tarot, created by Vicki Noble and Karen Vogle, was my third deck in what would become an ever-growing collection of tarot and oracle cards. First I got the Rider-Waite deck in 1988, then the Secret Dakini Oracle Cards as a Yule gift in 1990. The Motherpeace Tarot was a Yule gift to myself in 1994 and the book, Motherpeace: A Way to the Goddess through Myth, and Tarot by Vicki Noble, was a New Year’s gift in 1995. I bought the Motherpeace Tarot Guidebook by Karen Vogle in September, 1996. Although Noble’s book was more comprehensive and thorough, Vogel’s book was easier to use in a practical way. I thought it was interesting that they both created such a beautiful tarot deck together and then published such radically different books about that same deck.
I shuffled the cards and cut them three times for the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone. I left the cut in three piles.
Placing my right hand over each pile, I asked, “What should I do with this novel?”
Then I turned over the top card from each pile.
First Card – 10 of Cups – happiness
Second Card – X Wheel of Fortune – surrender to the flow
Third Card – Son of Wands – the dancing fool – just do it, stop thinking about it.
SO – if I want to finish the novel and be happy, the surrender to the wheel and just do it – dance with the son of wands – stop thinking about what to do with the novel and just write the damn thing.
I put the cards back into their cloth and thanked my spirit guides. After opening the circle, I decided I would add the two Motherpeace books to my reading list. It’s going to be a long winter, after all.
Blessed Samhain! Brightest Blessings to all!
References:
https://www.amandalinettemeder.com/blog/2015/9/25/halloween-is-the-veil-between-the-worlds-thinner
Vicki Noble. Motherpeace: A Way to the Goddess Through Myth, and Tarot. San Franscisco: HarperCollins, 1994
Starhawk. The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess. San Fransisco: Harper & Row, Publishers. 1989.
Karen Vogel. Motherpeace Tarot Guidebook. Stamford, CT: US Games Systems, Inc., 1995.
Barbara G. Walker. The Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. San Fransisco: Harper & Row, 1983.
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About the Author:
Polly MacDavid lives in Buffalo, New York at the moment but that could easily change, since she is a gypsy at heart. Like a gypsy, she is attracted to the divinatory arts, as well as camp fires and dancing barefoot. She has three cats who all help her with her magic.
Her philosophy about religion and magic is that it must be thoroughly based in science and logic. She is Dianic Wiccan and she is solitary.
She blogs at silverapplequeen.wordpress.com. She writes about general life, politics and poetry. She is writing a novel about sex, drugs and recovery.