Every year, on October first, I write my Welcome to the Witching Season post. October has always been my favorite month and autumn, my favorite season. This makes sense, of course, given I’m a shamanic witch and this season is made for witches and mystics. And this is one reason I love writing paranormal & fantasy series.
Right on schedule, the rains are starting here as the season of ghosts rolls in. This is the perfect time for mysticism and magic, this is the time when those of us who are real witches claim our ground. I love the fog and the mist, and the chill rains that make the Seattle area feel like home. I love the nights when the wind rustles through the trees, sending leaves spiraling off to carpet the ground. And I’ll even admit it, while I’m an arachnophobe, whenever we start seeing the giant house spiders that run through our house and the striped orb weavers that build their webs all across the bushes outside, I know autumn is here. I may still scream (well, at the giant house spiders—the orb weavers stay in their webs outside and we leave each other alone), but it’s a sure sign of autumn.
For Pagans, the new year—Samhain is not only the festival of the dead but the celebration of the Pagan New Year. This is the season of magick and bewitchment. This is the season where we remember the ancestors, honor the dead, and ward off unwanted phantoms seeking entrance into our lives. We celebrate the holiday that Halloween took its roots from.
This is also the season for all lovers of the paranormal—this is the season of imagination. Ghosts lurk in the shadows, trolls creep out from under their bridges, vampires go on the hunt, and that howling you hear? No, it isn’t the basset hound next door—it’s a werewolf peeking out of the forest under the full moon.
Every year I have a tradition—to my closest female friends I send an autumn card. I always include a phrase that I read in a card many years ago: “…this burnt orange season” and so I send my ‘burnt orange cards’ every year—not via e-mail, but honest-to-goddess snail mail cards to say hey, I’m thinking of you this wonderful season. And you matter to me, my sisters of the heart.
The tradition heralds in the autumn, and has for many years. So I sit, writing little notes by hand in an age of all-things-keyboard, and while I’m doing so, I think of bonfires and hearth embers and applesauce and cinnamon buns and community.
So, tell me, what about this season makes you shiver at night, and wrap the covers just a little tighter around you? What makes this the perfect ‘Witching Season’ for you?
~Yasmine
Comments
For me, it’s gazing at my reflection in a mirror in a dark room. It gives me chills to think that on the other side of that mirror, someone else is gazing too. Blessed Samhain.
What makes the season for me is the smell and sounds during the day. The leaves and pine needles gently falling to the ground and the crunch as you walk in them. At night it’s the chill and fresh yet woodsy smell, mixed with the rain at night time. I love to turn my lights off at night and put my twinkle lights on. Then cozy up with a cup of tea, my pillow, and pj’s. That is when my “pet” raccoons aren’t knocking at the window for more cookies.
I love the crisp air in the morning. The sky always seems brighter. It’s a time of walking in the woods and being in Marie. Getting bird feeders ready and stocking up on seeds. Baking homemade bread. Soups and stews cooking in the crackpot. Hot tea or cocoa at night snuggled on the couch with a book.
There’s a smell that wraps around one self this time of year I can’t exactly explain and a tingle that starts in the toes. I love this season . The sand hill cranes are starting to come in and the Canadian geese have arrived. Soon my witchy Halloween decor will litter my porch and delight my grand children.