Samhain Cross Quarter Day Missive
Many blessings during this season of darkening as we walk through the Thinning of the Veils and swirl in these Samhain days. Here you’ll find your Samhain Cross Quarter Day missive all about…
{pssst – want to skip to one particular section? click on the subject next to each 🍂 to jump to that topic}
🍂 How to pronounce “Samhain” and its Celtic history
🍂 Lunar Samhain, Solar Samhain, and why neither actually happen on “Halloween”
🍂 What we can learn from Samhain and its Death Medicine to support us when times feel heavy
🍂 Where Samhain Shows Up in Your Menstrual Cycle
🍂 What your period tracking app and the Gregorian calendar have in common
The timing of True Samhain Cross Quarter Day
We’ll dive into this even deeper in the section on Lunar Samhain and Solar Samhain below, but here’s the skinny:
All points in the Wheel of the Year are determined by our relationship with the Sun from here on Earth.
The Solstices show us when we are receiving either the most amount of light from the Sun, or the least. While the Equinoxes land us at the seesaw point of balance — equal day and equal night before tipping the scales to one side or the other.
The Cross-Quarter Days are the midpoints between Solstices and Equinoxes. Because the Sun does not abide by the Gregorian calendar, the Wheel of the Year points will shift around the fixed days we humans have marked.
With the Cross-Quarter Day of Samhain, we are at the midpoint between Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice — the entry point, the initiation, into the seasons of Winter. This happens when the Sun hits the point of 15* Scorpio {this is midway between 0* Libra and 0* Capricorn}.
This year, Samhain 2024, occurs on Wednesday, November 6th when the Sun lands at 15* of Scorpio
How to pronounce SAMHAIN and its harvest origins
The Celtic language fascinates me. As a native English speaker, just about nothin’ makes sense when it comes to guessing Celtic pronunciation — and the name of this Cross-Quarter Day is one of Wheel of the Year Holy Days that trips most of us up the most.
SAMHAIN ~ pronounced as “sow” {like the pig} + “ehn” {add “eh” before the “n” sound} OR “sau” {almost like “saw” but without the hard “w”} + “ihn” … but either way, definitely NOT the way it looks 🚫 “sam-hane” 🚫
Samhain is one of the few words in the Wheel of the Year that we actually have some certainty was used by ancestral Celts.
Modern day WOTY practitioners gifted us some of the Holy Days words like “Litha” (Midsummer) and “Mabon” (Autumn Equinox), but Samhain seems to be traceable back to ancient Gaul and likely originates within the Gaulish language.
Samhain is said to be derived from the root words translating to “summer’s end” — a nod to this where the livestock would be herded back from summer pasture to their wintering stables or chosen for slaughter to feed families.
As the last of the harvest days, and connected with death in many ways {the livestock being slaughtered for sustenance, the leaves turning color and then dying, the Sun’s decent toward its “death” and then rebirth at the Solstice}…
It’s no wonder this point in the Wheel of the Year is so deeply connected with the Ancestors.
{more on this ancestor and Death Medicine connection further down…}
One of the most important pieces for us to remember as we sit with the turning of the Wheel of the Year: all of these Holy Days are an honoring of the relationship between the EARTH and the SUN
While not all of the Holy Days are connected to times of reaping the harvest — that’s kind of the point… LIFE itself is never perpetually growing or harvesting.
But we are perpetually in relationship with the Sun as a life force that feeds and guides the seed from germination, to sprout, to fruiting, to harvest, to death and compost. {Whether that seed be the literal food that will feed us, or the seed of an idea, or the journey of our human life cycle.}
And on that note of how we relate to the Sun and its guidance…
Lunar Samhain, Solar Samhain, and why neither actually happen on “Halloween”
All across the world we see ancient structures that were built to honor this relationship between the Earth and the Sun:
From the Stonehenge of England, to Germany’s Gosek Circle, Peru’s Machu Picchu, Turkey’s Karahan Tepe, and the Temple of Karnak in Egypt our ancestors mapped their lives {and their sacred architecture} based on how the Sun and Earth dance together.
This relationship with the Sun is why the Gregorian calendar is all sorts of inaccurate when it comes to connecting us to the true turnings in the Wheel of the Year.
We try to pin down the days of Solstices, Equinoxes and the Cross-Quarter Days (like Samhain or “Halloween”) to a set date on the calendar, but this isn’t an embodied reflection of our relationship with the Sun from our place on Earth.
So if you want to deepen your Wheel of the Year practice and receive the medicine of living more in tune with the Great Mother here’s my invitation…
Learn to identify the Sun-based moment of each Holy Day.
This is why I still hold to practicing astrology from a Tropical lens vs Sidereal — working with the Wheel of the Year guides us through the Astrological wheel as well. {More on this another time!}
🎃 Samhain : 15* Tropical Scorpio {around early November}
❄️ Yule : 0* Tropical Capricorn {a few days before Christmas}
🌅 Imbolc : 15* Tropical Aquarius {around early February}
🌱 Ostara : 0* Tropical Aries {around late March/the time of Easter}
🌸 Bealtaine : 15* Tropical Taurus {around early May}
🌞 Litha : 0* Tropical Cancer {around late June}
🌾 Lughnasadh : 15* Tropical Leo {around early August}
🍂 Mabon : 0* Tropical Libra {around late September}
Samhain and Death Medicine
There are so many metaphors we can call forward within this season that remind us of not only the inevitability of death, but also its importance.
🍂 leaves changing color and then falling as they wither
🐄 regenerative farming practices where animals are seasonally out to pasture and then return to shelter during cold months, some of them meeting death to serve as our sustenance
🌾 the first frost often sets in around this time, ending much of the harvest for agricultural crops
🌄 daylight hours are so clearly decreasing as we make our way to the short day with the Solstice
Culturally we’ve somehow convinced ourselves that we can avoid death and decay. This obsession with youth… fear of aging… it’s so unbelievably contradictory to LIFE.
Maybe that’s sounds odd — fear of death being contradictory to life…
But it’s only with Death do we have the means for Life to flourish
💀 the rotted compost nourishing the roots of our food to grow
💀 the seed that must face its own demise with cracking so that a sprout bursts forth
💀 the death of a loved one calling us to LIVE more fully with each day we’re given
I think this is what it means to come into deeper relationship WITH Death. To see its value, and understand the crucial role it plays in feeding us with LIFE all at the same time.
This is Nature.
This is Great Mother.
This is our greatest Teacher.
One way to embrace the wisdom of Death is to learn from and embody the turning of the Wheel of the Year.
The Wheel of the Year is an ancestral, traditional way of understanding and honoring the passage of time.
Connecting with the Wheel of the Year and coming back into right relationship with seasonal timing and the natural shifting energy is a powerful way to rewrite those negative narratives that leave us disconnected from our bodies and longing for more ease in all areas of our lives.
When we tap into the ancestral wisdom of honoring the seasons, we open up the doorway (as women especially) to writing a brand new relationship with our body, our cyclical energy patterns and hormone cycles, and even our over-packed schedules.
If you want to learn more about the Wheel of the Year and how it can support you to connect more deeply with your female body, your menstrual cycle, and the overarching life cycle of being a woman…
Be sure to grab the FREE Guidebook THE LIVING WHEEL
Where Samhain Shows Up in Your Menstrual Cycle… or: Mapping the Wheel of the Year with the Living Wheel of Your Fertility Cycle
You, in your female body, are a mirror of not only the seasons, but every nuanced shift of light and dark throughout the year
The Cross-Quarter Days can be found in the monthly cycle, just like the overarching seasons:
🌅 Imbolc ~ Estrogen returns after bleeding
🌱 Spring Equinox ~ the Follicular phase
🌷 Beltane ~ peak Estrogen levels
☀️ Summer Solstice ~ Ovulation!
🌻 Lughnasadh ~ Progesterone begins to rise
🍂 Autumn Equinox ~ Luteal Phase
→ 🎃 Samhain ~ Progesterone begins to decline ←
❄️ Winter Solstice ~ bleed days
Just like the Wheel of the Year does not abide by the exacting fixed days on the Gregorian Calendar, your fertility cycle has a nuance all its own. Its this nuance that is the quiet spoken language of your body calling you into deeper relationship and communion with the vessel of your physical self.
This is what makes me wonder about the true value of of much we rely on human-concocted tools like the Gregorian calendar or even… period tracking apps 😱
What your period tracking app and the Gregorian calendar have in common:
Sure, there is value to having a structure for tracking time like the Gregorian calendar {which, btw, was only instituted in the 1580’s so like… basically a blip on the human timeline of things…}
It’s especially helpful given the global nature of humanity these days.
And sure, there’s value to the period apps and how they can guide us into becoming more aware of our cyclical timing.
And yes, it’s amazing to see how many apps have popped up and how much more the conversation of “Cyclical Living” or “Periodization” have risen in collective consciousness again.
But…
Just like the Gregorian Calendar cuts us off from deep connection with Nature’s timing & rhythms, there’s an element of how these apps dislocate us from the deep inner conversation of our body.
🙈 Relying on an alert from a device of your upcoming bleed time to remember to pack pads/tampons/menstrual cup…
🙈 Swiping open an app for a robotic algorithm to check if you’re fertile in order to avoid pregnancy or to try to conceive…
🙈 Frantically plugging in your Basal Body Temperature to determine whether or not you had “healthy metabolism” and a “good luteal phase”…
{full disclosure — this 👆 was me up until 3 months ago 🫠}
This isn’t a dialogue with your body — it’s data mining.
And you, my dearest, are not a robot.
Does this mean we throw out the Gregorian calendar AND our period tracking apps?
…I mean maybe..?!
No, probably not 😉 but can we expand our awareness to see that the conversation does not end there — they are both tools, but it’s up to us to broaden the scope of how we relate to both Nature and our bodies as the true keepers of time.
Many many Samhain blessings dear one. May this time serve to root you deeper into the knowing that the Death portals are as divinely powerful as your moments of reaping abundance in the spotlight.
Big Love,
GET YOUR FREE GUIDEBOOK: THE LIVING WHEEL
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