Samhain: Illuminate Your Soul

Introduction

‘Work of the eyes is done. Now is the time to go and do the heart-work on all of the images imprisoned within you.’
- Rainer Maria Rilke

“We're all ghosts. We all carry, inside us, people who came before us.”
- Liam Callanan, The Cloud Atlas

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer."
- Albert Camus

The feast of Samhain, and the Christian sister festival of All Souls is a time when we experience the irruption of the spirit world onto the human plane. Samhain is the high point and beginning of the Celtic new year. It is the first of the four annual Celtic festivals and is the threshold into the dark half of the year.

This is a time when the veil between the visible and invisible world is at its thinnest and we are reminded that this time that can be fraught with danger and anxiety if we don’t not approach these lessons with the correct reverence and humility. We are visited by strange creatures wearing frightening masks demanding to be hosted, that is, unless you wish to be tricked instead.

The ancient Celtic festival was so influential that it was adopted by the Catholic Church and named the feast of All Saints and All Souls. But more significantly for us today, it has  survived as our contemporary festival of Halloween and Dio de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead.

Ireland has a brave relationship with death and lamentation. This relationship is fostered by the inherited traditional wisdom in our art and spirituality around the inevitability of loss. We will explore creative aspects around our own passing as well as that of our ancestors. This Celtic new year is an opportunity to renew our personal vows and celebrate and honor those who have passed while the darkness of Winter bears down upon us once again. 

Day 1 - The Poetics of the Celtic New Year

This season can be a lonely place. We bid goodbye to autumn beauty and come to grips with the oncoming Winter. We can find it hard to believe that the world will bloom once more. As we hurtle headlong to the dark part of the year we must reframeb death as a regenerative force. We turn our hearts to understanding the poetics of death, grief and renewal that the mythology and custom of this Celtic feast have to teach us. We will perform a simple ritual of honoring our ancestors during our time together.

Day 2 - Ancestry, Family and Forgiveness

Our relationship with those who have passed before us brings to our attention our relationship with our family. Unfinished business and words that were left unsaid can visit us like old ghosts at this time. 

The art of remembering is a valuable one in these modern times of constant distraction. Our focus on the infinite and the disturbing fact that we are not the first to walk these paths is never easy. 

We are reminded that the act of grieving and letting go is also akin to the process of forgiveness, which is the great hallway to gratefulness. 

Day 3 - Crossing Thresholds / The Thin Veil

Ireland has a famous relationship with death. Our traditional mythology of the Banshee as well as our tradition of funeral rites stand out among modern customs. The old Irish tradition of the  Month’s Mind, and the tradition of waking loved ones in the days after their death, is still a vital and vibrant tradition in Ireland. Our vernacular too is littered with references to our limited time here on earth and the fact that we are at the mercy of forces beyond our reckoning. Our art and music is centered on death and loss as a reason for celebration and poignance. Let us examine how our own perception of the after life can inspire us to live this life more to the full.

Day 4 - Your Creativity and the Celtic Imagination

Imagination is a revolutionary force in our quest for true friendship with the soul. Imagination can be both friend and foe and we must fuel our imagination with images and tools to make our heartwork strong. The Celtic imagination revolves around the natural world and darkness as an empowering, germinating force. It has a counterintuitive approach to our modern day sensibility and is always focused on immovable truths and the phenomenon of our ever changing apparent reality. 

This is a time for great traditions of divination and fortune telling. The gift of second sight is more easily accessed during these crepuscular times on the thresholds of dusk and dawn.This time is ripe for creative pursuits, or building a new relationship with our imagination. This is a time to go within, to do the heartwork, as Rilke admonishes us, on all the images imprisoned within you.

What you will receive:

• Attend four live Zoom meetings

• Every session has an optional breakout conversation with other participants to reflect on a question of the day

• Interact with the group via the Zoom chat feature

• Gain access to recordings of the four sessions indefinitely

• Download the Teaching Notes and Participant Chat for each session

• Receive an invitation to join the Dámh Imeall (h)Edge School Facebook Group

• Become a part of this ever growing community of creativity and imagination

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