A Note For Samhain

Over recent years, and with erratic degrees of diligence and enthusiasm, I have marked the main festivals in the 'pagan' calendar: the solstices and equinoxes, along with the four great intermediary days. Should you live with at least one foot out in the natural world, you soon realise that these festivals all denote a significant turning point in the annual cycle, along with the accompanying human psychological attitude. And of these various festival days, it is Samhain that has the deepest impact on me.

Despite having lived for almost a decade in this northerly place, I am still caught off-balance by the speed with which the days shorten at this time of year (and conversely, by the fast-growing hours of daylight in March and early April). Ignore the shift at your peril. Should I not permit my body and mental habits to catch up, I will be in a state of exhaustion by the end of November, feeling painfully alienated and 'out of touch'. About a fortnight ago I started to feel the discomfort typical of this change in the year. Making the adjustment is not, for me, straightforward: it involves shedding a skin, renouncing the persona of busy outer activities in favour of a more inner attitude. Actually, this is a change in ego identity, from one who 'does' to one who 'sits' and 'is'.

So we enter the time of year when darkness has the upper hand. We live surrounded by blackness, and must make whatever provision is necessary. It is the time for magic, mysticism, penetrating the depths. For the feminine to come forth. For gazing long at a moon-and-star embroidered sky. For setting out on the kitchen table the Tarot cards of the High Priestess, the Moon, and Death. It is the time for watching what we considered to be strong and stable fall apart, or dissolve. For material to slip back into the void, into the darkness and nothingness, whence it came. A time for brews, unguents, and magic potions.

Though horribly commercialised, Hallowe'en remains as a faint reminder of this unique time of year. Witches, ghosts, ghouls, weird things. It is indeed the time when the veil between the worlds is thin, almost inviting us to tear it asunder. This is something that I find quite tangible as I walk through the woods, or even gaze across the trees and gardens out of my back window. The enforced busy-ness of the weeks to come, as the western world of humans winds itself up for the fake merriment of Christmas, bears witness to the alienation of modern mainstream culture from our authentic, natural rhythms.

We enter the darkness. And there we shall remain, until, come the arrival of February and the festival of Imbolc, we may stand atop a hill and welcome back the sun, the light, the brightness that increases by the day. Happy, magical Samhain, everyone.

Image: fragment from Witches Sabbath by Michael Heer, 1626



        

On The Hillpaths

Ah yes, the hillpaths. Not any old hillpaths - these specific ones. I have walked them eight or ten times, and never met another person on them (save my own companion, on the few times I have not gone out alone). They don't climb up the hills as such (though they do reach a height of 1500 feet above sea level) but more lead right into the hills. To the heart of things; into the belly of the beast, even. As such, they enter land more lonely, wild and mysterious than many-a path that leads to a giddy summit.

The track sets off from behind the tiny village as one, before bifurcating a few minutes' walk up the hillside. The paths were originally deerstalkers' ways into the wild places, built during the Victorians' craze for such pursuits. Nowadays, from what I have seen, stalkers travel mainly in swanky modern dark-green all-terrain vehicles across marshland and moor; on a good day, they probably don't need to get off their bum in order to bag a stag. In truth, these old deerstalkers' paths have seen better days, and some are in danger of falling into total disrepair. The hillpath I chose last week alternated between stretches of clear stony terrain and deep puddles, before occasionally getting lost altogether in bog and temporary baby lochs. The west coast of Scotland had clearly experienced a little precipitation over recent days.....

I hadn't walk this particular hillpath for several years. While some of it was familiar enough, other sections seemed new to me; and the hills can be unrecognisable from season to season. At one point, the pencil-thin track through the heather took a sharp turn to the right, and began to climb steeply above a deep, narrow gorge accommodating a rapidly-flowing mountain stream. This didn't seem right at all, but I continued anyway, just to see where it actually led. Ten minutes later, it became clear that this was indeed the path, as I emerged onto flatter ground that my memory banks recognised from five years past.

As I climbed further, landscapes opened up around me. Behind me, the unmistakeable jagged outline of the Cuillin of Skye appeared. While sunshine was in short supply all around me, the Cuillin were bathed in the low ethereal glow of mid-autumn sun. It does happen from time to time.

A pregnant, almost disturbing, silence had accompanied me all the way. The hills hereabouts have the ability to unnerve and unsettle the individual, particularly in certain weather conditions. Around now, though, the silence began to be punctuated by a distant piercing bellow, followed by another spine-chilling roar. Stags were out on the hills, and not too far away. I scanned the hillsides, then scanned again, but nothing. Maybe they were really close, but their coats would merge seamlessly into the colours of the autumn around. Then I heard the sound of scree moving down a slope to my right: two deer were crossing the hillside, but females. I continued to walk quietly and attentively. The roars continued to ring through the air. Then, halfway up the hillside to my right, I saw one. He stood still, as is the way of deer on the hill, and looked. I too stood still and looked. He was a magnificent specimen, and I pondered how, should there be a fight between stag and human, there would be only one victor. Then, as if fatigued by this mutual gazing, he turned his back and moved away. Swiftly yet silently, with grace and dignity, and without the slightest sign of anxiety or panic.

I reached the top of the pass. The afternoon sun was already beginning to set over the Cuillin skyline. I looked into the glens and mountains below and beyond me: some of the most isolated peaks in Scotland, normally requiring an overnight camp to be visited properly. I climbed to a small nearby peak before retracing my steps out of the wildness. Several deer peered down at me from a ridge above, a bit like cowboys out for an ambush in a 1960s spaghetti western. Twilight was descending as I rounded a corner and saw the familiar and somewhat comforting outlines of the few dwelling places of the village. I gave thanks, crossed the little river by the haphazard collection of rocks loosely arranged as stepping stones, shed a final glance hillwards, then was gone.



        



     

The Empire Strikes back

  Image found on Neil Kramer's Facebook page

Here we go round the mulberry bush. Again. And again. And again. Apparently, in the original, it was a bramble, not mulberry, bush; and this barbed image may well be more appropriate.

We have recently witnessed that annual gathering of the Wise, the True, and the Holy, otherwise known as the Conservative Party Conference. Prominent among the speakers was Not-at-Home Secretary, Theresa May. Our own local Green Tara, Mother of Mercy, Tory Bodhisattva of Infinite Love and All-Seeing Compassion announced that, should the Conservatives win the next General Election, they would be introducing 'Extremist Disruption Orders'. Folk who represent a threat to 'the functioning of democracy' could be banned from speaking at public events, from broadcasting or protesting.

Shortly beforehand, David Cameron had spoken at the U.N. In his speech, he stated that non-violent conspiracy theorists are just as dangerous as ISIS. That, I take it, includes Pale Green Vortex. Read while you can, folks: we won't be around forever.

It is plainly obvious what the whole thing is about. It is a full assault on 'dissenting views', a vague term that could be extended to include anything outside the Lib-Lab-Con, Republicans-and-Democrats paradigm. This is the barely-hidden subtext, and one that Cameron has been particularly keen on. Remember catching paedophiles as a pretext for increasing internet surveillance? Rarely have I come across a politician who is so transparently a hollow puppet for other people's agendas as David Cameron. Whenever I see him, I am reminded of this bendy rubber rabbit toy I had when I was a child. It could be twisted and manipulated into whatever shape you wanted. It eventually got old and was thrown away....

The war on terrorists is a dream come true for politicians. Since terrorists can pop up anywhere and everywhere, it's a war that can never be properly won, hence delivering a state of perpetual fear and attitude of constant warfare. Thus we will always need politicians to defend and protect us, and to introduce more and more measures to help us control the bad guys. So a lot of it is just that: a pretext for increased control, silencing voices that disagree or, more to the point, see through the whole bloody charade.

Meanwhile, yesterday evening, BBC aired a programme seriously challenging the official version of events surrounding genocide in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. If the BBC were to present more programmes questioning the official version of reality - on things like the Arab Spring and the windfarm fraud, for example - I would readily review my opinion of the corporation. As it is, while western governments gaily announce war in the Middle East on a regular basis, they idly stood aside while literally millions died in Rwanda and DRC (where, in the eastern regions, things remain far from stable even today). This is the kind of reality that gives the game away. It's not about Mother of Mercy. Not at all. It's about far sinister stuff, much of which the pathetic puppets of Obama, Cameron, and the rest are probably only faintly aware, if at all. It's a long, slow process whereby the tentacles of control are intended to reach out further and further, to squash independent thinking, freedom of speech, free spirited living. This is the long game: it behoves us to be awake to its many low tricks.