All Saints Day; death and rebirth

October 2022 comes to an end today, on the 31st. The last day of the month delivers All Hollows Eve, known as Halloween. This celebration is an inheritance from the ancient Celtic festival of Shamhain, when people dressed in animal heads and skins and lit bonfires to bring light into the darkness of the winter ahead and to keep at bay the dark spirits or ghosts, of the dead returning to earth that day. The Celtic tradition was incorporated by the Romans into their celebration of Feralia, the day of the dead and Pomona, goddess of fruit and trees.

Her symbol was the apple, hence perhaps the bobbing of the apples (catching an apple with your mouth, no hands, floating in a barrel filled with water). It was also incorporated by Pope Gregory the III, during the 8th century A.D. into All Saints Day, a day to celebrate all saints and christian martyrs, on November 1st. The night before all saints day, was called all hollows eve (middle English ‘alholowmesse’ meaning ‘all saints’). In our days, besides candy and trick or treating, we also celebrate this day in an attempt to understand and come to terms, with not only the finality of all living beings, but the infinite cycle of death and rebirth. The zodiac sign most preoccupied with this infinite life cycle, is the Scorpio.

This is the one zodiac sign that understands, at a deeper level, regeneration and transformation. On October 23 the Sun entered Scorpio and on the 31st, Mars, planet of action, passion and drive, turns retrograde. There seems to be an uncanny timing here, between a holiday rooted in ancient time, when people’s daily existence depended on the surrounding unpredictable natural elements, and action packed planet, Mars, tapping on its brakes. I can not help but wonder; Is there something important to learn here? Perhaps by slowing down, not just our physical but also our mental existence and at the same time, celebrate the dead, we can better truly absorb, how fragile our earthly world is and how infinite the circle of life is. Thus, we can begin to appreciate the value of our limited time on this planet and galaxy.

We may not all be the same, look the same but we all share the same right; the right to be able to provide food, care and shelter for our families. Nothing less than this should do. As October comes to an end and November is colored by the Scorpio-Taurus axle and Taurus Full Moon on the 8th, the lesson here is, to seek the balance between our earthly possessions (Taurus*) and our soul’s deepest needs (Scorpio*). If the scale tips either way, the imbalance will have dire consequences for our collective and consequently, individual existence.

We are all equal. We are all ‘saints’.