Suddenly

It happens every year.

I plan on celebrating Samhain, using the mid-point between the Solstice and Equinox as a base. I buy a Butternut Squash, or a Crown Pumpkin, disembowel it, carve it into a JackoLantern. I grind up resins, roots and oils to make the incense.

After a supper featuring Pork and Pumpkin, I light the JackoLantern, hang the swinging censer outside and light the charcoal, sprinkle the incense, and annoy my neighbours.

That's on the outside: inside a rich conversation with my Ancestors has been going on for a few days.

I'm observing the Moon, how she is fading to New in a few days and I keep the internal conversation going. I fling the arms of Spirit out embracing the dry wind which whistles away all our precious moisture, here in Joburg.

Warren and I trek into Rosebank to stock up on sacred oils from Isis and we get lost among the noisy renovations of The Mall. We smell onions frying from street cafes and hear the tribal dancers gearing up for the morning batch of tourists.

It's the start of Winter. And I seem to neglect that factor every single year. For the morning after I start my Samhain celebrations it is invariably the first frost-nipping, sitting-on-hands-to-warm-them, breath-steaming morning of the year so far.

But I - I have forgot my gloves, my beanie, my Winter-weight coat.

And so I complain - as every year - how suddenly the Winter came on this time.

And all the while, on the inside of Spirit, a bow wave of Ancestors -yours,mine, everybody's - is winging out behind and to the side of me. Weighing lightly but insistently on my earth soul, and reminding me: we are the leading edge in Time of All Those Predecessors.