Today is astrological Samhain. The Sun reaches 15 Scorpio, halfway between the Autumn Equinox (0 Libra) and the Winter Solstice (0 Capricorn).
Samhain is the opening of the Celtic year, our entry into the dark half of the dark half. We step into a time of darkness and decay.
In our modern era, endless growth is the goal. Words for diminishing sound bad: reduction, lessening, stagnation, failure. We live in a solar culture that seeks to banish darkness.
Yet endless growth is disease, not health. All cycles need times of pruning, composting and, loss.
This is a time of concentration. In cooking, we boil or simmer liquids to intensify flavor––reduction. Creating essential oils and perfumes requires distillation. We extract the essence.
Today we enter a time of focusing, extracting, reducing. We are essentializing.
This year’s Samhain is intense. The Samhain Sun applies to sextile Pluto (exact Nov 13). Retrograde Mercury will also sextile Pluto (Nov 9) on his way to transit across the face of the Sun (Nov 11).
Pluto often signals times when we lose parts of our lives on the way to something more authentic, meaningful, and essential. He offers rewards, but only after we’ve been through the dark time.
The Moon, just past her conjunction with Neptune, perfects her sextile with Pluto as Samhain begins.
If it seems odd to speak of reduction under a waxing Moon, remember we are harvesting the last of this year’s crops. If you grow your own, you are now drying, simmering, extracting, and reducing. This is how we make food. This too is achievement.
There is no universe process for making a life. No perfect recipe. We feel our way. We explore, experiment. We find riches in the shadows. We partner with forces we cannot see.
How is your life is becoming more focused. What are you concentrating on? What kind of essence will you create?
Image from a photo by Scott Umstattd : https://unsplash.com/photos/MwYBzsaSAGQ