Hi Friend,

Halloween/Sawhain is upon us, and with it, the coming of the long nights and short days. On the solar circle of the year, this is the moment when we can clearly see the approaching Winter Solstice. In many parts of the northern hemisphere, it is a time when the leaves a rustling, falling, dying, becoming compost.  (This year we are once again offering a very sweet online series to help prepare ourselves for the coming of Winter - I think of it as an Advent for Winter Solstice - the flier is at the end of this newsletter.)  Pre-climate change, the weather was predictably and steadily heading towards cold in the North East - these days, it's not so clear.

I myself have mixed feelings about Halloween: I love the creative, crafty opportunities for play, for all ages to have permission to dress up, for all things pumpkin; I detest the plastic altars that pop up on people's lawns (although I find many of the displays immensely amusing), the insane consumption of sugar/candy (Here's an article I wrote about sugar a few years ago), and the perception of witches as scary, ghoulish creatures who scare children and are best killed (though Harry Potter has done a great deal to help altar that perception).

Halloween echoes the older Celtic/European tradition of Sawhain/Samhain, a holiday sometimes referred to as the Witches New Year. It is a time when, as they say, the veil between this world and the otherworld is thin.  The rustling of the leaves can often seem to be whispers from the Otherworld.  And so we light lanterns.

For all of you who lost loved ones this past year, I hope your grief is flowing in a supported way.  

Ironically, the U.S. election is always right after Halloween: right after the moment to, in many cultures, take time to connect with our ancestors.  In the last few Sawhain rituals I've co-created during election years, we've always taken time to talk about election-related anxieties and fears. This week in the United States, election-related anxiety is higher than ever. Yet another reason to connect with the earth and ground yourself. We just don't know how long the uncertainty, mistrust, anxiety, polarization, and deep discomfort amoidst our fellow countrymen will last. 

Sometimes, when I see the number of fake witches with plastic cauldrons and purple bubbles on people's lawns, I wonder: is this an expression of a desire to be witchy?

Witchy: What happens when we take the word "witch" and let it slide away from being a noun and into the realm of an adverb, even an adjective?

The insistence that the categories of "pagan" and "witch" are distinct, separate identities that cannot intersect with other religious/spiritual beliefs is a notion that Christianity imposed upon indigenous communities in Europe back in the 800s AD.

It is not something that the local communities in what we now call Europe call themselves. We have a wide variety of historical evidence that in the early phases of Christianity in Europe, people practiced a blend of Christian and "pagan" practices - especially those that honored Mother Earth.

In the process of the Christianization of Europe, local deities' feasts became infused into Catholic Saint Days; old Goddess symbols became part of Christian symbolism; and ancient sacred sites became the sites of Churches. Some people say that the Old Earth Goddesses took refuge in the skirts of Mother Mary (and Mary Magdalene). I'm not always sure about that, but who am I to say what deities may or may not do? 

Sometimes syncretism  (the blending or the incorporation of other beliefs into a new or existing religious tradition) was a forced imposition and an act of power-over. And sometimes the differences between the new and the old merged with relative peacefulness. Many academics say that Christianity only survived because of such blending. (Syncretism is, of course, a pattern across many religions.)

So I use the term "witchy" to convey a spiritual pathway that does not necessitate a departure from global religious traditions.  It is akin to the way I see authors such as Sophie Strand and podcasters such as Josh Shrei talk about animism (a term I am increasingly appreciating).

Of course for many people, paganism/being a witch is their primary sense of religious belonging and they are very clear that it is not part of another religious tradition.

But so many of the people with whom I work do not experience the mystical and cosmic magical experiences that we can loosely categorize as "witchy" as inherently oppositional to the rest of their faith experiences.

What happens when "witchy" becomes a descriptor of a way of looking at the world, a way of being with interbeing, a way of practicing magic... that is not inherently separate from other religious traditions. One can be a "witchy" ..... (fill in the blank: Catholic, Muslim, Buddhist, Jew). Or Quaker.

I'm excited that we are once again offering a retreat on, "If Quakers were Witches" - this time at Woolman Hill Quaker Retreat Center in western Massachusettes, May 2-4 (right on Beltane). It should be a very rich and very beautiful time. Elaine Emily and Hayley Hathaway will accompany me as elders. It's not yet open for registration, but I wanted to share with you anyways! 

There are so many gateways into a re-enchanted world.

And then there is this other question, a question that I think about a great deal: what does it mean for people (especially from global religious traditions) to engage respectfully with local Indigenous traditions to create practices appropriate for local ecologies? How does the person from somewhere-else come to be closely connected to the lands and waters and peoples of the place wherever-they-are-now?  Especially given the realities of the legacies of colonization and our rapidly-shifting-ecologies?  Which is to say - in a context where there is a lot of distrust?  

Just this week, I witnessed something emerge that gave me much hope as to possible ways forward. It occurred during the last session of the Motherhouse Starter Series (where I've been part of the theological council), hosted by Land Justice Futures, which has introduced a wide array of people to some of the basics of Mother Law as experienced amongst Haudenosaunee peoples and has leaned into teaching about the implications of the Doctrine of Discovery on everybody (especially black and brown bodies) and how this intersects with the European Witch hunts (as that is one of my focus areas, I also got to help shape that session).  The initiative is premised on the notion that in order to delve more deeply into Mother Law, we also have to delve more deeply into "complicit no more".  In the last session, there was generosity in the spiritual and practical invitations from a clan mother that I suspected would not have been possible without the "complicit no more" framework. 

To lean into the animate living world also includes sharing the burden of the work of both understanding and breaking the spell of the Doctrine of Discovery. 

Return: to the moon. To the cycles of Earth. To the mother. 

ReMembering is part an parcel of ReEnchanting. 

This season, wherever your Halloween/Sawhain celebrations take you, I hope you give yourself time and space to play.  I hope you have some moments to honor your own ancestors, to celebrate this precious season, to take pleasure in the rustling of the leaves, to see clearly both how long and how short our own lives are. Perhaps you might sense the thinness of the veil. And as you listen to the more than human world, perhaps you will hear more glimmers of what it means to disentangle from the Doctrine of Discovery.  

I myself will have some kind of a fire, which is an important part of Sawhain rituals. I think I'm on candy duty for at least some of the evening (alas, my purple knitted witches hat is not with me).

And because this Halloween, on a new moon, is also Diwali, I will also celebrate the Indian Festival of Lights with some dear friends from the Indic continent.  Like so many of us, they are attending to the Divine Feminine in their own ancestral lineages, as well as deepening their own inquiry and experiments into what it means to unravel from the Doctrine of Discovery. 

Blessings to you during this precious season of lights in the darkness, of harvesting, falling leaves, and of celebration  Yes, I feel you on the anxiety.... breathe deep the cooling of the evening air, the lighting of the candles.

May you experience the blessings of the rustling of the leaves. 

-Sara Jolena

PS - thanks to everyone who came to our ReMembering Course  Informational webinars! They have all been so great! I've loved meeting you! The current ReMembering Course is off to a great start! In part because of the high interest, we are having another ReMembering Course informational webinar in a few weeks, though the next cohort will not begin for a while.