Samhain

To enshrine ourselves in the dual ideology of being alive or dead, dark or light, good or evil, is a profound mistake. It's a trap for the unwary. Samhain has long been wrapped in ghostly imagery and tales of horror, but this was not the way of our forebears.

In the old world, Samhain was not about fear for its own sake. It was a sacred time when the harvest was complete, the nights were lengthening, and people paused to acknowledge life's impermanence. It marked the threshold between seasons, the turning from light to dark, from growth to rest. The stories told and fires lit were ways to remember that death was part of the natural rhythm of things, not something to be shunned.

Nowadays, we might need a night of symbolic darkness more than ever. In a culture obsessed with youth, speed, and productivity, Samhain offers a rare invitation to slow down and face what we prefer to ignore. Horror films, costumes, and haunted houses give us a safe, imaginative way to approach fear. They offer catharsis, but they also reveal something deeper: our longing to make peace with what terrifies us.

Real horror exists, of course. We see it every day, but filtered through glowing screens and endless streams of images, it becomes abstract, even unreal. We watch the suffering of others from a distance and scroll on. Our sanitized lives have disconnected us not only from the rawness of death, but from life itself.

We no longer touch death directly. Loved ones are whisked away, embalmed, and sealed in boxes. "No touching, germs," we're told. Traditional wakes, where people wept and sang and kept vigil, have given way to efficient, impersonal procedures. Death has become clinical, tidy, sterile, and hidden away. In this avoidance, something essential has been lost.

We are removed from killing our own food, the fear of blood. From caring for our elderly, the fear of infirmity. From dealing with our own waste, the fear of being unclean. We even distance ourselves from the homeless on the street, the fear of failure and abandonment. In countless ways, we build barriers between ourselves and the parts of life that remind us of death. We fear loss, decay, and vulnerability. We cling to what is polished, youthful, and controlled, hoping to outpace time.

Money, health, beauty, and security have become our modern talismans of "goodness." Poverty, aging, and illness are treated as moral failures, signs of "badness." We shield ourselves through Instagram filters, plastic surgery, fad diets, social media platforms, and gated communities. We convince ourselves that control equals safety. But all of it, every distraction, every defense, is temporary. It is all delay and distraction. You will die.

This is not a statement of doom but of reality. The moment we admit it, life begins to feel different. Every ordinary moment, every breath, every friendship, every morning sky, takes on a new vividness when seen against the backdrop of impermanence. The ancients knew this. Their festivals and rituals were not designed to escape death, but to befriend it.

Winter is coming. Nobody gets out of this world alive. Not only are you going to die, but you don't even know when. You could step outside, be bitten by a mosquito, and, oops, encephalitis. Or a truck could back up without seeing your bicycle. There's no guarantee that death will wait until you're old and ready. People die young, too.

There are countless ways to leave this world. Since we cannot predict which one will claim us, it only makes sense to learn how to die well, to understand what happens, to meet it consciously, and to surrender without fear. When we practice dying, by letting go in meditation, by observing the coming and going of each thought, we are really practicing how to live in mindful awareness rooted in reality of what is.

The purpose of spiritual practice, at its heart, is to become intimate with impermanence. To notice how everything, every emotion, sensation, and thought, arises and dissolves. When this understanding deepens, we no longer struggle so much against change. The outer world begins to appear dreamlike and insubstantial, and our attachments start to soften. We stop clinging to what cannot last and begin to rest in something deeper, the awareness itself that never dies.

This is not resignation; it is freedom. When we realize that control was always an illusion, we stop wasting energy defending ourselves from reality. Instead, we turn toward it with a kind of tender loving courage. We begin to see that death is not the enemy of life, but is interconnected with life itself. Death gives meaning to life.

Our ancestors lived with this knowledge daily. They saw death in the turning of the seasons, in the cycle of crops, in the births and burials that shaped community life. Festivals like Samhain kept this awareness alive. They were not grim affairs but celebrations, filled with food, firelight, laughter, and memory. People told stories of their dead not to mourn endlessly but to keep them close. The boundaries between living and departed were understood to be porous and interconnected, not absolute.

On Samhain, as we gather pumpkins, light candles on porches, hang string lights, skeletons and ghosts, we can remember that these gestures have ancient roots. Beneath the costumes and candy lies a deeper purpose: to make peace with the mystery that none of us can avoid.

To sit with death, even symbolically, is to reclaim a part of ourselves that modern life has buried. It brings intentionality, gratitude, and clarity. When we know that everything we love will eventually change, we stop living from a place of looking away. We start showing up fully in each and every moment; in each and every relationship and encounter.

Samhain, then, is more than a night of spooks and skeletons. It is a mirror held up to remind us who we are and what we cannot escape. It asks us to pause in the rush of our lives and look directly into the dark, to see not evil, but truth; not despair, but interconnection.

Death is not an end but a teacher. It strips away pretense and reveals what matters most. When we learn to meet it consciously, when we allow it to remind us of our shared fragility, we find meaning not in denial but in open loving awareness.

Perhaps this is what the old festivals understood all along: that to honor the dead is also to honor life itself. The two are never separate. They dance together, as light and shadow do, in the same eternal rhythm.

So this Samhain, carve a pumpkin, light a candle, and put out food and candy. Say the names of those who came before you. Go out at night and feel the cool breath of impermanence on your skin as the weather cools and the night rolls in. Remember that this life, fragile and fleeting as it is, is already enough.