Rosher.Net

And so we come to Samhain (Or Halloween if you’re into pumpkin soup and doorknockers…) A time of reflection on the year now ending (ending if you’re following a nature path like paganism, Druidry etc… otherwise, well, back to spooky wooo.) Folk say the veil between the worlds is thinner at this time, although I’ve never found it any thinner at Samhain than any other time of year – it’s how you look, not when. But it is a time when we remember folk who’ve slipped out of their skin and bone and into some other reality. Not only by pagans, of course. See also “All Souls Day”, “Dia de los Muertos”, etc.

No-one of my immediate blood or tribe passed this year, thankfully, at least to my knowledge. But following on from a post someone posted on Ello the other day, I was minded to consider the folk who created the bookshelf that drew me across the ambiguity into paganism and Druidry. Margot Adler died back in July, and though I never ever met her or heard her speak, her book “Drawing down the Moon” was one of a first books that prompted my interest in the named pagan paths, rather than the unlabelled one I wandered along and still do.

Another name that cropped up was Morning Glory Zell, of the Church of All Worlds, who died in May. I came across the CAW in two ways – firstly, I was immediately captured as a teenager by Robert Heinlein‘s “Stranger in a Strange Land“, from which I gained the concept of ‘grok’ and which gave birth to the fictional Church of All Worlds. Secondly, from the religion that book crafted into the apparent world, which I came across in poor quality duplicating machine prints of the Green Egg magazine in the seventies, when I was really wanting to be ten years older and a proper hippy. Heh. My die was cast long before I knew it.

Anyhow, to the Sunshine, and to be honest there hasn’t been a lot. Warm, warm, warm autumn though it might be, that just means we’ve had overcast skies, low cloud and mist in an otherwise unseasonably warm month. You can see the collapsing trend in the generation here.

Still, we generated 173kWh in October 2014e. The solar folk at JRC calculated I would manage 164kWh this month, so hey, we’re on top again. And with National Grid promising we’re not going to have any lights out nonsense this winter, that’s a good thing, eh. Your power, safe in my hands… for another five months.

I also received my second payment from the electrickery for FIT and Export, this time for the sum of £374.18 – making £562.84 since it went in last December. Come New Year I’ll have the full year’s earnings and carbon savings and perhaps… perhaps… I’ll stop regaling you with my Sunshine smile.

For some, the Yew tree is a gateway to the otherworlds, a tree of long life, a tree of life and death… found in churchyards and burial grounds… maybe even the World Tree Yggdrassil… Tree of England, longbow tree… V

This one above and to the right was cut from a Yew Topiary at Duffryn Gardens, and dropped as waste beside the now prettified tree. It called out, and we took it home, red berried and still green and damp from the morning dew. It’s doing quite well, and will become a whole new tree in time, somewhere…

Blessings at Samhain. Lift a glass to your ancestors and remember we all become ancestors in some context – blood, mud and path –  eventually.