Samhain Mysteries

It's the night of Samhain (here in the Southern Hemisphere) – when, according to Pagan tradition, 'the veil thins' and we not only remember and honour our dear departed and our ancestors, we may be visited by them.

All week, around town, I have kept seeing women who looked like Yasoda, a friend who died a little earlier than a year ago – and then they would turn around and the resemblance would fade. Only tonight I thought, 'Oh of course. It's Samhain.' And then a friend reminded me it was recently the anniversary of her passing. So I guess that between these dates she would come close.

Late this afternoon, I was sitting in my living room with three friends. One looked up, over my shoulder, and said, 'Someone's here.' I turned and saw nothing, but did feel a presence very strongly (which is my more usual way of perceiving the other-worldly). She said she'd seen someone 'flit' down the passage, someone apparently very familiar with the place, and had enough of a glimpse to see his height. 'Short,' she said, and I wondered if it was Andrew (my late husband). She went over and indicated where his height had reached – exactly the same as her own. I measured her against me, and said, 'Yes, that must have been Andrew.' He was just a fraction shorter than me, and she came to the same height. I picked up a pendulum which was once Andrew's and asked if it was him. I got a big yes. (This was a woman who knew Andrew for many years and loved him dearly.)

The sense of a presence abated, and we all decided to go to that same friend's place to celebrate Samhain with a fire in her fire pit.
It was a lovely, relaxed evening. She spoke some words to honour the ancestors, including the ancestral indigenous owners of the land we live in, and we mentioned by name our loved ones who had gone 'beyond the veil'. I included, without specifically naming them, 'My beloved cats, and dogs.'

(We burnt a broken old wooden chair on the fire.)

When I came home, my next door neighbour was just driving out. Good! I would not be observed from his back yard. An opportunity too good to miss. I grabbed my wands, went outside and cast circle. Remembering my dead all over again, when I came to my cat Selene, whom I did mention specifically this time, I couldn't help some moments of sobbing.

Back inside afterwards, I saw that one of my friends had left a pencil behind, on the coffee table we'd all been sitting around. I picked it up to put aside for her, thinking to give it to her next time I see her – and then I saw something else on the coffee table. Let me explain that I had cleared and wiped down that table before my friends arrived in the afternoon. Then we had all sat around it with cuppas, buns and biscuits. At no stage did anyone see this item, which was now clearly visible in the middle of the table – the sheath of one of Selene's claws.

Selene went to her Summerlands on March 4th. Since then the coffee table has been wiped down a number of times, and the floor vacuumed.

Just now, as I type this, I am hearing noises from my kitchen. It sounds like the way my old cat, Levi (who died in 2015) used to go around and bump all the cupboard doors with his nose when he wanted to be fed.

Because I am who I am and live the life I do, these occurrences don't greatly surprise me. But they do make me glad.