This is a reblog from my channel, DruidHeart, at the Witches and Pagans website. To read the full article, click HERE.
Here in the UK, the weather has turned and the colder air sweeps down from the North. Nights are longer, as the sun jumps along the horizon with each rising and setting, heading further and further towards the south. Trees are changing colours, and plants are beginning to die back, the green fading into golden and tawny hues, foliage less dense and earth beginning to peek through the underbrush.
The tide of Samhain has begun, when, after the autumn equinox we prepare for the darkness to come. The balance has been tipped, and we have tipped with it, our internal clocks trying to adjust to new temperatures and light levels. Often, we try to establish our centre, attempting to find some foothold or handhold in the coming darkness, our egos crying out the great rallying cry of “I AM!” The darkness, however, knows the folly of this, and smiles as it creeps ever closer.
In the darkness there are no guidelines. There are no boundaries. There is no up or down, no left or right. There is only impenetrable night, a sweet release from the constraints of the known…
To read the full article, click HERE.
Down the Forest Path 
Powerful learnings you share here. Powerful lessons from your deep knowing. Perhaps this is the reason some of us are so drawn to Autumn and the journey that it signals and initiates. It takes us into the arms of Samhain and from there the into the acceptance or rejection of the dark night, the letting go. Some years it is easier to embrace the journey and some much less so. Some years it is fled from entirely. Nevertheless we are given the opportunity to take the path into the fading light, the vanishing familiar, the absent present.
Yes – too often people neglect the teachings available in the darkness, for we are taught to be afraid of it since childhood. Death is not spoken of. The ego is everything in our culture and society. But breathing with the darkness we have the opportunity for complete integration, immersion with our gods and the knowing that comes with pure being. It’s intense, and sometimes I feel like I’m trying to explain what cannot be explained – language fails on so many levels compared to the experience…. x