​Tomorrow is also Samhain, the witches’ new year. This is the midpoint between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere. It is the final harvest, the end of a cycle of life and growth and gathering the fruits of our labor. Now we move deeper into the autumn months, the longer nights, and the colder weather. Every ending is also a beginning, and as the wheel of the year turns and this cycle is complete, we enter the dormant period that is also the start of a cycle of new life to come. Samhain is also a time for honoring our ancestors, for communing with the dead. It is said to be the time of the year when the veil between the worlds is thinnest. It is a time for celebration and also introspection. Today or tomorrow, you might create an altar to your ancestors—those who make your life possible whether related by blood or other forms of kinship—and offer gratitude for the lives they lived. For me, this includes my father, my grandparents, and my family line as well as the transcestors, the mighty and beloved queer dead who are not my kin by blood but by possibility. The lives they lived make my life possible. You might take time to be quiet and still, and listen to what your ancestors are saying. To say that the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest also suggests that this is a time for visioning toward worlds to come. What will justice in worlds to come require? What resources do ancestors past, present, and future offer to creating justice for all, for life on this planet other than ourselves? If we allow today to mark both endings and beginnings, what can you let go of or surrender that is no longer serving you, and how can you orient yourself toward being in service to that which you love in the year ahead?

​Today is the Autumnal Equinox, Mabon to the witches, the midpoint between the summer and winter solstice when the hours of daylight and nighttime are in balance. It’s a time for celebrating the harvest, for cultivating gratitude for the work we have done and the fruits of our labor, as well as for letting go of that which we no longer need. As the Sun moves into Libra, in the northern hemisphere, the leaves are already beginning to turn colors and fall away. The crops are coming into their final fullness as longer days depart for longer nights. This is also a time for reconnecting to balance, for noticing what is out of balance in our lives, and for engaging in the dynamic process of making the changes necessary in order to feel stable in responding to the shifting forces of our lives.
 
Surrounding the Sun’s ingress into Libra marking the equinox, the Moon in Cancer will oppose Saturn in Capricorn. Now direct, Saturn has an agenda, steadily moving forward on long-term plans for the future. As Saturn demands these new directions, notice where you feel resistance or opposition in your body. The Moon then makes a square to Mercury in Libra and a sextile to Mars in Virgo. News, messages, or correspondences may challenge our sense safety or security—as if that’s not simply a daily reality in our current political climate—and we may in turn feel empowered to take action in order to support meaningful change.
 
As we embark on this new season and celebrate the turning of the wheel of the year, I hope that you can feel all the ways that you are of this place, constituted with and from this earth. It is not only that the world around us is changing; the worlds within us are changing as well—if we let them. Magic is what happens when we recognize this vital, necessary relationship between the worlds within and without, and allow ourselves to be moved by this changing earth to which we belong.