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Samhain comes as the great turning of the Wheel, the hinge-point between the light and the dark halves of the year. It is the deep breath before winter, when the last harvest has been gathered and the fields lie bare, awaiting the hand of frost. The Celts knew it as the year’s ending and its beginning, for the wheel does not move in lines but in circles, and death is always the seedbed of new life. In this liminal turning, time itself feels more fluid—past, present, and future braided together like roots beneath the soil.

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The plants reflect this mystery. Their green bodies fade from sight, but their essence does not vanish. It slips below ground, into root and rhizome, into seed husks nestled in dark soil. The Wheel teaches that descent is part of the cycle, no less vital than the blossoming of spring or the fullness of summer. Samhain is the descent into the dark, the initiation into the unseen. Just as the ancestors cross into shadow, so too do the herbs enter their hidden dreaming. And we are invited to follow, not in fear but in reverence, trusting the cycle that holds us all.

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To honor Samhain is to remember that our lives are woven into this great Wheel. We are not observers at its edge—we are part of its turning. Each death within the cycle—leaf, season, ancestor, old self—becomes fertile ground for what is to come. This is why the veil feels thin now, why our dreams echo with voices that are not entirely our own. The Wheel opens, and we stand at its threshold, offered the chance to see beyond, to listen, to carry forward the wisdom that only the dark season can give.