Being both dead and alive
I spent the evening of Samhuin listening to John Rutter's Requiem, performed by my wife's choir. Rutter is a modern composer but uses his medieval influences to create works that are both modern and old at the same time, much like Druidry. Which is interesting as Rutter has written much Christian religious music but is not, as such, a practising Christian he is agnostic, tending towards atheism when he describes life as a numbers game. As it was Samhuin I meditated, listening to the music, looking at the translated latin Christian lyrics. The theme that the meditation brought was that Samhuin is not only that key boundary between life and death but is also a time when life and death merge...
Quantum Samhuin
We are both dying and living at the same time and this is the river of the here and now, where the Awen flows. The cells in our body are constantly dying, creating and living. Cancer is when the cells don't die when they remain alive. Modern western liberal society is a cult of youth that fears death. Contrast that with the Gewessi path where the Anglo-Saxon quote "wyrd bið ful aræd" is very meaningful; my translation is that "Destiny is very determined" can be viewed against the traditional translation that "Fate remains wholly inexorable". My translation is from my modern pagan understanding of the Germanic worldview that Orlog, how a person behaves when facing their wyrd/destiny/doom/fate, has an affect on the web of wyrd afterwards. Whilst the traditional view comes from the classical christian scholarly interpretation that the quote supports a fatalistic worldview. Our Anglo-Saxon forefathers knew full well that death could occur at any time and so their awareness of the balance between life and death was much closer; they lived in a much more uncertain world.
Samhuin is the time to be alive in the balance between life and death.
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