21 September 2012

Mabon and the Spooky Symposium

Tomorrow is Mabon! It's finally here! I cannot tell you how happy I am to greet the Autumn.  Summer's great for hiking and camping, but there's nothing like October country to stir my blood.  I love the way the air turns crisp and the trees shake in the wind.  I love watching swirling orange and red leaves float through the air.  I love seeing fresh apple cider in the grocery store and even love the pumpkin spice candles that start popping up everywhere.  I truly love Autumn.

It also doesn't hurt that Mabon heralds my very favorite time of year - Halloween season!  Yes, I know that Halloween is really Samhain - I am a Pagan you know.  I love Samhain, it's my favorite of all the wheel of the year holidays, but I also love Halloween - silly, creepy, over-commercialized, sugar glorifying, horror movie marathon inducing Halloween.  I'm a dark person by nature (a shock to all my regular readers I know), so few things thrill me as much as seeing normal everyday people enjoying the things that I like everyday.  I love the abundance of spookiness, from ghost tours to haunted houses, that's available this time of year.  I love a good safe scare. 

Mabon itself isn't all that creepy on the surface.  It's a time of balance and harvest - think Pagan Thanksgiving.  But below the surface we see the waning of the year, the turn towards darkness.  From Mabon until the following Ostara the night holds sway and daylight hours are short (particularly here in the PNW).  On Mabon itself the veil thins; the liminality of the day allowing for easy access to other realms.  That means that if you're looking to communicate with "other" beings, Mabon is a very good day to do so.

And that brings us to the Spooky Symposium.  You see, last weekend a friend of mine asked me to provide her with a genuinely scary experience.  She's wanted to see ghosts forever, but hasn't quite gotten the knack of energy sensing, so she can't under normal circumstances.  I rather cockily said I could make scary circumstances.  I figured I'd take her someplace haunted and just pump energy into the room until things could manifest more solidly.  Then I started thinking about where to go.  My thought process was along the lines of: "Oh, I could take her to...no, that would be trespassing.  Hmm, maybe I could go to...no, that place is rather dangerous at night.  Well, maybe I could...no, those ghosts aren't there all that often."  I think you get the picture.  There are plenty of haunted places in Seattle but they either private property or the potential for mugging is too high for a small group of women after dark.  So I came up with a better idea.

Instead of going somewhere dangerously haunted, we'll spend the evening talking about paranormal experiences, different spooky entities, and end the evening with a seance - a Spooky Symposium if you will.  Yes, we shall pretend that we're proper Edwardian ladies and discuss spooks over tea and cakes and then invite the spooks to join us.  Normally I do not recommend seances.  They tend to open doors and not shut them - this leads to people having to call me to rescue them.  Of course, being the witch I am I will do it right (*knock on wood*).  I know enough to ward us from malicious entities and have the ability to banish anything pesky that comes through.   If all goes well we'll get some spooky fun, maybe help a spirit or two, and then go back to the mundane.  If all goes poorly, well, then my friend will get a little bigger scare than she bargained for.  It should be very interesting none the less.  I'll let you know how it goes ;)

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