When Spirit Walks Thickly

The Autumnal Equinox marks the first day of fall and opens a door into my favorite time of year. The leaves are dessicating and dropping, skittering across the sidewalk as the cooler winds blow in. In the northeast, we throw open our windows and let the new winds curl through our homes, licking at the corners and cleansing the edges of our rooms, and our minds.

We prepare ourselves to lower the storm windows and turn on our furnaces. We stock the woodpiles and harvest our fall gardens. We ready ourselves to turn inward and ride out the dark and cold days ahead. But they’re not here yet, and we relish in leaf piles and apple orchards, in pumpkins and autumn squashes.

The Equinoxes are balancing points. In the spring we tip both towards warmer days and the reality of shorter days after the solstice. After months of being closed up, we spring clean at the Vernal Equinox, sweeping out the cobwebs and dustbunnies and letting the warm air swirl through. In the fall we tip towards colder days and longer days after the promise of the solstice. At the Autumnal Equinox we also clean, consecrating and creating sacred space in the walls of the home we will depend on through the coming colder, dark days.

Cinnamon sticks simmer in a pot of water on the stove, the scent vibrating through the air, whispering to the ether in the house. Wake and walk, wake and walk. May all beings that wish us harm walk right out the front door. You are not wanted here.

Bundles of sage and rosemary are clipped from the garden and strung up in all the windows. May the ancestors protect all who dwell in this home. May the guardians watch over us. May they keep us healthy and safe.

Our cats run through the house, stimulated by the smells of the transforming world outside and the transforming home inside. And in their laps, the numbers grow. Two cats still of flesh and bone and two cats still beloved and every day missed. For the first time, all our babies are running together. It is a bittersweet sensation, both a gift and a heartache.

Have you ever been in a room with your cats, both sleeping, only to clearly hear another cat digging in the litter box? Have you ever reached out your hand to pet your animal, feeling them jump up beside you, before you remember that your pet is already behind you?

When spirit walks, we listen.

Equinox is a step closer to Samhain, towards All Hallows, towards the time of year when the veil between our world and spirit is thin. They walk all year, but this is the time of year that those who do not see may spy their shadows slipping past them. And this year, the spirits are walking more thickly earlier than I usually experience them, as my cats can attest.

My dreams are full of lost loved ones visiting and bringing me messages. Some of them are for me. Some of them are for people I love. And some of them are spirits who find me because I am an ancestral lighthouse keeper and I shine a bright light. Some messages I can’t deliver, some I won’t deliver, but I listen to what all the spirits have to say. Most of their messages are meaningful, but a handful of them are purely selfish. Still, I hear them out so they can move on.

This is my work and what I do. I listen to the living tell stories about their dead and I listen to the dead tell stories about their living, their loved ones, their descendants. And the spirits that follow the course of their family lines, a mirror of how I trace mine backwards, have just as much love for those they could never know as I have for those who came before me.

And this year, spirit is moving earlier than usual, reaches out to us and milling about, thickening the air around us. The only thing we have to fear from them is what they reveal to us that we have been trying not to look at, the things we have been trying not to see. The only fear is within us. Because they come with love. They come because they love us.

Call out to your loved ones as you close your eyes for slumber. Open yourself up to the spirit energy in the world around you. Open yourself to see what was previously unseen. And bring yourself to meet them in dream world with love in your heart.

(A note: I separate true hauntings and poltergeist activity from normal spirit world antics. Often what we think of as hauntings are spirits simply trying to get our attention. If they’re turning your iron or your stove burners on, that’s different than knocking over boxes, playing with your pets, and turning on lights around the house.)