In Which Amy.... well, just read it already. (Myspace Blog)

This is my favourite holiday ever. Ever ever ever. Samhain - with crisp apples waiting in big tubs of water to be caught with the teeth, lit candles on the alter flickering in the dark for those that have passed, for us to remember, costumes and candy, jack o'lanterns carved into scarey faces and lit throughout the night to guide our dead to visit us, and the seeds salted, roasted, and dipped into the sweetest honey in the world. Ouija boards, circles, bonfires, tarot readings, the dumb feast... I love it all. This Samhain is different for me. It is my first in many years in which I am choosing not to have large crowds or a huge gathering of people come to watch the witch in action. I will not be reading tarot until 3 am for everybody under the moon. I will not be casting circles of salt 'round the bonfire and drawing open the West to welcome in the dead. I will not be dancing around a cauldron, stirring the witches brew that fogs the ground from the secret stash of dry ice which I dropped in. I will spend my Samhain alone. My children off, for the first time in years, at "halloween" parties and trick or treating with peers. For them, this is a rare treat. They never get to be normal... this is Samhain. But this year, even they must go. I will be in the dark of my room, incense thick in the air, chanting in commune with the world that is thin with the veil between worlds. I will cast off the old - this is a moment of truth, of moving on. I will shrug off the past. It will be closure. Closure at the time of new beginnings, the start of a new turning of the wheel of the year. When I am done, I will be cleansed. I will be empty of the past and able to let go of it. I will be looking foward, into the future. And there will be a new candle on the alter, for this year only. It will be a rememberance of dead relationships. This year, when the veil is the thinnest, I send that path into the world of the dead, and I will not be haunted by it anymore. So mote it be.