I am gradually putting out my seasonal things. I don’t do it all at once but over time. Building, adding, layering bits and pieces I have gathered. Yes, I am one of those collector, gatherer types. I am always picking up sticks, rocks, piece of moss, leaves, little bits of nature. My windowsills are lined with beach rocks and my altars always have some bit of collected nature.
I found this bit of fallen tree branch a couple of years ago, struck by the skull so clearly marked. To me that it. Since I was out searching for things to add to an altar for an October dark moon ritual, this seemed like a divine sign! A found skull on a piece of dead branch just a few days before Halloween, the time of the thinning veil and spirits. It spoke to me of magic, transition, endings and meaning after death. I felt tingles and a giddiness of discovery and understanding!
On the way home I passed our neighbors and when they asked what I was carrying I showed them my treasure. He didn’t see the face in the wood but she did. For them it was merely an interesting oddity. And that is the way of signs. They speak to us in different ways, as individual as our fingerprints. This piece of wood is placed on many of my altars as a reminder of the power of death, the gifts of nature, the way our world is always speaking to us. We just need to slow down enough to learn our language together.
This is the season of reading signs and finding meaning in the ordinary and it is one of the ways we will be celebrating in Signs, Stories, and Shadows.
