A Ritual for Samhain – The Underworld of your Writing

This is an audio ritual for Samhain, to help you to get in touch with the underworld of your project. Find a quiet moment and press play.

Ritual Transcript:

Welcome. This is a ritual you can use to get in touch with the underworld of your project anytime you need to, not just at Samhain.

Please find a comfortable place to rest, take some deep breaths and close your eyes.

If you have a pen and paper or some other way to record your thoughts that will be useful at the end of the visualisation.

Once you’ve found a comfortable place, just relax and listen.

I will guide you through some images connected to Samhain and to Scorpio season so that you can get a sense of how you might use this underworld ritual in your own writing.

Then you'll have a chance to do a visualisation and to begin to think about the underworld of your writing project and your writing history.

It might be a good time to start thinking about who and what your ancestors are in your writing practice. These could be familial ancestors. But they might also be ancestors who are other writers, who are plants, or ancestors of the land. Who and what has informed your writing?

Samhain and Scorpio season ask us to think about decay as a form of renewal. To think about compost as a way to create new life. As the darkness takes over, at least in the northern hemisphere, it hides fierce light. The sun doesn't disappear. We just can't see it as much as in the height of summer. There is treasure in the void. There is gold in the dark.

Scorpio is a water sign landing in a fixed season. The kinds of watery images that might be associated with Scorpio might feel more silty and stagnant than in other water signs. Perhaps you might imagine a pond or a deep well. The scent of ancient dampness rising up. It might be greenish. It might almost be black. We don't know how deep it is. So deep we can't see the bottom. There is so much that we don't know that we have to trust.

There might not be much visible activity. Perhaps the surface of the water is covered in algae. But there is a lot going on under the surface that we can't see.

If we think about compost, the underworld, fixed water, layers of sediment, minerals and history, water blending with the earth, we can start to think about the hidden parts of our writing.

Petrichor is the specific smell of rain hitting the earth after a dry spell. It is a joyful scent that quenches our thirst and our spirits. That is the scent that I would like you to start the visualisation with. Try to remember the last time you were waiting for rain and smelled that complex, delicious smell of rain hitting the earth.

Now, think of a moment when you spent time outside with the earth. It could be in a garden. On a farm. Somewhere on holiday. Perhaps you might remember a particular moment from childhood. Find that image of outside in the earth.

Now, imagine your hands directly in the earth. Feel each grain of dirt on your hands.

What scents come up out of the earth as you disturb it?

What can you touch in your hands? What gifts do you receive? What are the secrets hidden in its layers? What is composted there?

Now, think about your project. How can you work to unearth and excavate the underworld of your project?

How can you reveal all the parts of you in that work? Your history. Your emotions.

What minerals, sediment, goodness do you find when you remove your hands from the earth?

Look at your hands. See what you have uncovered.

When you are ready, open your eyes.

Take a few moments to journal, record, or take notes of what emerged from the earth. This could be something about your project. Your writing history. Or an image or idea that came to mind as you were listening.

Take that with you and come back to the underworld of your project whenever you need to.