Samhain: The Beauty in the Dying

Samhain: The Beauty in the Dying

The veil grows thinner with every falling leaf. 🍂

The air hums differently now — softer, deeper, edged with something ancient.

This is the in-between: the hinge of the year, the threshold where endings meet beginnings, where the earth exhales and nature prepares to rest.

What is Samhain?

Samhain (pronounced sow’inn) translates to Summer’s End.

It marks the Celtic New Year — a celebration of death, transition, and the sacred pause between the harvest and the hollow.

Where Beltane blooms in fertility and firelight, Samhain descends — cool, quiet, reverent — inviting us to turn inward and listen.

It is a festival of remembrance and renewal, honouring ancestors and the spirits of those who have passed.

We celebrate not by denying death, but by sitting beside it — understanding that all endings are simply doorways into new forms of life.

The Beauty in the Dying

There is a strange loveliness to this season — a sad, powerful beauty that stirs the bones.

It’s the ache of the trees shedding what no longer serves them.

It’s the quiet miracle of seeds sleeping beneath the frost.

Samhain reminds us that even in decay, there is devotion.

Even in darkness, there is growth.

When I first wrote about Samhain years ago, I understood it as myth and history.

But now, after walking through my own seasons of loss, motherhood, and rebirth, I feel it in my bones.

I’ve lived this festival.

I’ve been the harvest and the husk, the fire and the ash.

Samhain is the soul’s descent — the underworld initiation that teaches us how to die before we are reborn.

It asks us to lay down control and meet the truth of impermanence — to look gently at the places within ourselves that ache to be seen, held, or released.

The Thinning of the Veil

In ancient times, Samhain marked the liminal space between worlds — the veil thin enough for ancestors to whisper through.

Fires were lit to guide the spirits home.

Offerings were placed on doorsteps, and candles burned in windows.

Communities gathered in circle to divine, to bless the land with the ashes of the old year.

Even now, you may feel that closeness — the tingling at the back of your neck, the presence in dreams, the sudden knowing that someone is near.

At Samhain, the seen and unseen merge.

Our intuition sharpens.

Our sensitivity deepens.

We remember that the spiritual and physical worlds are not separate — only layered.

Light a candle.

Whisper their names.

Trust that they will hear you.

How to Honour the Season

This year, I invite you to honour this portal with me — to gather from home for a guided Samhain ritual soon to be released through Lost Cosmos.

Together we will:

🕯 Journey through meditation and ancestral connection

🌿 Work with herbs, crystals, and colours of the dark half of the year

💀 Release what must die, and make space for what wants to be born

🪞 Reflect through journal prompts that bridge the living and the unseen

Samhain isn’t a time to fear the dark — it’s a time to remember that we are the dark.

We carry the light of every woman who came before us, and through us, her fire burns again.

✨ Sign up to the Lost Cosmos newsletter or follow on Instagram @lost_cosmosuk to be the first to receive the ritual when the veil opens.

A Blessing for Samhain

May this Samhain remind you:

You are the bridge between worlds.

You are both the seed and the soil.

And every ending you’ve survived was never the end —

only the beginning of another becoming.