The Rover's Almanac: November

Tawny talk, darkness and the dance with death.

Nov 01, 2024

Introduction

At the beginning of each month I like to locate myself, metaphorically, within what is happening around me: the annual cycles, the celebrations and festivals of the calendar, the arc of the stars, the waxing and waning of the moon and the passage of nature whispered on the wind.

This is the twelfth instalment of a regular monthly almanac I write to share with you. It is, in the main, a figurative contemplation, seasoned with some of the more prosaic anchor points and markers that I personally cherish.

Here we look ahead to the month of November in the year 2024.

Calendar

Friday 1st November - Samhain
Tuesday 5th November - Guy Fawkes Night
Sunday 10th November - Remembrance Sunday
Monday 11th November - Remembrance Day
Saturday 30th November - St Andrew’s Day

Moon Calendar

Friday 1st November - New Moon 12:47
Saturday 9th November - First Quarter Moon 05:55
Friday 15th November - Full Moon: Darkest Depths Moon / Mourning Moon 21:29
Saturday 23rd November - Last Quarter Moon 01:28

Sky Calendar

Sunday 10th November - Keep watch after sunset to see a close encounter between Saturn and the waxing gibbous moon
Saturday 16th November - Best evening to see Mercury
Sunday 17th November - Uranus at opposition: Earth’s closest approach to the ice giant
Wednesday 20th November - Keep watch after sunset to see a close encounter between Pollux, Mars, and the waning gibbous moon
Saturday 23rd November - Keep watch after sunset to see a close encounter between Regulus and the last quarter moon
Wednesday 27th November - Wake up early before sunrise to see a close encounter between Spica and the waning crescent moon

The Rover’s Almanac: November 2024

All is dark.

The light of the first November dawn is an hour away. Through the gap in the tree canopy Jupiter shines, blazing bright in the vast black. Down and to the left is Betelgeuse, glowing red. Red-brown tawny owls are calling to each other:

How’s hunting beyond the beck?

The sky is clear but the moon is dark.

Yes, not so good.

The full moon will return.

Indeed, the darkest depths moon, on the fifteenth night - with luck we will fill our bellies.

The nights lengthen; winter is coming.

Yes, the hungry-ones will soon breach the boundaries.

They are young and headstrong.

I will defend my territory. They will have to do their best to survive on their own.

Many will die.

It is the way.

Farewell my friend, and good hunting!

Good hunting to you.

At the end of last month, the clocks fell back an hour from British Summer Time to Greenwich Mean Time. No longer can we borrow daylight from the early hours to make our evenings lighter and longer. In fact we are losing light everyday and will continue to do so until the sun stands still on the shortest day: winter solstice on 21st December next month.

The initial adjustment can be awkward, with longing looks out of office windows as the afternoon daylight dissolves before work’s end. If we can get past our preference for light and turn instead to face the return of the darkness, November invites us to reconcile with an old friend.

Hello old friend,
Death here. Just thought I’d remind you that I am here, because you seem to have forgotten, and it’s really not doing either of us any good.
What happened between us? It wasn’t always like this. There was a time when we were friends, when we lived together, ate together, even went out dancing; remember? Remember when I sat at your side through the night as you wrote your epic poems? Remember when you used to depict me as walking with you through your life, at your side at every step? I do, but slowly you pushed me out of the picture, until you had me just wafting in at the end, hovering over your death bed, doing battle with your stupid doctor and then clocking you out at the end of the shift.1

Our ancient festival Samhain2 is the matchmaker: the go-between reuniting us with darkness, decay, and death. No wonder some of us drag our feet. Yet this is a rich and potent period if we can follow the path laid out before us, and not turn away.

The veil between the seen world of matter and the unseen world of spirit becomes thin - a perceived crack in the fabric of space-time. It is a time for communication with the ancestors, a time for divination, omens, portents, and seeking to understand the inner mysteries.3

Much is made of the veil at this time of year, draped across the doorway to another world. Folk say the shroud becomes thin around Samhain, allowing a degree of to-and-fro.

Cross the threshold from the world of the living into the Celtic underworld and you will end up with ‘an apartment in the City of Death’4 where your invitation to the Danse Macabre awaits. Will you dance?

The church could not ignore this ancient pagan ritual. It was thought that others could also slip through the gap: the faerie, the sidhe, hobgoblins, elves and other mischief-makers.

This is the root of Hallowe’en’s ‘mischief night’. Later the emissaries of the devil were also feared along with evil ghosts and many ‘horrors of hell’, which were let loose on this night and which all good Christian folk were led to fear.

To take control, the church simply appropriated the ceremony, renamed it, and repurposed it. The new brand, Allhallowtide, Hallowtide or Allsaintstide, encompassed All Saints' Eve (Hallowe’en), All Saints’ Day (All Hallows’) and All Souls’ Day.

Since the fourth century Hallowe’en has required us to honour all saints and pray for recently departed souls who have yet to reach heaven.

Instead of the Celtic feast of the dead, when our ancestors would reach out to their lost kin, laying places at the table so the recent dead could be with their families and friends,5 gatherings were held to commemorate all the Christian martyrs.

The church created hell out of the Celtic Underworld, and every sadistic cruel fantasy man could invent, was assigned to it. The Underworld and darkness became a place to fear and the Celtic understanding of its regenerative aspect became lost.6

A few years back I went to the woods on my own on a dark Hallowe’en night to witness what would happen on the stroke of midnight when October gave way to November.

Nothing happened.

In my naiveté and inherited cultural poverty, I thought I would encounter a deathly dancing partner, some sort of apparition or ghostly spirit.

The real journey is to the woods within, the underworld, the unconscious, the spirit realms. November holds the invitation: explore the dark inner worlds, face fears, confront what lurks in the personal shadow. Dance with death, reawaken intuition, gain insight, and harvest wisdom.

It is possible to die and meet the dead before your own death, but you need balls of steel, the heart of an oak, and a good dose of fruit from the earth to do so.7

If all this seems strange, consider this from J. B. S. Haldane:

The world is not only stranger than you suppose but stranger than you ‘can’ suppose.8

Samhain is associated with burial mounds which were thought to be entrances to the other world. One of these was the Bronze Age barrow at Fortingall at the head of Glen Lyon in Perthshire. A bonfire was built on the mound, known as Carn nam Marbh, the Mound of the Dead, because it was believed to contain the bodies of plague victims. Great quantities of whin (gorse) were gathered from the hillside and heaped on the mound.

When it was blazing, the whole community held hands and danced round it while young boys took burning faggots and ran through the fields with them. After the boys had held a leaping competition over the dying, embers of the fire, the youngsters went home and ducked for apples while their elders went dancing.9

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For my children, Hallowe’en is about a single end goal, gathering sweets, and the two strategies that will bring them closer to that end goal: pumpkins and costumes. The costumes give legitimacy to their annual round of door-to-door begging, while the pumpkins indicate which homes can be raided.

The meaningless, asinine, Trick-or-Treat night that we have imported from America, has successfully taken hold. When they were young I resisted it because I knew it would escalate over the years, but I was overruled by Tara and the children.

The farmers who grew the wasted Hallowe’en pumpkins will move on to fertilise the sugar beet fields. There is also a lot of ploughing to do. Those who have diversified their land for Christmas trees will begin the harvest.

Farms will start feeding their livestock more because the grass stops growing and the incoming colder temperatures will force livestock inside. On a farm with cattle, the male calves will be castrated before the onset of frost.

This was the traditional time to slaughter animals and preserve meat, to save the expense of keeping them alive through winter. The slaughter also put food on the feast table. The Anglo-Saxons called it Blot-monath (blood month).

One way to dance with death at this time of year is to play around with explosives:

Remember, remember, the 5th of November,
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, 'twas his intent
To blow up the King and the Parliament
Three score barrels of powder below
Poor old England to overthrow
By God's providence he was catch’d
With a dark lantern and burning match
Holler boys, holler boys, let the bells ring
Holler boys, holler boys
God save the King!

My boys persuaded their Grandad to buy a box of fireworks. In Tesco where they were purchased, the children were not permitted to touch them at any point. They’ll be touching aplenty on Guy Fawkes Night, up close and personal, lighting the blue touch paper. I’ll be there to supervise of course and I’ll try not to pass on any bad habits, like holding roman candles in a gloved hand and aiming the sequential pyrotechnics at imaginary foes.

When the flame of the last firework has burned out, we need not fear the darkness. In the shadows, there is salvation:

That’s why I’m writing to you now, because that fear is keeping us apart. Let me in now, before it’s too late. The deathless system is going to hell, and nothing you can do can stop it. So let go now. You’re running out of energy, you’re running out of world and, look, now you’ve run out of tomorrows. Even if this hideous charade plays on for a few decades more, you’re still mortal. So face it; and by facing it, free yourself of your fear, and your anxiety, and all your silly trying. Face it; and let me in.
Because I am here now.
Your oldest, and closest, friend,
Death10

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