Halloween is a festival in which so many ancient traditions are still alive, some of them having barely even changed form. And that gives this very old festival of the dead a real potency and aliveness.

Seasonal rituals give us a chance to practice being in a ritual space, to try our hand at symbolic actions that are a microcosm of the changes going on all around us in our lives.

In folklore, myth, and fairy tale, we arrive at the crossroads again and again. At dusk or dawn or midnight, in spring or autumn or the bleak midwinter, over and over we come to this place of choice, of decision, of directional change, and of intersection.