The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum

Other threads have touched on this one, but I had a thing at work that made me wonder: what do other people notice at this time of year?

Many people talk about the veil thinning, for example, or different behaviour of animals that's out of the ordinary. Do you notice things that are different? What are they?

(My own in the next reply.)

Do you notice things that are different? What are they?

 
I live in a place with four distinct seasons, but the changes this time of year are the ones that usually capture my attention.  There are the usual mundane seasonal changes - the way the air smells, the rustle of leaves, and the shifting slant of sunlight.  Also, there's a marked increase in both the number and activity of corvids in this area due to migrations.  It's not officially fall until the morning birdsong includes a robust chorus of cawing.

The wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff happens to me as well.  My internal timekeeping goes haywire making it hard to gauge the passage of time.  I have a theory that this is more to do with the shortening amounts of sunlight than anything mystical or spiritual.  Also, it's a time of year when I tend to do multiple projects that really engage my attention and when I get working on those, there's a sense of stepping outside of the normal flow of time.

My surest sign of Samhain approaching is a heightened awareness and sensitivity to smells.  My sense of smell is almost non-existent most of the year, but tends to go into overdrive in October.  For example, going to the local farm for apples leaves my head swimming because the smells are so heady.  Other times of the year, visits to the same farm leave no olfactory impression at all.

This time of year phantom smells can be equally intense, particularly those that are associated with loved ones who have died. It's not unusual this time of year to wake up to the smells of my grandmother's coffee and her orange blossom perfume, even though she's been gone for 30 years.  Or to catch a whiff of my father's cherry pipe tobacco if I step outside between 9 to 10 at night, which is the time he'd usually go out for a last smoke of the evening and to do a bit of star gazing.  In thinking about other instances, I've come to realize that the smells are always ones that are associated with pleasant memories of these folks.  I may have to give that one a bit more thought.

Other threads have touched on this one, but I had a thing at work that made me wonder: what do other people notice at this time of year?

Many people talk about the veil thinning, for example, or different behaviour of animals that's out of the ordinary. Do you notice things that are different? What are they?

(My own in the next reply.)

I'm a highly mystical, woo prone person, but Autumn and the Samhain season in particular don't hold any specific spiritual significance for me. They're more about family and grounding back into the mundane in a sort of general way.

I'm not sure what's meant when people talk about the thinning of the veil, so I can't say if it happens to me or not.

Many people talk about the veil thinning, for example, or different behaviour of animals that's out of the ordinary. Do you notice things that are different? What are they?

 
Here's one that's probably unusual: at work I sit by a north-facing window. To the east of my building is a condo tower that, for a couple of weeks each spring and fall, reflects the evening sun right in my eyes. :p

Other than that ... the scent of cold air is what says to me that the season has changed.