The Witch’s Compass and the Last Colors of Autumn-A Manx Working for the Night of the Ancestors

The Witch’s Compass and the Last Colors of Autumn

This morning, in the hollow hours before dawn on November eighth, a few mornings before the old Manx Ancestor Supper, Soddag Valloo, the Silent Cake, and the Shibber Vallo, the Silent Supper of the Dead, the world lay hushed and the veils were thin. Many celebrate on Halloween now, but some of us still follow the old calendar and will honor the ancestors tomorrow, on November eleventh.

Outside, the last gold of autumn still clings to the trees. By nightfall tomorrow the forest may turn white and silent if the weather forecast proves true, but for now the earth still breathes in color and decay.

Between three and four this morning I slipped into lucidity, aware I was dreaming yet still half anchored to the room around me. Darkness breathed softly at the edges of vision. Out of it appeared symbols, bindrunes of crossing lines glowing faintly as if drawn from red sinew or braided leather. They hovered in the air, alive and deliberate, pulsing with intent. I did not yet know what they meant, only that they were meant for me.

My dog stirred, pulling me back. I rose, tended to him, and when I returned to bed and drifted once more into that threshold state, the current found me again.

A woman in a black hood waited in the soft grey between dream and spirit. Her presence carried the weight of knowing and the calm of inevitability. She reached for my left hand and traced a spiral into its center. Light unfurled from her fingertip, coiling into the flesh as if a doorway had opened within me.

Then the world shifted. I stood in a clearing of autumn woods. Golden leaves carpeted the ground, and the air was thick with the scent of earth and sweet decay. Two vast altar stones stood before me, ancient, veined, alive with quiet power. One radiated a current that pushed me gently away. The other drew me forward with silent recognition.

The cloaked woman placed a stang in my hands, my own forked staff long kept but not used as much as I would like. It throbbed faintly, like something waking after long sleep. No words were spoken, yet the meaning was clear. This tool is to be awakened, carved with symbols, and worked through the coming winter.

When I stepped toward the waiting stone the world dissolved into mist and smoke. I walked through the altar into darkness alive with movement. Shadows swirled like breath, shapes flickered at the edge of vision, serpents, lizards, beings of the in-between, leaping and circling as if testing my resolve. I felt no fear, only a deep trust in myself and in the ancestral current carrying me. The mist spiralled around me, bone white and filled with shifting forms and unseen power.

Within that living darkness a single rune ignited, Ansuz. Its vibration moved through me like breath made visible. It felt carved not on skin but into my being itself, a key awakened, the sound of spirit entering matter.

The darkness thinned and I found myself again in an autumn clearing, light gold upon everything. At its heart stood one immense altar stone carved with lozenges and unknown signs. Knowledge moved through me as a knowing. This was a place of crossing where the living and the dead can speak. Autumn itself was the key, the liminal current between warmth and frost, life and death. To begin ancestral work in this season opens the door for communion that endures through the frozen months.

Then came another understanding. The runes and the ogham are companions. The ogham roots deep into the body of the earth, drawing the green current of growth and decay. The runes open upward and outward, carrying the winds of creation and the voices of the unseen. Together they form a circuit of power, earth and breath, root and sound, each amplifying the other when worked in harmony.

To receive both in the same vision is to be handed the full key, the grounding of the ogham below, the awakening of the runes above, joined through the living axis of the self.

The symbols and insights came in waves, then the sense of return, moving back through mist, through the twin stones, through my bedroom window, until I settled once more into my body in the dim light before dawn.

Only as morning brightened did the fullness of the vision unfold. The bindrunes, the starred lines, the lozenges, the stang, the crossings, all were facets of one revelation, the Witch’s Compass. Its geometry had been written not upon the earth but within me.

To be given those symbols in such a way is to have them etched into the fabric of being. They are no longer marks I draw. They are a living compass, a map of the work carried in breath and bone.

Now, as I write these words, the first snowfall is forecast for tomorrow. The last of the golden leaves will soon yield to white silence. The dream came on the very edge of the season’s turning, a few mornings before the Manx feast of the ancestors on November 11th according tot he old calendar, a parting gift of autumn itself, marking the passage from reds and golds to frost, from breath to stillness, from the outer to the inner work that begins again in winter’s dark.

Reflection: The Inner Compass and the Turning of the Year

When a vision arrives before dawn it speaks in the language of thresholds. The air itself seems to hold its breath, and in that stillness revelation unfolds. This morning opened such a gate. Autumn still burned bright beyond my window, the last day of gold before snow.

The compass shown to me was not one drawn upon the ground but one awakened within. In the older craft the compass, or mill, or round, is both map and motion, a way of aligning with the tides of creation. It is the circle of the elements, the pattern of direction and season, and the still point that holds it all. The dream revealed this same geometry not as a ritual to construct but as an interior structure already alive in the body.

At the center of this vision stood the stang, the forked staff that serves as the world’s axis, the world tree, the embodied divine linking what lies above to what lies below. Placed in the witch’s hands, it becomes a living spine, rooting into the earth and rising into the unseen. To be reminded of its power on this threshold between autumn and winter was a summons to hold that connection through the dark season ahead.

Within the mist the rune Ansuz appeared as breath itself. Creation begins with voice. To have that rune awaken within me was to remember that every act of speaking is an act of enchantment.

The dream was part of the land’s own unfolding, the meeting point where the season, the ancestors, and the spirit of place aligned. What was shown was both vision and remembering, the body as compass, the staff as axis, the word as bridge, the cycle as teacher.

The Door Between Seasons

The ancestors move closest when the world grows quiet. Their presence rises through root and memory, asking to be met in the hush of winter’s threshold.

What follows now is the working of that summons, the art of communion with those who came before, the tending of lineage through the living land, and the weaving of practice through the wheel of the year. The path of ancestral craft begins here, where autumn fades to white and the silence of snow becomes the altar of remembering.

If you have not yet made your connection with the ancestral dead and wish to walk with them through the dark half of the year, may I suggest that you perform Shibber Vallo, the Silent Supper of the Dead, during this sacred turning. By one of the old calendars, Lunar Samhain arrives this year on the night of November 11 into the 12th.

Whereas, Astrological (Solar) Samhain the precise cross-quarter moment when the Sun reaches 15° Scorpio occurred on November 7, 2025, at 5:01 PM Eastern Time. The astronomical midpoint between the Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice.

This is the moment when the year truly crosses into its shadow half, when the gates between the living and the departed rest open and the ancestral current runs deep. To share bread and silence at that hour is to open the heart to the wisdom of those who have gone before, to renew the thread that binds lineage, land, and soul.

You can read the full ritual here: https://www.sorceressmaggiemoon.com/post/the-silent-feast-of-the-ancestors-soddag-valloo-and-the-manx-witch-s-supper-of-spirits

“The ancestors are not gone. They breathe in the soil and the stone, they move in the hush between heartbeats, they walk beside us whenever we remember.”

A Manx Working for the Night of the Ancestors

Time: On the night of Shibber Vallo or any night near true Samhain (November 11–12) when the wind turns and the first frost threatens.

Place: At the hearth, window, or bedside somewhere between inside and out.

(A rite for communion through dream)

Offerings:

A small piece of barley bread or bannock, a thimble of milk or whiskey, and a white candle.

Working:

1. Before sleep, set the bread and drink upon a plate by the window or doorway and whisper:

   “For those who came before me, bread and warmth for the road between.”

2. Light the candle and gaze softly into its flame. With slow breath, speak:

   “Let the road open through dream. Let the kind ones who remember me draw near.”

3. When the flame feels steady, close your eyes and imagine the two stones of the vision rising from mist. Between them glows a faint spiral of light. Step inward in your mind’s eye and feel it open at your heart.

4. Lie down without blowing out the candle; snuff it gently with your fingers or a spoon so that its smoke carries your summons.

5. As you drift toward sleep, repeat quietly:

   “By leaf and root, by bone and breath, may the ancestors speak in peace.”

6. Upon waking, write or sketch the first image, sound, or word that lingers. These are the gifts of the Silent Ones. Return the bread and milk to the earth in thanks.

Purpose:

This rite invites communion not through séance or calling, but through the liminal gate of dream, the old Manx way of listening rather than summoning. It may bring symbols, sensations, or voices that guide the practitioner through winter’s inward path.

Closing:

Before you rise for the day, place your hand upon your heart and murmur your gratitude for whatever has come. Step outside if you can and breathe the morning air, for the breath of the living world is the bridge between realms. The ancestors travel by memory, and when you breathe in thanks, the line between your world and theirs is renewed.

Whisper one final blessing:

“The road remains open, yet I walk in peace. May the roots be fed, may the flame endure.”