Hail to all you sapient beings who celebrate the Earth’s successive seasons! Here, in the Northern Hemisphere, Fall’s arrival brings cooler evenings with the promise of bountiful harvests to come. The impending touch of frost should, ere long, ignite leaves to blaze with vivid colors. Those in the Southern Hemisphere rejoice in the triumph of Spring’s growth over bestilled Winter. They may witness Nature as it rises from stasis, surging forth with renewed vigor.
Satanists find it fulfilling to luxuriate in vital, carnal existence, embracing the majestic cycles of our precious, fragile island in space. Our cognizance invokes humbling respect as we seek an ever-deepening understanding of our beautiful and dreadful Earth. While our human societies may be in turmoil, may we each find health, sanity, and satisfaction as the new season dawns!
Tchaikovsky, one of the greatest of melodists, wrote The Seasons—a series of 12 brief piano pieces, one for each month of the year, during 1875. These were intended for release, one per month, in 1876—the year in which our home in the Hudson Valley was being built. The piece for October is the Autumn Song, and the publisher appended words by Aleksey Tolstoy to capture the sense of the melancholy music: “Autumn, our poor garden is all falling down, the yellowed leaves are flying in the wind.”
Here is an arrangement for ‘cello and piano that should provide a thoughtful, autumnal respite from your activities today:
In the Haunted Hudson Valley, The Witchcraft District is flourishing, and those who live here, as well as those who identify with our eternal sense of The October Country, find All Hallows’ Eve to be always in their minds and hearts. The spectral breezes impel the tumbling leaves to swirl through the lengthening nights. Soon, Samhain will sweep us up in its dark mysteries—as always, we Children of the Night can hardly wait!
—Magus Peter H. Gilmore