An archaic word for October in German is Gilbhart.

The word contains a sense of yellowing (gelb) and a roughness (hart) and refers to the foliage (laub). I personally connote "glauben" with the general sound of the word, which is "to believe", which for me is a way of being and seeing and doing that has a gilded, goldenness to it. To believe is to be like a radiant sun or to stand tall like a Michaelic presence with a gleaming metalness that lies at the heart of our true courage (mettle). This considered with the metals in mind, I find to be living in our organs and blood and reflective nature.

Equanimity

October used to be a hallowed month and thus the best month for marriage - especially royal weddings. It may have had something to do with the bounty after the harvest, enabling one to provide regally and impressively for one's guests, of course. But I rather feel, back then, another awareness, namely that of death, would have been more alive for people than it is today: I fancy that marriage is really, ad fundum, in response to the pending journey of the after life.

Composure

I don't mean this necessarily in a moribund way; one need not reside in the mood of "momento mori" on one's wedding day! However, just go figure how, any which way, your marriage has much to do with leaving a legacy (in children or eachothers testimony) or "growing old together", and who wants to die alone? None of these motivations make wise reasons to marry, mind you! But they do come into play once love rules the heart, which knows its job is to listen to the eternal (which spans beyond one life time and another's). Fads and stop gaps are wasted on the heart's true potential. As long as you take this away with you, you'll have made a start on understanding the eternity that love can touch upon.

Serenity

What is wise though?
We can learn from theologians:
“Wisdom presides over God’s creation, but precedes it, being founded from eternity.” (Jean Danielou, “God and the Ways of Knowing”)
We can read for ourselves how the Word of God creates, judges, reveals (see John, Revelations, Samuel). Noah, Lot and Moses knew these things; but we can hardly make out their living picture worlds anymore: fata morganas and spectres to us by now.

We may observe the Quality of Chokma or Sophia has become less in the tread of time, pushed back by fact and fiction. First, to become Torah Law as the mouthpiece of Yahweh, cultivating a civilisation; until Her remnants got milled ever finer: into wise sayings, proverbs, parables, quotes, platitudes and slogans. We can't savour the crunch of Her Truth anymore. We have lost Her bite. She is as thin air.

We could meditate on the following:
God can only speak in Wisdom. Man can only make sense in Love.

Self-surrender

When the stillness within is - just IS as in being there where it is - the self-willedness of all our frenetic as well as our routine doing stops. When it doesn't, the midst reflects this as a maelstrom. Allowing this still pool to form its Self reflective ability is a most noble aim that requires utmost spirit-consciousness. For this a Meister Eckhart or Scotus of Erigena prayed.

What we find in this innermost stillness is the composure that resonates the Word.
The Word gets to compose its true story within you. Finally you get to mean something. You become an instrument of consciousness and a part of the eternal.

One could argue there is more fun in being your own independent self, vagabond or emperor - penguin - leader, and then you die, but so what! as long as those still alive can recall how great you were! Until, they eventually are all dead too.... but then who cares whether you lived at all...?

For the Sweetness of Love

One could also forsake argument and reason and take the glorious yellow days of Autumn to observe how the flower quickened by the sun into something almost heart-like turns to the Art of Dying as only a flower can: fully embodied, at last, at it's very peak or head, in the weight and ripness of fruit - to fall and lie received in death, to begin again (springing forth from seed).

The days of harvest are almost done: the last of the fruit is ready to be reaped: these are the final flowers to be picked and "disfrutatdo-ed" (Spanglish: enjoyed). As the year turned, greening turned into the tannins and colours of ripening.

Tranquility

Enflamed, in rosy red and sunflower yellow, with the passion of life spent on a fruiting-body, the apple blossoms once more before it falls to rest on the calm brown earth; a quiet shallow grave before it is drawn down into its depths where it is teeming with life to divest it of death and give it new life. This is the world of gnomic energy, where the dynamic is one of caring for all things mineral. This nature-consciousness inspired by the Cosmos guards over the deeply esoteric secrets of transsubstantiation, often gruffly warding off the nosey ones, not like the slyphine ones whispering in whispy and luring buzzing and humming tones for us to guess at; shooing us back indoors with chillblains and frostbitten noses. The gnomes are not in for a laugh: for tending to that which lies in the vaults under ground is strenuous work, covert under the stark conditions of winter.

Winter

Are we then left flowerless? No, not at all! Time to turn to the crystals (snow if you like). From the mineral kingdom we can learn so much about our inner stillness, which gives us the serenity to know our true selves by. A thorough study of the mineral kingdom will reveal that here, too, there is a living dynamic, a plant-like desire to move and be moved (just study the turmaline with the help of Friedrich Benesch). Until one emotes and constructs and conceives and roams like the animal.

There is nothing dead (as in consciousless) about the mineral: your bones are alive, your nails and hair are alive; life doesn't have to yelp in pain to be alive, you know! The mineral world has it's own (fairly strictly) Cosmic awareness, which a soulful mind can translate into a wealth of information regards its very dimensions.

If you are able to penetrate into this world and undertand its fundaments, you will learn how to be content is not a full-bellied satisfaction, but a deep inner silence that has nothing more to say, completely resounding the Word, and eminating the Cosmos.

Happy healing to all!

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- the stunning photo at top of Mrs V.'s impressive amethyst ©

- The turmaline for October is from Benesch: Das Turmalinjahr; Urachhaus Verlag.

- The section dividers are cropped from an image on the Golden October Wikipedia page.