There are many ways to be haunted:

• haunted by memories
• haunted by relationships and addictions
• haunted by the dead
• haunted by the imagination

Living life in fear of shadows is like sleeping with the light on. Plenty of good comes out of the darkness. Tricks and treats make light of  our hauntings, So here are some insights and tips for making light of Winter.

Haunted by relationships and addictions

In a black and white life there are just shades of grey - the depths of colour are either absent or just not visible. On Halloween Black and Orange are the colours of choice, and this choice has a history. Black - we know it well, is the colour of darkness, in fact not a colour at all, but the absence of colour. It's impression can be powerful, alluding to shadows and threats sometimes dangerous and sexy - the power-dressing colour of choice.

Orange of course is a colour of Autumn -Falling leaves express this best, and the pumpkin lanterns hold the light in the darkness of this time. Orange by contrast to Black is flamboyant, and a warning, it's traffic light heeds us to pause, to get ready, it brings expectation - that something is about to happen; and so it does on Halloween, the time of year when we are haunted by superstition warning that the dead are quite near-by. Put in a more poetic way; age- old wisdom says that at this time "the veil between this world and beyond is thin".  So it is a good time for healing and for letting go. Enter the trickster, we all have him with us.

Haunted by the dead

Human nature being what it is, has transformed a Pagan religious festival into one of tricks and treats. Once a celebration of harvest, and the first winters day; its Welsh  name was  Calan Gaeaf , but  the Christian establishment preferred the theme of "All Saints day" (on Nov 2nd.), for the living to pray for the souls of the dead. Yet we are haunted still - something in our nature or even in our shadows calls us to remember a darker side; and so we light our candles and we bring it up to date with trick or treats. All Hallows Eve became Hallow Evening, and then Hallowe'en - the first day of Winter, a Pagan New Year's Day in contemporary dress. And so now we move into Winter, that more introverted time of year when we can turn more inward unto ourselves.

Haunted by the imagination

We are haunted, perhaps not by the dead, but by the trickster in our nature. When we feel the tingling down the back and spine is there something sinister or morbid in the shadows, or is our imagination playing tricks? In Greek mythology as in psychology today this feeling has been given character; its form is that of 'Hermes', but we in Celtic lands would know his name as 'Merlin', he came from near my home  ("Caer-fyrddin" was his fort, in the County where I live). Although others claim him as their own - and this befits his nature.

Hermes is the 'Puer Eternis'; eternally young father-less child, with a sense of humour, athletic, and stealthy. Not human but numinous; a figment of our imagination and an aspect of our psyche. He reminds us that we are on the edge, that genius and insanity are never far apart and haunted by that little breeze of shivers down the spine, life pauses between the gasp and outward breath.

Haunted by memories

We are haunted by memories of what we cannot let go; people die and ideas die; we experience death many times in our lives, and learning to let go is a life skill that enables us to be fully alive. In good humour we keep our sanity, making light of things we could not otherwise carry.

So on this first Winters day;  pause, gasp, hold your breath then exhale, and know you are alive. In this coming season of darkness, take time to look back and look inward, to Re-member and  celebrate.

Tip 1 - Make light, have fun, and let go.  Key area 1 of your home  is the place for appropriate reflection at this time of the year.

Tip 2 - Use Orange for enthusiasm, and for letting go.

Tip 3 - Light a candle as an affirmation of letting go

The Secret of Home  was my first book; a self-help guide to read your home and to work with your home as a means to achieve a better life.

http://www.jungatlanta.com/articles/Hermes-and-the-Creation-of-Space.pdf

In future blogs I will be writing about the meaning of colour from home experiences in Wales and beyond – Why do women wear red shoes and what happened to the woman who lived in a black and white house?  www.homesouls.com/blog

Follow me on  Twitter  and read my future blogs to find out more,    Contact me

Lindsay Halton Architect-Author-Guide

It is national storytelling week, so here is a strange but true story from my practice as a homesouls consultant.

Without our walls where would we be? Place a window in a wall and there is vision, place a door in a wall and there is somewhere else to go, so our walls frame our choices.

It can be self-empowering to re-imagine the content of home as a metaphor for the way life is; seeing the home as a mirror of Self and responding by making changes in the home that are a call for change in personal life. To view a house in this way is a therapeutic experience. The psychology behind this is Jungian in flavour. The experience is Synchronistic, acknowledging that; where things are placed in the home and matters that arise in the home may have meaningful coincidence.

Beyond its commodity and comfort, your taste, its style and design, your home is full of meaning, symbolic of how things are. The psychology of home is a modern day phenomenon; not spiritual, not material but ‘imaginal’ – Your home is a place of images and impressions that tell your story, taking you closer to the truth about the way that your life is.

Our culture is longing for home, a home makeover is not just about fabric and things, it is much more about YOU – So what are you longing for and how might working with your house help you?

"Hireath" is not just longing or homesickness, it is a heart-felt calling for home. Not only Welsh people feel it, we acknowledge it because the feeling is timeless and the Welsh language is ancient .

You can start to do homesouls® yourself. For inspiration read my blogs , and my own book; ‘The Secret of Home’, is a self-help guide, it describes a process for change that I call homesouls™ . My research took place in hundreds of UK homes over a period of 14 years. With the Glass Runes The Secret of Home becomes an Oracle for the home.

Lindsay Halton Architect-Author-Guide

Real Life Stories: Is your fantasy your reality?

In Wales we are great storytellers, and we know that in real life there is a good story to tell.

How good is the story you are living in? Is it what you want?

Shoes and mirrors, stairs and wardrobes, they all reveal the secret life of people. So as a homesouls consultant I am invited in to reveal what their home is trying to tell them.

In my first of three true stories about life choices - Lucy (not her real name), couldn't fulfill her romance and fantasy, so she took a second lover, and lived two separate lives - each one secret from the other, and this went on for twelve years. What started as Lust soon turned to Love and then two households grew. It was hard for her to manage these two, but manage she did, with growing discontent - not visible at the surface. That is why she called me in. She had no intention of revealing her real life stories, but I saw through her facade and told her so.

I used  Glass Runes  to do a homesouls Oracle reading, and this inspired an intuition which I knew to be the truth. Her response was; shock, embarrassment, relief, then with tears she told the truth. Her two lives had grown too big, but what was she to do? Lucy could not manage them anymore. She could not speak her story, but she could do something about the reflection in her home.

As a child she used to dream about 'The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe'; in which Lucy discovers a wardrobe through which she enters a magical world called Narnia. So it was toward Lucy's wardrobe that we looked, and we talked of her childhood and her dreams,of how her home life story began. She could not find enough love in just one relationship; her neediness had grown from woundedness, and this went back to lack of love as a child.

I would never see or hear from Lucy again, but I sensed the power of that story, and the image of her secret life that started in her childhood wardrobe, and she carries it with her in the clothes that she wears and the image that she presents to the world. ...... read the full blog  http:// ow.ly/JqHzQ  to learn:

• What did I discover when I visited her?
• What did she do about her choices?
• What would you do?

The Plash Inn  will be hosting its first ever storytelling night on Tuesday the 24th of March at 7.30pm. its in  Llanfallteg,  Carmarthenshire,  SA34 0UN

For Four people

Boil your potatoes as usual:

At the mashing stage add:

A knob of butter

a dash of milk or cream

Add a handful of Yfenni cheese( alternatively a handful of cheddar cheese and a teaspoonful of wholegrain mustard)

In a separate pan fry washed and finely chopped leeks and add these to the mash

http://www.homesouls.com  - In interior design the patina of age is trendy now. A place is a relationship, it has a story. The things that we have, say so much about the way we are; their patina holds a story that is shaped over time. Read my blog for some advice and guidance about the real value of patina:

http://www.homesouls.com/blog/2014/11/patina-of-age/

The patina of life is rich, and life experience decorates our world. Where you are is an extension of who you are - So take a look around you:

How does your home move you?
What of yourself do you see in it?
What marks have you made, and what marks have been made upon you?

My blogs are written regularly on the 1st. and the 21st. of each month. So please keep in touch, follow https://twitter.com/homesouls

Contact me: Lindsay Halton Architect-Author-Guide  www.homesouls.com/contact-us/

The dreams of yesterday are the eyes of tomorrow.

Taking a simplistic view I will say that the city of tomorrow is shaped by the children of today, and today’s children are shaped by the adults. So all of us are the architects of our future.

Dylan Thomas saw the Ugly and the lovely in Swansea town long before it was bombed in WW2.  Through little boy’s eyes , he looked out through bedroom windows and saw the ugly on one side and the lovely on the other.

We continue to share the ugly and the lovely view – in fact we are all just that – both ugly and lovely – We are complex.

When I ask people to look out their windows, and what do they see? I am asking for a perspective on life. Two people might see different things, and what they say, reveals as much about them as about what is out there.

Swansea City centre was shaped by the Second World War – it was bombed during the Blitz, by the Luftwaffe under the command of Adolf Hitler.

Hitler as a child was obsessed with ‘Parsifal’ – the blameless fool, the champion of the Holy Grail, and the healer of the wounded King. And as the leader of the Third Reich the image of Parsifal and the image of the Fuhrer became enmeshed.

The children of today walk down Swansea Kingsway, rebuilt after the war – Were it not for Hitler their feet would be treading on different ground and their eyes would perceive different sites.

The psychologist Karl Jung wrote about many complexes; he believed it perfectly normal to have ‘complexes’, because everyone has emotional experiences that affect the psyche. These experiences can bring comfort, and they also bring pain: Hitler’s father was brutal to him, and like Parsifal, he lost his father at an early age, Jung reacted to his father’s views, and Dylan Thomas longed for his father’s approval.

The experiences of these men as children shaped their later work; they shaped the world as we know it.

It is our views that shape the world; the planners and the politicians make decisions about our cities, but what were they thinking long before they rose to those positions? And what will our children think when they take their place?

So when you look out of your window, what do you see? Is it ugly or is it lovely? The way you see the world is the way it is – change your view, then your experience will change too.

Apparently the Opera ‘Parsifal’ by Wagner was conceived on a Good-Friday.

On Easter Sunday children all over Wales will be searching for Easter Eggs. The eggs are a symbol or a promise of ‘new birth’, the festival became a Christian one; celebrating the resurrection of Christ, but its origin was pagan; coming from Germany and the Goddess ‘Eostra’, the goddess of renewal and fertility, her symbol was the Hare.

So why not take a look out of a window over the holiday, and  consider your view?