I’m writing this on Halloween ­ or as my old coven-mates used to say, Hallowmas or Samhain. Here in Quito, there wouldn’t be any little mites coming to the door in colorful costumes. There’s no candy corn in the stores. And I don’t have a coven to celebrate with, so I won’t be calling the corners and invoking the goddess tonight.

Here in Quito, people do honor this day, though. They will be going to the cemeteries tomorrow on El Día de Los Muertos, the Day of the Dead, bringing flowers and food to share with each other (and with their beloved dead). These rituals are connected with the Catholic traditions, but also with older pagan customs. The traditions are all interwoven, strand building on older strand.

What does it matter if we call her Tara, Kwan Yin, or the Virgin Mary, as long as She comes when we call? It is interesting that it’s mainly the female deities who have a reputation for appearing and lending ordinary folks a hand.

Living in Catholic countries for the last fourteen years has had an effect on me. Strangely enough, it’s reconciled me to Christianity. Latin America is full of beautiful old churches. And it’s impossible to walk into them without feeling that hush of layered prayer, that give-and-take between the heart and the divine breath.

It doesn’t matter what name you give it. It’s a human thing, this ability to connect with something greater, to tap into a spiritual force.

And now the New Age folks talking about the Harmonic Concordance. They’re saying that we all need to join our consciousness and pray for world peace on November 8, when there’s a total lunar eclipse and a grand sextile in the sky.

It’s hard to say exactly what this configuration means, but it is strikingly beautiful. Grand sextiles - that is, six planets spaced evenly around the sky-circle ­ don’t happen very often. There was one in March of 1954, and as far as I know, the world didn’t change enormously. (However, it’s true that Brown vs. Board of Education was decided a few months later, so maybe it did.)

So I’m good with everybody tapping into this energy at the next full moon. I’m good with anything that brings a host of people together, regardless of the symbols and signs that they were raised under. The sky belongs to all of us, and so let’s gaze at it together. Many of us will be able to see the eclipse that night.

The grand sextile is composed of three oppositions, each of them an opposition between earth and water. The interface between earth and water is like the division between the living and their cherished ghosts. Earth is practical reality, the embrace of the physical. Water is the amorphous realm in which feelings flow, beyond the sharp divisions of the years, beyond the reach of death.

When people go to the cemeteries with their food offerings, they are trying to bring earth and water together. They bring something that is physical, something that is all about nurturing and sustenance, and they leave a space open for the non-physical to return to them.

One of the three oppositions is between the moon in earthy Taurus and the sun in watery Scorpio. Taurus is the most stable and physically-oriented sign, and Scorpio is the sign of transformation. Taurus is about dwelling contentedly on our round earth, and Scorpio is about living in eternity. It’s one of the contradictions embodied in this full moon. Life is what’s happening here, in this present moment - and yet it’s also everything that’s ever happened, everything that will happen.

The second opposition is between Chiron in earthy Capricorn and Saturn in watery Cancer. Capricorn is the sign of goals and ambitions, of building structure on the material plane, and Cancer is the sign of emotional attachments. It’s another of the contradictions embodied in this full moon. Life is something that we shape, but it’s also something that flows through us.

The third opposition is between Jupiter in earthy Virgo and Mars in watery Pisces. Virgo is the sign of practical details, giving us a sense of the systems and organizations that make up physical life. Pisces is the sign of faith, of surrender to a cosmic consciousness. This is the third of the contradictions of this full moon. Life is infinitely varied, and yet everything is one.

The earthy signs are more involved in form, so it’s easy to point to them as the problem. After all, it’s in the forms that we differ, not in the substance. We dress in different ways, live in many different structures, call our gods by different names, and then we come to the conclusion that these things are important.

But earth also provides common ground. We all survive by eating what she gives us. And without earthy people and influences, none of us would have survived this long.

And all you watery people out there, wrapped in your sensitivities, ready to cry at the thought of a homeless child on the other side of the globe - what are you actually doing? You can soak up all those feelings when you’re on the other side, when you’ve cast aside your bodies. But now, here, you’re physical. What will you do?

Will something change at this full moon? Will our mutual human consciousness move up a notch? I don’t know. But I do know that it’s a time when our bodies and our spirits will look across the void, straight into each other’s eyes. Maybe there can be a joining of time and timelessness, form and formlessness. Maybe the many and the one will recognize that they don’t disagree. Maybe we can offer ourselves both this green world and the risk of eternity.

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