Oct 31, 2015

Posted by in Featured, Life & Musings | 0 Comments

Blessed Samhain! Happy Halloween!

My pumpkin!

My pumpkin!

Today, for many, it is Halloween. A holiday that has become extremely commercialized, but is insanely adorable because the kids are just too cute (especially when you’re sugaring them up to send home to mom and dad hahaha). For many adults, it’s a great time to throw parties; and to those of us who love to have fun, it’s an awesome time to dress up as whatever the hell you want. Unless you run around the circles I do, where there are events all year that let you dress up as stuff you love, but I understand, not everyone can be that cool. šŸ˜‰

Halloween is, traditionally, the spooky holiday. It’s the day when you get candy, watch Hocus Pocus (because it’s only an awesome movie), and generally have a good time. We who were raised this way just see it as a fun holiday, which is great.

Pete's Pumpkin

Pete’s Pumpkin

As a Wiccan though, this isn’t just Halloween for me. Today is Samhain, the end of the year, and the time when the veil between the living and the dead is very thin. It will never be thinner, and as such it’s a very magical time. Magical in this case is also in reference to a very sacred sort of energy, because of what this can be used for.

In the old tradition, Samhain is a day when the dead will come back to visit. This is a time for death, and for rebirth. People used to dress up in those times because they did not want their loved ones to linger, and worried that if their deceased loved ones recognized them, they would not pass back over the veil and would instead haunt this side. No one wished for that, so they hid their identities. That’s just one tradition though, however it is where the idea of costumes comes from.

The left side of our alter

The left side of our alter

The ritual then would begin with the dousing of all hearth fires in the village, as one bonfire was lit as the sacred fire in the center. Any manner of traditions would happen at this point, depending on the region and the beliefs. The beauty of Wicca is that there are no solid set procedures. It’s done on intentions and intuition. There are common beliefs, but you can work with them to suit your personal ways.

At the end of the night, that sacred fire would be brought back by everyone to their own hearths, and the sacred fire would cleanse and begin the new year in the home.

The right side of our alter.

The right side of our alter.

Tonight, for us (myself and Pete), it is a ritual that symbolizes the year we’ve had, and the year we will begin. We will welcome back ancestors, and we will welcome in diety. Costumes not required, because we do not feel that the dead will linger (differing traditions and all that). We’re going to part with the old that does not serve us any longer, and honor the lessons that those experiences we are leaving behind taught us. These are the things that have died, so to speak. And we will honor our ancestors, and those who were influential on us and who we are today. This is very much a holiday of honoring those that have passed on but who are not forgotten, as well as the lessons of the year.

At the end, we will light our own sacred fire, to welcome in the new year with its new possibilities and lessons to be learned.

Our alter in its entirety.

Our alter in its entirety.

For our traditions, the ones we follow anyways, Samhain is the time when the Goddess is able to pass into the underworld in her grief for the God who gave his life for our harvests. It is the time when we enter into the dark period, where the days are short and the God’s power is weak. On Yule, the Winter Solstice and shortest day of the year, the Goddess will return with the God who will then be reborn, and we will see his power growing as the days get longer. It is his power that lends us the ability to grow food and nourish our bodies. Thus, the cycle continues.

To some, this is the dark time coming up, where the year has ended, but the new one has not begun. In these traditions there is a two month gap, and the new year will not begin until Yule. In other traditions, Samhain is not the new year, but Yule is. It all depends on the region of people you are following. It’s important to remember that many of these traditions followed and agricultural calendar, because these people lived in a very simple time where the growing season dictated your life; it was how you survived after all. it’s because of that, that the traditions are varied.

Roasted pumpkin seed offering to deity from the pumpkins we carved.

Roasted pumpkin seed offering to deity from the pumpkins we carved.

When Christianity made its sweep across the nation, that was when it appropriated many native traditions in order to get the Pagans (as they were known, it’s a term for country bumpkins or non-city dwellers that was derogatory) to convert to their faith and follow the new belief systems. Many things in the Christian belief system for holidays was appropriated from other cultures and made new.

Trick or treating is wholly Christian though, Wicca didn’t breed that one. That particular tradition came from beggars who desired food going from door to door requesting bread or other small things in return for praying for the family. If the family refused, the beggar would instead wish ill tidings upon the family for their lack of kindness during All Hallows Eve, when the dead were thought to be among us. Hence, trick or treating. It would later evolve to what we have today.

Right now, I’m still apprenticing under Pete to truly learn the ways of ritual and all the meanings behind the traditions and the esbets and sabbats of the Wheel of the Year in the Wiccan tradition, so this will be my first Samhain. I’m sure after we do the ritual I will have a much deeper understanding on a spiritual level that I am failing to capture right now, pre-ritual. However, what actually happens in ritual and my experiences might not be something that I want to share. I find ritual to be something that’s fairly intimate, as it’s the same idea of going to mass on Sunday or visiting a confessional. We are going to commune with our deity and practice our craft. It will be something beautiful and likely indescribable. Sure, I could come back and tell you what we did step-by-step; but I cannot tell you accurately what sensations were there, how intuition tingled, or any of the other more intimate things. Just like you can tell me what you spoke about in mass and that you prayed, but there’s no way I can know how it was to actually be there in that environment and how you actually felt.

Our LED light-up wax skull.

Our LED light-up wax skull.

Suffice to say I am looking forward to it. We have our alter set to welcome those we wish to welcome, and to do the magic we wish to do; with the items on it that are symbolic to us. All that’s left now is to wait until the time is right, which should be within the next hour. Then, we will cast our circle and begin the ritual.

May your day have been as blessed as mine, and to fellow Wiccans who are celebrating Samhain tonight, may your new year be full of renewed energy and blessed happenings.

All photos are credit Pete and his camera phone. Despite being a photographer, I don’t have a camera on me that’s better than his phone. Shame on me. D:

 

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