Samhain

All Hallow's Eve!

What we celebrate as Halloween 
has its roots in the 
Great Festival of Samhain 
(pronounced Sow-in) 
of pre-Christian Celtic times. 
The Celts were a culture thought to
 have migrated into Europe 
from somewhere north of the Black Sea 
about seven thousand years ago.

These old traditions still hold fast in this modern world and are the least diluted in the country of Ireland. For everyone who loves them, they are a repository of ancestral magick that vibrates as powerfully as ever in our lives today.

Samhain was, and is, one of the four

 Great Festivals in the Celtic calendar. 
It's the end of summer, time for final harvest 
and to bring animals in from the fields. 
 The old year is over, 
and all who've passed are honored
   along with the ancestors. 
 The New Year is born 
with the light of a great bonfire. 
 It's a crossroads time, an in-between, 
a void, when there's easy passage out
 of what the Celts called the Otherworld.

  Today's Halloween is a remnant
 of the Celtic Fire festival, 
with add-ons from the later 
Roman and Christian church overlay. 

 Around 7th Century AD, 

the Christian hierarchy
 began its demonization

 of the nature spirits and the"craft of the wise." 

A new holy day was created 
called 

 Hallowmas 
or Allhallows,

 now called All Saints' or All Souls' Day. 

 Over the centuries All Hallows' Eve became All Hallow e'en, which today we know 

as Halloween.

At Halloween and Samhain, 
it's said that the veil is thin between the worlds.  

The Otherworld in Celtic myth
 is a land where nobody dies or gets old, 
there's plenty of honey, fruit and wine 
and treasures of all kinds.

 It was known as Tir na n-Og, 

the Land of Youth, 

Heaven. 

At Samhain, the divine race of the other world, the Tuatha De Danann, or Dannanns for short, would go walkabout and freely roam.

 They came out of the Otherword through the

 fairy mounds, to make mischief.

From this sense of collapsed boundaries 
between worlds 
came warnings to stay home, 
and rituals of scaring away spirits 
 or playing with them by wearing masks.

Dressing up in costumes

 was a way of making the ancestors feel safe to come and mingle amongst the living 

for a night.

The Druids were the shamanic elders of the Celts, not unlike the wizard Gandalf in Lord of the Rings. Rather than being an intermediary for a sky-God, they had intimate knowledge of the terrestrial, ethereal, elemental and the primordial.

Some of their wisdom has been lost, because they passed it on through an oral tradition. 
And yet, what's been lost, can be remembered 
and reclaimed, as many are doing now.
 

With the enhanced psychic sight of Scorpio time, it seems possible to see 
mystical 
and mythical creatures. 
 Like ghosts,
 I suspect they're
 most at home in overgrown, 
natural places. 

It's a time to see rare entities, 
or bring them to life through the imagination;

such as 
the trickster pixies, 
gnomes, and watery spirits
 like the sprites, 
silkies and 
nymphs.

Look no further 
than the nearest Oak
 and its spirit known as the dryad, 
to bring the sacred into the season.
 For all it gave, 
the Oak 
 was sacred 
to the Celtic people, 
as a door to the underworld.

 It's interesting to note 
that the word door comes from 
the Celtic word for oak, which is duir. 
And since the Celts considered trees the ancestors, 
it's a wonderful time to sit 
under your favorite  
Duir to the underworld, 
or give one a hug.

Samhain is the gateway into winter, 
taking us on a journey where the night gains more and more strength
 until we reach the rebirth 
found on Winter Solstice,
 and as such these celebrations 
are at the sunset of the dying year.
 Give thanks for all the love, life 
and experiences of 
your last year.
 What would you like to place on the bonfire of this fire celebration? 
What no longer serves you and can be 
tossed into the cauldron, 
to be cooked down into raw life energy that will fuel your next cycle of rebirth?

Halloween is a bewitching time of the year, when the sharper psychic powers could find you having breakthroughs of inter-species understanding.

 

The familiar of the witch or wizard 
is traditionally a black cat, toad or owl, 
the predator bird 
with night vision. 
Each of the three witches in Macbeth 
 has a familiar;
a cat named Graymalkin, 
a hedge-hog named Paddock 
and an owl called
 Harpier.

Just as the indigenous North Americans used animals as messengers and scouts, witches' familiars are thought to be little helpers.
Life just wouldn't be the same without them!

  Halloween is a season

 of magically re-wilding our culture,
 which is way too over domesticated!

 It's one of the few times for some, 
of giving embodiment to the primordial soul through costume. 

 It's Scorpio's season, 
Zodiac sign of death and transformation, 
and the time of solar diminishing. 
 All this evokes the dark mysteries of dying, 
being held by an unseen force (demons), 
being haunted, and of entities trapped
 between worlds.

Some mythic beasts, however, come to live through the power of the human imagination.

At Halloween, 

we come closest to living out 

the inner beast, 

or encountering the killer instinct

 of the mythic (or real) predator, 

through scary costumes.

 The minotaur is half-man and half-bull, the centaur is half horse and half man, and the satyr is half man and half goat. 
 Then there are ogres, trolls and goblins! 
Take your pick.

This potent remnant of indigenous Europe has become fixed in the modern imagination,
 and it's yet another way 
that Halloween reminds us of the past, 
when the dark mysteries and supernatural
 were part of everyday life. 
 And those considered wise, were the ones who understood animal medicine,
 and were close intimates 
with these relations.

It is our incredibly rich birthright 
to remember, reclaim

 and celebrate the essence of this deliciously Scorpionic time.

Today October 22, 2012 at 5:14pm PDT
the Sun has moved into the sign of Scorpio.
 Here the Sun (identity) joins a newly entered Saturn(big lessons), 
Mercury(perception, citta)
 as well as
 the north node of the Moon
(evolutionary growth edge).
 Its is a potent time people. 
 

 

Heroes of the Dawn, Celtic Myth, Time-Life Books: 1996.

Pagan Origins of Halloween, by Rowan Moonstone  

 Halloween, by Joanne O’Sullivan, Lark Books: 2003.