Witch's Halloween

Samhain, meaning ‘End of Summer,’ goes by many names. Halloween is the most well-known, but you may have also heard of All Hallow’s Eve, Hallowmas and day of the Dead. Those are just to name a few.

A pagan religious festival, Samhain’s origins date back to an ancient Celtic tradition. It’s considered to be one of the most important Sabbats of the Wiccan’s calendar. Celebrated on the 31st October, it is widely considered to be the Wiccan new year.

On this date, we welcome in the harvest and usher in the dark half of the year, with the division between the light and the dark clearly marked, separating the brighter days from the long, cold nights. The darker, chillier time of year provides the chance to meditate on what the witch has learned along the way, and how those lessons can be applied to life, in order to improve a wiccan’s self.

It’s well known that during Samhain the veil between the physical world and the spirit world grows thinner, the barriers breaking down, which allows the humans to make contact with loved ones who have passed. It’s an opportunity to make contact with ancestors, with spirits, to reach out to the dead.

Samhain is the third and final harvest. The Sun God will die and return to the underworld until his return at Yule. Life will lay dormant as death takes the lead, and it marks the transition into the world of the dead. At Samhain, keep in mind that death is not something to be feared, as with death comes new life. In darkness new life is celebrated. With the death of winter. Spring is welcomed.

To celebrate Samhain, the dead are and have been remembered. A Wiccan would set an extra place at the dinner table for the Samhain feast, so they too could enjoy the festivities, and in Celtic countries, food offerings were left on altars and doorsteps for the dead.

These days wiccans will leave a lit candle in the window to help guide the spirits of loved ones home. Apples buried along paths and roads provide for spirits who left no descendants, and carved turnips can be hollowed out to look like protective spirits. And hey, if you don’t have a turnip, you can probably get your hands on a pumpkin.

Consider it a much needed-protection for a night of chaos and the wandering dead.