Samhain - The Tradition and its Transformation

“At no other time does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that is in no way inferior to the smell of the sea, bitter where it borders on taste, and more honeysweet where you feel it touching the first sounds. Containing depth within itself, darkness, something of the grave almost.” - Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters on Cézanne

Summer has drawn to a close; the nights are noticeably longer and the days, shorter; the wind is considerably colder, and there is far less green in our wonderful landscape than there was just a few weeks ago. Autumn has come, and with it comes a shift in consciousness, a change in the air, something tangible but nigh impossible to put into words. Suddenly you can sense something different, when you step out of your front door as evening falls and you feel the thick buzz in the air, you smell the mildest hints of wood smoke and notice that everything has an odd tinge of orangey-grey. There is an absence of birdsong which is unsettling yet soothing at the same time, and in the twilight you start to see shapes, people, animals, moving in the corners of your vision, only to turn and find the streets deserted. Autumn is a time beyond time, a space between worlds, where our senses come alive and we are awakened to what our world truly looks like behind the curtain of illusion.

Autumn marks the beginning of the 'Dark Half' of the wheel of the year, with the end of the fair summer weather, the slow death of surrounding flora, and the reaping of crops. A this time as the winds begin to circle in from the north, heards of cattle and sheep are brought inside to wait out the winter, leaving the land appearing barren and lifeless. The Autumnal Equinox, known to the Irish Celts as Lughnasadh, is the point at which the night and day are of exactly equal length, when the sun and the moon share the sky as equals. This balance between night and day is mirrored in the human condition, as we feel compelled to withdraw from the outside world, to go within and contemplate ourselves and the world around us and our place within it. The Equinox, in Greek Mythology, is symbolised by the kidnap of Persephone by Hades, and the death of the Earth as Persephone's mother, Diana, retreats in mourning to find her. In Celtic myth, Lugh, the Sun God, mourns the death of his mother, Ethniu, ending a tenuous truce between the Tuatha De Danann and the Fomorians at this time, the darkness of impending winter represented by the ensuing war with between the two tribes.

The Tuatha De Danann

Following the 'descent into the underworld', we finally arrive at Samhain, or 'Summer's End', the Celtic New Year; traditionally celebrated over three successive days beginning on or around the end of October (some believe this depends of the nearest full or new moon), Samhain, pronounced 'Sow-en' is thought to be the time of year when the 'veil' between this world and the Otherworld (the afterlife, known to the Celts as Avalon, the realm of the Fae-Folk) is at its thinnest, allowing us to perceive and communicate with spirits of the dead. In Greek myth it is the time when Persephone agrees to marry Hades and rule beside him in the Underworld, consolidating the hold of darkness over the living world above. As a side note to this, it is believed by some Hellenic Pagans that Persephone, in her role as queen of the underworld and guide of the dead, takes on the name of Hekate, the Matroness of witches and necromancers. Typical associations with Samhain are the colours black and orange, black representing the dark night of impending winter, and orange representing the promise of the return of the sun in the spring. Plants such as corn, berries, apples, root vegetables etc. are all significant to Samhain as they represent the last harvest before the winter. Animals such as spiders, bats, owls, toads and wolves are all attributed to Samhain as they are primarily nocturnal creatures and correspond to this season of darkness, introspection and change. Other Deities associated with Samhain include Cernnunos the Horned God, who governs the dark half of nature, the cycles of death and rebirth, and oversees the balance between predator and prey, Ariannrod who is a Matron of Witches and The Morrigan who is a goddess of Magic, war, change, death and rebirth due to her role in overthrowing the Fomorians in the Irish Myth cycle. Samhain currently falls under the starsign of Scorpio, making it a time for self reflection under the watery influence of the sign, but also for manifestation of desires and ending of conflicts due to the firey, aggressive nature of the scorpion.

So, how would Samhain have been celebrated back in ancient times, and how has it changedin today's society? What connection is there, if any, to the commercial secular holiday of Halloween? There are many theories surrounding each of these questions, many of which contradict one another, but from my reading, as well as from general observation, contemplation and conversation, I have a few thoughts of my own which I will share with you now. To begin, Samhain began (as far as historical records suggest) in Ireland as far back as 2000bc. The falling of the last fruits and the reaping of the last harvests were celebrated with feasts to give thanks to the Goddess for the abundance of the Earth which would see the European inhabitants through the harshness of winter. In Irish Celtic myth, when the land was ruled by the Fomorians, they demanded payment from their subjects amounting to two thirds of all of their crops, livestock and children born each year. Julius Caesar writes at length about the widespread animal and human sacrifice amongst the Gaulish and Celtic tribes which may have arisen from this legend, though this cannot be fully relied upon given the bias of the source, with Caesar leading military campaigns to annex their lands at the time. What is to be relied upon is that people would light huge bonfires at this time of year and fuel it with objects and possessions which no longer served them in an act of ritual cleansing, doing away with the old to make way for the new. Offerings of grain, or home-baked bread were cast into the fire in thanks to the Goddess, and it is indeed possible that a share of meat from slaughtered livestock may also have been offered. Later in history, the middle English would leave offerings of bread, milk, honey and wine on their porches or window sills for a similar purpose.

Ritual bonfires were set at Samhain to burn away old energy and invite ancestral spirits

The association with death is easy to pinpoint; in the Northern Hemisphere, everything is dying, flowers and trees, even insects are dying on mass, and birds are migrating while land based animals are going into hibernation. Everything has a spirit, so when plants and animals begin to die in such great numbers at the same time, these spirits are released, clouding the air with the energy they emit, and as this energy transgresses the dimensional barrier between this world and those beyond our perception, a part of our consciousness is carried with it, granting us a glimpse of what lies after death, and bringing us closer to the divine, albeit in a rather morbid way. The image of death as the 'grim reaper' also has its root in the autumnal celebration of Samhain, for as humans reap the bounty of what we have sown, so too do the Gods reap the souls that they have helps to make manifest, clearing space for new life to flourish and grow. It is important to note that death is never something to shy away from of be fearful of, for in death there is always a renewal of life elsewhere; as the Northern Hemisphere dies with its autumn, the Southern Hemisphere is given life in its spring time. It is this continuous cycle of life, death and rebirth which is celebrated at Samhain, and with our perception of subtle energy at its peak, it is a time to honour those who have passed before us. One of the ancient traditions would be to ritually invite the spirits of the ancestors into the home and make offerings of food and drink to them; in return the spirits of ancestors would communicate with their living descendants and offer guidance for the coming year. Of course, there was always a worry that other spirits would also return to settle differences or reap revenge upon one who had wronged them in life, so a common practice was to carve frightening faces into turnips or potatoes and place them in doorways or windows to ward off the unwelcome spirits, a practice which was adopted into Medieval Gothic architecture with the use of gargoyles. As time went on and the worship of the old Pagan Gods dwindled, this practice, and that of leaving food and drink on the doorstep, endured as a means of placating the wandering and potentially mischievous spirits of the dead.

An example of a traditional carved turnip

As well as honouring the spirits of human ancestors, the original celebrants of Samhain also honoured the spirits of animals, the spirits of the slaughtered livestock in thanks for giving their lives to sustain the family or community, the spirits of horses and mules for their hard labour, and the spirits of dogs and hounds for guarding the homestead and aiding in the hunt. The practice of animal reverence was not limited to the Celts, however; the ancient Egyptians worshiped cats as sacred and believed that they were guardians of the underworld, preventing the dead from returning to the realm of the living and guiding departed souls on their journey through the afterlife. The ancient Greeks worshiped the Bull and saw it as a symbol of the cosmic life-giver, ritually slaughtering bulls every year to ensure good harvest for the following year. The practice can also be found in the Norse and Native American cultures with animal totems and animal spirits as guides for the living, many tribes claiming kinship to one animal or another based on their shared traits. At Samhain, the living animals would be treated with even more care and respect than at any other time of year, given a share of food or drink and sometimes brought inside the home as equal members of the family.

Other traditional celebratory acts included dressing up, sometimes in honour of the Gods, sometimes as animals and other times to reenact the old folk tales. Of course, storytelling would have been a huge part of Samhain, recounting the old legends of their ancestors, sharing stories of deceased loved ones, and reminding one another of shared heritage and memories. During the Middle Ages, children would go from house to house begging for food and drink, which eventually gave rise to what is now called 'Trick-or-Treat', and it became common for candles to be placed in the windows of the home to guide the spirits of the ancestors back to their living relatives. This, when combined with the carving of vegetables, gave rise to the Jack O' Lantern, though this has developed its own modern folk tale surrounding the tradition from the Irish Catholic tale of "Jack of the Lanterns" or "Stingy Jack", a man punished for deceiving both God and the Devil to prolong his life.

Stingy Jack, traversing purgatory with his turnip lantern.

So what has changed over the centuries? When it comes to Samhain, not much; some of the ancient European traditions surrounding the Sabbat have survived and are still practiced by pagans today, albeit as a modern interpretation based on limited historical sources, as well as animal sacrifice having been widely abandoned and replaced with symbolic gestures to equal effect. The changes to how people commonly celebrate Samhain are largely cosmetic, merely resulting in slight renaming of individual practices or symbolic imagery, but the core values of the Sabbat have remained the same. However, any attempt to reconcile the ancient celebration of Samhain with the modern holiday of Halloween may prove difficult, given the rise of the consumerist society in which we now find ourselves. Trick or Treat has devolved into the pass time of doting parents and impertinent children, scavenging confectioneries from their neighbours, thus trivialising the plight of the children who originated the tradition to acquire food to fill their otherwise empty bellies.

Party games such as "Apple Bobbing" have become popular, though the importance of the apple seems to be generally unknown; the apple is a fruit sacred to the Roman Goddess Pomona, a deity of fruitful abundance associated with orchards, so at this time of the last harvest, it is easy to see how the apple was adopted into modern celebrations at this time of year. However, the act of "bobbing" for apples has a much darker history, rooted in the brutal inquisition and witch trials between the 12th and 18th centuries; suspected witches would be repeatedly submerged underwater for increasingly long periods of time as a means of interrogation, resulting either in a confession or drowning. This was also a means of "testing" to see if the accused really was a witch or not; if the accused drowned, she was innocent, but if she survived, she was guilty of using dark magic to avoid drowning. A similar game, also using apples, involves the fruits being suspended on strings from the ceiling as participants attempt to bite them whilst blindfolded; again, deriving from the hanging of suspected witches.

By far the greatest deviation of the modern Halloween from the original Samhain is the season's typical association with "evil" and horror culture. As many of you may know, Halloween earns its name from the Christian festival of All Hallows Eve, the night before All Saints Day which originally was celebrated around August but was moved to coincide with the well established Pagan festivals in Europe at the time. Over the centuries, indigenous European paganism was either stamped out by the church or absorbed into it, and with the rise of Protestantism in the 15oos, the was a concerted effort by these new Lutheran radicals to purge the pagan elements within the established Catholic doctrine in order to "purify" the church. This continued into the New World with the establishment of the Puritan settlements, in which fear of witches reached fever pitch, and later in attempts to remove old pagan aspects from society such as animal worship and communing with the dead, societal focus shifted to portraying the supernatural as something to be feared and hated. This much is plain to see in modern society, with Ghosts being something to keep away from the home, stories of the supernatural being used to frighten children before bedtime, the return of the dead being mixed up with zombie culture (which is in and of itself a perversion of African American Hoodoo practice) and reduced to depictions of half-rotten, brain-eating monsters, and the night of deepest darkness being twisted into a prime night for murder and depravity rather than introspection and self healing. The sanctity of death has been manipulated into something grotesque, cheap and commercially lucrative, playing on humanity's desire to explore the darkness within ourselves, to explore death and experience the shadow side of nature, but presenting it in such a way as to make it laughable to most, fearful to others and deplorable to a select few who use it as a spring board to demonize pagans and witches by claiming that Halloween, with all of its negative attributes, is somehow synonymous with the Sacred Sabbat of Samhain. Maybe it is a stretch to say that a heavily Christianised society, now abandoning all faith in favour of material empiricism, seeks to devalue and undermine the ancient rites of our ancestors with such a cheap and vile imitation of one of the most important celebrations of our ancestors, but there it is; it is my oppinion that this devolution is part of a conscious effort to paint pagan practices such as magic, necromancy and divination as inherently evil.

Regardless of whether this is true or not, let us remember what Samhain is truly about; it is about getting in touch with those parts of our minds and souls which lie neglected and unloved for most of the year, our shadow selves, and bringing those aspects of our being into the light to be understood and worked with. It is about letting go of those things in life which hold us back from being our most authentic selves, addictions, toxic relationships, dead end jobs, bad habits, general clutter and disorder, so that we can move forward and grow. It is about laying old dreams to rest and setting new goals for the coming year, new aspirations, new ideas, new projects, and setting out to make those ideas manifest. It is about remembering where we come from so that we have a better idea as to where we are going, about honouring those who have walked these paths before us and left their footprints for us to follow. It is about recognising and honouring the sovereignty and majesty of nature in all of its aspects, bowing to the inevitability of physical death and communing with those who have made that passage already, to better prepare ourselves for the journey ahead. It is about being grateful for what we have and optimistic about what we have yet to receive. It is about knowing the self, knowing the Earth, knowing the plants and the animals, knowing the stars, knowing the spirits in all things, and most importantly about loving all of that.

A Samhain altar to past loved ones by Jillian Lauren. 

Samhain is the perfect time to work spellcraft, so before I finish this article, here are a few ideas for activities to conduct on this wonderful occasion:

1. Bake some hearth-bread as an offering to your ancestors; leave a portion of it on your doorstep to invite the spirits to come to you. If your are familiar with the concept of Kitchen-Witchery then blessing each of the ingredients and chanting invocations as you mix them can really add to the potency of the offering, making the simple act of baking bread a work of spellcraft. 
2. Set up a Samhain altar (if you haven't already); this should be located in an area of the home which is special to you, such as the bedroom or an area of the living room where you feel most comfortable. Fill the altar with plants associated with the season, and perhaps include symolic representations of animals you see as significant to you. If you know the totem animal/s of your family, use this as a means of paying tribute to them. 
3. Start a journal; journaling is a really great way of externalising all of our thoughts and emotions, clearing out blockages, creating order from chaos and helping ideas to take form. You could keep track of your dreams and analyse the symbolic meanings within them to better understand your motivations and subconscious aspiriations. 
4. Meditation; introspective working is extremely effective at this time of year, as our world aligns with the darkness and repose of winter. Start with basic breathing exercises to reduce mental traffic, then try simple visualisations such as colours or symbols. Use music to assist in visualisation (preferably nothing with lyrics as this can be a distraction) and attempt to commune with your ancestors/spirit guides in this meditative state. For more information on this, see one of my previous articles, Travelling Through the Ether - A Mystical Experience.
5. Clear out your home; ritual cleansing will allow you to release much of what you hold on to and help you see what you take for granted. The Witch's broomstick was originally used for this purpose, clearing out the old to make way for the new, both physically and psychically. Perhaps set up a yard/car-boot sale to clear away any old, unwanted or unused items or clothes, or just box it up and take it to a charity shop. One of the best things to do, however, is to gift some old items which may have held sentimental value, to a friend or loved one, as Samhain is just as much about giving.
6. Get out into Nature; the weather may be turning against us now, but that shouldn't discourage us from getting outdoors. Wrap up warm and waterproof and go on an adventure! Wander into the woods or through the park or go for a drive into the countryside. Appreciate the visual changes in nature around you. Talk to the trees and the animals you see, sit and listen to the wind, feel the energy of nature and try to merge with it. Perhaps take an offering to leave for the spirits of the land, the Fae-Folk, for they can be valuable friends to have when trying to manifest our dreams into reality!
7. Make some Magick! Anything can be an act of Magick, so long as there is pure intention and direction behind the action. If you want to let go of something or someone, choose something to represent what it is you want to let go of, mark it as the chosen symbol of your desire, focus on it and pour all of your Will into it. Speak an affirmation to yourself to consolidate the intention in your mind, then either cast the chosen object into the sea or a river to carry it away from you, or perhaps burn it with the intention of purging and purifying yourself of it. If you wish to manifest something into your life, write the intention down, again, pouring all of your Will and belief into it, visualise it becoming a reality, and bury it in the earth with a seed or bulb; as the plant grows, so too does your wish grow and come to fruition. The more you nurture the plant and help it grow, the more your nurture your dreams into reality.

Basic Ritual setup for spellcraft.

I hope that this article has given you some ideas for your own Samhain celebrations. Thank you for reading! Please share this article if you found it informative, and please visit my Facebook page "The Wandering Hermit" for more content. Many blessings to you this Samhain. Have a wonderful Sabbat and may your Gods be with you!

Enki Endymion. O(