Samhain is the most
important holiday of the Celtic calendar. It is the Celtic New Year; it
is also the Wiccan New Year. Samhain and the new Celtic year actually begin
at dusk on October 31, the beginning of the Celtic day. Traditionally,
however, Samhain was celebrated on the full moon of October, also known
as Blood Moon.
This night
is the Feast of the Dead, the night of the wheel-turning
year that brings us to the This Veil. The gates between the worlds stand
open this night. I honour my ancestors who come to me on the whispering
wind. All those who wish me well are welcomed within this circle.
Samhain is celebrated at
night because darkness comes before light, because life appears in the
darkness of the womb, and because the Celts observed time as proceeding
from darkness to light. The Celtic day began at dusk, the beginning of
the dark and cold night, and ended the following dusk, the end of a day
of light and warmth. The Celtic year began with An Geamhradh, the dark
Celtic winter, and ended with Am Foghar, the Celtic harvest. Samhain marks
the beginning of both An Geamhradh and the new Celtic year.
During the Dark Ages,
Irish monks carried the tradition and celebration to Europe. In the year
998, 31 October was adopted as a Christian festival known as All Saint's
Day, or All Soul's Day. It came to be commonly known as, All Hallow's Eve.
Oidhche
Shamhna, the Eve of Samhain, was the most important part of Samhain. It
was a night of feasting and celebration.
Villagers gathered the best of the autumn
harvest and the animals that could not be kept through the winter were
slaughtered and their meat salted to sustain the tribe through the winter.
Bonfires
The focus of each village's festivities was
a great bonfire. Villagers cast the bones of the slaughtered cattle upon
the flames. (The present-day word, bonfire, comes from these "bone fires.")
With the great bonfire roaring, the villagers extinguished all other fires.
Each family then solemnly lit their hearth from the one great common flame,
bonding all families of the village together. In Ireland, all fires were
extinguished and then re-lit from the one great fire kindled upon the hill
of Tlachtga.
Fraser writes of the beauty of the bonfires
in the Highlands of Scotland, which blazed on the heights:
“On the last day of autumn children gathered
ferns, tar-barrels, the long thin stalks called gàinisg, and everything
suitable for a bonfire. These were placed in a heap on some eminence near
the house, and in the evening set fire to. The fires were called Samhnagan.
There was one for each house, and it was an object of ambition who should
have the biggest. Whole districts were brilliant with bonfires, and their
glare across a Highland loch, and from many eminences, formed an exceedingly
picturesque scene.”
In Wales, bonfires were lighted on the hills,
and the people who assisted at the bonfires would wait till the last
spark was out and then would suddenly take to their heels, shouting at
the top of their voices, “The cropped black sow seize the hindmost!” The
saying, according to Sir John Rhys, implies that originally one of the
company became a victim in dead earnest. Even today, allusions to
the cutty black sow are still occasionally made to frighten children.
In the Isle of Man also, another Celtic country,
Hallowe’en was celebrated by the kindling of fires, accompanied with all
the usual ceremonies designed to prevent the baneful influence of fairies
and witches.
Feast
of Death.
The rituals of Samhain involve bonding with
the dead. On this night, the Celts believed the doors were opened between
the worlds and the paths were travelled by the spirits going back and forth
on this night. This world and the Otherworld become equivalent to each
other, and no barriers existed between the dead and the living, that is,
the “Veil” was at its thinnest.
It is The Veil between the two worlds that
Wiccans invoke when they cast the circle to worship or perform rituals;
thus, on Samhain night, when the Veil is thinnest, spells are most powerful
because we are closest to the spirits.
It is a time of celebration and remembering
those who have parted from their earthly forms. Ghosts of old friends,
grandparents, kindred from many ages enter the open doors. Now it is a
time for oracles to see what will have in the year to come. Bobbing for
apples, a traditional Samhain pastime, was a reference to the Celtic Emhain
Abhlach, "Paradise of Apples," where the dead, having eaten of the sacred
fruit, enjoyed a blissful immortality.
Divination
Samhain is also known as the Great Gathering.
Harvests of hazel nuts were gathered at this time, as were fungi for food
and healing, and invoking dreams and visions. Celts used hazelnuts, symbols
of wisdom, to foretell the future.
Consecrate a string of
nine hazelnuts over the Samhain bonfire: Hazelnuts,
nine in a ring
By the smoke of the Samhain fire bring
Protection to this house and those within
Blessed be this charm of nuts and string.
Here the Goddess is both pregnant and the
Old One, the Wise Hag. She is the ruler of the Otherworld, wherein her
God/Lover rests, between evolving incarnations. She is Persephone, Queen
of the Dead and the Unborn, Bringer through the Veil of Life to those
to be born, and carrier through the River of Night, those who have passed
from the human world. In this dark time when the Veil is the thinnest,
is when knowledge and spiritual powers can pass back and forth. The Goddess
will answer those who dare to ask questions.
Stones also featured prominently in Celtic
divination.
Stones
In Ireland, when the fire had died down, the
ashes were carefully collected in the form of a circle, and a stone was
put in, near the circumference, for every person of the several families
interested in the bonfire. Next morning, if any of these stones was found
to be displaced or injured, the person represented by it would not
live twelve months from that day.
In the northern part of Wales it used to be
customary for every family to make a great bonfire called Coel Coeth on
Hallowe’en. The fire was kindled on the most conspicuous spot near the
house; and when it had nearly gone out every one threw into the ashes a
white stone, which he had first marked. Then having said their prayers
round the fire, they went to bed. Next morning, as soon as they were up,
they came to search out the stones, and if any one of them was found to
be missing, they had a notion that the person who threw it would die before
he saw another Hallowe’en.
Reflection
and Renewal
This is also the best time to make new year
resolutions. In addition to celebrating the year’s
end (Samhain literally translates to “Summer’s End”), it is also a celebration
of the beginning of Winter. It is now that Celts and Wiccans begin to prepare
for the Son of the Goddess (Later adopted by Christianity to be the birthday
of the Christian son of God) — the child born on the darkest night of Yule
(the Winter Solstice), the soul-son, the Sun of Life. Samhain
is a time to review the past year: one's failures and achievements, and
gains and losses: and prepare to awake cleansed and refreshed at
Yule.
"When you
see my power fade, and the leaves fall from the trees; when snow obliterates
like death all trace of me upon the Earth, then look for me in Moon and
there in the Heavens you will see the soul of me, soaring still amongst
the Stars." —Vivianne Crowley, Prayer to the Autumn Goddess
See also:
The
Samhain Parshell
Food
Sources
-
Aveni, A. The Book of the Year
— A Brief History of Our Seasonal Holidays. Cambridge University Press,
January 2003.
-
Capanelli, P. Wheel of the
Year: Living the Magical Life. Llwellyn Publications: 1989.
-
Conway, DJ. Celtic Magic.
Llewellyn Publications, St. Paul, MN, 1994.
-
Crowley, Vivianne. Wicca: The
Old Religion in the New Millenium. HarpersCollins, Glasgow, 1996.
-
Frazer, Sir James George. The
Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, "The Fire-Festivals of
Europe," Chapter 62, MacMillan Co., New York, 1922.
-
Green, M. A Witch Alone: A Practical
Handbook. HarpersCollins, London, 1991.
-
Personal knowledge
-
Treanor, George. The Irish Heritage
Group.
Credits
Pagan graphics by Robin
Wood.
Copyright © Robin Wood
1997, Used with Permission.
Article by
Míchealín Daugherty.
Copyright © 2003 Ireland's OWN.
May be reprinted with permission.
Music by CelticGhost
Myths & Magic logo by Míchealín
Daugherty.
Copyright © 2008 Ireland's
OWN.
All Rights Reserved.
Page last updated: 5 Oct 2008
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Draíocht
na Muintir - a poem
The Celts
honored the intertwining forces of existence: darkness and light,
night and day, cold and heat, death and life. Celtic knotwork
represents this intertwining.
Other cultures celebrate
the night of the dead
Alexandrian
Egyptians laid out food for the dead and fastened oil lamps to the eves
of their houses to commemorate them.
Ancient
Romans threw black beans at "spirits" in hopes that they would accept the
beans instead of carrying off living family members.
The Germans
called it Hallowtide or "Hallowmas."
Mexicans
celebrate the Days of the Dead with both solemn and playful activities:
feasts, picnics, as well as visits to graves.
Traditions
It is
customary to leave candles burning in the windows on Samhain, to
guide the spirits and let them know they are welcome in your home.
Jack
O’Lanterns
The people
of Ireland leave their doors open and food on the table for the 'dead to
return.' They also carve faces into turnips and set them on their doorsteps
to ward off the wondering spirits.
The Irish
immigrants in America carried on the tradition by carving bright, orange
pumpkin's in place of the turnips.
See also:
The Legend of the Jack
O'Lantern.
Trick
or Treat
It was
also night of social bonding. The poor would take on the identity of the
community's dead, and go from door to door to receive offerings in the
name of the ancestors. At each house they were given a portion of
the food that had been set aside for the dead.
In the
villages of Scotland boys went from house to house and begged a peat
from each householder, usually with the words, “Ge’s a peat t’ burn
the witches.” When they had collected enough peats, they piled them in
a heap, together with straw, furze, and other combustible materials,
and set the whole on fire. Then each of the youths, one after
another, laid himself down on the ground as near to the fire as he
could without being scorched, and thus lying allowed the smoke to
roll over him. The others ran through the smoke and jumped over their prostrate
comrade. When the heap was burned down, they scattered the ashes, vying
with each other who should scatter them most.
Apples
This is the time of the
year that the Celts "wassailed" their apple trees to ensure a
bountiful harvest. Traditional wassail is made of hard cider, spices and
usually has some apple floating on top. As the concoction heats, the apples
eventually burst, leaving skins and a white frothy foam of apple flotsam on
top. Notably, apples play an important role even in today's
Halloween. The practice of bobbing for apples, for example, is believed to
have evolved from the the Celtic wassail with the apples floating on top.
Apples also have healing properties. And if an apple is sliced in half
horizontally, it reveals a hidden five-point star or pentagram.
Costume
The people
in the community who were going from door to door were masked to allow
them to represent the dead more convincingly.
Disguise
was also worn to confuse the spirits from the Otherworld because some might
be evil.
Celts
thought the break in reality on November Eve not only provided a link between
the worlds, but also dissolved the structure of society for the night.
Boys and girls would put on each other's clothes, and would generally flout
convention by boisterous behavior and by playing tricks on their elders.
In the
Isle of Man, the first of November, Old Style, has been regarded as New
Year’s day down to recent times. Thus, Manx mummers used to go around on
Hallowe’en (Olde Style), singing, in the Manx language, a sort of Hogmanay
song, which began “To-night is New Year’s Night, Hogunnaa!.”
Fraser:
“Not only among the Celts, but throughout Europe, Hallowe’en, the night
which marks the transition from autumn to winter, seems to have been of
old the time of year when the souls of the departed were supposed to revisit
their old homes in order to warm themselves by the fire and to comfort
themselves with the good cheer provided for them in the kitchen or the
parlour by their affectionate kinsfolk. It was, perhaps, a natural
thought that the approach of winter should drive the poor shivering
hungry ghosts from the bare fields and the leafless woodlands to the shelter
of the cottage with its familiar fireside. “
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