Another Turn of The Wheel: Samhain - 'The Witches’ New Year'
Some musings on this Wheel of the Year festival and suggestions of rituals to honour this potent seasonal shift
31 OCT
The milky late Autumn sun delicately warms amber leaves… The dense evening fog mingles with the smoke of a wood-burning fireplace wrapping the land in an ethereal embrace… An enchanting energy pervades.. The veil thins. Intuition heightens. Witches the world over hold their breath…
Ah Samhain…wistful sigh. ‘Tis the season of the Witch and the witchiest of the Wheel of the Year’s sabbats*. Arguably the most delicious and potent time of year (or maybe that’s just cos I’m a Scorpio Rising).
Circles are cast, altars prepared, candles are lit. All in dedication to loved ones who have passed or ancient ancestors, unknown to us, yet still watching over us. Their croons piercing the veil (if we have an ear cocked for them).
Invocations are summoned and offerings made to Hekate. Cerridwen. Baba Yaga. The Witches’ Goddess, the Goddess of the Cauldron, the Crone Goddess. The Goddesses who reign over the Dark season. They hold their torches aloft for us as we turn inward and the blanket of the Dark Half of the Year draws over the land.
Samhain, pronounced ‘sow-win’ not Sam-Hane (as I was wandering around saying for about a year until I heard it on a podcast, oops!) translates to ‘Summer’s End’. The holiday marked the end of Summer, the ‘Light Half’ of the year and the final harvest (it’s the last in a triad of harvest festivals including Lughnasadh and Mabon). It was known as the Celtic New Year and is still known as ‘The Witches’ New Year’, as it honours the end and, subsequently, a new beginning of another cycle of The Wheel. Celtic pagans and many other nature-based practices view death as another phase of life in that there is no ending without rebirth. Any ending is simply releasing, creating space to alchemise and rebirth a new beginning.
Samhain marks the point in the year when the Goddess in her triple form has become the Crone (where the Maiden is embodied from Imbolc through Beltane and the Mother from Litha through Mabon). The Crone beckons us to witness the death and decay of nature and to look at where we have journeyed from and to during the wheel of the year.
We are invited to draw on her wisdom from deep within as she cradles us during the dark months to come, enabling us to release all that no longer serves us. - Flavia Kate Peters & Barbara Meiklejohn-Free
The festival honoured the descent into Winter or ‘The Dark Half’ of the year. As the strength and energetic force of the sun dims and the days shorten, we shift from the ‘solar’ half of the year and a dominance of solar / yang / doing / external energy. The shorter, colder days, the decay and hibernation of the natural world, the dominance of night invites self-reflection, quiet contemplation and an opportunity to embrace stillness - a more lunar / yin / being / introspective energy dominates. Samhain was a sabbat of contrast between light and dark, masculine and feminine energies.
Traditionally, as the darker winter season of rest and hibernation approached in the northern hemisphere, bonfires would be lit on the night of the 31st October to mimic the power of the weakened sun. Villagers would gather round to burn crops and animals as sacrifices and to give thanks to the Celtic gods and goddesses for the bounty of the harvest. As the final harvest festival before the long winter, Samhain offered a chance to take stock of what had grown - both literally and metaphorically - over the past cycle of the Wheel and to contemplate the coming year.
The three days beginning on All Hallows’ Eve (31st October) were recognised as a major threshold, a liminal space when “the veil between the worlds thins” and one could more readily connect with (or at the very least reflect on and honour) one’s ancestors, guides, deities or other supernatural beings. The Celts (and other cultures who also celebrate a similar festival, such as Mexico’s, Día de los Muertos, ‘Day of the Dead’) believed that the souls of the dead were free to roam alongside the living for the night of the 31st October. Some were welcomed but others were feared and it was believed they needed to be fed and placated.
Even in our modern times, despite the fact that, for most of us, we’re no longer reliant on harvesting our own food before the winter sets in (and therefore need to leave offerings for deities to ensure it grows back the following year!) we can still honour the seasonal shifts with a simple ritual or small acknowledgement. Acknowledging and honouring the transition from one season to the next and becoming more aware of the deeper energetic shifts with the seasonal changes of the earth can help us sync our own rhythms with those of all of nature and add balance and harmony to our lives.
Try one of the below suggested rituals or use these as jumping off points to create your own unique to you. Your rituals don’t all have to strictly fall on the evening of the 31st - that thin-veil energy of Samhain is still strong into the first few days of November at least. There is also Lunar Samhain on 12th November offering another opportunity for a more introspective and insular practice, not to mention the word Samhain in Irish translates to November so these would all be appropriate rituals to try throughout the month! (Personally, I like to acknowledge, connect with and do the occasional ritual/activity pertaining to each Wheel of the Year seasonal shift throughout the entire six-seven week period between each ‘sabbat’ or festival date. We’re not about official here. You do you boo.)
Create an Ancestral Altar - to honour and connect with the ancestors who came before you. You could add photographs, or personal heirlooms you have a connection with. Or leave offerings of flowers, dried petals or food. Pumpkins, apples and hazlenuts are symbolic of this festival as they were traditionally harvested at this time. Or even just light a candle to a passed on loved one or a particular deity or guide you have a connection with. It’s more about the intention behind it than how grand and ornate the gesture is!
Cook a Samhain Feast - basically anything with pumpkin or gourds would be very apt (I read somewhere on Substack, I forget where sorry! about cooking a whole stew inside a pumpkin. Love this.)
Or anything with potatoes, apples, nuts, or even a hearty meaty stew cooked in ale or cider was quite traditional. Light some candles, enjoy some cider or your tipple of choice and make merry! No particular criteria is required - as long as it celebrates some of the bounty of the late Autumn harvest season, is something you would actually enjoy eating and gets you in the spirit of gratitude for everything you’ve harvested - whether literally or metaphorically - this past year.
Have a Fire Ceremony of some sort to honour the ending of ‘The Light Half’ of the year. I mean, by all means, go nuts and hold a bonfire if you have the means to do so! Though unless you’re lucky enough to own land you could do that on, that’s mostly not a viable option, cos fire laws. So to still “mimic the power of the weakened sun” you could always light a fire in a mini cauldron, in a fireplace if you’re lucky enough to have one or failing all of that even just lighting a candle is perfectly fine - sometimes simplicity is perfection. Use the ritual to disconnect from your device and the digital world for a hot minute and gather around the warmth to take stock of what’s grown over the past cycle of the wheel, to give thanks for your bounty and to contemplate the coming year.
Letting Go Ritual - reflect on and write down what you want to use this portal to let go of. Just as the lighter half of the year must come to an end, are there any habits, ways of being, draining or non-supportive connections, or just some negative energy in your life that also needs to come to an end or be banished? Write this and burn it (provided you can do so safely) to banish that energy. Now that’s opened up an energetic space, write a new list of what you wish to cultivate through the next cycle of the Wheel.
Connect with the Dark Goddess - if you’re open to doing some deity work, connect with, invoke, petition the Dark Goddess to guide you through the Dark Half of the year. Hekate, as the Goddess of Witches, Keeper of the Keys, Triple Goddess of the Crossroads, is (for me at least) perhaps one of the most appropriate Goddesses to connect with for Samhain - to give thanks for the path you’ve walked up to this point, the present moment and the path of your future as she guides us with her torch to navigate the darkness. I’ll be posting a separate post to follow about Hekate tomorrow, 1st Nov. Or if Hekate doesn’t resonate with you, find a Goddess who does - another appropriate Goddess to work with around this time is Welsh Goddess, Cerridwen, for alchemising any negativity, pain and loss in her magical cauldron of transformation.
*A note on the Wheel of the Year:
The Celtic or pagan ‘Wheel of the Year’ comprises eight festivals or ‘sabbats’ spaced six to seven weeks apart throughout the year: Samhain, Yule, Imbolc, Ostara, Beltane, Litha, Lughnasadh and Mabon. The Wheel honours honours the natural rhythms and seasonal shifts of nature, lunar phases and agricultural rhythms of the Earth.
Some sources suggest the Wheel of the Year concept originated with neo-pagan Wiccans such as Gerald Gardner in the mid-20th century but in fact the sabbats or seasonal festivals that have been incorporated into ‘the Wheel of the Year’ concept have been honoured and celebrated in Ireland and Celtic Britain since ancient, pre-Christian, pagan time (though perhaps not under the official banner term ‘The Wheel of the Year’.)
To this date, many Christian festivals fall around the same dates as most of the Wheel of the Year ‘sabbats’, such as ‘All Soul’s Day’ on 2nd November, Candlemas 1st Feb (when Imbolc was celebrated) and Easter around Ostara. Funnily enough…. Many other cultures with ancient lineages also celebrate many of the same seasonal demarcations albeit with different names.
