Creating Circles and Ceremonies: Rituals for All ... - reading...

Book III: W heel of the Year 241
At Your House
There are so many things you can do for Samhain! Spook up your home with Halloween
decorations, carve weird pumpkins, hang “ghosts” (balloons covered with cheesecloth) from
trees, and throw a costume party for your friends. One very special thing you could do at this
time is to make up your altar to honor your beloved ancestors. Get small photos of departed
grandparents or anyone you love and admire who is no longer living. Frame them nicely, each
with a little label, and arrange them on your altar, along with other mementos. Use a black altar
cloth and candles, black feathers, a small sand timer, a pomegranate, a carved pumpkin, apples
and nuts, and other items that symbolize death. If you’ve collected any small animal skulls or
bones, you might display them here. You also may want to place candy on your altar as offering
to all of the children who have passed on. It’s fun to make and decorate traditional Mexican
“Day of the Dead” sugar skulls, and these can also be part of your ancestor altar. Samhain is an
especially good time to do divinations and necromancy, connecting with the spirit world; you
might want to put a bowl of water on your altar for scrying.
Hallowmas - October 31st
Also known as Samhain, All Soul’s Night,
All Hallows Eve, Hallows, and Halloween
T heme: Deepening 1
By Ruth Barrett
Night is noticeably lengthening as the dark half of the year
marks the first day of winter. With the last of the harvest gathered and stored away, the livestock
were brought in from the summer pastures close to home. Those animals not likely to survive the
winter were slaughtered and their meat preserved for winter stores. In earlier times, this was a
time of sacrifice, divination for the new year, and communion with the dead. To the ancestors,
this season was a time of endings and rest, and the night of October 31 st was a moment in time
that belonged to neither past nor present, to neither this world nor the Otherworld.
In Ireland, the customs of November Eve varied greatly from village to village. The
beloved dead were remembered and honored by candles that were formally lit, one for each
departed relative. If the deceased had died in the family home, a candle was lit in the room
where the person died. It was a night when communication with the dead was possible and
one could ask favors from the ancestors. It was also the time to escort the souls of those who
had passed through the veil between life and death.
Halloween was also called “the night of mischief or con,” when bands of young people
would go door to door begging for bread or money. The holiday was taken very seriously:
Because the people knocking at the door might be real Faeries or ghosts in disguise, it was
of utmost importance to give them something. Pranks were played on persons generally held
to be mean or unpleasant. Divination customs included the lighting of bonfires and scrying
into the hot coals or ashes to foretell the future for personal reasons, such as marriage or the
success of the next season’s crops. Especially important was the foretelling of weather for
the coming year, often done by observing the winds at midnight, which would indicate the
prevailing wind during the coming season and warn of storms.
The practice of “trick or treat,” in which children disguised as ghosts and goblins walk from
door to door asking for donations of candy, is still celebrated in the majority of neighborhoods
in the United States. Seances, scary stories, and spooky games to foretell the future are still
played at today’s Halloween parties by young and old alike. The image of the Old Crone riding
her broom across the moon is displayed in store windows and in homes. Although most people