   The eve of the first of November is when the Celtic winter begins, is directly across the Great Wheel from May Eve, when the Celtic Summer begins. Samhain for the Celts is the beginning of the year, and the feast of Samhain is our New Year's Eve. It is a day to commune with and remember the dead. In the European traditions, Samhain is the night when the old God dies snd the Crone Goddess mournes him deeply for the next six weeks. The Haloween image of her as the old hag menancingly stirring her cauldren of life, death, and rebirth to await reincarnation. The Crone Goddess has been an object of fear and revulsion in popular culture, but this is definitely not the way or pagan ancestors viewed her. The crone was always revered as a woman of power whose vast stores of wisdom came with her great age and the life-long practice of her many skills. She was both the destroyer and the healer, the grandmother and the eternal womb of rebirth. The crone's cauldren is deeply a part of our Samhain rituals. Samhain is now known as Halloween, a contraction of the words "Hallowed Evening," and it retains much of the original form and meaning it had long ago in Celtic lands, despite the efforts of the Church to turn it into an observance of feasting and prayer for the vast pantheon of saints. The Church began by calling it Michaelmas, the feast day of St, Michael, but our old Samhain holiday was just too popular for one lone saint to replace. Later it was renamed the Eve of All Saint's Day, or All Hallows Eve, which comes just before All Saints Day, and is still one of the holiest days in the Catholic calendar. But even after all this effort, so much Samhain lore and practice remained in the popular culture that the Church was finally forced to diabolize Samhain into a night boiling with eveil spirits. According to the Church, these baneful crearures were dispelled only when morning broke on All Saints Day to the ringing of church bells. The 1922 classic European silent film Haxxon presents this idea quite clearly. In our pagan tradition, deceased ancestors and other friendly spirits are invited to join the Sabbat festivities, and be reunited with loved ones who are otherwise separated by time and dimensions of existence. All these spirits, particularly those of the recently departed, are asked to help in divinations and ritual. While it is true that Samhain is no more evil than any other holiday, it is also a fact that evil does exist, and we pagans have always been aware of this. Our ancestors sought to protect themselves on this night by carving faces in vegatables to place near windows or at the perimeters of their circle. This is where we get today's jack-o-lanterns. These carved pumpkin faces are relics of an earlier custom of placing candles in windows to guide the earth-walking spirits along their way. Today it is still a custom in Ireland to place candles in the windows on Samhain night and to leave plates of food which evolved into our modern trick or treat. The Sahain observance may deal with the uncomfortable subject of death, but is not entirely a somber occasion. This is also a time for harmless pranks, lavish feasting, circle games, and merry-making which can teasingly be blamed on local spirits. The best known pagan prankster is the Lord of Misrule, a personification of the spirit of fun and hedonism who invades the circle creating pleasabt havoc and reminding our coven that even in the face of death, there us reason to rejoice. His job is also to keep the circle frpm becoming melancholy at the thought that summer is over and the harsh days of winter lie ahead. In other Wiccan circles this Lord of Misrule is called the Abbot of Unreason, the King of the Bean, the Jester, and the Master of Merry Disport. In the Norse tradition, this is the time when the power of Loki, the trickster god, reached its peak. He is a god who delights in playing tricks on humans, animals, spirits, and other deities. In Rome, Samhain was a day on which everything was turned upside down, when kings were slaves and slaves where kings. This was done in honor of the Apple Goddess, Pamona, whose sacred holiday this was. At night they lit fires in honor of the next day's festival, the Festival of Fortuna, the Goddess of Wealth and Luck. Feasting and drinking to her honor, as well as performing rituals so that she might favor the petitioners, where all part of the observance. Pamona and Fortuna were thought to be able to enter the Land of the Dead together and bring recently departed relatives back from the spirit world to join with their living families for the celebrations. Mexico celebrates El Dia de Muerte (The Day of the Dead). This is a time to honor one's ancestors with drinking and feasting, and to toast the personification of Death who was once believed to take this day off for the year. Businesses and schools close on the Day of the Dead, and picnics are packed and taken to graveyards, where families sit near their relatives graves and share their feast with them. Individuals dressed as Death dance amoung the revelers, and convivial mariachi music is always played nearby. Samhain has always been considered the best time for divinations and other psychic work which may have helped give rise to the anti-witch hysteria surrounding the Sabbat. Divination is the art of seeing into the future, or discovering information about a person or situation by means of connecting with the universal collective inconscious, a vast storehouse of psychic knowledge. Popular divinatory devices used in modern paganism are tarot cards, palmistry, the runes, and the controversal Ouija Board. Unlike other divinatory devices, The Ouija board does not use the collective unconsciousness as the source for answers, but relies instead in asking unknown spirits to take over the device. Opening such a portal without having any control over who or what comes through, has its risks, but you can decide for yourself, or get one of our Ouija boards.
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