The winner of this drawing will receive one (1) paperback copy of Pagan Writers Presents Samhain, edited by Camenæ E. deWelles, Angelique Mroczka, and Rosa Sophia, when the book is released.
The drawing for this giveaway will occur Friday, October 21st, around noon CST. Entries (comments on Pagan Writers Community blog) must be dated before then to be counted.
To be entered for this drawing, please post a comment on this post with your answer to the following question:
What is your favorite memory from a past Samhain or Halloween?
Winner will be announced on the blog and notified no later than Tuesday, October 25th.
Last Samhain I officiated for a Handfasting, The majority of the guests had never been involved in a Pagan ceremony of any kind before, during the Ceremony, I asked them all to take a step back.. and to invite their Ancestors to be with us and add their love to the union of the couple..
Looking around the circle, seeing the smiles, the tears, and feeling the loving energy filling the space was amazing.. After the Ceremony.. many of the guests wanted to come and ask more about Paganism as ,to quote several guests, ”Now I know what a wedding is really about, and could feel the energy and the connection, and if thats what Pagan is, then now I know what I am”
That for me was very special.. that people who were disconnected from any kind of spirituality, and jaded by conventional life ceremonies.. were moved,excited and ready to find out about reconnecting.
I was a child, and leaves were swirling in a circle about my feet. I knew at that moment, magic did exist! Thanks for the chance to win! It’s my fave time of year and sabbat.
Mine is a memory that is yet to be made… this Samhain we are having my youngest daughter’s Wiccaning, my next youngest daughter’s magickal naming ceremony, my elevation, my eldest son’s elevation and a good friend’s initiation…. what a night it will be!
I think that one of my most memorable Samhain celebrations was the first time I took part in a silent dinner–an honoring of our Ancestors and heroes from times gone by.
So to sit down in candlelight with plates full of wonderful festive foods and eat beside a plate and empty chair was so very moving. I found myself drawn towards the people in my life that would and could sit in that chair and all the reasons why I loved them, missed them, respected them and the next thing that I knew, it was as if they were right there with me.
Growing up in an Italian household, dinners were NEVER silent!
I could hear their laughter, remember their stories, nearly see what they would look like if they were right next to me. Knowing that they would reach out a hand to touch me and poke me and pat me on the back.
It wasn’t a Samhain of spooky things such as the media might talk about-but it was the deepest and most spirited Samhain I have ever had.
I would like to add my offering for the Samhain Pagan Writers Presents. I hope this is the correct place to post.
The Final Harvest
Samhain is fast approaching. Many of us look forward to this time of year. Candy, carved jack-o-lanterns, itty-bitty children dressed up as adorable bumblebees, princesses, or pirates. This is a joyous time of year! The leaves begin to crunch beneath our feet. And the crisp breeze begins to pinch our faces and burnish our cheeks. There is nothing so beautiful as frost on crimson leaves gleaming in the morning sun.
At this time, my thoughts turn to death and dying. Whoa! What? O, not in a fatalistic manner, or in the Goth-cool fashion either. Samhain is when the veil between the worlds is thinnest, when we celebrate those who have crossed over during the past year, and when we make reckonings of our lives. I’ve always seen parting the final veil as an adventure to be anticipated. Those who have taken this journey before me have all the secrets of the Universe on 3X5 notecards. Lucky! To be one with the Divine? Wow. Death is not the end, merely a new beginning.
“Death— the last sleep? No, the final awakening.” Walter Scott
“Because I could not stop for death
He kindly stopped for me
The carriage held but just ourselves
And immortality.” Emily Dickinson
“Seeing death as the end of life is like seeing the horizon as the end of the ocean.” David Searls
“The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.” Seneca
“For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?” Kahlil Gibran
“People sleep, and when they die, they awake.” – Mohammed
“I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.” Winston Churchill
I can’t help but find comfort and solace in these words. To awaken from sleep? To melt into the sun? How wonderful! How beautiful! How glorious! I hope to live my life in a manner deserving of such beauty.
Life, as someone once said, is a sexually transmitted terminal disease. We start the journey to death the moment we first hit atmo. Nobody gets out alive. Yet, that is no reason to be fearful, or dread the inevitable. Embrace life, and live it to the fullest! One of my favorite sayings hangs in the kitchen of our dear friends, which sums up a wonderful approach to life:
“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, wine in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming “WOO HOO what a ride!”
That’s going to be me, sliding into home plate with a martini in one hand and a bar of chocolate in the other. Wow! That was fun! Let’s to that again! After all, if life is too short to drink shitty beer, is there any good reason to fill it with fear, bitterness, and assorted and sundry negative crap? So, why restock the refrigerator! We are so much better off enjoying ourselves!
There is no escape from this prison called life, yet one day, we will be freed. In the meantime, we should endeavor to make Heaven/Summerland/Nirvana this life on earth. Be nice to people. Actually treat everyone and everything like you would want to be treated. Be compassionate. Be loving. There is no sense in waiting till we’re on the other side. That’s the ultimate in procrastination. Instead of bitching and whining about how badly life has treated us, why not, in the words of Mohandas Gandhi, “Be the change that you want to see in the world.”
Living in a compassionate, grateful state of mind prepares us for the inevitability of crossing the veil. The Buddhists say that one’s frame of mind at the end helps determine how one enters the next life. Filling our minds with happy, compassionate, and grateful thoughts as we cross the bridge helps move us into a new and better life. Thoughts of fear and anxiety hinder our progress on the spiral. Frankly, I don’t want to come back as a mosquito.
No one has ever come back to give a travelogue of the Summerland. Yet, I still get glimpses and fleeting sensations of those who have gone on before me. I swear I can smell my dog every once in a while. He and my cat are happily chasing each other around. My Mother and Father appear to me in my dreams and provide words of love, comfort, and encouragement. Based on this, I know the Summerland is a place of joy, peace, and fulfillment.
Of course we miss those who have gone before. That’s only natural. What kind of sick puppies would we be if we didn’t fell that loss? But, how dare we hinder their progress on the Path just because we can’t stand to let them go? That is the height of selfishness! By letting our loved ones go with love and compassion, we elevate ourselves on the spiral of life/death/rebirth as well. We will be with them again. And their echoes remain to guide us along the Path until our time to rejoin them. Dry your tears, my friends. Though our loved ones go before us, they are the lucky ones! And one day, we will be tenderly and joyfully caught up in their love and laughter again. Of that, I have no doubt.
How can we know there is life after death? We know our bodies decay. What about that which makes us us? A small, but increasing, number of scientists theorize that consciousness is related to, but not dependent on, the material brain. One scientist has even found that the brains of people who have had near-death experiences closely mirror those of nuns and monks, who are considered spiritual adepts. I have my own theory on what happens to us when we die. As Kahlil Gibran said, “we melt into the sun;” or, according to my theory, we melt into the All That Is. Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, the neuroscientist who suffered a massive stroke chronicled in My Stroke of Insight, said, “Our bodies are portals for energy.” I believe that which makes me me is the energy that comes through that portal, and that energy is part of God/dess. When our bodies cease to function, and are thoroughly used up, our consciousness is freed to join that of the All from which we came.
So, death is nothing to fear! It is to be adoringly and joyfully anticipated, yet not sought. We have so many lessons to learn here, after all. Life is a journey to be savored, and the final awakening is the reward for a path well-traveled.
Think of who you were before you were born. That is who you will be again.
Yes, indeed, this is a joyous time of year!
The first time I invoked Hekate, our group cast a double circle, a figure eight with one side in the world and the other in the underworld. I stood at the crossroads with the priest who invoked Hermes, while dancers passed from one circle to the other.
I can imagine that was a very powerful ritual!
I think it would be a tossup between my favorite Halloween and my favorite Samhain. For Halloween I was about twelve and decorated the entire livingroom myself. I made about a hundred kleenex ghosts and hung them from the drop ceiling with black thread and had a fan going in the back so they moved. I also had one a spooky sounds tape and had that playing in the back on low and kept the lights off so when the kids came to get candy it was just horrible. Plus I had one of the premium channels on that was showing nothing but blood and gore horror movies!
My favorite Samhain was last year at my first group ritual. I’d been practicing for about fifteen years but hadn’t really come out of the broom closet. This was my first time actually doing ritual with others and it was one of the most memorable nights of my life! Bonfire, chanting and dancing and singing! It was an epic night! I can’t wait for the one that is coming up this year! We have a dumb supper planned and will be working for three days! I love being a Witch!
The last Samhain I spent with my friend Sally before she died – Sally was a Scorpio, born on November 11th. Her birthday always felt propitious in some way, and she felt certain that her last day would be similar. True to her intuition, she left us on Easter Sunday the following year, also a full moon. But while she still had her vitality, we visited and talked about her mystical studies, her garden and her art. Our last Samhain visit was magical as always.
Lazing on her sofa, draped in caftan and flowered headscarf, she mused about the years of bookkeeping and odd jobs that subsidized her painting, astrology and mystical studies. I sat rapt, fascinated, as she spun stories of synchronous meetings with helpful strangers and obliging spirits, of powerful dreams and visions, of mystical exercises and spontaneous trance states. Staring at the wall above her, I could see these stories woven into giant oil paintings and delicate colour studies. They pulsed with energy, able to summon a timely buyer or devoted student with their elemental attraction.
Spent from talking, Sally finally lay back, still and pondering, then mused, “I think art is really my form of magic.” And quietly, I responded, “spoken like a true High Priestess.” Each Samhain, I look forward to our visit, across the Sunless Sea, if only to hold that momentary image so close again in my mind’s eye.
My favorite Samhain memory is of the first year we held a public circle for Colorado Springs Witches Meetup. It was great seeing a struggling community come together, we had a great circle and wonderful feast afterwards. The impact on the community that it caused was truly magical.
My favorite Halloween memory is the first and last time I took my son trick o’ treating. My son is autistic, and he saw no point in knocking on strangers’ doors for candy — in fact he was dead set against it. I begged him to try one more door before we headed home.
I knocked on the door of a house, which was the center of many rumors. Some rumors said the house was for abused women. Others whispered that the house was for women who were transitioning back into communities after they had tried to kill their husbands for abusing them. I was a little leery, but my greed for candy won out over my apprehension.
A voice behind the door yelled. “It’s them!”
“Hurry!” Another voice urged.
They had spotted us trick o’ treating, and were excited about getting treaters.
A round-faced, short woman appeared in the doorway. Her eyes had a dull quality, the kind of gaze people sport just before those people lunge at a victim. Her lips had a tough set. If any husband had tried to put his hands on her, then surely he had lived to regret it — if he had lived.
“You stay here. Don’t go anywhere.” She sounded as though she wasn’t asking.
“We won’t.” Had not there been the promise of candy, I would have taken her tone as the cue for making a getaway to safer grounds.
Beside me, my son was quiet. Either he had decided to make good on his share of our bargain to trick o’ treat at one more house, or he thought it best not to draw the attention of any female whose taste for revenge against males might have lingered.
The door shut and reopened four minutes later. Women began dumping handfuls of candy into Sebby’s bag.
“Oh no, that’s too much candy.” I pleaded, but the women had decided Halloween wasn’t Halloween if they couldn’t bury a kid under mountains of candy. .
After they had finished, a woman with sunken cheeks asked hopefully, “Do you think more children will come?”
I scanned the skies in speculation. “It’s after 5:30 now. if you don’t get any by 6, then they won’t come. They won’t come after dark.”
I waved good-bye and lugged the bulging bag home. Once my son saw my eating his candy, he joined in. Suddenly, getting candy by knocking on the women’s door didn’t seem like a bad idea.
My favourite memory comes from attending an open ritual with a particular group and others, including myself, who were applying to join the group. We drove up into the hills, and then made our way, on foot, in the dark, across fields and streams to a special place in the hills with hunters out lamping seemingly all around us. The space was set and the leaders directed us through a ritual of remembrance, but it was far from what I had been expecting, let alone imagining and I felt disappointed.
Afterwards, as we stood around the fire, some of us were encouraged to explore the area (again in the dark) and, as I did so, I had an encounter I will never forget. When I returned to main group, it had scattered with some still standing around the fire and others off in little groups. For whatever reason, I found myself looking in a different direction, then something occurred which had me in awe; and, for those precious moments, I truly believed I was on the right path. It seemed to me only I was experiencing this odd occurrence, then the leader said something and I broke out of my reverie. Everyone else was still standing, talking around the fire and off in their little groups. I couldn’t understand how they could not have noticed what I had. For a long time afterward, including the rest of that night, I wondered if I had imagined it or if, indeed, the leader had undergone the same experience. I started to worry I was going a bit nuts, so refrained from mentioning it to anyone.
Weeks went by with thoughts of that night still milling around my head. Eventually, I queried the leader about what I had experienced and she confirmed I had not been alone that night, as she had experienced it, too. I was relieved to know I was not insane, and elated to find the experience real. I wanted more.
From that night on, Samhain has held a special magic for me, though no festival celebration since has come close to eliciting the same reverence and awe I experienced at that secluded site, by a stream, in the hills of the north on a clear, bright night betwixt autumn and winter.
Each Samhain our Circle calls the Ancestors and speaks with the dead. Last year Charles II came through to me (I was looking for a more recent relative, but the King would not be denied.) We had quite a conversation! When I asked him who he was to me in this life he responded “Your uncle, the king.” Well I have no uncle who was a king. He teased me for quite some time during the ritual, until it dawned on me: Le Roi! the king. Uncle Roy was LeRoy. Shortly after that I was reading Lady Fraser’s bio of Charles II and found a copy of a correspondence in which he refers to himself a Le Roy with the English spell. I nearly fell off my chair. That man had a sense of humor! I can’t think how any other Samhain ritual could top that one for me!
My best Samhain memory was from my freshman year of college, when I got to go to my first Halloween ball as a vampire, with individually glued on fangteeth and my prom dress, dirty and torn to pieces! It was a true celebration, as “All Souls Day” is also my birthday (November 2nd).
My favorite Halloween was last year, when I was able to take my kids trick or treating with my parents. I loved watching them understand what was happening and how excited they were to go from house to house. We had to skip some of the spookier ones, but they were okay to look from afar. They have been asking for a few weeks already when they get to go again!
Spending the evening with dear friends, and the Ancestors. The Ancestors were invited in and given time to mingle and give messages. We journeyed into a dark cave via a labrinth and had time in the Womb of the Earth to say what needed to be said, what hadn’t been said, and to receive gifts from the Ancestors. We journeyed back out via the labrinth and emerged reborn, regenerated and with a new love and respect for the Ancestors. It was brilliant.. and then we had a big bonfire and sang and danced and at tons of food.
Oh, the year that really sticks out in my mind was when my older kids were small. After a festive meal, they helped me put some outdoors in offering. They were so excited to rush out the next morning and find that the food was all gone. They spent the rest of the day guessing who had eaten it… faeries, gnomes, etc. It added more magic to our celebration.
One year after the ritual was done and many of us were feasting and chating, I met a psychic fellow and we talked about my grandmom, passed years ago. I miss he so much, and it was just so comforting talking to him about her, for those hours she was there and all the things I wanted to tell her were said. It is one of my favorite lifetime memories.
Mine is a memory in the making. My two youngest children decided to follow the Wiccan path this year. I waited for them to choose for themselves what they wanted to practice; and never tried to lead them. My ex-husband however, has dragged them to his christian church most Sundays since they were little. They came to me a few months ago and said that they don’t believe what the church is trying to teach them and would like to learn more about my beliefs. This will be their first Samhain and I can’t wait to light the fire and cast the circle with them under the stars.
My fondest past Samhain was last year because I thought my mom was going to die last June. She got her leg amputated and I just enjoyed being able to plan a dumb dinner with her.
When I was a kid, we lived in a pretty small town so we got to go trick or treating all over, but my favorite house was my Uncles up on the hill. He went all out with lots of his wax dummies and strobe lights, and spooky music, and you never knew which one of the “statues” was actually him, but in the end, you got a full size Snickers and a can of soda, and lots of hugs for being a good sport and not crying and running away.
Sad to say but my favorite memory had nothing to do with my faith. 2 years ago right before Halloween I found out I was pregnant. I was soo excited we painted my belly and I walked around town showing everyone the babies first Halloween costume
Love everyone’s post, but Patricia’s in particular makes me think what it would be like haveing a silent dinner and imagining sitting next to my dad.
My favorite memory from Halloweens past is my daughter dressing up and taking her trick or tricking – I loved every single one so it would be hard to pick a single favorite. She has out grown it now, and I miss it.
I don’t know that I would label this as a “favorite” memory. In fact, it is one I had completely forgotten, until a twist in fate brought it rushing back to my brain in a total recall flashback.
In my mid forties, I was engaged to the man who is now my second husband. His mother, sister and two brothers were visiting at our house one afternoon, and as will happen, the stories of the “good ‘ol days” were flowing.
Now, in the town where we both grew up, my husband and his three brothers had quite a rep as “bad boys”. We lived only four blocks away from one another, but I never met him until my mid-life. I always tease him by saying that it was because he lived below 15th street – the line that divided the rough neighborhood from the rich neighborhood (labels we gave as kids, but truly, how much difference could there be in a few blocks?) and my parents wouldn’t allow me to go below 15th.
His brother begins telling of how, when they were grade school age, they used to put masks on and take pillow cases to go trick or treating “above” 15th street, because that’s where all the good candy was. Then he starts laughing and telling stories of how they used to steal candy from the little kids.
All at once, the memory of standing on the corner of 16th street, shaking like a leaf while three BIG, masked, goons grabbed my bag of candy and dumped it into their pillowcases came rushing back to me. I turned to my husband and said “You’re the nasty boy who stole my Halloween candy! Well, now you’re going to have to buy my candy for the rest of your life.”
Isn’t Karma a grand thing?