Deaf Pagan Crossroads

“Hecate guards the threeway crossroads. She guides those who journey between the worlds, both the living and the dead; and the wheel turns on…”

The holiday that most people celebrate on October 31 is called Halloween. However it is also a sacred time that is a religious holiday for Wiccans and Pagans. We call our holy day Samhain. Both of these holidays have roots in the ancient history of Europe.

Modern Halloween customs such as trick or treating and ideas about ghosts and dangerous creatures who go about on this night, come from the Celtic culture of the settlers who came to America in the 1840’s to escape the potato famine.

The Catholic Church absorbed this holiday and renamed it All Saints Eve – a time of remembrance for dead saints; they could not change the original practices associated with it so they changed the meanings for the rituals of the holiday.

Samhain is the exact mid-point between the fall equinox and winter solstice. It is the time when the sun would sink to its lowest point on the horizon as marked by the Celtic astronomers.

It is the time that marks the third and final harvest holiday observed by Wiccans. The ancient Celtic people would now gather in the final food of the field. If any food was left in the field after the 31st the Pookhas (evil goblins) got it. They made it inedible so it was very important to finish the harvest by this day. The Celts would also bring their herds down from the hills to be culled or wintered. So this was not a blood free harvest.

This is the time in the Wiccan Wheel of the year that the Dead Sun God is mourned by the Mother Goddess. She now evolves through her pain of sorrow into the Crone. The “Wise One” who has experienced life and learned its mysteries and now understands the value of death. Death, no matter how much it is feared, is a chance to rest from the pleasure and pain of living and an opportunity to start again (and if were lucky not make the same mistakes).

Remember, if no one died where would there be room for the living? The ancient Celtic people did not fear death, they saw it as a part of the cycle of life just as Wiccans and Pagans do today. This is also the Wiccan New Year as the cycle of life can only begin again from the dead and fallow fields.

The God that we worship at this time is the Horned God. This is the God of the Hunt, the keeper or the forest. From him we learn that we must respect the gift of life and that nothing can survive without partaking of another – either plant or animal. All life is sacred and the gift of that life to sustain another should not go unrecognized, unvalued. We as Wiccans need to acknowledge the great sacrifice that is made when we take the life of a plant or animal to feed our own. This too is part of the cycle of life and death. One way of doing this is to improve the quality of life of the plants and animals that feed and clothe us. This means not polluting our environment as well as not forcing animals to live horrible existences just to improve output.

The cauldron that is today a symbol of Halloween comes from the idea of the cauldron of the Dark Mother. In her great dark womb she would break down the souls of the dead to cleanse them and reshape them for returning to the world of the living.

The custom of trick or treating comes from the Celtic tradition of leaving out some food for the dead so that they could also feast with the family to celebrate the harvest passing. It is also connected to the habit of leaving out food for the fairy folk lest they play tricks on you and curse your home. Also remember that when people are uncomfortable with dealing with something they make jokes about it. This is why the trickster God is important at this time for he teaches us that nothing is so great or powerful that it does not have its weaker side. It too can be overcome and conquered; even death is not an end. Once we realize this we know that we have nothing to fear. We know that it is just a cycle that we must go through and we can laugh at it and at ourselves (remember if we can laugh about something we can survive it, laughter and hope go hand in hand).

The souls of the dead are believed to walk the earth at this time. This comes from the belief that as the Sun God passes from the world of the living to the world of the dead he weakens the portal or veil between. This makes it easier for other spirits to return on this night to talk to their family. Because the world of the fey is also permeable at this time, magical practices such as deviation are easier. We are more sensitive to our senses other than the usual five.

As you can see many practices are still the same as they were in ancient times but just a little different…just as Christians have incorporated ancient Celtic practices into their religion and given those a different meaning. Modern Wiccans and Pagans have adapted and reinterpreted the ancient ideas and beliefs to reflect our cultures way of viewing the world and our relationship to it. Just as the Crone has gained wisdom from her years of experience so have we learned that the gift of life and death is a wonderful thing.

Note: Samhain is generally pronounced “sow-wen” and Ocean signs it by using a combination of two signs – “dead night” to demonstrate its importance as a night for honoring the dead.