We're rapidly moving through the Autumn and passing through many of the world's New Year celebrations - Rosh Hashanha, Dewali, Advent is coming, Nov 29, but now it is Samhain - the Celtic-pagan New Year. You can see some glimpses of it it in Halloween if you know where to look, but more on that later.
Samhain is the most important date on the Celtic-pagan calendar. One of the 8 modern Sabbats, marking the quarters (solstices and equinoxes) and cross-quarters (the halfway marks of solstices and equinoxes - Feb 1, Imbolc; May 1, Beltaine; Aug 1, Lughnassa (Lammas); Oct 31; Samhain). I say "modern," because the one piece of historical evidence that shows the Celtic Calendar lists only the cross-quarter days. However, the pre-Celtic pagans left their marks in stone circles in the places the Celts invaded. Stonehenge and New Grange both clearly mark the solstices. Other pagan groups celebrated the equinoxes and solstices more heavily; thus we moderns very often celebrate 8.
Samhain is the celebration of the ancestors, which the Catholic church tried to gloss over with the creation of All Saints Day and All Souls Day - In Mexico, the people moved their indigenous Day of the Dead, El DÃa de los Muertos, to All Saints Day so as not to get into trouble with the Catholic Church. The early church used this technique a lot:
( Tangent! Calendar talk )The difference between Samhain and All Saints? The Christian celebration is about people who have gone away and have achieved or are trying to achieve a better place. The pagan celebration is about the people that never left us and are just hard to see. It is a fundamental difference between pagan beliefs and Abrahamic beliefs: deity is immanent in the pagan world; spiritual power infused everything and is right here, right now. The power is available to those willing to see it and live in harmony with it. Abrahamic beliefs have a seperation between deity and deity's creation that occurred do to sin - a gap that humanity must strive to overcome to reconnect with deity.
This is not the beliefs of all pagans, but is very much a part of the beliefs of the Celts and those closest to pre-agricultural, aboriginal, and shamanic spiritual beliefs. The Celts, the Romans, Greeks, Vikings were all post-agricultural pagans and radically changed the focus of their beliefs from the pre-agricultural ancestors. Instead of being focused in a broader spiritual world, which was defined by the people of the tribe, the post-ags became focused on protecting and deifying their immediate surroundings, because they were tied in to place by their crops. It's still evident in the world's few remaining aboriginal peoples - the focus is the tribe, the spirits of the land where they wander and their dead, who are just other members of the tribe.
I find it best expressed in the poem
Senegalese Breaths by Birago Diop, who is expressing a pan-African view.
Listen more often to things rather than beings.
Hear the fire's voice,
Hear the voice of water.
In the wind hear the sobbing of the trees,
It is our forefathers breathing.
The dead are not gone forever.
They are in the paling shadows,
And in the darkening shadows.
The dead are not beneath the ground,
They are in the rustling tree,
In the murmuring wood,
In the flowing water,
In the still water,
In the lonely place, in the crowd:
The dead are not dead.
Listen more often to things rather than beings.
Hear the fire's voice,
Hear the voice of water.
In the wind hear the sobbing of the trees.
It is the breathing of our forefathers,
Who are not gone, not beneath the ground,
Not dead.
The dead are not gone for ever.
They are in a woman's breast,
A child's crying, a glowing ember.
The dead are not beneath the earth,
They are in the flickering fire,
In the weeping plant, the groaning rock,
The wooded place, the home.
The dead are not dead.
Listen more often to things rather than beings.
Hear the fire's voice,
Hear the voice of water.
In the wind hear the sobbing of the trees.
It is the breathing of our forefathers.
You can listen to Sweet Honey in the Rock's awesome interpretation of the poem
here -- scroll down to the album
Breaths and listen to the first track,
BreathsAs for Halloween-
Halloween is to Samhain as the Radio City Christmas Spectacular is to Midnight Mass
Which isn't to say that you can't enjoy both of them, but they are so not the same. Of course there is the ironic part where Halloween, despite it's many misplaced and misapplied pagan trappings is actually a Christian holiday -- All Hallows Eve, as in the night before All Hallows day, aka, All Saints Day.
***
As for me this year, I'll be baking cupcakes and wearing my awesome new witch hat to work to celebrate Halloween. Likewise, I sewed a dragon tail for E's costume. The older and more sophisticated R (age 6.5) is going pirate. I'll be stealing some of their candy later on. I'll also buy candy to pass out to Trick or Treaters. *cough* Let us not dwell on the fact I live on a dangerous country road and kids don't trick or treat on my street. ;-)
This year I'm attending two Samhain celebrations. Friend Misal, one of the moon sisters, felt called to open up her home for larger pagan gatherings. We both belonged to a large group that had around 20-30 regulars and up to 80 or so folks that would come for a holiday or two. The farm where we used to gather was sold, and the group gently dissolved into smaller, more local groups. We had folks regularly travel 50 miles to attend and some that would come from a hundred miles for the bigger holidays.
Misal's celebration will be much smaller, but hopefully put us all back in touch with the folks that are in our neck of the woods. I'm really looking forward to catching up with some folks I've lost touch with. We will feast, have an ancestor's shrine and do ritual. In the Celtic-pagan view, the veil between the ordinary world and the unseen world was think at Samhain, allowing for greater communion with the spirit world.
The other celebration will be
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rockin_violin's annual family celebration. It's a dinner ritual where we gather around the table, remembering that death is just another part of life and asking those ancestors to join us more closely. We go around the table and light candles for those that have passed in the year and those that have been pulling at our memories. Then we make a plate for the ancestors and fill our own plates.
Unless there's a safety issue, for we are not dumb!pagans, the candles burn until the stop or until we head off to bed. The ancestor's plate is taken outside to share with those spirit beings that send ask a corporeal being (usually furred or feathered) to pick them up a snack.
I wish you all a Happy New Year, no matter when one you celebrate yours. May we all think about expanding our souls or conscious a little more. A friend of mine recently told me how she boiled down religion for her child. If it makes you love people more; it's a good thing. May we all find greater understanding of each other in our beliefs whether they are spiritual or not.
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