Unending Wisdom’s Golden Thread: Blessed Samhain to All

I am the hallow-tide of all souls passing,
I am the bright releaser of all pain,
I am the quickener of the fallen seed-case,
I am the glance of snow, the strike of rain.
I am the hollow of the winter twilight,
I am the hearth-fire and the welcome bread,
I am the curtained awning of the pillow,
I am unending wisdom’s golden thread.
by Caitlín Matthews, from Song of Samhain, Celtic Devotional: Daily Prayers and Blessings

We have come to another turning of the Great Round, and the Celtic year’s end is now upon us. Today, we stand in the gateway between the old, which is utterly and forever gone and the new, which has not fully arrived.

It is now that our beloved dead are remembered. Here the veil thins and Mystery comes upon us, ready or not.

There is so little in our Western secular culture that even remotely prepares us for the irrevocable powers of Life, Death, and cthonic transformation, as they overturn the haute couture masks, plastic pumpkins, pointy hats, and chocolate bars.

That superficiality was rudely exposed last year, and nothing will ever be the same, no matter how much Wall Street and Washington might wish for it to be.

We would do well to learn from the wisdom of other cultures, who take this threshold time to honor and celebrate their Ancestors.

For once again, we are entering the dark half of the year. What if you, at least momentarily, stepped away from the artifice of our culture, and listened to the whispers of your forebears? For there are treasures in this liminal time, bittersweet as they may sometimes be.

What is Samhain?

The Great Sabbat of Samhain (pronounced SAH-wen, SAH-ween, or SOW (rhymes with cow) -wen) is the third and final harvest, marking Summer’s end.

It is the celebration of the New Year in both the old Celtic calendar and also in many traditions of the Craft. In the Northern Hemisphere, this marks the midpoint between Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice (although by strict astronomical reckoning that falls on Nov. 6 or 7 this year (depending on your time zone).

Samhain is the opposite point of the year from the celebrations of life and fertility of May Day, or Beltane, which our friends below the equator are celebrating today.

A most merry Beltane to all our dear ones in the Southern Hemisphere!

A Witch’s View of Human Nature

As most educated people know, neither Witches nor Samhain have anything whatsoever to do with “satan,” who is strictly a Christian invention. While our stories have plenty of tricksters and even a few nasty villains, there is no entity of supernatural evil in the beliefs or practices of Witchcraft or Paganism.

More tellingly, most Witches and Pagans do not believe in the myth of fundamental wrongness being at the heart of the world, or human nature.

We especially reject the notion of “original sin” and the subsequent eternal punishment of all humanity, or that the “fall” was caused by the inherent wickedness of Woman.

For millennia, Western civilization has been haunted and manipulated by the terror that a taint of evil lurks in even the most innocent of us.

Sadly, the fallout from this is that most people are alienated from, and deeply afraid of, the natural cycles of living, aging, and dying. And yet a morbid fascination with violence, death, and horror are central to popular entertainment pastimes.

For our ancestors, as well as in cultures not dominated by the Abrahamic religions, when you eliminate the fear that there is a stain of evil or accursedness dwelling within every single one of us (mediated only by the Church), then you have a very different relationship to the fact of death, as well as the Earth Herself.

Death may bring deep grief to those left behind, but it is not the grotesque horror that we have turned it into, in our modern, “enlightened” times.

On the contrary, we sense that the boundary that lies between the living and the departed, and between what is past, present, and future has become thin.

This is not a spooky, terrifying thing to us. Consensual reality shifts, and other dimensions are revealed, enabling us to welcome and commune with our beloved dead, as well as our Otherworldly guides and allies.

Origins

Halloween and All Saints Day have their origin in the ancient Celtic feast of Samhain. The All Saints ceremonies had originally been in the Springtime, but the Catholic church, in an attempt to stamp out the Pagan rites of Samhain, superimposed it to that time.

We do not, in fact, really know what went on at those most ancient rites, as the wise Ronald Hutton reminds us.

In the modern Gaelic languages, the name of the feast means “summer’s end.” In the modern Brythonic languages, it means “the first day of winter.” It is the end of the end, the beginning of the beginning. The Celts honored the intertwining forces of existence: darkness and light, night and day, cold and heat, death and life.

Celtic knotwork art represents this intertwining. The old ones observed time as proceeding from darkness to light. Thus, the Celtic day began at dusk, the beginning of the dark and cold night, and ended the following dusk, the end of a day of light and warmth.

Similarly, the Celtic year began with An Geamhradh (“an gyow-ragh”), the dark Celtic winter, and ended with Am Foghar (“am fu-ghar”), the Celtic harvest. So Samhain marks the beginning of both An Geamhradh and the new Celtic year.

Throughout history and across cultures, this is a time for making peace with one another, and with the inevitability of death.

This would have been the third and final harvest of the growing season, with Lughnasadh (Aug. 1) being the first harvest of grains and Mabon (Equinox) being the final harvest of fruits and vegetables. Samhain marked the blood harvest of cattle, pigs, and other animals that had to be culled in order to survive the encroaching Winter.

Thus, stories with a theme of the death and the transformation cycle, as well as rituals honoring and welcoming the spirits of our beloved dead Ancestors are central to our rites.

Our Magical Legacy

While the revelry of Halloween can be fun, it is not Pagan. Instead, Halloween is a commercialized, secular event. It is amusing that some conservative churches are trying to “clean up” what they fear is the Pagan influence of this night by having “Fall Harvest Festivals,” since that is actually much closer to the Pagan observances.

This night is our most holy, reflective, and deeply sacred time.

So to my friends who love to party, dress up, and carouse on this night, I appreciate your disappointment that this year your revelries may be curtailed.

But for me, especially in yet another terrible year of brutal, senseless loss, my feelings and sensibilities at this time could hardly be further away from those activities.

Instead, like most other Witches, Druids, and Pagans, I will be in sacred space on this most spiritual of nights. I am only sorry that many of those gatherings are still confined to electronic ones, and not dancing the Spiral Dance and raising our Power hand in hand.

But what is unchanged is that tonight, we’ll be bidding welcome to our beloved departed ones by freshening their resting places if nearby, decorating our altars in their honor, preparing their favorite foods, perhaps hosting a dumb supper, and lighting candles to show them the way.

We review the old year’s triumphs and shortcomings, and we may burn symbols or actual items in our bonfires representing that which we wish to release for good.

The Start of the Wild Hunt

This is a night of great power, when we may seek wisdom through divination and sacred contact with the Otherworlds.

It is a time to contemplate our own ephemeral existence in this Middle World of life, and to accept with grace our place in the Spiral Dance of life and death.

Our predecessors took Samhain quite seriously. Any crops not harvested by this day were known to belong to the “Shrouded One” and left alone.

Ancestors not honored at this time could be expected to plague the living with ill luck. Thus, tonight is an important time to set a place at the table for your beloved dead, and give offerings to those who have crossed over to the Summerlands.

The most fierce Faery races, led by the Lord of the Faery, Finvara, King of the Dead, ride forth, beginning on this night, with the hosts of the dead, sweeping up all the souls of those who have died within the past year.

Commonly known as The Wild Hunt, this fabled activity continues until Yule, so beware of dark, lonely places in the night, lest you be taken by mistake.

We Honor the Crone

On this sabbat, in addition to giving our honor to the Gods of the Wild Hunt and Gatherers of Souls, like Gwyn ap Nudd, we offer our devotion to the Divine Feminine in Her form as the Underworld Goddess and the Old One, including the Morrighan, Demeter, Hel, and Orchil.

On this day especially, since the last day of the month is always sacred to Her, let us call upon mighty Hecate, who advocates for the downtrodden and marginalized, on behalf of mothers and children, and is our own Goddess of the Witches.

The Burning Times

In addition, on this day, we remember all those men, women, and children who have been burned, hanged, imprisoned, beaten, drowned, tortured, starved, and murdered as Witches.

The Witch hunts during The Inquisition and European wars of religion peaked between about 1580 and 1630, but there were over three centuries of terror, with an estimated total of 40,000–100,000 people executed. Mostly women.

But let’s be clear.

Witchcraft continues to be misunderstood and persecuted across the globe today. In some countries, including so-called “modern” ones, suspected Witches are still routinely put to public and torturous death. Alas, those persecutions are on the rise again, for when fear and ignorance tip into the extreme, scapegoats become targets.

But we will continue to strive for justice and understanding for all in danger. And we vow:

Never again the burnings! And hangings. And drownings. And torture.

Dates of Execution from America’s REAL Witchhunt –
(And, frankly, screw those who have recently tried to trivialize this term for their self-pity and ego!)

I invite you to remember them aloud in your rites on this holy day:

• Bridget Bishop (June 10, 1692)
• Rebecca Nurse (July 19, 1692)
• Sarah Good (July 19, 1692)
• Elizabeth Howe (July 19, 1692)
• Susannah Martin (July 19, 1692)
• Sarah Wildes (July 19, 1692)
• George Burroughs (August 19, 1692)
• George Jacobs Sr. (August 19, 1692)
• Martha Carrier (August 19, 1692)
• John Proctor (August 19, 1692)
• John Willard (August 19, 1692)
• Martha Corey (September 22, 1692; wife of Giles Corey)
• Mary Eastey (September 22, 1692)
• Mary Parker (September 22, 1692)
• Alice Parker (September 22, 1692)
• Ann Pudeator (September 22, 1692)
• Wilmot Redd (September 22, 1692)
• Margaret Scott (September 22, 1692)
• Samuel Wardwell Sr. (September 22, 1692)
• Giles Corey (September 19, 1692) – Pressed to death, the only such execution on record in America. Last words, “More weight!”

Died in prison

• Ann Foster — convicted and died in custody in December 1692
• Mercy, infant daughter of Sarah Good
• Sarah Osborne— died in prison (May 10, 1692) before she could be tried
• Roger Toothaker – died before trial (June 16, 1692) probably due to torture or maltreatment
• Lydia Dustin – found not guilty but died in custody

Convicted but escaped:

• Mary Bradbury
  

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A Few of the Beloved Dead of 2021

This year, a number of actual Witches, Pagans, and other non-traditional magical people crossed the veil. These are a few of our luminaries. We take a moment to thank them and wish them blessed journeys:

Carol Christ, Author, thealogian (her spelling preference), historian, director of the Ariadne Institute, and one of the foremothers and most brilliant voices of the Goddess movement.

Stuart Kaplan, Founder of U.S. Games (one of the world’s largest publishers of Tarot and divination cards), author and renowned Tarot expert, and champion of the modern upsurge of interest in the Tarot.

Devyn Christopher Gillette, author, member of the Thomas Morton Society, awarded the Shield of Valor by the Witches League for Public Awareness. A Craft elder, he introduced the Blue Star tradition of Wicca to Canada in 1999.

Wendy Griffin, beloved Academic Dean of Cherry Hill Seminary, she developed one of the first Women’s Studies programs at CA State College, Long Beach. She was also Co-Chair of the Contemporary Pagan Studies unit with the American Academy of Religion.

Iona Miller, Author of The Magical and Ritual Use of Perfumes, and The Modern Alchemist and contributed to several anthologies about Greek Goddesses. She was also a Jungian hypnotherapist, and was dedicated to the “reunion of science and religion.”

Gust Clarence Lundberg, aka Robin Goodfellow, the Faerie King. Ambassador-at-Large for the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors; Shamanic Healer at Tremont Tearoom and Keeper of the Alchemical Fire.

Robin Wood, Pagan artist perhaps best known for her creation and illustration of the Robin Wood Tarot Deck, as well as portraits of characters from Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series, and the cover art for several of Scott Cunningham’s books.

Donata Ahern, HPS in Gardnerian and Alexandrian Wicca, Druid in O.B.O.D; Priestess in Maya Temple of the Deer; Grey Council member; faculty of Grey School.

Julie Adams Keller (Shetakaey), Longtime Church of All Worlds member; owner and editor of Rending the Veil in Baytown, TX.

Matthew Jack Whealton, Jr., Temple of Ra, in San Francisco, noted linguist, Egyptologist, and Kemetic revivalist.

George Koury, magician, mentalist, Tarot reader, musician, author, former clown with Ringling Circus, essential oil expert, photographer, counselor and psychic medium, healer, and angel messenger. And cherished friend.

Paul, musician, writer, and full adept in O.B.O.D (the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids). Also, the beloved husband and life partner to my heart-friend and sister Priestess of Hiereiai, Rose.

Carolyn Clark, The first legally ordained Priestess of modern times, and High Priestess of the Church of All Worlds (CAW).

Herman Nash Enderle, Jr., member of Pagan Way Gardnerians of Chicago. He wove the Celtic, Greek, Egyptian, and Qabalistic strands of mysticism and magic together with Golden Dawn Ordo Templi Orientis.

Stephan Grundy/Kveldulf Gundarsson (He was a “goði,” author of fiction as well as books on Norse and Germanic magic and Heathenry.

Gone and Lost Forever

In addition, we grieve for the waves of extinction now catapulting our biosphere into ruin, with no sign of slowing.

This year alone, over 22 species were removed from the extremely endangered list and declared extinct, gone from the Earth forever.

They include the ivory-billed woodpecker, Bachman’s warbler, the Scioto madtom (a freshwater fish), the San Marcos gambusia (another fish), eight species of Southeastern freshwater mussels, a flower and eight birds from Hawaiʻi, as well as the bridled white-eye bird, and the little Mariana fruit bat, both from Guam.

What is remembered lives, but extinction is forever.

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Last, among the many, many others, these notables also crossed the veil this year, and we may wish to mark their going:

Jerry Pinkney, illustrator for over 100 children’s books. Won the Caldecott Medal in 2010 for The Lion and the Mouse, as well as five Coretta Scott King Awards from the American Library Association, and Lifetime Achievement and Hall of Fame inductee to the Society of Illustrators.

Paddy Moloney, Irish folk music legend and founder of The Chieftains.

Ed Asner, prolific and admired actor as well as passionate philanthropist.

Charlie Watts, drummer and co-founder of The Rolling Stones.

Robert Moses, civil rights activist, co-founder of SNCC, and champion of math literacy for maginalized communities.

Olympia Dukakis, Oscar-winning actress and fierce supporter of the LGBTQI community.

Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh.

Isamu Akasaki, Nobel Prize-winning Japanese physicist who pioneered energy-efficient LED lighting as a weapon against global warming and poverty.

Beverly Cleary, beloved children’s book author and recipient of the National Medal of Arts in 2003, the National Book Award in 1981, and the John Newbery Medal three times.

Chick Corea, jazz pianist, winner of 23 Grammy Awards and founder of the online “Chick Corea Academy” online music school in response to COVID.

Sir “Captain Tom” Thomas Moore, World War II veteran and retired Army officer, who was catapulted to fame for his spectacular fund-raising efforts in support of NHS staff during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cicely Tyson, Groundbreaking Black actress, winner of an Honorary Oscar, two Emmys, and a Tony Award.

Cloris Leachman popular and admired for her many roles on stage, on television, and in films. She won eight Emmy Awards — tied for the most all-time with Julia Louis-Dreyfus — and a Daytime Emmy Award.

Hank Aaron, baseball’s “Home Run King” who held 23 major league records including 755 home runs during his long career for the Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves. Despite racist hate mail and death threats, Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s home run record in 1974, and then broke Ruth’s RBI record. Elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982.

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Who might you add to this list of the Beloved Dead?

Light a candle to guide your cherished ones that they may join you this night. Speak their names, and tell them of your life since you last met. Offer them refreshment. And give thanks to your Ancestors, who saw you in their dreams.

Weaver, weaver weave their thread
Whole and strong into your web;
Healer, healer, heal their pain,
In love may they return again.

We merry meet.
And merry part.
And merry meet again.
What is remembered lives.

Blessed be.