Samhain is a festival marking the end of the harvest season and the beginning of the dark half of the year (Winter).
It is held on November 1st with celebrations beginning the evening of October 31st as Celtics days ended and began with the sunset. This is also about halfway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice.
Now wayyyyy back in the day this was celebrated like most festivals. Harvest bounties were shared fires were lit for protection and the dead were both honored and protected.
Now, remember what you find from here on down is MY PERSONAL PRACTICE. Some things as usual you will also find elsewhere but there are some you won’t.
I start my day with a card pull regarding the coming season but I do not start any rituals or other practices until sunset.
As always I start with cleansing my workspace. My actual ritual varies from year to year as I am not always in the same place physically and spiritually.
I take time to honor those I have lost in my life to death. I will either light a candle or leave a small gift for each of them on my altar as I work.
I also take time to honor the parts of myself that have “died “. I then proceed to ask for the strength, bounty, and faith to make it through the dark half of the year.
These rituals can be as long or short as you personally feel is needed and much like everything else for me, the length is often very.
One last thing I like to do is make a Samhain spell jar, which will be filled with protection, prosperity, and strength along with a few other things.
At the end of Samhain (Sunset November 1st.) I try to discard all of my ashes and herbs from my spell work into the evening air.
Now, this part isn’t always possible as I am an adult with a job that sometimes requires night so if I can’t do so at sunset I do so at my earliest convenience that evening.
The musky scent of autumn rolled over my town, and I could feel the veil between the worlds getting thinner.
~ Ellen Dugan
