Alas, SAMHAIN approaches! This is the official beginning of a NEW YEAR for Wiccans, witches, and Pagans. Party plans mostly begin the moment we flip the calendar to this new month--October. Perhaps more seriously, it is the perfect season to honor any loved ones (both family and friends) who have left and gone “HOME”. While the serious side of this holiday is to pay tribute to deceased loved ones, it also takes place at two times of the year – March being the other. More interestingly, Samhain is when the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest, which allows easier connections with the spirit realms.
I am sorry to have posted so late in the season of spooky celebration, hoping party plans are set and costumes purchased or completed and ready for tonight, and, for those who follow old traditions of this season the ritualistic meal has been placed on altars and words of gratitude spoken for deceased loved ones and ancestors—so it’s finally time to carve goofy or grotesque faces into our pumpkins, set them out to light paths or frighten ghosts away from our porches. LOL
While humans change their everyday garments for the most fantastic, weird, or comical, so too the over-stressed trees and bushes change before our eyes from rich green garments into the drab, end-of-year shrouds of golden yellow, blazing orange, and rusty red. Soon they will be casting off these autumn colors and prepare with bare branches to face the coming winter. Although it may seem like a death, it is truly a gift of a winter’s rest for the deciduous trees. Meanwhile, the evergreens find delight as they wave their year-round green needles in defiance of weather and frisky winds.
Thus, this is the Turning of the Wheel of the Year and the time for witches to celebrate by riding high on magical broomsticks . . . oops! Sorry, got carried away with the myth so long ago perpetrated by ancient fear and a mistaken belief that they flew on such things to some hellish Sabbath rite. Wrong! Unlikely, as their brooms were unlikely able to take flight with or without a witch pilot. Rather, this was more likely a version of astral projection (a methodology of leaving one’s body during sleep). Either way, the flight was believed to be possible by using a mysterious fat-based ointment or using a unique beverage laced with hallucinogenic plants/substances. They certainly did NOT consort or dance with the devil/Satan, since the witches of old did not – nor do they likely now – believe in that Christian symbol. Instead, the image likely originated from the belief in the ancient deity, PAN. Samhain originated long before pumpkins were the favored decoration for Halloween. In that era, many believed in evil spirits and the walking dead (ghosts), which thus inspired them to carve faces into gourds and turnips to frighten evil away. Today, it has become the humble pumpkin that kindly allows us to carve or paint its beautiful orange flesh with any kind of expression we wish.
And . . . Ta-Da, the result is a perfect . . . Jack-o’ lantern!
No longer does fear equate to placing jack-o-lanterns with candles (or preferably battery-operated candles) inserted into empty heads for the safety of little trick-or-treaters. They are no longer carved as protectors from things that “go bump in the night’ as our ancestors did, but they remain favorite Halloween decorations. I must say that every time I carve a new pumpkin with a large grinning mouth, I chuckle and wonder -- how would any self-respecting demon have been even a little intimidated by a vegetable with a goofy face? Well, perhaps if it had been carried and thrown by a caped, headless man, riding a charging black horse.
So . . . the next time you see a leering jack-o’-lantern, DARE to look directly into its face. LAUGH and stare into the mirror of the eyes as you would into the bathroom mirror on the worst bad-hair day . . . oh, you are not alone when Halloween brings out the costumed human crazies, or you find yourself facing things that go bump in the night! While your jack-o-lantern may just sit there with its hollow eyes sparkling by the mercy of a candle and never talk to you or morph into a phantasm of the wildest kind, just remember the real MAGIC is within YOU! It is the imagination born from your subconscious that makes life fun. You may say you have no magical or psychic abilities, but everyone absolutely does. Anyone can either attract what is desired or detract what needs to be released. Just remember -- Think Abundantly—Attract Abundance. Think Negatively or Depressively. Potentially find yourself in those deep shadows. Alas, Samhain/Halloween is not all about spookiness, witches, and carving pumpkins with an up-or-down turned mouth. Funny how all potentiality can be present and noticed even in a gutted orange vegetable that barely dodged becoming a pumpkin pie before magically manifesting as a -- Jack-o’-lantern.
I am sorry to have posted so late in the season of spooky celebration, hoping party plans are set and costumes purchased or completed and ready for tonight, and, for those who follow old traditions of this season the ritualistic meal has been placed on altars and words of gratitude spoken for deceased loved ones and ancestors—so it’s finally time to carve goofy or grotesque faces into our pumpkins, set them out to light paths or frighten ghosts away from our porches. LOL
While humans change their everyday garments for the most fantastic, weird, or comical, so too the over-stressed trees and bushes change before our eyes from rich green garments into the drab, end-of-year shrouds of golden yellow, blazing orange, and rusty red. Soon they will be casting off these autumn colors and prepare with bare branches to face the coming winter. Although it may seem like a death, it is truly a gift of a winter’s rest for the deciduous trees. Meanwhile, the evergreens find delight as they wave their year-round green needles in defiance of weather and frisky winds.
Thus, this is the Turning of the Wheel of the Year and the time for witches to celebrate by riding high on magical broomsticks . . . oops! Sorry, got carried away with the myth so long ago perpetrated by ancient fear and a mistaken belief that they flew on such things to some hellish Sabbath rite. Wrong! Unlikely, as their brooms were unlikely able to take flight with or without a witch pilot. Rather, this was more likely a version of astral projection (a methodology of leaving one’s body during sleep). Either way, the flight was believed to be possible by using a mysterious fat-based ointment or using a unique beverage laced with hallucinogenic plants/substances. They certainly did NOT consort or dance with the devil/Satan, since the witches of old did not – nor do they likely now – believe in that Christian symbol. Instead, the image likely originated from the belief in the ancient deity, PAN. Samhain originated long before pumpkins were the favored decoration for Halloween. In that era, many believed in evil spirits and the walking dead (ghosts), which thus inspired them to carve faces into gourds and turnips to frighten evil away. Today, it has become the humble pumpkin that kindly allows us to carve or paint its beautiful orange flesh with any kind of expression we wish.
And . . . Ta-Da, the result is a perfect . . . Jack-o’ lantern!
No longer does fear equate to placing jack-o-lanterns with candles (or preferably battery-operated candles) inserted into empty heads for the safety of little trick-or-treaters. They are no longer carved as protectors from things that “go bump in the night’ as our ancestors did, but they remain favorite Halloween decorations. I must say that every time I carve a new pumpkin with a large grinning mouth, I chuckle and wonder -- how would any self-respecting demon have been even a little intimidated by a vegetable with a goofy face? Well, perhaps if it had been carried and thrown by a caped, headless man, riding a charging black horse.
So . . . the next time you see a leering jack-o’-lantern, DARE to look directly into its face. LAUGH and stare into the mirror of the eyes as you would into the bathroom mirror on the worst bad-hair day . . . oh, you are not alone when Halloween brings out the costumed human crazies, or you find yourself facing things that go bump in the night! While your jack-o-lantern may just sit there with its hollow eyes sparkling by the mercy of a candle and never talk to you or morph into a phantasm of the wildest kind, just remember the real MAGIC is within YOU! It is the imagination born from your subconscious that makes life fun. You may say you have no magical or psychic abilities, but everyone absolutely does. Anyone can either attract what is desired or detract what needs to be released. Just remember -- Think Abundantly—Attract Abundance. Think Negatively or Depressively. Potentially find yourself in those deep shadows. Alas, Samhain/Halloween is not all about spookiness, witches, and carving pumpkins with an up-or-down turned mouth. Funny how all potentiality can be present and noticed even in a gutted orange vegetable that barely dodged becoming a pumpkin pie before magically manifesting as a -- Jack-o’-lantern.
- HAPPY HALLOWEEN and have a MAGICAL SAMHAIN EVE!
