Samhain

The evening of October 31st is Samhain.

That's not pronounced as it looks, but more or less like Sow- (to rhyme with how) win, accent on the first syllable. It's the Wiccan term for Halloween (from the Irish Gaelic for November, according to Stewart and Janet Farrar in Eight Sabbats for Witches, p. 121. London: Robert Hale, 1981.)

Samhain is Wiccans' greatest sabbat and, due to its derivative in the form of the modern Halloween, it is also the best known and most controversial. Halloween is a contraction of All Hallows Eve, a Christian occasion preceding November 1st as All Saints Day and November 2nd as All Souls Day. Just as with the old Pagan celebration that the Christians took over, it was a time to remember our ancestors.

We modern Pagans also take it as a time to think on death generally, that most terrifying prospect. And so do secular celebrants of this day. Children dress up as ghosts and skeletons, as well as monsters, witches (!) and devils (or UFOnauts), playing at being scary things themselves, whereas for the other 364 days of the year they're afraid of the scary things.

This ties in with another aspect of modern Halloween. In days gone by, when most of the populace laboured under subsistence conditions, provision was made for the letting-off of steam. Donkeys paraded in the church, the village idiot was king-for-a-day, and the normal world was turned upside-down. People played briefly at being something else — peasants dressed in finery (or at least ribbons), aristocrats in rags. Many adults today use Halloween to fill this human need for a holiday from their everyday roles — burly men putting on dresses and make-up is an enduring classic. In past decades Halloween has been a big night for gay men to dress in drag because it was the one night of the year when, until recently, it was not illegal in this country to wear the clothes of, and pass oneself off as, a person of the other gender. (Which was considered a species of fraud!) But everybody, gay or straight, rich or poor, young or old, feels a need to bust out now and then, and Halloween has become (after Christmas) the most popular (and commercialized) holiday in modern North America. A WASP carnival.

Let us digress for a moment and consider the archetype of the scary witch. People studying fairy-tales have concluded that children have their quite natural, but alarming, moments of resenting and fearing their mothers. And mothers have fears of being inadequate and even of times momentarily hating their children. Parenting is difficult. And adult behaviour is baffling to very small children, who do not comprehend parental distraction, exhaustion, impatience or, yes, occasional flares of temper. But since children's survival depends on good mothering, they split their perception of their mother into Good Mommy and Bad Mommy, the latter forming the classical fairy-tale witch, the antithesis of the devoted mother (and, for that matter, wife). The concept of the witch incorporates this bad-tempered (rebellious) female image, an icon of deviance from a day when women were presumed to have no legitimate role other than to serve. (The presumption extended almost as completely to the vast majority of men, as well, who were virtually enslaved to the lord of the manor, the king, the state, the church, the vagaries of the harvest and the needs of their families.)

Today many sincere Christian people abhor the celebration of Halloween: Children dressing up as spooks and ghoulies — there's a suspicion that this is somehow getting in league with the Forces of darkness or at least giving them an entrance point into this world.

We Pagans look at it differently. There is death and darkness in this world, and we should think about these things, play with images, get used to the ideas. And isn't it healthy for a child to with full parental sanction be the monster for a little while rather than have the monster always be the fearsome Other? We need to face up to the monster within occasionally; denying it only gives it power by weakening our internal safeguards.

Pagans celebrate Samhain as the death of the old year, with the new beginning on November 1. The in-between time from sunset on October 31 until dawn the next day is neither old year nor new year, but a time-out-of-time when we review the year just past, or even all of our lifetime to that point, and then look forward to the year (and years) ahead of us, often using tarot cards or rune-stones as a meditation or divination device. We remember those who have died in the past year, and all those who have gone before, including all those people whose line stretches back into the mists of time, people who we no longer know but who gave us life and whose labours have given us the comforts of our modern world. We celebrate our ancestors. And of course, once you go back a few generations, all of the ancestors merge into a collective of Ancient Humanity, a common origin which we all share. And then we turn again and look to the future, when we personally will no longer live except as dim memories — a time when we will be will be the ancestors. Samhain is for contemplating how we will live the remainder of our lifetime and what kind of world we are making for our descendants.

We also often think about all the small deaths of the past year — the deaths of enterprises, relationships, and dreams. And we try to remember that such losses clear the way for new enterprises, relationships and dreams. Out of death comes new life.

One of our favourite chants for this sabbat comes from Starhawk (of Spiral Dance fame) and her Reclaiming Coven; the words are:

Nothing lasts forever
Time is the destroyer
The wheel turns again and again
Watch out or it'll take you through
But nothing dies forever
Nature is the renewer
The wheel turns again and again
When you're ready it'll take you through.

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