Samhain and Halloween

 I thought I would do a post to celebrate Samhain (pronounced Sow-ein) as I am now committed to studying Celtic Shamanism. As a novice in this work I will give you some wisdom from one far more knowledgeable than myself - Glennie Kindred. The following information on Samhain is drawn from her books - The Earths Cycle of Celebration and The Sacred Tree. The references to Halloween are from various sources.

Samhain has no truly fixed date, unlike the modern (Christian) festival of Halloween or All Hallows Eve, Samhain is celebrated on the second new moon after the Autumn equinox. This is both the ending and the beginning of the Celtic year and it falls around the end of October and the beginning of November. (In 2021 it falls on November 4th). Samhain is a festival that celebrates the affirming of rebirth in the midst of death and darkness.

Samhain is a magical time when the veil between the seen world of matter and the unseen world of Spirit becomes thin, especially at dawn and dusk. It is a time for communication with our ancestors, a time for divination, omens, portents and seeking the Mysteries. It is a time to drift, dream and vision; a time for inner journeys and to connecting to the wisdom inside yourself.

The Halloween we are all familiar with today appeared when the Roman Catholic church tried to replace the traditional religious practices of the Celts with the "new" religion of the Roman Empire - Christianity

The importance of pre-Christian customs to people’s lives apparently wasn’t lost upon the early Catholic Church. Pope Gregory I, also known as St. Gregory the Great, who headed the Church from A.D. 590 to 604, advised a missionary going to England that instead of trying to do away with the religious customs of non-Christian peoples, they simply should convert them to a Christian religious purpose. For example, the site of a pagan temple could be converted to become a Christian church.

So the Church mixed the traditions involving Celtic spirits and Catholic saints. In the 800s, the Church designated November 1 as All Saints’ Day.

"The old beliefs associated with Samhain never died out entirely,” as folklorist Jack Santino wrote in 1982 “The powerful symbolism of the travelling dead was too strong and perhaps too basic to the human psyche, to be satisfied with the new, more abstract Catholic feast honouring saints.”

Instead, the first night of Samhain, October 31, became All Hallows Day Evening, the night before the saints were venerated. That name eventually morphed into Halloween, and it became the time when Christians could turn the supernatural symbolism and rituals of Samhain into spooky fun.

The tree that is associated with Samhain is the Yew. It has an unusual form of growth which enables the tree to occupy the same spot for centuries. Its branches grow down into the earth to form new stems and these form the trunks of "new" trees - hence the Yew represents everlasting life and continual rebirth. Many huge old Yews are to be found in graveyards but their presence is much older than the churches themselves. There are Yews alive today which are said to be 5000 years old.

I have a favourite Yew in a chuchyard in Oxfordshire that has been dated as being 1600 years old. Sadly, some sick minded vandal or vandals tried to burn it down about 25 years ago but the tree survived and despite the scorched and blackened interior of its hollow central trunk, it has managed to thrive.

I intend to journey to this tree in the "Otherworld" at Samhain. I will ask one of my guides, Brother Francis (a Christian monk that I like to think of as Francis of Assisi) to gather up all my non human friends (pets) that have passed to the other side over the years and guide them to me so that we can have a loving, if brief, reunion. I will let you know if I was successful on this journey in a later post.   

Thanks to Glennie Kindred and History.com for the information contained in this post.