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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in Samhain

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

A Great Rite of Peoples

 

Do we celebrate Samhain?

Mostly, yes.

Do we observe Samhain?

I hope so. The unexamined life is not worth living.

Do we keep Samhain?

Bingo.

We are keepers, we pagans. We keep. We keep to.

And not just Samhain. We are those who keep (and keep to) the Old Ways, long after others have thrown them away.

We retain them. We hold them. We guard them.

Like Americans, witches are a Great Rite of Peoples.

We hold to the Old Ways.

We keep the Old Ways.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
What Is Truly Scary

 Hello everyone, and Happy Halloween/Samhain season to you all. I am honored to have Allison Jornlin on our podcast episode 48, kicking off season 5!

 Allison Jornlin has been investigating strange phenomena for more than 20 years. Inspired by Chicago’s Richard Crowe, one of the pioneers of U.S. ghost tourism, she developed Milwaukee’s first haunted history tour in 2008.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs

path through a dark forest ...

 

At the jack o' lantern Gate, the Horned lays down his crown of antlers and autumn leaves.

He removes his torc.

He doffs his cloak.

Even the scanty loincloth he strips off.

Without looking back, he passes through the Gate.

Long after his pale rippling flanks have disappeared into darkness, we can still hear the dry leaves, crunching underfoot.

 

Later, around the hearth, someone asks: Gods, weren't you cold?

He laughs.

Here's the point at which I'm supposed to say—his voice drops a register—I was so deep in trance, I didn't even notice the cold, he says.

He laughs again and shakes his head.

Of course I was cold, he says. By the time I'd got to where I'd stashed my clothes, I swear, both nuts had crawled all the way back up into their sockets.

We laugh, as intended, but unconsciously, we all edge a little nearer the fire. Winter is upon us.

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs

American Halloween and Pagan Samhain are very different holidays. Neither are Asatru, or heathen, but because they are celebrated by the wider local community, this year I celebrated both. My experiences at the Samhain Soiree appear second in this post, after the link to an American Halloween celebration for those who wish to have one.

American Halloween is a fine community tradition. My street does it all together as a street fair, which we started doing in 2020 so we could move Halloween outside for safety, but we kept doing it because it was more fun this way. American Celebration Kindred does both Asatru holidays and American holidays. 

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Lighting A Jack-O'-Lantern: Choosing ...

 

Did Halloween originally mean “hallowed evening”?

Did All Hallow's originally mean “all-holy [evening]”?

Was Hallows—used by some as a spellable, pronounceable alternative to the problematic Irish “Samhain”—an old pagan name for the holiday?

No, no, and no.

Hálig (HAH-lee-yeh) was the Old English adjective that meant—and eventually became—“holy”. Substantivized—i.e. made into a noun—this became hálga, a masculine noun denoting a holy person or thing. After Christianization, it became the standard word for a saint: i.e. a holy person. Until 1066, this word—which would become our hallow—was the standard English word meaning “saint.”

(The fact that we now use the French word instead of the native English one tells its own story. The Church has always favored the conqueror over the conquered.)

So Halloween didn't originally mean “hallowed evening”, nor All Hallow's "all-holy", but rather the "Saints' Eve" and "All Saints' [Eve]" respectively.

In effect, they're worn-down forms of old names for a Christian holiday.

Does it matter?

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs

From the Triads of Paganistan

 

A night without law,

a night without rule,

a night like no other:

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs

How to Hunt the Phases of the Rut ...

 

A dead body, hanging from a tree.

When I boarded the school bus that frosty October morning, who could have guessed that what I was about to see would sear itself into my memory forever?

 

You have heard it said that Samhain marks the End of Harvest.

You have heard it said that Samhain marks the Homecoming of Flocks and Herds from the Summer Pastures.

Hear now as I tell of Samhain's First Beginning.

 

My school-mate's older brothers hunted.

That's how, when the bus stopped at her house to pick her up that Monday morning, there came to be the gutted carcass of a buck hanging by a rope from the big old maple in the front yard: strung up to bleed out, kept fresh by the autumn cold.

Never before had I felt so viscerally just how similar in weight and size a deer is to a human being.

It was like a crucifixion.

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