Pagans celebrate Halloween as part of the country’s newest religion

By Robert Pigott

BBC News religious affairs correspondent

In a riverside meadow in the Dorset town of Weymouth, a witch is using a broom to sweep a sacred circle in the grass. 


The rest of the coven stand, some in hooded gowns, in a circle around an iron cauldron where a fire is burning.


They've met to celebrate Samhain, pronounced "sah-wen": the turning of the year from light into dark.


Many think of Halloween as a time of ghouls and ghosts, and for some retailers it has become the third most lucrative event of the year.


It is the time of year when some churches remember the souls of the departed.


For the witches of Weymouth it is one of their most important religious festivals, a time when they believe the barriers between the physical and spiritual worlds are at their thinnest.


They invite the spirits of north, south, east and west into the circle, and cut apples to share with the spirits of people who have died.


The leader of the coven, Diane Narraway, bids farewell to the goddess of light, and kneels before the head of a horned ram, holding her hands out as if to a flame.


"I kneel before... the horned god, Lord of Witchdom, as we welcome him back to reign over the dark months," she says.


The coven meets regularly to make spells, using a variety of potions and differently coloured candles in order to achieve particular ends.


Green is for money, pink is for love


They say the spells are exclusively positive, and should be seen more as prayers.


Anouska Ireland, a 35-year-old teaching assistant, is wearing a hooded cloak in pale blue - the colour of good health.


She says: "We sometimes use the cauldron to mix spells... it could be for the purpose of healing, and in harnessing positive intentions for someone who is unwell."


Sarah Sanford, a mother-of-three, uses spells to protect them.


"When my children are going to school I'll do a protection spell for them, so they get through the day all right," she says.......


For the Complete Story Follow This Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11652512

Honouring the Ancestors: Samhain and Beyond

 October 26, 2010 by Galina Krasskova

Samhain by Helene Grasset

There’s a great deal of focus around Samhain on honouring one’s ancestors, and honouring the dead in general. Whether we celebrate Samhain or Winter nights, that’s what this holiday is all about, right? Well, yes….but ideally the celebrations that mark the end of October, should be the culmination of a year spent regularly and consistently interacting with the dead, honouring them, and recognizing their role in the continuing evolution of our spirituality. Honouring and interacting with the ancestors isn’t just a Samhain “thing,” rather it’s an every day “thing,” and one of the fundamental underpinnings of a strong, nourishing, resilient spiritual practice.


Many traditions pay special homage to their ancestors, to those who have come before us, to those who, by their struggles and failures, victories and joys have contributed to the common threads of being we all share. Honouring one’s lineage is the first and one of the most important steps in developing a strong spiritual foundation. It is a place of beginning. We all have ancestors. We can all tap into that connection. Ancestors may include those connected to you by blood, but also those who, while a blood relationship might be lacking, were nevertheless close enough to be kin. These are our teachers, mentors, and friends—our spiritual kin. No one lineage is better than another. Paying homage to one’s ancestors is not, in any way, shape or form an excuse for racism, rather it is a means of honouring the process of one’s spiritual journey, honouring those whose actions and lives helped create our own, shape our own. It means honouring those who shed blood for us, so that we might remember and also learn to craft lives of honour. It is an acknowledgement that we are all connected through the Holy Powers, through the cycle that Hela governs. We honour the continuity of Divine presence throughout the course of our lives. We honour their strength, courage, wisdom, struggles even as we seek to learn from them.

In the Northern Tradition, we have several different types of ancestors. The word “Dis” (plural: disir) refers specifically to the female ancestors of one’s line. These ancestors are very important because they are guardians of one’s luck and one’s wyrd. Luck particularly relies heavily on the female line in passing from one generation to the next. Sometimes the word ‘alf’ (plural: alfar) is used for the male antecedents, but in contemporary Heathenry this is not all that common as it leads to confusion with the denizens of Alfheim, one of the nine holy worlds. So most of us just refer to them as our “male ancestors”…unglamorous but effective! One might also encounter the word “wight,” an anglicized form of the Old Norse ‘vaet’ (plural: vaettir). This is a rather ‘catch-all’ term for nature spirits, elementals, and land spirits. Some use it to imply ancestors, but that is not its most common usage. The Northern Tradition is an animistic one and these beings, somewhat analogous to what Shinto would call ‘kami’ are no less important than one’s ancestors. So we honor not just our dead, but the spirits of the places in which we live, of our home, of the land itself as well.

One does not evolve spiritually in a vacuum. The strength of one’s spiritual House depends on the integrity of one’s lineage. By this, I mean being in right relationship with our ancestors. This is attained by honoring them regularly, rightly, and well. One’s ancestors and the vaettir of our world can assist us in our journey and in our spiritual Work. We can learn much from them but only if we empower them to act with us. A house cannot be built without bricks. Bricks cannot be secured without mortar. Paying homage to one’s ancestors and the spirits of the land is the mortar and clay from which those bricks are formed. We begin in the physical because we are physical beings. Our own physicality, the sense of touch, of sight, sound, smell, and hearing are the primary filters through which we experience our world. The first step in growing strong and whole and heal in this tradition, is honouring those who have struggled to do exactly that before us. This process is helped by the fact that many spirits choose to stay as guides/watchers and protectors.


There are endless ways of making proper offerings. The first step one should take, is the construction of an ancestral altar. This should be a separate altar from anything given to the Gods – a simple shelf will do, dedicated entirely to the ancestors. In my main kindred, we have a communal ancestral altar with offerings from each person. It’s quite a gathering of energies, because we all come from different backgrounds: Celtic, English, Swiss, German, Lithuanian, Cherokee, African, Italian, Polish. We honor our spiritual lineage too. This means that in addition to those actually related to us by blood or adoption, we also consciously honor those people who may have had a tremendous influence on us, who were teachers, mentors, and guides. For example, my mother kept a picture of Wilfred Owen on her ancestral altar, because his war poetry helped her through a very traumatic time in her life. In addition to the shared kindred altar, most of us also have our individual ancestor altars.

For the rest of this article click here: http://www.patheos.com/community/paganportal/2010/10/26/honoring-the-ancestors-samhain-and-beyond/

Preparing for Samhain

Article from A Pagan's Blog

Tuesday October 26, 2010

I've been busy polishing our ritual script for Samhain (pronounced "Sow-win"), which we will celebrate the 30th. I hope every other Pagan reader of this blog will have an opportunity to observe and celebrate this time as well. I think it is one of our two most important Sabbats.


Wicca celebrates and honors the Sacred in all its manifestation throughout life, for it is the Divine as it manifests in the world that serves as our "sacred text." We focus on the meaning within phenomena as symbols of a larger context toward which they point. Life is a cycle, and we see it symbolized throughout the course of a year here in temperate zones. On the equator we would need different symbolism to bring this insight alive, a sign that variety is itself Sacred. Along with the Sacredness of variety, I believe our world's other most fundamental teaching about the Sacred is its eternal linkage of life and death. Everything that lives, dies.


Samhain is when we honor death, as six months previously we honored life at Beltane. Then light was rapidly increasing, each day longer than the one before. Now night is becoming dominant, each night longer than the one before.


In NeoPagan and Celtic traditions Samhain is the last day of the year, as sundown is the end of the day and the beginning of the next. For Wiccans such as myself, the time between Samhain and Yule is the time when death is the dimension of Spirit most present at least symbolically.


For the rest of this article click on the following link: http://blog.beliefnet.com/apagansblog/2010/10/preparing-for-samhain.html

Samhain Blot

Our Alter taken by Chris ~ The photographs are my maternal grandparents

I and some friends had a beautiful Heathen blot last Saturday. It had been a while since we'd been all together for a blot due to family things. Nearly all of us had suffered a death in the family, some closer to us that other. Originally it was going to be our usual Penda Blot but because of our-loses and that we'd not been together for a while we decided to focus mostly on Samhain.

We are only a small group, but we are very good friends who enjoys one another’s company and so we're not just a bunch of pagans but a circle of friends. Paul had added a segment about friendship and an oath of friendship. All this signified by both words and a special ring he had made that we all hold. We said the oath together and then individually made a toast to our circle of friends drinking mead from the horn.



Chopping board decorated by Chris and on the left the pictures of my grandparents



We always have a rune that is appropriate to the blot and we chant it to add power to the circle and to aid this myself and Chris rhythmically hit our drums starting slow and steadily increasing the speed of the chant. It can be a very emotional and powerful moment when we do this.

We also bring something written to share with one another. We go round reading what we have fetched. It can be a song, poem or what ever we feel is appropriate for the blot.

This was one of the best blots so far and most definitely the most emotional. And made all the more special because of the people I share the circle with!