Getting Started:
Eight Days to Hold Sacred, Part Two

By Rev. Todd Covert, Chief of the Fellowship

Samhain:  The Coming of the Dark

Arguably the most important of the Fire Festivals—unquestionably one of the two most significant, along with Beltaine—Samhain can be appreciated, understood, and honored from a number of perspectives.

At its simplest, Samhain—traditionally observed between October 31 and November 11 in various places—can be seen as the end of the summer:  The name relates to the Gaelic word for “summer,” samhradh, and the denotation of the festival as an occasion outside of the calendar in some traditions marks it as transitional.  When one factors into consideration the notion advanced by Julius Caesar among others that the Celts reckoned divisions of time as beginning with the darkness, then Samhain can be seen as transition from the light/fecund half of the year into the dark/fallow half and, therefore, as the year’s beginning by virtue of its position at the start of the dark time.  The festival is generally described as the “Celtic New Year” even in an age in which secular Celtic culture has conformed itself to a calendar norm which marks the year’s beginning at January 1. 

Samhain is in some contexts seen as falling outside the year.  Such occasions in many cultures are occasions for social role reversals and there are indications of this in Celtic contexts.  More importantly, perhaps, from a religious perspective, Samhain’s position outside the year’s normal round marks it as a time where the extramundane world is in contact with the mundane.  Tales of invasions and depredations by hostile beings are associated with this time of year.

Contact with both spirits and the honored Dead are understood to be more frequent and accessible at this time and a simple, traditional, method of marking the occasion is to set out a meal for these beings.  In traditional Celtic society, generally this food was understood to be no longer appropriate for human consumption after it was set forth for this purpose.

In more than one traditional Celtic culture, folklore records that hearth fires throughout the Land were extinguished at Samhain and were to be relit with fire from a sacred festival fire kindled at the Center.  In the case of Ireland, this was taken to be the Samhain fire at Tara—or, more specifically, at the Hill of Tlachtga near the Hill of Tara.  Recent folk practice has the fire from a significant local fire shared as the source of relighting hearths in the vicinity.

Extinguishing the altar fire and then ritually relighting it after allowing space for workings done in the “dark” period with no fire (such as offering meals to the Dead or opening to the presence of Ancestors or other unseen guests) is a powerful and appropriate activity for Samhain.  The ancient custom of sharing fire from the ritual to homes in the community can be reenacted through the lighting of candles from the relit altar flame by ritual attendees.

Relighting the fire in a traditional manner—usually by friction—offers a powerful, direct, lesson in the fragility of the sacred fire and the reason it was hedged in times past by so many prayers and customs of tending.

The notion of Samhain as the beginning of the Dark Half of the year (and the end of summer) was, for our forebears, not the least bit metaphoric or symbolic.  It was at Samhain that the stock animals, having been brought in from pasturage, were sized up and those that were deemed unlikely to last the winter slaughtered.  Provisions were budgeted to allow man and beast to survive until new food stuffs were available in the spring.  Miscalculation here meant deprivation, if not death.  For moderns, this can be an occasion to both honor the fortitude and ingenuity of those who went through this annual ordeal—and sought the support of the Deities and Ancestors in doing so—and also undertake an assessment of what is essential and what perhaps can be discarded going forward…a New Year’s resolution of a particularly searching sort.

Irish mythology offers one other association for Samhaintide that can be employed ritually.  The mating of the Dagda—the god of magic, among other attributes—and the Morrigan, the tripartite Chthonic goddess of war, death, and prophecy, took place at Samhain.  Many modern Pagans choose to see this tale—in the context of Samhain’s character as a New Year festival—as representing a recurring renewal of the life cycle, with the seeds of new life planted at the very beginning of the Dark Time of the year, ensuring rebirth in the spring.

Suggestions for Samhain ritual observance:

1)      Convening ritual at sunset on Samhain Eve

2)      Making special invitation to the Dead to join in feasting and the offering of food

3)      Extinguishing the ritual fire

4)      Meditation, contemplation, trance work in the “dark time” after fire has been extinguished

5)      Relighting the fire—using friction is traditional; a man and a woman joining together to kindle the fire can be a representation of the union of the Dagda and the Morrigan

6)      Offering of suitable food stuffs (apples/cider, hazelnuts have excellent associations with the lore regarding the Dead and immortality) to the Ancestors