We are not alone in the dark

 

some information about Samhain and Halloween:

From the blog  joincake.com:

Samhain is an ancient Celtic festival that takes place every year at the end of October. Most scholars and historians believe that Samhain is the origin of the holiday we know as Halloween. Samhain is also the origin of other fall holidays, including All Saints’ Day and Dia de Los Muertos, which have similar themes.

The festival of Samhain has, for centuries, marked a “liminal” time of year, when the afterlife and daily life on Earth overlap. During this transitional period, spirits and the living can intermingle. Today, many Druids, Wiccans, and Pagans carry on the tradition by celebrating Samhain worldwide.

 

It’s easy to see the similarities between the Celtic festival of Samhain and the modern celebration of Halloween. But there’s much more to Samhain than the few activities that carried over to our modern holiday.

Samhain is a Celtic celebration marking the time of year when the transition to winter begins. It marks the separation between summer and winter, at the halfway point of the autumn season. 

At its heart, Samhain is an agricultural festival. It was originally a time when agricultural communities would prepare for the coldest months of the year. 

With its position at the “border line” of summer and winter (or lightness and darkness), Samhain also took on more spiritual connotations for the ancient Celts. 

The festival of Samhain originated in ancient Europe as a “fire festival.” On the night of Samhain, the Celtic people would build a bonfire to appease the gods. They hoped that by showing thanks to the gods, the gods would in turn help regenerate their crops. 

The ancient Celts thought of the year as two halves: light and dark. As the dark half of the year began in November, they believed that the world of gods and spirits became visible to mankind. And this could lead to trouble for the living.

With the line between the living world and the Otherworld blurred, the Celtic people believed the needed to take protective measures to avoid harm. 

 

 

 and some thoughts from 

Halloween as Practice

By Tracy Cochran

 

At a certain point, the summer of our innocence passes. The bright hope that spiritual practice might be a way for us to bypass suffering vanishes. The bliss we might have felt at the beginning gives way to the realization that the more we practice, the more we feel not just joy but also the 10,000 sorrows. The practice begins to feel a bit like Halloween.

Halloween is typically linked to the Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-an or sow-in), celebrating the end of the lighter half of the year and the beginning of the darker half. The ancient Celts believed this to be a thin time, a time when the border between this world and unknown worlds became porous, allowing the passage between worlds and levels to be much easier than it ordinarily is.

According to legend, one rite of Samhain in ancient Scotland was the dowsing of household fires. People would allow themselves to experience the darkness, lighting a new fire from a common bonfire. As we begin to understand that everyone suffers, everyone without exception, we begin to experience that common fire. We begin to be able to look at ourselves and others with kind attention. Our hearts begin to open to others and to ourselves, in all our guises and manifestations, even the most frightening.

Moment by moment, we begin to realize that waking up involves waking up to the truth of who we are, and that means the whole truth. A new kind of warmth and vibrancy and ease comes into our lives at moments (and let me stress again that this is a work of moments). We feel just as much as before. But there is also light and warmth, and the understanding that we are not alone in the dark.