The Wheel of the Year cont. - Samhain
We now come to the last of the Sabbats. Samhain. Wicca holds that the Sabbat has themes of death, rebirth, and honoring of your ancestors as central aspects of the celebration. As with other Sabbats, a feast is customary, traditionally featuring foods from the final harvest of the year. Many adherents will leave a plate of food and a drink out, providing refreshments and nourishment for any spirits that may visit the house. Divination is a common practice for the Sabbat, most especially contacting spirits that have passed on, given that Wicca holds that the Sabbat is the day when the veil between the afterlife and our world is thinnest.
When examining classical Samhain, we find that there is no link to rebirth, nor of death itself. Reverence of the dead, yes, the end of the harvest season, yes. Not rebirth, however. The earliest literature mentioning Samhain dates from the 9th century, wherein Samhain is marked with grand gatherings and feasts, as well as being the day when ancient burial mounds that act as entrances to the Otherworld were open, with some literature associating Samhain with bonfires and sacrifices.
According to “Serglige Con Culainn” the festival that the Ulaid over-kingdom would host lasted a week, comprising of Samhain and the three days before and after, involving gatherings where meetings were held, feasts eaten, alcohol drunk, and contests held. The “Togail Bruidne Dá Derga” notes the use of bonfires at Samhain. F. Marian McNeill claims in volume three of her work “The Silver Bough” that the bonfires began as need-fires, much like the bonfires of Bealtaine, with the practice dying out. Similarly, per John Gregorson Campbell’s “The Gaelic Otherworld”. Only certain woods were used for the bonfires, with that custom dying out as time went on.
The purpose of the bonfire, per McNeill’s The Silver Bough, John Arnott MacCulloch’s “The Religion of the Ancient Celts”, and James George Frazer’s “The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion”, was as a form of sympathetic magic, whereby the bonfire imitated the sun, holding back the decay and darkness of the winter months, with Frazer positing that the fire may also have served as a symbolic means to
“burn up and destroy all harmful influences”
This could be seen as being supported by 18th and 19th-century accounts that indicated the fires (and their ashes and smoke) had protective and cleansing powers.
In Moray, Scotland, boys went around the village asking for bonfire fuel. When the fire was lit they would lay themselves on the ground, as close to the fire as manageable without being burnt, and would let the smoke of the fire roll over them. Other children would run through the smoke and jump over the child who was lying on the ground at the time. Some areas held that two bonfires were lit, with the people (and sometimes their livestock) passing between the two as a cleansing ritual. Additionally, the bones of slaughtered cattle are said to have been cast into the fire, which itself would be brought to the home, much the same way as was performed on Bealtaine, with the hearth being doused, a torch lit from the bonfire being carried around the home and fields (sunwise being specified) and the hearth relit with the torch.
The bonfires themselves were used as a means of divination. A ring of stones for each person was laid around the fire, with the participants then running around it with torches, “exulting”. In the morning the stones would be examined, with any that are mislaid being signs that their corresponding person wouldn’t survive the year. Divination games and rituals were rather common, in point of fact. They commonly utilized apples and hazelnuts, and most commonly focused on death and marriage. An example was the peeling of an apple, maintaining the peel in one strip, and tossing the peel behind the shoulder, its shape said to form the first letter of your future spouse’s name. Two hazelnuts might be roasted by the fire, one named for the roaster, the other their desired. Should the nuts jump away, the matching would be poor, but should they roast quietly, then the matching would go well.
There was also the practice of hiding items in food, with the person finding it having their fortune foretold. A ring, for example, denoted marriage, a coin wealth. Similarly, a salty oatmeal bannock was eaten in three bites, which was said to result in a dream where your future spouse would offer a drink to quench your thirst. Birds were also a common method of divination, more specifically crows, with their numbering and the direction in which they flew being interpreted.
Samhain was also seemingly perceived as a form of a liminal time period when the boundary between the mortal world and the Otherworld was more easily crossed, allowing the aos sí to come through into our realm, making the time a period where the fairy-folk would require propitiation, through offerings of food and drink, or portions of crops. One such example survived into the 1670s in the Outer Hebrides, and Iona, in Scotland. Fishermen and their families would go to the shore, and one of the men would wade into the water, pour out a cup of ale, and ask “Seonaidh” who was named “the god of the sea” to bestow a good catch. The custom was ended after a campaign by Christian ministers, though in reality it simply shifted to the springtime and survived into the 19th century.
Of course, care was taken to not offend the aos sí, and to ward off anyone out to cause mischief. People stayed near to their homes and, if forced to walk in the darkness, turned their clothing inside out, or carried iron or salt to keep the fairy-folk at bay. In southern Ireland it was custom to weave a small cross of sticks and straw called a “parshell” or a “parshall”, which would function similarly to Brigid’s cross, or God’s eye, fixing it above the door to ward away bad luck, illness and witchcraft, being replaced each Samhain. The dead were, naturally, honored during Samhain, a fitting practice for such a time period, given the time of “dying” that is winter. The dead were specifically thought to revisit their homes, seeking hospitality, causing places to be set at the table and by the fire to welcome them. Naturally, however, just as the souls of thankful kin could return to bestow a blessing, so too could a wronged person return to wreak their revenge.
Some areas held that mumming and guising were aspects of Samhain. Going from house to house, people wore costumes or disguises and traditionally recited songs or verses in exchange for food, with the tradition being theorized to have evolved from an older one whereby people would impersonate the aos sí, or the souls of the dead, and receive offering on their behalf, a tradition that may have been accompanied by the belief that by impersonating these spirits, the impersonator was protected from them. More specifically, in “Pagan Channel Islands: Europe’s Hidden Heritage” S.V. Peddle suggests that the guisers
“personify the old spirits of the winter, who demanded the reward in exchange for good fortune”
Similarly, McNeill suggests that the original custom was, instead of impersonators, people bedecked in full costume, with masks, representing these spirits, further positing that the tradition may have eventually evolved into the trick-or-treating of the modern day.
The traditional means of illumination for guisers, or pranksters abroad on the night taking advantage of the anonymity, was that of turnips or mangel wurzels, hollowed out and carved with grotesque faces that had lights in them to act as lanterns. Those who made them held that they represented different things. Some claimed that the lanterns represented the spirits or supernatural beings being warded off, whereas others claimed the lanterns themselves warded off said beings.
Having discussed the customs of the traditional Samhain I feel that much like was done with Yule, and with Ostara, I would be doing a disservice to not examine Hallowe’en, the celebration many claim Samhain was appropriated as.
The name itself is derived from All Hallows’ Eve, the first day of Allhallowtide. A prominent theory holds that many of the Hallowe’en traditions of the modern day were syncretized from Celtic harvest festivals, with some proponents going further and suggesting that the entire holiday was simply a collection of Celtic festivals that were Christianized into All Hallows’ Eve. In contrast, a differing group of scholars posits that Hallowe’en began independently, as the eve of vigil before All Hallows’ Day, otherwise known as All Saints’ Day.
The nature of All Hallows’ Eve as being a night-time celebration that precedes All Hallows’ Day is one with a great deal of precedence. Since Paleo-Christianity vigils the night before major feast days have been rather common, as is seen in the traditional celebrations of feasts such as Easter and Pentecost. The night itself was not always held on the 31st of October, as in 4th century Roman Edessa it was held on the thirteenth of May, with records from the year 609 indicating the re-dedication of the Pantheon in Rome to “St. Mary and all martyrs” by Pope Boniface.
By the year 800, we do find evidence of churches in Ireland, as well as Northumbria, holding a feast commemorating saints on the first of November. The idea of November 1st as the date of celebration may have then been introduced to the Frankish Empire through Alcuin of Northumbria, a member of Charlemagne’s court, with the date becoming the official one in 835. There is also the possibility that the date was shifted on the basis of practicality, as a summer date was not one that Rome could accommodate, given the large number of pilgrimages, as well as concerns over Roman Fever (now known to be malaria) which claimed many lives during the summer.
When it comes to the actual traditions of Hallowe’en, one proposed origin for trick-or-treating is souling. Groups of poor people, frequently children, would go from door to door collecting soul cakes (small round cakes made with sweet spices that resemble shortbread) in exchange for praying for the dead, most especially the givers’ friends and family. The tradition of souling is known to date back at least as far as the 15th century, being found from England to Flanders and Bavaria.
With Samhain, we can see that Wicca has a stronger argument for the idea that Samhain had traditions that would be syncretized into Hallowe’en, but the argument that the entire festival was changed into Hallowe’en simply lacks substantial supporting evidence as does the idea that the Sabbat variation has its rooting in the pre-Christian celebration.