Samhain / All Hallows' Eve

Above: sorry for the image quality... I took this on my phone. Little creekbed next to the golf course that we live beside!

Note: I wrote this post over a couple days, so if the continuum is messed up, that's probably why!

Hail and welcome, lovely readers! And Happy (belated) Hallowe'en... or Samhain, if you will.

On Sunday night my pagan group had its public Samhain (pronounced SAH-win or SOW-in) ritual. It was my first formal ritual, though we do cast a circle each regular meeting as well. There weren't very many of us there (pretty much just the regulars from the group, a few people from the Unitarian congregation and a new person who I think will be joining the group), but I was actually glad about that because I had volunteered to invoke the god -- which involved saying a few verses of what is essentially poetry full of imagery. I don't like public speaking of any sort! But I had volunteered because I want to challenge myself a bit, and the horned god is one of my favourite deities, or archetypes, if you will. Some might know him as Pan, the antlered, bearded fellow with goaty legs, the king of the forest. Of course, being in love with forests, I am drawn to such a character!

Anyway, that went pretty well, I think. My voice started to shake by the end of it, or so I felt. Haha. But it was nice, and probably good practice.

I'd like to kind of explain how it went, both for my own memory and for the benefit of my lovely readers who probably aren't familiar with such things! Sometimes when you hear the word "ritual" you think of a lot of spooky Hollywood nonsense, but really it's just sort of a structured way to connect with the different kinds of energy in the universe and try to work with them in a way that benefits you and others. No virgin sacrifice required... in fact that would be very against the pagan way!

I got there a bit early to help set up. We had four altars (just tables covered in cloths, with various candles and items on them) for each of the four directions/elements. North/Earth, East/Air, South/Fire, and West/Water. The altar for the North held rocks, leaves, chestnuts, and other natural things from the Earth; the Eastern one had feathers and besoms (brooms); the South had a Jack-o-Lantern, lots of red things; and the West had seashells and other things from the sea. There was also a centre altar to hold the candles representing the god and goddess, or the divine masculine and feminine, or however you want to picture those two aspects of the universe's energy. And finally there was an altar dedicated to the dead: ancestors as well as loved ones who had passed on. There were chairs arranged in a circle around the main altar.

We started by cleansing the circle, which involves using salt water and a brush made of rosemary (or any other leafy thing) to symbolically cleanse the space around us of any stray energies or personal stresses and worries that we want to dispel. (One of the ladies likened it to leaving your bag behind at the door; you can always pick it up again on the way out!) Then the circle is cast. (The "circle" being a sort of containment of energy both to hold the energy that we raise, and to protect us from outside energy.) They cast it around the whole building to enclose us all. This is done with use of an athame (ah-THAH-may), which is a little knife/sword, or you can also use a wand or stick of some sort. The tools aren't really mandatory, as the energy is perceived to be controlled/manipulated with our will and concentration, but they help a lot with visualization and in a symbolic way. In other words, you don't need a wand define a boundary of energy, but it could make it easier for your mind to help picture what you want to do. The caster walks around the circle with the athame raised and we all concentrate on defining the boundary.

Once that part is done, we move on to call the directions. Each direction/element is called, or invoked, and invited to come and be with us during the ritual. Our group always starts with East; I think it's traditional, but I'm not sure why. I think I would start with North if it were just me, but it doesn't make too much of a difference. They all get called. We turn to face the direction we are calling, and whoever is calling it reads out or says some words of invitation. Each direction/element is perceived to have characteristics and associations. North/Earth is associated with strength, wisdom, nature, stability, and our physical selves; East/Air, with the mind, intellect, thinking, clarity, and reasoning; South/Fire with passion, inspiration, love, motivation, and liveliness; and West/Water with emotions, feeling, and experience. After calling each direction, we light the appropriate candle on the main altar.

When the directions have been called and they're all hanging out in the circle with us, we move on to calling the god and goddess... the male and female divine, the lord and lady, etc. Basically, two parts of a whole. Each of us has a bit of both, no matter what our gender is. (This is like the yin and yang principle.) They are called in the same way we call the directions; with some verses or words to invite those energies into us and into the circle. We light the candle for the god and the one for the goddess after calling each one.

Finally we start in on the main parts of the ritual, the energy work, as it might be called. This can involve any number of varied activities depending on the season and purpose of the ritual. As this was Samhain, the time of darkness as we go into winter, we did some visualization wherein one member of the group sort of verbally led us through the different seasons of the year and how our lives change through the cycle of those seasons. We also did a cleansing ritual in which we concentrated on all the things we would like to let go of, or let die -- things that might be holding us back in life, like relationships that are unhealthy or old grudges or past hurts that we haven't got past yet. After thinking of all these things, we "blew them out" onto little pieces of paper, which we then burned in a small cauldron to symbolically release these things from our lives. As it's the time of death (leaves on the trees are dying and plants are withering as the winter comes on), it makes sense to send negative energy away into the darkness so we can spend the winter inwardly focused on the things we'd like to nurture and grow.

We sang a song/chant as we did this, which was very nice. I love singing with a group (it's the one thing I actually liked about the few traditional Christian church services I've attended). We sang another song as well just before the closing of the circle.

The last step was to pay homage to our loved ones and ancestors who have passed on. For this we headed to the altar of the dead I mentioned earlier, where there were a bunch of candles for us to light in memory of those loved ones. We said the names of all the ones we loved and remembered, to connect with their energies.

All this being done, we "devoked" the directions, and the god and goddess, and opened the circle to release all the energy we had been concentrating. And that's pretty much the whole thing! Afterwards we had snacks and mulled apple juice to drink, and had a bit of socializing time. Hopefully I didn't forget any parts.

All in all, it was a pretty good experience. Being the youngest one there by probably ten years at least, I do feel like I was sort of the odd one out, but I embraced it. I'm not afraid to spend time by myself, even at a public event! I did chat with some of the people there though. The new lady who I mentioned is a writer who had just returned from a 6-month sort of retreat on Bowen Island. Her descriptions of the forest and being in nature so much were amazing. It sounds heavenly.

We have another meetup tomorrow night, our regular pagan group meetup. This week we'll be discussing divination -- tarot cards and crystal balls and things. Divination isn't necessarily a mandatory part of being pagan, but it seems to sort of go hand-in-hand in some ways. I think it's all about connecting to the unknown energies around us, and there are many different ways of doing that. I see no difference between praying and ritual, myself, and I think tarot cards are just another way of exploring the natural forces that are present in the universe; or, the powers of the human mind and consciousness.

So anyway! This is a pretty long post already, so I'll just leave it at that for now! Not too much is new with me at the moment anyway; just working away, trying to find time and inspiration to get started on my art series that I want to do. I think my first series will be a set of four drawings of dragons for each of the elements. Now that I'm learning more about the associations between the four elements and the four directions, it seems like I should incorporate them into some art!

Since it's my day off, I am probably going to go play some Skyrim now. I've got some laundry going and a peppermint tea to drink, and it seems as if the Fox has it all set up for me... I hear the main Skyrim theme floating in from the living room...

Until next time, lovely readers!