begin the night, end the day. cold winter will now come this way. evil spirits wish to harm - be mindful of the smoke alarm!

tonight begins samhain, the ancient celtic festival celebrating the coming of winter. to the celts, as to the israelites, each day begins at sunset, so samhain begins on 31 octobre and ends at sunset on 1 novembre. of course, to the ancient celts, samhain would not have fallen on 31 octobre. samhain would have fallen on samhain. what i mean is that they didn't have the julian calendar - they measured by stars and sun and moon - so samhain would have been measured by some calculation of the motion of the sun & moon.

the measurement would have been done at various holy places similar to stonehenge, most much smaller than that. the community shaman would measure the movement of the earth as demonstrated by the relative movement of the stars, sun, & moon through the heavens, and then relay to the community when the aligment was in place. samhain falls a certain point between the autumnal equinox [20/21 septembre] and the winter solstice [20/21 decembre] and that point would have been revealed in these measurements.

the traditional halloween game of bobbing for apples comes from an old celtic belief about an apple tree that grows at the center of the otherworld, across the western sea. the bobbing symbolizes crossing the sea to gain the apple of knowledge. apple of knowledge... sounds familiar, eh?

samhain is the beginning of winter/night and the opposite celebration beltane marks the beginning of summer/day. during each of these times, the barrier between the world that we know and the otherworld is weaker. in the otherworld live the spirits of humans who've died but also other spirits - good & evil beings, fairys, daemons, brownies, elves, boggarts - beings we cannot see and from whom we're usually separated.

samhain's a good time to talk to the ancestors, since the barrier's weaker, but it's also a dangerous time when we can fall to enchantment or be drawn into the otherworld before our time. so - we want to make contact, but yet we don't. we want to take a walk on the dark side, maybe meet up with the shaman, eh? a wee visit with grandma-bec or granda-penn or harold the elder. but what of those who want to keep us there, how do we avoid them? hollow out a gourd and carve a scary face on it, place a light inside to shine through the scary face. wear a scary mask, so the bad spirits will be fooled, think you're one of them, and leave you alone. tried & true solutions that have been working for centuries.

may you keep safe this samhain!