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A lovely ritual that went smoothly. Offerings to the Gods and honoring the dead. Leaving behind the baggage of the past, letting go and opening up to the future. Can you feel the change in the air? The cool Autum breeze is whipping up the fallen leaves. Feelings of relief, lightened burdens carried to the Underworlds by the wise Crone. Hate, anger and fear, hiding your true self, rejection, loneliness and pain.
Excitement and anticipation for emotions and fears set free. What will the new year bring? New experiences, new emotions if you are strong enough to let them live. Can we live so unafraid as to be ourselves? Love and reach out to those who mean the world to you. Be not afraid that a hand will be pulled away. We all need more compassionate touch in our lives, why not open yourself to give and recieve? We only need to have someone show us how to open the door. Who shall you lead?
Blessed Be.
Exerpts from A Celtic Perspective on Samhain from Lowell McFarland of Celtic Renewal,
New research has found that Celtic origins go back over 5,000 years (with the Celtic religious sites at Newgrange/Bruge na Boyne and Emain Macha/Navan Fort in Ireland) and possibly 8,000 years (with various finds, including Celtic objects found in bogs or underneath Trackways (bog-bridges) radio-carbon dated at over 8,000 years). For perspective, Newgrange was built about 1,000 years before Stonehenge and several centuries before any Egyptian pyramid.
Two thousand years ago, Caesar conquered the Celtic lands of Gaul and Southern England and replaced all Celtic leaders and government with quislings. Caesar instituted laws forbidding (under pain of capital punishment) all Celtic officials, religious and intellectual. Celts incredulously learned that their practice of not allowing standing armies, of disposing of weapons after breaking them, in lakes, wells and rivers, dedicated to peacemaking goddesses (like Sir Lancelot, Excaliber and the Lady of the Lake), that their respect and understanding of nature and all living things and clean water, that their encyclopedic knowledge of the complete history of Europe and its originating peoples, that their peaceful alliances with peoples, including Greeks and Romans, but especially Scythians (pre-Russians) and possibly Chinese, etc., came to naught against a barbaric, fanatic warlord like Caesar. Might Makes Right is still the world’s primary law, but many people and especially Celts, know that there are better ways and a better primary law.
the Christian Church, after it gained power, used this principle against Celts whom they regarded as barbaric, devil worshipping, anti- (their) God and anti-Christ. The principle was embodied in that not only did God personally appoint His sole religious Vicar, He also appointed all kings who converted to Christianity as His temporal Vicars. (Queen Elizabeth rules today by Divine Right.) All Celtic sacred places were ordered destroyed, including rocks and forests. Iona, used by Picts for thousands of years as a Druidic school, had all its engraved stones thrown into the ocean by order of St. Colomba. The world will never know if a possible Celtic Rosetta Stone was destroyed by the intolerance and barbarism of St. Columba. Worse, when Celts continued to come to Iona to hold religious services because of all the ancient Celts buried there, all ancient Celtic bodies were disinterred and thrown into the ocean. Because of these monomaniacal and sacrilegious destructions, only the largest ancient Celtic sites (and largest megaliths) survived.
Before the Celts, perhaps some 8,000 years ago, most all tribes of the world celebrated four identical natural holidays. Besides the two Solstices, they celebrated the rising and setting of the star Maia, in the open star cluster Pleiades, in the Constellation Taurus. So widespread is the celebration of the Pleiades, that the Parthenon in Greece, Callanish in Scotland, Tiahuanaco in South America, etc., are all aligned to tell the exact time of rising and setting. Celts also adopted the setting of Maia for the timing of Samhain, our New Year’s end and beginning. Samhain was originally christianized into St. Michael’s Mass (Michelmas) with little success. It was later re-christianized with aspects closer to elements of Celtic Ways, as Halloween, followed by All Saint’s Day, when Christians are obligated to think about dead saints.
Samhain is the time to evaluate your life, your goals, your relationships (important to Celts) and to think about our departed family members and ancestors (even Caesar knew about the importance of Celtic genealogy). It is also a great time to think of our future and life, goals, relationships, etc. Celts make resolutions at Samhain, non-Celts on January 1st.
There are some ritual fires and some variations among individual clans, tribes, associations, covens, groves, etc., but in a nutshell, this is the story of Celtic Samhain.
