How to Celebrate Samhain

Samhain (pronounced sow-en) is a pagan holiday celebrating the end of the harvest season. It falls halfway between the Autumnal Equinox and the Winter Solstice, beginning at sundown on October 31. It is suspected that Halloween and Samhain share pagan roots, and both holidays have allusions to the veil between the earthly world and the spirit world being very thin on that night. There are countless ways to celebrate Samhain. Here are some ideas to get you started.

Instructions

1. Set outside your door a glass of milk and a scone-like cake, called a Bannock Samhain, on Samhain Eve. This is a sign of welcome to any spirits of ancestors who want to join you for the holiday.

2. Place candles in the windows to guide spiritual visitors.

3. Prepare a Samhain feast. Focus on the vegetables of the late harvest season, especially the ones that grow under the ground. Include autumn squashes, pumpkins, turnips, onions, potatoes and carrots.

4. Talk to the dead people in your life. Chat and laugh with them like you would if they were alive. Remember them. Assume they can hear you on this night when communications can pass from one world to the next. Set a place for your ghostly guest or guests at your table for the Samhain feast. Include them in the dinner conversation.

5. Bob for apples. This Halloween tradition is full of pagan symbolism. The water represents the Cauldron of Regeneration, in which ancient pagans were baptized while blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs.

6. Refer to the Book of Pagan Prayer for poems appropriate to recite and reflect upon on Samhain.

7. Practice divination to receive messages from the spirit world.