Can you feel the crisp bite in the air? The Cailleach is coming.

she is here now.

Halloween is known as a spooky holiday with blatantly pagan origins. It originated from the Celtic holiday Samhain, a sacred celebration from Pre-Christian Europe.

Samhain is a Celtic holiday that takes place on October 31. It celebrates the end of the harvest and is a time in which spirits and fairies are highly active. Samhain welcomes the dark part of the year. For the Celts, it was the beginning of the year. Neo-pagans and Wiccans call it the Witches’ New Year for this reason.

Most traditions practiced at Halloween time have their roots in Samhain folklore which is thousands of years old. Everything from pumpkin carving to trick-or-treating holds a significant meaning when we journey through time into the ancient forests and hills of the pagan Celts.

What is Samhain?

Samhain, pronounced “Sauh-ween,” marks the onset of the dark part of the year. The Celts began the day at sunset and thus their year at Samhain. In the Northern Hemisphere, the day is noticeably shorter, and the nights deep and long. Samhain was a time of celebration, divination, and honoring the ancestors.

Samhain is one of the significant fire festivals in the pagan Wheel of The Year. It is a sister holiday to Beltaine, which takes place on May 1, or whenever the Hawthorn first blooms. In Druidic Ireland, the Druids would light a massive bonfire at Tlaghta (Tara) to honor the land goddess. In anticipation, every household would extinguish its hearth– the lifeblood of the home. Runners would then bring the fire to every province, where the villagers would pass the fire to the hearth of each household. In this way, the fire unified the people of the land to each other and the Goddess.

Like all Celtic holidays, Samhain marks a point in the agricultural year. It is the mid-point between the Autumn Equinox and the Winter Solstice. Livestock released to pasture during Beltane was brought into the barn for the Winter. All grain had to be milled by this day, and harvesting ceased.

It was also a time for divination and communing with the fairies, spirits, or ancestors. Dead loved ones were honored at this time, and Celts believed that the veil between this world and the Otherworld was thin. So keen was this belief that if a woman emptied a water bucket, she would yell, “Seachain!” (Watch Out!) to the air so the spirits teeming around her could get out of the way.

It is important to note that pre-Christian peoples indigenous to Europe and the British Isles did not hold that every spirit or ghost was evil. The spirit world reflected the human world – some shades meant to harm, some did not, and others fell somewhere in between. Samhain marked a potent time for the Celts to honor and connect with loved ones who had died and the ancestors who gave them life.

What Does Samhain Mean?

Samhain is Gaelic for “summer’s end.” It marked the start of the Winter and the new year. All Celtic people celebrated this time of year, so the holiday has many names. It is called Samhuinn (Sah-vin) in Scottish Gaelic, and in Wales, Calan Gaeaf for “Winter’s Eve.”

Traditions of Samhain

There are three aspects to the celebration of Samhain: Agricultural, Divinatory, and Ancestral. Each aspect held its rituals. The Celts were a diverse people with distinct tribes, clans, and kingdoms throughout many regions. Since my ancestry is primarily from the British Isles, I focus on the traditions of this region.

Agricultural Traditions of Samhain

Agricultural traditions were magic grounded in practicality. The cows had to come in, the grain had to be milled, and the last crops harvested and put up for the Winter.

Samhain marked the end of the harvesting season, and it was highly taboo to harvest anything from the fields after the Samhain. Whatever was left in the fields was for the fairies. In this way, the Celts cultivated care for the land and the animals that lived alongside them. The leftover crops were essential food for birds, rodents, and deer to fill up before the scarcity of Winter. As the excess crops died, they returned to the soil, nourishing it for the following year’s planting. For those of us with Celtic ancestry and the opportunity to grow our food, I feel it is vital to reclaim traditions like this.

Now that the work was done, it was time to play. Turnips would be carved into menacing faces, and children would travel from door to door, receiving food gifts for them to make a party. Communities would gather for harvest festivals, bobbing for apples or telling stories around the fire at night.

The Celts also made offerings at this time to the land. People would often offer milk or ale to their fields and the sea. An offering to the sea during a storm was particularly potent, and it boded well for an abundant seaweed harvest in the coming year. Blood offerings were poured over Earth and stone. These offerings were taken from animals that needed to be culled before wintertime. The animal would be slaughtered, the blood collected and the meat processed for winter stores. A portion of this meat was always given to those less fortunate. Thus, the community cared for its own poor. At Samhain time, it was not uncommon for animal blood for sacred offerings to be sold at the market along with a farm’s produce.

In this way, the Celts wasted nothing. Their relationship with their animals was one of gratitude, and people felt that nothing more precious could be offered as nourishment for the land in a request for fertility. Our ancestors understood that death brings life and that life brings death in a never-ending cycle.

Divinatory Traditions of Samhain

It was thought that the way the wind blew at midnight on Samhain would be the prevailing wind for the Winter. The directions held divinatory meaning, with North or Northeast winds bringing battle and sickness, South and Southeastern winds bringing abundance, Southwestern winds battle and famine, and The West wind foretold the death of a King.

The moon was gazed upon, and its relationship to the clouds spoke of the severity of the Winter and its storms. A clear night meant a mild winter. A moon shrouded in clouds told of a wet and soggy winter. Quick clouds blowing across the moon’s face belied many storms to be had before Spring.

The heartbeat of Celtic life was food. Tokens would be baked inside small cakes, and the token found gave hints as to the future of the individual who chose it. There was classic magic with plants, such as harvesting nine ivy leaves and sleeping with them in one’s left sock to dream of one’s future fate.

Ancestral Traditions of Samhain

Celtic Samhain shares similarities with Dia de Los Muertos as a time to honor the dead. Celts would leave out a spirit plate of food for deceased family members. This practice predated ideas about heaven and hell; therefore, the dead were seen to be accessible, and the family felt responsible for caring for them even after they had passed. Samhain is a potent time to contact loved ones, and many modern-day celebrators of Samhain use it to receive messages from their ancestors.

The land was also considered an ancestor for peoples indigenous to the British Isles. All offerings given at this time-honored the givers of life, be it tree or grandmother.

Spirits were abounding. Candles were lit all night in rooms where a loved one had died. Lanterns and candles burned through the night at gravesites to protect the living and guide the dead to peace. It was thought that those who had been wronged in life would return and haunt the perpetrators. Tales of headless huntsmen and headless women in white abound throughout Samhain lore.

If you live in a culture bereft of rituals around grieving, Samhain is a special time. It is an opportunity for us to light a candle to the ones we miss and let them know we love them. It also allows us to face our darkness and fears and confront what we usually refuse to see. In this way, we dispel fear and arrive at joy.

Your Samhain Celebration

Celebrating Samhain is a powerful reclamation for me personally. We all have ancestral lines that lead us back to celebrations around the hearth. As we move forward in our lives, weaving these threads of death-honoring traditions helps us to be generators of life. Samhain marks the beginning, the dropping of the seed into the Earth to be conceived. As we descend into a time of darkness and uncertainty, we are reminded of the sacred truth that the dark is not something to be feared but embraced as the source of all creativity. Chaos precedes order; the storm fells the weakened tree, who then feeds the forest. This is the beauty of Samhain.

If you are looking for specific rituals you can do to celebrate Samhain, check out my article giving 3 Samhain rituals you can do this Halloween season. Thanks for reading, and be sure to sign up for our newsletter to receive our season Green Witch E-Zine and regular updates of free educational offerings like this one!

In Love, Susan Marie