Samhain plans

[guenevere]

Hi all,

I've been discussing Samhain plans with a friend of mine, and I'm more excited than usual because this is the first year that I'll be celebrating with someone else instead of just by myself. Feel free to share your plans, if you want

For my part, my friend and I will be burying apples in the 'Potter's Field' section of a former cemetery in our town, and having a mini-feast outside on the same hill. We're broke students, so we're keeping it simple: apple scones, savory baked squash, homemade meatballs, and pumpkin cider. I also want to make a fire in my fireplace to burn a list of qualities I want to diminish in myself and qualities I want to increase...and since the spiritual New Year is beginning, I think I'm going to spend some time on a working for prosperity, since my family has been struggling lately.

At any rate, I have a really, really positive feeling about celebrating Samhain this year, and the things to come in the new year, and I would love to hear others' plans, if you feel like sharing.

[Lark]

Traditionally Samhain marks both the final harvest festival of the year, and it is also the time when we honor our Ancestors and our Mighty Dead.  I'll be celebrating this with my coven.

For us this means having a huge potluck feast of seasonal foods such as roast pork, winter squash, sweet potatoes, nuts, baked apples, etc.  During the feast we set an extra plate for the spirits of our loved ones who have passed the Veil.  Once the meal is complete we take the plate outside and leave it as an offering.

We also set up an Ancestor altar in the West with pictures of those we are remembering and honoring on this special night.  And we ask them to be present in our circle.  During the portion of the ritual where we remember them especially we take turns telling stories about things we remember about them and letting them know that they are still part of our family.

PS:  Be careful about being in the cemetery on Halloween unless you have a permit to be there.  Generally cemeteries frown on strangers wandering around and digging in the ground and I'd hate to see you end up sitting in the police station charged with vandalism.

[guenevere]

Oh, don't worry There's no way I'd go to a ...functional, I guess(?) cemetery. I wouldn't want to get in anyone else's way, and you're absolutely right about possible vandalism charges.

The hill I'm going to *used* to be a cemetery, but several decades ago they moved mostly everyone out and settled them in the cemetery that our town now uses. It's now a public park, and only the potter's field-type section that still has anyone buried there, the people whose families couldn't afford markers or who didn't want to bother with having them moved. That's the whole reason for going there...it's kind of silly, but I feel bad and want to remember them even if no one else does.

On a lighter note....pumpkin carving tonight! Any dormant artistic talents I'm harboring still haven't shown themselves. Hmm...

[Labrys]

Our Samhain will  be celebrated Thursday when the moon is full.  If it isn't pouring rain very hard, we will have a fire.  Things symbolic of what we wish to end from the past year will go into the fire.  The dead will be recalled, this year's list from the wars will be read and the victims of the Utoya massacre in Norway will be remembered as well.

And then, a new year begins.  A lot of heavy processing is occurring here; and the winter threatens to be very cold, very dark, and very long.  Hoping it will be time enough for the work that needs done.