Post by Senbecc on Oct 20, 2006 11:57:16 GMT -5
I debated with myself whether this should be in Wicca/Witchcraft or the Celtic boards, but since not all are interested in the Celtic boards I settled here.
If all things were not considered equal to the Celts Samhain might have been the most important of all the festivals. Like the other three Celtic festivals Samhain too represented a marked event. This would be the ending of one year and the beginning of another. The word it's self means the end of summer, kicking off the end of the light 1/2 of the year and the beginning of the dark, sometimes known as the times of the big and little suns. Samhain traditionally begins around Nov. 6th, when the sun is 15 degrees Scorpio, and like most other cross-quarter days the festival usually shifted and is now celebrated as Halloween, like a few years back when we celebrated on Oct. 31st because there was a new moon, making it the est day to proceed.
Samhain is the third traditional harvest festival, and according to legend all harvests needed to be be brought in by this day, since anything left would belong to the cailleach. A hag (though it's also a word for Witch) embodied by the final, leavings in the fields there were severed from the earth and preserved until the next planting. In Welsh myth the wild hunt with the hounds of hell happen at this time, the riders came from Anwen to find all those who had died from one Samhain to the next, taking them to the gates of the otherworld.
This was the time of year that extra cattle would be killed for food (probably in the form of sacrifice at times) to get them through the winter. It was Samhains associations with death and decay which cause it's transformation into the Halloween of today. Though the reason this was important to the Celts was it's obvious associations to the natural world where plants and animals died and decayed to nourish the ground and make it fertile.
Samhain is an in between time, being neither the old year, or the new. To late for the light 1/2, and to early for the dark outside the effects of time, which is a very special place to be, and is recognized as being a time when all are backwards and chaos ensues. The dead are no longer kept away from the living land, and the ancestors become free to join in the festival. The importance of this backwards time is reflected in much of the Irish lore, where many important deaths and births take place either in the morning or in the evening, or the times which lay between night and day. I'm going to work on this further as well as add a festival working that might be of interest to some.
If all things were not considered equal to the Celts Samhain might have been the most important of all the festivals. Like the other three Celtic festivals Samhain too represented a marked event. This would be the ending of one year and the beginning of another. The word it's self means the end of summer, kicking off the end of the light 1/2 of the year and the beginning of the dark, sometimes known as the times of the big and little suns. Samhain traditionally begins around Nov. 6th, when the sun is 15 degrees Scorpio, and like most other cross-quarter days the festival usually shifted and is now celebrated as Halloween, like a few years back when we celebrated on Oct. 31st because there was a new moon, making it the est day to proceed.
Samhain is the third traditional harvest festival, and according to legend all harvests needed to be be brought in by this day, since anything left would belong to the cailleach. A hag (though it's also a word for Witch) embodied by the final, leavings in the fields there were severed from the earth and preserved until the next planting. In Welsh myth the wild hunt with the hounds of hell happen at this time, the riders came from Anwen to find all those who had died from one Samhain to the next, taking them to the gates of the otherworld.
This was the time of year that extra cattle would be killed for food (probably in the form of sacrifice at times) to get them through the winter. It was Samhains associations with death and decay which cause it's transformation into the Halloween of today. Though the reason this was important to the Celts was it's obvious associations to the natural world where plants and animals died and decayed to nourish the ground and make it fertile.
Samhain is an in between time, being neither the old year, or the new. To late for the light 1/2, and to early for the dark outside the effects of time, which is a very special place to be, and is recognized as being a time when all are backwards and chaos ensues. The dead are no longer kept away from the living land, and the ancestors become free to join in the festival. The importance of this backwards time is reflected in much of the Irish lore, where many important deaths and births take place either in the morning or in the evening, or the times which lay between night and day. I'm going to work on this further as well as add a festival working that might be of interest to some.