Samhain is one of the best
attested of the Celtic holidays. It marked the New Year, and was a feast of the
Dead. The Coligny Calendar shows a festival Trinoxtium Samonii during the month
Samonis (Summer’s End?) which has been equated with Samhain in Gaul. The
ancients believed that the boundary between worlds was thin at this time and
that the Dead (both the honored and the fearsome) could cross over. The Wild Hunt rides at Samhain with Gwyn ap
Nudd and the Cwn Annwn (Hellhounds) at the lead (or Woden or Herne the Huntsman
or others, depending on your version of the myth.)
It makes sense that this time of
the year marks a major feast of the Dead, because in the Northern Hemisphere,
winter is nearly upon us, and the evidence of the dying year is everywhere. The
leaves are fallen, the first frosts begin, and the animals grow fat in
preparation for the hard winter. We celebrate Halloween at this time, almost
certainly a descendant of the Irish Samhain. We dress up and knock on doors
asking for tricks or treats (this seems an obvious development of the Indo
European value of hospitality) and we carve pumpkins into leering faces. It is
a time that, even when we take it lightly, we face our fear of Death.
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| Photo by Dick Daniels, Licensed under Creative Commons |
It is a time to remember our own
ancestors, and a time for honoring the liminal deities, ones that might
frighten us and those associated with Death. In my practice, we set an empty
place at the table for our ancestors, and I honor Cernunnos, or Nantosuelta and
Sucellus at Samhain. Samhain is also the cusp of the turning year, which makes
it a good time for looking ahead into the future through Divination.
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