Celticai Studio

Mind-Body-Spirit Connection

  • Home
    • Testimonials
    • Policies and Disclaimer
  • Celticai Blog
  • Contact Caithe
  • Services
    • Distance Reiki Healing List
    • Palmistry
    • Abundance Dowsing
  • Classes
    • Online Meditation Circle
    • Reiki for Everyday Living
    • Monday Meditation Circle
    • Events
  • Products
    • A Wiccan’s Walk in Oz
      • Wheel of the Year
    • Energetic Calendar
    • Elemental Goddess Meditation CD
    • Spirit Speak and Other Weird Noises
    • 5 Steps from Doormat to Doorkeeper
    • Wholesale Enquiries

Celebrating Samhain

Celebrating Samhain

Contents

May the ancestors deliver blessings on you and yours…
May the new year bear great fruits for you…
May your granted wishes be as many as the seeds in a pomegranate…
May the slide into darkness bring you light…
May the memories of what has been keep you strong for what is to be…
May this Samhain cleanse your heart, your soul, and your mind!

— traditional Samhain blessing

Samhain (pronounced sow-en) is a Festival that has survived ’round the world. Call it by any name you like, but whether you bob for apples, practice some of the many forms of divination, light a fire (or just a candle), meditate in your garden with your Elementals or spend the evening greeting costumed children at the door, you are celebrating in The Old Ways. Celebrate with your Honored Dead and have a wonderful Samhain

History

Honoring the Crone Goddess, relatives who live in spirit and and the renewal of the Wheel of Life, Samhain is celebrated on November 1st as the Celtic (pagan) New Year. Festival rituals begin at sunset on October 31st.

Formal ceremonies were conducting from sunset on October 31 by the lighting of a giant bonfire.  Sacrifices of crops and animals were made as a method of sharing the previous year’s bounty with Celtic deities.  The sacred bale fire was also representational of cleansing out the old year and preparing for the new one.

During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes and danced around the bonfire. Many of these dances told stories or played out the cycles of life and death or commemorated the cycle of Wheel of Life.

After the celebrations were complete, each family would take a torch or burning ember from the sacred  bale fire and return to their own home. The home fires extinguished during the day, were re-lit by the flame for protection during the coming winter. These fires were kept burning night and day during the next several months. It was believed that if a home lost its fire, tragedy and troubles would soon follow.

With the hearth fires lit, the families would place food and drink outside their doors to appease the roaming spirits who might play tricks on the family.

Historical celebrations

  • Jack o’lanterns,
  • Guising ~ an old Scottish practice where children dressed up and went door to door; singing, reciting or performing and in return, received a special treat.
  • Riding the Hodden Horse
  • Divination
  • Apple bobbing
  • Lighting the Samhain Bale fire

Modern celebrations

It is an opportunity to:

  • Leave milk and honey outside for the fae folk
  • Dumb Supper ~ “Going in for dumb supper, meaning that nobody will talk while having supper, encourages the spirits to come to the table.”
  • Make resolutions, write them on a small piece of parchment, and burn in a candle flame, preferably a black votive candle within a cauldron on the altar.
  • Symbolically extinguish the “hearthfire” of your home and then re-light it from the Samhain Sabbat Fire or cauldron.
  • Enjoy the trick or treating of the season.
  • Drink apple cider spiced with cinnamon to honor the dead. *see recipe section*
  • Bury an apple or pomegranate in the garden for spirits passing by on their way to being reborn.
  • Do divination for the next year using whatever form of divination appeals to you.
  • Let this be the traditional time that you make candles for the coming year, infusing them with color, power, herbs, and scent depending on the magickal purpose.
  • Have a New Year’s Party-it is, after all, the Celtic New Year!
  • Honor the dead, remember those you loved who have passed on-perhaps by putting their pictures or something they gave you on your altar during your ritual.
  • Mix up some hot mugwort tea
  • Make a pumpkin pie
  • Dry meat or make jerky-this is the traditional meat harvest
  • Bob for apples. There were many divination practices associated with Samhain, many of which dealt with marriage, health, and the weather. Ducking for apples was a marriage divination based on the belief that the first to bite into an apple would be the first to marry in the coming year.
  • Apple peeling was another type of divination to determine how long one’s life would be. The longer the unbroken peel, the longer the life of the one peeling the rind
  • Or if you don’t divine yourself, get a reading.
  • Carve jack-o-lanterns to light the way for the spirits who walk during this night.
  • Finish any incomplete projects and pay off lingering bills (if possible) to close out the old year and begin the new year afresh.
  • Tell ancestral stories and tales around the fire, or at the dinner table.
  • Have a mask-making ceremony in which you create masks to represent your ancestry

Herbal And Botanical Associations

Apple, cedar, cherry, elder, eucalyptus, holly, horse chestnut, lime, orange, palm-date, oak, peach, pear, pine, plum, quince, rowan, sandalwood, willow, witch hazel, african violet, agaric, blackberry, blueberry, cinnamon, coconut, cuckoo-flower, cyclamen, deerstongue, devil’s bit, elderflower, garlic, ginger, grape, hemp, huckleberry, kalbs cross, lavender, liquorice, mandrake, mint, myrrh, nettle, nightshade, pineapple, pomegranate, raspberry, rhubarb, saffron, sage, sarsaparilla, sassafras, sloe, star anise, strawberry, sugar cane, tea, tobacco, vanilla, witch grass, wolfsbane.

Colour associations

Black, brown, gold, orange, red, silver, yellow

Deity associations

Any figure of the goddess in her crone aspect, as well as gods of death; such as: Hecate (goddess of fertility, moon magick, and the witches’ protectress, Morrigan (celtic godess of death, Cernunnos (celtic fertility god), Persephone (Greek goddess who dies and is reborn every year after being tricked by Hades), Arawn (Welsh king of hel), Gywnn ap Nudd (king of faeries and of the underworld), Macha(Irish mother of life and death, one of the triple goddesses of morrigu), Scathach/Scota and Osiris (Egyptian god who dies and is reborn every year; Anubis, Arianrhod, Astarte, Baba Yaga Beansidhe (Banshee), Belili, Bran, Cailleach Beara, Cernunnos, Cerridwen, Crone , Demeter, Hathor, Hecate, Horned God, Inanna, Ishtar, Isis, Kali, Kore, Lakshmi, Lilith, The Morrigan, Nephthys, Odin, Osiris, Oya, Pomona, Rhiannon, Tlazoteotl

Incense associations

Cedar, cinnamon, eucalyptus, ginger, lavender, lime, mint, myrrh, orange, sagebrush, sandalwood, copal, mastic resin, benzoin, sweetgrass, wormwood, mugwort, sage, or patchouli.

Food and Beverage associations

Apples, apple dishes, cider, meat (traditionally this is the meat harvest) especially pork, mulled cider with spices, nuts, pomegranates, potatoes, pumpkins, pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie, roasted pumpkin seeds, roasted pumpkin seeds, squash, corn, cranberry muffins and breads, turnips, beets, ale, herbal tea (mugwort)

Crystal associations

Amethyst, asbestos, beryl, bloodstone cat’s eye, coal, coral, carnelian, danburite, fossil, herkimer, jasper, jet, marble, mother of pearl, obsidian, onyx, petrified wood, pumice, quartz, rhodonite, smoky quartz, salt, tourmaline-pink.

Symbolic representations

apples, autumn flowers, acorns, bat, black cat, bones, corn stalks, cauldrons, colored leaves, crows, death/dying, divination and the tools associated with it, ghosts, gourds, Indian corn, jack-o-lantern, nuts , oak leaves, pomegranates, pumpkins, scarecrows, scythes, waning moon.

Animal Associations

Stag, cat, bat, owl, jackal, elephant, ram, scorpion, heron, crow, robin

Mythical Associations

Phooka, Goblin, Medusa, Beansidhe, Fylgiar, Peryton, Erlkonig, and Harpie

Recipes

Samhain Cider

Ingredients:

  • 2 quarts apple cider
  • 1/2 cup confectioner’s sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
  • 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/4 teaspoon ginger
  • 1/2 cup apricot brandy

Instructions:

In a large pot, combine the apple cider, confectioner’s sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, and ginger. Simmer slowly on low heat for about 15 minutes. Take care that the cider does not boil. Add the apricot brandy and then serve the cider while it is still warm. Refrigerate any leftover cider.
Note: I have used apricot nectar instead of brandy and it wasn’t too bad.
Yield: 8 servings
Source: Dunwich, The Pagan Book of Halloween

Pumpkin Muffins

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 stick butter or margarine, softened
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/2 cup buttermilk
  • 2/3 cup cooked, mashed pumpkin
  • 1/4 cup brown sugar
  • 2 tablespoons molasses
  • 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon ginger
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves or allspice

Instructions:

In small bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In a separate large bowl, beat butter and sugar until fluffy and pale. Beat in eggs and buttermilk until well-blended. Add flour mixture to form a batter. Preheat oven to 375ºF. In medium bowl, mix pumpkin, brown sugar, molasses, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves until well-blended. Stir into the batter. Ladle batter into 12 2 1/2-inch greased muffin cups and bake for 15-17 minutes. Cool for 5 minutes, then cool on rack.

Yield: 1 dozen
Source: Dunwich, The Pagan Book of Halloween

References

http://ravenhawksmagickalmysticalplaces.com/journal/?p=13

Additional articles of interests:

  • Pagan Sabbats – High Holy Days
  • The Celtic Samhain
  • Fantasy & Folklore of Hallows Eve – Library Of Congress

Additional Reading:

In addition to you might also check out the following resources:

  • Natural History periodical – October 1983 p43-44
  • Pagan Celtic Britain by Anne Ross
  • Celtic Mythology by McCane
  • The Druids and Their Heritage by Ward Rutherford
  • The Black Arts by Richard Cavendish
  • Human Sacrifice by Lewis Spencer
  • The History and Origins of Druidism by Lewis Spencer

Posts you may enjoy….

Meditations and More

In this personal exploration of Reiji Ho, Reiki practitioners are invited to listen, contemplate, and develop their own intuitive approach to honoring the connection of all things through Reiki. This practice deepens awareness, guiding you to trust in the energetic flow and your inner knowing.
🔮 Cultivate intuitive Reiki awareness
✨ Contemplate the interconnectedness of energy
🧘‍♂️ Develop your own approach to Reiji Ho
Through reflection and presence, this experience encourages practitioners to embrace Reiki as a bridge between self, spirit, and the infinite whole
Reiji Ho ~ Caithe's version
In this guided practice, Reiki practitioners will explore Byosen Reikan Ho, refining their ability to sense energetic imbalances within themselves. By engaging in self-practice, you’ll strengthen your intuitive perception, allowing for deeper awareness of subtle vibrations and energy shifts.
🔮 Develop energetic sensitivity
✨ Detect and interpret Byosen in self-healing
🧘‍♂️ Enhance personal Reiki practice
This technique is a powerful tool for practitioners seeking to cultivate greater awareness and precision in their healing work.
Byosen Reikan Ho Meditation
In this guided activation, Reiki practitioners will activate their palm chakras, refining their awareness of hibiki and the natural flow of Reiki energy. By strengthening the sensitivity of the palms, this practice enhances the foundational technique of Tenohira, allowing for more precise energetic perception and intuitive healing.  👐 Awaken your palm chakras
🔮 Sense hibiki effortlessly
✨ Refine your Tenohira technique  Ideal for practitioners looking to heighten their ability to detect subtle energetic shifts, this activation deepens the connection between Reiki and the intuitive touch essential for effective healing.
Palm Chakra Activation
Experience the stabilizing energy of grounding in this guided meditation, designed for Shoden students seeking balance and presence. Through visualization and sensation, you'll attune to the Earth’s support, anchoring your energy for clarity and strength.
🌱 Feel the grounding energy flow
🧘‍♂️ Enhance stability and presence
✨ Strengthen your spiritual foundation
Allow yourself to fully connect with the moment, grounding mind, body, and spirit in harmony.
Grounding Meditation
Recorded live at Celticai Studio's Monday Meditation Circle - 20 May 2013.  This is part of the Meditation Circle Subscription.  I feel this meditation is directed at recognising and developing your Psychic strengths.
Hidden Treasures Meditation
Recorded LIVE at the Monday Meditation Circle June 3, 2013
Seeds of Potential Meditation
Recorded LIVE June 17 2013 at the Monday Meditation Circle.
Peace Meditation Video
Recorded LIVE at the Monday Meditation Circle on July 1, 2013.  This means no rehearsal!  Find your Zen in the midst of daily noise.
Matrix Meditation Video
Recorded LIVE at Celticai Studio's Monday Meditation Circle - 15 July 2013
Spreading Compassion Meditation
Load More... Subscribe

All content is © 2025 Celticai Studio · Passionately crafted by verv creations.

The Studio has reopened! ** Flailing Kermit Arms ** Dismiss