A Happy Halloween To All!

This is a brief history of Halloween from History.com:

Halloween, celebrated each year on October 31, is a mix of ancient Celtic practices, Catholic and Roman religious rituals and European folk traditions that blended together over time to create the holiday we know today. Straddling the line between fall and winter, plenty and paucity and life and death, Halloween is a time of celebration and superstition. Halloween has long been thought of as a day when the dead can return to the earth, and ancient Celts would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off these roaming ghosts.

The Celtic holiday of Samhain, the Catholic Hallowmas period of All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day and the Roman festival of Feralia all influenced the modern holiday of Halloween.

In the 19th century, Halloween began to lose its religious connotation, becoming a more secular community-based children's holiday. Although the superstitions and beliefs surrounding Halloween may have evolved over the years, as the days grow shorter and the nights get colder, people can still look forward to parades, costumes and sweet treats to usher in the winter season.

In Wiccan and Pagan circles, Samhain, pronounced SOW-in, is one of the four Greater Sabbats which are celebrated on the cross-quarter days, the mid-way point between the corresponding Equinox and Solstice.  Of the four, Samhain is considered to be the most important. It is the third and last harvest of summer, and the time when darkness increases in the northern hemisphere until the Winter Solstice on December 21, the shortest day of the year and the day which marks the rebirth of the Sun and Light again as the days slowly begin to increase in length.

The four Greater Sabbats are celebrated on historically traditional days which do not necessarily match the exact mid-point between the corresponding Equinox and Solstice, however they all fall around the 15th degree of the Fixed Signs. In Scorpio, the Sun is in the 15th degree on November 7, and many Wiccans and Pagans use that day for their rituals, though most observe the public holiday also. 

The Tarot cards which represent Scorpio are Major Key 13, Death and Minor cards the Queen of Cups and the 5, 6 and 7 of Cups. 

The 6 of Cups represents 10 to 20 degrees of Scorpio, and the time span of November 2 to November 11, corresponding with the time when the Sun is in 15 degrees of Scorpio on November 7. The astrological association for the 6 of Cups is the Sun in Scorpio, an appropriate card for the Halloween holiday since the Sun actually is in Scorpio on these dates.

The veil between the worlds is said to be very thin during this time and rituals and celebrations often include communing with the dead and departed souls, as well as leaving offerings of food outside. Divination is also a common practice such as tarot readings, scrying, astrological planning and prediction, just to name a few.

In this card from the Halloween Tarot the Ghosts of the departed do seem to be having a very pleasant and possibly nostalgic time as they gather together to commune with the living, enjoy the offerings put out for them and recall and share past times gone by.

In this ‘spirit’ I wish everyone a warm and happy Halloween filled with costume parties. haunted houses, eerie sounds and noises, trick-or-treating and the simple enjoyment of the company of friends and loved ones, both living and departed.  Enjoy!

Micki