Hippy Holidays

    May the joy and blessings

          Of the Season

                         Be with you now

And throughout the whole New Year

 

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

Mabon Blessings!

Today is the Autumn Equinox, the day when the Sun enters the Cardinal Air Sign Libra, which marks the beginning of Autumn in the Northern Hemisphere. 

In Wiccan/Pagan circles this is the Festival Day known as Mabon, honoring the second harvest of the year.  It is a day of giving thanks for the rich bounty which will sustain us through the dark winter months, very similar in theme to the USA’s Thanksgiving Day in November.

In Wicca there are three harvest festivals, the first is celebrated on August 2, known as Lammas or Lughnasadh, Mabon on the Autumn Equinox,  and the third, Samhain on October 31, Halloween. 

There are eight Wiccan Festival Days through the year, known as Sabbats.  Astrologically these correspond to the first day of the four seasons when the Sun enters one of the four Cardinal Signs: Aries, beginning Spring; Cancer beginning Summer; Libra beginning Autumn; and Capricorn, beginning Winter.  The other four Festival Days correspond roughly to the days when the Sun is at the mid-point (15 degrees) of the Fixed Signs; Imbolc, February 2 in the sign Aquarius, Beltane, May 1 in the sign Taurus, Lammas, August 2 in the sign Leo, and Samhain, October 31 in the sign Scorpio.

Traditional celebrations for Mabon include wine, gourds, pine cones, acorns, grains, corn, apples, pomegranates, vines such as ivy, dried seeds, and horns of plenty. 

“At this festival it is appropriate to wear all of your finery and dine and celebrate in a lavish setting. It is the drawing to and of family as we prepare for the winding down of the year at Samhain. It is a time to finish old business as we ready for a period of rest, relaxation, and reflection.”  [1]

When I first discovered Wicca in the mid 1990s I was looking for a book which would explain the use Astrology in Ritual Magick.  I didn’t find one, but I did find the book  Circle Of The Cosmic Muse: A Wiccan Book Of Shadows by Maria K. Simms, and I was immediately delighted with this beautiful religion of celebration and cooperation with the forces of nature. The author is a Wiccan High Priestess and a professional Astrologer, and explains that, though their Coven celebrates the Sabbats on the traditional festival dates, she performs her personal rituals for them on the astrological “power days” when the Sun is at 0 degrees of the Cardinal Signs and 15 degrees of the Fixed Signs.  Already familiar with Astrology from childhood on, this book provided me with a beautiful way to celebrate these astrological power days in my own personal life.

So, I wish to all a wonderful Mabon!  May you have many blessings to give thanks for this year and in every year to come.

Micki

[1] Mabon image and quote are from Joelle’s Sacred Grove

Autumn Leaves picture is from Crystal Links