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Greetings, witches and Pagans and Happy Samhain. Samhain is the Celtic holiday honoring the dead and marking the beginning of winter that forms one of the primary influences on Halloween, along with the Catholic festival All Souls’ Day. Here in the northern hemisphere we celebrate our ancestors and examine our mortality while down in the south they celebrate the renewal of life with Beltane.

As we do every year we’ve gathered all our content for this very special day, along with a few links from elsewhere. We hope you have a spooky (but not too spooky) Samhain!

—Aryós Héngwis

 You are a Stallion, lord, greatly to be praised:

worthy of sacrifice, lord of life and death.

(Ceisiwr Serith)

Among the more interesting titles of the God of the Witches is “Stallion of Three Tails.”

The three-tailed stallion features prominently on the coinage of the Dobunni, the Keltic people ancestral to the Anglo-Saxon Hwicce, Stephen P. Yeates' “Tribe of Witches.” Yeates suggests that this figure—in effect, the symbol of the Dobunnic people—represents the tribe's patronal god.

The god of Witches is well-known for his association with horned animals, but as Lord of Beasts he not infrequently takes the form of other animals as well. The stallion is a well-known symbol of virility and ferocity: equine society centers on the herd-stallion with his “harem” of mares, and woe to the younger stallion who encroaches on the territory of the King of the Herd.

In fact, the stallion is associated with kingship across the Indo-European world, and the sacrifice of a stallion marked the king-making among many Indo-European-speaking peoples, including many Keltic peoples. As the stallion is father to his herd, so the king is—metaphorically, one presumes—father to his people.

Wishing you all a very happy Halloween, and a blessed Samhain to those who celebrate.

May your day be just the right amount of spooky, with more treats than tricks. And if you're lucky, a black cat to cross your path.

Today we celebrate Samhain, and I'm drawn to think of my ancestors, my mothers bloodline and my fathers, back to the beginning, and as I step out to the threshold of my home, darkness gathering about me like a shawl, I give thanks to Gwyn ap Nudd, my patron god, lord of the wild hunt, and I give thanks to those that stand we with me unseen at the liminal places, who have seen my victories and my sorrows, and held my hand soft as the mist that caresses my cheek. I give thanks for each of them, my ancestral guardians, my beloveds, those whose bones are now a part of the rock and soil, those whose ashes are scattered on the wind, and whose memories are dust in the barrow mounds upon the hills, those who walked this long road before me. I remember you and you live in me, always.

Each year I bake a gift for the spirits, either barm brack or soul cakes, which I place out with a candle and a whiskey, for those who pass by on the wind. 

A magic cord is a rope that binds magic to your and is ideally made from strands of red wool or ribbon. Nine feet long, it is braided and tied into a loop at one end to represent feminine energy and left loose or frayed at the opposing end to signify the complementary male energy. Crystal beads woven onto the strands of the rope can compound its magical quality. I recommend that you use clear quartz crystal beads, which are energy amplifiers, but you can use special stones for various effects: rose quartz for love, citrine for grounding, jade for prosperity and success in work, blue lapis for creativity, and amethyst for improved intuition and psychic ability. This is the perfect adornment to wear as you celebrate All Hallows Eve when the veil is thinnest between worlds. Other stones to keep at hand to enhance your intuition and psychism are:

Azurite connects you to the astral plane

Reconciliation is a huge task, a deep responsibility, a seven-generation work of covenant renewal.  Reconciliation involves decolonization and reparation.  It calls for a massive act, or series of acts, of confession and (hopefully) forgiveness.  There are no short cuts, and nothing can replace the sheer hard work of re-building broken relationships.  Reconciliation is a key aspect of the Great Work of our time.

As an Anglican priest, I've been involved in reconciliation and justice work during my entire ministry.  I worked as an inner-city chaplain on the streets of Saskatoon.  I acted as a church representative in the alternative dispute resolution hearings for residential school survivors, and offered the words of apology on behalf of the church many times over.  I sat, mute and numb, in the memorial feast for young Colten Boushie as his community grieved at Red Pheasant.   And I know that countless others, in and out of the church, Indigenous folks, settlers, and newcomers, are all doing whatever they can to bring about a new reality of right relationships in our land.