The Real Origins of Halloween: Celebrating Samhain
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- Опубликовано: 4 ноя 2024
- www.aurahealth...
In this special Halloween episode, we're celebrating Samhain, the ancient pagan festival that marks the end of the harvest season and the start of winter. 🌒🍂 Known as the "Witch's New Year," Samhain is a time for honouring ancestors, releasing the past, and welcoming new beginnings. Join us as we explore the deep magick of this sacred season, sharing rituals, personal reflections, and ways to honour the cycle of life and renewal.
We’ve all been using Aura for different reasons-whether it’s for mindfulness, better sleep, or just finding a bit of calm in the day-and it’s genuinely made a difference for each of us. You can try Aura for free at www.aurahealth..., and the first 500 people who sign up will get 25% off a membership!
With insights from the Lunar & Wild Coven, we'll discuss the significance of Samhain, traditional practices, and how you can connect with the energies of transformation and introspection. One of our hosts will also share their journey with Aura, a year-long tool for spiritual growth that aligns with this season's themes of self-discovery. Whether you're new to Samhain or a seasoned practitioner, this episode will inspire you to embrace the turning of the wheel with purpose and intention.
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embracingmagick
Steph lunarandwild
Toni waxandkohl
Lizzy curioussunwitch
Thank you to Aura for supporting us on our journey to mindfulness! Join us in a 30-day meditation challenge and start using Aura for free at www.aurahealth.io/embracingmagick. The first 500 people to sign up also get 25% off a membership
Wooo so excited that you’ve got sponsorships now! Love that company’s want to support the podcast and can help you guys to continue making amazing content :))
@@abbeywarren thank you Abbey 😘
Loved this one ladies ❤ well done!
@@veronicanowell thank you. Hope you had a lovely Samhain? Xx
Great Folklore podcast - The Three Ravens - worth a listen, and one of the presenters is a witch - brilliant UK Follore and lots of great stories
@@ruthjames9278 thanks Ruth, we love folklore so we’ll definitely check it out
Hello lovelies, i am a meditating witch too! I always do guided meditations with my coven and I lead peace meditations with my community at the library. So glad you promote meditation!
I had a samhain party and we did the ancestor altar. Everyone put a picture on the altar and shared stories. I had candles, flowers, on the altar. There were lots of tears and bonding from the sharing.
Enjoy the season! It's the best!
@@kathleenroberts7972 thank you so much for sharing 🙏 all three of us created our separate ancestral altars at our homes last night. It’s such a lovely thing to do. Love to hear you are also a meditating witch 🙌🖤
I absolutely LOVED the tale of Jack-O-Lantern!!! ❤❤❤
@@AZHerbalistBotanicals Lizzy is a good story teller! ❤️
Thank you, your podcast is a delight, I love the casual chattiness of it. :)
@@HennaHuu aw thank you so much, we really appreciate the kind words xx
Awesome ladies - im a complete Halloween mode all year long person if im honest ....... 🤘, might be something to do with being a Scorpio - but i love this whole time of the year and Halloween never leaves my little front bedroom studio and inspires my Witchy Characters art work. Keep the excellent content coming 🧙
@@ruthjames9278 thank you 🖤 and we are with you with all year long Halloween haha 🕯️ 🎃 👻
Another great episode ladies. One of my favourites so far 🥰
@@samanthawalker8256 thank you 🖤🥰
Beauriful gathering, conversation, decor and all your accesories, thank you for this brilliant episode on this special day✨🌙✨🎃
@@libragoddess333 thank you for listening 🙏✨
Before I watched this awesome episode. My thing I done for my ancestors, had a salted bath first, just incase any naughty spirits decided prank me. Made hot chocolate and them with my portable bbq/cauldron I nearly failed in making a mini bonfire. Blooming thing wouldn't start, so after running back in and got my rubbing alcohol and splashed some on the kindling, and yep.... went up with a whoosh. Lol. But being a good witch, had the lid nearby to me and a full rain barrel too but wasn't needed, just had to pop my heart back in my chest and my cats in the catio giving me a wtf moment. I dropped in ancestral and pet spirit/animal guide gratitude petitions in. Sat there thinking about those I wished I knew and my great aunt who passed last month, a fellow with too. It felt calm and cosy and also peaceful.
Thank you for sharing this with us. We feel honoured 🥰🥹
In some region of Italy they also bake " le ossa dei morti" the bones of the dead cookies, they are a traditional kind of cookies that har hard not particularlty sweet or salted, they are given to people as token
@@valentinabernardi1771 I think the podcast might need to make a trip to Italy for Samhain 😏
Samain blessings lady's..x
@@sandyblack9698 and to you too Sandy, thank you xx
Im Italy we put candles in the graves , butfirst we spend the whole day cleaning and polishing each family member gravecaddibg flowers nad decorations and candle, people will seat by the grave and tell them all news and whatever stuff you want to tell them, just commune with them . Then at home on the day of the dead we would have a dinner and place a extra plate at the table for the departed, and people will share story about all the departed loved one. The house will have some sort of altar (my nan put it over the side board but spulled over the tv which was also de orated with doilies and pics of my great granmother and great uncles and tge unmissible moccolotto( a perpetual safe candle that can be let to burn for days)
@@valentinabernardi1771 this is so beautiful, thank you for sharing 🖤
Thank you so much for sharing this, I recently found out I have Italian ancestry so would love to learn more about Italian traditions - Steph x
All due respect... It's not that Americans stole Samhain traditions. The settlers from Ireland, Britain, Europe were the Americans. 😂 As with everything, it evolved from the traditions they brought with them. Trick or treating was around Canada initially before spreading to the USA around the 1930s and 1940s. I love you but some misinformation in the history here. Sincerely a proud Scottish American fan ❤
Ah yes, wonderful. So much fascinating history!!! Thank you so much! 💓 xxx
I used to live in Kent, have any of you been in the crypt in Rochester Cathedral? I used to get very strong feeling of nausea, so much so that I had to leave.
@@Whatintheworldofwitches Toni was supposed to attend this Sunday but her friend had to cancel. She’s experienced strong nausea in a crypt before too which is very interesting
As much as I like Samhain and its traditions, what is celebrated today is more the myths, legends and lore that surround it, many of which have their ultimate origin in Medieval Christianity. Samhain never really "became" Halloween - all three holidays, Halloween, All Saint’s Day, and Samhain share a relatively common date and perhaps a “feeling”, but that’s really about it. Indeed, so much of Halloween “feels” Pagan that attempts to connect those things to ancient Samhain simply “feels right”.
To say Halloween’s connections to ancient Samhain, or anything “ancient” for that matter, are, at best, extremely tenuous, would be grossly overstating the facts. Virtually all of the customs associated with the modern secular celebration of Halloween developed only in the past 500 years and have no connections to ancient pagan religious practices.
In short, Halloween just does not have the “pagan precedent” so many people seem to desperately want it to.
Even the concept of ‘Trick or Treat’ is a relatively new phenomenon, originating from right here in the USA from about the 1920’s or so, and represents a mix of cultures, capitalism, and accommodation.
To be completely fair, a few customs associated with Halloween do have a very old past; most notably, the carving of root vegetables and bobbing for apples. Without going into all the lengthy details, the carving of root vegetables (pumpkins in America) dates to around the 1700’s - it’s just not historically attested any earlier than that. Bobbing for apples is a fall activity not specifically connected to Halloween, and comes from a British woman’s courting custom historically attested to about the 1300’s. Neither custom is associated with, nor can they be historically attested back to, Samhain, or anything ‘pagan’ or ‘demonic’ for that matter. Further, there is zero evidence the Celts ever donned costumes of animal pelts to ward off evil spirits. Costuming for trick-or-treat comes from about 1930's America. The concept of trick-or-treat dates to about then as well. It has no ties to mumming, guising or souling. Historical similarity does not equate to historical sameness. Simply put, there is no continued ancient tradition. But misconceptions abound regarding the nature and origin of Samhain, to the point where virtually everything that people today believe about it is a complete fabrication.
What is definitively known about Samhain would fit on about a page and a half of paper. What gets passed around the Internet as “history” and “fact” is mostly speculation and utter nonsense. The primary source of what is known comes from the books of the Ulster Cycle. By most historical accounts, Samhain proper was preceded by three days, and followed by three days. In some accounts it’s only a three-day celebration (not a seven day). Samhain seems to have been a time to prepare for winter, to welcome in the dark half of the year, cull the herds and celebrate the final harvest of the year. One particular activity that these old Gaelic texts seem to suggest was very popular at Samhain was…. horse racing. In addition, there were many ‘warrior-type’ athletic competitions and well….a lot of drinking. That sounds a lot like many European holidays today from October-January. The texts also speak of it as a time to pay tithings, gather taxes, and the holding of a judicial assembly (much like the Manx ‘Tynwald Day’). There is zero evidence that it was a religious observance, that the Celts ever donned costumes of animal pelts to ward off evil spirits, that it entailed any ritual, that it was a celebration of the dead, or that it opened the Celtic year. The tradition of relighting hearth fires from a single bonfire was written by Geoffrey Keating
To be completely fair, the Celts, like other cultures, as I'm sure you know, practiced divination and the change of seasons (amongst other things) was seen as a liminal time in which the boundaries between the spirit world and the material world were seen as overlapping (this includes the change of one day to the next, the change of high tide to low, the crossroads on a path/road, etc., etc.), however, this was part of the broader Celtic religious framework and not something specific to any one specific holiday. Indeed, Samhain’s polar opposite celebration, Bealteine, was seen as just as powerful, if not a more powerful, time of year with respect to this overlapping.
Let’s take a closer look at the assertion that Christian All Saints Day/All Souls Day replaced Gaelic Samhain.
To state it briefly, the date of 1. November for All Saint's Day was practiced in continental Europe long before the date was formerly fixed by the Church to November 1st, and long before said change got to what is now the UK & Ireland; which was centuries after the time of Druids and Samhain proper.
In addition, most people are not aware that Samhain itself is a movable feast day; the exact date varies from year to year depending on when the autumnal equinox and winter solstice fall. In short, it’s not always 31. October. It's the halfway point between the Autumnal Equinox and Winter Solstice which astronomically coincides with the culmination of the Pleiades (the "Seven Sisters"). This year, that takes place on 17.November. Before the change of the calendars from Julian to Gregorian that would have been about 3.November.
To assert that the establishment of All Saint’s Day (and All Souls Day on 2.NOV) was the early church’s attempt to “Christianize Samhain” just does not stand to reason. Think about this logically for a moment, why would the church change a major feast day affecting all of Western Christendom just to accommodate a small group of Christians who lived on, what would be considered at that time, some remote group of islands in the middle of nowhere, centuries after Druids and the observance of Samhain?
One scholar has even suggested that November 1st may have been chosen simply so that the many pilgrims who traveled to Rome to commemorate the saints “could be fed more easily after the harvest than in the spring (when it was originally celebrated).”
Knowing this kinds of puts a bit of a damper on Samhain for me, but it's also very much about the magick, legends, lore and myths that surround this holiday.
@@kavikv.d.hexenholtz3474 thanks for this passionate and detailed comment. We hope you are having a blessed Samhain x
Beautiful and thank you very much x