Samhain: Pagan celebration honoring the dead

Tag : religious crafts

Add to that the unblinking Bay Area acceptance of all that isdifferent or outrageous, and this just may be the year to partywith the pagans. The fast-growing community's biggest holiday - orsabbat, as holidays are also called - Samhain, arrives thisweekend, mixing themes of harvest, renewal and communing with thedead.
The latter isn't all that wacky, and in fact sounds like a form ofprayer, with the addition of a celebratory "spiral dance."
"I wouldn't know anyone who conducts a seance," said witch DeborahOak Cooper, a member of the Reclaiming collective. "At the SpiralDance (expected to draw more than 1,000 celebrants to KezarPavilion on Saturday), there's a trance journey, where you go tothe Isle of Apples and visit your beloved dead. It's a meditationperiod: You go and look around and see who wants to visit."
"You might create an altar and make an offering," said Starhawk, apolitical activist and the Bay Area's best known contemporarywitch. "Then you can sit down and talk: 'Hey, Mom, sorry I was sucha hard teenager for you to deal with. Now I understand how thatmust have been for you, and I wish you were here so we could sitand talk about it.' "
Starhawk often represents paganism in mainstream media and events,but she admits that there are no definitive statistics onparticipation, partly because paganism covers many, manytraditions. Imagine a religion with hundreds or even thousands ofchurches with congregations of no more than 13 (the number of fullmoons in a year, considered the maximum size for a coven).
Modern paganism defies not only quantification but even definition.Try this one, from the Pagan Educational Network: "a broad,eclectic contemporary religious movement that encompassesshamanistic, ecstatic, polytheistic and magical religions. Most ofthe religions termed Pagan are characterized by nature-centeredspirituality, honoring of pre-Christian deities, dynamic personalbelief systems, lack of institutionalization, a quest to developthe self, and acceptance and encouragement of diversity."
So there are Neopagans and Wiccans and Rosicrucians, Faeries,Druids, Gardnerians, Asatru, worshipers of the God, worshipers ofthe Goddess, worshipers of nature.
"There's no clearinghouse," Cooper said. "It's the mostdisorganized religion, and that's part of the appeal."
But negative stereotypes and stigma aren't. One pagan man who livesin Florida didn't want his name published because he said hisneighbors surely would raise eyebrows; on the other hand, Bay Areawitches said they don't need to hide their brooms in any closets.Several witches, in fact, stepped up eagerly to lay claim to the"pagan Martha Stewart" apron.
(That apron would surely be black. Said Starhawk: "Witches often dowear black because night is a time of power and mystery, and alsobecause black is slenderizing and doesn't show dirt.")
"Martha and I both find crafty uses for herbs, flowers, homedecoration and recipes," said Rabbit, proprietor of the Sacred Wellmetaphysical shop in Oakland and high priestess of the Come As YouAre Coven. She added, rather craftily, "Our definitions of 'craft'might be different."
Indeed.
Starhawk was eagerly awaiting Dinner of the Dead, a feast thatfeatures food the participants' ancestors would like, creating apotentially global menu.
Cooper was making sugar skulls - symbolic of ancestral wisdom - andvotive candles to memorialize her beloved dead on her altar;there'll be a martini set out for Dad on Saturday.
Astrologer Fern Feto Spring ( wisestars.net ) will pour a glass of wine and fix a plate of food for hergrandfather. "I put flowers, usually marigolds and anything elsethat catches my fancy and seems like something my dead mightappreciate," she said.
And Rowan Fairgrove was practicing Samhain songs for her pagansinging group, maybe even a "calling on" song or two for takingblessings to houses that are visited on the holiday.
Paganism sounds so much like other religions, and Samhain like somany other rituals, because, celebrants say, it is based on Celtictraditions and moon rituals. The celebration of the harvest soundslike Thanksgiving, the introspection brought by summer's end(technically, for pagans, when the sun reaches 15 degrees ofScorpio, or Nov. 7 this year) so much like New Year's Eve. AndSaturday's festivities sound like the Day of the Dead celebratedelsewhere in Cooper's neighborhood, the Mission.
"A lot depends on the mythos of the tradition people follow," saidMarilee Bigelow, renowned tarot reader at Ancient Ways in Oakland."I always have an altar in honor of Persephone, and so I alwayshave pomegranates out."
Last weekend, there were several spiral dances and dinners with thedead in the Bay Area, and also the Witches Ball in Santa Rosa.Rabbit's CAYA celebration Friday night will start with a potluck"dumb supper," based on an ancient tradition of dining silentlywith one's ancestors and beloved dead. Then priestesses and priestswill "aspect" various gods and goddesses - high theater, saidRabbit.
"Typically, the priestess or priest enters into a light trance andoffers prophesy, wisdom and advice in the voice of the deity beingaspected," she said. "Costumes, props and other theatricalcomponents complete the overall effect.
"After aspecting, our ritual will then move forward to the crowningof our winter king and queen. The premise is that when we appointthese individuals to represent the health, prosperity and safety ofthe community during the winter season, it is then the community'sobligation to keep them safe, prosperous and healthy until they arerelieved of their duties in May by the May king and queen. ...Finally, we complete the ritual with a spiral dance - an ecstatic,celebratory dance that serves to represent the turn of the Earthtoward the next seasonal phase."
The big events on Saturday include a spiral dance at KezarPavilion, where there will be altars set up for air, fire, waterand earth, as well as for guests to honor their dead. One mightcall it Bay Area paganism's annual coming-out party - except thathere witches feel little need to hide.
"Mostly what I have experienced," Spring said, "is people makingjokes of 'Wriggle your nose and make that traffic go away.' "