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To recap:
Year one worked, at the time my parents had given me the go ahead to explore religion, the month ended on a Friday so I celebrated Halloween and then on Saturday I did a simple ritual, researched about the holiday and made cookies, ect. I realized though in the later months that my parents didn't seem very comfortable with the religion change. They didn't want anything to do with it but they wouldn't limit my religious freedom.
I began to be more subtle about practicing and I think they decided that it was a phase that had passed. The second year, since I didn't really want to bring the religion back up and make them uncomfortable I celebrated Halloween only.
By the time October came along last year, I had a small group of people who I would do rituals with. We -of course- wanted to celebrate the holiday together. We planned to do it on Saturday, but last minute I cancelled. The plans were never really set in stone and I was going through a rough patch. Actually, I cancelled my Halloween plans as well, but then reset them very last minute.
This year I had big plans for Samhain. An all day Sunday celebration that I was planning with the same group from last year. We were going to meet around 11 in the morning, walk up to target and buy a dozen or two roses. We were then going to walk to a nearby cemetery and place them on the graves and have a picnic. Its something I do often with friends. I don't have any family graves nearby but I can at least respect others who might not get visited because they're so old. Then we were going to set up and do a ritual which tends to be a rather long process for us. We were going to end with one last event: a dumb supper.* Finally hanging out until everyone was able to get home for the night.
Lovely plans no?
Those plans aren't going to happen. For many different reasons, but mostly because we have no where to do it. When creating the plans I over looked the fact that most of the places we would originally do a ritual and such were destroyed or re-purposed because of the fire.
My parents also didn't want people over.
My Halloween plans on the other hand are the same as every year, hanging out with a very good friend of mine. We figured we'd watch movies and hand out candy. She's dressing up in costume where as I will just dress to my dark little hearts desire since I have to wear it to school.
In other news, 13 followers. <3 My favorite artfully imbalanced number.
*Completely silent, formal dinner to honor your ancestors.
Yeah, it's tricky trying to balance Halloween and Samhain. I tend to just link them together, since technically they're the same thing...
ReplyDeleteIf you need a place to hold a ritual, maybe pick a quiet place in a park or at someone's home - just enough to be private but also somewhere comfortable.
Samhain is a great time to practice your divination, so if you're looking into that....^_^
A dumb supper is something that's really hard to pull off successfully unless you're family is pagan or at least old-fashioned Irish or if you have a coven.
You can do something very simple and small by leaving an offering of food on your alter on Samhain and lighting a candle for your ancestors. That's the easiest method as a solitary I think.
Blessed be~
I'd love to link them together, I hope to someday. But for now, with tradition and comfort of the friend whom I spend the thirty first with I try to keep them separate.
ReplyDeleteWe have many places, or use to, that we could turn to but they all have seemed to have become unusable. It was a bit of an unlucky sort of situation.
I used tarot cards for a couple o' years but I was sad to find I was missing some after we moved back in after the fire.
The dumb supper worked until the ritual fell apart.
I'll find something small to do. Thank you for the ideas. I was to busy focusing on the plans to remember the holiday itself.