The True Spirit of Halloween

Samhain

Halloween has come a long way from its origins. Today there are only intermittent reminders of the true nature of Halloween.

Halloween started as Samhain, a festival that marked the end of the harvest. The Earth has given life and is also returning life back into the Earth to prepare to create new life. The Earth is in a liminal state between life and death, and so this time of year became a time to remember death and honor the spirit world.

The Reason for the Season

Samhain has been regarded as the day when the veil between the physical world and the spiritual world is the thinnest. It's a time for remembering loved ones that are now a part of the spiritual plane. It's a great time for divination and scrying. Samhain historically occurred just after the last of the crops had been harvested, so it was considered the beginning of the new agricultural year. It's the start of the time when the Earth rests and regenerates in preparation for creating new crops.

Here are some ideas to celebrate in the true spirit of Halloween.

Divination and Scrying

Tarot

A Tarot reading is a great divination activity for Halloween. It’s something that you can do by yourself or as an activity with friends. You don’t have to be an expert at Tarot to do a Tarot reading. You can let your intuition guide you to decipher the cards.

Runes

Runes are stones with symbols carved on them. Each symbol has a complex meaning. A fun group activity incorporating Runes could be to carve Runic symbols onto apples and have everyone bob for apples. They can look up and interpret the symbol they receive.









 Scrying

Scrying is simply gazing into a reflective surface and meditating to let images come to you. People generally think of gazing into a crystal ball to do this, but a bowl of water works just as well. What's most important is to be relaxed and to let the images come naturally.

Halloween is a time to reflect on new beginnings. As the Earth prepares to create new life and people reflect on life that has passed, remember that every ending is a new beginning.

The Fortune Telling Book 

This is a small and simple book about fortune telling. It has many different ideas for fortune telling activities. It gives directions for how to go about divining using various mediums. It even gives you ideas for fortune telling using simple household items (like using an ordinary deck of playing cards as Tarot cards).