Winter is coming
In the heart of Autumn, we begin to feel some cold days, we can feel that we’ll soon dive into the dark.
This is the dark season’s beginning.
We can also feel the magic in the air. Hot spicy chocolate, black cats and pumpkins everywhere.
All the witches are preparing the pagan new year.
A celebration for the dead and the apples, death and rebirth.
We finish a cycle to begin a new one.
Let’s celebrate, honour our dead ones and our ancestors, frighten bad spirits, and make wishes and good resolutions! Boo!
Winter is coming, Earth is preparing to sleep.
Ideas to decor my home
Colours : orange, black, gold, white, silver.
Autumnal fruits and flowers.
Pomegranate, pumpkins, apples, calendula, acorns, horse chestnuts, fall leaves, chrysanthemum…
Black things.
Candles and lanterns, Jack’O lantern (made with pumpkin, turnip, beetroot, pinapple…).
I like to light pumpkins’ lanterns on the porch or at my window as soon as sun light begins to going down, around 5pm.
Kids who are walking by my house like to see them.
Caldron, witches, witch’s broom.
Black cat, owl, bat, spiders, raven and crow.
Bones, skulls, ghosts, monsters and strange creatures.
Pictures and souvenirs of loved ones.
To celebrate we can
Wearing black.
Highlight our ancestors’ pictures.
Make candles to offer.
Crave a pumpkin (or a big turnip or beetroot, or orange, or pinapple…) to make a lantern and keep the pulp for the soup.
Make a witch’s broom with twigs.
Craft little gifts with acorns (toys, decor, jewellery…).
Have a time for introspection, read your last journal, watch pictures and creations of the past year, make a review of this past year…
Prepare the Samhain’s soup.
Put candles by our windows, especially on the West side, to guide our loved ones.
Wear freaking costumes. Celebrate Halloween, also offering apples, walnuts and flowers to our neighbours.
Make a fire outside.
Write on a piece of paper one or several things we don’t like in our life currently and we would like to get rid of, and then burn it.
Eat the Samhain’s soup.
Organize a walk in the night, into a forest. A party with music and dance !
Make a visual board, a collage with images we like and that inspire us to illustrate our wishes for the coming year.
We can also write our good resolutions.
Make apple’s divination.
Make a cootie-catcher with predictions or messages for the year ahead.
(I make it with a tarot or oracle’s cards reading)
Ask for my witch’s new year cards reading.
Ideas to have a fest
Soup.
Pies.
Gingerbread, soul cakes, Anzac biscuits.
Pumpkin, turnip, beetroot. Kumara (sweet potato), corn, grains.
Apples, walnuts, pears.
Apple juice.
Spices, cinnamon.
Personnally, as I’m living in Aotearoa, I rather do some of these things during Matariki, the Māori new year.
Some traditional landmarks
Samhain / Samain
Pronounced “sowen” or “soween”.
Ancestor of Halloween celebrated the 31st October and Toussaint (All Saints’ day) on the 11th of November.
Halfway between the Autumn equinox and the Winter solstice.
This year, in the North hemisphere (Western Europe) :the 7th of November 2022.In the South hemisphere (Aotearoa) :the 4th of February 2023.
In the South hemisphere (Aotearoa): the night between the 5th and the 6th of May 2022.
Samhain soup
Peel and cut in cubes and sauté seasonal veggies
(pumpkin, kumara, carrot, potato, leek, turnip, parnship, onion and garlic…)
in a bit of olive oil (or other oil like coconut, sunflower) with salt and pepper.
Then add hot water or vegetable broth to cover, and a little piece of fresh ginger peeled and cut into strips if you like it.
Let cook on a medium heat, during this time crush some hazelnuts.
Then mix the soup and add some coconut or soya cream.
Serve hot sprinkled with the crushed hazelnuts.
Apple divination
An old divination game for the year ahead.
Cut an apple in half in the thickness direction so you can see a star in the middle when you open it.
Based on the number of entire and not damaged seeds you can see, it tells you something about your coming pagan year:
0 : a quiet year with nothing really special
1 : a new adventure
2 : love
3 : wealth
4 : travel
5 : good health
6 : wisdom
7 : a wish will come true
8 : balance
9 : questioning
10 : achievement