When I first started this blog, I wanted to write about my research and experience within the wiccan community and my understanding of wiccan cosmology such as it is. I admit I have been fairly hit and miss about posting on a consistent basis but I hope to correct that this next cycle. It will still be about my experience as a solitary wiccan practitioner and mostly about my own growth process during these historic times. With that being said...\
Samhain is upon us. For the secular, American world it is known as Halloween. In the life cycle of the Goddess it is the celebration of the death of the God. In Celtic countries communities would gather at the end of the harvest and celebrate the ancestral dead of their community. The christian church celebrates All Soul’s Day on November the 1st.
My pith instruction from my teachers and books is that this is the Wiccan New Year. We celebrate our dead, do divination for the coming year, and reaffirm our dedication to the old ways.
In modern American culture we continue to do this but it is more the focus on confronting our fears around death. We still feed our dead with candy. We tell stories of ghost and monsters of all forms. I don’t believe there is any right or wrong way to celebrate this season.
My own expression of wicca has become much more focused on ancestor reverence throughout the year along with the Goddess and her consort. My family has always held a high interest in genealogy and I remember several summers with my Great Grandpa Herman and my mother going through old cemeteries in small midwest towns making rubbings from headstones for dates and names. I also remember in later years being taught by Grandpa Lew how to read area history by looking at grouping of tomb stones. In our family cemetery at Coleridge, NE I was shown groupings of young children who died from tuberculosis and spanish flu.
Our history is important. Remembering the history of our family is important not just on a personal level but on a more global social level as well. It is one thing to remember the people we hold a lot of esteem for. My great grandmother who harvest 5 o'clock seeds and sold them to Gurneys or that my Grandpa Don helped fight for factory worker rights in the 60’s and 70’s. What do we do with the not so pleasant ones? The same grandfather that championed social justice was a drunk and beat my grandmother nightly who I also inherited my depression from? In our genealogy research discovering the unpleasant fact that some of our southern relatives probably did own slaves even though they were poor farmers themselves?
We have a social movement that is very much focused on destroying any reminders of oppression and the negative side of our history as a feeble attempt at making reparation of the past sins of our ancestors as well as our society. I really don’t like revisionist history or being responsible for anyone's sins but my own.
For better or worse we are made up of unique combinations of our ancestors genetic material and their experiences. During this time of year, I offer up elevation prayers and rituals for my ancestors that had mental health issues, we addicts, we abusive, and oppressed other human beings. I also very much look at how my own biases and behaviors reflect my religious ideals. I freely admit I fall short but I keep striving to be a better person and more inclusive of everyone. In order to truly grown as individuals and a society we need to look at the negative as well as the good. It is not enough to just be idealistic and rewrite history to read the way you want it to. That doesn’t do anyone any good. My challenge to myself and to you gentle reader is use this season to celebrate the past good and learn from it to create a better future.
