Samhain to Imbolc

This Lughnasadh we have much to be thankful for. Many probably gave thanks for the return of Wednesday to Netflix after three years of anxiously waiting for our favorite dark academic icon to grace again the small screen.

If there’s any one recurrent theme in Wednesday it’s that the world of technology is a world we seek to escape. In the aesthetic of Dark Academia, Wednesday is very much a creature of the 20th century living in a 21st century world. Her dream to write a novel is a refreshing alternative to the fleeting dreams of clout on Instagram or Tik Tok.

And like the Irish God Lugh whose name sake created the title for Lughnasadh, Wednesday has hit a cultural note of resonance. She is the archetype of the natural witch with her powerful psychic abilities aiding her Sherlock career in solving crime.

The natural witch feels her power on this sabbat by seeking power through the company of friends, most powerfully in best friends. We are reminded of this with her powerful bond with Enid.

The pop culture takeaway this witch sabbat is to find a best friend to be magickal with. It will change you for the better. It did Wednesday. It will you.

And the Wheel turns once more to Lughnasadh, the sabbat which marks the start of harvest season and the preparation for the Witch’s Road- Samhain to Imbolc.

This Lughnasadh I reaped the harvest of sobriety and its rewards by moving into a new apartment and the start of my academic studies to become a librarian- the dream career of many magickally gifted witches.

The witch is first and foremost a creature drawn to the unseen. She is a conduit to the netherworld where time exists in all three states at once- past, present and future. If you’ve ever lost a loved one, pets included, this is a place of divine magnifiance where the witch draws her power during Lughnasadh.

Connecting to this place is different for every witch. Some like to read tarot cards. Others perform full moon rituals. I like to light a candle and invoke the Goddess Brigid for blessings and insight as I prepare to walk the Witch’s Road in Samhain to Imbolc.

Whatever the reason, the decision to walk the Witch’s Road should never be taken lightly. It requires guidance and careful planning. It means gathering as much Magick possible during the Harvests of Lughnasadh and Mabon.

My Magickal path is very Irish in Nature. During Lughnasadh, I like to channel into the direct lineage of my ancestors and ask for guidance and favor. To do this, I tap into the last energies of summer before the start of Fall and Autumn.

There is no one right way to be Magickal. It can be something you do on your own. Or it can be something you practice with your coven.

As for how to gather energy, it is as simple as taking a walk or strolling through the woods to feel the last energy of the Green Man in Summer before He hibernates for the Fall Autumn and Winter.

Magick can also be a path for forming a chosen family- what we call a coven in the Witch’s world. A chosen family is about sharing your inner world with those who matter most to you and reaping a collective harvest.

It is these rituals of harvesting which prepare the Witch for her walk on the Witch’s Road. May your harvest be plentiful this Lughnasadh!

If you’ve ever felt connected to something greater, can see the magic in even the smallest moment like a cup of coffee or the brewing of a pot of tea, you too are tethered to the magical threads which bind together the universe and connect us all in one mysterious ever unfolding tapestry. Pride in Witchcraft, Magick and Paganism is about seeing the wonder of this connection and anchoring to it on the Wheel of the Year.

As We get ready in the pagan community to celebrate Litha and the Summer Solstice, we must also be ready for the Wheel to turn from an increased amount of Light to its counterpart phase of the year an increasing amount of Darkness.

Celebrating summer is about gathering all those who mean the most to you and making time for them: your friends, your family, even your pets. In summer we rediscover who we are in the Light months of the year. This is an elemental fire season which means emotions and energies burn hot so making the most of the time left to celebrate the Light is paramount to a successful Litha before we turn next to Lughnasadh and the harvest season.

Summer is an important season in the Wheel of the Year and the Season of the Witch. It is when the elements and energies of the world are most alive, burn the brightest and the Witch can express her power the most freely. She can tap into the power of the Green Man and go for a walk in the forest to connect with his masculine energy or summon the Eternal Flame of the Goddess Brigid and her feminine prowess perhaps to attract a new romance and a handsome new lover. It is the time of year for living and savoring the wondering feeling of being alive.

Pride in Magick is expressed differently across the Wheel and the Eight Sabbats of Magickal Power. Litha is a Sabbat for the expression of free will, of love and romance, of friendship and community. During Summer, the Witch discovers her true power and unleashes her inner Goddess of Beauty and Strength.

The Wheel of the Year turns, the weather gets warmer and upon us is the Season of Litha. Otherwise known as the summer solstice, this is when the Green Man or also known as the Oak King has culminated his show of strength in the longest day of summer when the Sabbat of Litha takes place, June 21st.

I enjoy all things Green Man and if you are a fan of British-Irish pagandom like me, across the Altantic Isles at every church can be found the face of the Green Man who was thought to be the embodiment or soul of Nature during the summer season. It is a sabbat like Beltaine strongly associated with life and the element of fire which consumes that life.

The Fae and its most famous dark variation, the Banshee, frequent the wilds of the earth at this time and Fairy magic is strongest during the Litha season.

This is why during Litha I begin to catch up on summer readings on my favorite summer ritual topic “An Asairliochta” or the Occult of Ireland. The Gaelic realm is perhaps one of the strongest magic focal points in the natural world. It is here on the Emerald Isle in the Season of Summer on the Sabbat of Litha when fae folk can safely come out of hiding to gather among the humans who celebrate the season with fire dances and great feasts from the plentiful harvest.

Working with the Green Man and the Oak King can be a seasonal reminder to stay present while enjoying the fruits of summer and its warmer weather. Here is the time to anchor to life, family, friends and even foe and become fully sorted in the warmer blowing winds that continue to turn the Wheel of the Year forward.

On the New Yorker Radio Hour recently, gnostic gospels scholar Elaine Pagels gave refreshing perspective on the topic of spirituality and religion. If you don’t know who this is, in the 1970s Pagels published a famous academic novel on the gnostic gospels which had been discovered in a buried pottery jar in Egypt twenty years earlier.

In the podcast she said her relationship to the texts of the Bible isn’t about faith; it’s about curiosity and imagination. Like so many of us drawn to the spirituality of Wicca and the Occult, Pagels is an excellent example of how you can retain the morals you may have learned from the Abrahamic faiths such as charity, community, compassion and kindness and bring them with you while moving forward in a new direction suited to your unique spiritual needs like magic, wonder and curiosity. For her, it was academia. For me, it was magic.

The two most significant Sabbats in the wheel of year are Samhain and Beltaine. A month from now, we enter into the second most important Sabbat in the year after Samhain- Beltaine. It’s the only other time on the wheel the veil thins enough that the spirit world can break through. Whereas in Samhain it is the moment that ushers in the season of Winter and the coming of Darkness, Beltaine is the moment before the season of Summer and the ushering in of Light. It is the inverse of Samhain, the Gateway of Darkness to Beltaine, the Gateway of Light.

I mention Pagels because part of my own journey into Wicca and the Craft has been how much of my previous religion Christianity to bring with me and how much of it to leave out.  I will not lie that forming a community of witches isn’t as easy or convenient as finding a church to go to.  Much of the secrecy surrounding magic still exists and many still reside in what is known as “the broom closet”.  As someone who was previously closeted, coming out was not just a personal experience- it was a religious one. I grew up an Evangelical, a Pentecostal to be exact, and the language and imagery used to describe gay people I can only say is damaging to a child.  That is why my new anchor in coming out became magic.  It was not just a release from the damage inflammatory beliefs can cause children but it was also a resurrection of the self- of the person I was meant to become without the hurt which closeted me away from the world.

Pagels herself describes this same exact prejudice when after becoming born again in her adolescence, she left that community after the death of a close Jewish friend a year later. She details how when she revealed this passing to her acquaintances in her Evangelical community, they asked if he was born again and when she said no, he was Jewish, they then retorted oh well he is in hell.

This type of thinking is what I sought release from and is one of the reasons I found empowerment in a nature based religious cycle like the Wheel of the Year. Interestingly, Pagels references an academic study on how God or the Invisible Otherness become real. It is through the rituals we partake in that make our relationship with the other side an authentic real experience. 

Let that be the lesson this coming Beltaine in the Gateway to Light.  Whatever ritual you choose, believe in it because how much energy you put into it is how much energy you will get out. 

Ostara is upon us! I couldn’t be happier. My journey this year from samhain to imbolc was about rebirth and resurrection. I was focused on manifesting wellness. This year it worked.

One of the bittersweet pleasures of winter on the East Coast is that first memorable beautiful moment you walk outside and realize the winter freeze is over, the air is full of life again and you can even comfortably go on a walk with only a light jacket. That is the beauty of the journey from Samhain to Imbolc and its conclusion in Ostara. The Spring Equinox, nothing is sweeter than when the air outside feels warm again. You can open the windows, open the blinds, let the shine in like it hasn’t in months.

When you journey upon the Samhain to Imbolc path, part of that is finding what anchors you, what magical force flows through you the strongest and depending on that. For me, it was language, many of them. But above all, one in particular- Irish. As I continue to study it in school, I find myself feeling sparkles of wellness I haven’t felt in the longest time and a sense of joy that I had succeeded in concluding my Samhain to Imbolc path this season by manifesting my one most pressing wish- wellness. Now the journey is keeping it. We will see!

As Halloween has grown in cultural signficance beyond just a children’s holiday but an aesthetic and lifestyle it’s also become religiously sacred in the growing cultural visibility of witches, to practioners of wicca and paganism and Celticists who celebrate the sacred sabbat of Samhain.

These alternative spiritual systems represent more than just a form of counterculture. They are an awakening for people who’ve felt osctracized by mainstream religions. This is an especially relevant issue for the LGBT community who may feel unwelcome inside churches, synagogues or mosques but nonetheless seek spiritual fulfillment elsewhere. Halloween has filled the void. Some even call it the Gay Christmas.

In an article by NBC, a self identified witch records Helen A Bergers, a foremost authority and academic on paganism and wicca as saying, “It’s clearly increasing.” She was speaking of the rise in self-identified witches, pagans, celticists, etc.

Ever since the movie “The Craft” came out in 1996 (imagine mean girls but cat fighting with magic) the visibility in pop culture of what was once known as the occult has exploded over the last quarter century. It’s no longer a question of if Wicca and Paganism will become mainstream but a matter of when.

Indeed, the 2020’s may be the beginning of a new phase of visibility in America for witchcraft. In an article for the Atlantic titled, “Why Witchcraft is on the Rise,” Bianca Bosker writes that interest in witchcraft increases “usually in tandem with the rise of feminism and the plummeting of trust in establishment ideas.”

Be it mainstream religion, the sociological structures governing moral values (like on same sex relationships) or the depiction of various alternative lifestyles in pop culture, this period of disenchantment has led to a growing need for a new kind of religious system that appeals outside the conventional. Bosker writes, “The latest witch renaissance coincides with a growing fascination with astrology, crystals and tarot, which, like magic, practioners consider ways to tap into unseen unconventional sources of power.” This is especially appealing to marginalized groups or disenfranchised individuals weary of working from within the system to enact change.

Witchcraft is in the 21st century becoming the unconventional answer to LGBT rights, feminism, disenchantment, economic inequality and more. It’s a rebranding of a formerly taboo religious system being refashioned for the digital age. Halloween has been a part of that, becoming not just a holiday for fun but a season and lifestyle for the practitioners of the craft and the occult. Even musical tunes for the holiday has become a season staple with songs like Thriller and Monster Mash.

It begs the question- will we one day have a Halloween song as famous during the holiday as All I want for Christmas is You is during Christmas. Only time will tell.

As the popularity of the holiday has only grown, now with increased visibility on social media platforms like Instagram and Tik Tok, the holiday has also morphed into something else entirely- an actual lifestyle and religion, one dedicated to themes such as the macarbe and the demimonde of the underworld- the people and things who hide in the shadows that are rarely seen but deeply felt, most famously described beyond Halloween as Dark Academia.

folklore halloween history samhain

Spring is almost here. In less than a month we move from the season and sabbat of Imbolc to the season of rebirth and balance- Ostara. This is the pagan holiday that celebrates the return of life to the earth. It is the start of Spring. It’s origins are germanic and the word Easter has its roots in the old german word Ostara.

I like to change the aesthetic during the switch from the Samhain to Imbolc cycle to the Spring to Summer cycle or Ostara to Beltaine. These are the doing of action and manifesting sabbats. Whilst you focus your energy on rebirth and balance during Ostara, by Beltaine, one of the major Gaelic Sabbats of the Witch’s Wheel of the Year, you should be renewed in the Karmic turn of the wheel. This is the season most associated with the Wheel of Fortune tarot card, one of my favorites.

The color shift is also noticeably brighter for the Ostara season. No color resonates more with the concept of rebirth and balance than purple.