 Hello people! I'm Ginny Metherill and I am a fourth generation witch. Today I wish to discuss that amazing witch's sabbat one of the biggest of the year because it marks the start of the new year and for those of you who don't know we call it Samhain. So for this video I am going to use the term Samhain and Halloween interchangeably only because I was bought up calling it Halloween and that is what makes me comfortable. So to come now to Samhain doesn't sit well in my mouth. So what is Samhain exactly? Well Samhain is essentially a festival and the festival marks the start of the season of darkness. Samhain itself begins at dusk on the 31st of October and finishes at dusk on the 1st of November. Of course it is the birth of the new year. It starts at dusk because as all births do they are started in the dark and bought into the light. This is an old pagan celebration and there is thousands of years of traditions behind it. I have read a lot of books especially by my favourite folklorist who I will not mention who absolutely denies any pagan influence over the traditions and customs that we practice in this world today. He says that all Victorian institutions are adopted by the church and I'm like well that could be true but I'm pretty sure it isn't because otherwise we wouldn't have built any stone henges or circles or anything. So in this part of the world Halloween means different things to different people. Traditional witches would have celebrated the horned one or the elderly one or the mischief maker because he now rises to stalk through this dark period of the year. The Celts would have called him conanus, the Cornish who are deeply pagan by the way. They have him as the Booker Do who stalks through the land collecting the souls of the dead as he rides by and of course the Wiccans have the Holly King coming into ascendancy before he fights the Oak King at Yule. Halloween is of course named by so many different names, Duck Apple Knight, Mischief Knight, Knight of the Solars. Whatever you call Halloween it is well known that this is the time of year when the veil between the realms is at its thinnest and you can commune with the world of spirit. Now what does world of spirit mean to you? Well mostly it means divination because this is the night where you can ask spirits questions about the coming year and in fact Halloween is well known as a time of divination. So I want to look at what you might do on Halloween to define the coming year. Apples are a big part of Halloween. Simply take your apple and peel it and then you throw that peel over your shoulder and as it lands on the ground it reveals the letter of your life partner if you haven't got one. If you've already got a life partner it reveals the letter of the one you love the most. I think if I did the apple peel trick it would fall into the name W'd because that's the name of Waddles, my pet duck. I love my pet duck. Best time to perform divination techniques on Halloween is at midnight because this is when the veil is almost a rent asunder. Spirits are honour oblige to answer truthfully to all questions that you put to them. So for example Ouija board done at midnight on Halloween you will get a more truthful answer than you would normally. However Ouija board unless you know how to protect yourself first and unless you know how to cast out demons are extremely dangerous don't use them. I cannot recommend them at all without someone like me a true demonologist present so just don't do it. Samhain the word means summer's end. When the Christian missionaries came over in the first century AD they took over the first of November and called it all Hallows the day for the dead. This is when you would pray to the dead so that they were released from the Christian purgatory and could go to Christian heaven. This was a direct appropriation of the Celtic festival because Halloween is a time for the dead. For Celts and pagans alike would leave offerings to the dead so that they weren't upset by them and especially if they wanted to use those dead for divination purposes. Offerings were generally in the form of apples, nuts and bread these being the three most common food sources at the time and apples were considered to have huge links with immortality. They are the food for the dead. The dead can take the essence of the apple and if you haven't seen my apple video I'll put it up here for you because actually it's got a lot to do with Halloween. One of my favorite forms of divination was to look into a bowl of water. This is where apple bobbing comes from you put apples into water and you know whoever bit the first apple would be the first one to marry but also you might see the vision of your future spouse's face in the water of the bowl. However here is an old traditional divination practice for you to use. Take yourself a venusian copper bowl although I don't have a venusian one I've just got a plain one. Into it pour some moon water or plain spring water if you haven't got any moon water handy. Best results you'll need a key and I've got my front door key here. However it doesn't matter if you don't. Take the hot wax and pour it through the hole at the top of the key into the water. Now you can remove the wax and looking at its lumps and bumps make your predictions. Pretty good year for me I think. Let's try that one. This is a slightly form of water scrying which if you are part of my cover meeting you'll know how to do. I like water scrying it's a really interesting technique and you should do it on Halloween. Because pagans wished to placate the dead at Halloween they would dress up as ghouls and ghosties to scare off the ghouls and ghosties that they were trying to keep away because obviously that works. One of the words for Halloween is known as mischief night and mischief night is the night when you can carry out your tricks and jokes on your neighbours. This often took the form of dismantling hay ricks for example and hiding them and how they did that I don't know. When I was younger I used to go to a boys' boarding school and we had something very similar to this called Lever's Dares where we would dismantle large areas of the school and hide it so when the teachers came in in the morning there was no gym for example it made us laugh anyway. Very similar this happened at Halloween. Of course Samhain is a feast of lights and this is because we're entering the dark half of the year and when you enter the dark half of the year you need to have a bonfire it's a fire festival. We are celebrating the darkness by bringing it with light. Olden times bonfires will be made from nine different woods and placed on top of a prominent hill for the villagers to gather it would be started at dusk and burn right through to the morning. It is celebrating the bringing in of the dark half of the year by showing it to the light that its birth needs. However of course in today's modern times you can't necessarily just have a bonfire I mean I'm going to have a bonfire at my bonfire party but it's only a small one because we've got very small people coming and as they're only about this big my bonfire will have to be sort of this big to make sure they don't hurt themselves it's very small. If you don't have the capacity to make a bonfire why not do a lighting ritual as everyone enters your house simply give them one candle. Have a central candle from which they can light it from and place in a holder around it. This they can then take home should they so wish and use it for their own purposes. It makes a lovely lighting ritual. We can't discuss Halloween without discussing the marvellous pumpkin which of course we all love I love a pumpkin don't you. In the UK because we didn't really have pumpkins we used to carve out something called a mangle wasle which is a form of fodder beet that cattle would eat over the winter and they're sort of a huge great big beetroot turnip like things and those were carved into a ghastly grotesque faces with a candle lit inside it to place outside to scare away the spirits and that is simply all there was to them nothing else there is of course many legends about why we have pumpkins and I think I have done a pumpkin video about this last year so if you'd like to go and have a look at that and explains a bit more in depth about the pumpkin my party is definitely having pumpkin soup this year every year I make pumpkin soup and every year I give it to my husband and say what do you think of this and he says it's absolutely revolting and then I get really worried and start adding all sorts of rubbish into it and then at the end when it's come to be served he then turns around says it makes a rallying call and has turned delicious Samhain is a time of chaos there are two during the year the other is beltane and what does chaos mean to a witch of course it means the time for the fey this is the night when fairies are abroad they open their mounds you can see them feasting and dancing and drinking you can very much become fairy struck tonight so don't go abroad without protection and what would that protection be traditionally it's an equal armed cross and you would make these small crosses from rowan wood and this would help you keep safe from the fey often they're tied with red thread and the red is a sign of protection how else would you defend yourself against the fey well the Irish call this a time of the flitting and one of the best ways to do it is if you see a fairy approaching you you're supposed to take off your shoes scrape the dust or the mud from the shoe and throw them at the fey and this will apparently deter them from taking you or approaching nearer well i think i'd be deterred if someone threw mud at me from their shoes so yeah try that one that might work alternatively you can wear a necklace of rowan berries and if you're rich this would be made of amber Samhain marks the start of the festival of the dead meaning that the dead have the month of november to with which to walk the earth and they're most active on the first of november foods would be left on your doorstep for the dead to eat and partake of or you would lay a place at your table every night it was very common to serve foods made of nine ingredients like mash of nine sorts which is simply a mashed potatoes and varying other mashed vegetables whichever you choose that you mash up together add lots of butter cream salt and pepper it is delicious and then you serve that the number nine is very important to the dead nine is the number of transformation and immortality there are nine maidens who guard the cauldron of inspiration in the other realm of the dead and so they love the number nine if you're going to leave offerings for your dead and your ancestors leave the offerings in multiples of nine nine nuts nine apples nine rolls all of this will be appreciated by them for the dark witches out there halloween is also a night of great worship this is the time when the dark witches would renew their vows to the old one whoever their deity was this deity was often taken by the christian religion to be the devil but it's you know possibly the horned god the book could do synomnos who knows depends on who that particular witch worshipped it is also time when they would conjure the spirits of the dead to answer their questions about the coming year now spirits of the dead love to be conjured with blood it's got so much prana or chi in it you know your very essence so they would sprinkle the graves of the dead with the blood of themselves and others in order to conjure the spirit also halloween was a night of initiation there is a very famous giant rock in cornwall between the village of wicker and zenor and giant's rock is known as a witch's initiation rock at midnight on halloween if you walk around giant's rock nine times in an anti-clockwise direction and then lay your hand upon it you will receive all the benefits of being a witch witchers would also gather around holy wells at this time i don't mean holiest in the christian form of holy i mean holy to them these wells would contain the spirits of great gods and goddesses these wells were approached from the east and you would walk around the world clockwise three times and then silver the water with coins this would mean that your wishes could come true if you then tied a small strip of cloth to a branch of the trees overhanging the well this would mean that your bad jujus would remain in the strip of cloth you could walk away that was why witches tied bits of cloth to trees on no account should you ever touch those strips of cloth that are hanging from trees unless you want the bad luck to be transferred to you for authenticity this ritual should be done at midnight on halloween and in utter silence but make sure that you have returned home by sunrise and let no words pass your mouth today's halloween is highly enjoyable with the trick or treating the parties the fun the dressing up i can't wait for a traditional witch i'm also going to be doing the lighting ceremony with all of my little small nieces and nephews possibly i'm going to use a sparkler because who doesn't love a sparkler to do that with it i would love to know what sort of traditions you're going to do and how you're going to celebrate sowing let me know in the comments below do go to patreon.com forward slash a ginnie metrol for details of my coven meetings one-to-one services and other courses that you can take with me there's something for everyone i hope and otherwise i will see you in a few days