It is less than two weeks now until Samhain (pronounced SAH-wen, SOW-en, or SOW-ain; the festival that is now Halloween) and the Day of the Dead (November 1st), and I cannot wait. The girls and I have been planning their costumes for weeks already, although Lee, my youngest, still hasn’t decided what she will be. It will involve a horse, that much she knows. Rena and I have yet to make the mask for her butterfly costume, and decide what she will wear besides wings. I have been longing for a really witchy cloak, which I have put off making myself for a year now because I feel honor-bound to deny myself “silly” wants when I have so much else to do for my family, but I think I still have time. My thoughts have turned often to the decorating of the altar—the table we set up in remembrance of our beloved dead, what foods I will cook (Lee has been requesting pumpkin pie), and how to manage displaying our precious mementos with a five-month-old kitten in the house this year (so, nothing breakable). Each year presents its own challenges and another chance to dive into the magic of the season. Instead of trying to “get it right this time,” I’m working on following my own enchantment and that of my children, and see where it leads us. Would you like to join us? Here are a few of our traditions, and some new ideas I want to try this year.
Discovering your power animal
I have always been intrigued by the concept of a spirit animal or power animal, but it has always felt too…”out there” in a totally cheesy way, like an elixir called New Age Mysticism. I just can’t take the idea seriously. But, I have always appreciated the wisdom of animals and the many things I have learned from the animals that have shared my life and my environment. And so, with Lee still struggling to come up with the perfect costume, I found Cait Johnson and Maura D. Shaw’s suggestion of guiding your children in a meditation about their power animal very interesting.
There are great benefits to be gained here, both for us and for our children: power animals give all of us a way to understand our own complex psyches. As Waldorf-inspired educator Claudia McLaren, who uses the concept of animal totems with young children, says, “Every animal is an outward expression of what’s in our soul.”1
Additionally, Johnson and Shaw note that: “Power animals can inspire storytelling, role-playing, and other forms of nourishing creativity that provide continual insight and inner enrichment. And, they conclude, “the power animal is always there for your child, flying, running, or swimming beside her through every challenge, every situation—comforting, teaching, and empowering.” Like the Eastern Black Swallowtail butterfly we hatched this summer, which inspired Rena’s costume choice for this year and has had me watching for butterflies every time I’m outside, noting the color and how many times it flies close to me, or if it keeps its distance. Animals are messengers of our own hearts.
In order to meet your power animal, or to help your child meet theirs, Johnson and Shaw scripted a meditation guide to help with the process. Before using it, they suggest that you explain to your child what they are about to do, and to make sure that they feel safe, comfortable, and grounded (calming music or rhythmic sounds can help with this).
Power Animal Meditation
Imagine that you are walking up a soft, leaf-covered woodland path between tall trees. It is autumn and the leaves are all the colors of the fall around you, orange and red and gold. You can smell wood smoke in the cool, crisp air, but the sun feels warm on your face. As you continue walking up the path, you see that it is beginning to lead uphill, getting steeper now, and the path is getting bare and rocky. You see that the path is curving around a bend now, and you can’t see what’s on the other side. But suddenly you know that there is an animal—a good and loving animal—waiting around the corner to meet you and show itself to you. It could be an animal with fur, or feathers, or scales, or hide. You walk around the corner now, and there you see it—there is your special animal. (Pause for about a minute). You greet your animal and thank it for showing itself to you. You tell it that you will do everything you can to bring it into your life so that it will always be with you. Then you turn and begin to walk back down the path, waving to your animal until you walk around the corner and cannot see it anymore.
Walk down the path toward the bright autumn trees now, walking back down the leafy path, back to this room, back to your ordinary way of being. Stretch, wiggle your toes, take a deep breath, and open your eyes.
While I like the concept of doing a guided meditation with my girls, using this format for meeting a power animal feels a bit stifling to me. What if their animal lives in a habitat that is not forested and/or does not have an autumn, such as the ocean or tundra or jungle? Perhaps less guidance and more questions about the inner environment the child finds themselves in would allow for greater self-exploration. Johnson and Shaw also include a similar meditation for helping your child decide on a costume that feels right to them, allowing them to embody a historical figure, animal, or concept that is particularly meaningful to them. I don’t think that is something we will do this year, but I would like to talk to the girls about why they chose their costumes and what it means to them. Masquerade is a powerful and age-old method of transformation, and all transformation is magical and meaningful in some way.
Carve A Spirit Guide
Of all the festivals of the Wheel of the Year, only Samhain has survived into the present still being celebrated on the same day, and with so many traditions intact—albeit with a much scarier and less nurturing interpretation than originally practiced. Such as the popular jack-o’-lantern. These were originally turnips carved with fanciful depictions of seasonal and magical symbols that served as beacons for the returning spirits of the beloved dead.
To carve one of these more traditional spirit guides, find a large turnip or rutabaga at your grocery store and cut off the top. Also cut a small slice from the bottom, if necessary, so that it will sit flat. Using a spoon, a small knife, and a lot of patience, hollow out the inside so that you can place a small candle inside. If you run out of patience, make the space only large enough to fit a tea-light (a small votive candle in an aluminum cup about 1/2 inch deep).
Now, using the tip of a dull knife, a pointed chopstick, a toothpick, or some other not-too-lethal object, begin to carve designs on the surface of the skin. Be careful not to break all the way through to the inside, but make sure you scrape away the dark outer skin to expose the yellow flesh beneath.
Instead of the traditional faces that jack-o’-lanterns always sport, spirit guides can have any design you please. Any symbols associated with a particular departed loved one could be particularly meaningful. When darkness falls, light your spirit guide, and bask in the glow of your shared, remembered love and connection.
The Altar
This is our favorite tradition (besides cooking lots of good food that reminds us of our loved ones). Once a year I rearrange our kitchen so that we can set our big folding table up beneath the west-facing window, cover it with a tablecloth, and begin collecting pictures and objects that hold memory for us. Amid this precious collection are the seasonal decorations: marigolds, fresh from the garden; mini pumpkins, autumn leaves, candles, rosemary for remembrance, and anything else that feels right to add. About this special table I wrote last year in Ghosts: they’re not always scary:
As we gathered our memories I suddenly realized that Teresa would be in Rena’s co-op classes. I said so out loud and Rena’s face crumpled, the realization of the sister she would never have hitting home. She turned the sadness to action, asking to create a notebook for Teresa like the ones all the kids in the storytelling class had. Rena and Lee worked together to decorate it, and then placed it in the center of the table, between the mini pumpkins the girls painted this year and the birthday cards my best friend’s family makes for Teresa every year. These girls never cease to amaze me with their tenderness and insight. Rena picked marigolds from our garden to decorate the table, the flower believed to hold the power to allow spirits access to their families on the Day of the Dead. My husband came home and admired our table. The Autumn Vineyard candle burned, emitting a sweet muskiness while we ate dinner, cleared the table, and carved jack-o-lanterns together. It was a mild night, and we sat outside and watched our pumpkins glow while sipping hot chocolate with LOTS of whipped cream, in honor of my sister. Rena suggested we tell “scary, made-up stories.” We took turns, laughing in appreciation at each one. When our hot chocolate was gone and we started to get cold we went back inside, and I blew out the candle.
This morning when I got up, groggy from oversleeping after too many long days in a row, I sensed a difference in the kitchen. I stood for a long moment, gazing at our memory table, and I felt a sense of love emanating from it. I swear I really did. I still do. With a new month begun, most of the leaves fallen, and the season turning towards the dark time of the year, I feel more comfort than dread for the first time that I can remember.2
The altar stays up for about a week after Samhain, long enough for the decorations to begin looking sad and the table messy, long enough for me to miss the extra space in my kitchen enough to want to put in the work of sorting everything out and putting it all away until next year. The kitchen retains a sort of comfortable glow even after it’s taken down and the last crumbling leaf has been swept up, enough to carry us over the threshold into winter.
The Samhain Table
Food is grounding, and no celebration is complete without it; especially if the occasion is bittersweet, or evoking of strong emotion. A good deal of my planning for Samhain and The Day of the Dead goes into which foods I will prepare and why. Traditionally, I have served a coconut Thai dish every year because I craved coconut Thai curries during Teresa’s pregnancy. And some sweet, hot drink with dessert because my sister Rose had a legendary sweet tooth. This year, I would like to try to recreate the frozen fruit slush that my husband’s grandmother used to make for him and his siblings. On our trip to Scotland over the summer, while eating a fruit dessert that contained currants, one of his brothers had a sudden realization that the fruit slush that their grandma made must have had currants in it. Food holds memory, too. I will now begin my quest to find frozen currants (any idea where I could find them?).
Storytelling
Storytelling is a powerful way to remember and to pass on our memories to our children. Ever since Rena was about three years old I have been telling the girls stories about myself, their grandparents, aunts and uncles, their dad, and the animals we had when we were young. Since I’ve known my husband and in-laws for most of my life, and since many of his siblings married friends we’ve known for as long or longer, I have a lot of stories about a lot of people that the girls know. It is a gift to have a family group with so much history. Almost every night Rena asks me to tell her a story about when I was a kid, and usually I’m too tired. But Samhain is a night for stories, a night to remember and celebrate our remembering. My husband says he isn’t very good at telling stories, but he can come up with the best and most outrageous explanations for how a thing got its name that you ever heard. We sometimes go around the table at dinnertime, each coming up with a different explanation for a name. Last year on The Day of the Dead we told spooky stories instead of true ones, because Lee had developed a fascination with scary stories, and it was so much fun. Storytelling is a sacred art, and one of the oldest means of communication. Whatever stories we tell this year, they will be links in a chain stretching back through time, connecting us with each other and every family who ever gathered around a fire in the dark.
Remembrance Candle
The making of a candle is a meditative act that I very much appreciate. In The Ultimate Guide to the Witch’s Wheel of the Year, Anjou Kiernan suggests making an ancestral remembrance candle for Samhain3. Their instructions are to start with a soy wax pillar candle (the tall kind), melt more soy wax to dip your candle in, then roll the dipped candle in crushed mugwort and rosemary and a bit of your ancestor’s “luxury item” (anything that your loved one enjoyed in life: tobacco, wine, powdered makeup, perfume or a favorite scent, a spice they loved, etc.). Stick a small piece of paper inscribed with your loved one’s name to the candle, and light the candle on Samhain (or The Day of the Dead if you prefer). Instead of using a pillar candle, I plan on pouring my own beeswax candle for my beloved dead with something unique for each, and helping the girls roll beeswax sheets into candles with bits of crushed herbs inside (make sure that any herb you use in a candle is safe to burn! While most herbs are, some are not). If you already have a candle that reminds you of someone you love, use that. It doesn’t have to be fresh.
Mourning
Even though Samhain has always been associated with departed ancestors and other loved ones, the season always seems to create a space in me for grief of all kinds. This is a time to mourn relationships lost, or relationships that have changed in intimacy in ways that you miss, even if it feels right or you have accepted the change. This is a time to mourn the past versions of ourselves, the hurts that we have experienced, hurts we have caused, hurts our ancestors experienced of which we still feel the effects, the secondary hurt we experience when people we love are in conflict. Greater and more distant hurts, too: the loss of habitat that is hurting so many animal populations around the world, the dire effects of consumerism and colonialism on the natural treasures of our earth and her peoples, the Ukranian-Russian war, the Israeli-Hammas war, the wars that don’t even make the news in our country, racism, classism, anti-feminism, parental abuse, physical and emotional cruelty of all kinds, starvation, financial insecurity, religious manipulation and abuse, addiction, depression, disease, injury, cruelty to animals…there is so much hurt in the world, enough to break a person. Or to shape them. The season of Samhain is a time for me to practice letting these hurts pass over and through me, to feel and hold space for the hurt, and then to let it go. I can’t fix most of these hurts, but I can allow them to broaden my vision, deepen my awareness, and open connection with all the hurting life that surrounds me. Because if there is one thing I am completely sure of, it is that pain is the great unifier. No one who is hurting is alone, because everyone and everything who has ever lived has hurt, has struggled…and has prevailed. It is a universal, unifying truth. I am not alone.
Johnson, Cait, and Shaw, Maura D.. Celebrating the Great Mother: A Handbook of Earth-Honoring Activities for Parents and Children. United Kingdom, Inner Traditions/Bear, 1995.
Ghosts
I call it Samhain now, not Halloween (pronounced “SOW-en” or “SOW-ain”). That is one of many changes that have occurred in me over the course of the last month. I first learned about Samhain while studying Celtic culture and festivals with Rena last year. It was one of two festivals during which every fire in the village wou…
Kiernan, Anjou. The Ultimate Guide to the Witch's Wheel of the Year: Rituals, Spells & Practices for Magical Sabbats, Holidays & Celebrations. United States, Fair Winds Press, 2021.