Samhain: The Night Halloween Forgot

Most people know October 31 as Halloween—a night of candy, costumes, and plastic skeletons. But before pumpkins lined porches and horror movies took over the dark, there was a night older than the churches, older than borders, older even than the word “witch.”

This night is Samhain (pronounced SOW-in), the ancient feast when the living and the dead share the same breath. Halloween’s jack-o’-lanterns? They were once carved from turnips, beets, their grimacing faces lit to scare away spirits. Costumes? Worn to trick or drive off wandering ghosts—because on Samhain, every soul, lost or hungry, could come walking home. Food and drink? Laid out for ancestors and wandering dead, because if you wanted peace in winter, you fed more than your own family.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting a modern Halloween. But if you’ve ever felt a chill you couldn’t name or mourned someone harder as the nights grew long, you’ve already felt Samhain moving under your skin. The old magic is still alive—waiting for you to remember.

For druids, priestesses and witches through the ages, this night is not just about costumes or candy—it’s the one night the veil between worlds is nearly gone. In nearly every old land, this was the time for death feasts, ancestor rites or soul candles in every window. Even the church tried to claim it, making the next day ‘All Saints’ and ‘All Souls’—but the old magic runs deeper than calendars.

If you ever wanted to speak with the dead, with spirit, with the wild unknown—this is the night.

The Plant Witch’s Truth: Death, Roots and the Black Earth

Samhain is death in the living world, but it’s not an ending—it’s compost, black gold, hummus for the next wild green. Everything retreats underground—plants, animals, old dreams, worn-out selves.

For us, it’s the season of roots and silence. This is the time when we are invited to meet our own darkness.

We use this night to check our own roots:

— What needs to die?

— What stories, wounds or loyalties are ready to be released into the black earth?

— Where does our energy want to return to the dark, to become nourishment?

This is the invitation:

Get still. Let the world turn dark. Ask yourself: What in me needs to be composted for the next year’s wildness?

Fire and Feast: What We Do, What You Can Do

For us, Samhain is bone and fire. We light the altar to guide the lost home. We burn what we need to let go. We leave a place at the table for the dead—food, drink, words, even tears.

If you want to meet this night for yourself, start small: Light a candle. Speak a name. Place a photo or a stone for someone you miss. Eat or drink with the memory of your dead—not to mourn, but to belong.

Since the oldest days, people have gathered at Samhain to burn wheels—a funeral for the sun—marking the end of its reign and the beginning of the long dark. The fires mourn the sun’s death, holding vigil until it is reborn at the winter solstice.

They lit candles in windows so the dead could find their way. They carved fierce faces to keep out what didn’t belong. All of it survives in you, if you want it.

This night isn’t a party. It’s a threshold. A chance to feed your ghosts, then let the darkness make you wild again.

Because the veil is so thin at Samhain, this is the night for magic, ritual and meeting the unseen. Everything you do has more weight, more echo, more consequence. Whatever you call, whoever you feed, whatever you release—it’s heard. So choose with intention.

Altars for Samhain

Build your altar with what grounds you in the season and your own line—

• Colors: black (void, endings), orange (fire, transformation), red (blood, ancestors), white (spirit, bone).
• Objects: candles, bones, autumn leaves, apples, pomegranates, photos or items from ancestors, stones, favorite foods/drinks of the dead, nuts and seeds (to honor both what is ending and what will be reborn).
• Offerings: a drink, a bite of bread, a handful of grain or fruit for those who loved you before you were born.
• Light candles in your windows—one for each name, each memory.

Safety:

• Only invite what is welcome: your ancestors, beloved dead, benevolent spirits, chosen goddesses, old friends, those who come in peace.

If you want to be specific, say it aloud as you light the candle or set the altar:

“I honor my ancestors, my beloved dead, and all spirits who come in blessing, protection and truth. None else may cross this threshold.”

• You can add protection if you want:
  • Salt at the edges,
  • A rowan twig,
  • An iron key,
  • Or simply a circle drawn in breath or chalk.

Don't say “all are welcome” at your altar. The spirits know loopholes better than lawyers.

Rituals for Samhain: Entering the Dark

Release Ritual:

Write down what you need to let go—old pain, dead promises, tangled fears. Burn it in your Samhain fire or candle and offer the ash to the earth. Let the darkness have what you no longer want to carry.

Ancestor Calling:

Sit in silence. Call out the names of your dead, your ancestors or even the parts of yourself that are ready to pass on. Speak their names aloud, pour a drink, leave an offering or just let your tears be the offering.

Darkness Ritual:

Sit in total darkness and silence. Greet the dark season as an honored guest. Listen—what stirs in you when you stop filling the emptiness with noise? Let the dark speak. Don’t rush. There is wisdom in what you fear to feel.

Goddess Surrender:

Call on the dark goddesses—Hecate at the crossroads, Morrigan on the battlefield, Hel in the underworld, Baba Yaga in her house of bones, Persephone on her throne, Frau Holle in the silent snow.
Offer her what you’re ready to surrender. Don’t just drop your burdens and flee—ask what she wants in return.
Sometimes she’ll offer you a symbol, a task, a blessing or a lesson. Sometimes she’ll ask you to light a candle in her name, speak a truth you’ve buried, plant a seed or simply promise not to run from your own shadow. Always thank her. The exchange is part of the magic—the old law of the dark.

Setting Intentions for the Dark:

The year’s wheel turns now into night. What do you want to nourish in silence?
What part of your wildness is waiting for you under the snow, hungry to be reborn?
Write it, say it, hide it in your altar or whisper it to the fire. The dark remembers.

Smudging

Samhain marks the start of the smudging season. As the dark half of the year begins, it’s customary to burn plants that protect, banish what’s unwelcome or carry the memory of the sun in their bodies.

Start the smudging season:
Use mugwort (Artemisia) for sight and threshold, sage for banishing, juniper for protection, hawthorn for the ancestors, bay for honoring the dead.

Smudge yourself, your house, your altar and the thresholds.
Not to “cleanse” away the dark—darkness is holy—but to set boundaries, to claim your space as sacred.

No fancy tools needed:
If you have none of these plants, use a candle’s flame, your breath, a broom, even the sweep of your hand. It’s intention, not ingredients, that matters.

Finish with a mantra, a prayer, a song, or a hum.

Let your sound be the boundary and the welcome, the circle and the ward.

“Let only blessing cross this threshold. All else returns to the night."

When you finish smudging, open a window—even just a crack—and let everything that doesn’t belong drift out into the night. What is yours will stay. What is done will leave.

A Samhain Meditation: Enter the Dark, Meet the Goddess

Sit in the dark with a candle.

Let the flame be your only light.

Breathe. Let the silence grow thick.

Close your eyes. Imagine roots curling from your body into the black earth—down, down, deeper.

At the end, there is a doorway, a threshold between worlds.

She is waiting—

The dark goddess: Hecate, Morrigan, Hel, Frau Holle, Persephone, or the nameless one who has always known you.

Offer her what you’re ready to let die.

Place it in her cauldron or at her feet.

Wait.

Watch what she does with it.

See her stir the cauldron—

Your offering bubbles, smokes, dissolves or burns away.

Stay with her until it is gone.

Trust that her work is real.

When the last wisp vanishes, look at her.

Ask, “What do you wish in return?”

Wait for her answer—a word, a feeling, a symbol, a task.

Receive her gift, her silence, or her demand.

Thank her.

When you are ready, climb the roots back to the surface, bringing what you’ve been given with you.

Feel the candle’s warmth, the night around you, the pulse of your own body.

Open your eyes.

You have crossed the threshold.

You belong.

And at the end, crown it with the incantation—spoken aloud, whispered or written in the dark:

“I enter the dark with open eyes.

I lay down what must die.

I call my ancestors, my wild, my silence, my fire.

I rise from the dark, crowned in belonging.

So be it.”

Come find us in the dark.

We’ll be waiting, bone-deep and burning.

— Cynthia & Lumen