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Lesson #39

Samhain: The Great Sabbat

Samhain's Deeper Powers, cont.

4. Surrender

Acceptance of Winter's inevitable season... awareness of life brief and frail... quiet mourning for what we are asked to release in the ongoing dance of surrender that is the mortal world — Samhain speaks to the most challenging and most powerful of all spiritual practices — that of letting go.

Samhain is the season of the spiritual practice of surrender: that is the most AWE-some power of Samhain.

As Summer turns to Autumn, back at Mabon, we can perhaps easily release the light and warmth of Summer for the trade of gorgeous, dramatic scenery and crisp, fresh, Autumn days.

As the leaves fall, and Winter looms bleak and stark, with cold and storm and cruelly-abbreviated days, perhaps we look forward to the magickal benediction of snowfall... but we also must release any lingering attachment to the Sun's embrace.

We must let go of Summer, and step willingly into the Winter.

It's pointless to fight the Wheel's turn: we can only embrace it, or at the least ride without resistance.

Without resistance, we enter into the Flow of life —
life becomes smoother, more harmonious,
easier, and blessed with gifts of grace.

When we stand against the Flow, there is nothing but struggle and suffering, striving to hold our ground or push into the winds, but as soon as we relax into it, the winds carry us to where we need to be.

That in itself is a blessing.

And when we truly surrender to Divine Will, to the reality of what IS, that is peace, and Power.

This is why magick done with the power and blessing of the Divine is always more powerful than magick done against Divine Energy — "white magick" vs. "black magic," so to speak.

When we surrender to the Divine, we achieve all we could desire, and all the Power of the Universe is in our hands... to direct and use for the benefit of all.

5. The Ending Is the Beginning

¹ Just as in the modern calendar, the end of one year on Dec 31 marks the beginning of New Years Day.

² Which is not to say that Wiccans necessarily believe that "life begins at conception."

This idea is not addressed in Wiccan tenets, but from the experience of many Wiccans and women in other religions, it seems that a soul that fails to come through into birth in one body, generally returns to the same mother in another pregnancy.

And in my understanding of it, the soul is not firmly bound into a body at any given time. If the soul takes up residence early in the gestation, it’ll often pop in and out for a long time — it can get pretty boring in there!

And sometimes it won't even arrive until after birth!

The life of the body and the incarnation of the soul are not the same thing. And the soul is not dependent on one particular body to live in. If the first one doesn’t work out, it'll wait for the next bus.

Historically, Samhain was the Celtic celebration that marked the onset of Winter, the end of the growing part of the year.

Samhain also marks the Celtic New Year. ¹

Celts saw the year as divided into two seasons only: Winter and Summer.

The end of one was, naturally, the beginning of the other. The end and the new beginning are considered to occur simultaneously, so Samhain is both.

Roman mythology has the beginning of the year coincide with the new growth of the Sun.

The Wiccan perspective, however, is that all birth actually begins in the darkness; the hidden growth happens long before any sign of it rises into the light — like a seed grows underground, like a baby grows in the protected dark of the womb. ²

We could even say that the new crop begins with the clearing away of the old stubble — the cleansing of the old is the beginning of the new.

Wiccans see Samhain as marking the end of one cycle of seasons, and beginning the hidden gestation of the next.

So for us, it also marks the New Year.

6. The Sacrament of Death

This is the nighttime, the soul-time of the year: a time of dreams and hopes, stories and reminiscences, mortality and fears.

This season is inimical to mortal life, but favourable to spirit beings and soul life — the life after life.

In other words, Samhain is a time that speaks to us of what lives beyond the mortal world: the soul, the eternal, other realms of existence.

Death is complex to Pagans. ³ There aren't easy answers here. Religions are created to answer questions, but spiritual paths evolve from ASKING questions.

³ In fact, it's such a profound aspect of any spiritual path, death deserves a whole lesson unto itself! So stay tuned for the 2nd-Degree Wiccan training course, designed to fill out and complete your Wiccan education.

As a spiritual path, Wicca doesn't offer hard-and-fast dogma about what happens after life. Still, there are beliefs that many Wiccans share.

It's a Wiccan maxim that nothing dies forever, and a corollary of that is that everything we lose will come back in some form. Experience tells us, that's just how nature works.

What exactly that might be like, though, Wiccans differ widely on.

Most Wiccans believe that the soul goes on to an idyllic Summerland, a place of surpassing loveliness and peace where souls dwell after death — that is, to a higher state of existence, the metaphorical Cauldron were we await rebirth. ⁴

Reincarnation has been a tenet of Wicca, even before there was strong scientific proof.

⁴ The most cogent, and personally believable, explanation I've ever found of what happens after death is the work of Dr. Michael Newton in his book Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life Between Lives.

Some believe that the Beloved Dead stay near us until Samhain, when they make their Crossing to the Other Side.

Most believe that at Samhain we can communicate once again with those who've gone before.

Many believe we're reunited with the Source upon death.

Some believe we live in a realm where our every thought immediately manifests itself as our reality.

Some believe in combinations of these and other possibilities.

The one thing all Wiccans have in common
based on our beliefs and experiences
is that death is not an ending...
merely a transition to a new beginning.

So we don't grieve for the termination of a person... although we still must grieve our loss — the seeming separation from those we love.

Continue with Samhain: The Great Sabbat , part 6:

Cycle of the Gods and Goddesses

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