Dia de los Muertos / Samhain '09

Dear Neophyte,


This is what I did to celebrate Halloween in 2009 with my sister.  We have been getting together for this holiday since we were children.  Only in the last four years or so did we celebrate it as a religious day.  I looked forward to it each and every year. 
(random picture from the web :)

1.  Betty Roulette performance at the Lipstick Lounge in Nashville, Tennessee.  I DID take the below picture at said Betty Roulette show.  One way to walk away with half the bar patron's phone numbers is to be the only one NOT wearing black, leather, feathers or sequins :D

2. Long ass walk up the road to discuss the years progression of our craft lessons.  We each learned something about the other: both of us believe and live the code that if a witch can heal.. she can also harm.  Never piss off a non-Wiccan Witch if you value anything at all...


(I'll be nice and NOT link two World of Warcraft pics of my priest - One as a healer doing over half the raid healing as a Holy Priest against two resto druids and a paladin - and the second of him doing 20k dps NOT raid buffed)


3. Throw the roast in the oven *before* it gets dark.  If you've never cooked a roast then I assure you that a five inch thick slab of meat will indeed take longer to cook than a thin layer of chicken nuggets in your oven :)

Not my picture. 

4. Celebrating the harvest and honoring your ancestors are the two things that every tradition around the world can celebrate.  Even though my sister and I and her husband all come from different Pagan paths, we were bound together by these two constants in our celebrations.




5. Set up a table for the Dumb Supper / Ancestor feast.  Made offerings and prayers to and for our ancestors.  This is about the amount of food on each plate and my plates were black.  They were a gift to my from my Grandmother so I though they were appropriate.

This isnt my pick.   

6.  Set the feast on the table, made personal prayers, blessed the feast.  Before we chowed down, Melissa read a Samhain story out loud from her BoS.  


7. Shamhain is the ending of one year but the new year doesn't begin until Yule.  Think about this....


8. When the feast ended, we wrote out resolutions on slips of paper.


9.  Pour out the Dumb Suppers and libations asking that the Gods feed my ancestors threw the year if my own offerings (threw the year) were not enough.  Critters ate happy that night :)  I had planned to incorporate ancestor offerings into my yearly worship but I dont have the room to put up a shrine to them.  Nor, in truth, anything to put on it...


What is it with me and libations, by the way?  I guess it's the Aquarian.  Were perpetually pouring out the libations...


Not my pic.






10.  Made the bon fire and burned our resolutions. This year must remember to bless the fire and jump it for purification.  


Not my pic.


11.  Prayers and meditations for the coming year.  I asked to find my totem animal or spirit guide.  Right after I asked, I heard dogs howling.  Recently its come to my attention that the Wolf is my (current?) totem animal. I'm bias :)


12.  Melissa did a belly dance to Wings for Marie in honor of her grandmother.


14.  Lit a candle on the East side of the house on the back deck (should have been the west) to show the Blessed Dead the way back to the house.  The candle stayed lit all night, by the way, and was still a-flame the next morning... after staying outside all night (forgotten by us, apparently).


13.  We threw the cards and did pendulum divination after the fire burned out and we had gone back inside.  Apparently my sister's fat cat will never get over herself (this was my question).  Melissa's question about kids was a resounding "You wont have any, but only if your careful!"  My inner question of finding Arden was met with a pendulum who refused to cooperate - and I was using a wedding ring!


Not my pic but I damn sure wish it were!


14. I hand sewed three pouches to use for herb-filled sleep pillows (for prophetic dreams) but Aaron and Melissa couldn't decide on an herbal combination to put in them so we scrapped that idea :p  Besides, it was really late at this point.


15. Crawl into bed and not have one single dream for the next four nights...


By the way, Halloween last year was on the actual full moon.  Interesting if you think of all of those posibilities.


What I learned by last years celebrations are three things:  1).  Know what you want before you start praying.  2). Plan a lot of activities and plan not to be able to complete allot of those activities.  3).  Sometimes the gods choose not to answer your prayers.  It may be because your not ready, because you're not trying and dont deserve it, or because it's not what your alloted in this lifetime.


Salutations,
Sesh