Samhain, pronounced “sow’-en,” is the most significant holiday of the Pagan year. It is our New Year celebration. It is also the night that our God is crowned King of the Dead.

It is ironic that our God is not even considered to be upon the Earth during the most special time of His year. The dark half of the year, from Samhain to Beltane, is the God’s time. In the ancient world, survival during the dark and cold half of the year was not achieved through agriculture or animal husbandry – which are the provinces of the Goddess – but through the hunt, which is the God’s province and His special way of life.

Our God teaches us of Death, not as something to be feared, but as something to be expected and anticipated. It is His hand we grasp in our journey across the Bridge of Death, and it is He who lays us at the feet of our Mother Goddess to be born again.

Therefore, it is right and fitting that He be revered as King of those who wait between lives. He teaches us that life is immortal because all who live must die.

He also teaches survival. He teaches the life in death of the Hunt. He teaches us courage, and how to laugh on the edge of certain Death. For those of us who, like me, have chosen to walk a warrior path, he is a friend, a comrade and even a lover.

On Samhain night, the walls that divide the living from the dead are at their thinnest. The world stands at the crack of time, with a day that belongs neither to the old year nor to the new. It is traditional to welcome friends and loved ones who have passed through those walls to our Circles and our feasts. On this one night of the year, the dead celebrate with us, and they walk freely among the living.

We do not fear our dead. Christians do. During medieval times, in their constant efforts to convert us, the Roman church tried to demonize our most sacred day. Later they would attempt to woo us with their own festival of dead saints who had no other day, and so All Hallows was born.

Ours was the ultimate victory. Cavorting in costumes of goblins and demons – and laughing about it – is the ultimate victory over the early Christians who tried to slander our beliefs all those centuries ago. Just think about it. Medieval missionaries took a happy festival and tried to turn it into something dark and sinister. Now, more than a thousand years later, Christians and Pagans alike dress up in dark and sinister costumes and have a good laugh at their expense. 

Sweet, sweet revenge in the laughter of the innocent - and somehow oddly appropriate for our God's most special day. After all, the most important lesson He teaches us is how to fling laughter in the teeth of terror and despair.

Back

All graphics on this site obtained from Witchway Graphics. They do not ask for credit, but they do the finest, most incredible, most STUNNING Pagan graphics on the Web - and they deserve all the credit we can give them!