Samhain - Gaelic festival marking the end of the Harvest and the beginning of Winter

Samhain is also known as All Saint’s Day and Halloween. Now, we are heading into shorter, darker days. The world is going dormant.

Samhain is a liminal festival. It is the only one that straddles two days - the last day of April and the first day of May, in the Southern Hemisphere. It was believed that the boundary between our world and the Otherworld thins on Samhain - the living and the dead are as close as they ever come to each other.

I understand this, I see it when I look outside…Autumn is finished, but Winter has not yet started; old crops are drying out and going to seed, new crops are just going in; the mornings are cool and the days are warm. I still yearn for sunny beach walks, but my body is telling me to come into itself, to rest.

Likely, I will be spending this Sabbat with just my two girls as I will be fermenting with friends on Saturday and selling olives at the local market on Sunday.

I think I will serve pumpkin soup with corn bread, and vanilla poached pears drizzled with chocolate (and a bit of mulled wine for me!) for Samhain this year.