The circle should be outlined in candles. There should be two altars, the
main one in the North and a secondary, lower one in the North-West. The main
altar should be draped in brown, with apples piled in front of it, seed-cases,
dead leaves, ripe berries. On it, dark malty bread and a chalice of port.
A pot of Samhain incense and a censer, also a sage, oak and mugwort smudge
stick. A bowl of water and an aspergillum of rosemary too. The second altar
is for the ancestors, and should be draped in black and white, with black
ribbons and white candles. Each person places photos of their relatives or
a list of their names on this altar, with a small bottle of spirits, whichever
they think their own ancestors would have preferred in life. Sloe gin, whisky,
brandy, rum, vodka – whatever people feel is appropriate. Also a plate
of soul-cakes, one cake for each person attending as an offering to their
Spirits. There is also a fire burning in the centre of the circle. (For some
reason we have always been lucky with the weather at Samhain, and our Grove
is always able to meet outside, in a small wood filled with ancient oaks.)
All gather outside the grove, and breathe together in the darkness. This
is to have a cut-off point, a point beyond which people know that we are all
‘about a sacred business.’ After this moment all speech is ritual
speech, and all action ritual action. As we have between five and ten members,
the terms ‘priest’ and ‘priestess’ are generic and
the roles can be taken by anyone with the necessary experience.)
All pass into the grove.
PRIEST:
Hail Spirits of this place!
Hail Spirits of this sacred place!
Hail Spirits of this place!
We come here in peace and with clear intent,
To celebrate the feast of Winter’s Door
And the Beloved Dead.
Accept our presence, O Guardian Spirits,
Accept our presence.
The candles are lit, the fire stoked, the incense sparked, and each person
steps into the circle.
The Priestess censes the circle’s boundary with the smudge-stick, and
another priestess sprinkles it with water. All imagine a sphere of red-gold
(or whatever colour seems best to each) around them, forming itself as the
priestesses pass by.
The Calling of the Quarters:
The Grove sits or stands facing the directions and one or other of the celebrants
lead them on a guided visualisation of the element concerned. When the visualisation
is clear, then the other will call the quarter. We are doing this because
at Samhain, when we are confronting issues to do with death and darkness,
the circle needs to be especially strong and holding. It would help if at
quiet moments in the ritual if people took a few moments to affirm inwardly
the presence of the guardian spirits at the quarters, and the integrity of
the circle’s boundary.
PRIESTESS:
Close your eyes. Imagine you are walking through a wood, on a bright, windy
November day. Yellow and orange leaves are piled in drifts. Everywhere you
hear the patter of wet leaves falling. The sweet smell of rotting leaves and
smoke hangs on the air. You walk through the woods and feel the ground rising.
You come to an open ridge that lets you look over a great swathe of country.
You can see far into the distance. Above you in the clear, cold blue sky you
can see the sliver of the waning moon. You hear the scream of a hawk far above.
The wind is rushing into your face and your ears are filled with the sound
of it. It buffets your clothes and chills your face. Breathe in a great lungful
of clean, cold air. Feel its clarity in your mind.
PRIEST:
East.
Wild-wind.
Smell of frost on the air.
Leaf-fall, mist-pall -
Winter’s lair.
Hail spirits of Air!
Come to us,
Be with us,
Tonight.
PRIEST:
Close your eyes. You are again in a wet wood, but it is evening. The sky
is red and ochre with sunset. You can smell smoke again, and walk off through
the wood, between the sweet-chestnut trees, whose yellow leaves are hanging
down all about you. Soon you come to a clearing, in which you see a huge bonfire
blazing. A great wash of warmth comes to you, and you hurry to the fire and
warm your hands against it. Feel your own blood moving through your veins.
You look deep into the crackling heart of the blaze, where the embers are
glowing pink and orange. Blue and orange flames lick the dark branches and
you hear the hiss as resin oozes from the cut pine.
PRIESTESS:
South.
Spark of stars,
Ice-glint in ember-night.
Red fire in winter mire -
Hearts alight.
Hail spirits of Fire!
Come to us,
Be with us,
Tonight.
PRIESTESS:
Close your eyes. Again, the path through the wood. Twilight is thick around
you, and the wood is very quiet. A light drizzle is falling and everywhere
drops are catching on spiderwebs and dripping from the ends of leaves. Pools
of water have formed in the mud of the path, and you step around them. You
go downhill. Surrounded by moss and overhung by ancient willows is a dark
pool. There are bulrushes and reeds around its margin. You can hear the reeds
rustling in the rain and breeze. A tiny bird is hopping about in them. You
look up and see the silver undersides of the last willow leaves on the trees.
You go up to the water’s edge and dip your hands into the cold, black
water, feeling its pull. Soon, the moon will rise.
PRIEST:
West.
Knife-water,
Keen cold.
Winter rain, cleansing pain -
Bringing snow.
Hail spirits of Water!
Come to us,
Be with us,
Tonight.
PRIEST:
Close your eyes.
You wander through the twilight wood, kicking up the fallen leaves. You hear
the bark of a fox in the distance. You know somehow that you are heading North.
The wood is denser here, formed of ancient oaks and ash trees. Their mighty
branches hang over you. From one branch, an owl watches you and its eyes reflect
the last light. There are scrubby hawthorns, bare but for the red haws lingering
on their grey branches. Before you, you see a great cliff, moss-covered, and
in the cliff there is a cave-mouth. You reach out and touch the cool, wet
rock of the cave entrance, and slip inside. A wave of icy air hits you. Groping
in the darkness, you inch forward into the cave….
PRIESTESS:
North.
Flint in the furrow,
Creep of mould.
Old bone, old stone –
Huddled cold.
Hail spirits of Earth!
Come to us,
Be with us,
Tonight.
PRIESTESS:
The circle is cast. We are between the worlds.
Invocation of the Ancestors, first of Blood then of Spirit.
(Blood ancestors consist solely of your blood-kin. Your ancestors of spirit
are those teachers whom you revere who were not related to you by blood, whether
you knew them in life or not. They also include your own spirit-guides and
soul-friends, again whether you know their names or not).
PRIEST:
O Ancestors and kindred many,
This night is your night.
O you whose breath we now breathe,
Whose bodies are mingled with this most sacred soil,
Named and unnamed, known and unknown,
We come before you this night
With clean hands and pure hearts.
Your stories are threaded in our blood,
Your struggles shaped our bones.
Join with us, accept our offerings of love and respect,
Join with us, be here with us, this night of nights.
PRIESTESS:
Soul-kin, Guardians and guides,
Teachers of our souls, we call to you.
This night is your night.
Your lives to us are luminous, for
You walked your ways in truth and wisdom.
Named and unnamed, known and unknown,
We come before you this night
With clean hands and pure hearts.
Your stories are honoured at our shrines,
You struggles shaped our souls.
Join with us, accept our offerings of love and respect,
Join with us, be here with us, this night of nights.
All sit.
(The following is an adaptation of Vernon Watkins’ poem The Ballad of
the Mari Llwyd: the word ‘Midnight’ has been replaced with ‘Samhain’.)
PRIESTESS:
Samhain. Samhain, Samhain. Samhain.
Hark at the hands of the clock.
Now dead men rise in the frost of the stars
And fists on the coffins knock.
PRIEST:
Why should you fear though they might pass
Ripping the stitch of grief?
The white sheet under the frosted glass,
Crisp and still as a leaf?
PRIESTESS:
Samhain. Samhain, Samhain. Samhain.
Hark at the hands of the clock.
Now dead men rise in the frost of the stars
And fists on the coffins knock.
PRIEST:
Or look through sockets that once were eyes
At the altar and white cloth spread?
The terrible picklock Charities
Raise the returning dead.
PRIESTESS:
Samhain. Samhain, Samhain. Samhain.
Hark at the hands of the clock.
Now dead men rise in the frost of the stars
And fists on the coffins knock.
PRIEST:
What shudders free of the shroud so white
Stretched by the hands of the clock?
What is the sweat that springs in the hair?
Why do the knee-joints knock?
PRIESTESS:
Samhain. Samhain. Samhain. Samhain.
Hark at the hands of the clock.
Now dead men rise in the frost of the stars,
Knock and you hear that knock.
PRIEST:
Out in the night the nightmares ride
And the nightmares’ hooves draw near.
Dead men pummel the circle’s side
And the living quake with fear.
PRIESTESS:
Sinner and saint, sinner and saint –
A Hag’s head in the frost!
Samhain. Samhain. Samhain. Samhain.
Hark at the hands of the clock.
Now dead men rise in the frost of the stars
And fists on the coffins knock.
The Cailleach:
A bell begins to toll mournfully, with an eerie sound. The priestess stands
and turns to face the North. She ceremonially covers her face with a long,
dark veil. As the sound of the bell finishes, she slowly turns to the assembled
circle, having taken on the persona of the Cailleach, the Gaelic Goddess of
Winter.
I am Hag o’ the Frost.
I am the teeth of ice,
the skinned animal that bleeds in the snow.
I am the deaths-head moon
under her hood of bone.
Here in the dark of the year
you fall into my abyss.
I am age that gnaws the flesh…
I am cold that squeezes water
to clutch the backbone of ice.
I am freezing dusk that closes
Like a cold trap of steel.
Dark is my meaning.
When you cry,
My ears seem shut.
As you grope in My darkness,
I thwart your steps.
If I wish
I will make you desolate,
break you in pieces,
fill you with bitterness,
or feed you with ashes.
Do you feel the dark eye of Winter on you?
Do you fear my bite?
When you rock between dark and dark
Who then will you be?
For I am the Hag o’ the Hill.
I am the salt in the wound,
The shriek of the wind
That echoes in the cowering wood.
I am the dark woman of winter
who tatters the world to starkness.
What would you be rid of,
to face my dazzling darkness?
Draw back my veil.
It reflects the shivering stars.
Come, draw back my veil -
My pit-murk rags,
My beads of bone -
And underneath discern
My Uncreated Beauty.
Each person bows very low to the Cailleach, so they are not looking at the
priestess, who removes her veil and sits down also.
Each person including the priestess takes an item they have prepared to represent
what they must let go of, whether it be written upon a piece of paper, or
symbolic herbs in a pouch, or a piece of carefully chosen and anointed wood,
or whatever. It should symbolise to the person who has made it everything
that they must find the courage in themselves to let go of as they journey
deeper into Winter.
One by one each person casts their object into the fire, with a prayer to
the spirits of fire to transform what they receive.
A period of silence follows.
The Celebration of the Ancestors:
At this point the ritual becomes less formal, as we turn from the frightening
task of looking at our fears to honouring our ancestors who both shared those
same fears and can help us over come them.
Each person goes clockwise from where they are sitting to the Ancestor altar
and lights a candle, with the long taper and nightlights in jars provided,
in honour of their own kin. The first person to do this should heap more incense
upon the censer and cense the ancestral altar. They pick up the bottle of
spirits they brought with them as an offering and pour it into the brass bowl
on the altar, putting the empty bottle back. They then turn to the fire and
raise the bowl of spirits, saying:
I offer this to my Beloved Dead, in reverence and respect. [Or their own
choice of words]
They pour the offering into the fire, which will blaze up impressively. They
crumble a soul-cake into the flames.
When everyone has done this, the priestess takes the bread and port and blesses
them, saying:
Wind in wood
And over wold.
Fire in the belly
Against winter’s cold.
May this bread and wine be blessed and sacred.
She tastes the bread and port saying, Blessings of Winter, offers some to
the spirits, and passes them to the next person clockwise, with the same blessing,
and so on round the circle, each person blessing the next. Everyone sits by
the warm fire and shares stories about their ancestors and their spiritual
growth and lives, their fears and hopes for winter. They may sense the presence
of their ancestors. If anyone can sing, this is a good time for a keening
lament. An adaptation of one of the darker Dead Can Dance tracks (‘Gloridean’,
I think) for two male voices worked astonishingly well last year: one male
voice set up a low drone, and the other ululated over it, with the drone-singer
breaking off at the climax to join and wind round the other voice: the effect
was utterly hair-raising.)
Closing:
The Priestess stands and says:
Ancestors and kindred many,
We thank you for your blessing and your presence,
unseen but not unfelt.
May you always have peace and light.
May your souls shine brightly in all future lives.
Hail and farewell!
Blessed be as blessed is.
PRIEST:
Hag of Winter,
Weaver of Wisdom
Frost-bearer, Night-bringer,
Grandmother of Souls -
Hail and thanks be to you!
Enfold us in your garments of night.
Cleanse us of the outworn.
Make clear the stars in our souls’ depths.
The quarters are uncalled by the simple technique of the person concerned
kneeling at the quarter-point and touching their praying hands to their hearts,
their foreheads, and then bowing their heads and raising their hands up and
forward as a gesture of respect. We’ve found that the stillness and
poise that this gesture requires means the spirits are respected, the four
quarters are consistently uncalled, and an atmosphere of reverent stillness
is preserved, making the opening of the circle less jarring.
