What is death? What is rebirth? What is degeneration and regeneration. We've been asking ourselves these questions since we could think. Not just each of us but all of humanity for thousands of years. We noticed the light and the dark of each day and how there is less and less light as winter draws on and more and more light as the year progresses.
We watch the moon fade and grow each month; we watch the sun wax and wane each year. Stories and explanations developed tying our human lives to these cycles of light and dark.
The meaning and mystery of darkness is revealed with Samhain, at the end of October. This ancient Celtic festival celebrated the end of harvest but it was also understood to be the beginning of the new year. Within magick, pagan and witchcraft circles, you'll see people wishing each other a happy new year and welcome to the dark half of the year.
Isn't this a bit puzzling? Surely the dark half of the year started at the summer solstice back in June, when the sun reaches its highest point (in the Northern Hemisphere) and then begins to diminish in its intensity. Why did the Celts decide that this natural division was not a beginning or an ending and that some apparently arbitrary time in autumn was more auspicious?
The Celts followed a lunar calendar and not a solar one. Their cross quarter days originally corresponded not to the position of the sun but to the number of full moons which has so far appeared. This gave them a very different idea of what was going on in the Earth, starting at Samhain, when plants started to decay and return to the soil.
For the Celts, the coldest, darkest months are when the Earth is working its hardest to regenerate all the life which it is absorbing throughout autumn and winter. The rebirth of this life may appear above ground in Spring but it has its origin at the moment of Samhain.
The Gregorian calendar we follow today, was introduced in 1582 by Pope Gregory. It tracks only the solar cycle, having done away with the lunar phases altogether, and with that our cultural connection to the seasonal transitions embodied by the ‘cross quarter’ days celebrated by the Celts. These are Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane and Lughnasadh, which carry deep spiritual wisdom born of our earliest connection with Nature's cycles and rhythms. In particular, these helped us understand the elemental ideas of death, rebirth, fertility and abundance.
The Celts’ lunisolar calendar has prehistoric origins but these are not lost. Chinese, Jewish, Islamic and Hindu calendars are lunisolar, by which they maintain many cultural traditions in alignment with the lunar and seasonal phases, around the year.
Since losing the lunar part of our calendar, it’s now an intellectual struggle for many of us in the West to re-imagine those natural connections and ideas but the popularity of the sabbats imply that there is a great desire to do so.
If you’re celebrating Samhain this year then perhaps take some time at your altar to reflect on the idea of this being a beginning for you, a beginning based on recycling part of your old self as the year ends and simultaneously begins.