“The ‘wetting of the sark-sleeve,’ that custom of Scotland and Ireland was in its earliest form a rite to Freya as the northern goddess of love. To secure her aid in a love-affair, a maid would wash in a running stream a piece of fine linen—for Freya was fond of personal adornment—and would hang it before the fire to dry an hour before midnight. At half-past eleven she must turn it, and at twelve her lover’s apparition would appear to her, coming in at the half open door. …At all times it has been women who plucked herbs and concocted drinks of healing and refreshment. So it was very easy to imagine that they experimented with poisons and herbs of magic power under the guidance of the now evil gods. If they were so directed, they must go on occasions to consult with their masters. The idea arose of a witches’ Sabbath, when women were enabled by evil means to fly away, and adore in secret the gods from whom the rest of the world had turned.” – Ruth Edna Kelley, The Book of Hallowe’en (1919)
“When a woman decides to become a witch…she repairs to the family buryin’ ground at midnight…She removes every stitch of clothing…both parties repeat certain old sayin’s…This ceremony is supposed to be witnessed by at least two initiates, also nude…” – Vance Randolph, Ozark Superstitions (1947)
“Samhain is the old name for All Hallow’s Eve, or Hallowe’en…The outer edge of the Circle may be decorated with autumnal flowers, branches, pine-cones, small pumpkins, ect. There may also be flowers on the Altar.” – Raymond Buckland, The Tree (1974)
The “Wheel of the Year” in Witchcraft has eight holy days known as “Sabbats” that are evenly celebrated six weeks apart. This model of religious worship, when combined with the weekly or monthly Esbat, make for a full and satisfying religious life based in the rhythms of Nature that equally addresses the need for balance and regular ritual observance in human life, regardless of region or climate. While the Sabbats of Saxon Witchcraft are fairly equal in importance, the Celtic festivals of Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane and Lughnasadh, exploited under Pope Gregory I during the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons through Hallowmas, Candlemas, Roodmas, and Lammas are traditionally understood to be the “major” Sabbats, while the Solstices and Equinoxes—whose significance is well-attested by a medieval church still faced with an unassimilated heathenism in the North, are understood as the “minor” Sabbats. As F. Marian McNeill wrote in The Silver Bough (1956):
Besides the Celtic Quarter Days, we celebrate in Scotland both Midsummer Day and Yule, which are kept with particular zest in the Scandinavian fringes. The Beltane and Midsummer festivals have gradually merged, and Yule (which embraces Christmas and Hogmanay) has, despite the ban of the Kirk, retained its popularity up to our time.
For McNeill, Midsummer and Yule were as Celtic as they were Scandinavian, as the pre-Christian druids were also said to have ritually observed the Summer and Winter Solstice. The druids (most fully described by Julius Caesar in Gaul) were not a priesthood of equal common folk however, (as modern Witches consider themselves to be), but an elite who performed sacrifices, dispensed laws, and were consulted by warlords. They were also said, like modern Witches, to have taught the principle of Reincarnation. After Christianity came to the British Isles (along with Mithraism and the Roman state cult), the druids were portrayed in the native literature as magicians and prophets, either in service of the Christian God, or, as having magic less powerful than those in his service. It is not the survival of magic and divination that is in dispute.
Learned Romans took what they considered “magic” quite seriously, considering it frequently to be charlatanism that preyed on the superstitious, or the work of a petty “malefica” who wished to do harm, but who felt powerless to do so by a more direct method. Sacrifice, divination, art, song, dance, the study of the heavens, philosophy, the “natural magic” of observation and correspondence, and the right performance of ritual was, however, for the Roman, the very essence of real religion. This might go some way toward explaining the relatively easy adoption in the British Isles of a new solar religion born in Rome with a similarly elite priesthood who, in a previous life, would have been considered druids themselves. This seems particularly likely if the druids had been performing sacrifices of whomever they (as the law-givers) had also conveniently deemed to be the “criminals”. In Icelandic writings, by contrast, it is frequently unclear if the authors themselves were even entirely convinced of the superiority of the new religion to the old one—and clearly, in the end, if it meant the sacrifice of a really good story, they were not. As Hallfreðr Ottarsson (also known as “Vandræðaskald”, or, the “Troublesome Poet”) even wrote:
“…I also am forced away from Njördr’s children to call on Christ.” (trans. Jackson Crawford, YouTube, November 17, 2017)
The pagan Romans of course had also considered their Saturnalia, in part, a celebration of the Winter Solstice, and had celebrated Fors Fortuna at the Summer Solstice in honor of the Goddess. This Goddess survived, as did Venus (and Aphrodite and Astarte), into the Middle Ages among learned young men in Western Europe as criticism of the church, and as poetry such as the Carmina Burana. The October Horse sacrifice and Armilustrium tradition of pagan Rome also have interesting similarities to historical Frey worship, which included both horse sacrifice, and taboos regarding weapons in the sanctuary. Frey, as a bestower of peace, was a God not only of farmers, but of kings. In Rome, October was the end of military campaigning for the year, and this was marked by a horse sacrifice, ceremonial dancing, and the purification of soldiers’ weapons. Mars, it must be understood, was not only the God of war remembered today, but was like Frey, a God of explicitly male fertility associated with the agricultural seasons of planting in March and harvest in October. Modern taboos on weapons, like modern taboos on nudity, are taboos that Witchcraft intentionally breaks as acts of magic. Wiccans do not practice animal sacrifice within the Temple (in accordance with the peace required in the God’s sanctuary), but instead consecrate the Seax and Sword as permanent symbols of the Love found within the bond of the coven. In the Saxon tradition they are also a reminder of the practical necessity to defend one’s loved ones, whether Theow (non-Wiccan), Ceorl (a child of a Wiccan or aspirant to a Wiccan coven), or Gesith (a Wiccan, and a fellow Companion of the God and Goddess who are the individual’s highest ideals). This is, after all, the natural expression of love outside the sacred peace of the Witch’s Circle, just as much as within it. In this way, Saxon Witchcraft is a religion made for soldiers as much as for farmers. The Saxons were both. To compare Gardner’s ideas for the Spring and Autumn Equinox Sabbats to what Buckland presented in The Tree, see Chapter 5 of Crafting the Art of Magic, “The Book of Shadows in 1957”.
And while all eight of the Sabbats are adaptable to the realities of the Land in which one lives, (in accordance with the respectful worship of the God and Goddess Names of a particular Witchcraft coven)—if one Sabbat must currently be singled out as the “Greatest” it is undoubtedly November Eve. As Raymond Buckland said in an 1986 television interview regarding the significance of Halloween to a Witch: “…it’s almost like Christmas to a Christian…”
The name Samhain for the Sabbat, deriving from Old Irish, likely means “Summer’s End”, and it is the final celebration of the harvest where Witches give thanks to the Gods for the bounty that has been provided by Summer that must now see them through the hardship of Winter. It is also the time when Witches formally remember their beloved Dead (as if they are ever truly forgotten) and invite them to dine, drink, and dance with them once again. This practice is somewhat similar to that of Spiritualism, the main difference being that in Witchcraft, with its core religious principle of Reincarnation, that this celebratory meeting with dead loved ones is understood to be a passive invitation directed primarily at one’s fellow Witches rather than an active “call Back” of say, one’s grandparents.
While some Witches may also have a personal interest in Spiritualism, and in the practice of séances as a way of attempting to contact particular ancestors or other loved ones—and while this may indeed be a worthwhile area of spiritual exploration for those seeking to contact someone who was not themselves of the Witch belief—it is, like most other “occult” practices often colloquially labeled in the English language as “witchcraft”, a strictly personal area of interest that some, but by no means all, Witches may share. My own Grandfather, who I am particularly thinking of this Samhain, knew neither the Wiccan Samhain, nor the friendly neighborhood Halloween my own children do. For him, as a boy in 1930’s New England, November Eve was “Mischief Night”.
Within the Saxon tradition of Witchcraft, the God and Goddess names of Frey and Freya are related not only to the modern English words “Friend” and “Free”, but to the ancient Indo-European root word prij meaning Love itself. Therefore, Frey meaning most literally “Lord” is (for our coven) the Horned God who is venerated at the coven meeting—after the neighborhood “trick-or-treating”, and after the children have gone to bed. In the 10th century, a Christian poet wrote down his dream of a speaking rood (the Anglo-Saxon name for the Roman cross) who declared a vision of a brave young warrior ascending the instrument of his own sacrifice: Geseah ic þa Frean mancynnes “I saw there the Frey of mankind”. This, in a culture that had previously practiced religious human sacrifice, was not seen, as it was by the pagan Roman who considered human sacrifice barbaric, as the mere execution of a criminal to maintain a wider social order. For this poet, his own, intensely personal, tribal Lord had magically become, through the Godspell of self-sacrifice, the Lord of all. For good or ill, this is the central Christian principle as we understand—or, being self-admittedly Witches—misunderstand it. It makes no odds. Witchcraft has its own principles, and as Witches say: those who are right for the Craft will find it.
Pork, beef, or venison, in whatever traditional dishes the coven prefers, take center stage at the Sabbat feast, as does mulled cider, root vegetables, and of course, the pumpkin.
(From a family photo of a Samhain-tide past. The traditional use of a large pumpkin to carve a Jack O’ Lantern is a reminder that the modern religion of Witchcraft, or Wicca—like the modern secular holiday of Halloween—has its origins just as much in America as it does in Britain.)
Lincoln Green 