Editor’s Note: A reader's recent tip reminded us about a collection of articles from the October/November 1986 issue of Utne Reader about Halloween, contemporary witchcraft, and feminist spirituality. In celebration of the holiday, we’ll be posting a few of our favorites online until the 31^st.

Witches celebrate eight festivals each year, known as sabbats, which coincide with the changes in the seasons. The solstices (December 21 and June 21) mark the days when winter and summer, respectively, begin. The spring and fall equinoxes (March 21 and September 23) mark the two days of the year when the hours of the day are equally divided between day and night. These four days were very important to ancient agricultural societies and were occasions for great celebrations.

The four other sabbats are known as cross-quarter days and represent festivals that were important to herding societies: Candlemas on February 2; Beltane on May 1; Lughnasad on August 1; and Samhain, or Halloween, on October 31. Of the four cross-quarter days, Halloween is probably best known by nonpagans. In herding societies, Halloween marks the new year. It signifies the time of year when herdsmen thinned out their livestock for the winter, killing for their meat those animals that looked as if they wouldn’t survive the colder weather. Thus, Halloween is the Witch’s new year.

Halloween also marks the late harvest—the time of year when vegetation dies off and days grow shorter and darker.

“Halloween is the time when we are going into the dark,” says Antiga, a Minneapolis Witch, “and one thing about Witchcraft is that darkness is not necessarily associated with evil. The seed lies in darkness under the earth and is quiet all winter before it comes to life in the spring. In societies not as industrial as ours, people rested during the dark. It’s a whole different energy in the winter than in the summer.

“According to pagan legend, Halloween is also the time when the veil between the two worlds, the world of the dead and the living, is thought to be the thinnest. The reason people dressed up on Halloween was that they thought the spirits were all around them, and they were afraid the spirits might take them along with them. The people dressed up as spirits so the [visiting] spirits would think they too were spirits and wouldn’t take them to the world of the dead.”

Excerpted from the Twin Cities Reader (Oct. 30, 1985) and reprinted in Utne Reader (Oct./Nov. 1986). 

Image: A Halloween trick-or-treater in Redford, Michigan, 1979. Photo by Don Scarbrough, licensed under Creative Commons. 

We’re nearing the time of year when many people celebrate Halloween, and when many pagans and Wiccans celebrate Samhain, an ancient ritual with Celtic roots. But it appears that gathering around bonfires, a Samhain celebration staple, can be an act fraught with uncertainty: not because of spells or ghouls or human sacrifices, but because the law might show up.

A wiccan reader from Halifax, Nova Scotia, writes to Witches & Pagans magazine (Summer 2011) about the way it usually plays out:

Every time I attend a Samhain ritual in public, we are all in full swing enjoying the ceremony and then some muggle always calls the fire department. The fires are extinguished and our ceremony is ruined. It never fails. We always have a permit but that does not assure the authorities that we’re not Satan-worshipping idiots.

Aside from the gratuitous slap at Satanists—fellow pariahs should stick up for each other, no?—this Wiccan is on to something: Many law enforcers and emergency responders simply don’t understand religious and spiritual traditions that fall outside the mainstream.

Not all are unenlightened, though. In fact, Witches & Pagans in its last issue reported on David Chadwick, a high priest of a Wiccan church in Jonesboro, Arkansas, who happens to wear a blue uniform in his other gig. He sees his dual role as, um, a blessing and a curse:

Both a law enforcement officer and a visible member of the pagan clergy, David spoke of some of the challenges he faces. “Being in law enforcement has helped in some circles; however, wearing a badge keeps you in the spotlight. Add ‘pagan clergy’ to the mix, and I’m under a microscope.”

David’s profession has enabled him to educate police and pagans on how to get along. He also uses his skill to build effective security teams for events such as Pagan Pride Day, festivals, and special gatherings.

Sounds like just the kind of guy that most pagans and Wiccans would welcome at the bonfire.

Source: Witches & Pagans (articles available only to subscribers) 

Image by andy.v , licensed under Creative Commons .