HALLOWEEN IN OUR HEARTS

My mother used to keep a Christmas tree up all year, and would tell people, “It’s always Christmas in my heart.”  Meanwhile, I used to joke that, “It’s always Halloween in my heart.”  Looking ahead to Halloween night 2022, I was thinking about creating some spell to capture the Spirit of Halloween, when I remembered the Halloween ritual featured in my book, “By Candlelight: Rites for Celebration, Blessing & Prayer.”  Unfortunately, the book is now out of print, but I’d like to share the ritual, along with illustrations of some cards from Stacey Demarco’s “The Halloween Oracle.”  If you have this card deck, laying out these cards while also performing the candle rite can serve as a spell to welcome Halloween magic into your life.

Here are some excerpts from the book:

"To experience the mystical energies of this season, you can light a candle on All Hallows Eve (and, if you wish, on the nights surrounding it).  … [A]s the focus of a family celebration or kick off a night of party-going, you could perform the following rite, to recover some of childhood’s sense of wonder."  

           

Light your Halloween candle while saying,  

             

 "I light this candle

      in honor of All Hallows nights,

  a time when the human world

      can touch the world of magic

   

                   So at this time,

                       may we also find wonder 

                           in the mysteries of the universe,

                   even as we rediscover

                            the enchantments of childhood.

                 So may our lives be filled with magic:

                       magic in our homes,

                                  and magic in our hearts."

Note that we can think of the days around Halloween as “Allhallowntide,” based on ancient customs where the days leading up to and following a special holiday were also sacred; this includes the old practice of the “octave,” where you have eight days of celebration around an important feast.  By the way, the cross-quarter day associated with Halloween, that is, the halfway point between the autumn equinox and winter solstice, is fifteen degrees Scorpio, around November 7^th.