What is Samhain?
How did a day devoted to honoring darkness, death, and the unseen world become a night of costumes, parties, and candy? Believe it or not, the costumes have roots woven deep in spiritual traditions that surrounded Samhain. In Celtic and folk traditions people disguised themselves in animal skins, masks, veils, straw, or darkened faces, in part to confuse or avoid troublesome spirits believed to move more freely when the boundary between worlds was thin. It was a way of engaging with the mystery and uncertainty Samhain was believed to bring closer.
Samhain is a threshold in Celtic tradition, often understood as the Celtic New Year. Rather than beginning with birth, expansion, or light, this new year begins with descent. It begins with the recognition that before something new can come into creation, something else must first reach completion. In that sense, Samhain offers a potent reflection of the universal flow of energy, birth and death are not opposites, but phases within the same cycle. One gives way to the other, and transformation is what moves between them.
Samhain is the sacred portal into the darker half of the year, when nature itself begins to withdraw. Leaves fall, growth slows, animals burrow and hibernate, trees pull their energy into the roots anchored in the underworld, the earth quiets, and what was once visible begins to retreat beneath the surface. Nature does not resist this process. It demonstrates, that letting go is not an ending in the absolute sense but rather a necessary part of renewal.
This year we have five planets currently in retrograde. R in retrogrades stands for reflection, review, and revisiting. Rather than grinding forward, they invite us to turn our attention inward and reconsider what has already been lived, learned, carried, or left unresolved. Samhain offers a similar invitation. It asks us to recognize what has reached its completion and to become conscious of what we will release in order to create the conditions for something new to eventually emerge.
A time to contemplate the purpose of Darkness. A space of integration forcing us to look inward. It is the period in which what has happened can settle, reorganize, and become part of us in a new way. Transformation happens through our relationship with the phase of the cycle that is letting go and surrender to impermanence. This season becomes less about absence and more about incubation. Like the bear that walks into the cave for winter… the know, love and remember yourself place.
Fire has long been associated with Samhain traditions, as an element of transmutation. It destroys what is no longer needed and creates heat, light, and space. Whether through a candle, a fireplace, or a fire outside, this can be a meaningful time to reflect on what is ready to be released in both the world around us and the world within us.
Samhain is also traditionally associated with the thinning of the veil between the living and the dead. Ancestors were remembered, honored, and in many traditions called upon for guidance. This makes the season not only a time of release, but also a time of listening. If there is something you are seeking clarity around, it can be a meaningful moment to become especially attentive to what arises in stillness, memory, intuition, dreams, or reflection.
The idea of a thinner veil also offers a different way of thinking about those who have dropped their physical body. I remember back to a plant medicine ceremony where I was guided what felt like miles deep into my heart. Deeper, deeper and deeper until I reached the pin point of the present moment, that opened into a space of perfect love. A place I just knew when I arrived was where our souls call home. Everyone I knew was there living and dead. I was nourished in the reconnection of those I had missed for so long, listening to their song, feeling their touch, sensing their presence. And when the medicine began to fade I asked “wait, how can I get back here to all of you?” To which someone whispered back to me “don’t be silly, we never left, its you that forgot to be in the present moment.”
There can be something deeply grounding in remembering this through the body and the senses. The sound of a fire, the feeling of your feet on the earth, the air entering your lungs, the movement of wind through trees. To let the ordinary things, bring you deeply into the present moment, the only time that is true. In that sense, the natural world becomes a reminder that we are part of something much larger and much older than our individual lives.
So while Samhain may be celebrated with costumes, gatherings, and tradition, it can also be honored in quiet. It can be a moment to reflect on what has completed itself, what is asking to be released, what wisdom has been gathered, and what guidance might be available when we stop long enough to listen.
The darkness is not simply something to move through on the way back to the light. It is part of the cycle itself. It is where endings reflect timelessness, transformation and continuous flow of divine energy that creates us, and where the beginnings of what comes next are often already taking shape.
Blessed Samhain
