How to Prepare for a Samhain ritual celebration:

Prepare your altar for feasting (when you have space), or a side table, with a black cloth for the Feast of the Dead if you are solitary. You would adorn your dining area, or other room, for a coven. The spirit’s place is set with a white votive candle and offering plate of fruit, nuts, breads or other seasonal food items. Prepare place settings for each of the departed that you hope will join you. This could be revered family and friends you want to honor. Use black votives for the additional settings. Plates for the living remain empty until food is served in the sharing.

Samhain Incense Powder (create under full moon, Oct. 6th):
1 part each of the following herbs: (one part=2 tbsp)

Nettles, Bayleaf, Calendula, Sage, Tarragon, Oak Leaf

4 drops Frankincense and 4 drops Myrrh oil
Grind the powders in your mortar until fine, then add oils
Use a thurible or stone burner with 1 inch of sand 
Use a self-burning charcoal tablet, and sprinkle powder in small amounts to burn as smudging incense. Do not use briquettes in confined spaces, as these burn toxic.

Oil Preparation:

The following oil is a special preparation for use during scrying, tarot reading, any divination, soul-retrieval, and astral travel. This magic oil is a wonderful psychic enhancement, and will increase prophetic dreams. It enhances your creative powers, and is a very strong protective formula to use during rituals. You would use this to anoint yourself after ritual bathing, and it can also be used to anoint candles for Samhain. This is a subtle scent, but very powerful, it is used sparingly. Save any remainder for your next full moon ritual and tool blessing.

Create during the new moon in Libra, October 22nd, and also on Samhain the 31st (days for 2006), when the veil between the worlds of the physical and spiritual is most thin.

Sixth Sense Magical Oil: (use 2 oz base almond oil)
1 teaspoon each of powder, or 2 drops each of essential oil (add oils last):
Lemongrass, mugwort, eye-bright, rue, mistletoe, jasmine flowers, mullien, wormwood, yarrow, bay, mace, star-anise, mistletoe, Solomon’s seal, cinque-foil
Put powders in cheesecloth tied with a black string. Steep in the base oil for 3-5 day, left on an east window in sunlight. Squeeze to strain oil from cheesecloth, add other essential oils now. Shake he container and let it sit overnight outside. The preparation is ready for use.

Alter and Table Preparations:

Gather orange, white and black candles, pumpkins and other Halloween items, which are symbolic and actually traditional for Samhain. Mix the oil recipe below to anoint your candles. To prepare tapers for your altar and feasting table, hold them from the center with your power hand, and use you other hand to spread the oil from the center to the ends. Bless each candle, “Spirit of the Goddess Hecate, I dedicate this tool to honor the spirits of the dead�?

Samhain Ritual Oil (1oz base olive oil)
   4 drops Pine Oil
   2 drops Frankincense oil
   2 drops Patchouli oil
   2 drops Lavendar oil

Altar and other Items for your celebration:

Athame or dark handled knife - to draw or indicate a circle
Bell - symbolic of creative powers
Besom or Broom - cleanse ritual area
Bolline knife - cut herbs & carve candle runes
Cauldron - (3 leg) bounty & blessings
Candles - Goddess/God/Self/Other
Censer - incense burner for censing
Chalice - female principal of  water
Feather �?fanning incense (smudging) or to scribe
Incense - represent air/fire element
Mortar & Pestle - crush/mix recipes
Pentacle pendant �?five point star in circle-symbol of directions & Divine

Pentacle plate or paton - spellwork focal (plate, tile, or disk)
Rain water, well, or other natural source - represents water element

Salt - sea salt / black salt, for earth element (black salt - asian seasoning)
Staff- use is similar to Wand
Statuary - Deity and Spiritual symbols; Goddess or God
Sword - outdoors, in place of Athame
Talismans or Amulets - Magical representations, found or created
Thurible - heavy metal or stone container to burn Charcoal/Smudge
Wand - draw circle & consecration

Blessed be~

“And you who seek to know Me, know that your seeking and yearning will avail you not, unless you know the Mystery: for if that which you seek, you find not within yourself, you will never find it without.�?/FONT> 
Seeking the Goddess