Ideas and Activities for Samhain

Leave milk and honey for the fae folk.

Make resolutions, write them on a small piece of parchment, and burn
in a candle flame, preferably a black votive candle within a cauldron
on the altar.

Wear costumes that reflect what you hope or wish for in the upcoming
year.

Carve a jack-o-lantern and place a candle in it.

Choose and enthrone a Winter Queen and King the counterparts of the
May Queen and King.

Make masks and costumes representing the different aspects of the God
and Goddess and wear them to ritual or used to decorate your altar or
temple area

Have each covener bring a carved pumpkin and carry it, lit, above
their head in procession to your ritual site in memory of all those
who perished during the burning times or your own dearly departed.

Symbolically extinguish the "hearthfire" of your home and then re-
light it from the Samhain Sabbat Fire or cauldron.

Read or act out the "Descent of Inanna" or the story of Demeter and
Persephone.

During ritual invite departed friends and family into the circle and
tell them of all that had happened in your life since their
departure. You may wish to set a place for them at your dinner table
and use this time to contact them. This is a good time to talk to
them of any unresolved issues that you may have had with them and to
let them go.

Slice an apple on the altar displaying the star within and say, "this
is the fruit of life- which is death " and then slice a pomegranate
and display the seeds saying, " this is the fruit of death- which is
life."

Enjoy the trick or treating of the season.

Drink apple cider spiced with cinnamon to honor the dead. *see recipe
section*

Bury an apple or pomegranate in the garden for spirits passing by on
their way to being reborn.

Leave food outside as an offering to the dead

Do divination for the next year using whatever form of divination
appeals to you.

Set out a mute or dumb supper.

Make a besom, or witches broom. *see instructions in craft section*

Make a witches ladder for protection or as an expression of what you
hope to manifest in the year ahead.

Find a magick wand of oak, holly, ash, rowan, birch, hazel, elm,
Hawthorne or willow.

Let this be the traditional time that you make candles for the coming
year, infusing them with color, power, herbs, and scent depending on
the magickal purpose.

At Samhain, witches once gave one another acorns as gifts. During the
Burning Times, giving someone an acorn was a secret means of telling
that person you were a witch.

Acorns are fruits of the oak, one of the most sacred trees to the
ancient Celts. They are symbols of protection, fertility, growth,
values, and friendship. Perhaps you would like to continue this
tradition and give acorns as gifts this season. You might like to
paint them gold as a God symbol and decoration.

Have a New Year's Party-it is, after all, the Celtic New Year!

Look at old family photo albums or scrapbooks. Try to tell stories
about each person in the pictures

Honor the dead, remember those you loved who have passed on-perhaps
by putting their pictures or something they gave you on your altar
during your ritual.

Carve faces in apples and pumpkins

Mix up some hot mugwort tea

Make a pumpkin pie.

Dry meat or make jerky-this is the traditional meat harvest- *see
recipe section*