A Week From Today

A week from today it will be Samhain, the Wiccan New Year.

I happen to love Samhain. It is a fun holiday for Wiccans now, not the scary thing it used to be when Druids or those masquerading as Druids (history is unclear on this) did human sacrifices to the Oak King on Samhain. I think the Gaels of the 8th century were afraid of the Oak King, who was said to eat children, and so made a sacrifice each New Year of a child who hadn't reached his 8th year. The reason for that was at 8 years old, a child took on his or her "name" that he or she would be called for life. Up until that time, they usually had descriptive nicknames that served as their names until they reached adulthood and so had the right to select a name for themselves. Once that occurred, they were "safe" from being sacrificed to the Oak King.

We don't believe that now. And most Wiccans were not ones for human or animal sacrifice for any reason. It's one thing to kill animals for the food, the hide and the bones and antlers or horns. All life lives at the expense of other life. Or, "Nature is red in tooth and claw." Take your pick. But to take something's life to prolong yours or to read the future? That is just wrong.

Some cultures do practice such things and I would not align myself with any groups like that.

The other thing that happens a week from tonight, in Irish folklore, is that this is a Moving Day for faeiries. I love Irish folklore and read all I can on it. According to this, there are moving fairies and they move twice a year - once on May Day and once on All Souls' Day (also known as All Saints' Day), 1 May and 1 November, respectively. They do it on the stroke of twelve at midnight. They move all around the world.

"We the globe can compass soon,
Swifter than the wandering moon."

And they create trouble and mischief to those who encounter them. It's said that fairies won't bother drunkards or fools. They have a love of gold and a hatred for silver, as it is a metal of the moon. There is a good side and a dark side though, and woe to he that encouters the Amadán-na-Briona (Gaelic for "The Fool") and his coursers, who ride the night, hunting for anything that gets in their path. And there is True Tom, the only human who lives among the Daonie Shidhe, as the Wee Folk are called.

"And we fairies, that do run,
By the triple Hecate's team,
From the presence of the sun,
Following darkness like a dream."

Wondering how to find them? Well, if you should come across a fairie mound, you would face the setting sun and then cirle it nine times widdershins (anticlockwise) until you see the entrance to the hill, a cave. Once you are in, if you say, "By the Blessèd St. Patrick, our Lady and in the name of our Lord, guide my way", a guide will present itself to you. It might be a golden spinning ball, it might be a raven, a man or a woman who speak a foriegn language, or a child. But guide you they will. There are the Bright Lands, the Shadow Lands, and the Dark Lands. Once it was all one, and the King and Queen ruled together. But at some point it divided and the King became the Fool, or Amadán-na-Briona, and the Queen remained in the Bright Lands. You might reconise them as Oberon and Titania from A Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare. Good play for learning some of the Irish folklore that abounds still.

"If we shadows have offended,
Think but this and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here,
While these visions did appear."

A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V, scene i