Samhain Festivities

I hope you all had a Happy Halloween and Samhain!

We had a very mischievous Mischief Night on the 30th, with our annual Hallowe'en party, which I am pleased to report had a great turn out! One of my former Coffeebucks coworkers even came by with two of her friends and the 4 of us made merry... perhaps a bit too merry, as my head and belly told me yesterday morning.

Our festivities yesterday were low key. We spent the day napping, watching horror movies and getting the candy ready for the droves of trick or treaters we were sure we'd get. By 7:00pm we had answered the door twice, handed out candy to four kids and only two of them were in costume. There is still way too much candy in my plastic candy cauldron this year.

However, the lack of trick or treaters had a plus side as we had saved the carving of our annual jack-o-lanterns for sundown. No knocking at the door meant we were free to carve to our heart's content.

Since we neglected to take our annual Halloween photo at the party, we took a bunch of silly photos with the pumpkins. This is my favorite one, I'm thinking it's frame worthy:

When Joe retired around the witching hour to get up for work this morning, I stayed up a while longer to sit down and perform my Samhain ritual. For the first time in a very long time, I felt called to cast and work within a circle. I welcomed my elemental brethren and bade farewell to the Sun and welcomed the Crone into my life once more. With all of their energies around me, I released the things I wished not to bring forward with me by black candle flame. To fill the void, I contemplated what I wished to call to me and welcomed it with the flame of a white candle.

I felt so drained afterward that I didn't do my annual 12 cards wheel of the year tarot reading, instead opting to crawl under the warm covers of my bed and snooze away the first few hours of the New Year.