HERE’S WHAT WITCHES ACTUALLY DO ON HALLOWEEN

Here’s what witches are really doing during the spookiest time of the year.

As Halloween Season approaches, many of you'll be grabbing your costumes, and maybe you’re going for the classic witch look. at the present , it’s easy to acquire not only a “costume,” but an entire witchy wardrobe.

Alternative clothing companies make it easy to wear witchcraft literally on your sleeve with endless designs and occult slogans.

Even Sephora tried to sell witchcraft within the sort of a horribly-thought-out “starter kit,” which has since been pulled from the shelves.


The positive mainstream attention on witchcraft and therefore the curiosity surrounding it seems to be unprecedented at the instant .
So, we decided to speak to those that practice it for a few advice and clarification on what really goes on during the spookiest time of the year.

So, what are witches actually doing on Halloween?

Note: this text springs from the accounts of six people that practice magick. Their celebrations aren’t representative of all Wiccans, witches, neopagans et al. who include witchcraft and energetic will in their religions/lifestyles. due to the deeply personal nature of the practices, there are endless ways witches may celebrate the season. We encourage you to share your personal traditions within the comments!

NOT FUCKING AROUND

Of the various practitioners we spoke to, several had the subsequent advice to offer to those that want to dabble in witchcraft on Halloween: Don’t mess with Ouija boards. once you turn spirits, it'd not be grandma who answers, but something dangerous.

Whitney Woods identifies as a white witch. Her practice involves positive and well-intended magic through candle spells, rune and tarot-readings and imbuing crystals with positive intent.

“A lot of the magic that interests people around Halloween is darker because of the Horror genre, and, generally , not the type an individual need to be twiddling with ,” she says. “I personally won’t even touch a Hasbro Toys Ouija , since i think intention may be a large portion of what it takes to try to to something like communicate with a spirit, and not all spirits are good.

“Casting dark magic usually bites you back, so if you would like to use magic on Halloween, attempt to avoid casting curses [or] summoning anything, and please don’t charge objects with a negative intent.”

“Do no harm,” simplified is that the highest creed within the Wiccan religion. Keep that in mind when your friends want you to enter their basement for a round of curse-the-shitty-boss.

Marleigh McVeigh, who identifies as an “eclectic witch” due to the wide berth of Pagan religions she practices, including Santeria, Gardnerian Witchcraft et al. explains, “Most individuals believe that Samhain or Halloween are the foremost ‘evil’ days of the year. The association comes from it being the ‘most occult’ holiday. truth definition of ‘occult,’ however, is ‘cut faraway from view or interposing something.’”

CELEBRATING THE HARVEST AND PREPARING FOR WINTER

If you’re curious what witches could also be up to sometimes aside from Halloween, we’d advise you look to the sky and to the world . The moon, both regular occurrences and anomalies in nature and therefore the seasons have their own powers to harness and reasons to pay respects to nature.

Samhain, the Celtic festival from which our Halloween traditions originate, falls on Oct. 31 and marks the top of the harvest season.
From the Wiccan Rede, the essential moral code:

“As the old year starts to wane/The new begins, it’s now Samhain/When the time for Imbolc shows await flowers through the snow.

Harvesting involves one and every one when the Autumn Equinox does fall. Heed the flower, bush and tree by the woman blessed you’ll be.”
Before we move forward, it’s important you recognize that Samhain is pronounced “Saw-ehn.” You’re welcome.

Kristie Miller practices nature-based religion as a green witch, working with herbs, flowers and varied natural elements for spiritual guidance and healing.
“During autumn we celebrate!

The home is cleansed with sage or cedar,” she says. “We spend time outside. We go apple picking, have bonfires and luxuriate in the time of the season.

We enjoy food—harvest meals include bread, apples, squash, cranberries and pumpkin. I also write a gratitude list. A witch’s autumn is analogous to Thanksgiving.”

So, if you’re a lover of Tofurkey Day festivities, but don’t want to attend until November to feast, you would possibly want to hold call at a witch household this month.
“One of the first purposes for Halloween was to require a number of the bounty from your harvest and to share it with others, lest your ancestors consider you greedy and ungrateful,” practicing witch Taylor explains. “So sharing meals with friends and family may be a really good way to invoke the energy of the vacation within the most traditional way.”

In addition to being a time to celebrate summer’s bounty and steel oneself against the winter, Samhain is assumed to be the day when the veil between our world and therefore the imaginary place is thin, and thus the right time for

PAYING RESPECTS

Most are conversant in Dia De Los Muertos tradition, when loved ones are honored with food, grave decorations and altars. it's believed that in this point the “veil is thin.” That means: the boundary between the imaginary place and ours is diminished, thus allowing departed relations to revisit their loved ones.
Similarly to those that celebrate Dia De Los Muertos, many witches also use Samhain to honor the dead.

“Samhain is our most sacred time of year because it’s a time to honor our dead and our more distant ancestors,” she says. “Activities at this point of year include keeping an ancestral altar with items from your relations that have gave up the ghost so as to honor their lives and spirits.

“Other altar items include candles, pumpkins, the colours orange, brown, black then on. Usually on Halloween night or the closest full-of-the-moon to then, there's an enormous feast that has an area set for any unexpected guest, which is sort of a euphemism for setting an area for the dead. In my family, we leave one among the windows open with a candle in it to steer our loved ones home from the Otherworld [the afterlife].”

Solemn because it could seem for them to spend such energy reflecting on people that have died, spellcasters reassure that it’s not a miserable thing but often a celebration, and therefore the customs surrounding it's going to look familiar. as an example , pumpkins are quite an enormous deal during this point , and not solely as a decoration.

Witch Miranda Scott is that the owner of Cleveland modern witch shop and a private favorite haunt for those at AP called Coven. She and her daughter refill on pumpkins this point of year, for a special reason. “We…carve them a couple of days before Halloween, and that we leave them lit all night,” she reveals. “They light the way for our ancestors, and therefore the element of fireside keeps bad spirits from entering our home.”

And when welcomed spirits pay their visit to her house (which is all-black, by the way. How dope is that?), they’re greeted by burning candles and a stunning personal touch at her altar. “I buy my mom cherry Jolly Ranchers, because those were her favorite, and my dad always liked [Caramel Creams],” she says.

DOING NORMAL HALLOWEEN SHIT

We have yet to satisfy an honest person who doesn’t like Halloween, so in fact , practitioners of magic are in on the fun just like the remainder of us. As we’ve established, many Halloween activities come from the celebration of Samhain, so outwardly, they probably look precisely the same.