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Halloween and Black (and Orange) Magick

  
  

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Chiropteran
19:31 / 24.09.03
Halloween has always been a big part of my life. Growing up, it was pretty much neck-and-neck with Christmas in terms of anticipation, and (presents aside) was usually a lot more fun. My wife and I were married on Halloween a couple years ago (altogether now: "Awwwww."), and my mother-in-law has long been The Halloween Lady in town. Hers is the decorated house the newspaper photographer always hits (hey, it's a small town). The Addams Family, the Universal Classic Monsters, pumpkins, rubber bats and candy corn and the rest of the Halloween accoutrement play big in my personal mythography.

This year I'm starting to explore the idea of invoking Jack Skellington, The Pumpkin King (from the Tim Burton movie The Nightmare Before Christmas) as a godform. His blend of spooky tricksy prowess and wide-eyed innocence and enthusiasm form a nice kind of Trickster/Fool complex, and the plot of the movie outlines Jack's mostly-metaphorical death-and-rebirth cycle ("That's right! I AM the Pumpkin King!"). Thinking along the same lines, I'm also playing with associations between the four elements (for my purposes: air, earth, fire and water), the Cardinal Directions (N,S,E,W) and the Cardinal Monsters (Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, The Wolfman and The Mummy). There is so much rich and varied imagery associated with Halloween that everything seems to be falling into place nicely. Early experiments suggest that it's also pretty effective (for me, at least).

So I'm wondering: do any other 'lithers have any Halloween traditions or Halloween-based magickal practice? Not pagan Samhain celebrations or the like, but bright-orange, screaming-pumpkin, Trick-or-Treating Halloween?

[Meanwhile, I've been told that Halloween isn't as big a deal, at least commercially, in the U.K. as it is here in the U.S. - any thoughts or comments?]

~L

"No Treat, Only Trick!"
~ Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud,
from Bradbury's "The Halloween Tree"
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
20:58 / 24.09.03
Hey, a Halloween thread! Lovely.

It's true that in most of Britain, Halloween is less of a big commercial deal than in the States, although what with the influx of pop-culture from the US it's got a bit bigger than when I was a kid. I think us limeys are still more into Guy Fawkes' Night ("Remember, remember, the 5th of November...").

However, I belive that there is/was a trick-or-treating tradition thriving in some parts of the UK. When I lived in Wales, kids used to come round asking for a penny for Halloween. I'll have to look into that.
 
 
Quantum
10:10 / 25.09.03
Cool! Here in the UK we can't grow pumpkins, but we seem to have adopted the american festival anyway. Bats and pitchforks in all the cheap shops etc. the orange and black motif is halloween all over
 
 
_Boboss
11:48 / 25.09.03
can't grow pumpkins? we always used to go tricker-treating when I was a kid. General fear'n'badness makes it less common these days. the last couple years we've laid in a big bowl of sweets for the local nippers to menace us out of, but ate them ourselves because no-one bothered coming round. now i'm a growny myself appropriate Halloween festivities are fancy dress, booze and magic mushrooms all wrapped up in a big party.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
20:04 / 25.09.03
You can grow pumkins in the UK but only dahhhhn sarf, where the weather is warm. Elsewhere, they use turnips for their Jack O'Lanterns.
 
 
eye landed
02:40 / 26.09.03
Khaologan23ris: General fear'n'badness makes it less common these days.

It's refreshing to see the creeps taking back their night. The "sugar-shocked glory" is making a valiant effort to soften it up, but the cardinal spooks (magic, monsters--very human these days, darkness, and poisoned candy) strike real fear into the hearts of millions every Halloween.

Halloween is presumably a good time for talking to the dead or something (maybe I'll try it this year). But I'd avoid messing around with Halloween itself, Lepidopteran. The powers behind it are, well, powerful. Watch your movie again and decide if Jack is what you really want.

Heh. I'm just tryin' to scare you.
 
 
Chiropteran
13:16 / 26.09.03
substatique: No, I think Jack's what I'm looking for. He's impulsive, certainly, and workings with him need to be done cautiously to avoid a "snowball effect," but at root he is fairly benevolent. He also isn't the first "Dark God" I've been involved with - Loki has been a large part of my family's life for the past 6 or 7 years, and that teaches you - quickly - to be careful what you wish for.

Halloween is very powerful (and possibly perilous), but if I've ever felt a "calling" this is it. Every Halloween season I get a tremendous charge of energy and creativity, and every year I let pass by without a major working I feel a terrible sense of wasted opportunity.

Side question: have any of you ever used the so-called "Halloween Tarot?" It's a neat idea, and fits what I'm doing, but I'm wondering how it actually works as a deck (as opposed to a novelty item)? It'll work better for some than for others, I'm sure, but I'd appreciate your thoughts.

~L
 
 
salix lucida
20:15 / 26.09.03
Each year, some of my local weirdos and I dress up in appropriate creepy attire (a biker Ghede and some rather unseelie fae, last year) and wander a rather haunted old mining-town-turned-quaint-touristy-place nearby once it gets dark, scaring the shit out of local teenage stoners that mill about near the coffee shops. It's grand. Mmm.. Trooping.

("dude... duuude did you see the ears? were they real? whaddafuuuhck...")
 
 
Chiropteran
03:33 / 27.09.03
faething: Mmmm. Very nice.

~L
 
 
Sobek
18:45 / 27.09.03

Yes, I think of the trick-or-treating as being the "Rade" of the fey. So I load the candy up with lots of goblin energy.
 
 
Schism
03:08 / 29.09.03
To Lepidopteran:

Just had to comment when i saw that you got married on Halloween, i proposed on Holloween, musta worked we have been together for many a year. Best wishes to you and your bride.
 
 
Chiropteran
04:27 / 29.09.03
Schism: Thanks. Best of luck to you, too.
 
 
_Boboss
14:04 / 29.09.03
and i told me girly that i loved her for the first time on Halloween. its totally the sexiest evening of the year
 
 
FinderWolf
17:49 / 29.09.03
It's like that 60s song "Spooky" - where he meets this freaky spooky chick:

"Just like a ghost, you've been a'hauntin' my dreams
So I propose on Halloween,
Love is kinda crazy with a spooky little girl like you"

*Ahem* Anyway, Halloween is totally cool for both magickal and non-magickal fun. I'm not sure what I'll be up to magickally this All Hallow's Eve, but I'll be a-doin' somethin'.

What's the Halloween Tarot? Why did you say it's the 'so-called' Halloween Tarot?
 
 
Chiropteran
18:18 / 29.09.03
Oh, I just called it the "so-called" Halloween Tarot because that's how I've talked about it and heard it described, but I didn't know if that was the actual published title of the deck - it could've been "The All-Hallows Tarot" or "Black Cat's Spooky Tarot" or something, but it's the only Halloween-themed tarot deck I am aware of. I didn't mean to denigrate it or anything, if that's what you thought.

I have since found out that it is called, in fact, The Halloween Tarot. Go figure.

Just like it sounds, it's a tarot deck themed around Halloween - the suits are changed to Imps, Ghosts, Pumpkins and Bats, things like that, and every card has a black cat in it (somewhere). It was designed and illustrated by Kipling West. Reviews I've read (since my post) say that it's pretty consistent with the Rider-Waite symbolism, given the Halloween touch, of course (in other words, it's not as free with the layout and symbolism as many "novelty" decks seem to be).

Here's the designer's page: http://members.aol.com/Pageofbats/index1.html
And here's a review of the deck: http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/halloween/review.html

It seems like good stuff, as long as one doesn't insist on their readings being solemn.

Sobek, could you say a little more about goblin energy and candy? What exactly is it that you do, if you don't mind? (Sorry, just sounded interesting to me.)

~L
 
 
Chiropteran
18:20 / 29.09.03
Khaologan23ris: Yeah, you're not kidding.

~L
 
 
Chiropteran
15:28 / 02.10.03
Well, yesterday was October 1st, the official opening day (by my reckoning) of the Halloween season.

This year, as part of my overarching goal to get my magickal butt in gear, I've decided to do a nightly meditation/devotion/working to hammer my Halloween Magick system into shape.

(I don't know if anyone's interested in the particulars, but here goes anyway, for any of you who are...)

I started last night by turning the lights down and reading some H. P. Lovecraft ("The Moon-bog"). Cheesy, maybe, but it set the mood nicely. I'll probably do this with a different horror short story or novel excerpt every night.

Then I got things rolling with the quasi-improvised Four Monsters Banishing. Basically "calling the quarters," with Dracula to the North (air), The Mummy to the South (earth), The Wolfman to the East (water) and Frankenstein's Monster to the West (fire). (I've spent a while trying out different combinations of associations, and this seems to work out best, for now.) Then I read aloud a short passage from Bradbury's "Something Wicked This Way Comes" (the bit about the Autumn People).

As silly as it might sound, I have never had a more powerful opening to a ritual, whether solo or group. As I finished the final "call," the air in the room charged up with an almost audible *thunk*, and my hands positively swarmed with gathered energy.

The feeling was so powerful that I almost considered charging a spontaneous working, but I decided to stick with the original plan, which was the "skull mask" meditation, the first step toward a full-blown Pumpkin King invokation. I have this "novelty-candelabra" with a glowing skull on top (more Mexican Day of the Dead than cartoony) which I used as a focus - kneeling ("Dragon Pose" if you prefer), I had my eyes open and fixed on the skull as I inhaled and then closed and focused on the after-image as I exhaled (I think, on reflection, that I may reverse that next time). After several long minutes of this, I felt something stirring inside me, some hints of Jack Skellington. I found myself standing, arms outflung in a classic Jack pose. My eyes were still fixed on the glowing skull, and I gradually managed to flex the image from convex to concave, like I was looking into the hollow of a mask. I reached out for the mask and pulled the visuallized (astral?) mask over my own face. Again, as with the Banishing, everything *clicked* perfectly -- and I began spontaneously dancing, ending with a flourish and Jack's signature high-pitched laugh (which I have often tried to emulate, and could never seem to do right - I got it last night!).

I was exhausted and a little off-balance (this started out a quiet, reflective meditation, right?), so I closed with another Four Monsters Banishing and relaxed with some light pranayama (a few rounds of Sama Vriti, for what it's worth).

All in all, a success (I would say), and a good start (I've got 30 more nights of this...). I'm going to try to expand into some actual workings soon.

Anyone have any questions or suggestions? I don't know if this is of any interest to anyone, but I figured I'd share (who was it who was complaining about too much theory and not enough practice? *wink*).

Good Haunting,

~L
 
 
Sobek
06:18 / 03.10.03

*Sobek, could you say a little more about goblin energy and candy?*

In his CALL OF THE HORNED PIPER, Nigel Jackson gives a simple sort of "eucharist" consecration for hallowing bread and some milk or ale to the fey. But you could do it with candy, yes? So the rough draft was to incorporate this with a standard Mass of Chaos B (as in Carroll's PSYCHONAUT). Then it is just a matter of tweaking it for aesthetics and intensity, and I incorporated some personal/idiosyncratic touches.
 
 
Chiropteran
13:39 / 03.10.03
Sobek: Thanks - something about "goblin energy" just has great resonance.

(I once "consecrated" some chocolate-covered espresso beans to "The Funk"* in a similar manner, but that's a whole different story.)

~L

[*tapping into The Awesome Power of a Fully Operational Mothership]
 
 
Sobek
16:13 / 03.10.03

My pleasure. Your post was also inspirational, and I might include some readings like you mentioned.

I have to say that I have never seen direction/element attributions like those, though.

Still, it sounds like a good time.
 
 
Chiropteran
17:01 / 03.10.03
Sobek: Thank you, neither had I, and yes it was/is, respectively.

I had a little trouble deciding how to align the Monsters, but I think it worked out pretty well - Frankenstein's Monster animated by the primal Fire, Dracula a mutable and ethereal creature of the Air, the Wolfman subject to the tidal pull of the Moon (Water), and the Mummy... well the Mummy got Earth almost by default, but I usually think of his eternal nature as indicative of an Earth-like stability, and he was also buried alive, and associated with the desert sands of Egypt. So: Earth. A little more shallow justification than the others, but it feels right in practice, which is what counts.

I just gotta think of a good Wolfman ritual for when the full moon rolls around... I wonder if I can find some wolfsbane?

~L

"The way you walked was thorny, through no fault of your own."
 
 
illmatic
17:50 / 03.10.03
Just read this thread - that's a really cool working. The sort of associations it brings up for me are the great Horror movies - Hammer House of , Bela Lugosi and all that. Be very interested to hear what transpires.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
19:34 / 03.10.03
I ran a Halloween bash at my place last year which was a good laugh. We conjured a dead spirit into a pumpkin lantern and chatted to her via ouija board. A pumpkin lantern makes a pretty good temporary spirit house - you can conjure one of the partying spirits who take to the streets at Halloween into the lantern, offering them the pumpkin flesh, the energy of the candle, and some standard offerings like candy, shot glass of rum or whisky, etc... which you also place in the pumpkin.

It went quite well, the only thing is, Halloween is a bit mad and there's so much activity going on that it was hard to get much sense out of the spirits. They all seem to be off their tits at that time of year. Communication was a little like trying to have a rational conversation with someone mashed out of their head at 4am in the dance tent at Glastonbury.

I had other ideas for Halloween related magic that we didn't have time to do properly. For example, there's a divination system just waiting to be made out of the 'ducking for apples' tradition, and there's potential for baking sigilised cakes to give to kids who come trick or treating - sigil icing encoded with intents like 'form a band' or 'change the world'. Lots of scope for Halloween magic.
 
 
Chiropteran
19:46 / 03.10.03
Illmatic: Thanks, I'm glad this is actually of some interest to someone besides myself.

Last night's ritual was just a quick run-through of the Four Monsters Banishing again -- I was drop-to-the-floor tired, and didn't dare push any farther than that (the baby's teething, so sleep is at a premium).

Sobek has given me some ideas about candy-workings, though (Thanks!), and I just bought my first bag of candy-corn... I think tonight will be primarily devotional, though I may work up a "meta-sigil" to help keep this month's work on track.

In addition to the Cardinal Monsters (and their kin) and the Pumpkin King, there are also the Saints of Horror to consider: Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney and son, Peter Cushing, and the one I have the warmest regards for, Vincent Price. Price in particular I think would be great to work with, almost conspiratorially.

Since I began, I've been thinking about what Halloween Magick is really all about. While it could conceivably be turned toward most any kind of intent, it seems like it tends toward certain areas as a function of its aesthetic and associational structure. There is a philosophy here, an underlying Something that this is working towards. I'm just not yet sure what path the blowing leaves will lead me down. Bears some thought.

~L
 
 
Chiropteran
20:00 / 03.10.03
Gypsy Lantern: a pumpkin-lantern spirit-house, huh? I just might have to give that some thought. There's just something about pumpkins that's so evokative of the wonder and magic of Halloween.

On a side-note about pumpkin-magick, I was brainstorming on ways to adapt some of the modern traditions of Halloween for explicitly magickal purposes, and one thing that came up was the time-honored practice of pumpkin-smashing. (Just in case they don't do this 'round your way, it's a form of Halloween vandalism that involves stealing someone's pumpkin and smashing it in the street. Seriously inconsiderate towards the person who put the time and energy into carving the pumpkin, and just generally childish, but there's still a hint of atavistic wildpower and madness in there somewhere which could possibly be harnessed.) Anyway, I was thinking that it might be interesting to charge a working by carving the sigil into one of my own pumpkins and give it a good smash at a crossroads at midnight, or some such thing. Of course, the way I picture it the pumpkin bursts into flames when it's smashed... Don't know what that's about.

There's a practical downside to the idea, but at this point it's still just that: an idea. Still sigilized pumpkins would be interesting. Ooh - I just pictured the sidewalk by our house lined with 24 pumpkins each carved with a Rune. It'd look cool, if nothing else.

~L
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
20:14 / 03.10.03
Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney and son, Peter Cushing, and the one I have the warmest regards for, Vincent Price.

Don't be dissing my man Christopher Lee by leaving him out of that line up. Evilest bastard to walk the earth. Not only Dracula but the Man with the Golden Gun, Saruman, Fu Manchu and a host of others. Christopher Lee is one three nippled bad mother fucker and make no mistake!
 
 
illmatic
22:36 / 03.10.03
Mr L: I think it's great the stuff your doing, and as I said I want to hear more. The only thing is, these monsters, or deities if you will, in their most horrifying aspect - full on raw essence, unmediated by Hollywood, to what degree do you want to encounter that? Not a criticism too much, I hope, it's just something that occured as n afterthough, food for thoughtt - what would happen if for instance, you got in touch with Dracula in your dreams?

Please experiment and keep me posted!
 
 
Sobek
00:12 / 04.10.03
I meant that I have only ever seen:

South: Fire
East: Air
West: Water
North: Earth

...except for when Crowley switched North and East. It was just curious, is all.

But anyway, yeah, Christopher Lee...the only Si-Fan Sith Vampire that I know of. He roolz.

Actually, I just volunteered to help out with a bit of decor/ambience at the ncc-records Autumn Apocalypse Festival with Meson and Travis Morgan. Maybe I should think about taking this sort of thing to a larger-scale. So more ideas!
 
 
Chiropteran
06:09 / 04.10.03
Gypsy Lantern: No disrespect to Christopher Lee - the only reason he's not on the list is that he's still alive. I'm really not sure how I feel about working with the spirits of the living (that's a thread waiting to happen - I may start one, now that I think of it). But no, Lee is mighty!

And, Illmatic, as far as dealing with the unmediated horror of the Monsters... There are people who voluntarily deal with the Cthulu Mythos, too. All I can say is that since I became aware of the Monsters at around five years old, I have had feelings of friendship and sympathy and even kinship with them, rather than dread. I always wanted to be the one who haunted the haunted house. I can't say what I would do if I had to deal with the presence of Dracula, but I know that it feels right and natural to be doing what I'm doing, and I'm going to trust my instincts on this one. I've hobbled myself in the past by insisting that everything be "safe" - and I ended up not doing anything. I am being cautious, though.

Sobek: very cool about the festival - let us know what you're up to. As far as the elements go, I did a little prepatory research and found groups that did several different combinations. I read an essay (somewhere online - I'd link if I could remember) that explained the usual pagan orientations as resulting from the national geography of Britain, and that one should fit their orientations to their own regional geography (e.g. someone on the U.S. Atlantic coast could take East as Water, while someone on the Pacific coast could take West - or, if your circle was just south of a large lake, Water could be North). I can't say how accurate their historical explanation was, but I liked the flavor of it. The two I was pickiest about were Water/East and Air/North. Again, they just felt right, and I am on the U.S. Atlantic coast. Fire and Earth I was less convinced about, but I decided that an opposition of Fire/Water and Air/Earth felt good, plus it gave me some appropriate Monster oppositions as well.

~L
 
 
Spaniel
09:00 / 05.10.03
Halloween festivities are fancy dress, booze and magic mushrooms all wrapped up in a big party.

Except that this year your not having one. Boo-hoo.

The other year Kao, and Celebrity decked up their house with summonings and sigils: the whole house went to shit - literally as I recall. Was that the night Dan sat on the knife and went to casualty.
 
 
Spaniel
09:01 / 05.10.03
God , that night is still resonating. I can't even post about it without littering my remarks with typos.
 
 
Chiropteran
16:28 / 06.10.03
[This is (or ought to be) reply number 31, with whatever that implies re: Halloween Magick ]

Well, a little Halloween Project update: I was casting about (npi) for a Halloween working to do with an object, some artifact that could be charged with the power of the season for some specific use (it just seemed like a good next step - and Halloween magick, I'm finding, tends to be prop-heavy, in keeping with its theatrical spirit). I wanted something that would edge its way around the corners of day-to-day prosaic reality and arouse Halloween spirit in people who are exposed to it (not in an aggressive mind-control sort of way, but by triggering lost or buried emotional associations and memories the way certain songs can - "for those who have ears to hear").

I have a set of orange and black ribbons that I wear off my belt during the season (I started wearing this particular set last year), and I decided to make them the center of the ritual. I tied small bells onto the ends of each ribbon so that they jangle fitfully when I walk.

A semi-trancey brainstorming session turned up the phrase "The Voice of Something Wondrous and Wicked, As In a Dream," which captured what I was looking for nicedly, and which I also recast into my mantra for the working ("KARU DIWO GENA MUSI FOCE VAHUTI").

After the Four Monsters Banishing (which is getting more flamboyant in gesture every time I do it, and has now incorporated "releasing the bats" as the raising of energy), I substituted the text of the song from Bradbury's The Halloween Tree (the book, as I haven't seen the movie) for the "Autumn People" reading. I went through the Skull-Mask and again invoked the Pumpkin King (invokation is still "mild," but the feeling is there and growing each time).

As Jack, I oriented the working with yet another Bradbury reading, from the beginning of his story "Homecoming" (about the October People/the Eternal Family rushing to the great Gathering on Halloween: creeping, crawling, blowing on chill winds from all the dark corners of the world) - I wanted the Bells to act as a kind of "call" to the Halloween spirit within the listener. It was a lot of fun doing the reading as Jack - H/we read aloud with a storyteller's tone, gesturing with the text and miming as though performing for a surrounding audience.

I charged the Bells with energy from the Pumpkin King while chanting the mantra. Then things got a little more free-form and I just followed where the ritual led me - including taking the Bells to the North quarter and "charging up" their bewitching, mesmerizing qualities with the infamous Hand of Legosi ("you must be double-jointed, and Hungarian..." ). Jack had a few pronouncements of His own to make, calling them "another branch on the Halloween Tree: the Goblin Bells of Autumn," and instructing them to "gather My people from all corners."

It was a good ritual, and the bells feel edgy and exciting and good. I don't have any good way of objectively measuring their effect on others, but I have been told a couple times that they're very striking (on a fashion level) - at least they're drawing attention, which is the first stage of their effect.

That was two nights ago - last night I was dead tired again, and my resolve for working through ritual proved weak (though it's probably best I didn't try to "release the bats" when I was so tired I couldn't think straight...).

More Later, probably.

~L
 
 
Chiropteran
17:48 / 06.10.03
So, I'm still wrestling a little bit with the raison d'etre of Halloween Magick. I know how it feels, I'm learning how to do/be it, but, in my usual way, I feel like I need to figure out what it's for and where it's going.

Halloween combines the spirits of the Trickster and Death ("the Orange and the Black"), and juxtaposes Fun and Fear in a way that is at once cozy and nostalgic and unsettling and terrifying. But does it carry any actionable imperative for the October People, other than to Be As They Are without compromise with the daylight world? Or is that, in itself, the great secret of Halloween? ("I dress this way just to keep Them at bay, 'cos Halloween is Everyday.") As noted in the recent Apocalypse thread, many of us have a tendency to try to fit what we do into a larger mythic framework, and that's what I'm going through right now - not an urgent "end of the world" thing, but just a "place in the world" thing.

Yes, folks, we have reached the existential portion of our show. Dim the houselights, please. :P

A big part of what I'm doing with the Halloween Project is personal mythmaking, drawing from (mostly) literary sources that have specially touched me - mostly the Autumnal works of Ray Bradbury (chiefly The Halloween Tree, From the Dust Returned, and Something Wicked...), along with Tim Burton's movie The Nightmare Before Christmas. Can anyone suggest some other good Halloween sources, books (or whatever) that really capture the wonder of the holiday?

In order to help myself come to grips with the meaning of Halloween Magick (assuming there is one) and my place within it, there are two beings whom I'm thinking it might be worth making contact with (both from Bradbury): Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud and A Thousand-Times-Great-Grandmere. Mr. Moundshroud was the trickster/teacher guide in The Halloween Tree who showed the boys the history of Halloween itself, often at their great peril - "No Treat, only Trick!" He was a good guide, with no malice towards his charges, but the paths they followed were often very dangerous - I would need to take great care if I chose to follow him. A Thousand-Times-Great-Grand-Mere, on the other hand, is depicted as quiet (!), kindly and wise - the millenia-old mummy, oldest of the Eternal Family. I think she would be well-approached with a meditative working in an old attic (her abode in the House). Of the two, she is the one I am most drawn to at the moment - though I would like to work with them both.

Meanwhile, the Full Moon is in a few days - I would like to incorporate a Wolfman/werewolf working into my ritual that night. Does anyone have any suggestions? It can be a dramatic ritual or an actual results-working, either way - I just want to stay in keeping with the lycanthropic associations of the night.

Thanks everybody for your comments as we go on - it helps harden my resolve to know that there are others out there who are interested.

Good Haunting,

~L
 
 
beautifultoxin
23:01 / 07.10.03
Mr. L, that Bela Lugosi invocation is priceless!

I think candy magic has lots of potential. I would only caution you to ground deep back into the cold, wet, dark earth after getting all hopped up on sugar. Of course, you may want to adapt a grounding for the 31 days of the rite, with a very determined grounding once you are done.

I've heard more and more Pagans & Witches say that you have to pay attention to the whole cycle of Samhain -- now whether or not this due to American advertising or an energetic shift or both isn't really important. It just is. Riding with a season to fuel a longterm working, yes, yes, yes. It makes for such efficient work, too. You have so much energy building that each day you may only have to add a dash yourself.

I wonder if you could go trick or treating and save the candy to charge, offer a portion (the FIRST portion, of course) as a libation at somewhere apropos -- a crossroads sounds perfect. You could trace a sigil in the earth with pixie sticks. You could be especially wicked and charge the candy you dispense to the neighborhood kids with some benign and sweet effect. "May the dentist be gentle." "May your mummy still love you when you dye your hair green." "May this spirit always charm you." But that's taking thing to a karmic level of debt you may not want to cope with.

My own Samhain work has become Halloween work, spanning all of October and what's hit me hardest is moving from the gorgeous New England Autumn -- the apex of Halloween! -- to the Summerland of the Bay Area, where things are green and feel like FaerieLand. Well, we do we have mighty fog. But it's not the same. I'd go crunch in some leaves and make a dust of them, charge it right now, and hold onto it all year. (And post me a vial of it! *g*)

Have you thought of doing any work with scarecrows? Greenfield, MA had a big scarecrow contest last year, and my Feri teacher used her's as spell/servitor that she later installed in the window of her shop. Maybe making a spooky little scarecrow dollie.

And Sally. If you are Jack, do you get to stitch a Sally?

(I need to see the film again.)
 
 
Chiropteran
04:16 / 08.10.03
beautifultoxin: 1 vial of crushed and charged leaves with your name on it - check. Before you asked.

Well, I've spent most of the day fixated on the online lycanthrope community looking for inspiration for my full moon working on the 10th. I've got some ideas, but I'd appreciate any suggestions. I'm not looking for a shifting ritual or anything - more something werewolf themed.

More work with Jack tonight - after the rest of the household has gone to sleep. *groan* I may take a walk down to the local pumpkin farm for a little while to pass the time.

~L

UKOMA PEFIGU NOSA LEHITU ROBA
 
  

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