Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Samhain Experience

I have this posted elsewhere but want to delete it there. I want to not lose it as I dont think I could perfectly re-post it again word for word so Im pasting it here.
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I wanted to share the experience DH and I had last night during our Samhain celebration.
We didnt do a formal ritual to celebrate, instead we had a mute/dumb dinner. If you are unfamiliar with this its basically a dinner to invite ancestors to join you and there is no noise made during the dinner.
You use fall fruits and veggies and there are cakes called Soul Cakes you can make as well. Plus whatever meat seems appropriete.
You use black everything...forks, plates, cups, candle, tablecloth. You only eat by candlelight and you put items representing your ancestors on the table(pictures, items of theirs or that you feel represents them,etc).
So here is how our night went....
**We couldnt do this while our boys were awake because they could never have kept quiet LOL, so we waited til they were all in bed(a little after 9p).
Once down I got the table set up and plates ready to go. We had apple slices and I made Dumb Cakes, we didnt do a full feast because it was later so it was more like Mute/Dumb dessert LOL.
After all was set up I took a sage stick and cleansed the table area as well as DH and myself. Then DH lit the candle and I turned off the light and we sat and watched the flame and looked at the pictures we'd laid out.
I recently lost my great Aunt but I dont have a picture of her but I did write her a message that I would burn later so I focused on that and in my mind I saw her face and conversations we'd had over the years. I dont know what was going on in DH's head but a lot of it had to do with his mom...he misses her terribly and she's never out of his thoughts.
I just want to say this next part is something DH and I both experienced and questioned each other about after we were in bed.
Twice, while we were focusing on our ancestors the candle flame seemed to take direction all on its own. There was no wind blowing through the house, no a/c on, we werent breathing on it.
The flame stopped flickering and pointed, literally, in the direction of our family pictures and then pointed first to DH and then to me and then back to the pictures. It did this twice during our "dinner". Different times it wasnt twice in a row.
It was really neat and definately gave us the impression someone or several someones were about and letting us know they were there and all was well.
Another thing I notced but DH didnt was the wall. There were times the flame wasnt flickering much but Id look at the wall and the top of DH's mom/grandma picture frames were moving up and down, up and down.
The other thing I noticed is that at first I was quite hot then my body went back to normal temp except around my shoulder area...felt like I had a shawl wrapped around me.
It was a VERY beautiful experience!!! Something we look forward to repeating next year.
One other thing...
When we went to burn my message to my great Aunt DH noticed that as it burned in the pan the message burned bright red. He also caught(I saw it but didnt realize it was odd cuz I dont burn paper much LOL) that the envelope itself was doing some strange burning where it would have little tiny sparks going in and out, in and out.
Overall, Im so glad we did this and look forward to do it for many years to come and especially bringing the boys into it once they are old enough to be still LOL.

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