The Witch of Forest Grove

The Sidhe told me blue was for my blood ancestors and in the tradition I was trained in we light blue candles for the dead.  I brought home white roses and white stars of Mary; beautiful flowers the colour of bones bleached by the sun.

After sunset I lit the candles and beat my blue drum to welcome the dead. I prepared a feast of fresh-baked buttered bread, ribs and chicken wings (for the bones) and a plate of sweets with a bowl of chocolate covered pomegranate. In my best crystal I left libations of mead, milk, and water. On the blue altar I left offerings of honey and tobacco.

The candles burned down and they feasted well. The food will be taken to the graveyard, some buried and some left at the base of the trees that grow there.

I didn’t set up the altar to the Mighty Dead until it was almost midnight and the crackle and squeal of fireworks had died down in the neighbourhood. I sanded, stained, and rubbed the wood with beeswax and blessing oil. I stayed up late screwing the small wooden shrines into the walls and filling them with their magical contents. I snuck out into the night to harvest bows of yew and berries of firethorn from the forested park of crows.

The old White Bone Mother finally finds a home with skulls of goat and deer for Old Man and Old Woman. I set up the altar below the black, white, and red shrines to the Mighty Dead –the Ancestors of Witch. I light the red candles and the beeswax candles of my goat and cauldron candlesticks and I beat my red drum and welcome the spirits:

“Black spirits and white,
Red spirits and grey,
Come ye and come ye,
Come ye that may!
Around and around,
Throughout and about,
The good come in
And the ill keep out.”

I ate with the dead biting flesh off of bone, devouring bread, licking sugar from mincemeat tarts, and drinking deeply of mead. I felt their hunger. We watched Pan’s Labyrinth in the dark together – a fitting tale for such a dark Samhuin night. I brought out my cards, my oldest deck, and read them for myself and a few others. Then it was finally to bed to dream of witches and seers.

This is only the beginning dear witches. This is the welcome home; for the dead are with us until February. The altars will stay up and offerings will be continuous throughout the dark winter and its darker nights. The dreams and visions have already begun and old stories are on the tip of the tongue. Tales are best told in the dark when magic and spirits are so close you can touch them. A merry Samhuinn to you all!