(thinking out loud) Wicca & All Hallows Eve, seen and "practiced" from the outside.

Wicca & All Hallows Eve, seen and "practiced" from the outside.


All Hallows Eve (Halloween) is around the corner, once again, and it's always a good time to share ideas about transition and change. Welcome again to my virtual corner, I am Elhoim, and without unnecessary introductions, here is my post.

Buon'Italia, Chelsea Market, New York City (2018)

Wicca, different from what many claims around, is not the oldest religion on earth (you're welcome), it is a reconstructionist religious movement of the old Indo-European religion, in more technical terms (that someone else will always contradict, well we are in the era of "I'm on Twitter and therefore I assume I have something to say") is a modern pagan or neopagan religion, focused on the reconstructionism of the path of the goddess and the horned god, with a strong influence of the modern esoteric cult (modern witchcraft).

'All Hallow Eve' or popularly known as "Halloween", is an annual celebration that revolves around October 31 (Halloween) and coincides with the liturgical dates dedicated to remembering the dead, including all saints ( the hallows), the martyrs, the ancestors, and all the faithful departed.

Halloween has a strong influence (and probably origin) from ancient Celtic harvest festivals, especially Samhain, a pagan festival later Christianized as "All Hallow's Day".

Buon'Italia, Chelsea Market, New York City (2018)

Now, that is basically the introductory information that you are going to find in some books. If you live in Northern Europe, Uk, North America, everything sounds very beautiful and in perfect coordination with the celebration of the four seasons, etc, etc, etc ... If you live in the southern hemisphere, well, the situation is complicated a little when you have to adjust the calendars, because it is a little strange (very odd) to celebrate the arrival of the sun and the rise of summer, while you know that on the other side of the planet, other human beings are preparing for the cold and chaotic winter.

Now, let's complicate it a bit more, just like math equations in high school, once you've mastered equations and fractions, someone came up with mixing them up and adding parentheses, Greek letters, and equations within equations (for nothing, because once you graduate and go to college, none of that information is going to help you when you discover that math in college uses 100% different formulas), well, something like that.


Imagine that you do not live in the northern hemisphere, and no, you do not live in the southern hemisphere either, you live in the middle of the equator, in the middle of the tropics. While in the north they are celebrating the cold winter, you are on the beach in incredibly high temperatures (often surrounded by gringos who come to vacation with their cute floral shirts), months later, while in the south they are celebrating (also) winter, you are on the beach, on a hot day of your eternal summer, hotter each year, to a dangerously hot point.

And now imagine that in the middle of all this, you are reading a book on Wicca, where someone wrote "this is the darkest time of the year when the fairies hide among the trees and the gods sleep a long winter nap", you read that while you are drinking your pina colada by the pool with your white bathing suit surrounded by guys with big hats and jockstraps of all colors.

An Autumn/Fall Season "Altar" in Chelsea Market, NYC.

When you come from outside of these countries where Wicca seems to have a greater natural fluency (USA, UK, etc...) it is most likely that this "naturalistic" movement that celebrates the seasons may sound strange, especially when the time is approaching. Halloween in the middle of October, and the television channels offer you these long marathons of Halloween movies, where you do not stop seeing pumpkins and caramel apples everywhere (someone really likes to eat old apples covered in caramel and plastic that leave hands clogged? really?).

In some countries such as Chile and Argentina, Halloween is like a cult theme intimately related to the pagan movement and Wicca, it is not something properly celebrated, especially because Halloween night (October 31) while in the US the nights are slowly becoming long and cold, and the trees are offering colorful panoramas of orange, yellow, ocher, and a variety of dark greens, in the countries of the South during those precise moments spring is in full swing and the flowers are in their greatest splendor.

Although modern Wicca books (with some very rare exceptions) are more focused on collecting spells, and more spells, and another set of spells, and 200 more spells that you will never use (but you still buy the book because you know it is going to look nice and interesting in an Instagram photo), Wicca is still a movement more focused (and probably has been since its origin) in celebrating nature in all its expressions, including among these, the changes of seasons, the phases lunar, life and death, and natural cycles of transformation, which include from the evolution of butterflies as a metaphor for reincarnation, to the menstrual cycles of women (men are not included here yet because we do not yet have enough evidence to test our mood swings month by month).

While in North America the arrival of autumn is characterized by changes in temperature, the fall of the leaves, and the color changes of the trees, and a mystical inexhaustible source of pumpkin spice coffee and cake everywhere that makes you happy from the first Sip, and obviously, ... It is time to start decorating, but the perspective when you come from outside consists more in appreciating these natural changes, changes that are not visible in your countries, such as trees with red and orange foliage, covered streets of leaves, squirrels running everywhere, and cool breezes every night after a fairly sunny day, you know, those things that people around you take for granted.

A beautiful autumn day walking in Bear Mountain, New York.

Now, what can we do during this season?

The veil between the worlds is perceived thinner than usual (whatever that means because everyone writes it in their posts because it sounds interesting but nobody explains it!). Samhain is so close that spirits and ghosts are more easily perceived in all corners, an air of nostalgia takes over all places, perhaps because your ancestors are closer to you now than usual and you can perceive their presence trying to get closer to you from the other side.

There are ten thousand spells that you can put into practice, there are a hundred books out there with complete cookbooks for it, but perhaps the most important thing is, how do you feel during this season and how do you feel your energy? Do you feel that it is a good time to perceive your ancestors and try to connect with them? Or do you feel that it is simply a good time to remember them in serenity and let them leave and move forward knowing that everything is fine? And how will you do it? Will you build a beautiful altar dedicated to your ancestors with their photographs and some lamps or candles to illuminate their path? Or will you light a candle in a corner praying on behalf of each one of them to help them reach rest? what will you do?. There are no wrong answers.

My book in the wild, three years ago.

Sending blessings to everyone, with love & kindness, Elo.