"The exigencies of a life based in fear never seem to end. The blessings of a life based in love are effulgent. A significant portion of the world is now counting down to Samhain, with a variety of interpretations of what that is, and, with either a fear based superstition about it, or an informed awareness of this signifier of the turning of a quarter of a year." -- crystal faeries
The Celts:
Though there are no written records of the original practices of Samhain,
we can trace the roots of the festival to about 4000 BCE
through folk tales and information provided by folk histories.
At this time our ancestors, particularly in the Celtic world,
were holding ceremonial bonfires on hilltops during this time of the year.
The exact nature of the celebration has been lost
but the fact that they occurred is well documented.
Practices of later times are well documented and the general themes are given below.
For the Celts Samhain was an acknowledgment of the end of summer,
of the beginning of the New Year,
a time to divine the future, and a time to honor the dead,
one of the two times of the year when it was beleived that
the living could cross into the lands of the dead; the other was Beltane.
Samhain was viewed as existing outside of time, so this crossing over was possible.
This was a two-way street, however,
and it was also viewed as a time when the dead walked the land
and could communicate with the living.
The Celts beleived in an afterlife.
They also beleived that their ancestors could communicate with them and,
if approached correctly, could help them.
For these reasons,
the Celts would leave food on the table for deceased members of the family,
even ancient ancestors.
They also did divination work and asked for information about past,
present and future events from these ancestors.
They also beleived in, and greatly respected, faeries.
These energies were of the people who had owned the land
and been destroyed, driven underground or between worlds
by the coming of the Celts.
These spirits were honored and warded against,
because on Samhain eve it was believed that
the faeries could mix with the [mankind] world,
create trouble for, or even take a few people with them.
-- Clark Brean
"We would like to suggest that in any grouping or categorization of entities, that no judgment passed upon the group is truly applicable to all members thereof. It is of aloha and ahimsa to not operate in fear-based prejudice about any groups, especially so with superstitious fear others have 'bought into' and would like to convince us 'is real'. Given that most of the lore about the physically 'unseen' or 'unseeable' entities is based in fear, the assignment of blame for undesired manifestations, to unseen entities, can result in ascription to whatever catergory of unseen one most greatly fears. From another perspective, one may wish to consider that, the faeries chose not to descend into 'the fall' in which [mankind] participated, and only now through the (re-)ascension of [mankind] to higher realms, is [mankind] rejoining the faeries in sharing a reality." -- crystal faeries