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Page: Profile: Wren's Nest News Local
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Article: 11404
[Pagan]
Date Posted:
10/31/2004
12:56:55 pm EST
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Comments: 1
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The Witches' New Year
Author: Leah Ray Source: The Malaysia Star (Malaysia)
Title: THE WITCHES' NEW YEAR
Halloween is a favourite holiday for kids, with its fantastical trappings of ghosts and monsters, black cats and Jack-o-Lanterns, candy and costumes. You may not know it, but it is also celebrated by modern witches, or followers of Wicca, as their New Year.
Modern witches generally celebrate eight sabbats, or festivals, in the cycle of the year, with Halloween perhaps the most important and best-loved of all. It is the end of one year and the beginning of a new one. It is a harvest festival, a day of the dead and a potent night for magic and divination.
Whether the Celtic elements of the Wiccan way are, as some say, survivals of an old religion maintained in secret over the centuries or antique customs self-consciously revived, modified and melded into a new faith in modern times is irrelevant. One obvious adaptation is the inversion of the dates of the annual cycle to fit the seasons in the Southern Hemisphere. October isn’t harvest time in Australia! Witches in Oz celebrate Samhain on 1st May.
Some Wiccans believe in a Horned God and a Goddess, who symbolise the sun and moon and embody the male and female principles of the universe. Many of these witches believe that Halloween marks the annual death of the Horned God and his passage into the underworld. They honour his self-sacrifice with rituals and prayers, and look forward to his rebirth at the Winter Solstice.
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Community Thoughts: There are 1 comments posted | Reverse Sort |
| Pretty Good | Oct 31st. at 4:29:44 pm EST |
by MeritAset (Sydney, Australia) - wc_xemail - Web
It's always a good thig to see a non-hysterical piece written on all things Pagan.
The only thing I disagree with is that Witch and Wiccan are not interchangeable. Anyone can practise Witchcraft. Not all Witches are Wiccan.
But apart from that, good enty.
BB,
MeritAset
) O (
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