Free How to Become a Witch by Amber K. Page A

family lineage, your ancestry. Learn what lessons you can from your family history. Honor your elders. Remember your beloved dead.
    Meditate on death, transition, the afterlife, the spirit world, and reincarnation.
    Think about yourself, someday, as someone’s ancestor—what will be your legacy to your descendents? Will they have reason to remember and admire you, and to take you as a role model?
    Your personal harvest is done for the year, so you can spend some time in rest and reflection. In some Pagan traditions, Samhain is the New Year. For others, it is the beginning of the dark time, and Yule is the New Year. Take a deep breath. Hibernate. Spend time at home with your family. Use this time wisely.
    Review the past year. What new understanding has the past year brought to you? With that perspective, what do you hope to do in the New Year that is a continuation—or different?
    Activities for Samhain: Make shrines to your honored dead. Invite them to attend a dumb supper with their favorite foods. Bring out a scrying mirror, tarot cards, or runestones, and do some divination about the year to come (see chapter 10). Share stories about your ancestors, friends, and family who have passed on.
    Deities for the Season: Get to know something about your deities of the dead now, so you won’t be shy when you meet them later.
    Underworld Gods: Hades, Osiris, Thoth, Anubis, Manannán mac Lir
    Underworld Goddesses: Ereshkigal, Hel, Persephone, Ceridwen, Hecate, Selket, Ma’at, Kali, the Morrigan
    Hollow turnips?
    Legend says that on All Hallows Eve, the glowing faces of goblins could be seen bobbing through the darkness. Best for good Christian folk to stay inside for safety! The “goblins,” however, were large, hollowed turnips with faces carved in them and candle stubs inside. The followers of the Old Religion preferred not to have their Samhain celebrations interrupted, so they gave the Christian folk a little scare so that they’d leave the sabbat dances in peace. Many years later, in America, people found that pumpkins also made wonderful jack-o’-lanterns.
    So those are the eight primary celebrations, or sabbats, that Witches observe as the Wheel of the Year turns around and around and around again.
    Sabbat Exercises
Research a deity appropriate to the coming sabbat.
Find songs, chants, or instrumental music appropriate to the sabbat theme.
If you are part of a coven, take charge of one part of the sabbat celebration: decorations and altar, the feast, the music, reading a myth or legend aloud, or the games.
Draw your own Wheel of the Year; decorate and color it. Display it near
your altar.
Decorate your personal altar (see chapter 3) appropriately to the season.
What ideas, impressions, or feelings does this season bring to mind? Is it connected to vividly important events in your memories? How do these color your feelings about this time of year?
Brainstorm what you like about this season, what’s difficult, and what you can do to make it easier or more joyful.
What are your favorite and least favorite seasons, and why?
Do you have friends or relatives who have been more closely involved with the land and the seasons than you have? Farmers, ranchers, fishermen, park rangers? Talk with them about their experiences.
What sabbat most intrigues or attracts you? Why? Do some research on it—start with Llewellyn’s sabbat series of books, listed in appendix A.
    The Cycles Of the Moon
    To our distant ancestors, the prey of fearsome creatures that stalked by night, the moon and fire were sources of illumination and safety. To poets much later, the moon was a symbol of romance and adventure: Alfred Noyes proclaimed that “the moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.” To modern society, the moon may be a handy waystation to the exploration of outer space.
    For Witches, the moon is the symbol and embodiment of the Goddess as Maiden, Mother, and Crone, and it’s usually the feminine counterpart to the masculine