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Welcome to the inaugural issue of the Ogham Leaves Gazette! This new Grove newsletter will be published quarterly, with new issues at Samhain, Imbolc, Beltaine, and Lughnassadh. Each new issue will contain articles on Grove business, feature articles and activities related to the High Day at hand, special sections for New Druids and the Druid Family, as well as Sacred Space (an area to help you bring your practice into your daily life), Reviews, and Highlights of what's currently happening at The New Forest House, our invitation-only online community.
We hope you will find this a valuable addition to your total "Grove experience." If you would like to submit an article, poem, etc. to a future issue, please email it to Ard Brehon Neide or Ollamh Brighid.
Enjoy!
Brightest Blessings,
Ard Brehon Neide
Ollamh Brighid
Editors
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Samhain: Fright Night
by Ard Brehon Neide
Our Ancestors saw Samhain as a liminal or "between" time when the veils between the worlds were thin and faeries, mischievious spirits, and the dead walked abroad. Candles were lit to light the paths of the wandering dead, and the first jack-o-lanterns were carved from turnips (pumpkins are not indigenous to Europe) to frighten away more malignant spirits not only in an effort to protect the living, but the Beloved Dead as well. It was a night of celebration of the recent harvest and expectance of the coming year, but it was also a dark night; a frightening time when our Ancestors chose to face their fears.
Storytellers might gather the clan around the fire and whisper tales of witches and beansidhe and the dullahan--the headless horseman who called the souls of the dying. Through these tales, our Ancestors could face the darkness within and without, in much the same way that we do when we watch Hellraiser, or Friday the 13th, or Halloween. Our Ancestors knew what we must learn: fear can be very empowering.
Fear can also teach us morality. For many of us, the things we fear create for us personal taboos--taboos which are not that different from the geasa (a type of oath) of our Ancestors. Cuchulain, for example, was under the geasa not to eat dog meat, because dog was his totem; he was also under geasa to accept hospitality (one of our Six Values) whenever it was offered. Together, the two proved to be his downfall. If one is, for example, afraid of the dark, then it becomes taboo to sleep without a light on. Our partners in life then are placed under geasa to leave the lamp on when they come to bed. Just as one of Cuchulain's geasa bred in him gratitude and recognition of hospitality, so this would breed a level of loyalty in the household.
We are all aware, when watching scary movies, of certain unspoken "rules" of survival inherent in slasher cinema. For example, if you want to live to see the end credits, you don't have sex with your girlfriend, the babysitter, and leave the children alone downstairs. This is a taboo which also dictates an unspoken geasa: do not be dishonest, disloyal, and dishonor yourself by shirking your responsibilities. Those who break this geasa in the movies are usually summarily punished via a grisly meeting with a meat cleaver or an axe. Hopefully, when we breach our own geasa, the results will not be so final and violent. But the "unwritten rules" we see played out in modern horror films are not less "morality plays" because they are accompanied by technicolor gore than are stories such as that of Cuchulain. We can learn a lot about keeping our Celtic Values from Michael Myers (of Halloween, not the guy from Austin Powers!) and Neve Campbell (the Scream trilogy), if we know what we are looking for and watch with an open mind.
This Samhain, while paying your respects to your Ancestors, remember to also take a moment to remember their lessons on fear. After dinner, pop an extra bowl of popcorn for the dearly departed, and let our modern storytellers remind you of your own personal taboos--as well as those of this Grove--while you thank Deity you're not the one paying on the screen!
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