Halloween

Each year as children we dressed up to step out of ourselves and into some character to roam the neighbourhood dressed as spirits or animals, calling out “trick or treat” and gathering candy from neighbours, I remember the fun of my youth. I loved pouring through the box of old clothes in our basement and creating a new character for myself for halloween night. Even as a young girl it bothered me though that among the many character choices, witches were described as ugly and dangerous, especially old witches, this word used to point to and accuse old women of putting “evil spells” on people, these women to be avoided, ridiculed and laughed at. It bothered me that of all the halloween characters it was old women who were ridiculed. I wondered at a very young age about my own future, knowing that one day I would be an old woman.

The Halloween holiday for me has roots in the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, a celebration of the harvest. On the night of October 31, halfway between autumn and winter, people would light bonfires and wear costumes in recognition of a connection to the spirit world. It was believed that as the nights grew longer, ghosts of the dead returned to earth on this night.

As young women searching for our roots many of us embraced and celebrated the bits and pieces we were able to find about our ancestresses. We felt the loss of information, faced ongoing censorship and researched the hidden information about and the torture of our ancestresses. The meeting in circles for information sharing, for carrying our ancient ceremonies so closely related to the trees, the gathering of healing herbs, the power of making music together, the healing we were able to experience and offer, that we felt in our bones. 

The burning, the drownings, the torture, the murder of women as witches was real and continues today in many of its original forms toward women who break the rules of patriarchy. These dictates are carried by communities globally, the punishment of women who have broken some rule. The torture and murders of women were and are intentional to remind us that to speak out against the control of women, daring to speak about times and places in which women’s leadership was and is respected, will bring defamation of character and other forms of punishment. Here in Canada we continue to experience the ongoing ridiculing of women, the demonization of women who dare to lead, deeply evident in the years of work by Indigenous women across this land known as Turtle Island, calling for action to recognize, honour and respect the traditional leadership of women and to continue to hold in our hearts the thousands of missing and murdered women and girls now absent from their communities, never to be forgotten. Globally as women we continue to experience the intentional withholding of money from women for the work being done and the ridiculing of outspoken women who dare to describe a world free of poverty and violence, women who dare to research the truth of the past and to bring it forward to be held unapologetically, importantly and sacredly as crucial in the healing and growth of our global community.

Like many of my sisters I have long held circles for women, talking circles, information circles, planning circles, healing circles. They are as natural to me as gardening, as trees. The circles we sisters make possible are the backbone of healing, of teaching, of carrying forward traditions of our foremothers. May we never be forced to apologize for what we do, in this world we are collectively building together. 

Each Halloween I remember my ancestresses and dare to carry forward such a simple and necessary tradition. I feel my ancestresses with me. “Meet under the trees”, they whisper in sweet song through the sound of the branches in the wind. “Take this time together unapologetically. Heal and feel the strength in this sacred time. This gift of meeting and meeting again is what we have long dreamed.

“In Europe throughout the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, nine million women were burned or hanged as witches. This represents eighty nine women murdered every day for three hundred years”. Andrea Dworkin, “LIFE AND DEATH” 2002

The old ethnic names for "witch" signify ‘wisewoman' ‘prophetess', ‘diviner', ‘chanter', ‘herbalist’ and ‘healer chanter’ WITCHES AND PAGANS: WOMEN IN EUROPEAN FOLK RELIGION, 700-1100 Max Dashu https://www.suppressedhistories.net/