Why you shouldn't celebrate Halloween in the Southern hemisphere on October 31...

It is coming up to October 31 and I notice that a lot of people have put out Halloween/Samhain decorations in Australia. This is ill-advised because celebrating Halloween or Samhain on Beltane's eve is really bad magick and is bad luck.

The Pagan Wheel of Life originates in the Northern Hemisphere and therefore in the Southern Hemisphere, most Pagans advance these dates six months so as to coincide with the natural seasons as they occur in their local climates. Thus, an Australian Pagan will celebrate Beltane on the 1st of November, when a British Pagan is celebrating Samhain which is also known as Halloween. In the Southern hemisphere we celebrate Beltane on 1 November and we celebrate Samhain/Halloween on April 30/May 1.

To celebrate Halloween/Samhain during Beltane is a sacrilege and is really bad magick and bad luck.

In Australia, Beltane, the beginning of the summer months is at the November cross-quarter. Beltane is the spring fertility festival and there is feasting and celebration. Beltane is the festival of the Great Rite – of the sexual union between Goddess and God. Beltane is the most popular time for Witches to be handfasted (married). This is also the time when the brilliant red flowers of the Flame Trees highlight Australian forests and gardens as does the purple Jacaranda. The Melbourne Cup our famous horse race, is happily coincident with southern Beltane, being run on the first Tuesday in November and is taken as an unofficial holiday by many right across Australia.

On the other hand, Samhain or Halloween is the time when the boundary is thinnest between the worlds of living and dead; the powers of divination, the Sight, and supernatural communication are strengthened on Samhain night, and it is considered a powerful but dangerous time to communicate with lost loved ones. Pagans celebrate Samhain as an acknowledgement that without death, there can be no rebirth.

At Samhain, the darkness increases and the Goddess reigns in her powerful aspect of the Crone. The God passes into the underworld to become reborn of the Goddess again at Yule. It is a time to honour those who have gone before us and it is a poignant co-incidence that Australia's and New Zealand's day of Remembrance for their fallen in war, ANZAC Day on April 25, should be so close to the southern Samhain.

Beltane and Samhain are two spirit-nights of the Wheel of the Year where the veil between the worlds is at the thinnest and powers of divination are their strongest and you should be careful of the energies that are around on these two nights.

The Pagan Wheel of the Year turns through many significant dates and festivals. The highlights is the the eight seasonal Sabbats, and the thirteen Esbats which are celebrated each Full Moon.

The Sabbats are divided into two groups. The Greater Sabbats; Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane and Lammas, which fall on dates that represent high energy in the season. The Greater Sabbats are also known as the "cross-quarter" days as they mark the point between the solstice and the equinox.

The Lesser Sabbats; Yule, Ostara, Litha and Mabon, fall on the equinoxes and solstices, the dates of which vary slightly from year to year, and they mark the changes of the four seasons.

This seasonal cycle of the Wheel of the Year is one of the key ways in which we see the processes of birth, growth, death, and rebirth play themselves out, and the myth of the Wheel of the Year was created to illustrate this cycle.

In midwinter, the Goddess gives birth to a son, the God, who grows to adolescence by spring. In spring, the Goddess appears to the God in a youthful form. She falls pregnant to him and grows in beauty through summer and autumn. Over the same time, the God ages and slowly dies, symbolising winter. In the darkest time, when the days are at their shortest, the Goddess gives birth to her son, the God, whom she will again take as a lover in spring, continuing the life cycle or spiral.

In this myth the Goddess goes through the changing aspects of Maiden, Mother, and Crone.

The God brings forth the force of projective energy, the Spark of Life, and also the withdrawing and destructive energy of Death. The Goddess absorbs, reflects and transforms these energies. The Goddess and God are viewed as immortal and imperishable; they are the Duality of the Divine.

Their different aspects are a symbolic shifting of cycles, ones we discover within ourselves, our World and throughout our own lives. This is the process that produces balance; within and without, above and below.

In spite of modern lifestyles and insulation from the natural world, we are still dependent upon the forces of nature, and contemporary Witches observe the Sabbats to establish and maintain a balance with nature.

Sabbats are also a time for the Witch to look within, to reassess the life-path taken so far, and to reaffirm the directions she or he wishes to take in the future.

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