The witching hour beckons

The Wiccan community in Mumbai will be marking Halloween on Sunday by remembering their ancestors

Even as Mumbai prepares to celebrate Diwali on Sunday with great pomp, the small Wiccan community in the city is all set to mark Halloween. While in most places around the world, Halloween is celebrated by dressing up in scary costumes and reciting horror stories, the witches of the Wiccan community prefer to invoke their ancestors via rituals.

Psychic healer and writer Sangeeta Krishnan explains, “Halloween is one of the major Wiccan festivals. It comes from worship of the Sun, and the time of Samhain, meaning summer’s end.” Wicca is a modern, global religious movement that draws from ancient pagan rituals, and the idea of Do No Harm. She says, “Wiccans don’t brew frogs’ tongues, lizards or newts. Many are actually vegan and try to minimise suffering of other beings, even while we use cauldrons, brooms and ‘magickal’ wands.” They prefer using the term ‘magick’ to magic, the latter being a term for on-stage theatrics.

The founder of magick store Global Wicca, Swati Prakash, adds, “Symbolically, it’s a hallowed time because of the change of Earth’s cycle from one of life (or summer) towards death (or winter). It’s a great time to honour our ancestors or deceased family members, and also to focus on inner or spiritual work involving intuition, divination, just like Diwali. Paganism is a word for numerous nature-based and indigenous spiritual paths. Both Hinduism and Wicca are part of it. And just like Diwali is the transition point for the Hindu pagan year, Halloween is celebrated as the end of one pagan year.”

Both Swati and Sangeeta point out that Halloween, like Diwali, is a festival where lights play a huge role. “Candles and lanterns are used to decorate each home with the symbolic purpose of protection as we enter the darker and colder months,” says Swati. Sangeeta adds that a burning candle placed within a carved pumpkin is supposed to help guide loved ones home. In Wiccan and neo-pagan beliefs, there’s supposed to be a veil that separates seeing entities with energies that the eye cannot catch. “Samhain is thought to be the time when the veil between the worlds are the thinnest, and we can get in touch with souls and entities from the other world, and ‘see through the veil’.”

So what will Sangeeta be doing to mark the festival “I’ll visit a place of nature,” she says. “The Wiccan ritual will be a simple one, following traditional ritual format of invoking the watchtowers, God and Goddess, and our ancestors. Offerings are made to all the invoked entities, and the ritual then follows with meditation and casting a spell. Certain ‘magickal’ workings are done for this specific time. This time I will be honouring my ancestors and doing some ‘shadow work,’ an important ritual involving acknowledging one’s Shadow side.”

Swati sighs as she talks about the misconceptions surrounding the community. “Due to misinformation surrounding the topic of spirits, witches and ancestor worship, people associate this festival with ghosts and stereotyped evil witches. But witches are wise folk, not evil. And Samhain is a positive opportunity to connect with spirits to seek their blessings, and to send healing should they need it. It is also a good opportunity to remember our inner spiritual power which is the true meaning of magick and witchcraft,” she signs off.