In the Southern Hemisphere, 30 April marks the pagan festival of Samhain, sometimes known as witches' New Year's Eve. In Wicca, a modern pagan religion followed by witches, it's the night when they say the veil between the living and the dead is thinnest.
Rowan of Wycksted describes herself as a green witch. She lives rurally in Kaipara and follows traditions handed down through generations.
For her, celebrating the Wicca new year is a time of family gatherings with ceremony and tradition, both serious and fun.
Rowan runs Wycksted.co.nz, an online witches store, repository for Wicca information, and — since Covid put a pause on covens — the site for the Wycksted School of Witchery.
She spoke to Kim Hill.
Photo: pexels.com
Her celebrations for Samhain are centred around honouring ancestors.
"It's like this part and this time of the year is just that special moment when we know that they seem to be so much closer. For us as a family we like to get together and we have a feast and it's all about the food.
"And we do a serious side when the children aren't around, and we do the more sort of fun Halloween parts with the grandkids - at the moment they're carving pumpkins with grandad."
"The adults usually have a baelfire [bonfire] going and might do some divination... because Samhain, there's various times within the hours that are great."
Loki - one of the many cats of Wycksted - sitting among one of witch Rowan's kids Samhain altars. Photo: Wycksted
Rowan said Samhain marks the transition of winter into autumn. She explained why the veil between the living and dead is at its thinnest:
"It was at that time for the ancients that was a time of great worry for them. They felt that the winter time you've got to really take heed of what's happening; Can you feed your animals? Can you feed your family? And it was just that because there was a lot of slaughter mainly with the animals ...
"Because of lot of these farmers couldn't hold all their cattle over winter and house them, so there was that time where then was probably a lot more death going into winter, older people.... so it was like this veil sort of marked that transition from the dark autumn going into the start of the depths of winter."
Wicca is deeply steeped in ancient traditions, she said.
"All my festivals for me personally are pagan-ancient, way before Christianity ever came about ... to me these are festivals that go back so far, when our ancestors worshipped the land, they lived by the seasons, the moon, the tides, that was how their life was governed, they had their gods and their goddesses.
"That was how I was taught, to honour the ways of the ancients. There's a lot of people out there practising, and they do it in their own ways and traditions, and good for them because it's about doing what you feel right about doing, what is true to you, honouring yourself and your ancestors."
Day to day, Rowan said every day she gives thanks when she wakes, she likes to take time out by feeling the earth beneath her feet and getting outside.
Her training in Wicca was for a year and a day, and she was taught the various gods and goddesses, herbal magic, divination, spells, magic, casting circles, energy and protection.
"This is ancient, our ancestors they all knew their herbs, so when they went out to hunt they would make a sachet or they would take something with them... carry it with them and that was an amulet for protection for a good hunt, and that's no different than a spell nowadays."
