I wish I had others like me my cousin has the same gifts but she so shaken when the spirits come and wake her up and their there last Halloween I was at her house and there was a spirit of a little girl looking in her screen door she said do you see her I said of course and the little girl disappeared so she doesn't like to talk about it .
I will probably sit on the grass in my backyard and mediate, listening to the last of the birds chirping and the last bit of green grass.(that is if it doesn't snow by then)
Well, every halloween, I barely sleep, so I can be up all night. I generally take the kids trick or treating, then I go and do a seance and I honour all of the people who died. I generally attract spirits a lot, so by halloween, it is wicked awesome.
Samhain and Halloween are actually two different things.
Samhain is a Pagan holiday which came down to us from the ancient Celts (although we don't know much of what it meant to them.) For modern Pagans it is both the last of the harvest celebrations and a day to honor our Beloved Dead.
Halloween is a mundane holiday that was actually made popular by the candy companies as a way to increase their sales. More candy is sold at Halloween than during the rest of the year.
Samhain falls on 10/31 in the Northern Hemisphere and on 4/30 in the Southern Hemisphere.
I haven't started working with the Samhain energies yet as we have still to celebrate Mabon which falls on 9/22 this year. It is important in following the Wheel of the Year to work with each Sabbat in turn and not be anticipating something down the line.
However, I will be celebrating Samhain both in ritual with my coven and in a personal ritual at home. My coven ritual will include a celebratory feast (It is after all a harvest festival). The feast includes a Dumb Supper with places set for our Beloved Dead and the Ancestors. In addition, we'll be holding ritual to mark the descent of the Goddess into the Underworld where she will remain until Yule. My personal ritual will include a memorial service for my brother who passed away last year.
The answer to your question about masks is a bit complicated because it would depend on the culture and the time period as to why masks were worn.
The first information we have about the wearing of masks actually comes from the Paleolithic (Stone Age) when it appears that masks shaped like animals were worn, most likely as a form of attraction magic to draw animals to the hunters so that they could be killed. Of course this is just a best guess since our Stone Age ancestors left us no written records about what they did and why. But this same practice is seen today in some primitive tribes such as the Bushmen of the Kalahari.
We don't know that the Celts, from whom we derived Samhain, wore masks at all. The little we do know about the historical origins of Samhain indicate that it had something to do with both cattle and bonfires. Supposedly it marked the harvest of the meat, so it may well have been a huge barbecue.
The idea that Medieval covens of Witches wore masks to hide their identity is based on the now debunct writings of Margaret Murray. There is no solid evidence to indicate that covens of Witches galloped around on their brooms to meetings under the moon while wearing masks during the Middle Ages.
The idea of masks and jack-o-lanterns seems to have evolved in the 1600's as part of the Christian celebration of All Souls Day. Children dressed up in gruesome costumes to represent the connection of the holiday with death and dying.
So much of the practice of today's Halloween is very modern in origin.
