15 Samhain Rituals and Traditions to Celebrate the Celtic Holiday

On October 31st, we celebrate Halloween. But, before Halloween there was Samhain, the Celtic festival that honored the harvest and the dead. At Samhain, it’s believed their veil between the world we know and the Otherworld is the thinnest, allowing ancestors and spirits to visit.

It’s a holiday to reflect on death, life, and the transition between the two. And it’s an important holiday on the Wheel of the Year for Wiccans, neo-pagans, and witches. From lighting bonfires to creating altars for ancestors here are some Samhain ritual ideas and traditions to consider this year.

Samhain Ritual Ideas and Traditions

1. Set Up an Ancestral Altar

Create a sacred space to honor your ancestors. Set up a Samhain altar with photos, items that remind you of them, and offerings like food or flowers they enjoyed. The Celts believed that the veil between the world of the spirits and the living was thin during Samhain and this altar serves as a symbolic bridge between the two.

2. Hold a Dumb Supper

This meal is held in complete silence to honor loved ones who have passed on. Cook a meal with seasonal foods or those that include their favorite recipes. Set a place at the table for them as you would for yourself, but add a candle to invite them in. Serve the food to all in attendance, including the dead, and eat in silence without your phone. During the meal, quietly reflect on the lives of your ancestors and your memories of them as you eat.

After you have finished your meal, use the food set out for your ancestors as an offering for them on the altar or if it is wildlife-friendly, place it outside.

In Salem, Massachusetts, you can attend an annual Dumb Supper held in late October. At it, the silverware are set reversed, and the meal is served backwards, beginning with dessert and ending with dinner rolls.

3. Host a Bonfire Gathering

For the Celts, Samhain was one of four fire festivals. The people let their home hearth fires burn out and Druid priests lit a community bonfire using a wheel. After the harvest was complete, families would gather around the fire and bring an ember back from this bonfire to relight the hearth in their home.

To honor this tradition, gather your family, friends, or coven around a bonfire or fire pit and share stories and reflect on the year and stories of those who have passed. You may also wish to take a moment to pay respects for those who inhabited the land you stand on before you.

Then, as a way to honor the harvest cycle and the cycles of death and birth, reflect on what you have grown and harvested (either literally or metaphorically) and what your intentions are for the next season.

4. Hold a Ritual Circle with your Coven

Samhain is one of eight important neo-pagan holidays, especially for Wiccans and witches. If you are a High Priest or Priestess, organize a gathering for your coven so you can celebrate the holiday and perform a Samhain ritual. If you are a solo practitioner, do what feels best to you. If you are looking for inspiration, use Scott Cunningham’s Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner as a guide or connect with fellow witches in our community forum.

5. Leave Offerings for Spirits

For the Celts, the veil at Samhain wasn’t just thin between the living and the dead, it also meant the the barrier between the Otherworld and the Earth was thin. This meant that the Sidhe (fairies) could easily travel between the two and bring bad luck and mischief with them.

To appease these spirits, they would leave out offerings of food or drink, such as milk, cream, bread, or good ale or wine. You may feel called to do the same. Just make sure your offerings are wildlife-friendly.

6. Carve Pumpkins or Turnips

Also in an effort to frighten away mischief-causing or malevolent spirits, in the Middle Ages, Celts began carving turnips with frightening faces. The families placed the turnips in their windows and doorways as protection.

This tradition made its way over the pond to America, though we now carve pumpkins. For the holiday, pick up some pumpkins at a pumpkin patch or local store and carve or paint them. You could also host a pumpkin decorating party at your home and invite your friends to join in the festivities.

7. Prepare a Samhain Feast

On October 31 or just ahead of the holiday, gather friends, family, or coven members to enjoy a feast of seasonal foods. Here are more than 50 Samhain recipes you could try. Some traditional Samhain foods include apples, hazelnuts, and barmbrack (a type of bread with charms). Modern celebrations also include pumpkins.

Some people like to bake Soul Cakes, however, I cannot find reputable historical evidence that links Soul Cakes to Samhain or paganism. It appears to be a mostly Christian practice, though the cakes do sound delicious.

8. Make Protection Charms

In addition to carving turnips or pumpkins, you can craft protection charms or amulets from natural materials stones, wood or, if you’re particularly talented, iron. Charge them with protective energy during your Samhain rituals to ward off negative influences throughout the winter.

9. Practice Divination

Samhain was also a time for divination, perhaps because of the thinned veil. In ancient times, the Celts would cast the bones of sacrificed cattle to divine the future. They would also use stones or sticks for the same purpose. Bone throwing is a practice that is thousands of years old and is still practiced today. If you want to try throwing bones yourself, here’s a helpful guide by The Occult Witch.

If osteomancy is not your thing, you can also practice divination using tarot cards, runes, scrying, pendulums, or another method.

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10. Go on a Nature Walk

Connecting with nature is on almost every activity list for the Wheel of the Year. There’s a reason why. The wheel is connected to the cycles of nature and dropping in with it can help you connect deeper to the season and to yourself and what your body needs. It can also take you out of the business of social media and your mind and help ground you in the present.

While on your fall nature walk, you may want to gather some fallen leaves, acorns, or pine cones to use in seasonal crafts or on your altar.

11. Visit a Cemetery

One way to both enjoy a nature walk and honor the dead is to pay a visit to a cemetery. If you live in a big city and are craving nature, many graveyards are quiet spaces with lots of grass and trees. While there, you can simply spend time reflecting on those buried within or you can leave flowers, clean graves, or sit and meditate near the gravestones.

12. Dress Your Altar for Samhain

There are ancestral altars and there are Samhain altars and while they may be the same, you may choose to do one or the other, or both. (Or, neither.) To decorate your Samhain altar, use black candles, pumpkins, skulls, bones, fallen leaves, other symbols of the harvest or dead, and objects representing underworld or harvest and winter deities you wish to honor at this time, such as Persephone, Hades, Hecate, Cernunnos, Cailleach, Cerridwen, or the Morrigan.

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13. Dress Up in Costume or Go Trick-or-Treating

The Halloween tradition of trick-or-treating comes from mumming, where people dress up and entertain each other with songs, plays, and sometimes lighthearted tricks in exchange for food. The Celts used to dress up in frightful costumes to blend in with the Otherworld beings and go house-to-house at Samhain singing songs of the dead.

Even if you feel too old for trick-or-treating, you can still go to a costume party or host one at your home and invite your friends to dress up.

14. Do Some Shadow Work

What better time to confront your shadow than when the veil is thin? Journal or meditate on the aspects of yourself or your past that you wish to release during the winter and make room for growth and renewal. You may also want to write down some things you wish to release and burn them in the bonfire or use candle magic to set your spellwork in motion.

15. Make a Samhain Simmer Pot

Simmer pots smell amazing and when you’re done boiling the ingredients, you can keep them in a jar on your altar during the season. Some ingredients you may want to use include apples, cinnamon, cloves, orange slices, lemon, bay, star anise, ginger, and allspice.

To make a simmer pot for Samhain, fill a large pot with water and add all-natural ingredients to it and bring it to a boil. (Don’t add anything you’re allergic to.) Then, reduce it to a simmer and stir it clockwise, while visualizing your desire. Let it boil until there is an inch or two of water remaining.