October Magick

October Magick

Magick doesn't happen just with spells and rituals. It's the activities and events that allow for fun and memories, or that help others. Here are some suggestions on how to make October Magick...

Donate blood (think of Dracula)

Finish any incomplete projects and pay off lingering bills (if possible) to close out the old year and begin the new year afresh.

Go for a walk and collect twigs, leaves, pinecones, moss, seedpods, and feathers.

Leave food out for the birds and other wild animals.

Light candles, a fireplace or bonfire, put up Halloween lights to get a start on the season of light

If you don't have a wicker man left from Beltane, make one from dried grass or grains of some kind. Burn it in your Sabbat fire. If you don't have a fireplace or firepit, burn him in your cauldron, barbeque grill or hibachi.

Make a Scarecrow

Tell ancestral stories and tales around the fire, or at the dinner table.

Visit cemeteries to do a clean up project, visit ancestors, or just immerse yourself in the history

Have a mask-making ceremony in which you create masks to represent your ancestry.

Rake some leaves and jump in the leaves (especially fun if there is a child around to do this with you)

Decorate your computer with Halloween, Samhain or Autumn wallpaper or screensaver

Make a quilt, crochet an afghan or braid a rug using Autumn colors

Make a music tape of Halloween or Autumn inspired music and songs

Go for a drive strictly for the purpose of foliage gazing

Have a wine tasting party

Learn to weave (think of grandmother spider)

Plant trees (Japanese maple is a great Autumn tree) and flower bulbs

Pick apples from an apple tree and make a home-made pie or cobbler from scratch

Make a big pot of soup

Collect pictures of past Halloween's or Autumn activities and make a scrapbook; add pressed leaves, poems and sayings, seasonal sketches

Gather firewood

Samhain is the best time for divination; learn tarot, runes, using the pendulum, scrying

Start to knit a warm sweater

Visit a charity haunted house

Take a late night walk under the full moon

Make a batch of popcorn and hot spiced cider and watch Halloween movie videos

Gather up and press leaves of red, gold, and yellow

Set up an ancestor altar, with candles and your ancestor's pictures

Buy orange pumpkins and red, green and yellow apples

Easy decorations: a cauldron of apples, a candy dish of candy corn, chains made of black and white beads or paper loops, pumpkins.. carved or not

Make foods of fall; beef stew with thick gravy, apple crisp with vanilla ice cream and cinnamon sauce, pumpkin pie with whipped cream.... macaroni and cheese (it's orange!)

Make a Halloween tree; paint branches black and gather into a vase with black stones for anchors. Add orange Halloween lights, drape with dried moss and thin black ribbons. Even add ornaments!

Start a nature sketchbook. With the wonderful colors of fall, this is the perfect time to record the leaves changing colors, bare branches against a stormy sky, squirrels stocking up for winter...

Go on a hayride

Bake sugar cookies and cut out with Autumn-shaped cookie cutters. Frost with chocolate, maple and orange flavored frostings

Make or buy onion braids

Buy lots of orange, yellow, brown and gold candles to brighten up dark days and evenings

Make witch balls (clear glass ornament, swirl around silver paint inside, fill with red threads and herbs)

Collect pinecones for decorations and firestarters

Leave food outside as an offering to the dead

Make hot chocolate, French toast and bacon for Sunday Breakfast

Adopt a black cat (or orange or any color)

Watch for ducks and geese flying south for the winter

The most traditional Samhain activity is to prepare an extra plate at the dinner table to honor those passed. After the meal, place the plate outside overnight for any passing creatures. In the morning, bury whatever remains on the plate in the earth.

Buy some new fall clothes; corduroy pants or green denim jeans; a sweater or a college sweatshirt, a suede jacket, new hiking boots

Wear a costume to greet trick or treaters on Halloween night or accompany trick or treaters

Try a new shade of hair color; such as auburn or dark burgundy (red is the color of witch's hair)

Make homemade applesauce, apple dumplings, apple turnovers..

Make popcorn balls

Have a costume party; for kids only, for adults only, or families

Buy pumpkins and carve jack-o-lanterns

Bob for apples, do apple divination, cut an apple cross-wise to see the star that the seeds make. nature's own pentagram

Make caramel apples

Do a Past-life Regression therapy

Start to meditate if you don't already do this

Harvest and dry herbs Celebrate a late Oktoberfest with beer and German food


Written and Compiled by Cindi Wafstet © August 2002 Permission to share freely as long as credit is given.