Up and down the country this Hallowe'en night, witches will be working their magic, whether indoors, with candles and incense, or outside, around bonfires and at sacred sites. They'll scry with crystal balls, cast spells over cauldrons, channel energy for healing and journey to meet the inhabitants of what they call the astral plane for information and advice or just for the thrill of it, writes Adrienne Murphy
One self-described witch who'll be celebrating is Lora O'Brien, a 26-year-old Dublin-born mother of two who has just written Irish Witchcraft From An Irish Witch. "Samhain," she explains - using the Irish name for this most important of ancient festivals, which is often referred to as the pagan or witches' new year - "is the main 'time between times'. This means that it's especially a time for divination, magical activity and communing with spirits".
She says a gateway is opened as the year crosses from life and light towards death and the dark new gestation that ensures nature's rebirth, in spring. As with all gestations - the seed buried in the ground, the embryo in the womb - it's perceived as a time of immense hidden energy and mystery, pregnant with hope and potential despite the deepening darkness.
"That's why pagans tend to view Samhain as the new year," says O'Brien, "And why the cauldron is still a symbol for Hallowe'en. Ingredients go into the cooking pot and come out completely transformed. The cauldron is the vessel of transformation. This is the time to put away things that are of no further use to us, to clear the way for new projects, new hopes, new plans."
Many witches celebrate eight seasonal "sabbats" during the year, including the major celebrations of Imbolg (St Brigid's Day), Bealtaine (May eve) and Lughnasa (August eve), as well as 13 "esbats", or full moons. O'Brien believes that acknowledging these cycles doesn't necessarily make you a witch; nor does belief in and interaction with gods and goddesses (although it probably means you're a pagan).
"The term 'priestess' covers my religious persuasions, and 'witch' then refers to the work that I do, the actual magical work. You don't necessarily have to be a religious person to be a witch, though a lot of modern witches are religious. I even know of Catholic witches and a nun who works magic. Witchcraft is simply magic. Rituals and all that: it's stuff that I do, and it's very useful, but I don't think that it has to be part of witchcraft. Magic that comes from our folklore is what I'd call witchcraft rather than dressing up in robes, going to the top of Tara and proclaiming your ritual to whoever's around. When I'm doing my daughters' hair in the morning I'll plait it with intention, wishes and power, to keep them safe for the day. Using spells to look after your home, your family, your lifestyle: that's witchcraft."
O'Brien, who has spent years studying Irish myth and folklore, sees this, along with study of the Irish language, as vital to her witchcraft. Instead of "witch", she often uses the term bean draoí - or female user of magic - to describe herself. "Draoí is the root word for 'druid'," she says. "It basically meant a user of magic tapping into the energy and the power of the land. The use of magic is predominant in practically all of our myths and legends. Everybody's doing it, and those who aren't doing it themselves are looking for people who do it, to aid them in some way. And the rest are at the very least influenced by it."
In her book O'Brien quotes the reaction of Irish-language poet Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill after she'd been digging around in the folklore department of University College Dublin: "There is a drawer in the index entitled 'Neacha neamhbeo agus nithe nach bhuil ann' ('Unalive beings and things that don't exist'). Now I am not the greatest empiricist in the world but this one has even me stumped. Either they exist or they don't exist. But if they don't exist why does the card index about them stretch the length of my arm?"
O'Brien says: "There are references in folklore and mythology to An Saol Eile, 'the Otherworld', which comprises many different realms, from the land of fairy to the land of the dead. Key to the working of magic is access to these realms - gained by a letting go of the conscious mind through trance and meditation, or through magical visits to our many ancient earthworks, monuments and places of natural magic, such as lakes, caves and mountain tops."
O'Brien is part of a group that meets regularly at her home, in Co Roscommon, a land rich in pagan archaeology. O'Brien describes herself as a housewife-cum-author; the other members of Crow Coven are a librarian, a computer-company employee and a truck driver (Brendan, O'Brien's husband). "We have structure and set ways of working," she says. "We work a lot more at sites and in the grove of trees beside our house than in the sitting room. Working in the land is very important to us. Journeying would be used at a lot of sites, where you go into a trance state and basically journey to the astral plane or whatever you want to call it. You go down into the energy of a place and see if you might meet beings or things that live there and maybe find out what used to be done at the site."
"I feel now that I'm getting closer, working the way I do, to how it would have been done before Christianity in Ireland, how other magic users through time would have worked, and with the energies that I'm meeting it seems to be more in line with what they want as well. Of course, imagination is the tool used to actually get you to these places. Then you get information back."
When I press for more detail O'Brien says: "I'm oath bound not to reveal a lot of the stuff we do. It's a mystery, but it's also very personal. A lot of the magical work we do is about our own self-development and our own healing. But, yes, I find magic incredibly effective, though it might take a while, and it usually takes hard work on my part. I don't think you're going to win the Lotto just because you're a witch, but whatever you need in your life will come about if you work magically for it."
