Samhain

What Samhain is, every year

Samhain falls on October 31 each year — the cross-quarter sabbat opposite Beltane on the Wheel, marking the descent into the dark half of the year. Traditionally it's the harvest's end and the night the veil between worlds is felt to thin: a time for honouring ancestors, releasing what the year has finished, and turning inward as the light draws down.

It's calendar-fixed, so the date stays constant; only the weekday and the surrounding moon change. (The true solar midpoint — "astronomical Samhain" — falls a few days later, and is noted in each edition below.)

How to work with it, whichever year you land here

Samhain's tone is reflective and quiet, the opposite of Beltane's outward bloom:

• Make space to remember: a candle, a photograph, a name spoken aloud for someone gone.
• Name what you're ready to let compost — a habit, a role, a story that's finished its season.
• Honour rest. The dark half of the year is for slowing, not for forcing new launches.

In the Atlas, Samhain carries the Feline tone — guardianship of thresholds, night-vision, dignified independence. If that resonance calls you, the sabbat is a fitting time to return to it; the resonance journey mirrors your leanings gently rather than assigning a verdict.

Each year's edition below has that year's exact date, the astronomical midpoint, and the sabbats around it on the Wheel.