What is Samhain really all about?

Okay, well, just to clarify, I think there are two separate layers to this time of year.

There is Halloween because, you know, there's the later Christianized folklore of, you know, All Hallows' Eve and the remembrance of the dead and all of that.

Samhain is a different thing to Halloween.

So Samhain, meaning summer's end, is the festival which would really begin the whole cycle of Irish or Celtic fire festivals.

So the tradition is to kind of, begin all of these festivals in the dark.

That's why Eochána or Samhain Eve is the important beginning.

But can you talk to us about, I suppose, the the thing that can be spooky, or is it something that's comforting, this notion of the veil being thin at this time of year?

What were some of the important moments that really initiated you on this path?

I would say the very beginning was in childhood.

I was a very early reader and a very avid reader.

I lived quite close to the library in, in my home area.

And I had an absolute, you know, obsession with mythology.

Now, I read all mythology, Greek mythology, Egyptian, everything I could get my hands on, but particularly Irish mythology.

And it really, it touched me, it enchanted me, it absorbed me.

Like, what does that really mean for you? And, and, you know, for people listening, um, maybe you could just talk a, a little bit about Irish spirituality in particular and how that can inform our activism.