SAMHAIN ONLINE TRANSFORMATIONAL GATHERING
SAT 31ST OCT – SUN 1ST NOV
SACRED ACTIVISM, CONSCIOUSNESS RAISING WORKSHOPS, LIVE MUSIC
BLUE MOON AND SAMHAIN CEREMONIES
The Wider Horizons Online Samhain gathering on Saturday 31st Oct and Sun 1st Nov will focus on embracing the return to the Winter season of rest and rejuvenation, with opportunities to call on ancestors for guidance and protection. We’re teaming up with the brilliant Into the Wild Team to create two weekends of Samhain celebrations from 31st Oct to 8th November.There will be magical music, sacred ceremonies and wondrous workshops sharing tools for self-care and healing and exploring cutting-edge discoveries in medicine, psychology, spirituality and philosophy. There is an intention for transformation and inspiration for social, eco and sacred activism. We’re holding a fancy-dress party for the Blue Moon on Saturday night with Wyrd Wolves and Halloween festivities. You can join the zooms to meet the contributors and other participants, watch on the Wider Horizons FB Group, or listen in on a Bluetooth speaker.
Register for zooms here
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEpcOyuqjMjGtIGEC2SVPkkGHCYJZCrmGoi
Watch the livestream on our FB Group: www.facebook.com/groups/widerhorizons
Donations – www.justgiving.com/fundraising/samhain
(Suggested £20 per session / £40 for full day / £60 for whole weekend)
Donations go to Wider Horizons and the contributors via the Earth Community Trust.
Please donate to support artists and events at this time.
Workshops and entertainment run non-stop from Saturday at 9am to Sunday at 11pm.
Please see schedule for further details.
Samhain Blessing written by Chris Park, Druid
Samhain, Summer’s end, consolidating season of swan songs and ancestral feasting.
Gateway to winter rites, opening the doors for otherworldly voices. Divining, learning & letting go, whatever one’s choices.
Hey ho, darker grow the days,
and the wind blows rain across the land. See the leaves are falling. Hear the spirits calling.
Welcome the damp, the frost and the decaying forces. Know that the makers mischief, misrule and chaos are afoot. Offerings made as songs are sung.
Tangled into the spirits of this time are the wild hunt, and other death dealers, kindred with those who pair down the place.
Memorial service to those passed on, solemnity & silence, fires lit, protection strewn across the threshold, apples bobbed, nuts roasted, communities closer, as the Cailleach is calling, the veiled one, the oldest goddess of them all is coming, feared and revered, yet kindly too.
She of dark mantle, putting to bed the weak, midwife of souls back to the source, stripping trees bare, cleansing, purging, crowing, glinting and keening like a Banshee, foretelling the demise of these times….
After consecration and protection, gratitude and grace becoming… listen… invite…. prépare to wane a while, allow the spirits of this time to scour your soul, scan your being, unlock grief, untie truth, massage mysteries,
Cleansing fire festival of the betrothal of divine beings and the Shining One’s, stronger each circle, ‘momento mori’…
Gathering in and storing the year’s growth for winter sustenance. This season of great change, and intrepidation of cold and challenging gloom ahead. Fears may be found here, as a powerful time of change provokes, and help can be called upon through communion with the ancestors, the gods and the mighty ones. Seek the guidance, ask for the help, however that occurs to you.
Tales are told, of spirits and ghostly flight, tutelary deities, horrors that haunt the Nos Calends, dreams and visions, cunning corpses, teasing trickery, warnings and lore, as traditionally very few would venture outdoors on these nights without strong magic, foolhardy foray or enchanted fate.
This time, as with many Celtic feast days, is peacetime among tribes. No weapon lifted, whatever the quarrels have been. Reconciliation and sharing of victuals, common concerns and bonding rituals.
Somewhere amidst the awe of remembrance, the cleansing fires, the song and story, dances and divinations. Ask yourself how you feel about your ancestors, if it’s easy or difficult to embrace this festival? If and how it might bring blessings and balms to your life? How best to embody remembrance? Which family patterns may be worth keeping, and which may be worth giving away to the fire, or the cauldron of rebirth and the Cailleach? Are there habits and opinions, engagements and battles, or anything that might be stake that can be let go of and given to the grateful compost of this time?
May you be graced by the stars of Samhain above, the root strengthening power of this season, and the closer circles of family & friendship. May the fires warm you through, bring peace and truce and truth. May any feasting be exquisite, any tales be enchanting, and any prayers be strong.
Wishing you a very blessed Samhain and Nos Calends, much love and magic, sweet solemnity and life affirming connection to this world and the other.
Infinite Love
The Wider Horizons Family
The Samhain Transformational Gathering is being held online. Imagine an area by a beautiful lake within a gathering. Online festivals are new adventure for these times, creating connection through the arts, music and sharing what inspires us, whoever we are, not limited by space and time. We will host live music, workshops, talks, debates, inspiring stories, films, storytelling, wild crafts, Indigenous elders and lots more. In the Zooms you can interact with the contributors, musicians and fellow participants connecting with old friends and new. You can join our FB Group to access the event or join the zooms.
We are asking for donations to support the artists and the team at Wider Horizons, who give a lot to make this all happen. You can make donations here. (Suggested £20 per session/£40 for full day/£60 for whole weekend) Donations go to Wider Horizons and the contributors via the Earth Community Trust. Please donate to support artists and events at this time.
The workshops are designed to help you open new parts of yourself. The contributors include lecturers, shamans, artists and other practitioners from a variety of healing disciplines. You are able to choose from a diverse programme that includes sacred activism, nature connection, expressive dance, individual and group healing, yoga, meditation and sacred singing. As well as learning new skills, you will have opportunities to explore questions about who we are and the mysteries of consciousness and our relationship with the physical world. Alternative views of the nature of the mind and the universe will be presented.
We invite everyone to connect with each other as an expression of nature.
Evening celebrations will involve music, singing, drumming and dancing. Bring instruments, drums, percussion and dancing feet.
What to Bring
To prepare, please join our FB Groups:
Wider Horizons FB Group – www.facebook.com/groups/widerhorizons
Wonderland FB Group – www.facebook.com/groups/in2wildonlinefestival/
Now is the time!
Essential things to bring:
Fancy Dress (for Saturday night)
Notebooks and pens
Consider bringing:
Musical instruments
Agreements
Wider Horizons is a consciousness raising event so we have some agreements we ask you to support.
Be clear and healthy – no drugs or alcohol
Be hygienic – keep your kitchen clean, keep your nails short
Respect the land – no chemical soap, leave no trace (be conscious of where you put rubbish – there are different rubbish bins for compost, recyclables, glass and land fill)
Respect others – Listen to others and share your heart
Give – no buying or selling
Looking forward to seeing you at Wider Horizons @ Wonderland Festival Online 2020!
Tickets
Tickets are by donation. This price is subsidised thanks to generous funding from a number of benefactors (The Scientific and Medical Network (SMN), Jon Ross, James Mermagen, Chaucer Barn). Thanks are given to The Scientific and Medical Network for its grant to help fund the event and for giving those attending free membership of the SMN for a year. Please contact the SMN after the event to request your free membership. (This event is devised and delivered by Ben Gross as an independent event organiser).
Tickets – www.wonderlandfestival.org/donate
We would like to explain the donation approach. We wish to bring in the etheric version of the magic hat into this space. The magic hat is passed around at Rainbow gatherings and whoever feels able to contribute does. If anyone feels called to support even if it is a very small donation that would be a wonderful share and an opportunity to energetically embed our collective experience into the present and bolster the strength of Wonderland, and it’s creators, Into the Wild, ANIWA and Wider Horizons in the future. We will share proceeds with our contributors. Our community of artists and events have been adversely affected recently and deeply appreciate your support.
Much love, everyOne.