samhain from oct.31 - nov.11?

[licorice whip]

my wiccan friend recently told me that samhain extends from october 31 until november 11. i havent read about this anywhere! does anyone know if that is true or not?

[cherrywind]

I've never even heard of that. Maybe some sort of holiday for some culture's extends that long (like All Saint's Day/La Dia de los Muertos is a two day festival), but I've never heard of Samhain extending that long.

I'd ask your friend where they heard that from.

[Jenett]

One of the arguments I saw for this (just this morning, actually) was the idea that, with the change in calenders (this happened in the middle of the 18th century for the British empire and its colonies at the time, earlier for most other places in Europe), there was a 10 day adjustment. Thus, November 11 now would have been November 1 before the calendar change.

I personally don't find that a particularly persuasive argument (or at least, I think if you're going to apply it, it needs to be applied consistently. (Though it *would* help prevent the totally-packed weeks that a lot of local folks have hit with there being multiple Samhain rituals they wanted to go to in the space of a week or ten days)

The other reason you might see different dates is that some traditions celebrate the cross-quarter festivals (Imbolc, Beltane, Lammas, and Samhain) on the day when we're 15 degrees into the appropriate astrological sign (so, Scorpio, for Samhain). Where that falls depends on the astrological stuff going on - sometimes it's close to the more common dates, sometimes it isn't.

[Rævyn Cigány]

Originally posted by licorice whip
my wiccan friend recently told me that samhain extends from october 31 until november 11. i havent read about this anywhere! does anyone know if that is true or not?

In one tradition that I know of, Samhain doesn't start till today (I think it's today, anyway) and it ends on the 10th or 11th... Mari can strike me dead if I'm wrong, but I think it's her Gwyddon Tradition (welsh trad).

B*B

Rae )O(

[licorice whip]

ah, thank you!

they said they read this on a, possibly llwellyns (did i spell that right?), magickal calendar.