Blooming Wand

Samhain Blessings and Rituals: Honoring Our Beloved Dead

• Emily O'Neal

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The year turns, the nights lengthen, and a quiet invitation rises: make room for the ones who shaped you. We lean into Samhain as a living practice of memory, building a simple ancestral altar, speaking a heartfelt blessing, and exploring how candles, food, and storytelling become bridges between worlds. Rather than casting the season as grim, we highlight cross‑cultural traditions like Día de los Muertos that celebrate joyful remembrance and teach us to greet the unseen with warmth and respect.

With gentle honesty, we talk about boundaries in ancestral work—how to invite the healed and wise ones while protecting your heart—and why remembrance is strongest when it’s simple, personal, and true. You’ll get step-by-step guidance for creating an altar with photos or handwritten names, seasonal offerings like pomegranates and autumn leaves, and a place at the table for a presence you can feel. We share a spoken blessing you can read aloud on Samhain night, then invite you to say their names, tell a story, and leave a small offering that honors ongoing love.

We also bring tarot into the mix with a focused ritual using the court cards to connect with unknown ancestors. Learn how a single card—the healer, the adventurer, the builder—can illuminate lineage gifts and reveal practical guidance for your path. Reflection prompts help you journal, notice signs in dreams, and anchor insights into daily life. Along the way, we challenge the fear of aging and death by reclaiming them as part of belonging, reminding ourselves that love doesn’t end, it transforms.

Light a candle, create a quiet corner, and try the ritual with us. When you’re done, share the card you pulled and what you felt—we’re building a community of remembrance. If this spoke to you, follow the show, leave a review, and send it to someone who’s ready to honor their beloved dead.

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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Blooming Wand, your home for grounded spiritual content. I'm Emily O'Neill, Evidential Psychic Medium, Intuitive Healer, and Coach. And you know I wouldn't let a turn in the wheel of the year go by without checking in with you. So this episode is really to offer Sawin blessings and to share some rituals with you. And if you don't know about Sawin, we call it Halloween. There are cultures across the world that celebrate this particular time of year. We in the Northern Hemisphere or in the Americas call it Halloween, Dia de los Muertos, celebrated either October 31st, but a lot of places it's several days and extends between the 31st and November 1st and November 2nd. So it's just a special time of year. It's that midpoint between the autumn uh equinox and the winter solstice. So we're going to start to feel the days getting really darker. We're going to deepen into the darkness. And historically, when times got darker, people would spend more time indoors and doing more indoor tasks. And I do believe that when it's dark, we do tell stories. We remember people. We share traditions and oral histories and things of that nature. And so kind of bending into that practice, we can weave that into our rituals as well. And this is a time to honor your beloved dead, the ones that are no longer in the physical realm, but are in the unseen and deeply, still deeply felt realm. And I always say when we're working with ancestors or honoring the dead, to use healthy boundaries around that. I've talked about that before on an episode where we kind of dove into ancestral lineage work and ancestral, just ancestral work in general. So include and incorporate your healed and wise ones into this practice. And if there are people who it would be triggering to you to weave into this practice, don't bring them into your practice. If you know you have ancestors in your lineage who have caused particular harm or have done damage, you don't have to include and incorporate them into your practice. So I think that it's really our job in terms of how we manage those boundaries is to do our own personal tending and our own healing work around that stuff. And that doesn't always happen in this, these particular rituals. They happen through under other kind of other forms of tending and in other ways. And that's just my personal practice. I would offer that you do things that are in alignment with your needs and values and practices. And so I'm just going to share some things with you here. And if it feels like it resonates with you, maybe that you can include and incorporate some of this into your Sowin practice. As October deepens and the darkness grows longer each day, we do arrive at Sawin, that sacred midpoint between the autumn equinox and winter solstice. And you can feel it, the deepening connection to the unseen but deeply felt realms, the quieting of the world, and nature herself turning inward. It's no accident that cultures across the world honor the dead this time of year. In Mexico and throughout Latin America, families create vibrant offerings for Dia de los Muertos, altars overflowing with marigolds, photographs, sugar skulls, and the favorite foods of those who've passed. And it's not a somber or fearful event. It's a celebration, a joyful welcoming of beloved spirits into the home for a visit. There's something about this season that makes us naturally more reflective. At least I feel that way. And as the world kind of dies back and darkness claims more hours, we feel our mortality more keenly. We think of those who've shaped us, who loved us, and whose absence perhaps still echoes in our lives. So here's a Sawin ritual that I'm just offering up to you. This year I invite you to create your own sacred space for honoring your beloved dead. And here's a simple ritual that you can adapt to your own practice. Find a quiet space in your home, a windowsill, a shelf, a corner table. Gather photos of those you wish to honor, parents, grandparents, friends, and even beloved pets. Add candles and seasonal offerings like pineapples or pomegranates. I'll just pause there. Like I like pomegranates because it makes me think of Persephone descending into the underworld and her connection to how she ate the pomegranate seed, and that's how Hades got her, kind of tricked her into having to stay into the underworld. So I kind of like to play with pomegranates for a lot of reasons, but that's one of them. You could also put some autumn leaves or flowers out and leave an empty chair or a place setting nearby where you're kind of intending to make room for the presence that you can't see but you can feel. I think that's really special. And if you don't have photographs, write people's names on pieces of paper using, you know, a nice pen or colorful paper and ink. And you don't have to buy anything for these altar spaces. Maybe just look around you and see if there's anything that could symbolize them and place them on the altar or go outside and collect things that could represent them. Don't overthink it. I I always tell people that because I think sometimes we we just overthink things. It's like do what feels right for you and be open and kind of playful about how this practice wants to move through you and make it your own. So on October 31st, light your candles as darkness falls. And you might say something simple like, On this night when the veil thins, I welcome the spirits of my beloved dead. I remember you, I honor you, and I love, I feel your love still holding me. Or perhaps you'll feel called to say this blessing. I wrote it just for us, for this season and for this time. And it goes like this Ancestors known and unknown, I light these candles for you. Beloved ones I've held and lost, I light these candles for you. May heart my heart calls to you and I feel you draw closer and closer. In this thinning dark, may love reach across all distance and time, and may we remember that we belong to each other still. I love you and thank you for the love that you've given me. Though all that lives must part this world, I know love never dies. You are not forgotten. And this is the heart of it. Don't let them be forgotten. Say their names aloud, share a memory, a quality you loved about them, a way they still influence your life. Let yourself laugh at funny memories, and let yourself cry at if tears come. It's all welcome here and within this practice. Leave food or drink on your altar overnight, perhaps their favorite meal, a cup of tea, bread, or honey. In many traditions, the essence of these offerings nourishes the spirits while the physical food remains. Now, I feel like I always want to say this, but I don't want to be triggering or morbid. If we demonstrate these practices for the ones coming up in our lives, like the young ones, the little ones, they will know what to do for us and how to tend to our memory when we pass. And it's also a way to help people not maybe fear death or dying as much, because I know that here in the United States, where I'm from, here on Turtle Island, many of us, they're just a tremendous fear of death. We could talk about that quite a bit. I mean, most of us don't even want to ever look old. We don't see the gray hairs or the wrinkles or those marks of time as treasures. We see them as things to get rid of. And what a joy it is to and a privilege it is to grow old. And I just kind of offer that here, this that I know that people have different attitudes and feelings around death or dying and mortality. And so notice where you're at. And I have to say, like a lot of times I'm pretty comfortable with it, but there are moments and there are times where that that I'm not as comfortable with it as others. And fair enough, I think that that's a very human thing. So just notice where you're at. Now, I wanted to bring in tarot into the practice because you know I love working with the tarot. So I created a tarot ritual for distant ancestors. So if you work with the tarot, here's a beautiful way to honor those ancestors you never knew in life. The ones whose names may be lost, but those whose blood runs in your veins. So the first thing you're gonna do is separate out all 16 court cards from your deck, the pages, the knights, the queens, and the kings from all four suits. And these cards are gonna represent people, personalities, and the human faces of the divine. Shuffle the court cards while holding the intention to connect with an ancestor from generations past, somebody that you've never met, but who wants to make themselves known to you now. When you feel ready, draw one card and place it on your altar. This card represents the ancestor reaching across time to rekindle the connection. A Queen of Cups might show you the healer in your lineage, the one who tended to hearts and emotions. The Knight of Wands could reveal an adventurer, the risk taker whose courage lives on in you. The Page of Pentacles might speak to the practical builder, the one who worked the land and crafted with their hands. Sit with this card and let it speak to you. What qualities does this ancestor offer? What gifts have they passed down through the generations to reach you? You might journal about what you see or simply hold the card and feel the thread of connection strengthening between you. And I've crafted some questions for you to ponder as you work with this ancestor. So as you sit with the card that you've drawn, let these qualities guide your reflection. What qualities or energies does this card embody, and where do you see traces of them in you? What might this ancestor want you to know about your own gifts or challenges right now? If this ancestor could speak across time, what wisdom might they offer about the path that you're walking? What part of their spirit are you being called to awaken or remember within yourself? How might honoring this connection change the way you move through the world? Let the answers arise naturally without forcing them, and sometimes the knowing comes later in dreams or quiet moments in the days that follow. Thank this ancestor for making themselves known and keep the card on your altar through so and night. You're rekindling a relationship that transcends time, remembering that you carry within you the strength, the wisdom, and spirit of all who came before. Share what card you pulled with me. I would love to drop it in the comments. Shoot me an email, Emily at BloomingWand.com. I love to hear from you. And I pulled the page of cups from the relative tarot. So we have an older picture that's been transposed against a kind of misty background that looks like the ocean, and the woman is dressed in it, looks kind of like a showgirl outfit. She definitely has a presence, and she has a very inquisitive or I don't know, inviting smile, a smirk on her face. And you see the cup with the little fish popping out. And I just think there's a playful quality and an invitation here around new possibilities and following your intuition, maybe in a very playful way. At least that's sort of part of what I'm getting here. I can't wait to continue to work with this ancestor. And so just know that what we're working with with this tarot ritual is an unknown ancestor. So one that we've never met and don't really know. But you're gonna know them after you do this ritual, and they might continue to pop in and support you on your self-care and spiritual journey. So do share what you got with me. And even if you have any other insights, I do really genuinely like to hear from you. So in closing, we'll kind of have a closing ritual that can accompany any of these other parts of the ritual that we've done. So spend some time just being present at your altar, light a candle for each person you're honoring, feel the connection across time and space, and trust that love doesn't end, it only transforms. Same with life. When you're ready, thank your ancestors for their presence and their gifts to you. You might extinguish the candles or let them burn safely through the night as beacons for wandering spirits. This moment is yours, ours to honor those who came before and to remember that we're part of an unbroken chain reaching backwards and forwards in time. And I just want to offer may your Sawin be blessed with memory, connection, and love that transcends all boundaries. And I want to offer my gratitude for the Blooming One community. I do appreciate you, and I love sharing these practices with you, and I love when you share yours with me. In the meantime, get those journals out. You know, well journaling around these rituals can be very helpful. Maybe you even document your rituals and start to create your own ritual book. Either way, take good care of yourselves, and I will see you soon.