Lethbridge Pagans and Witches celebrate the Festival of Samhain and Halloween’s Origins
LETHBRIDGE – While children are dressing up in their costumes, eagerly anticipating the enormous loads of candy they’ll be gorging on tonight – and others are handing it all out by the bucketful, Lethbridge’s Witches, Warlocks, Pagans and Wiccans will be celebrating their new year.
Some Halloween traditions today can be traced back to the Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced Sow-win), when the belief was that the “veil was thin” between the living and the dead, and when people would don costumes and light bonfires to ward off evil spirits. https://www.history.com/topics/halloween/history-of-halloween
Lorien Johansen is the Chair or the Southern Alberta Pagan Association. She identifies as a Pagan Witch.
“I was raised a devout Christian,” she explains. “My mother taught me from a very early age to question, to ask and examine and decide for yourself. This is how you were raised, and Christianity didn’t work for me.”