Collective Coven Samhain Tarot Reading🍎🎃🕸️ (Patreon)

Blessed Samhain and Happy Halloween, witches! Here is 3-card spread collective tarot reading using the Halloween Oracle Deck by Stacey DeMarco. This reading is all about taking that risk to get the reward, finding that 'sweet spot' and forgiveness. Does this reading resonate with you?

1.) Apple - Risk and Reward

Sweetest icon

Risky red desire

Poison and freedom

Tempting hearts afire

Apples have been a symbol of Samhain for a very long time. Apples, when cut in half, have a seed pattern that looks like a pentagram and so the Celts held the fruit to be sacred. Bobbing for apples, a game traditionally played at Halloween, has its origins in the Samhain festival and is one of the oldest associated with this celebration.

The traditional way to play is to place 3 or 13 apples into a barrel of water and the game is to try and bite an apple whilst it floats and bobs in the water. Hands must not be used and people often compete with each other, bobbing at the same time. It is believed that the Romans brought the custom to Britain and there are quite a few images recorded through art of this activity in both cultures. It was said that unmarried women who placed the apple they had bobbed under their pillow, would dream of their future husband. In Newfoundland and some parts of Ireland even today, Halloween is called Snap Apple Night.

Candy apples (apple of a stick covered in toffee), although not quite as popular now as they once were as Halloween fare, are now making a comeback as a fun and simple treat to prepare on this night. Apples have been an iconic part of mythos from ancient times to modern - the story of the poison apple in Snow White, to the Roman Goddess Pomona's magical apple tree, to the Christians' tempting fruit in the Garden of Eden. Should you receive this 'Apple' in your reading, it's time to look how risk plays out in your life. Are you hedging your bets and not trying anything new? Do you want change but are not willing to change anything? Are you willing to risk to get a greater reward? Or alternatively, are you risking too much, too often?

2.) Barmbrack - Sweetness and Synergy

A pea, a cloth, a coin, a ring and stick

Within a loaf of speckled sweetness

Slice it and eat it

A glimpse of my fate's completeness

Not quite a cake and not quite a bread, barmbrack is a sweet loaf, larger than a typical bread loaf, baked with flour, sugar, salt and dried fruits such as raisins. The making of barmbrack is an Irish tradition that still stands around Samhain (Halloween). The person baking the loaf would be sure to set the intention for love, truth and synergy whilst preparing. Inside the dough, a number of special objects are hidden and baked into the loaf.

The objects are used as a kind of random oracle - each one has a particular meaning which represents the fate of the person who found it in their slice! The traditional objects include a coin, a pea, a stick, a ring and a small piece of cloth like muslin. Some other additions, made in more modern times were religious medals.

Should your slice of the brack contain a coin, this would indicate prosperity and good luck. The pea unfortunately meant that no marriage would occur for you that year, yet finding the ring meant a marriage was certain. The stick - to be avoided at all costs - indicated disputes and unhappiness and finding the cloth meant bad luck and little money ahead.

When you pull the Barmbrack card, it indicates a curiosity to know what is ahead, but it's important to balance that with the now - after all, we have the tools to change our future should we choose. The sweet synergy of barmbrack - all the ingredients including the objects are more complete and powerful together than they are individually, should encourage you to seek your own 'sweet spot'.

3.) Forgiveness - Reducing Burden

A wrong is done

Consequences you cannot deny

But to hold a grudge is to drink poison

and think that the other person

will die.

Being a cold-season festival, Halloween is the perfect time to pause and think about how things actually are in our lives and what heavy burdens we do not wish to carry through these harder, leaner times. Some of this heavy-heartedness may relate to old relationships or grievances. Some may relate to negative feelings we hold onto tightly about others and even a lack of compassion for the 'mistakes' we have ourselves made.

It is said that it takes a "big person to apologize' but in many ways it takes an even bigger person to forgive. When we hold grudges, the negative energy is incredibly toxic. It is like drinking a poison and expecting the 'other' unforgiven person to die! Whilst we may even harbor feelings of revenge (and to be honest, that does feel good for a while), it is important that we move those feelings along to forgiveness and release as soon as possible for our own health and wellbeing.

If you have chosen this card, think about who it is that you could be forgiving - and that includes yourself.