For Samhain ceremony in PaGaian tradition, there is a place where we remember old selves we have been, some of our personal transformation journey, which may also include one’s participation in any particular moment of the evolutionary story of transformation.

To facilitate this process we play a game I played as a child, of “In and Out the Windows”, which it seems to me is a good metaphor for living and dying and becoming again in some form, as well as for those deaths and rebirths we have in this lifetime.

In the game/rite each participant travels in and out of upraised and linked hands and arms of the circle, and when “In” may speak and/or show photos of themselves from the past. Some may choose to remember any self from the entire evolutionary story, with whom they would like to identify. Each is praised for their “becomings” each time “In”. Each person may do this a few times. When all are done, all are addressed and praised by the celebrant as “Great Ones” for having come through so many changes/transformations, as Gaia Herself has done. They are then each presented with gingerbread snakes, “Gaian totems of life renewed,” which will be consumed in three parts.

The chant can be found in part on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LLGIeTuv8w.

A recipe for gingerbread snakes can be found in Appendix B of A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony

Reference:

Livingstone, Glenys. A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Girl God Books: Bergen, Norway, 2023.