Death & the Craft¶

Death has always been at the heart of witchcraft. Not as something to fear, but as something to understand, respect and embrace. I have read a beautiful view of death from my research: a threshold, a transformation, and a thinning of the veil between worlds, rather than a simple linear view of beginning and end.

The Wiccan Wheel of the Year is fundamentally a story of death and rebirth. The God dies and is reborn. The earth dies in winter and returns in spring. Samhain is the festival of the dead. To practise the craft is to live in relationship with death, not in opposition to it.

This section explores the ways death appears in pagan traditions, from the psychopomps who guide the dead to the rituals that honour them.

Pages in this section:

• Samhain & the Thinning Veil
• Psychopomps in Pagan Traditions
• The Wheel of Death & Rebirth
• Divination
• Death Folklore of the British Isles