Twitter
Facebook
Reddit
Digg
Tell us what you think!Send a letter to the editor about this or any other article in The Maine Campus.
On Friday Oct. 26, Pagan Campus Organization hosted a Samhain celebration with a divination fair on the mall. While the Samhain holiday falls on Oct. 31, PaCO decided to host festivities on the weekend to make it easier for fellow students to attend.
The Samhain holiday – pronounced “saw-hen” – celebrates the end of the harvest season and marks a time in the year where the veil between the living and dead is thinnest. This makes communicating with the dead and divination easier.
The festival offered a number of divination methods including apple peel reading, palmistry, rune reading and tarot card reading. Attendees could also paint or carve pumpkins, drink hot apple cider served from a cauldron heated over a fire and take a button or two. While those functions were free, there was also a bake sale set up which accepted payment for cupcakes and cookies on donation.
Apple peeling seemed to be the event that intrigued people the most, as few people had seen it performed before. Jennifer King, vice president of PaCO, explained that apple peels could be used to divinate in several ways. Participants were told to peel an apple from top to bottom in the longest segment they could. The length of peel determined how long they would live. “I can not peel to save my life,” attendee Derek Brewer said. If someone had a yes-or-no question they wanted answered, he or she were instructed to throw the peel over their left shoulder. If the peel landed in what looked like an “O” or “U,” the answer was “no.” Anything else meant a “yes.”
Under a tent on the other side of the set-up area was a table for rune reading. Alora Felix sat behind the table, reading homemade runes. Before each telling, she rang a small bell to clear the air. She then placed her runes in the other person’s hands. The runes were shaken three times and then dropped. Felix’s reading described the present and near-future. Most people who had their runes read sat and nodded in agreeance.
Tarot Cards were read by PaCO president Michelle Shandorf, who wore a smart black witch’s hat. Attendees drew three initial cards from her deck at random for past, present and future. Shandorf would ask questions to try to discover an accurate meaning for each card. If any one card was too vague, attendees were instructed to draw another card. “Sometimes they need helper cards,” Shandorf explained.
Pumpkin carvers and painters huddled around a table, happily conversing with each other. Designs ranged from an elaborately painted dragon to colorful clown-like faces to a carved face painted with small blood-red streaks and pumpkin seeds hanging out of where a brain might have exploded.
Over all, the festival seemed a success. Attendees were happy to sit and listen to what their futures might hold while sipping cider and PaCO members were happy with the turn out.
Bangor Daily News