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Nos Calan Gaeaf (Halloween) in Wales

Wales (UK) is a place dear to my heart since I first step foot here more than a decade ago, I have travelled extensively visiting ancient stone circles, standing stones and tombs, holy wells and all kinds of places associated with myth and magick over the years, visiting many of the amazing castles and spots of natural beauty too along the way.  It often surprised me how quiet and unknown some of these places would be, even to people who have been living not far from Wales on the other side of the border in England.  In fact, even though I understand some of the reasons for it, I was even more surprised when Pagan friends in the UK told me that they had never visited Wales at all!  Wales to me is the most magickal of all the countries in the UK, even the Welsh Flag is magickal - how many countries have both a dragon as their national symbol and a flag in the three alchemical colours of red, white and green?

How magickal is that?

Welsh traditions are still very much focussed on and around the family and home, in some parts (apart from technology) not much has changed in the last 50 or 100 years!  As such Wales is a great place to learn more about traditional charms, customs and healing - you just need to know who to ask and it helps if you can speak Welsh or at least pronounce the words properly (I am getting there slowly!).

In Wales it was believed that the Hwch Ddu Gwta (black, short-tailed sow) was amongst the many hostile magickal creatures who emerged on the night of Samhain.  According to Anne Ross writing in “Folklore of Wales” - “Pig-lore is very widespread in Celtic countries and is particulary stong in Ireland and Wales.  There is an enormous corpus of lore about pigs, pig transformation and great royal fasts at which the flesh of a pig was voraciously devoured.  It was believed in the more northern partso f Wales that after the bonfire is turned into a smouldering mass, that the Black Sow made its appearance and would chase terrified young people, sometimes as far as their homes…” (p. 30)

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