Samhain and Stoicism

For these longer essay style posts, I’d recommend listening to the audio version. There’s a designated “play” button at the top of this article on Substack. It typically reads quite well.

…Therefore, let us so order our minds as if we had come to the very end. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s account every day. The greatest flaw in life is that it is always imperfect, and that a certain part of it is postponed. One who daily puts the finishing touches to his life is never in want of time. And yet, from this want arise fear and a craving for the future which eats away the mind. - Seneca, Moral letters to Lucilius (R.M Gummere Translation)

In centuries past when bonfires were burning in Gaelic lands, the Stoics were teaching in Mediterranean cities. One sect turned to ritual and story, the other to argument and inner discipline, but both were genuine attempts to steady a human life inside forces not of our making.

My homeland, along with other Gaelic communities, are often credited with the invention of the original celebration of what we now call Halloween. They observed the festival of Samhain (pronounced, “SAH-win”) an ancient event marking the end of the harvest and the onset of winter, and was commonly viewed as a transitional time when the veil between the living and the spirit world thins.

According to folklorists, Samhain was a period when boundaries between this world and the otherworld blurred, allowing spirits and ancestors to pass through; fires were lit, ceremonial costumes were worn, and offerings made to protect families from any lurking malefic forces. Legal gatherings, councils, festivals, and so on were all supposedly held during this time, often for up to a week.

The notion of modern day Halloween came out of the Western Christian habit of keeping All Hallows’ Eve, the night before All Saints’ Day, which has been celebrated on November 1st since the 900s. Before that, different regions marked the same idea by remembering the holy dead in the spring.

Halloween, of course, looks much different today, but with a keen interest in the original pagan and mediaeval history of the motherland and Stoicism. I wanted to explore how they both each engage with the themes of mortality, fate, nature, and rituals – highlighting their insights into death and remembrance, destiny and acceptance, the natural order, and the practices that give these ideas tangible form.

Most of what is popularly known of Samhain is reconstructed through medieval sources that may project later Christian-era assumptions backward. But can we learn wisdom from both the human condition, and the nature of our existence?

Samhain has long been associated with death and the honouring of ancestors. As winter’s darkness came upon them, Celtic communities took time to not only remember the dead, but invite them to be among the living.

In folklore, the souls of departed kin were thought to revisit their homes on Samhain, seeking hospitality, and were welcomed with a place set at the table or by the hearth. Their tradition reflects a view of mortality not as a final, abrupt severance but as a continuum with the living and dead maintaining a connection.

The festival’s very timing at the “dying” of the year stresses its philosophical stance that death is a natural phase in life’s cycle. Rather than deny or fear it, Samhain rituals openly acknowledged death’s presence. They not only mourn or commemorate individuals, but honour the cycle of death and rebirth underpinning all existence.

As we turn to Stoicism, confronting mortality is likewise seen as essential to a life of wisdom, though in a different manner. The Stoics taught that to “live well” one must also learn to “die well,” with philosophy as preparation for the inevitable end.

Far from being morbid, reflecting on death is considered a healthy daily practice – encapsulated in the Latin motto, memento mori (“remember you must die”). The Stoic philosopher Seneca, for example, urged frequent contemplation of one’s aging and finitude as a way to cultivate gratitude and perspective.

A Stoic seeks to meet death with tranquility and dignity, viewing it as a natural completion of life’s course. In fact, the Roman Stoics believed that a “good death” would be characterised by mental calm, an absence of complaining, and thankfulness for the life one has had. To achieve such equanimity, Stoics regularly practice imagining their own death or the loss of loved ones – not to dwell in sorrow, but to rehearse acceptance of the inevitable.

As the slave turned teacher Epictetus once advised, you should kiss your child at night with the awareness that the child (or oneself) could die tomorrow. This sober consciousness has the intention to make one cherish the present and diminishes the fear of the end.

In Stoicism, therefore, mortality is neither denied nor dramatised; it is an ever-present truth of nature to be faced squarely. By keeping death in mind, a Stoic practitioner learns to live with intention and resilience, holding life as a gift on loan rather than a permanent possession.

Both Samhain and Stoicism, each in its own way, invite people to confront the reality of death – Samhain through communal remembrance and ritual fellowship with the dead, and Stoicism through personal reflection and philosophical exercise. Both seek to make peace with mortality and draw wisdom from its inevitability.

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In the Stoic worldview, the universe is seen to be governed by an orderly fate – a web of cause and effect ultimately overseen by divine reason or Providence. Some of the Stoics firmly believed that all events unfold according to a rational and providential plan, leaving no room for pure chance in the grand scheme.

In Stoicism, nature itself is fate, an unbroken chain of outcomes woven by Logos (universal reason) or in some cases defined as Zeus. Wisdom, they argued, lies in understanding this inevitability and aligning one’s will with it. In fact modern Stoics borrow one of Nietzsche’s iconic catchphrases “amor fati” meaning, a love of fate, which helps encapsulate this attitude in a popular mantra.

Rather than merely resigning yourself, the ideal is to embrace whatever happens as necessary and fitting. Emperor Marcus Aurelius repeated that a virtuous person “loves and welcomes whatever happens to him and whatever his fate may ultimately bring”.

In practice, this meant cultivating an attitude of thorough acceptance toward life’s fortunes and misfortunes alike. Since for the Stoics fate equals the natural order, to rebel against fate is to rebel against nature itself. Far better to yield willingly, weirdly even joyfully towards providence.

By focusing only on what is up to us (our own judgements and actions), and meeting everything else with assent, the Stoics found freedom within necessity. Stoicism then frames fate as something ultimately sympathetic or at least rational, to be loved rather than feared.

The payoff of accepting fate is inner tranquility; if you cease to rail against whatever happens, your soul can remain untroubled. This is not fatalism in the passive sense, but an active alignment of oneself with the flow of events – trusting that “the universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it,” as Marcus Aurelius remarked.

Samhain approaches destiny from a very different angle, reflecting the ancient human desire to glimpse and perhaps influence what the future holds. In the context of a rural Celtic community, the coming of winter was fraught with uncertainty and fear. Would the stores of food last? Would their livestock survive the bitter months? Thus, Samhain traditions often included divination rites and appeals to otherworldly powers in hopes of securing good fortune.

Medieval accounts and folklore describe how on Samhain night, people engaged in playful yet earnest attempts to read the future, “divination games brought glimpses of the future”, amidst the feasting and merriment. Nuts and apples were used in customs to foretell romances or hardships – reflecting a belief that on this night, when the veil between worlds was thin, hints of fate could leak through.

Alongside trying to discern destiny, they also attempted to influence it by propitiating spiritual forces. Samhain lore holds that the aos sí (spirits or fairies) had to be appeased with offerings so that people and animals would make it through winter safely. Food and drink were left outside village dwellings for the unseen beings, and portions of the harvest might even be left in the fields for them.

In essence, these acts were a hedge against cruel fate – a way to court the goodwill of powers that could dictate survival or doom. Not far off the offerings given by the Greeks and Romans, to specific Gods, dependent on what outcome was required for the sacrifice.

Even the eventual practice in later centuries of wearing disguises (guising) had a fate-tinged purpose. By dressing as spirits or monsters, villagers hoped to avoid being recognised and subsequently harmed by evil forces roaming in the dark.

We see, then, that Samhain’s stance on fate was twofold: part acceptance of nature’s coming trials, and part negotiation or bargaining with the unknown. Unlike some of Stoicism’s philosophical surrender to a rational cosmos, the Samhain traditions suggest a worldview in which fate is something mystical and negotiable – its secrets momentarily accessible through omens, and its harsher outcomes perhaps avertable through reverence and ritual.

Both perspectives tell us about the perennial human anxiety about the future, the Stoic by training the mind to accept whatever may come, the Samhain celebrant by ritually seeking assurances about what will come.

Samhain’s ideas were not written down formally, but enacted through rituals and community customs. The meaning comes alive in the tangible practices handed down over centuries, similar to other oral traditions of the time period. Central among these was the bonfire. These fires had a dual symbolic role: they were celebratory, bringing light and cheer to the dark night, but also served as protection and purification, in the belief that flame could ward off wandering harmful spirits.

Historical accounts describe how villagers would douse their household hearths and relight them from the great Samhain bonfire. Around these fires, rituals unfolded, participants feasted on the year’s bounty, told stories and legends (preserving cultural memory), and as above performed sacrifices or offered portions of crops and livestock as thanks and appeasement to their Gods or Spirits.

Ritual in Samhain is thus a medium for dealing with fear and uncertainty – for example in later iterations of the festival, laughter and pranks were also customary, serving to lighten the psychological load of the coming winter.

Another widespread practice was the “dumb supper,” a silent meal at which families left an empty chair and plate for their unseen ancestors – inviting the dead to symbolically dine once more with the living. Such rituals provided structure for emotions like grief, love, and hope. They allowed people to act out their beliefs and anxieties by lighting a fire, symbolically conquering darkness, and inviting the sun to return.

Samhain shows how ritual in itself can be a philosophy in action – a way of knowing through doing. The festival’s wisdom about mortality, fate, and nature was experienced directly through lighting a flame, sharing food, or donning a costume, creating an embodied understanding that life’s mysteries can be met with reverence, community, and even humour.

If Samhain’s wisdom was carried in collective rites, Stoicism’s was carried in personal practices – a kind of daily ritualisation of philosophy. The Stoics treat philosophy as a way of life, and they prescribed various mental exercises to cultivate the Stoic mindset. Of course it’s important to note that the Stoics also took part in civic ritual religion; they weren’t ritual-free, but they all didn’t treat that ritual as the instrument of philosophy.

These exercises served much the same purpose as religious rituals, to anchor and internalise one’s values through repeated action. For example, they recommended a routine of morning and evening reflection. At daybreak, a practitioner might rehearse the challenges likely to come – planning how to meet them virtuously, and at night, one would review the day’s events, examining one’s own responses such as, “Did I act justly? Did anger or fear sway me?” The self-audit was a daily cleansing of the soul, akin to how others might pray or confess.

Another common exercise is the premeditation of adversity (premeditatio malorum). In this practice, one vividly imagines possible misfortunes – loss of wealth, exile, death of a loved one – in order to habituate oneself to accept them if they occur. By visualising these outcomes, you aim to steel the mind against surprise and sorrow, reinforcing the principle that such externals are ultimately beyond one’s full control and therefore not true evils.

The exercises function much like personal rituals, they are done regularly, often in a set time and manner in order to transform one’s mindset. The Roman statesman Seneca, for instance, wrote that he ended each day with a reflection on his conscience, effectively “interrogating” his soul and softening into sleep with a clear mind.

Some Stoics also practiced voluntary hardship (such as occasional fasting, wearing simple clothing, or sleeping without a bed) as a form of discipline to appreciate what one has and to prove that one can be content with less. All these practices were the equivalent of ritual – they provided a structured method to embed philosophy into daily life. Just as Samhain’s festivities brought community beliefs into tangible form, a Stoic’s meditation or nightly journal brought Stoic principles from theory into lived experience.

In both cases, ritual or routine serves as a bridge between lofty ideas and the rhythms of life. Stoicism’s inner rituals trained the individual to respond to life’s trials with virtue and calm, much as Samhain’s communal rituals trained the village to face winter with unity and hope.

The threads that both the Celtic rite and the Hellenistic philosophy weave into meaning – beyond their obvious differences, we can see a shared desire to help humans live and die well by seeking to make sense of the larger forces that govern our existence.

Both sets urge us to face the unknown – whether the mystery of what lies beyond death or the unpredictability of tomorrow. Both invite us to honour those who came before – whether literally, by setting a place for ancestors, or figuratively, by heeding the insights of past sages. And both find meaning in the natural cycle of endings and beginnings, be it the turning of the seasons or the eternal return of cosmic order.

In treating winter’s onset as a sacred time, Samhain transforms an existential fear into an occasion for reverence and connection. In treating death as “according to nature,” Stoicism transforms anxiety into acceptance and self awareness for the fragile human condition.

Whether by myth or through reason, by festival or through practice, my ancestors around a Samhain bonfire, or Stoic philosophers pacing the Stoa, or at a lecture ultimately arrived at complementary truths. Life is fleeting, seasons will change, and much is beyond our control. Yet through wisdom, whether folklore or philosophical, we can find a way to live in harmony with these realities.

Both to me ultimately affirm the resilience of the human spirit in the face of fate. They remind us that even as we are subject to death and time, we are also participants in a greater natural order – one that can be met with understanding, community, and virtue

In that recognition lies a kind of hope, as relevant today as it was two millennia ago.

Thanks for reading,

If the post resonated with you, please consider sharing or engaging with it. They’re free to read, and I would love for the ideas to travel further and reach people who might benefit from them.

Memento mori,
Enda (The Irish Stoic)

P.S Donald J. Robertson & Kyle Shepard had an insightful conversation through Substack last week. I know a good proportion of my audience are familiar with these two, and as someone who doesn’t listen to podcasts I would highly recommend checking this one out.