from Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft

"Samhain - Greater Sabbat

This is the time of year for getting rid of weaknesses (in the old days the cattle least likely to make it thru the winter wouldvbe cut from the herd and slaughtered). Coveners should bring into the Circle with them a small piece of parchment on which they have written down weaknesses or bad habits they would like to lose. "

From A Witches' Bible

"The eve of 1st November, when the Celtic Winter begins is the dark counterpart of May Eve which greets the Summer. more than that, 1st November for the Celts was the beginning of the year itself, and the feast of Samhain was their New Year's Eve, the mysterious moment which belonged to neither past nor present, to neither this world nor the Other. Samhain is Irish Gaelic for the month of November; Samhuin is Scottish Gaelic for All Hallows, 1st November.
. . . . .
"A sense of psychic eeriness, or at the turn of the year - the old dying, the new still unborn - the Veil was very thin. The doors of the sidh-mounds were open, and on this night neither human nor fairy needed any magical password to come and go. On this night, too, the spirits of dead friends sought the warmth of the Samhain fire and communion with their living kin. This was the Feile na Marbh, the Feast of the Dead, and also Feile Moingfhinne, the Feast of the White-Haired One, the Snow Goddess. It was "a partial return to primordial chaos . . . the dissolution of established order as prelude to its recreation in a new period of time", as Proisnias mac Cana says in Celtic Mythology."
  ¶ 5:00 p.m.