Paganism // Current

Here’s how All Hallow’s Eve (Halloween) came to be celebrated

The observance of All Hallow’s Eve, which over the years has been contracted into Halloween, has its roots in the end of summer celebrations held by people of pre-Christian Europe, especially the Celts of the British Isles.

Because the Celts believed that the world of the living and that of the dead were so close during this festival, allowing spirits of the dead to more easily return to the land of the living, people set out food and drink for family members who had died the previous year. Of course, if friendly ghosts could return under this night’s cover of darkness, so could evil spirits. To keep these malevolent ghosts at bay, skeletons, presumably of dead animals, were placed at the entrance of each house and in many cases turnips were hollowed out, faces carved into the shells to represent skulls and small pieces of wood wrapped in oil soaked cloths were placed inside each one and set alight. In some places, people dressed in animal skins or wore grotesque masks to frighten away unwelcome spirits.

In Scotland, the young men disguised themselves as spirits by dressing in white and blackening their faces, or wearing masks or veils to confuse and ward off these unwanted visitors. This costume and carved turnip practice lasted well into mediaeval times, when Christianity had long replaced the Celtic religion.

With the arrival of the Romans in Britain, a new element was added to the end of the summer events, when the festival honouring Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and orchards, took place around the same time. Apples played an important role in this celebration.

Another ancient British festival with an apple theme, now known as Snap Apple Night, was celebrated with bonfires, feasting, dancing and itinerant entertainers at this time of year. One of its popular games was to try and bite an apple suspended on a string without using hands. It seems then, that apples and turnips at Halloween time predate pumpkins by many hundreds of years.

With the arrival of Christianity, early church leaders, realizing they couldn’t simply ban these old customs, wisely chose to give them a Christian interpretation and the day remembering Christian saints was moved from May 13 to the end of October and All Hallow's Eve came into being, with the day following called All Saints’ Day (“hallow” is an old English word for holy one or saint).

In parts of 9th century continental Europe, people went from door to door early in November “souling,” because it was believed departed souls needed help on their journey to Heaven. The “soulers” begged specially made little “soul cakes” from each family visited and in return would promise to pray for family members that had recently died. Eventually the day following All Saints’ became All Souls’ Day.

While the Christian aspect of this holy day (holiday) remained strong in the old world, the other old traditions began to fade after 1500, but not before British settlers arrived in Canada and the U.S.A., bringing the old ideas with them. Where now the Christian aspect has become muted, the earlier pre-Christian customs remain strong.

(I shortened the article. More detail at link)The observance of All Hallow’s Eve, which over the years has been contracted into... more

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Do Pagans Have More Sex?

"Wouldn't it be great to be back in hunter-gatherer days? Back before the human spiritual quest had been corrupted by the "relentless onslaught of Western scientific materialism" and "dogmatic male-dominated religion"? Back when there were shamans—spiritual leaders—who could plug us into "the realm of the magical," show us "the reality behind apparent reality," and thus lead us to understand "how the universe really works"?

The quotes come from Leo Rutherford, a leading advocate of neo-shamanism, which is a subset of neo-paganism, which is a subset of New Age spirituality. But the basic idea—that there was a golden age of spiritual purity which we fallen moderns need to recover—goes beyond New Age circles. You see traces of it even in such serious scholars as Karen Armstrong, who wrote in A History of God that early Abrahamic religion had created a gulf "between humanity and the divine, rupturing the holistic vision of paganism."

As the author of the just-published book The Evolution of God, about the history of religion, I'm primed to do some debunking. But before I start, I want to stress two points: 1) I think it's great for people to find spiritual peace and sound moral orientation wherever they can, including neo-paganism; 2) I don't doubt that back before Western monotheism took shape there were earnest seekers of a "holistic vision" who selflessly sought to share that vision.

What I do doubt is that these earnest, selfless spiritual leaders were any more common in the heyday of shamanism than today, or that the spiritual quest was any less corrupted by manipulation and outright charlatanism than today, or that there was a coherent philosophy of shamanism that makes more sense than the average religion of today.

if shamanism is so crude, how did it get glamorized? In 1951, the esteemed scholar Mircia Eliade published a book called Shamanism. While he didn't whitewash shamanism, he did his best to see its more refined side. He wrote that Eskimo shamanism and Buddhist mysticism share as their goal "deliverance from the illusions of the flesh." And shamanism, he said, features "the will to transcend the profane, individual condition" in order to recover "the very source of spiritual existence, which is at once 'truth' and 'life.' "

f you try neo-shamanism, don't be under the illusion that you're helping to recover a lost age of authentic spirituality. Religion has always been a product of human beings, for better and worse.""Wouldn't it be great to be back in hunter-gatherer days? Back before the human... more

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History of Halloween

"Halloween has its origins in the ancient Celtic festival known as Samhain (Irish pronunciation: [ˈsˠaunʲ]; from the Old Irish samain). The festival of Samhain is a celebration of the end of the harvest season in Gaelic culture, and is sometimes regarded as the "Celtic New Year". Traditionally, the festival was a time used by the ancient pagans to take stock of supplies and slaughter livestock for winter stores. The ancient Gaels believed that on October 31, now known as Halloween, the boundary between the alive and the deceased dissolved, and the dead become dangerous for the living by causing problems such as sickness or damaged crops. The festivals would frequently involve bonfires, into which bones of slaughtered livestock were thrown. Costumes and masks were also worn at the festivals in an attempt to mimic the evil spirits or placate them.

History of name

The term Halloween is shortened from All Hallows' Even (both "even" and "eve" are abbreviations of "evening", but "Halloween" gets its "n" from "even") as it is the eve of "All Hallows' Day", which is now also known as All Saints' Day. It was a day of religious festivities in various northern European Pagan traditions, until Popes Gregory III and Gregory IV moved the old Christian feast of All Saints' Day from May 13 (which had itself been the date of a pagan holiday, the Feast of the Lemures) to November 1. In the ninth century, the Church measured the day as starting at sunset, in accordance with the Florentine calendar. Although All Saints' Day is now considered to occur one day after Halloween, the two holidays were, at that time, celebrated on the same day. Liturgically, the Church traditionally celebrated that day as the Vigil of All Saints, and, until 1970, a day of fasting as well. Like other vigils, it was celebrated on the previous day if it fell on a Sunday, although secular celebrations of the holiday remained on the 31st. The Vigil was suppressed in 1955, but was later restored in the post-Vatican II calendar.

Symbols

The carved pumpkin, lit by a candle inside, is one of Halloween's most prominent symbols in America, and is commonly called a jack-o'-lantern. Originating in Europe, these lanterns were first carved from a turnip or rutabaga. Believing that the head was the most powerful part of the body containing the spirit and the knowledge, the Celts used the "head" of the vegetable to frighten off any superstitions.The name jack-o'-lantern can be traced back to the Irish legend of Stingy Jack, a greedy, gambling, hard-drinking old farmer. He tricked the devil into climbing a tree and trapped him by carving a cross into the tree trunk. In revenge, the devil placed a curse on Jack, condemning him to forever wander the earth at night with the only light he had: a candle inside of a hollowed turnip. The carving of pumpkins is associated with Halloween in North America, where pumpkins were readily available and much larger, making them easier to carve than turnips. Many families that celebrate Halloween carve a pumpkin into a frightening or comical face and place it on their home's doorstep after dark. In America the tradition of carving pumpkins is known to have preceded the Great Famine period of Irish immigration. The carved pumpkin was originally associated with harvest time in general in America and did not become specifically associated with Halloween until the mid-to-late 19th century."

Just some fun history for the holiday, more at link,enjoy:) "Halloween has its origins in the ancient Celtic festival known as Samhain (Irish... more