THE VIGIL OF SAMAN is the Anglicised interpretation of the Celtic festival 'Samhain' pronounced 'Zoween'. It is also termed Festival of Light or Fire. The Vigilof Saman or Samhain occurs on October 31st and was observed for at least a thousand years before Britain was Christianised. Saman is the Celtic lord of Death and Transformation. Samhain was the Festival for remembering Ancestors and renewing firefor the hard cold months of winter. Samhain was the Celts' most important festival because it was the beginning of their year; their New Year's Day.
ALL HALLOW EVE is the popular name for 31st of October; the evening before the Christianised festival of All Saints Day (also termed All Hallows Day) which occursin the Christian calendar on November 1st. People often think that Halloween is a contraction of Hallows-even-ing, but it is more likely to be a compound of Hallow'seve and Zoween
ALL SOULS DAY (Nov 2nd) ' This is a festival celebrated by the Roman Catholic Church on behalf of the souls in purgatory for whose release the prayers of the faithful are this day offered up and masses performed. It is said to have been first introduced in the ninth century by Odlion abbot of Cluny; but was not generally established till towards the end of the tenth century. Its observance was esteemed of such importance that in the event of its falling on a Sunday it was ordered not to be postponed till the Monday as in the case of other celebrations, but to take place on the previous Saturday, that the souls of the departed might suffer no detrimentfrom the want of the prayers of the church. It was customary in former times on this day, for persons dressed in black to traverse the streets ringing a dismal toned bell at every corner, and calling on the inhabitants to remember the souls suffering penance in purgatory, and to join in prayer for their liberation and repose.' Chambers Book of Days.
All Souls' Day is the Christian church festival observed on November 2nd. Hallowtide is the Christian title for the period covering October 31st to November 2nd.As you will see from the research which follows, in order to supplant the ancientand much-loved festival of Samhain the Christian Church moved its own All SaintsFestival from February to November 1st. However, you need to know also that AllSaints Day was itself a spurious invention by the church which was originally usedto absorb the ancient Roman pagan festival of Parentalia which, although occurringduring mid-February was very similar in content to the Celts' Samhain. Parentaliawas the Roman festival of honouring their ancestors and family dead and was subtlychanged to honouring the Christian Martyrs.
Allegiance to tribal and family traditions and lore was probably seen as a threat to Christianity which demanded loyalty first to Mother Church.This assimilation technique worked so well that they appear to have done the same thing with the ancient Briton's and so moved All Saints Day from February to coincide and compete with Samhain; making sure to skip a day so that anyone who continued to observe the original festival could be easily marked as a heretic. The purpose of the original Celtic festival was to honour their ancestors and family dead so the people were not ready to accept a ceremony honouring the martyrdom of Christian saints in its place . In response to this reluctance the Church invented All Souls Day as a Christianised Halloween counterpart and shifted it to November 2 in order to give precedence to their Saints Day and presumably break the habits of the Celtic Calendar. All Soul's Day was designed to replace the original pagan festival with more 'Christian' activities but some of them got a bit mixed up.
You cannot divest a people instantly of their psychology and attitudes simply by shifting a date or renaming a festival; as can be seen from the following; 'At Naples it used to be a custom on this day to throw open the Church's charnel houses [crypts] which were lighted up with torches and decked with flowers while crowds thronged through the vaults to visit the bodies of their friends and relatives, the fleshless skeletons of which were dressed up in robes and arranged in niches along the walls. At Salerno, also, we are told, that a custom prevailed previous to the fifteenth century of providing in every house on the eve of All Souls Day a sumptuous entertainment for the souls in purgatory who were supposed then to revisit temporarily and make merry in the scene of their earthly pilgrimage. Everyone quitted the habitation and after spending the night at church, returned in the morning to find the whole feast consumed, it being deemed eminently inauspicious if a morsel of victuals remained uneaten. (Book of Days R Chambers, 1864)
The Christian Church consciously and cunningly reorganised old festivals in order to suppress the Old Religion and confuse its adherents. In his Book of Days (1864) R Chambers points out that, 'All-Saints Day takes its origin from the conversion in the 7th century of the Pantheon at Rome into a Christian place of worship and its dedication by pope Boniface IV to the Virgin and all the martyrs. The anniversary of this event was at first celebrated on the 1st of May [Celtic Beltaine and still a pagan holy day throughout all Mediterranean countries] but the day was subsequently altered to the 1st of November which was thenceforth under the designation of the Feast of All Saints set apart as a general commemoration in their honour.
The festival was retained by the Anglican Church. And Spence remarks 'All Hallows Eve (as observed in the churchof Rome) corresponds with the Feralia [Parentalia] of the ancient Romans, when they celebrated in honour of the dead, offered up prayers for them and made oblations tothem. In ancient times the Christianised festival was celebrated on the twentyfirst of February but the Roman Church transferred it in her calendar to the firstof November. ' (Encyclopaedia of Occultism.)
HALLOWEEN NOTHING TO DO WITH SATANISTS: Halloween therefore has nothing whatsoeverto do with Satanists and is not 'the high point of their calendar' as fundamentalist Christians are fond of quoting. Halloween is a Celtic pre-Christian year-end festival celebrating the harvesting of the 'last fruits' and is represented in similarobservances in all ancient civilised societies the world over.
NOTHING TO DO WITH EVIL EITHER: Halloween has nothing whatever to do with Evil. The people who originally celebrated Halloween were ordinary folks. Peasants who believed in the Celtic Pagan Religion which was predominant for thousands of years in the U.K. before Christian missionaries invaded our shores. In fact, for hundreds of years (whilst Christianity was a young, minor and only partly accepted belief in the U.K.) Paganism and Christians worshipped communally side by side - even sharing sacred sites and temples. Only when Christianity had got its foot in the door and became politically powerful by winning over tribal elders and kings did the twisted minds of the extremist fundamentalists begin to turn the Old Gods into the NewDevils and attack innocent people who had kept the old Pagan beliefs.
FUN ASPECTS OF HALLOWEEN ARE ALL PAGAN: Samhain had been extant for thousands ofyears and it is from this original festival that all the fun aspects of Halloween are drawn. Unbelievably, even after 1,000 years of failure, Christian Activists and fundamentalists are STILL trying to force the people to abandon it using the most atrocious lies and defamations which, if targeted upon any other faith (e.g. Jews,Moslems, Hindus ) would cause hails of protest from Human Rights agencies and most probably a prosecution for criminal defamation. The truth is that Samhain has ALWAYS been the festival that British people have enjoyed and alternative festivals invented by the Christian Church (and which were designed to destroy the old festival and the will of its people) have failed miserably. They tried to do the same withYuletide and haven't much succeeded there too.
WHY HALLOWEEN IS A TRADITIONAL BRITISH FESTIVAL: Every year carping Christian fundamentalist activists rush to insists that Halloween is not a British tradition and should not be followed in the U.K.. This lie relies upon activating anti-American sentiment in parochial British minds, because the truth of the matter is that Halloween is NOT an American Importation, it is a wholly British tradition which was actually EXPORTED to the U.S.A. by European imigrants. In particular the peasant Welsh, Irish and Scots people who were thrown out of their rural homes in the despicable 'clearances'. As you will see from the following research it is abundantly clear that Halloween (or Zoween) has been observed in Britain for thousands of years and is one of the few pagan religious festivals which represents the original folklore and heritage of Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales. A true melding of Britano-Celtic common interest. Trick or Treat is simply an American amplification of the 'fun and forfeit' games which have formed part of the traditional Halloween festivities in Britain for hundreds of years.There is nothing involved in Halloween which is uniquely American, it's just that the Americans know how to enjoy themselves and can recognise a good thing when they see it!
THE SACRIFICE LIBEL: The word 'Sacrifice' has extremely emotional conotations so detractors always misuse the term so they can turn historical records to their wicked ends. Every mention of the word is immediately interpreted by such people as a ritual killing, yet in reality the word Sacrifice comes from the Latin 'Sacrificium' whose root is Sacre(Sacred) and facio (to make). Sacrifice therefore simply means to make an offering to one's gods and that offering was usually, almost inevitably, an offering of food, wine or incense. There is no evidence anywhere that the word Sacrifice should be taken to even include human sacrifice, let alone be exclusive to it. This is clear from all texts and artwork from ancient times and throughout all the classical civilisations. However today, after hundreds of years of evil disinformation Sacrifice has become a sine qua non for ritual killing. When the oh-so-civilised Romans barbarously put an enemy of the state to death it became 'a sacrifice', but when our governments do the same thing they call it 'justice'. When the old offered themselves for voluntary euthenasia in ancient times historians term it 'ritual sacrifice', today it becomes a 'mercy killing'. When the Ancient Egyptians took the heads of their enemies in battle the historians term it 'ritual murder' but when American troops cut ears from 'gooks' in vietnam it becomes a 'heroic war'.
Pagans who observe Halloween DO NOT involve themselves in any form human or animal sacrifice but they DO offer food, libations and incenses to their gods, as is traditional. The assertion that the ancient Celts (the first observers of Halloween) sacrificed humans on October 31st is a lie based entirely on one fictitious piece of historical writing - as the following research will show in detail.
This is how these misconceptions occurred: In Celtic times the herds were brought down from the hills at Halloween to over-winter in the barns. A portion of the herd, (that portion which could not be fed through the winter on the available fodder) was culled. This was a necessary act of husbandry which occurred, and still does occur in rural places, in all northern societies. In Celtic tribes this culling provided the fresh meat for the Samhain (Halloween) feast as a last binge of fresh food to see them through the winter. There is no historical record anywhere which provides any evidence that ritual killing was involved at Samhain. The suggestion that human sacrifice was performed as a religious act at Samhain by the Celts is a lie put out by Christian evangelists who wish to discredit and suppress the Pagan religion. Their lie is based upon a single misdirection in ancient Celtic literature which was penned by yet another missionary who, shortly after the Christianisation of Ireland and in order to praise Saint Patrick for delivering the Irish 'heathens' to Christ, included in his scribble a load of old twaddle from a Celtic Fable as though it was fact. The fable itself was a piece of propaganda by one Celtic tribe against another and which accused them of sacrificing two-thirds of their offspring to their gods! It is from this ridiculous mention, a forerunner of the modern Satanic Ritual Abuse Myth, that all the deluded allegations of human sacrifice at Halloween sprang.
The confusion over Animal Culling and Animal Sacrifice is cleared up by Chambers (1864) when he writes.' November was styled by the ancient Saxons Wint Monat or the wind-month from the gales of wind which are so prevalent at this season of the year, obliging our Scandanivian ancestors to lay up their Keels (boats) on shore.... It bore also the name Blot monath, or the Bloody Month, from the circumstances of its being customary then to slaughter great numbers of cattle to be salted for winter use. '..... The Bookof Days
LUNAR ORIGINS OF PAGAN HALLOWEEN: October 31st. The calendar of the northern European Celtic tribes was based on lunar observations and pre-dated the solar calendars of the Mediterranean countries. The two major festivals of the Celtic year Beltaine (May 1st) and it's cross-quarter counterpart Halloween marked the beginning of summer and the beginning of winter respectively for the Celts. Its origins are lost in the midst of time, as are most of the Death Festivals which occur throughout the world.
Chambers in his BOOK OF DAYS says 'It [Halloween] is clearly a relic of Pagan times for there is nothing in the church-observance of the ensuing day of All Saints to have originated such extraordinary notions connected with this celebrated festival..' In his mammoth tome, The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Dr Brewer also states that...'On the introduction of Christianity it [Halloween/Samhain] was taken over as the Even of All Hallows or All Saints. ' The eminent Folklorist and Mythologist, Lewis Spence added in 1920 that 'One of the former four great Fire festivals in Britain...when all fires, save those of the Druids were extinguished from whose altars only the holy fire must be purchased by the householders for a certain price.
The festival is still known in Ireland as Samhein or La Samon, that is, The Feast of The Sun. ' (ENCYCLOPAEDIA OFOCCULTISM' 1920.) and to finally confirm the precedence of Samhain, Sir James Frazer says this in his monumental work on folklore, THE GOLDEN BOUGH 'by the antique character impressed upon [Halloween] it betrays a remote and purely pagan origin.
An excellent overview of the true origins of Halloween are contained within Barbara Walker's DICTIONARY OF MYTH & SYMBOL where she writes 'Our Halloween rituals are relics of the original... Feast of the Dead (Celtic Samhain, or Vigil of Saman). It was perhaps the most important of the cross-quarter days, when the 'crack between the worlds' could open up and let the spirits pass through. Therefore the ghosts of dead ancestors could revisit the earth, join their descendants at the feast and give necromantic interviews and omens.
In Ireland all the Sidh or fairy hills (grave mounds/barrows) were said to open up for the occasion. Folks insisted that it was impossible to keep the fairies underground on Halloween. Since these 'faires' were simply pagan spirits the church naturally insisted that demons were abroad on Halloween, summoned by witches, which was the usual term for the ancient pagan priestesses whose business it was to communicate with the dead. Halloween trick or treat customs descended from a belief that the family dead would bring gifts or goodies to the children during their temporary return from the other world. Gifts, food and sweets were always the standard method of attracting children's attention to religious holidays, as is still shown by our own Christmas and Easter customs. Thus the 'dead relations have become the good fairies of the little ones'. Black cats, owls bats, and broomsticks were the famliar spirits and tools commonly associated with wise women or witches, who retained a dominant position in the Feast of the Dead despite the church's attempt to assimilate the festival in honour of its own cannon of saints [All Saints Day].'
Sir James Fraser confirms the view that Halloween is a benign festival of the people for the people and has nothing to do with the evil ethos projected onto it by Christian evangelists, when he writes, '...Halloween was perhaps of old the more important since the Celts would seem to have dated the beginning of the year from it rather than from Beltaine [It's cross year May day festival].... Not only among the Celts but throughout Europe. Halloween, the night which marks the transition from autumn to winter, seems to have been of old the time of year when the souls of the departed were supposed to revisit their old homes in order to warm themselves by the fire and to comfort themselves with the good cheer provided for them in the kitchen or the parlour by their affectionate kinsfolk. ' Golden Bough
THE SACRED SAMHAIN FIRE AND HALLOWEEN FIRE RITUALS: : Halloween, the Celtic NewYear, has much in common with the Solar based new year now commonly celebrated in January. Although Samhain was timed with the lunar calendar and therefore does not synchronise with the Solar fire festivals of the Solstices / Equinoxes, it was formerly celebrated by lighting Sacred Bonfires or 'Halloween Bleezes' as they were known colloquially in Scotland. These fires were called Samhanagan. ' There was one for each house and it was an object of ambition who should have the Biggest. Whole districts of Scotland were brilliant with bonfires..'.in the Perthshire Highlands (Callander) they still blazed down to near the end of the eighteenth century.'..... 'The general demeanour, festivity and celebration of the Celtic New Year was later transferred to December 31st but even after the Celtic language was virtually dead in England, in the Isle of Man Celtic speaking mummers used to go round at Halloween singing a song called Hogunnaa! (Hogmanay).' (Fraser)
.Fire being such an important feature of Halloween, there is a remarkable uniformity in the fireside customs of this night all over the United Kingdom. ' Nuts and apples are everywhere in requisition and consumed in immense numbers. Indeed the name of Nutcrack Night by which Halloween is known in the north of England indicates the predominance of the former of these articles in making up the entertainments of the evening. They are not only cracked and eaten but made the means of vatication in love affairs.' Book of Days. Chambers
.THE NUT SPELL: It is a custom in Ireland when the young women would know if their lovers are faithful, to put three nuts upon the bars of the grate, naming the nuts after the lovers. If a nut cracks or jumps the lover will prove unfaithful; if itbegins to blaze or burn, he has a regard for the person making the trial. If the nuts named after the girl and her lover burn together, they will be married' Brand 'Popular Antiquities'
It is only natural that autumnal fruits, nuts and other produce harvested at this time would form a large part of the fayre at Halloween celebrations. What couldn't be eaten would be stored for the long winter to come.
OTHER ANCIENT HALLOWEEN CELEBRATIONS AND RITES: 'In some parts of Scotland it is till customary for young people to kindle fires on the tops of hills and grounds and fire of this description goes by the name of 'Halloween Bleeze. Formerly it was customary to surround these bonfires with a circular trench symbolical of the sun... In Perthshire the 'Hallowen bleeze' is made in the following picturesque fashion. Heath, broom and dressings of flax are tied upon a pole. The faggot is then kindled; a youth takes it upon his shoulders and carries it about. When the faggot is burned out a second is tied to the pole and kindled in the same manner as the former one. Several of these blazing faggots are often carried through the villages at the same time' [ed. presumably to give residents the opportunity to renew their old hearth's with the newly charged ceremonial fire). Spence-
In ancient Ireland a new fire used to be kindled every year on Halloween or the Eve ofSamhain and from this sacred flame all the fires in Ireland were rekindled.' (Golden Bough)
.CEREMONIAL LIBATIONS AT HALLOWEEN: 'At Halloween, The Celtic Samhain, the natives of the Hebrides used to pour libations of ale to a marine god called Shony, imploring him to send sea-weed [a powerful fertiliser still used today in the Islands] to the shore.' Golden Bough
THE ASH STONES: 'When the fire had died down the ashes were carefully collected in the form of a circle, and a stone was put in near the circumference, for every person of the several families interested in the bonfire. Next morning, if any of these stones was found to be displaced or injured, the people made sure that the person represented by it was fey or devoted, and that he could not live twelve months from that day.' (Fraser)
A similar rite is conducted in the northern part of Wales where it used to be customary for every family to make a great bonfire called Coel Coeth on Halloween, when it had nearly gone out every one threw into the ashes a white stone which he or she had first marked.... Next morning as soon as they were up they came to search out the stones and if any one of them were found missing they had a notion that the person who threw it would die before they saw another Halloween' ..... ' A similar ceremony occurs in Lower Brittany where every person throws a pebble into the midsummer bonfire...The custom , thus found among three separate branches of the Celtic stock probably dates from an ancient period before their dispersion..' (Fraser
CANDLE & APPLE STICK MILL: At Halloween...'There is an old custom .. of hanging up a stick horizontally by a string from the ceiling and putting a candle on the one end and an apple on the other. The stick being made to twirl rapidly, the merry-makers in a succession leap up and snatch at the apple with their teeth (no use of the hands being allowed), but it very frequently happens that the candle comes round before they are aware and scorches them in the face or anoints them with grease.The disappointments and misadventures occasion of course, abundance of laughter. Book of Days R Chamber 1864
APPLE BOBBING: 'But the Grand Sport with apples at Halloween is to set them afloat in a tub of water, into which the juveniles by turns, duck their heads with the view of catching an apple. Great fun goes on in watching the attempts of the youngster in the pursuit of the swimming fruit which wriggles from side to side of the tub and evades all attempts to capture it; whilst the disappointed aspirant is obliged to abandon the chase in favour of another whose turn has now arrived The apples with stalks are generally caught first and then comes the tug of war to win those which possess no such appendages. Some competitors will deftly suck up the apple.. Others plunge ... and having forced it to the bottom of the tub, seize it firmly with their teeth and emerge. In recent years a practice has been introduced... of dropping a fork from a height into the tub among the apples and thus turning the sport into a display of marksmanship. Book of Days R Chambers 1864.
Apples have always had an intimate connection with the Old Religion's libertarian attitude towards sex and provide a traceable common-link between pagan religions.'The Three Mothers of the World were always closely connected with apple tress in early Greek and Celtic Myth. The apple tree remained sacred to the Goddess in Romanian folklore and there are many other examples throughout the world of he Apple or Appletree being used as a symbol for the Goddess. ' (Walker)
The New patriarchal religion of Christianity neatly scapegoated Women and stigmatised both the Old Religion and Apples with the Garden of Eden Myth. Even though the bible does not indicate which fruit it was that Eve tempted Adam with anti-pagan propaganda from the church has succeeded in convincing 99% of the population that it was an apple!
EATING THE APPLE AT THE GLASS: ....the celebrated spell of eating an apple before a looking glass, with the view of discovering the inquirers future husband who it is believed will be seen peeping over her shoulder. Spence adds 'as the clock strikes twelve [midnight].. cut the apple into small pieces, throw one of them over your left shoulder and advancing to the mirror without looking back, proceed to eat the remainder combing your hair carefully all the while before the glass. '. In reality the apple should be cut across revealing the 'secret pentangle' within, one half thrown over your left shoulder for your lover. Cutting the apple across and sharing it with your lover was an ancient gypsy rite used at weddings.
HALLOWEEN MASKS: 'Masks were common attributes of deities from the most primitive times, when people wearing masks literally impersonated their divinities. Egyptian art shows clearly that the gods appeared as human beings with elaborate masks thatcovered the entire head. The Teutonic word for mask, Grim, was also a common component of the deities' names, showing that the divine personality was literally believed to reside in the mask. To prevent manifestation of pagan deities, the mediaeval Christian churches forbad the wearing of masks but the practice continued anyway at such pagan survivals as Halloween and Carnival'. ('Barbara Walker')
THE PUMPKIN HEAD LANTERN: Is generally believed to be a composite later development of mask-making combined with the ceremony of feasting the head. Historically throughout the world virtually all societies had days when relics of their ancestors, bones and heirlooms, tribal fetishes etc. were brought out of safe keeping to be honoured by the living at a celebration specially set aside for remembrance. In many old tribal societies the skulls of patriarchs and ancestors were brought to the table to join in the feast. Barbara Walker explains:
'The Old religions accepted the presence of ghosts throughout the environment which dissolved and absorbed the dead in one way or another so that living nature was just an altered form of the living spirits of deceased ancestors. Ghosts [of deceased relatives, patriarchs] were invited to participate in festivals and other important occasions with their descendants; hence the 'death head at the feast' a relic of the preserved ancestral skull actually placed at the meal among living members of the family. For this reason 'ghost' and 'guest' are from the same word, Germanic 'Geist', as in 'poltergeist.' The words Ghost and Guest were pronounced exactly alike in northern England...
Therefore [to biased , uninformed Christians] all pagan spirits could become 'ghosts' and meet the living, especially at Halloween, the pagan Feast of the Dead.' ...'Samhain ...was the holiday of the dead and of all the supernatural beings. "On November Even 'says a North Cardiganshire proverb. ' there is a bogy on every stile'. The Scotch have even invented a special bogy - the Samhanach or goblin which comes out at Samhain. Charles Squire, Celtic Myth & Legend.
HALLOWEEN KAIL CEREMONY: 'The young people go out hand in hand blind-folded into the Kail yard or garden and each pulls the first stalk [of Kail or Colewort - a type of cabbage] which he meets with. According as the stalk is big or little straight or crooked so shall the future wife or husband be of the party by whom it is pulled.The quantity of earth sticking to the root denotes the amount of fortune or dowry and the taste of the pith ... indicates the temper. Finally the stalks are placed, one after another over the door and the names of the persons who chance thereafter to enter the house are held in the same succession to indicate those of the individual whom the parties are to marry ' Book of Days R Chambers
. THREE MAGIC DISHES SPELL: Another ceremony much practised on Halloween is that of the Three Dishes or Luggies. Two of these are respectively filled with clean and foul water and one is empty. They are ranged on the hearth, when the parties, blind folded, advance in succession and dip their fingers into one. If they dip into the clean water, they are to marry a maiden; if into the foul water, a widow; if into the empty dish, the party so dipping is destined to be either a bachelor or an old maid. As each person takes his turn the position of the dishes is changed.
THE SALTED HERRING SPELL: 'Just before retiring to rest eat a raw or roasted salt herring, and in your dreams your husband (or wife) that is to be, will come and offer you a drink of water to quench your thirst. ' (Spence) Presumably any salted fish will do.
THE SPELL OF THE SOWN HEMP SEED: ' Steal alone towards midnight and sow a handful of hemp seed, repeating the following rhyme: "Hemp seed, I sow thee, Hemp seed I sow thee; And he that is my true love, come behind and harrow me:" Then look over your left shoulder and you will see the person thus adjured in the act of harrowing. ' Spence Encyclopaedia of Occultism.
THE TRIANGULAR CAKES: 'Even in the 20th century, Scottish country folk baked triangular cakes for Halloween, the Celtic Feast of Samhain, calling the woman who baked the cakes 'the Bride.' After a reign of one year she must be displaced by the Caillech or 'Auld Wife' - that is the incarnation of the Crone. (Barbara Walker -Women's Dictionary of Symbols & Sacred Objects 1988.) One of the most persistent ceremonies in English Witchcraft is the ceremony of the Cakes and Wine observed after every meeting. This communion involves the distribution by the high priestess of small biscuits or cakes which are crescent or triangular shaped.
THE WET SHIRT SPELL; Another old rite is to wet a shirt-sleeve, hang it up to the fire to dry , and lie in bed watching it till midnight, when the apparition of the individual's future partner for life will come in and turn the sleeve.
HALLOWEEN SYMBOLS: Many Halloween symbols have retained their significance down through thousands of years, although much of their meaning has been misrepresented as evil or anti-social by Christians wishing to discredit the Old Religion of Paganism.
OWL: The Wise-woman [cunning healer and herb Mother/Crone of the village / locality ] or Witch had the same name in Latin as the owl; Strix, the plural striges, later the Italian strega, 'witch'. ' The Wise Owl still appears with witches at Halloween because of its past association with many forms of the Goddess, who embodied wisdom as well as mortality. Lilith, Athene, Minerva, Blodeuwedd, Anath and the staring owl-eyed goddess Mari were closely associated with the owl or took the owl's shape. (Walker)
CAT: ' Cats were sacred to the Egyptians. The divine Mother of all cats was the Goddess Bast, whose sacred city of Bubastis was famous for its joyous and elaborate festivals. The Greeks [later] identified Bast with Artemis, whose Roman equivalent was Diana, the name that became widely known in the Middle Ages as the Queen of Witches. Therefore the cat was identified with witchcraft ... which accounts for its frequent appearance as a witch's familiar and an emblem of Halloween.' (Walker)
There are many other strange and wonderful aspects to Halloween but this overview by the Sorcerer's Apprentice ® proves clearly that it is a very important British celebration which has provided a cultural link with our ancestors for thousands of years. Perhaps it is the oldest communal festival in existence. It is everyone's job, to celebrate Halloween in grand style every year. If there's one thing which has been guaranteed to undermine the spiritual terrorists and sectarian harbingers of doom over the past two thousand years, it is the yearly sight of millions of ordinary people having a rousing good time at Halloween.
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