Is Halloween a Satanic Ritual? Pre-Historic Celts – Halloween and Samhain

Halloween’s Ancient Origins

How numerous of us definitely know the which means powering Halloween? Most of us appreciate Halloween, that is with the exception of a number of Religious Zealots who imagine that it is devilish, and maybe also a couple of extremely concerned moms. Halloween has been celebrated in another way, at diverse situations and distinct destinations. Its lore is nearly as assorted as the costumes that you see parading all around on Halloween evening. But Halloween has usually been a little bit of a secret, and loaded with contrariness and revelry, a needed release of social pressure.

Halloween is so much fun, that we pretty much neglect it can be a vacation (Holy-Working day). At least the Christian Evangelists have, who declare that it is evil and demonic. The founder of the Christian Coalition, Reverend Pat Robertson even went so much as to get in touch with it a ‘satanic ritual’ and did his utmost to have it banned in 1982. He absolutely dismissed the actuality that Halloween is most surely a Christian Getaway and one particular of the most vital ones at that.

It has been celebrated by the Christian Church for about fourteen hundred years, and is 1 of the six holy times of observance, when higher mass is held. Sunday is also one of the six holy times of observance!

You probably know that Halloween is the ‘All Saints Day’ of the Christian planet. Correspondingly, the pursuing working day of November 2nd, is ‘All Souls Day’. This juxtaposition of times is meant to insure that the Heavenly Saints will appear just after the souls of the dearly departed. Halloween or ‘Hallowtide’, as it was after recognised, was not always noticed on the 1st of November, but a much more mature pageant was.

Halloween inherited some of its supernatural flavor, and the tradition of bonfires from this historic festival but incredibly small else. Most of the customs we rejoice currently, these as sporting costumes and trick-or-treating, originated in Medieval situations.

Halloween and the Pre-historic Celts

Think about what it would be like if you could journey back again in time, to a time long in advance of Halloween was celebrated on the cobbled streets of Medieval Europe. Our time equipment might not be capable to transport you bodily, but it will transport your head again in time, to discover the historic festival that Halloween eventually replaced.

It is into the pre-historic earth of the Celtic tribes that our journey will choose us, and this is where it receives a tiny tricky, because the Celts didn’t use composing. Julius Caesar tells us that, ‘They take into account it incorrect to entrust their studies to writing’. The myths, record and custom of the Celts, ended up orally recounted, and passed on by the Druidic bards, who sang their sagas at festive gatherings.

“These sagas have been element of a extensive vernacular custom that was written down centuries afterwards, probably in corrupted and abbreviated variety. These tales really should be read as clues to the mystery of historical lore and to the art of storytelling, instead than as straightforward evidence of social apply.”1

The Celtic tribes have been the fiercest enemies of Rome, and sacked it on 4 instances. Yet, significantly of what we know about the Celtic culture was prepared by the Romans. What do you imagine your enemies would compose about you? What the Roman’s did publish, was typically filled with horrifying tales and pernicious propaganda. As exemplified by the Hollywood movie, Wicker Gentleman, which was loosely centered on Roman accounts of the Celtic celebration of Halloween, their Sahmain.

The most trustworthy source for us to realize the mysterious culture of the Celts, is by way of their stone age monuments and gold and silver artifacts. Even with our time equipment, it is a seemingly impossible activity to day the line that divides pre-historic Europe from Celtic Europe, or without a doubt to inform if such a line even exists. All that we can know with any surety is that the obscure origins of the Celtic tribes lays somewhere between 34,000 a long time in the past, the age of Ireland’s aged mound of New Grange, and 3300 BC, marking the initially development of Stonehenge.

From Julius Caesar, we also study that the Celts were being divided into aristocratic tribes. They lived in round houses and formed cozy communities dominated by king like chieftains. We also know that their legendary festivals were held in enormous rectangular halls. Some individuals consider that these were being an early prototype of the Medieval Cathedral.

The Celtic Sagas notify us that they had been a mystic Lifestyle. Like Halloween alone, the Celts existed between the really true environment of each day practicalities and an enchanted environment, loaded with fairies, fey and supernatural feats. They lived their fearless life with terrific zeal and fervour. The Celtic women of all ages ended up the most liberated women of all ages in the historical world. They savored sexual equality and fought side by aspect with their gentlemen in battle.

The guys fought without garments or armour. Can you picture what they must have seemed like? Their naked bodies would have been a terrifying sight. The gentlemen were totally shaven apart from for a moustache, and a wild mane of hair highlighted with powdered limestone. As you may possibly have noticed in Mel Gibson’s movie ‘Brave Heart’, some of the guys even dyed their bodies blue and wore amulets and huge torcs about their necks.

Halloween and the Historical Pageant of Samhain

Countless numbers on hundreds of yrs right before the dawn of the Christianity, around the 1st of November, the Celtic tribes celebrated what has turn into Halloween. It was their Harvest Pageant of Samhain (pronounced ‘sow-win’). The Celtic calendar of festivals was primarily based on cycles of nature and the agricultural 12 months. They celebrated the Solstices and Equinoxes, as well as the Cross-Quarters in in between – Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh, Samhain. 2

The 8 spoked wheel of the Celtic calendar year, perpetually turns on and on. At every of its 8 points, the organic rhythms of the seasons, of our own life, of our communities and of the heavens, occur into alignment. Like mother nature by itself “persons are moved by the rhythms of the earth, its tides of ebb and movement, induced by the cycles of the sunshine and moon. Though the moon magnetically controls the waters, the sunshine controls the seasons. With the withdrawal of the sun’s light-weight, heat and energy, like nature alone, we instantly draw our energies inwards in purchase to sustain daily life”.

The Celtic Halloween – Samhain, marked the beginning of the sun’s journey into the wintery underworld. The harvest was reaped, the fields lay fallow, the livestock was ritually culled and its meat salted and smoked in readiness for the coming chilly. The agricultural calendar year had come to its conclude, and on Samhain, the Celtic New 12 months would start.

Daylight is the summer season of the seasons although nighttime corresponds to the winter season. The line that divides working day and night is at it truly is thinnest at twilight, at dawn and dusk. Samhain was the dusk of the seasons, when the sunlight of the old year passed absent and entered into the underworld. It was the twilight season, when the veil that separates the environment of the dwelling from that of the useless and supernatural, is at its thinnest. So skinny that cracks open up concerning the worlds, enabling fairies, ghosts and other supernatural beings to enter the residing entire world.

Samhain was a time of supernatural depth, when an huge amount of money of spiritual electrical power poured into the earth. It was a time when divinations ended up done to see what the coming year had in retail store. It was a time of purification and a time of magic and ritual to appease the dead.

In Celtic mythology, Samhain was the working day when the tribal god, the Dadha, designed adore with Morrigan, the raven goddess of war. You could know of Morrigan due to the fact in later on ages she performed the function of the evil sorceress in the legend of King Arthur.

After our quick journey back in time, some of you may perhaps be pondering, that even if Halloween is just not Satanic, then Samhain guaranteed sounds like it could be. To place the subject to rest once and for all, there is no way it could be. There is no corresponding god, angel, or any utterly evil remaining in the Celtic pantheon. In closing, I will the moment once again estimate from Nicholas Rogers’ extraordinary e-book, ‘Halloween – From Pagan Ritual To Bash Night’-

“The belief is satanic cults blossomed only in the late medieval period when it fashioned section of the persecutory discourse against heretics and witches – extensive immediately after the demise of Samhain.”4

Foot Notes

1. Rogers Nicholas, ‘Halloween – From Pagan Ritual To Get together Night’, Pg 18, Oxford University Press

2. The Cross-Quarter festivals of the Celtic calendar.

A) Imbolc, the spring pageant was celebrated on the 1st of February.

B) Beltane, the summer festival was celebrated on the 1st of May well.

C) Lughnasadh, the autumn competition was celebrated on the 1st of August.

D) Samhain, the wintertime pageant, like our Halloween, was celebrated on the eve of October 31st and the 1st of November.

3. Paterson Jacqueline, ‘Tree Wisdom’, Pg 83, Thorsons – Harper and Collins

4. Rogers Nicholas, ‘Halloween – From Pagan Ritual To Social gathering Night’, Pg 13