A Rambling Post About Halloween
Oct. 11th, 2023 01:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphilo The Wheel of the Year, as visualised by most pagan groups, has eight spokes, corresponding to eight festivals, Here it is, with the festivals given their old-timey names- some of which we used in our covens and some we didn't.
.
Yule is also the Winter Solstice or- stretching a point- Christmas
Imbolc we were as likely to refer to as Candlemas- which is prettier.
Ostara is the Spring Equinox or- again stretching a point- Easter.
Beltane is May Day.
I don't think we ever spoke of Litha. We always said Midsummer which- the Wicker Man and all that- has more resonance with us moderns
Lughnasa we were more likely to call Lammas.
Mabon was Autumn Equinox with us or Autumn Eck for short. I suppose we may have called it Mabon occasionally.
Samhain is Halloween. I think we used both terms equally.
The point I'm making (being a bit of a hobbyhorse of mine) is that we weren't Iron Age Celts but modern Brits- and it seemed a bit precious to carry on as if all the history and cultural change that had occured between the Roman invasion and the present day could simply be wished away.
So, Halloween...
As a spokesperson for Wicca- as I was for a time- I used to emphasise that ours was a religion of balance. You had the light half of the year, you had the dark half of the year, you had life, you had death, you had god, you had goddess- and witches loved the darksome stuff, steeple hats and skeletons and ghosts, but they also loved going into the woods at Beltane and weaving flowers into their hair- Like Mellors and Lady Chatterley. Therefore the popular notion that Halloween was the Wiccan festival par excellence was wrong. It was special to us but nor more special than the other seven. Wicca isn't a death cult. No way.
Nor is it Satanic. Exactly what was going on with medieval witchcraft is up for debate. All we have by way of testimony comes from witch hunters and the poor souls they were torturing and terrorising into saying what they (the witch hunters) wanted them to say. The archaeologist Margaret Murray thought medieval witchcraft was pre-Christian rural paganism gone underground- and this notion was taken up and played with by writers as different as Robert Graves and John Buchan. The consensus now is that she was mistaken. What we can say with some certainty is that modern Wicca is a mid-twentieth century invention or reinvention, embodying material from all manner of sources including, just possibly- but no-one really knows- a surviving rural witch cult- or cults....
What we did at Halloween was honour the ancestors- just as Christians do at All Souls and All Saints. If anything we played down the spookiness, finding it disrespectful. The flavour of what we were about is contained in a speech Ailz and I wrote for Gwyn Ab Nud- the Welsh Hades- to use in a Samhain ritual:
"I hold the treasure house of the past. The old ones gather at my shoulder- workers with flint and bronze and iron- all those who made you what you are. Listen to them, your ancestors. You have forgotten much that they knew."
There's nothing I'd want to rethink there, except I would now want to add in something along the lines of, "workers with flax and wool and cotton". There, that's a little more balanced. And balance is what it's all about.
The modern Halloween is the witch hunter's version of witchery passed through the cutesifying filter of the Walt Disney Corporation. After we came out of Wicca we had as little to do with Halloween as possible- which wasn't difficult when we lived (a) in a high Muslim area and (b) in a farm at the end of a long drive with fields all around. Now, however, we're back on a residential street and there are kids about and it would be unattractive not to join in with the fun. So we've bought pumpkins, we've bought toys and sweets to give away. What admirable citizens we are...
.
Yule is also the Winter Solstice or- stretching a point- Christmas
Imbolc we were as likely to refer to as Candlemas- which is prettier.
Ostara is the Spring Equinox or- again stretching a point- Easter.
Beltane is May Day.
I don't think we ever spoke of Litha. We always said Midsummer which- the Wicker Man and all that- has more resonance with us moderns
Lughnasa we were more likely to call Lammas.
Mabon was Autumn Equinox with us or Autumn Eck for short. I suppose we may have called it Mabon occasionally.
Samhain is Halloween. I think we used both terms equally.
The point I'm making (being a bit of a hobbyhorse of mine) is that we weren't Iron Age Celts but modern Brits- and it seemed a bit precious to carry on as if all the history and cultural change that had occured between the Roman invasion and the present day could simply be wished away.
So, Halloween...
As a spokesperson for Wicca- as I was for a time- I used to emphasise that ours was a religion of balance. You had the light half of the year, you had the dark half of the year, you had life, you had death, you had god, you had goddess- and witches loved the darksome stuff, steeple hats and skeletons and ghosts, but they also loved going into the woods at Beltane and weaving flowers into their hair- Like Mellors and Lady Chatterley. Therefore the popular notion that Halloween was the Wiccan festival par excellence was wrong. It was special to us but nor more special than the other seven. Wicca isn't a death cult. No way.
Nor is it Satanic. Exactly what was going on with medieval witchcraft is up for debate. All we have by way of testimony comes from witch hunters and the poor souls they were torturing and terrorising into saying what they (the witch hunters) wanted them to say. The archaeologist Margaret Murray thought medieval witchcraft was pre-Christian rural paganism gone underground- and this notion was taken up and played with by writers as different as Robert Graves and John Buchan. The consensus now is that she was mistaken. What we can say with some certainty is that modern Wicca is a mid-twentieth century invention or reinvention, embodying material from all manner of sources including, just possibly- but no-one really knows- a surviving rural witch cult- or cults....
What we did at Halloween was honour the ancestors- just as Christians do at All Souls and All Saints. If anything we played down the spookiness, finding it disrespectful. The flavour of what we were about is contained in a speech Ailz and I wrote for Gwyn Ab Nud- the Welsh Hades- to use in a Samhain ritual:
"I hold the treasure house of the past. The old ones gather at my shoulder- workers with flint and bronze and iron- all those who made you what you are. Listen to them, your ancestors. You have forgotten much that they knew."
There's nothing I'd want to rethink there, except I would now want to add in something along the lines of, "workers with flax and wool and cotton". There, that's a little more balanced. And balance is what it's all about.
The modern Halloween is the witch hunter's version of witchery passed through the cutesifying filter of the Walt Disney Corporation. After we came out of Wicca we had as little to do with Halloween as possible- which wasn't difficult when we lived (a) in a high Muslim area and (b) in a farm at the end of a long drive with fields all around. Now, however, we're back on a residential street and there are kids about and it would be unattractive not to join in with the fun. So we've bought pumpkins, we've bought toys and sweets to give away. What admirable citizens we are...
no subject
Date: 2023-10-11 12:50 pm (UTC)This current over-the-top Halloween celebrating has had me thinking for the last several years. The why of it if you will. The darker aspects being play-acted and used as a focus for the decor. And the seesaw effects the huge commercialization of Halloween has had on Yule. When modern culture turns its back on religion, the Earth, then the plastic culture, the substitute for what is real, moves into place. Hmmmm....
And that's not even to address the multitude of questions regarding a perceived rise of "darkness".
no subject
Date: 2023-10-11 02:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-10-11 03:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-10-11 03:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-10-11 03:52 pm (UTC)But religion is too often oppressive, infantilising and plain wrong. The plastic substitute may be less so...
And anyway, religion isn't at all the same thing as spirituality- and that, I believe, is gaining ground.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-11 04:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-10-11 06:04 pm (UTC)