This Post is a deeper look at Samhain/Halloween. I hope it helps to bring people out from under the spell of the spirits connected with this HOLY-DAY. Halloween is a PAGAN RELIGIOUS HOLIDAY that worships and honors the Ancient gods of FIRE and the SUN.
Halloween – The Eve of the Devil; Part1; Part2; Part3; Part4; Part5; Part6; Part7; Part8, Part9; Part10; Part 11; Part 12
Halloween A Matter of Life or Death – FOR YOU!
HALLOWEEN – WHAT THE HELL?
KEEP THEM IN MIND, THIS HALLOWEEN/DAY OF THE DEAD
Samhuinn Fire Parade 2023: Edinburgh’s Most Unique Halloween Event
Samhuinn Fire Parade is Edinburgh’s annual Halloween celebration. Bringing the Celtic New Year to a modern audience, the unique celebration, hosted by the Beltane Fire Society, is one of the city’s biggest winter festivals. The totally immersive festival allows you to wander through otherworldly creatures and witness a spectacular, fiery display of storytelling.
Halloween is a cross-quarter day
EarthSky
Samhain (a Gaelic word pronounced “sow-win”) is a pagan religious festival originating from an ancient Celtic spiritual tradition. It is usually celebrated from October 31 to November 1 to welcome in the harvest and usher in “the dark half of the year.” Celebrants believe that the barriers between the physical world and the spirit world break down during Samhain, allowing more interaction between humans and denizens of the Otherworld.
Halloween is a cross-quarter day
Halloween is a cross-quarter day
Halloween is short for All Hallows’ Eve. And, although many don’t realize it, it’s an astronomical holiday. Sure, it’s the modern-day descendant of Samhain, a sacred festival of the ancient Celts and Druids in the British Isles. But it’s also a cross-quarter day and a testament to our ancestors’ deep understanding of the sky.
The cross-quarter days fall more or less midway between the equinoxes (when the sun sets due west) and solstices (when the sun sets at its most northern or southern point on the horizon). Halloween – October 31 – is approximately midway between our autumn (September) equinox and winter (December) solstice.
In other words, in traditional astronomy, there are eight major seasonal subdivisions of every year. They include the March and September equinoxes, the June and December solstices, and the intervening four cross-quarter days.
In modern times, the four cross-quarter days are often called Groundhog Day (February 2), May Day (May 1), Lammas (August 1) and – the most sinister cross-quarter day because it comes at a dark time of year – Halloween (October 31).
It falls at a dark time of year
For us in the Northern Hemisphere, Halloween is the darkest of the cross-quarter days. And comes at a time of year when the days are growing shorter. Early people once said that the spirits of the dead wander from sunset until midnight around this cross-quarter day. After midnight – on November 1, now called All Saints’ Day – the ghosts supposedly go back to rest.
The October 31 date for Halloween is fixed by tradition. The true cross-quarter day falls on November 7, representing a discrepancy of about a week. According to the ancient Celts, a cross-quarter day marks the beginning – not the middle – of a season.
The Pleiades connection
Some believe that the early forebear of Halloween – Samhain – happened on the night that the Pleiades star cluster culminated at midnight.
In other words, the Pleiades climbed to its highest point in the sky at midnight on or near the same date as this cross-quarter day. In our day, the midnight culmination of the Pleiades cluster now occurs on November 21,but Halloween is fixed on October 31.
Presuming the supposed connection between Samhain and the midnight culmination of the Pleiades, the two events took place on or near the same date in the 11th century (1001-1100) and 12th century (1101-1200). This was several centuries before the introduction of the Gregorian calendar.
At that time, when the Julian calendar was in use, the cross-quarter day and the midnight culmination of the Pleiades fell – amazingly enough – on or near October 31. But, then, the Julian calendar was about one week out of step with the seasons. Had the Gregorian calendar been in use back then, the date of the cross-quarter day celebration would have been November 7.
Calendar converter via Fourmilab
But Halloween falls on October 31 now.Meanwhile, the true cross-quarter day now happens on or near November 7.And the midnight culmination of the Pleiades cluster on or near November 21. (COP28 – Thu, Nov 30, 2023 – Tue, Dec 12, 2023)
Bottom line: October 31, the present date for Halloween, marks the approximate midway point between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice. So Halloween is an astronomy holiday, and one of the year’s four cross-quarter days.
Samhain – Traditions, Halloween, Wicca | HISTORY
Ancient Samhain
Ancient Celts marked Samhain as the most significant of the four quarterly fire festivals, taking place at the midpoint between the fall equinox and the winter solstice. During this time of year, hearth fires in family homes were left to burn out while the harvest was gathered.
After the harvest work was complete, celebrants joined with Druid priests to light a community fire using a wheel that would cause friction and spark flames. The wheel was considered a representation of the sun and used along with prayers. Cattle were sacrificed, and participants took a flame from the communal bonfire back to their home to relight the hearth.
Early texts present Samhain as a mandatory celebration lasting three days and three nights where the community was required to show themselves to local kings or chieftains. Failure to participate was believed to result in punishment from the gods, usually illness or death.
There was also a military aspect to Samhain in Ireland, with holiday thrones prepared for commanders of soldiers. Anyone who committed a crime or used their weapons during the celebration faced a death sentence.
Some documents mention six days of drinking alcohol to excess, typically mead or beer, along with gluttonous feasts.
Samhain Monsters
Because the Celts believed that the barrier between worlds was breachable during Samhain, they prepared offerings that were left outside villages and fields for fairies, or Sidhs.
It was expected that ancestors might cross over during this time as well, and Celts would dress as animals and monsters so that fairies were not tempted to kidnap them.
Some specific monsters were associated with the mythology surrounding Samhain, including a shape-shifting creature called a Pukah that receives harvest offerings from the field. The Lady Gwyn is a headless woman dressed in white who chases night wanderers and was accompanied by a black pig.
The Dullahan sometimes appeared as impish creatures, sometimes headless men on horses who carried their heads. Riding flame-eyed horses, their appearance was a death omen to anyone who encountered them.
A group of hunters known as Sluagh or Faery Host might also haunt Samhain and kidnap people. Similar are the Sluagh, who would come from the west to enter houses and steal souls.
Myths of Samhain
One of the most popular Samhain stories told during the festival was of “The Second Battle of Mag Tuired,” which portrays the final conflict between the Celtic pantheon known as the Tuatha de Danann and evil oppressors known as the Fomor. The myths state that the battle unfolded over the period of Samhain.
One of the most famous Samhain-related stories is “The Adventures of Nera,” in which the hero Nera encounters a corpse and fairies, and enters into the Otherworld.
Samhain figured into the adventures of mythological Celtic hero Fionn mac Cumhaill when he faced the fire-breathing underworld dweller Aillen, who would burn down the Hall of Tara every Samhain.
Samhain also figures into another Fionn mac Cumhaill legend, where the hero is sent to the Land Beneath the Wave. As well as taking place on Samhain, it features descriptions of the hero’s holiday gatherings.
Samhain in the Middle Ages
As the Middle Ages progressed, so did the celebrations of the fire festivals. Bonfires known as Samghnagans, which were more personal Samhain fires nearer the farms, became a tradition, purportedly to protect families from fairies and witches.
Carved turnips called Jack-o-lanterns began to appear, attached by strings to sticks and embedded with coal. Later Irish tradition switched to pumpkins.
In Wales, men tossed burning wood at each other in violent games and set off fireworks. In Northern England, men paraded with noisemakers.
Dumb Supper
The tradition of “dumb supper” began during this time, in which food was consumed by celebrants but only after inviting ancestors to join in, giving the families a chance to interact with the spirits until they left following dinner.
Children would play games to entertain the dead, while adults would update the dead on the past year’s news. That night, doors and windows might be left open for the dead to come in and eat cakes that had been left for them.
Christian Samhain
As Christianity gained a foothold in pagan communities, church leaders attempted to reframe Samhain as a Christian celebration.
The first attempt was by Pope Boniface in the 5th century. He moved the celebration to May 13 and specified it as a day celebrating saints and martyrs. The fire festivals of October and November, however, did not end with this decree.
In the 9th century, Pope Gregory moved the celebration back to the time of the fire festivals, but declared it All Saints’ Day, on November 1. All Souls’ Day would follow on November 2.
Samhain Merges With Halloween
Neither new holiday did away with the pagan aspects of the celebration.October 31 became known as All Hallows Eve, or Halloween, and contained much of the traditional pagan practices before being adopted in 19th-century America through Irish immigrants bringing their traditions across the ocean.
Trick-or-treating is said to have been derived from ancient Irish and Scottish practices in the nights leading up to Samhain. In Ireland, mumming was the practice of putting on costumes, going door-to-door and singing songs to the dead. Cakes were given as payment.
Halloween pranks also have a tradition in Samhain, though in the ancient celebration, tricks were typically blamed on fairies.
Wicca and Samhain
A broad revival of Samhain resembling its traditional pagan form began in the 1980s with the growing popularity of Wicca.
Wicca celebration of Samhain takes on many forms, from the traditional fire ceremonies to celebrations that embrace many aspects of modern Halloween, as well as activities related to honoring nature or ancestors.
Wiccans look at Samhain as the passing of the year, and incorporate common Wiccan traditions into the celebration.
In the Druid tradition, Samhain celebrates the dead with a festival on October 31 and usually features a bonfire and communion with the dead. American pagans often hold music and dance celebrations called Witches’ Balls in proximity to Samhain.
Celtic Reconstructionists
Pagans who embrace Celtic traditions with the intent of reintroducing them faithfully into modern paganism are called Celtic Reconstructionists.
In this tradition, Samhain is called Oiche Shamnhna and celebrates the mating between Tuatha de Danaan gods Dagda and River Unis. Celtic Reconstructionists celebrate by placing juniper decorations around their homes and creating an altar for the dead where a feast is held in honor of deceased loved ones.
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Excerpts from: The Soul of Scotland
The Romans had already told us about the Gaulish practice of slinging human skulls on their horses’ necks and nailing them to their houses. Strabo tells us that Poseidonius “saw this spectacle in many places, and that, although he first loathed it, afterwards through his familiarity with it, he could bear it calmly”. It seems that the British tribes and Picts had the same fascination for skulls.
The Romans also tell us about the druids, those mysterious men of the sacred groves who were the spiritual leaders of the Gauls, Britons, Picts and Scots. Unfortunately the druids deliberately passed on their beliefs and practices by word of mouth, without committing anything to writing, so we have to glean what we know of them from the records of the Roman historians. In about 55 BC, Julius Caesar wrote his Gallic Wars about his experiences among the Gauls of France. He noticed that the druids were highly organised amongst the tribe of the Carnutes, who thrived near modern day Chârtres and Orléans. They were led by an archdruid, and they held national festivals. This religion, he said, “is supposed to have been devised in Britain, and to have been brought over from it into Gaul”. Those wishing to study the art of druidry in depth travelled to Britain, and probably to the seat of the druids on the island of Ynys Môn – modern-day Anglesey, in Gwynedd, North Wales. This island is strewn with more prehistoric sites per square mile than virtually anywhere else in Britain.
At first the Romans were fascinated by the druids, the wise men of the sacred groves, for they were listed among the Magi, Chaldeans and other philosophers by Diogenes Laertius in his Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers in the third century AD. It was believed by the Roman pagans and later Christians that the mysterious druids, with their dark sayings and riddles, had supernatural powers over nature, and that they had ancient remedies for healing. The druids especially held mistletoe in awe, which grew on the oak tree, where they harvested it for magical purposes with golden sickles. They worshipped many gods, were accompanied by their musical bards, and believed in a form of reincarnation and an eternal universe, according to Strabo in his Geography, written in about AD 197. However, the exotic nature of the druids became tarnished by a darker side to their religious practice – that of human sacrifice.
Julius Caesar wrote that the Druids “have figures of vast size, the limbs of which formed of osiers [wicker baskets] they fill with living men, which being set on fire, the men perish enveloped in the flames.”
Diodorus Siculus tells us of their victims who were pierced through near the diaphragm “and when the stricken victim has fallen they read the future from the manner of his fall and from the twitching of his limbs, as well as from the gushing of the blood.”
Fascination for the druids was turning to horror for the Romans, who despite their gory gladiatorial shows and crucifixions, were outraged at this kind of human sacrifice. In the time of the Emperor Augustus, who died in AD 14, Roman citizens were forbidden to observe the religion of the druids, according to Suetonius in his The Twelve Caesars, but between AD 41 and 54 Emperor Claudius began to actively suppress it. It is difficult to know exactly what the Roman invaders came to hate most about the druids: their human sacrifices, or the fact that they had great influence with the British kings. Dion Chrysostom tells us in his Orations“… without their advice even kings dared not resolve upon nor execute any plan, so that in truth it was they who ruled, while the kings, who sat on golden thrones… became mere ministers of the Druids’ will.”
In AD 60 the Romans decided to put a stop to the influence of the druids and struck their power base on Anglesey. Tacitus tells us that for a while the Roman soldiers were petrified by the sight they saw there, for “between the ranks dashed women in black attire like the Furies, with hair dishevelled, waving brands. All around, the Druids, lifting up their hands to heaven and pouring forth such dreadful imprecations…” But despite their great magic the druids perished. The backbone of druidism was broken. Pliny could write fifty years later that although “Britannia is still fascinated by magic…we cannot too highly appreciate our debt to the Romans for having put an end to this monstrous cult,whereby to murder a man was an act of the greatest devoutness, and to eat his flesh most beneficial.”
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Druidism : the ancient faith of Britain
National Library of Scotland
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Lunar dynasty
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Lunar Dynasty
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| Capital | Mathura, Hastinapura |
| Common languages | Sanskrit |
| Religion | Hinduism |
| Government | Monarchy |
| Monarch | |
The Lunar dynasty (IAST: Candravaṃśa) is a legendary principal house of the Kshatriyas varna, or warrior–ruling caste mentioned in the ancient Indian texts. This legendary dynasty was said to be descended from moon-related deities (Soma or Lunar).[1] The Hindu deity Krishna is believed to have been born in the Yaduvamsha branch of the Lunar dynasty.
Solar dynasty
| House of Ikshvaku
Suryavamsha
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| Country | Kingdom of Kosala, Kingdom of Kashi, Nishadha Kingdom |
| Founder | Ikshvaku |
| Final ruler | Sumitra (historical claimant) [1] |
| Style(s) | Chakravartin, Raja of Kosala |
| Deposition | 362 BCE |
| Cadet branches | |
In Indian tradition, the Ikshvaku dynasty was founded by the legendary king Ikshvaku.[2] The dynasty is also known as Sūryavaṃśa (“Solar dynasty” or “Descendants of the Sun”),which means that this dynasty prays to the Sun as their God and their originator, and along with the Lunar dynasty, comprises one of the main lineages of theKshatriya Varna.[3][failed verification]
According to the Jain tradition, the first Tirthankara of Jainism, Rishabhanatha himself was King Ikshvaku. Further, 21 Tirthankaras of Jainism were born in this dynasty.[4][5]
According to Buddhist texts and tradition, The Buddha[citation needed]descended from this dynasty. Many later kings[who?] of the Indian subcontinent claimed to be of Suryavamsha descent.[citation needed]
The important personalities belonging to this royal house are Mandhatri, Muchukunda, Ambarisha, Bharata Chakravartin, Bahubali, Harishchandra, Dilīpa, Sagara,[6]Raghu, Rama and Pasenadi. Both the Hindu Puranas and the Buddhist texts include Shuddodhana, Gautama Buddha, and Rahula in their accounts of the Ikshvaku dynasty but, according to the Buddhist texts, Mahasammata, an ancestor of Ikshvaku who was elected by the people as the first king of the present era, was the founder of this dynasty.[7]
Origins
Suryavamsha, or the Solar Dynasty,is one of the two major legendary Kshatriya dynasties found in Hindu Puranic and epic literature, the other being Chandravamsha or the Lunar Dynasty. According to Harivamsa, Ikshvaku is considered the primogenitor of the dynasty of, and was granted the kingdom of Aryavarta by his father Vaivasvata Manu.Manu settled down in the Aryavarta region after he survived the great flood. A. K. Mozumdar states that Manu is the one who built a city on the Sarayu (being the river that his mother Sanjana was the goddess of) and called it Ayodhya meaning the ‘invincible city’. This city served as the capital of many kings from the solar dynasty and is also believed to be the birthplace of Rama.[8]
| Part of a series on |
| Hinduism |
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Some Hindu texts suggest Rishi Marichi, one of the seven sages and first human creations of Brahma as the progenitor of the dynasty. Marichi’s eldest son Kashyapa is said to have settled down in Kashmir (Kashyapa-Meru or Kashyameru). He also contributed to the verses of the Vedas. Later, Vivasvan, son of Kashyapa and Aditi, famously known as the Hindu god Surya married Saranyu who was the daughter of Vishvakarman,the architect of devas.He had many children but Manu was given the responsibility of building the civilization and as a result it formed a dynasty that was named ‘Suryavamsha’ or the solar dynasty.Manu is also the progenitor of the Lunar Dynasty because he married his daughter Ila to Budha, the son of Chandra or the moon god and the couple gave birth to the magnanimous King Pururavas who became the first king of the Chandravamsha, or the Lunar dynasty.[9]
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DRUIDISM THE ANCIENT FAITH OF BRITAIN
The Gaelic Druids met annually in solemn assembly or convocation in the territory of the Carnutes (Chartres and Orleans); this country being chosen as it was considered to be the centre of Gaul.
| CHARTRES, France Chartres is located on a leyline linking Glastonbury, Stonehenge, and the Pyramids of Egypt. The Druids believed that this was a place where spiritual energy emanates from underground. Its legendary roots come from the time when Druids, the Celtic priests of Britain and Gaul, held sacred rites there. During the Gallo-Roman times, the underground waters of the site were believed to have been revered by the Druids. The territory of Chartres was highly influenced by the Carnutes, a Gaulish people who had a vast Druid assembly. Gauls created statues of the protective mother goddess with infants. They were mentioned by Gaius Julius Caesar and Livy, who recorded the legendary traditions of the Carnutes. SOURCE |
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Etymology. French Chartres, from Latin Carnūtēs, name of a Gaulish tribe, from a Celtic root for “rock, stone”. SOURCE
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| ORLEANS, France Cenabum was a Gallic stronghold, one of the principal towns of the tribe of the Carnutes where the Druids held their annual assembly. The Carnutes were massacred and the city was destroyed by Julius Caesar in 52 BC, then a new city was built on its ruins under the Roman Empire. The emperor Aurelian possibly built urbs Aurelianorum, or civitas Aurelianorum, “city of the Aurelii” (cité des Auréliens), which evolved into Orléans. |
| According to the author of the article “Orleans” [“Histoire de Villes de France”, Paris, 1855, p. 575 ff.] since Orleans sits on a bend of the River Loire, the term Cenabum derives from the Celtic word “Cen” (‘point’) and “Avon” (‘Water’) for which “Cenabum” would indicate “a ‘point’ on the water.” SOURCE |
I was surprised to learn the the Druids held their Sacred Assemblies in France. I don’t know why I was surprised. We have seen a great deal regarding France and the Gauls. Guals of course came from France. Celts came from Germany and the Netherlands, but of course they are connected with France at the ALPS. And the Meuse River, Latin Mosa, Flemish Maes, Dutch Maas, river, rising at Pouilly on the Langres Plateau in France and flowing generally northward for 590 miles (950 km) through Belgium and the Netherlands to the North Sea. THE ALPS, Where CERN and the GOTHARD TUNNEL are located.
I have found in my other research that when the Celts/Druids held their yearly assembly Celts came from all across Europe and Asia.
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The most important of all Druidical festivals, however, was held on the eve of the 1st of November,when all the people throughout the country extinguished their fires and every master of a family was obliged to take home with him a portion of the consecrated fire andkindle with it the fire in his house. This sacred fire was lighted as as thanksgiving for the completion of the harvest. If any man had not paid his tithes by the last day of October in each year, he was not allowed to have even a spark from the holy fires, nor dare any neighbour give him a portion under the pain of excommunication, a punishment worse than death.
At the Hallowe’en festival, which, in many parts of the Highlands, still retains its Gaelic name of Samh-in, or ” the fire of peace,” tlie Druids met annually to adjust all disputes and to decide controversies.
| Miss Catherine Sinclair, in Hill and P’alley, says : ” The same animated celebration of All Saints’ Eve takes place among the Welsh peasantry that Burns describes in his poem on Hallowe’en, and all superstitious ceremonies seem exactly similar to those in Scotland. Apples and tallow candles are hung alternately from the cottage ceiling so close together that those who leap up to catch them in their mouths can scarcely touch the one without tasting the other, though the greatest proof of skill and good fortune is to succeed in doing so.” |
MacLauchlan, in The Early Scottish Church, a work published in 1865, says :
| ” There are places in Scotland where within the memory of living men the teine eigin, or ‘ forced fire,’ was lighted once every year by the rubbing of two pieces of wood together, while every fire in the neighbourhood was extinguished in order that they might be lighted anew from this sacred source.” |
It was not until 1220 that Loundres, Archbishop of Dublin extinguished the perpetual fire which was kept in a small cell near the church of Kildare, but so firmly rooted was the veneration for this fire that it was relighted in a few years and actually kept burning until the suppression of the monasteries. A writer in the Gentleman’s Magazine, 1795, says that being in Ireland the day before Midsummer he was told that in the evening he should see ” the lighting of fires in honour of the sun “ at midnight.
Tuathal ordered a fire to be kindled annually on the eve of 1st of November at his royal seat at Tiachtga for the purpose of summoning the priests, augurs, and Druids in order that they might consume the sacrifices which were offered to the gods. It was established under the penalty of a heavy fine that no other fire should be kindled upon that night throughout the kingdom, so that the fire that was to be used in the country was to be derived from this holy fire ; for which privilege the people were to pay a Scroball, amounting to threepence each year to the King of Munster.
These fires were a feature of Irish Druidism, although the Irish Druids had no particular veneration for the oak, and the mistletoe was unknown in Ireland until the nineteenth century. In an ancient tract called Dinnseanchus, there is a legendary account of Midhe, son of Brath, son of Detha, who is said to have been the first to light a fire for the sons of the Milesians on the hill of Uisnech in Westmeath, which continued to burn for seven years, and from this fire every chief fire in Erin used to be lighted. The successor of Midhe was entitled to a sack of wine and a pig from every house in Erin every year. The Irish Druids, however, said that it was an insult to them to have this fire ignited in the country, and all the Druids of Erin came into the house to take council, but Midhe had all their tongues cut out, and he buried the tongues in the earth of Uisnech and then sat over them, upon which his mother exclaimed : ” It is uisnech (i.e., proudly) you sit up there this night.”
The third day of the Feis, or Convention, of Tara, instituted by Ollamh Fodhla, was devoted to the feast of Saman, or the moon. Saman, or Samhen, has also been rendered ” heaven.” At the conclusion of the festival the fire of Saman was lighted and the tutelary divinities invoked.
Vallancey says that among the Irish Hallowmas Day is known as La Samhna, that November was the month of mourning, being the season appointed by the Druids for the solemn intercession of the quick for the souls of the dead, or those who had departed this life within the space of the year. The first day of November was dedicated to the angel presiding over fruits, seeds, etc., and was therefore named La Mas Uslial, or ” the day of the apple fruit,” and being pronounced Lamasool, has been corrupted into ” Lambswool,” the name given to a composition made on this eve, of roasted apples, sugar, and ale. The festival lasted until the beginning of December, which month was named Mi Nolagh, or the month of the new born, from the Hebrew word Nolah, ” to bring forth young,” whence the French word Noel and the Irish Nolagh, or Christmas Day.The feast of Murdad, the angel of the ancient Persians, who presided over fruit, fell also on 1st November, and it is not impossible, says Vallancey, that the Irish name for agrimony, viz., murdrad, may have been derived from this source.
So great was the hold of these ceremonies upon the people that the Christian priests were unable to abolish them and therefore transferred them to Christian observances. Thus St. John the Baptist’s Day came to be observed by the building up of large fires of which bones formed part of the constituents, while the customs of driving cattle through the flames and of people leaping over them were still retained. The cattle were driven through the flames in substitution for the actual sacrifice and the bones were, in all probability, burned as substitutes for the actual cattle. From this custom sprang the term ” bone fire,” corrupted into ” bonfire.”
These fires were interdicted at the sixth Council of Constantinople, held in A.D. 680, in the following words :
| ” These Bonefires that are kindled by certain people on New Moones before their shops and houses, over which also they are ridiculously and follishly to leape, by a certain ancient custome, we command from henceforth to cease. Whoever therefore shall doe any such thing ; if he be a clergyman, let him be deposed ; if a layman, let him be excommunicated ; for in the fourth book of the Kings it is thus written :‘And Manasseh built an altar to all the host of heaven, in the two courts of the Lord’s house, and made his children to pass through the fire.’ |
” Prynne, in his Histriomastix, says : ” Bonefires therefore had their originall from this idolatrous custome,as this General Councill hath defined ; therefore all Christians should avoid them.”
They were further interdicted by the Synodus Francisca under Pope Zachary when “ the sacrilegious fires which they call Nedri (or Bonefires) and all other observations of the Pagans whatsoever ” were further interdicted.
Pomponius Mela tells us that the immortality of the soul was a Druidical doctrine which the Druids only permitted to be published for political reasons. ” There is one thing,” he said, ” which they teach their disciples, which hath been made known to the common people, in order to render them more brave and fearless, namely, that souls are immortal and that there is another life after the present.” They held also to the belief that communication with the departed by the living was possible and really took place. The precise character of this afterlife has been the occasion of debate between some writers. Some have held that the Druidical belief in life after death involved the tenet of transmigration,
The belief that on death, some aspect of us—usually identified with the ‘soul’ (see psyche)—survives to enter another body,is connected with the idea of immortality, supplying one possible destination for the disembodied soul. It is esp. associated with Pythagoreans (see pythagoras ); in the 5th cent. it is attested in Pindar, Empedocles, and Herodotus, who claims, probably wrongly, that Greeks borrowed it from Egypt). For Pythagoreans, the transmigrating entity retains its individual identity, but Plato, who inherited the general idea from the Pythagoreans, specifies that souls do not remember previous bodily existences.Caesar reports that the Gallic Druids (see religion, celtic) believe that ‘souls do not perish, but after death pass from (their original owners) to others’.
similar to the Buddhistic, but differing from the Theosophical belief : that is to say, they believed in the possibility of the descent of the human into the animal species. Lucan wrote :
” Forth they fly immortal in their kind.
And other bodies in new worlds they find ;
Thus life for ever runs its endless race.
And like a line death but divides the space.
Thrice happy they beneath their northern skies.
Who that worst fear—the fear of death—despise.
Hence they no cares for this frail being feel.
But rush undaunted on the pointed steel;
Provoke approaching death and bravely scorn
To spare that life which must so soon return.”Diodorus Siculus says that they held that ” the souls of men are undying, and after completing their term of existence they pass into another body.” Edward Williams declares that this doctrine of metempsychosis is that which, of all others, most clearly vindicates the ways of God to men, is countenanced by many passages in the New Testament, believed in by many, if not all, the early Christians, and by the Essenes, at least, among the Jews. In Irish tradition. Find MacCumall, the celebrated Irish hero, is described as being killed at the Battle of D’Athbrea in A.D. 273, and being reborn in a.d. 601, and again later still as King of Ireland. D’Arbois de Jubainville states that the belief in reincarnation went back to ancient times in Ireland.
For those of you who do not believe or want to believe that the DRUIDS practiced HUMAN SACRIFICE and that Samhain or Halloween are not pagan holidays where human sacrifices are offered. I submit to you the following.
The following does not come as hear say. These excerpts were taken from the book entitled:
DRUIDISM THE ANCIENT FAITH OF BRITAIN
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| Human sacrifice was practiced in Gaul: Cicero, Caesar, Suetonius, and Lucan all refer to it, and Pliny the Elder says that it occurred in Britain, too. It was forbidden under Tiberius and Claudius. There is some evidence that human sacrifice was known in Ireland and was forbidden by St. Patrick. SOURCE |
From the language of the Triads and other ancient poems, there appears to be ground for the inference that during the Roman occupation there was a Druidical seminary in the isle of Britain, or in an adjacent island, and probably beyond the limits of the Empire, where the doctrine and discipline were cultivated without interference; that there the Druids persisted in the sacrifices of human beings; that certain devotees from the southern provinces repaired thither to their solemn festivals ; that upon the departure of the Romans they repaired to Mona and Wales; and that this northern seminary was not entirely suppressed until the end of the sixth century. It is intimated in some works that the Britons regarded this northern establishment with great respect and that they made frequent pilgrimages there, particularly at the time of the solemn festivals.
Druidism did not, however, disappear until about a.d. 560, after the abandonment of Tara, the capital of the supreme king of Ireland. In a.d. 452, the Council of Aries decreed that ” if, in any diocese, any infidel lighted torches or worshipped trees, fountains, or stones, he should be guilty of sacrilege.” In a.d. 658, the Council of Nantes ordered the destruction of all Druidical monuments, and, later, the capitularies also condemned the religion. Welsh historians assert that Christianity was accepted in a national council held by King Lucius (a form of Lucifer), A.D. 155, when the Arch-Druids of Europe, Lud and Leon, became archbishops and the chief Druids of twenty-eight cities became bishops. (So, here again we see the infiltration and assimilation of the Druids and their practices into the Catholic Church.) Dom Pitra, in St. Leger, says : ” The two thousand Brothers of Sletty, who sing day and night, divided into seven choirs of three hundred voices, reply across the seas to the sons of St. Martin, being, according to legend, children of the converted Druid Fiek.” The Rev. W. L. Alexander, writing on lona, says that while the Roman armies were harrying the Druids at Anglesey, there was a college of them in the Scottish islands, situate 56° 59′ N. designated Innis-nan-Druidneach, or ” the isle of the Druids,” and that the priesthood prevailed over all the other islands until a.d. 563-4, when Colum or Columba arrived with twelve companions who were continued in that number till after ages. The Druids remained after human sacrifices were abolished, for Mela, after speaking of the abolition of human sacrifices, goes on to say : ” They still have their elegant speech and the Druids as their teachers of wisdom.” Aurelius Victor (De Casiribus, iv, 2) refers to Druidism as an extinct superstition, but one of celebrity in his day. Druidismis said to have found an asylum in Armorica some ages after it had been proscribed and suppressed in the rest of Gaul.
The imperial measures taken to arrest Druidism and to abolish it were in vain. It is certain that the Druids were in existence at the time of St. Eloi, who died towards the end of the seventh century, and even for some time after. Eloi Eligius was Bishop of Noyon and patron saint of goldsmiths. Long passages could be quoted from the writings of this saint showing that Paganism still triumphed over Christianity in many parts of France in his day, and there is no reason to doubt from his statements that the mysterious rites, with which the Druids had always honoured their divinities, were then still practised. It may even be assumed that Druidism alone retarded the free passage of Christianity to all parts of France.
Pliny, in his Natural History (xxx., 4, 13) says that Tiberius Caesar caused the Druids to disappear, yet he admits in another passage that they were still in existence and superintended the religious ceremonies in the time of Vespasian. His language leads to the assumption that all that was accomplished in the reign of Tiberius Caesar was the temporary suppression of the outward observances of Druidism, or, particularly, the practice of human sacrifices.
In many parts of Britain, moreover, the Romans permitted the natives to retain many of their laws and customs and to be governed by their own princes, and here, in all probability, they would continue the performance of their ancient and sacred mystical rites. According to Strabo, the Druids still acted as arbiters in public and private matters, though, presumably, they had not the power to deal with murder indictments, as formerly they had. Thus, on the introduction of the civil law by the Romans, the principle of secular justice between man and man, priestly domination among the Britons passed away.
Cormac, who, about the middle of the third century, ascended the throne of Ireland, attempted to reform the religion of the Druids by divesting it of the polytheism into which it had degenerated, but, in consequence of his efforts, his subjects rebelled against him. In one of the battles which ensued he lost an eye, which compelled him, in accordance with the law then prevailing in Ireland, to resign the crown.
Procopius. Gibbon epitomises the history of the Druids in the Christian era in the following words :
” Under the specious pretext of abolishing human sacrifices, the Emperors Tiberius and Claudius suppressed the dangerous power of the Druids ; but the priests themselves, their gods, and their altars, subsisted in peaceful obscurity till the final destruction of Paganism.”
In its primitive state, Druidism may be regarded as an edifice raised upon the same basis as the patriarchal religion. Its ostensible design was to enlighten the understanding, to promote harmony, and to encour- age virtue. As a religion, it undoubtedly deteriorated in the course of its historv, possibly under the influence of commerce, and probably by the contaminating influence of the Carthaginians and the Phoenicians. From them possibly were derived those cruel and abominable rites of human sacrifices and the burning of infants. Deterioration, however, is a factor common to all religions. The East to-day is losing its former deservedlv high reputation as the home of mysticism and high spiritual culture under the advance of commerce, and the art of meditation, even among Buddhist priests, is becoming a lost accomplishment, whenever and wherever such come into contact with western ideas and customs. spacer
The CELTS, Gauls and Picts were all well known for taking the heads of their enemies and hanging them on the horses upon there homes. These peoples were all under the DRUIDS. This practice is also recorded throughout history as being practiced by the Persians/Arabs.
HEAD: SYMBOLISM AND RITUAL USE
The symbolic and religious value of the head is attested by various myths that stress the theme of many-headedness (thus calling attention to assorted aspects of divine power) as well as by numerous rituals, dating to prehistoric times, in which the human head is hunted, offered as a sacrifice, preserved, and venerated. Whatever exact meaning these myths and rites ascribe to the head, they all rest on a common, and certainly very ancient, valorization that must not be overintellectualized. In the most archaic psychology the forces of courage as well as the impulses of anger and violence have their base in the head. The Greeks of the Homeric age considered it the location of a psuchē difficult to control and opposed to reason and judgment, which were located in the chest and heart. In agreement with Alcmaeon of Croton, the Pythagoreans localized sperm in the head. From that localization of life force came the belief that the vital and spiritual element of a victim could be assimilated by eating his brain.
As a source of power, the skull naturally became an object of worship: its magical value came from the fact that it was supposed to be the center of life. Among the Celts, for example, the head was the container of a sacred force, whereas in other ancient and traditional cultures, the head is conceived of as the seat of vital energy, the active principle of the whole individual. From such beliefs come headhunting rituals, the offering of skulls in sacrifice, and veneration for ancestors’ skulls, as well as the apotropaic talismanic value attributed to the head.
Multiple Heads
Indo-European mythologies represented the diverse fields of application of the divine power by endowing the gods with three heads. Hinduism recognizes the trimūrti, a figure with three faces on the same head, representing Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and Śiva; in other words, the creating, preserving, and destroying power of the divine One.
Śiva is often shown with three or five faces and many arms, a sign of his omnipotence. Agni (Fire), accomplishing the will of Indra in the world, is endowed with three heads. Indra, “the leader of all the gods and lord of light,” will struggle against Triśiras, the son of Traṣṭr the demiurge, a young ascetic Brahmāṇ also possessing three heads: with one he reads the Vedas, with the second he eats, and thanks to the third, he surveys the whole universe. He was endowed with a threefold knowledge and a threefold will and thus risked upsetting the divine equilibrium. Indra therefore struck Triśiras with his thunderbolt and had a woodcutter chop off his three heads. In the Greek world, Hekate, the lunar goddess of night and of crossroads, has three heads: a horse’s or cow’s head and a dog’s head that together frame the head of a young girl. She possesses an abundance of magical charms. In the same nocturnal register there corresponds the dog Kerberos, with three heads and tails of a serpent. Kerberos is the guardian of Hell, and his monstrous voracity, born of the imagination, is the incarnation of the greed of devouring death.
The Hindu god Aditi has two faces, for it is he who begins and ends each liturgical act (Śatapatha Brahmāna 3.2.4.16). Like him, the Bifrons Janus of the Romans has a double face, for he is the god of passage in time as well as space. His face is double, as his functions as overseer and protector of time are ambivalent. Among the Celts, the three-headed god, often identified by the Gallo-Romans with Mercury, had many representations in Aedui country and in the northeast of Gaul. Certain Celtic myths feature animal gods with three heads or three horns. This repetition signifies, as in Hinduism, the desire to represent, and thereby augment, the divine power. It is the same for the Thracian Rider, often endowed with three heads. In the nineteenth century, thousands of representations of anthropomorphic divinities with three or seven heads were destroyed during the evangelization of the Samoyeds. This many-headedness recalls the faculty of seeing and knowing everything that the Finno-Ugrians assigned to the sun, which was the principal manifestation of the god Num.
Beheading
Numerous discoveries in mountain caves have revealed the existence during the last interglacial period (150,000 years ago) of rites in which the skulls of bears were placed with long bones and preserved as if they were an offering to a divinity in charge of dispensing the spoils of the hunt. This rite seems analogous to one practiced not so long ago by the Inuit (Eskimo) of King William Island and to another rite practiced by the Samoyeds, in which a reindeer’s head and long bones were exposed on some branches as an offering to Num, their supreme god. The discovery in Silesia of the skull of a young bear whose incisors and canines had been sawed and filed has been compared to a rite practiced by the Gilyak of Sakhalin Island and by the Ainu of Yezo, present-day Hokkaidō. This offering of an animal’s skull and long bones appears very characteristic of hunting peoples. However, if the fact of their belief in a supreme being who is lord of the animals can be contested because of the lack of unambiguous documents, the religious character of this offering seems certain from the time of the late Paleolithic age.
It is difficult to ascertain whether it is a question here of a sacrifice of firstlings in which the brain and the marrow are offered to the god (the thesis of Alexander Gahs, 1928) or of a belief that the killed animal will not be reincarnated into another similar animal unless its bones remain intact (according to Karl Meuli’s hypothesis in Griechische Opferbräuche, Basel, 1945). It is possible to state, however, that the idea of a ritual intended to assure the quantitative renewal of game rests upon an identical belief observed in a large zone extending from the Caucasus to Tibet, and in the entire Arctic European and North American zone. Similar indications have been found in Mesopotamia, in ancient Ugarit at the time of the Aqhat epic, as well as in the Egyptian Book of Going Forth by Day. Applied to the hunted animal (bear or reindeer) the belief is that life resides in the “soul of the bones,” and that in offering the skull it is the whole animal, in its most vital part, that is thus consecrated to the god.
One finds the same belief, but now applied to man, in founding rituals that mention certain myths: the first decapitation is the sacrifice that founds the order of the created world. According to the Chaldean priest Berossus (third century bce), the god Marduk ordered the head of the first (primordial) man cut off. From a mixture of the spurting blood and the earth, Marduk then fashioned all humans and animals. The construction of a city or a temple is also found to be linked to a sacrificial decapitation in certain myths about the Kotoko of Chad.
Pliny reports (Natural History 23.4) that when the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus was constructed at Rome, a gigantic human skull was found during the laying of the foundations. This was interpreted as a favorable portent that Rome would be the head of the world and the capitol the seat of its power. We should also recall the Christian legend of Adam’s skull, found at the very place where the cross of Christ was raised at Golgotha, “the place of the skull,” as if to mark the foundation by the new Adam of the new Jerusalem of redeemed men. A completely different meaning, closer to that of hunting peoples, appears in the Aztec ritual of beheading during the sacrifice to Chicomecoatl-Xilonen, the goddess of young corn, and to Teteoinnan (Toci), the mother goddess of fertility and vegetal plenty. It should be noted that the same word, quechcotona, designates both sacrificial decapitation and the gathering of ears of corn.
The head-hunt, a rather common practice, is the necessary condition for being recognized as an adult and being deemed suitable for marriage. This practice is more like a ritualized war expedition than a sacrifice to the gods. It is well documented among Indo-European peoples such as the Scythians, who suspended the heads of enemies they had killed around the necks of their horses (Herodotos, 4.6.4). In ancient Greece the head hunt was an obligatory rite for initiation into the brotherhood of animal-men: Dolon the Trojan dressed himself in a wolf skin and tried one night to bring back the heads of Odysseus and Agamemnon; when he was discovered, his own head was cut off by Odysseus and Diomedes (Iliad 208ff.). The skull hunt was commonly practiced by the Celts. The Gauls hung the trophy skulls in their homes or nailed them to the main door after having rubbed them with cedar oil (Strabo, 4.4.5; Diodorus Siculus, 5.29.4–5). Sometimes these skulls, glazed with a thin layer of gold, served as sacred vessels for human blood libations to Teutates, and as cups strictly reserved for use by the druids and the chiefs (Livy, 23.24.12). This custom was to be maintained in Celtic Ireland and in the country of the Gauls. Gallic coins from Armorica pictured chopped-off heads as a victory symbol evoking the hero Cú Chulainn, the son of the god Lugh who brandished decapitated enemy heads in battle in order to frighten the enemy. He himself died in single combat with Lugard, who cleaved his head, since in the Celtic world death took effect only if the membranes of the brain, the adversary’s seat of life and force, were reached.
In certain Semitic cultures, or cultures influenced by Semitic peoples, the head hunt is associated with the hunt for genital parts. Whether practiced in ancient Israel (1 Sm. 18.25–27, 2 Sm. 3.14) or by ethnic groups in northern East Africa, the trophy brought back is, along with the head, the foreskin or male member. Among the American Plains Indians, scalps have always been war trophies that the Cheyenne or Blackfeet hung at the tip of a pole around which they danced in honor of the forces of nature. Joseph François Lafitau (Mœurs des sauvages amériquains, vol. 2, De la guerre, 1724) says that the Iroquois exposed the severed head of an enemy caught apart before the battle in order to frighten their opponents, but that afterward they only scalped those who were dead or left for dead. This scalp was prepared like the skin of an animal taken in the hunt and exhibited at the end of a pole. Lafitau compares this practice to that of the Scythians and the Gauls.
In the whole Malay archipelago, the head hunt and human sacrifice have been so closely linked that among the Niassans, the same word, binu, designates both. Among the Dayak in central Borneo, the ideal booty consists of the head because it contains “the substance of the soul.” The victims of this hunt are excluded from the kingdom of the dead, as are the hanged, those struck by lightning, and those who died in an accident. On the other hand, victorious hunters and heroes who fall in the course of a head hunt are noble, and their souls will live at the summit of high mountains in the company of the Kamangs, their ancestors. A similar practice was more recently extended to the mountainous populations of Indochina, to the Nagas studied by J. P. Mills (1926–1937), as well as to the Jivaroan people of Latin America and the Mundurum of Brazil, who carefully preserved the heads of decapitated enemies, sometimes by shrinking. Head hunts are conducted on the occasions of rites of passage and initiation, or during the foundation rites for a common house, the chief’s house, or the village temple.
The close connection between the skull hunt and human sacrifice has also been noted in Assam and Burma. Under the influence of Śaiva Tantrism, the ritualistic and symbolic role of the skull in Tibetan Buddhism has often been superimposed on a very ancient stratum of local beliefs, culminating in a revalorization of prehistoric practices in a type of Tantric yoga. Such was the case with the Aghorins, Śaiva ascetics who ate from human skulls and meditated while seated on cadavers, and who also practiced ritual cannibalism up to the end of the nineteenth century. They were the successors of the Kāpālikas, or “carriers of skulls,” who had certain orgiastic practices and were worshipers of Śiva the great destroyer (Maitrāyaṇī Upaniṣad 6.8). Forgetting the yogic significance of the corpse and the skeleton, these Aghori naturally rediscovered the most ancient practice of the cannibalistic headhunters (Mircea Eliade, Yoga, New York, 1958, pp. 296–298).
The Aztec decapitation ritual took place after the human sacrifice. The head, separated from the body from which the heart and the lungs had already been removed, was impaled and publicly displayed on the tzompantli. The skulls, perforated transversally at the level of the temples, remained there a long time. This ritual was ordinarily practiced at the time of the sacrifices to the warrior gods, the hunting gods, or the agrarian gods, but we have not been able to uncover the deepest reason for such a practice. In a single Mexican village, Fray Bernardino de Sahagún saw seven tzompantli (Florentine Codex, appendix 2) and the conquistadors counted between 80,000 and 136,000 human heads exposed in this way, among which Cortés recognized those of fifty-three of his companions next to four heads of the first horses put to death. It is not certain that these “skull walls,” which inspired respect mixed with fear, were the result of the worship of the god of death. But it is certain that the head was a sacrificial trophy that was displayed as the personal property of the Aztec collectivity, since the handling of these heads seems always to have been reserved for the priests and dignitaries of the Aztec people (Florentine Codex 3.53).
Certain African ethnic groups link the skull to initiation rituals; thus, in the blood-pact rite in Benin, the skull of a traitor or one who died by accident serves as the receptacle for a beverage made of the coinitiates’ blood. Those who betray their oath will experience the same ignominious death as the skull’s owner. In the rite of initiation into Haitian Vodou, the concepts of pot-tête, mait-tête, and lav’tête have quasi-magic importance, as the place where the initiate, whose head hair, body hair, and nails have been gathered, unites with the lwa, or spirit, received at the time of initiation.
The Honored Head
Discoveries from the Middle and Upper Paleolithic ages, in Europe as well as in the Middle East, or in Australia, show the importance of the cult of the skulls of the ancestors. Their heads were prepared with great care and preserved. These skulls have undergone an enlargement of the occipital orifice, have been colored with red ocher, a substitute for blood as the symbol of life, and have been preserved according to a precise ritual orientation exactly like that practiced not long ago in Sulawesi. Likewise, the Aborigines of Australia preserve their relatives’ skulls with great care, in order to venerate them and carry them along with them on their pilgrimages. The same care in decorating and preserving the ancestors’ skulls is also found among the Andamanese of the Bay of Bengal, the Papuans of New Guinea, and the Indians of Bolivia. All of them believe that the “soul of the dead” resides in his skull and that it protects them.
In the same way, the Celts preserved the skulls of their next of kin on “encephalic” pillars with hollowed-out niches, such as those of Roquepertuse, Entremont, and Glanum. This custom was maintained for a long time in the Danube Basin where the ancestors’ skulls, separated from their skeletons, were preserved under the main altar in churches. Every year, during the rites of passage, the young men took them out and wore them around their necks. Certain African ethnic groups, like the Bamileke, bring the skull of the deceased back into the home and deposit it near the family altar, where it is invoked in prayers of benediction and protection. This is because the skull, as a vessel for sacred power of divine origin, protects its possessor against all kinds of peril and gives him health, wealth, and victory.
Belief in the oracular powers of the head follows from this worship of the ancestors’ skulls. Because the head is the seat of life, it is believed that one can easily enter into a relationship with the dead by means of the skull. Those of ancestors permit one to question the spirits, a common practice in Melanesia and Polynesia. Among certain Indian ethnic groups of Latin America, the Jivaroan people in particular, the spirits manifest themselves in the shape of skulls, formidable if they belong to ancient shamans. The Inuit of Iglulik believe in the existence of tattooed flying heads, the manifestation of spirits who have taught language to the Inuit. In ancient Israel, the terafim show the relation between the worship of skulls and divination: small anthropomorphic domestic idols become the instrument of divination (Gn. 31:19; 1 Sm., 15:23, 19:13, etc.).
| Teraphim (singular is unattested, plural: Hebrew: תְּרָפִים tərāfīm) is a Hebrew word from the Bible, found only in the plural, of uncertain etymology.[1] Despite being plural, Teraphim may refer to singular objects, using the Hebrew plural of excellence.[2] The word Teraphim is explained in classical rabbinical literature as meaning disgraceful things[3] (dismissed by modern etymologists), and in many English translations of the Bible it is translated as idols, or household god(s) although its exact meaning is more specific than this, but unknown precisely. |
| Plural perhaps from H7495; a healer; Teraphim (singular or plural) a family idol: – idols (-atry), images, teraphim. Total KJV occurrences: 15 Source: ESWORD |
Commenting on these texts, medieval (Babylonian) rabbis affirmed that the terafim were made from the decapitated head of a firstborn son from which the hair had been removed. The head, sprinkled with salt and castor oil, was preserved and questioned about the future according to a ritual analogous to the one reported in the tenth century among the natives of Hauran. The Greeks likewise were acquainted with the existence of oracular heads: that of Orpheus at Lesbos (Philostratus, Heroicus 5.704) and that of Archonides preserved by Cleomenes of Sparta (Aelianus, 12.8).
But it is especially in Celtic literature that the theme of the oracular head comes to its fullest expression. Separated from the body, heads continue to act and speak as if they preserved the vital breath they once contained, like Brân’s head in the Mabinogi, or those of the Roman Arthurians who take up the old theme of Fledh Bhricrenn, in which the hero Cú Chulainn is the prototype of the knight Gawain. The Celtic theme of the severed head, still living and speaking, is the foundation of (ROMAN CATHOLIC) Christian legends of cephalophoric saints, the most famous of which is Saint Denis, the bishop of Paris. All these legends originated in northern Gaul, in Celtic country, and do not illustrate, as was long believed, the affirmation of Chrysostom concerning the martyrs who could present themselves with confidence at God’s tribunal “carrying their cut-off heads as a testimony of their martyrdom.” It is always the same sacred power, vital and of divine origin, that is expressed by the severed head testifying to its religious faith.
Bones; Crown; Human Sacrifice, overview article; Nimbus.
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Tlachtga – The Hill of Ward & The Samhain Fire
Originally published in 2018
By Brian Witt, Guest Blogger
Samhain (sow-in)
November 1st was traditionally known as Samhain, literally translated, the “end of summer.” October 31st marked the end of the Celtic year, the start of winter and a time for reflection.
On this day, it was said that a person’s ancestors would walk through the furze of time and shadows and come back to visit. People would disguise themselves in costume so their long-gone relatives would not recognize them and possibly impose upon them, or try to take them onto the other side.
The early blackness of the night was frightening to people, and the lack of light only offered up the familiarity of lurking spectres.
Samhain was also when meetings were held, wars were stopped, and peace was made. It was a time to take stock and decide upon future activities. All debts had to be settled and horse-racing as well as chariot racing gave parties the chance for entertaining diversions.
Traditionally, all the fires were extinguished when Oiche Shamhna, (Samhain day) set in, making this the darkest night of the year. The fires were then re-lit, marking the start of the new year.
In ancient Ireland, the Hills of Tara and Tlachtga were important. Tara was long the seat of the High Kings of Ireland(photo above is the hill of Tara).
Tradition has it that druids lit a huge bonfire on the Hill of Tlachtga (near Athboy, County Meath) and burning torches were then carried from there to every household during the night.The hill of Tlachtga is about thirteen miles away from the hill of Tara.
The ancient ritual site of Tlachtga was the center of Celtic religious worship over two thousand years ago. It has been overshadowed by its famous neighbor and has not received the attention it merits as a place of importance in its own right. This was the center of the Great Fire Festival that signaled the onset of winter.
Great Fire Festival
The rituals and ceremonies carried out here by the pre-Christian Irish offered assurances to the people that the powers of darkness would be overcome, and the powers of light and life would, once again, be in the ascendancy. This was the place where the Celtic sun god was celebrated at the year’s end.
The festival probably lasted for at least several days and centered on the god Lugh.The site takes it name from Tlachtga (pronounced Clackda), the daughter of the Druid Mug Ruith who died there giving birth to triplets. Tlachtga is clearly visible from Tara and the fire lit on the eve of Samhain was a prelude to the Samhain Festival at Tara.
With the coming of Christianity, the festival was incorporated into the Christian calendar as a time of remembrance for the holy souls, so the Samhain festival of the ancestors retained its relevance. The customs of Samhain that didn’t fit into Christianity survived as Halloween. Irish immigrants carried the Halloween tradition to North America in the 19th century.
Tlachtga (photo above is the hill of Ward)
Tlachtga was an interesting character in her own right. Tlachtga accompanied her father, the Druid Mug Ruith, on his world travels, learning his magical secrets and discovering sacred stones in Italy.They flew in a machine called the roth ramach, the “oared wheel.” She gave birth to triplets called Cumma, Doirb and Muach, issued from 3 different fathers.They were born on the hill that would later bear the name of their mother. The triple birth is a common theme in Celtic mythology, and her death of grief and the construction of a fortress at her grave echoes the story of Macha, from Navan, in Armagh.
It is believed that the tribe that introduced the cult of Tlachtga as a fertility Goddess to this area were the Luigni, an Erainn tribe. They were partially displaced by a new wave of invaders known as the Lagin. They took over the Kingship of Tara and the focus of power shifted from Tlachtga and became centered on Tara.
The Hill of Tlachtga is also known as the Hill of Ward. The ringfort built on the hill was associated not only with the kings of Mide, but also with Munster as well, travelling a bit afield, as it were.
The ard ri, (high king) Ruaidri Ua Conchobair (Rory O’Connor) held a massive assemblage in 1168 at the site, as well. Mug Ruith (or Mogh Roith, “slave of the wheel“) was a larger than life blind druid of Munster who lived on Valentia Island, County Kerry. He could grow to enormous size, and his breath caused storms and turned men to stone. He wore a hornless bull-hide and a bird mask. He had an ox-driven chariot in which night was as bright as day, a star-speckled black shield with a silver rim, and a stone which could turn into a poisonous eel when thrown in water.
He was also said to be the executioner of John the Baptist, even though he supposedly died in 2500 BC. The territory Mug Ruith received for his descendants was Fir Maige Fene, later known as Fermoy. The medieval tribe of Fir Maige Fene claimed descent from him.
The Remains of the Hill of Ward
The earthworks seen on the Hill of Ward today represent the last phase of development about 2000 years ago. The remains of an older barrow burial have been incorporated in the earthworks. It is likely that the hill was the centre of ritual activity long before the Celtic period.
The hill got its English name from a landowner, Ward, who had been evicted from his land during the invasion of Oliver Cromwell in 1649. The land was given to a Roundhead soldier. The Ward family, whose forebears were landowners of the hill and of whom the hill was named after, are living in County Meath today. The Ward family, of Milwaukee Irish Fest, are also amongst the descendants of that long ago Mr. Ward.
Recently, Irish archaeologists digging at Tlachtga – the Hill of Ward – have found evidence of intense burning at the site dating back to 500 AD.In 2014, excavation found the skeleton of a child buried in one of the chambers.Dr. Steve Davis, from UC Dublin, was one of the people working the site.
“There has been a suggestion that one of the reasons the site is not better known is that it was written out of the Patrick story – that it was so infamous that the church did a very good job of trying to erase it from the mythology,” Dr. Davis said.
The site has found renewed interest in the past few years, with torchlight parades up to the top of the hill on Samhain. We have traveled across time and hills, goddesses and magical druids, from Munster to Meath, and into the dark and back to the light, from the old year to the new year, and from the dead to the living.
I hope it has been an enjoyable journey, crossing these byroads in the Samhain celebration, and some of the stories of its background.
Just remember, if you don’t want to be recognized by your long ago, across the spirit world family, dress in costume. They may be looking for money.
(You can find out more about the light festival in John Gilroy’s wonderful book, “Tlachtga: Celtic Fire Festival.” It was published by Pikefield Publications, 9 Hazelwood Court, Glanmire, Co. Cork in October 2000. It is available on Amazon.)
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Faith of the Ancient Druids
Taranus is a word derived from taran, thunder, and is identical with the Jupiter of Greece and Rome and the Thor of northern nations. Belinus, known in Old Testament times as Baal, is identical with Apollo, the god of the sun. A wood in the neighbourhood of Lausanne is still known as Sauvebelin, viz., Sylvia Bellini, and traces of the name are to be found in many parts of England. Belus is also a Babylonish title of Ham, whose descendants include the Cuthites and Cadmians. Both were zealous adorers of the sun and addicted to rites of fire. They were men of superior stature, adepts in every branch of science, and particularly famed for their skill in astronomy. Tradition savs that they were the first navigators of the sea, and the division of time with the notification of the seasons is ascribed to them. According to Herodotus, all these arts took their rise in Babylonia, whence they were carried into Egypt, and from Egypt westward into other countries. Elius Schedius, in his book De Diis Gfrmanorum, imagines that he found in the name Belenus the 365 days of the year, in like manner as the Basilideans for- merly found them in Abrazas and Mithras, thus:
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” Tu Bajocassis stirpe Druidarum satus
(Si fama non fallit fidem)
BELENI sacratum ducis e Templo genus :
Et inde vobis nomina ; Tibi PATERAE (sic Ministros nuncupant
Apollinaris Mistyci.)
Fratri-Patrique nomen a Phoebo datum
Natoque de Delphis tuo.”
From this verse it is clear that all the family of Attius had a particular name, owing to their deriving their origin from the Druids of Bayeux, and that they were also devoted to the Mysteries of Belenus.
BELENI sacratum ducis e Templo genus translates to:
BELENUS, the sacred race of the leader from the Temple
In the Latin Life of St. Patrick, however, it is stated that, on the Tara, not only princes and heads and chiefs of provinces, but also the druidum magistri, assembled for the purpose of offering human sacrifices to idols.The following poem is found in the Books of Leinster, of Ballymote, of Lecan, and in the Rennes MS. The translation was made by Dr. Kuno Meyer, and it appears as an appendix to Nutt’s Voyage of Bran :
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It is improbable that the religious instruction of the populace was limited absolutely to the teaching of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul.It is more likely that the Druids followed the practice of the Gymnosophists of India, the Magi of Persia, the Chaldeans of Assyria, and other priests of antiquity,by having two sets of doctrine, one being communicated to the initiated only, admitted after certain ceremonies and rites and sworn to secrecy,and the other taught freely and openly to the uninitiated.No verses or poems whatsoever relating to the system or creed were permitted to be issued unless previously examined and publicly approved at a Gorsedd.For this purpose they were first recited by the Dageiniaid, or reciters, in the hearing of all.
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THE DRUIDS Had FULL Authority even over Kings and Princes. They DEMANDED complete submission to their decisions and decrees, punishing all who dare to speak against them or refuse to comply.
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THE CREED OF DRUIDISM
Caesar says that the Druids were the judges on all points of law and equity, and were the distributors of all punishments and rewards. They had the power of excommunication against all who did not submit’ to their decrees, of excluding persons of all ranks from the benefits of Society, and even from Society itself ;of deposing princes, and even of condemning them to death, a power not infrequently exercised, and of declaring war and peace. The Druids themselves were exempt from bearing arms and paying taxes. Divitiacus, the Arch Druid, however, we learn from Caesar, was permitted to carry arms, and was entrusted even with the command of a corps in one of Cesar’s battalions.
Caesar gives the following account of the effect of the sentence of excommunication:
” If any person, either private or public, does not acquiesce in their decisions, they interdict him from their sacrifices. That is, among them, the severest punishment. They who are thus inter-dicted are reckoned impious and accursed ;all men depart from them ; all shun their company and conversation, lest they should sustain some misfortune from their contagion ; the administration of justice and the protection of the laws is denied to them and no honour is conferred upon them.” The sentence consigned the miserable defaulter to a lingering death from cold and hunger, says George Jones. He had no fire to cheer his home or dress food for his subsistence or to warm himself in the depth of winter, while surrounded with frosts and snows. No friend, kinsman, or neighbour was permitted to supply him with it under pain of incurring the like cruel sentence. The excommunicated had also to walk with bare feet and wear black garments for the remainder of their lives. Repentance and purification were regarded by the Druids as necessary duties.
The mode of excommunication from the community was to expose the erring member to a naked weapon. The Bards had a special ceremony for the degradation of their convicted brethren. It took place at a Gorsedd, when the assembled Bards placed their caps on their heads. One deputed for the office unsheathed his sword, uplifted it, and named delinquent aloud three times, adding on the last occasion the words :*’ The sword is naked against him.” After these words were pronounced the offender was expelled, never to be re-admitted, and he then became known ” as man deprived of privilege and exposed to warfare.”
They observed one day in seven as peculiarly sanctified and made holy by the Great Creator, and they were wont to dedicate one- tenth of all their substance to religious purposes.
Now that you have read about the punishment of EXCOMMUNICATION, do you see the similarity to the New Social Credit System? The word was very familiar during the Inquisition.
excommunicate (v.)
“to cut off by an ecclesiastical sentence either from the sacraments of the church or from all fellowship and intercourse with its members,” early 15c., from Late Latin excommunicatus, past participle of excommunicare “put out of the community,” in Church Latin “to expel from communion,“ from ex “out” (see ex-) + communicare “to share, communicate,” related to communis “common” (see common (adj.)). Related: Excommunicated; excommunicating. also from early 15c.
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Jack-o-Lanterns:
“If witches are the Queen of Halloween, the smiling jack-o-lantern is the King. The demonic jack-o-lantern leaves most historians baffled tracing its spooky origin. One popular tale, tells of Jack who tricked the devil in a deal for his soul. But the origin of the jack-o-lantern is much more sinister. It arrives from the Druid’s ghastly reverence of the severed human head! They proudly decorated their houses and temples with bloody severed heads. The Druids believed the head housed the soul, hence the light or candle in the skull. The original jack-o-lantern was not a pumpkin or turnip, but a severed human head!” Source
As darkness set in on October 31st, the clan of Druids would put on their white robes and hoods. They would carry sickles and Celtic crosses as they began a torchlight procession. At the beginning of the procession, a male slave was killed and dragged by a rope fastened to his left ankle. The Druids would walk until they came to a house or a village where they shouted the equivalent of “trick or treat.”The treat was a slave girl or any female to be given to the Druids. If the people refused to a girl as a “treat”, blood was taken from the dead slave and used to draw a hexagram or six-pointed star on the door or wall of the village. Spirits of the “horned hunter of the night” were invoked by the Druids to kill someone in that house or village by fear that night.
If the house or village gave a girl as a “treat”, the Druids put a pumpkin with a face carved in it in front of the door or gate of that place. Inside the pumpkin was a candle made of human tallow to keep evil spirits away. Thus, the Jack-O-Lantern was and is a sign that you have cooperated with Satan.
The treats or female victims were taken to Stonehenge where they were raped and killed and then sacrificed on the sacred bonefire until only glowing embers were left. The “bonefire” is the origin of the modern day bonfire. As a matter of luck for winter survival, all villagers were expected to use the glowing embers of the bonefire to light their hearths. Source
“It is believed that faces, rather than other images or symbols, were originally carved onto the pumpkin because they gave the jack-o-lantern the look of a head. The Celts of ancient times believed that the head was the most sacred part of the human body, for it housed a person’s immortal soul.” Source: (Dunwich, Gerina. The Pagan Book of Halloween, p. 32)
“…They hang the heads of their enemies from the necks of their horses, and, when they have brought them home, nail the spectacle to the entrances of their homes…” Source: (Strabo, Geography )
“…The jack-o-lantern is generally presented in its traditional form as a festive euphemism for the death’s-head, the triangular nose hole and rictus grin being the “dead” giveaways.” Source: (Skal, David J. Death Makes a Holiday: The Cultural History of Halloween, p. 38)
“Carved and illuminated by a candle, they are symbolic of death and the spirit world.” Source: (Thompson, Sue Ellen. Holiday Symbols and Customs, p. 256)
“A will-o’-the-wisp (/ˌwɪl ə ðə ˈwɪsp/), will-o’-wisp (/ˌwɪl ə ˈwɪsp/), or ignis fatuus (/ˌɪɡnɨs ˈfætʃuːəs/; Medieval Latin: “foolish fire”) is an atmospheric ghost light seen by travellers at night, especially over bogs, swamps or marshes. It resembles a flickering lamp and is said to recede if approached, drawing travellers from the safe paths. The phenomenon is known by a variety of names, including jack-o’-lantern, friar’s lantern, hinkypunk, and hobby lantern in English[1] folk belief, well attested in English folklore and in much of European folklore.”Source: Wikipedia
The pumpkin is the medium of choice in America, but in Europe it could be a turnip, large beet, potato, rutabaga or even a skull with a candle in it. To the ancient Celts, the frightful face of the jack-o-lantern was representative of the god of the dead, Samhain, who would drive off less powerful evil spirits that were wandering about particular night. Seeing glimmering lights flickering over an English marsh or an Irish bog, people were certain dead souls had returned to earth. They would place the jack-o-lantern on posts and in windows to ward off the spirits of the dead on Halloween.
The word jack-o-Lantern is an abbreviation of “Jack of the Lantern.” Jack is another name for joker or Satan. In the Irish tale, a man named Jack was fond of playing tricks on the devil. Annoyed, the devil tossed Jack a burning coal from hell. With the coal in his “lantern” Jack was condemned to walk the earth forever searching for rest. The jack-o-lantern is a Halloween idol that keeps alive an ancient symbol of demonic superstition.
It has been said that the Celts displayed the Jack-O-Lantern in hopes of avoiding the curses and pranks of the evil spirits and the sinister Druids. It has been said that they displayed the ghoulish carving to show they were willing to offer sacrifices to the horrible god of the Druids, even if that meant offering one of their children. Now that you know the origins of this nasty custom hopefully you will not be willing to display the Jack-O-Lantern on your porch or step as so many people are so eager to do. SOURCE
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OCC: Halloween’s Occult Connection by David L. Brown
THE DARK SIDE OF HALLOWEEN
by David L. Brown Th.M. Copyright 1990
The Celts considered November 1st as being the day of death because the leaves were falling, it was getting darker sooner and temperatures were dropping. They believed Muck Olla, their sun god, was loosing strength because Samhain, lord of death, was overpowering him. Further, they believed that on October 31st Samhain assembled the spirits of all who had died during the previous year. They had been confined to inhabit animals’ bodies for the past year as punishment for their evil deeds. On the eve of the feast of Samhain, October 31st, they were allowed to return to their former homes to visit the living. Supposedly to protect these people, Druid priests led the people in diabolical worship ceremonies in which horses, cats, black sheep, oxen, human beings and other offerings were rounded up, stuffed into wicker cages and burned to death. This was done to appease Samhain and keep the spirits from harming them.
THE DRUIDS
Who were the DRUIDS? They were occult practitioners, witches of sorts. In the century preceding the birth of Christ, Caesar conquered the Britains and he records very carefully the account of the DRUID PRIESTS (early witches)…”All Gallic nations are much given to superstition…they either offer up men as victims to the gods, or make a vow to sacrifice themselves. The ministers in these offerings are the Druids, and they hold that the wrath of the immortal gods can only be appeased, and man’s life redeemed, by offering up human sacrifice, and it is a part of their national institutions to hold fixed solemnities (Ceremonies) for this purpose.”
I looked deeper to see if I could find the dates of these “fixed solemnities.” In the series edited by Richard Cavendish called, Man, Myth and Magic it says, in volume 6, page 720, “…the pagan Celts in Northern Europe held two great fire festivals each year— Beltane on the eve of 1 May and Samhain on the eve of 1 November — to mark the beginning of summer and winter.” I also came across an article written by Robert Graves in the Daily Telegraph Magazine, May 21, 1965. Graves said the fixed worship days are the “cross- quarterly days-Candlemas (February 2nd), May Eve (April 30th), Lammas (August 1st) and Halloween (October 31st).
When they got together on these pagan worship days they would meet in a grove of trees (preferably oak trees) or in a Druidic stone circle, the most famous surviving circle being located in Stonehenge, England. It is evident that human sacrifice was common at this ancient Druid Sacrificial Circle because within three miles of this sight there are over 350 funeral mounds that contain the remnants of countless human sacrifices.
Holiday researcher George Douglas adds some interesting information when he says “Many of Halloween’s customs are derived from the ancient Baal Festivals. Other customs originate from the taking of omens from the struggles of victims in the fires of druidic sacrifices.” (From: The American Book of Days, by George William Douglas revised by Helen Douglas Compton).
Alexander Hislop in his book, The Two Babylons, says, “The god whom the Druids worshipped was Baal, as the blazing Baal- fires show—We know that they offered human sacrifices to their bloody gods. We have evidence that they made `their children pass through the fire to Molech’, and that makes it highly probable that they also offered them in sacrifice; for, from Jeremiah 32:35, compared with Jeremiah 19:5, we find that these two things were parts of one and the same system.” Further, it is to be noted that the “priests of Nimrod or Baal were necessarily required to eat of the human sacrifices; and thus it has come to pass that `Cahna-Bal‘, (Cahna is the emphatic form of Cahn which means `a priest’) meaning the priest of Baal, is the established word in our tongue for a devourer of human flesh.” (from The Two Babylons, Hislop. See page 232).
Though the name of their gods were changed Hislop believes that the Druids practices were rooted in Baal worship, which is condemned in the Bible.
THERE ARE STILL DRUIDS TODAY
According to Robert Graves, there are still Druid practitioners around today. In fact, members of one surviving coven in Somersetshire, England still carry small blue tattoos pricked below a particular finger joint made from woad (an Old World plant with leaves that yield a blue dye) as did ancient Druids. You will still find Druids meeting at Stonehenge this Halloween symbolically carrying out their grotesque sacrifices. Although they claim no longer to practice human sacrifices they are one group responsible for keeping the occultic celebration of Halloween before the media. The followers of the Druids pagan religion are common in the USA too. A woman called me and told me a group going around to Milwaukee, Wisconsin area libraries presenting a program to children which dealt with their heritage. She engaged one in a conversation afterwards and found that he claimed to be a druid priest who practiced the “old religion.”
THE PATHETIC PARADOX OF CHRISTIANS CELEBRATING HALLOWEEN
It’s no wonder that a onetime witch of our day, Tom Sanguinet, former high priest in the Celtic tradition of Wicca (witchcraft) said, “Halloween is purely and absolutely evil, and there is nothing we ever have or will do that would make it acceptable to the Lord Jesus.”
Owen Rachleff amplifies this when he wrote, “Halloween can be, and to many is, a deadly serious affair. [It] originated with pre-Christian Druids or Celts in Northern Europe, who marked the year by four seasonal festivals. The autumn feast took place on November 1st. Early Christians, desiring a part in the traditional festivities, created All Saints’ Day to coincide with the pagan rites. Satanists–acting true to form–reversed the Christian procedure. Because November 1st was All Saints’ Day (All Souls’ Day, November 2nd, memorializes the dead), Satanists established October 31st as and “All Demon’s Night.” As surely as the Christian martyrs and saints dominated their own holiday, so did the demons permeate the preceding evening. All Hallows’ Eve predictably became a time of spells, curses, and horrors for those who did not believe, but for the Satanists, particularly the witches, it was a joyous festival and major sabbat. So it remains in a diluted form, ironically celebrated by Christian society far more vigorously than All Saints’ Day.” (Quoted from The Occult Conceit – A New Look at Astrology, Witchcraft and Sorcery, by Owen S. Rachleff, from page 189-190.)
Historically, Halloween is obviously and totally a pagan, occultic worship day. There is NOTHING Christian about the day. Pause for a moment. Dig beneath the candy. What is the primary focus of Halloween, even in our day? I see a three fold focus… 1) DEATH 2) FEAR & HORROR 3) EVIL, THE DEVIL & THE OCCULT. There is absolutely NO Christian significance to be found in Halloween.
Remember our earlier reference to BLACK JACK? Well here is the Jack referenced. The one the Numerologist call the Devil.
JACK-O-LANTERNS – BLACK JACK – THE DEVIL
Jack-O-Lanterns, what is their significance? The World Book Encyclopedia, 1977 edition, volume 9, page 24-26 says, “The apparently harmless lighted pumpkin face of `Jack-O-Lantern’ is an ancient symbol of a damned soul.”
There was another purpose for Jack-O-Lanterns according to author Owen Rachleff. “The candlelit pumpkin or skull… served as a beacon for the sabbat and as a signal to mark those farms and homes that were sympathetic to the Satanists (and actually being sympathetic to the Druids/Satanists meant that you were willing to offer a human sacrifice from your household to appease the spirits. So, by lighting that pumpkin/gourd on your porch you were saying come and take a sacrifice) and thus deserving of mercy when the terror of the night (Halloween) began.” (The Occult Conceit; page 190). SOURCE
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