The Dark Night of the Soul

Halloween

     Well, it's that time of year again!  People rush to find that special orange pumpkin, search for the scariest costume, clothe the outside of the house in an eerie arrangement of glowing monsters, sticky spider webs, and a vast array of haunting, seasonal decor.  All of this effort for the innocent fun of Halloween--perhaps? 

     Is Halloween just innocent fun, or is there some truly scary revelations on how the frightening season all began?  Hundreds of years of slow transformation have changed the appearance and haunting beginnings of Halloween.  Whether or not you choose to participate in the festivities, you still might consider reading some historical highlights on how it all started and the real story behind the celebration.

     Long ago, the festivals celebrating the Savior were changed into Church "holy days" (holidays).  The changes were first initiated with the reign of Constantine (around the year A.D. 325) when Christianity and Paganism united into one "church."  It was Constantine's efforts to appease the masses and calm differences in belief systems.  A unification, of sorts, that united all people of various backgrounds and beliefs into one church/government-controlled system that appeared to make everyone happy.  The Christians were no longer persecuted but accepted, the Jews tolerated but ignored, and the Pagans?  Well, they had their god(s), too, and so, in the name of peace, followed the blending of all types of beliefs, religions, philosophies, and cultures into one harmonious union that was intended for the good of all.
 

Festivals and Holy Days
     One of the ways to achieve harmony among religions was to "correct" the festivals of the Lord by reinterpreting them into "acceptable" days for worship.  One way of doing this was to revise the Jewish Calendar system by converting the Hebrew festivals.  Now, this wasn't easy because the Hebrew calendar aligned most precisely with the movement of the heavens.

This was GOD's calendar given to mankind from the beginning, and the ancient "astro" (star) "nomers" (watchers) devised the

calendar to follow seasons and feast days; but the new Roman calendar consisted of a blending of the old with the new. 

The new (approved) calendar consisted of four cardinal days (time-periods) set aside for "holy days."  They were fall (Autumnal Equinox), winter (Winter Solstice), spring (Vernal Equinox), and summer (Summer Solstice), and the seasons determined the four major festivals celebrated throughout the year.
     During "The Autumn Equinox," both day and night are equal in length.  This is the time for celebrating the harvest, endings, the dying of nature, and associated with "the dark night of the soul."  The Autumnal Equinox also marked the beginning of the pagan  year.  This was the celebration that came to be known as Halloween.
     Shorter Days and longer nights marked "The Winter Solstice."  It is the time period representing the Feast of Saturnalia (by the Romans) honoring the god/planet Saturn.  The Feast of Saturnalia occurred from December 17 to the 24th.  This was a time of debauchery, orgy, and drunkenness.  On December 25th, the Romans celebrated the birthday of the "sun god."  They

believed that the sun died during the winter months and after the Winter Solstice, when the sun reclaimed the lengthening of the day, it was "born" anew.
     "The Vernal Equinox" occurred when day and night are equal in length.  It was a time to celebrate the joys of spring, new life, and the resurrection of nature over death.  The Vernal Equinox is an ancient festival celebrating the death and rebirth of

the gods Tammuz and Damuzi.  This was time to celebrate the rites of fertility done through orgies and lasciviousness, and worship to the gods/goddesses of fertility through human/animal sacrifices.   (The use of colored eggs, "May Poles," rabbits, etc., were prominently used in festival worship.)
     "The Summer Solstice" was marked with longer days and shorter nights.  The Britain's called this a "Midsummer Night."  It was a time of great abundance revealed in celebrations of drunken abandonment.
 

A Celebration of Death

     As early as B.C.E. 400, the ancient Celtic civilization gathered to celebrate the Celtic New Year and the festival of the god of death, "Samhain," during the dark night of the soul, October 31st -- where the souls of the wandering dead were thought to manifest themselves to the living.   This time of year was a celebration of the Autumnal Equinox.  The event marked by the harvest, the culmination of Summer, and the dying of nature.  It was a festival to bring fear over the minds of the unenlightened.  At the stroke of midnight, the Celts offered many human sacrifices to the god of death.  It was during this night, the soul  passed from death to a new birth just as the clock sounded the midnight call ushering in a new day.--  A time of death to the old year and birth to the new, and so began the ancient Celtic New Year.     

     In A.D. 834, Pope Boniface IV moved the celebration of "All Saints Day" from May to the 1st of November.  The day before became All Hallows' Evening, or Halloween.  You may also remember that October 31st is Reformation Day in celebration of Martin Luther posting his Ninety-five Theses on the door of the church (this action, among others, essentially began the Reformation).   All Saints Day was an attempt to rid the people of the festival of Samhain along with its sorcery and occult divination.  All Saints Day was a time to honor those martyred by Rome, but not recognized (by the Reformers) as a scriptural holy day.  Pope Boniface IV failed in his attempts to replace the festival of death with All Saints Day, because today Halloween is more popular than ever before.  In fact, many people begin Halloween as "the holiday" season leading up to Christmas. 
     The name "Halloween" came to us by way of the British Isles. All Saints Day was known as "All Halloweds" honoring Christian martyrs.  The festival of Samhain always occurred the night before All Saints Day or, as it came to be known, All Halloweds Eve (or All Halloweds E'en).  All Halloweds Eve passed down to us today as the name of Halloween.

THE DRUIDS

     The history of the ancient Druids is shrouded in an aura of secrecy. The mysterious legends originate thousands of years ago, partly from early Babylonian myths and legends.  In later history, the Druids intermixed traces of British myth and the ancient religious practices of the Gauls.  The religion predominately followed the worship of elemental deities - fire/air, and the seasons, specifically following the Solstice/Equinox.  When the first pilgrims arrived on the shores of America, pagan festivals were forbidden, including customs such as the Festival of the Dead, (Halloween, Samhain brought by way of the Celts) and the Roman, Feast of Saturnalia (later known as Christmas). The pilgrims followed a strict, unyielding adherence to their ancestral forms of worship, with great fear of yielding to the ancient, paganistic celebrations that were later introduced into Church society.

     It was only during the Middle Ages, when the Druidic and Celtic customs saw a revival in America through the celebration of Halloween. The Celtic immigrants, from the British Isles, brought their folk customs and pagan superstitions with them,   including Samhain the Festival of Death. This occurred simultaneously with a resurgence of witchcraft and Satanism in America. The mixing of ancient superstitions with eerie supernatural manifestations helped to set the frightening stage for All Halloweds' Eve. Witches flew threw the sky on brooms with black cats poised delicately on the broom-tip as lookouts to guide through the night. Ghosts, goblins, evil demons and all forms of sinister-looking monsters roamed about the streets in search of the unsuspecting soul.

     Through time the church, sadly weakened by complacency, no longer fought against the practice of what was termed the evil practice of witchcraft, but more or less tolerated its existence; and as remains to this day, the time near the Autumnal Equinox was by far the most important night of the year for the celebration of Halloween. Thousands of years have come and gone, yet Halloween still remains today as the official celebration of Summers' end and beginning of the Fall festivals. Halloween marks the seasonal worship of the Autumnal Equinox, the setting of the Pleiades, and an alternative for the Jewish New Year (Rosh HaShanah) and the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) which occur during the month of Tishri.

     The future fortune of early villages, through good or bad omens, came through the rising and setting of the stars of the Pleiades and the gods of the night. During the dark night of the soul, near the Autumnal Equinox, a great festival occurred - an eerie counterpart to the modern-day Harvest Festival. Huge "bone fires" surrounded the villages illuminating the night sky with a bright, reddish orange glow--the familiar colors of the harvest.

     Halloween "Bone" fires originated far earlier than the celebration of Samhain, but were carried over into the Halloween night of festivities later by the Druids and Celts. The element of "fire" acted as the altar of sacrifice and the blood of the sacrificial victims (both human and animal) fueled the inferno (similar to the High Priest sprinkling blood on the Ark of the Covenant during the Day of Atonement). During the dark night of the soul, the bone fires' two-fold purpose was to both appease and drive away the bad spirits that wandered the Earth in search of a human host to possess.

     Sacrificial victims were led through the streets of the village by masked Celtic priests, the Druids, who ceremonially offered them to the Lord of Death, Satan. From the death agonies of the "living" victim placed on the altar of sacrifice, the priests divined the future of the village from the way the soul departed the body. This custom originated in Babylon where the Babylonian priests' prayed to the symbolic deities (Nimrod) to inquire (divine) the will of the gods: "O Great ones, gods of the night...O Pleiades...." (1) The victims were furiously consumed by the roaring flames, and in the morning, all that was left were the bones and ashes. Today without realizing it, people everywhere practice a similar ritual (hopefully, nix the sacrifice) during the Harvest Festival, not as "bone fires," but as "bon fires."

     Another custom was the marking of the body with strange, ritualistic markings especially carved near the stomach area (if female). It was the ancient Druidic "TAU" symbol of fertility, death, reincarnation, and written with the letter "T" or the "tau cross," an ancient symbol for Tammuz, the dying and rising divinity associated with fertility cults. This same shape can be found in the Hermetic use of the "ouroboros" representative of the "tree of life." The primeval representation of the renewal of life processes within its own substance; i.e., the rebirth from its own ashes--both living forever--thus representing eternity. It also depends on the direction of the "T-cross" (i.e., towards the head or towards the feet). In fertility cults, this symbol would appear over the womb area or near the heart. Today, some might wear it in the form of a cross on a chain which hangs near the heart. --Usually, the shape would be over the womb area (crux ansata - a symbol of life), and not as a perfect circle. Sometimes a point, or a comma, is used to form the shape of the "T" representative of the tongue of fire, placed for the symbol representing a spirit-being or messenger, to signify his (the spirit's) more than human character. In alchemy the practical solution for the use of the ouroboros was a representation of the "dissolution of the body by fermentation; ie, death" (Berthelott).

      Initially, the ancient priests carried a hollowed turnip with a lighted candle made with the fat of an animal or human. The symbol of the hollowed turnip carried the "Jock (or Jack) of the Lantern," the spirit-likeness, or image, that was carved into the outer core of the turnip. The Jock (or Jack) was the guiding spirit of the  lantern who dwelled in the light of the burning fat. Wearing a symbolic mask and dressed in a black, hooded robe and skins of sacrificed animals (sometimes a human body-part was also used as a token), the priests carried the Jock spirit on a dangling rope before them to guide the soul of its carrier through the darkness of night (replicated from a similar procession occurring during the Jewish festival of lights). This procession was of special significance when lighted on the eve of October 31st, to celebrate the ending of the seasons through the setting of the Pleiades. The Jock O'Lantern provided the light, the spirit-guide for the souls of the walking undead. Later, in America, pumpkins replace turnips because they were harvested during the Fall, readily available, and easier to carve than turnips.

    During the dark night of the soul, the hooded priests walked through the streets passing from house to house with a special demand of food, drink, or an added bonus, the virgin sons and daughters of the villagers to offer as sacrifice to the spirits of the night. Sometimes the villagers would also dress in costume to hide (mask) their identity from the evil spirits especially in efforts to protect their children. In this way, the evil spirits were fooled into thinking the villagers to be evil spirits  also and not harm them. The villagers created special amulets for good luck. The sweet taste of the "apple" became the favorite because it pleased the evil spirits and brought good luck to the villagers (bobbing of apples evolved from this belief). The ancient Druids' believed that witches, demons, and spirits of the dead roamed the earth on the eve of November 1st. If the village willingly complied with their demands, the priests passed by, but if the village failed to produce something of value, the priests placed the "Jock O'Lantern" outside the door post of the house to be released as a curse upon the dwellers.  The house would then be cursed and doors/window's marked with a five-pointed star (pentagram) or a six-pointed hexagram (similar to the appearance of "the star of David").  The word "hexed" (meaning cursed) evolved from this ancient occult symbol of the hexagram. 

     Finally, the spirits would be left in the cursed village to wander the streets, ravaging homes and bringing destruction upon the living...

This custom has been passed down today in the form of

"Trick or Treat."

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