Happy Samhain

(Ellen) #1

To any pagans, and everyone else happy Halloween.

#2

Yes, Samhain is a Gaelic word for the New Year - a very old pre-Catholic tradition (but according to the full moon - so not today exactly!).

And All Souls/Saints Day - Day of the Dead! Big processions in the American southwest ( L.A., Tucson, etc) all the way down to Mexico City!

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(Ellen) #3

I know they don’t tie up exactly but forgot about Dia de los muertos, many names and traditions for this time of year. Always good to remember that although it’s getting darker & colder, Spring will come.

#4

Yes indeedy!

:bouquet:

(Susan) #5

My grand daughter really had fun tonight for Halloween -she was an adorable witch --she was just really disappointed that the broom I bought her didn’t help her fly… haha.

(Michael) #6

Mary, I’ll have to disagree with you about when Samhain occurs as it is the name of the month of November in the Irish/Gaelic language.

The ghoulish aspect of Samhain has more to do with the extensive slaughtering of animals that could not be fed or survive over the winter. They often didn’t need freezers back then so the meat did not spoil quickly and some of it was salted/cured to last till Spring.

The All Saints/ All Souls holidays are a Christian overlay on the existing Samhain festival…

Samhain would be very much a north-western European ritual before the onset of Winter. I am sure these rituals also occurred in other northern hemisphere regions at this time of year, for the same reason, but the word Samhain is AFAIK very much Celtic in origin.

(Ellen) #7

I bet she looked cute, although thinking about it, I reckon travel by broomstick would be cold & uncomfortable, flying lazeboy might be better :wink:

(Susan) #8

I am going to upload 4 pics of her from last night on my accountability thread in a minute; that my eldest daughter took of her before her mom, and her two aunties took her out =).

#9

Disagree with me all you like, about what is the native language & culture of some of my grandparents and greats born & raised on Eire land in the actual Gaeltacht. :woman_shrugging:

Gaelic cultural genocide on both sides of the pond continues on with much of TV and internet culture. Many don’t know that the word Samhain predates the word November linguistically & culturally - it translates to “Summer’s End,” - has the same root as “Samhradh” which means “Summer”. It marks the full moon New Year after harvest, based in the lunar calendar (similarly with Hindu, Muslim, Chinese, and Jewish lunar holidays that change their date every year according to when the full moon falls within the season - to name a few of many lunar-based cultural groups from what goes back to prehistoric aboriginal cultures) which is an entirely different calendar than the solar Gregorian calendar made and instituted by a Pope in the 1500s. The Gregorian calendar’s sole purpose is domination & empire, perpetuating cultural genocide in the name of Roman Catholic church furthered by English colonial rule which outlawed the Gaelic language and colonized through forced schooling, economic marginalization, agricultural plundering and subsequent famine of the peasant class, along with relentless religious conversion. For more on lunar matters see the book Luna: Myth & Mystery by scholar Kathleen Cain.

And, for those under 50 y.o., many don’t know that the commercialized Halloween wasn’t a thing in Ireland/Scotland and England until about 30 years ago - it’s an American industrial import. But that doesn’t really matter much to the huge numbers of current landowners in western Ireland, who are Danes, Germans, and assorted Anglo hippies, etc.

I think that postmodernism and neopaganism (for all its heartfelt desire to free itself of the Abrahamic religions and possibly find some ancestral roots) generally is rife with the same cultural appropriation, objectification, and commercialization that perpetuated cultural genocide in Ireland for 800+ years. It carries on in epigenetic trauma (anthropologist Marjorie Shostak studied the western coastal Irish and her book Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics addresses the diverse outcomes of such trauma).

Decolonization is necessary in order to approach Gaelic words & culture in a way that is respectful and regenerating of the worldview that informs it. (For example, in Irish Gaelic we don’t say the equivalent of “I am sick” we say “Sickness is upon me” meaning that the “I am” isn’t merged/trapped with the condition, the condition is an impermanent imposition on what is a self in intimate relationship with the web of life and the entire cosmos). Neopaganism selectively uses words like samhain (as do many pubs in many places) similarly to how Americans pick out dreamcatchers and tipis to lend some kind of meaningless indigenous air to decor without regard for the reality of ongoing cultural genocide of First Nation peoples. The fact is that the Gaelic language is vast worldview and cultural fabric. Modern urbanites and/or neopagans can never know what it is like to have grown up Gaelic (Irish or Scottish Gaels rather than Anglo-Irish) and can at best be allies & advocates of cultural survival. Except average neopagans et al don’t seem to know that, because… Anglo-Eurocentrism continues to colonize it, as does magical thinking.

(Michael) #10

Mary, I am Irish born and bred. I don’t need to get lectures on what it is to be Irish; Thanks very much.

I live in Galway which is the last city in Ireland where you can hear Irish spoken every day on the streets. The city is the gateway to Connemara which is the last remaining vestige of a living breathing Irish language/Gaelic tradition.

My correction of your previous post still stands in spite of your attempts to move the goalposts!

#11

Then the fact that you don’t know about the lunar calendar vs. commercialized modern post-colonialism then is an indication you’ve been miseducated. There are huge differences between urban/rural cultural literacy depending on one’s orientation and the degree of commercialization (Galway being a major tourism hub is a thing). The institutionalized language revival movement has been patchy in its decolonization - basic literacy about the lunar and pre-Catholic, pre-patriarchal traditions are often lacking in schooling.

Actually the northwest - Donegal along with the islands - being less accessible to tourists and urbanites - is much more living and breathing in the land-based Gaelic language comprehension and older worldviews (though much has passed away in recent decades). Up to you whether you’re interested in the facts about the old calendar or not - slán.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #12

The Gregorian calendar is Gregory XIII’s reform of the old Roman calendar, building on Julius Caesar’s reforms before the Roman Empire even began. The Roman calendar had its roots in Etruscan and Latin pagan culture, roots which pre-dated not only the Empire but also the Republic by quite a few centuries. So it was by no means conceived of as an instrument of oppression, though its use was enforced throughout the Empire in the name of administrative efficiency (my understanding is that local calendars continued in use, but that all official business had to be dated using the conquerors’ calendar).

Note, please, that I am not questioning the malign effects of Roman domination and the later political and cultural domination of the Christian Church (it makes no sense to speak of Roman Catholicism before 1495), merely making a point about the origin of the calendar that remains in world-wide use today.

As far as I know, the Roman calendar was always a solar calendar (this seems to be an Indo-European thing), and like all calendars, it originated as a means of regulating the conduct of agriculture. Roman pagan culture had festivals similar to those of the Celtic tradition, but they were rather ruthlessly eradicated—or co-opted—once Constantine ended the persecution of Christians and especially after he made Christianity the official religion of the Empire.

All Saints’ Day and Christmas are examples of “co-optative” holy days, the former having been picked after legalization to pre-empt Samhain, the latter during the years of persecution to disguise Christian celebrations of Christ’s birth. (The one thing we do know about the date of his birth is that it was not December 25; the date was picked because it was the Dies festis natalis soli invicti—birthday of the unconquered sun—which was less raunchy than the Saturnalia (ten days of whooping it up that ended on the 24th) but was still festive enough to provide protective cover for the Christian observance. As a festival of light, it also had obvious resonances with the Christian observance.

The date of Easter, by the way, was chosen not in competition with Passover, but rather because the events of Christ’s last few days were inextricably linked with that Jewish holy day. There was much debate in the Christian community over whether the Resurrection should be observed on the date it occurred, which was the 14th of Nissan in the Jewish calendar, or on the Sunday before Pesach, the first day of the week having by that time been established as the Christian day of worship. The Sunday party won out, and Easter is thus a moveable feast, since the first day of Pesach is calculated according to the Jewish lunar calendar (and a further complication is that Christian and rabbinical methods of calculating the date have diverged somewhat over the centuries).

Somewhat ironically, the English term “Easter” preserves the name of a Celtic goddess; in other Western European languages and in Easter Orthodoxy, the name of the holy day is some variation on ‘Pascha’, the Greek form of ‘Pesach’.

(Ellen) #13

You always know so much about Latin/Roman/Greek history, I do enjoy reading your replies. Is it a hobby or did you study it academically?

(Jane Srygley) #14

Blessed Samhain Ellen (a bit belated…) :waxing_crescent_moon::full_moon::waning_crescent_moon: