Saturday October 31st – ARTICLE 19
THREE DAYS ON HELL, HEAVEN & PURGATORY (OCTOBER 31-NOVEMBER 2)
We have entered a period of time which, under the surface, could be said to be a battle between Heaven and Hell. Today, October 31st, the eve of All Saints Day, which traditionally begins with the liturgy of First Vespers on (Ocotober 31st) the evening before All Saints Day (November 1st), has been turned into a glorification of pagan and diabolical customs. We will therefore, over the course of three days, a triduum of sorts, look at Hell (Halloween), Heaven (All Saints Day) and Purgatory (All Souls Day).
Halloween or Hell-O-Ween?
Few people know the history behind Halloween—they prefer to stop at the sweet superficial aspect of it, and have little or no clue about its origins. They are happy to pass over it with “two-bit” phrases or vague platitudes while smiling at the quaintness of much of the customs.
In a nutshell, Halloween has pagan origins, which the Church tried to replace with a Christian overtone, and which now has reverted back to pagan overtones. One could almost say it parallels the fate of the Church—which was born in a time of pagan darkness, Christianized much of that darkness, and is not falling back into an increasingly pagan atmosphere.
The Gods of Gentiles and Pagans Are Devils
Holy Scripture clearly tells us that: “For all the gods of the Gentiles are devils” (Psalm 95:5). “They sacrificed to devils and not to God: to gods whom they knew not” (Deuteronomy 32:17). “For you have provoked Him who made you, the eternal God, offering sacrifice to devils, and not to God” (Baruch 4:7). God tells them to stop this devilish and hellish practice: “And they shall no more sacrifice their victims to devils, with whom they have committed fornication. It shall be an ordinance for ever to them and to their posterity” (Leviticus 17:7). Which leads St. Paul to warn us: “And what concord hath Christ with Belial? Or what part hath the faithful with the unbeliever?” (2 Corinthians 6:15).
Pagan Celtic and Druid New Year
Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient pagan Druid and Celtic festival of Samhain―variously pronounced as “sow-in”, “sah-win”, “sam-hayne” plus more. A Druid was a member of the educated, professional class among the Celtic peoples. The pagan Celts―who lived over 2,000 years ago in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France― It was the beginning of their new year and was generally celebrated on October 31st, but some preferred November 1st. This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred.
Communication With The Dead
On the night of October 31st they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort and direction during the long, dark winter. It is one of the two “spirit-nights” each year, the other being Beltane. It is a ‘magical’ interval when the mundane laws of time and space are thought to be temporarily suspended, and the “Thin Veil” between the worlds is lifted. Communicating with ancestors and departed loved ones is thought to be easy at this time, for they journey through this world on their way to the “Summerlands”. It is a time to study the “Dark Mysteries” and honor the “Dark Mother” and the “Dark Father”, symbolized by the “Crone” and her aged “Consort”.
To commemorate the event, Druids (the Celtic ‘priests’) built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the pagan Celtic deities. Originally the “Feast of the Dead” was celebrated in Celtic countries by leaving food offerings on altars and doorsteps for the “wandering dead”. Today a lot of practitioners still carry out that tradition. Single candles were lit and left in a window to help guide the spirits of ancestors and loved ones home. Extra chairs were set to the table and around the hearth for the unseen guest. Apples were buried along roadsides and paths for spirits who were lost or had no descendants to provide for them. Turnips were hollowed out and carved to look like protective spirits, for this was a night of magic and chaos.
The “Wee Folke” became very active, pulling pranks on unsuspecting humans. During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other’s fortunes. Traveling after dark was not advised. People dressed in white (like ghosts), wore disguises made of straw, or dressed as the opposite gender in order to fool the Nature spirits. When the celebration was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter.
Human Sacrifice
“He that shall find me, shall find life, and shall have salvation from the Lord: but he that shall sin against Me, shall hurt his own soul. All that hate Me love death” (Proverbs 8:35-36).
There is a debate among scholars as to whether human sacrifices were performed during Druid/Celtic celebrations of Halloween. Of course modern druids will say that they were not. They say that the only evidence that this custom was practiced is a reference in an ancient Roman document by Julius Caesar (see below). We do know that human sacrifice was practiced among the Celts in ancient times because of several “bog men”, or mummies preserved in the peat bogs that show signs of ritual killing. Of course, there would be no remains of any humans that were sacrificed in the fire. At any rate, the word “bonfire” comes from a compound of the Middle English words bon (bone) and fir (fire) … meaning a fire kindled upon bones.
The author Merle Severy, in his book The Celts (National Geographic, May 1977, pages 625-626), describes “the eve of Samhain… the start of the Celtic new year: “According to the Dinshenchas―a medieval collection of the lore of prominent places―firstborn children were sacrificed before a great idol to ensure fertility of cattle and crops.
Samhain eve was a night of dread and danger. At this juncture of the old year and the new, our world and the otherworld opened up to each other. The dead returned, ghosts and demons were abroad, and the future could be seen.. . . Behind such Halloween games as bobbing for apples lie Celtic divination arts to discern who would marry, thrive, or die in the coming year. Behind the masks and mischief, the jack-o-lanterns and food offerings, lurk the fear of malevolent spirits and the rites to propitiate them.” Page 601 gives additional insight: “Tacitus tells us of the bloodstained Druid altars of Anglesey in Wales.”
Julius Caesar, speaking on Celtic sacrifices said: “The whole nation of the Gauls is greatly devoted to ritual observances, and for that reason those who are smitten with the more grievous maladies and who are engaged in the perils of battle either sacrifice human victims or vow so to do, employing the druids as ministers for such sacrifices. They believe, in effect, that, unless for a man’s life a man’s life be paid, the majesty of the immortal gods may not be appeased; and in public, as in private life they observe an ordinance of sacrifices of the same kind. Others use figures of immense size whose limbs, woven out of twigs, they fill with living men and set on fire, and the men perish in a sheet of flame. They believe that the execution of those who have been caught in the act of theft or robbery or some crime is more pleasing to the immortal gods; but when the supply of such fails they resort to the execution even of the innocent.”
The classical author, Diodorus Siculus, also reported scenes of human sacrifice by the Druids: “When they attempt divination upon important matters they practice a strange and incredible custom, for they kill a man by a knife-stab in the region above his midriff.” After the sacrificial victim fell dead … “they foretell the future by the convulsions of his limbs and the pouring of his blood.”
The 1984 discovery of a sacrificial victim in Cheshire, England, helps validate the reality of ritualistic human sacrifice. The well-preserved young man had apparently belonged to an elite social class in the second century BC. After two sharp blows to the head, he had been strangled. Then, like the countless sacrifices to Aztec and Mayan gods, his body had been drained of the human blood needed to please and appease their gods
Here Come the Pagan Romans!
By 43 A.D., the pagan Roman Empire had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. In the course of the four hundred years that they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of pagan Roman origin were combined with the traditional pagan Celtic celebration of Samhain. Pagan + Pagan = More Pagan. The first pagan Roman celebration was Feralia, a day in late October, when the pagan Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honor Pomona, the pagan Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple and the incorporation of this celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition of “bobbing” for apples that is practiced today on Halloween.
Throw-Out Devil & Put In Christ!
On May 13th, 609 A.D., Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome in honor of all Christian martyrs, and the Catholic feast of All Martyrs Day was established in the Western church. Pope Gregory III (731–741) later expanded the festival to include all saints as well as all martyrs, and moved the observance from May 13 to November 1.
By the 9th century the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands, where it gradually blended with and supplanted the older Celtic rites. In 1000 A.D., the Church would make November 2nd to be “All Souls’ Day”, a day to honor the dead. It is widely believed today that the church was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, but church-sanctioned holy day (holiday). All Souls Day was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels and devils. The All Saints Day celebration was also called All-hallows or All- hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints’ Mass, much like
“Candlemas” on February 2nd, means “The Mass of Candles”) and the night before it was celebrated with the singing of First Vespers (which always starts the celebration of great feasts on the evening prior to the feast), and thus began to be called All-hallows Eve and Hallow-even’ [ing], eventually becoming Halloween.