This is Halloween

People have diverse reactions to Halloween.  For many children, it's a magical time to dress up and go visiting, collecting bags of candy.  For some adults, it is fun, but creepy and weird.  For some adherents to Christian religious sects, it is a clandestine foothold of Satan in the world.  But for those of us who self-identify as pagans, it is the highest of holy days.

There is a common error committed by some religious zealots:  the conflation of paganism with "Satanism."  Paganism has nothing to do with Satanism.  Satan is a Christian deity, the repository of the shadow elements of the Christian soul, rejected outright from the collective consciousness, and thereby given great power over the collective unconscious. This is the meaning of the banishment of Satan from Heaven, and his eternal reign in Hell.  But paganism enacts no such polarity, preferring to integrate the shadow powers of the unconscious with the compassionate and loving collective consciousness, preserving a harmony that reflects the balance of nature.  

It must also be acknowledged that to be a pagan has no definitive meaning.  Generally, the term refers to those religious beliefs and practices that were common in Celtic Europe before the arrival of Christianity. But there is no universally recognized set of organizations, no orthodox scripture, no dogma.  Therein lies a weakness of paganism as a belief system, but also a very great strength.  What it means to be pagan is up to each individual to decide, and one is a pagan simply by believing oneself to be so.  Our priesthood is the animals and trees, our scripture is the leaves and the stars, and our church is the stones and seas of the earth.  Therefore what I have to say today about paganism is only that:  what I have to say today about paganism.

The Holy Days of the pagan calendar include the equinoxes and solstices, but emphasize the cross-quarter days: those that fall exactly between the solstices and equinoxes. These are Imbolc (Winter-Spring), Beltane (Spring-Summer), Lughnassad (Summer-Autumn) and Samhuin (Autumn-Winter). Of these, Beltane and Samhuin are highest, and Samhuin occupies a special place because it is considered the beginning of the new year. The astronomical date of Samhuin is November 6 on a modern calendar, but the precession of equinoxes has caused the calendrical date to drift by a week, and we celebrate it now on October 30.

Samhuin is a Celtic spelling and pronunciation (sah-ween), whose somewhat more familiar Anglo-Saxon counterpart is Samhain. I believe it is from the Celtic phonetics of this word that we derive our modern “halloween.” It seems a more likely derivation than the traditional “all hallowd's eve,” since, under that theory, one would have to explain why we don't call the holiday “halloweve.”

The pagan religion, and Celtic spirituality in general, places a high value on liminal space, the “in-between” of things. Doorways, windows, and well openings are liminal in space, but there are also liminal times, such as midnight, dawn, and dusk. The cross-quarters are all liminal times because they represent the conjunction of seasons, and Samhuin is doubly liminal, since it is also the conjunction of the new and old year.

Pagan religion, like most tribal religions, believes in the transmigration of souls. At the liminal moment of Samhuin, this transmigratory pathway is at its most open, and we have a chance to see the movement of souls among the worlds between the living and the dead, between the temporal materiality and the eternal spirit. For this reason, we may see spirit-forms walking the earth.

We honor the transdimensional nature of spirit with our costumery, enacting its transformations. We honor the wicce, the wise women of herb and animal lore, and also the druids, the Der-Wydd, the Oak-seers who seek the tree-lore contained in the cauldron of Cerridwen, nestled in the roots of the world-tree, Ygdrasil. We honor the spiders, who are the living image of the Weavers of Fate, the Sisters of Wyrd, whose names are Urd, Skuld, and Verdandi, and who eternally weave the fabric of destiny. We honor the moon, whose cycles resonate with the cycles of our bodies, and our animal companions, among whom cats, bats, and owls are particularly revered.

The symbols and meaning of Samhuin have been systematically trivialized and denigrated by the orders of the Catholic Church as part of its program of cultural genocide against pagans that began with Saints Patrick and Columba in the 5^th century (we are the “snakes” whom Patrick famously drove out of Ireland), reached its peak of atrocity under the Spanish Inquisition, came on the ships to the New World and showed its head in Salem, and is visible today in the ignorant remarks of contemporary religious and political leaders. It is only one genocide among many that hang from the head of that bloody church, whose Jesus has said, “You shall know the tree by the fruit it bears.”

Although they have nonsensically related the pagan holy day to their own trickster shadow-deity, have demonized our wise women as “witches” (whose wisdom was a great threat to the invasive patriarchy), and have slandered our familiar animal spirits with the curse of bad luck and demonism, the pagan connection to its highest holy day survives. The spirits of children and adults are captivated by our ancestral connection to our own tribal religion. We celebrate the transformation of our spirits, the communion with the departed, and the special connections we have to the natural and animal worlds at a time when the season sweeps us into the mystic perseverance of the past, encoded in our very DNA. Enjoy, then this magical season, and seek its ever deeper meaning, and be not fooled by appearances – for they are transitory.