Throughout ancient Europe, the end of the harvest coincided with the feast dedicated to the souls of the deceased: let's see how we came from the Celtic celebration of Samhain to today's Halloween, passing through the Christian feast of All Saints.
di Alberto Massaiu
originally published on the author's blog
image: Karoly Kisfaludy, "Ossian Conjures up the Spirits on the Banks of the River Lorca"
Β
We all have at least once, when we were little, to dress up as monsters, vampires, witches or other supernatural creatures. The now infamous night of Halloween, soon to arrive, it has infected with its consumerist and profane side a whole series of traditions that date back to a distant and fascinating past.
The modern party of Halloween it rests on a whole series of misinterpretations that developed in the somber mentality of the Victorian age, where the gothic taste for occultism, necromancy, divination and the macabre in general was very successful in the middle-upper classes of the Anglo-Saxon world. These aspects, which gave the material substratum, were joined by the more commercial ones that developed a few decades later in America, where they went to create the party so much appreciated by all those children who go around the houses to the refrain of"Trick or Treat".
Here I intend, on the contrary, to explain the depth and spirituality of everything to the best of my ability a series of cults that, from the Celtic and Mediterranean pagan agricultural world, arrived at the gates of the modern era through Christian religious holidays [1].
First myth to dispel. The term Halloween is a Christian term. It is the corruption of the sentence "All Hallow's eve" or "Evening of the Feast of Saints" - from hollow, which means to sanctify and from the abbreviation of evening "Eve", which means evening. This is because the night of October 31 came, in the High Middle Ages, to coincide with the vigil awaiting the celebration of All Saints of the following day. But let's go step by step.
All agricultural cultures of antiquity had a series of rituals and cultic moments that marked important passages of the year. The Romans - often borrowing them from the Etruscans - had some holidays related to the cycle of birth-death-rebirth of life. One, very archaic, was the Mundus Cereris, in which it was thought that in three specific days of the year (24 August, 5 October, 8 November) the world of the living and that of the dead would come into communication. Same thing happened in Saturnalia (between 17 and 23 December), in which days the underworld deities and the spirits of the dead had the right to return to earth and therefore had to be appeased with offerings of food, banquets and sacrifices [2].
The cults that, for the purposes of this article, we are interested in investigating the most, however, are the Celtic ones.Β The party Halloween, which ran between October 30 and November 2, also known as Trinuxtion Samoni or Celtic New Year, was that ritual practice on which the Christian liturgy will later rely. Halloween it was seen, in the Gothic conception that we mentioned at the beginning, as a real oneΒ "Prince of Darkness" or a dark one "Lord of Death"Β [3], but in truth there is no evidence that he was a Celtic deity. In Old Gaelic samain -Β orΒ samuin or evenΒ samfuin - it just wants to say "end of the summer" from the union of words sam e fuin, or, according to another reading, simply "Come together". This is because in Celtic culture the solar year was divided into two periods; winter, said geimhreh, which began with the party of Halloween and summer, saidΒ samradh, which began with the party of Beltane.
The new agricultural year, hence the fact that Halloween turned out to be the Celtic New Year, it began in November, shortly after the end of the harvests, which had just been stored for the winter. Such a festival was also present in the Mediterranean world, as testified the cult of Ceres between October and November, but the Latins chose to make the beginning of the year coincide with spring - da primum, ie first season - and the month of April - from open up, that is, which opens the year.
But what did they do during the feast of Halloween? In the first place it was a time of reuniting family groups, clans, tribes, even entire nations - the Irish gathered at the sacred royal hill of Tara, for example - in order to thank the gods for the good harvest and propitiate them for that. that was going to start in the year to come. At the same time it was a moment in which the earth symbolically went to sleep, then to die and then be reborn the following spring. For this reason those days were regarded as a moment where the real world of the living met that of AnnwynΒ [4] - of spirits - and of Sidhe - of fairies [5].
Because of this it was thought that the spirits of those who had died might temporarily escape their state to return to visit loved ones still alive. For their part, to facilitate their arrival, it was customary to put lighted candles on the windows of the houses, to show them the way. At the same time she prepared extra food and laid out for those who had disappeared, so that they could join their family's table once more. The Romans and the Etruscans, but also the Celts and even the Christians, sometimes used to go directly to the burial places, to have lunch with the dead, among the tombs.
It must be understood that the world of the dead was not seen in a negative or fearful way in the past, especially when it concerned the respect and remembrance of loved ones who have died out. In fact, the latter, when they arrived on earth in those days, joyfully came to meet their family members, who in turn prepared banquets in their honor.Β These ancestral traditions still persist in certain rural environments. In fact, in Sicily there are sweets of the dead, an ancient memory of the food that was left to the spirits of the dead in these days. As for Sardinia, my grandmother often told me that, on the night between 1 and 2 November, it was common in the village to place lighted candles on the windows, set tables with extra seats and leave food near the front door of the houses.
In the Celtic world, centered on cosmic time represented by the circle of birth-life-death-rebirth, the transition from summer to autumn-winter was precisely the moment in which the earth died and then was reborn [6]. For this reason the party ofΒ Halloween had a whole series of deep and articulated mythical-ritual aspects - unfortunately little known scientifically, given that they concern a civilization that did not know writing - which certainly, in general, included orgiastic aspects, breaking of traditional rules of behavior, auspicious or fertility-related rituals, animal sacrifices - generally the first born, as a propitiatory sign of fertility in the flocks and herds.
But the most evocative ritual whose memory has been handed down is, in my opinion, that of sacred bonfire. On October 30, huge piles of wood were prepared in the hills of Britain, Gaul, Ireland and Caledonia. On the 31st these were lit and, at the same time, the fires of the hearths of every single house in all the villages were extinguished throughout the night. The next day, the first day of November, the druids went from house to house to bring the burning embers of the sacred new fire, which symbolically outlined the passing of the old year into the one that has just begun.
Well, this was more or less what happened in the origins. But then what happened with the advent of Christianity? The process of Christianization of the pagans was neither a miraculous event, nor was it taken for granted. The first fathers of the Church, following the Edict of Thessalonica of 380, with which the emperor Theodosius imposed Christianity as the state religion and began to persecute all those who venerated the ancient gods, had to work for many centuries in order to make the pagans digest their new faith.
In 835 AD, having seen the resistance of rural cults linked to Halloween in the Celtic world and in Ceres, Demeter and other minor divinities in the Mediterranean, Pope Gregory II decided to move the date in which all Saints were celebrated from May 13 to November 998. Almost two centuries later, in XNUMX, Odilo of Cluny began to have a prayer recited in his Benedictine monastery "Pro requie omnium defunctorum" November 2nd. Soon this idea was grasped by Rome, which institutionalized it, inserting many of the pagan cultic activities into the Christian rite, putting in place that religious syncretism that has allowed it, with centuries of work, to make the new religion digest in an almost painless way, basing it on the traditions and beliefs of the old ones. In fact the offerings of food to the dead, the fires and lights on, the masks to scare away evil spirits typical of rural Christian traditions, are all pagan aspects, perfectly preserved within a slight patina of superficial Christianization [7].
I would like to close this quick trip into the past on a funny note, bringing back the myth behind the famous pumpkins of Halloween, Or the legend of Jack O'Lantern. Jack O'Lantern, also known as Stingy Jack, was according to an old Irish legend the village drunkard, as well as an inveterate gambler. It is said that once, just during a night of Halloween, met the devil on the street and invited him to drink at his house. Later, both of them quite drunk, took a walk and came to an old tree. Jack, always looking for bets, then challenged the devil to climb on top of it. The devil, smiling, climbed the tree with ease, but Jack carved a cross into the bark, trapping it up there thanks to that sacred symbol. At this point the Jack proposed a deal: the devil, if he wanted to be able to return to earth, had to promise not to tempt him anymore. The devil accepted. When Jack died years later, the gates of Heaven were denied him due to his vices. Jack then headed to hell, but the devil prevented him from entering to take revenge for his stunt, condemning him to wander in limbo between the world of the living and that of the dead, aimlessly.
However, he was given a burning ember, to illuminate his path in the darkness. Tradition states that Jack put the ember in a hollowed out turnip or onion, in order to make it last longer, and thus began his lonely and sad journey into eternity, with the possibility of accessing our world only at night. of his stunt with the devil, ad Halloween. When the potato famine occurred in Ireland at the turn of the century, many Irish migrated to America, bringing with them their ancient traditions and history, including that of Jack O'Lantern. In the United States, however, they found pumpkins, which were better suited to be carved than turnips or onions and since then the traditional pumpkin of Halloween.
Before saying goodbye, a couple of concluding remarks. In the end, all these ancient religious practices and beliefs arise in an ancient world, driven by values ββand principles that are partly alien to our fast-paced modern and urbanized world - such as the importance of seasonal cycles and harvests -, partly from others we share or that at least we should pay attention to the sense of traditions, of social and family values, of the sense of belonging to a people and a culture.
But the thing that most unites us with all those generations of forgotten men and now only dust is the great mystery of the human heart, which you never want to resign to the disappearance of your extinct loved ones and of the people you have loved. And finally, above all, who still remains, today as then, fascinated and at the same time terrified by the great mystery of death and what happens after it.
Note:
[1] See the category of articlesΒ Cosmic-agrarian cults of ancient Eurasia, on AXIS mundi.
[2] See M. Maculotti, Cosmic cycles and time regeneration: immolation rites of the 'King of the Old Year', on AXIS mundi.
[3] See M. Maculotti,Β Divinity of the Underworld, the Afterlife and the Mysteries, on AXIS mundi.
[4]Β See.Β Jean Markale: the Other World in Druidism and Celtic Christianity, on AXIS mundi.
[5] A belief that also characterizes the 12 days following the Winter Solstice (Yule); in this regard, cf. M. Maculotti,Β The archaic substratum of the end of year celebrations: the traditional significance of the 12 days between Christmas and the Epiphany, on AXIS mundi.
[6] See M. Maculotti,Β Cernunno, Odin, Dionysus and other deities of the 'Winter Sun', on AXIS mundi.
[7]Β See M. Maculotti,Β From Pan to the Devil: the 'demonization' and the removal of ancient European cults, on AXIS mundi.
Β
Thanks Alberto Massaiu, a really useful and clear article !!!