Throughout history, human beings always had an ancestral connection with Mother Earth and the Sun. Through the celebration of every crop, especially in certain periods of the year, humans saw an embodiment of the land in the seeds, in the sprouts and in the several plants, fruits and grains providing them a sustainable life centuries earlier than permaculture was conceived and developed in the 1970s by Bill Mollison and his co-worker David Holmgren in Australia.
Celts in the British isles in the pre-Christian era used to have a religion, Druidism, and they had a calendar dividing the year into two periods: the cold period and the hot period. The local population used to know a cold season (or darker half-winter) that started on November 1st in conjunction with the festivity of Samhain, and a hot season (or lighter half-summer) that started on May 1st in conjunction with the festivity of Beltaine or Cetsamhain. Samhain was literally dividing the year. There is no doubt that this festival was the most important of the four Celtic Festivals.
As aforementioned, in ancient times, the majority of the population used to have only two seasons. It is therefore plausible to believe that in the popular perception of those people, that transition or liminal period was a “time out of time”- as scholars often define it – that is a time that is and it is not, it is no longer summer but it is not winter yet; it is no longer the tepid time of full joy but it is not yet the time to be distressed by watching the ice holding the world in its grip.
The perception of a liminal time, a concept extremely dear to the ancient culture of the British Isles, which has always seen the moments of transition, including the age stages in humans, is it that of a period or several periods full of value, where many extraordinary things could happen and they actually happened.
In fact, in both folklore and literature there are various hints to strange inexplicable facts out of the ordinary happening on the night of the first day of Samhain.
For example, in mythology, many heroes who had become elderly died on that very night, as if tied to the thread of a mysterious destiny. Other heroes, on the other hand, consumed their epochal victories on that day: this is the case of the mythological Fionn mac Cumhaill, a mythical hunter-warrior who on the night of October 31st managed to gloriously defeat an army of enemies from the Underworld.
Samhain is intended by that night in which the walls dividing our world from the Afterlife world were thinned: a mysterious kingdom hosted the souls of the dead and many evil spirits and demoniac entities harmful for the living creatures were accessing and crossing that physical, metaphysical and spiritual threshold.
It’s only in the XII century – some historians speculate it dates back from the X century – where in Ireland a first narrative text, the Tochmarc Emire, was introduced and where the transition of the two seasons were then divided in two more seasons. However, according to Kuno Meyer, the Tochmarc Emire – “The Wooing of Emer” – is dated back to the 900s CE. Different sources indicate different periods and ages, but they all merge into two main events: Lúnasa (Lughnasadh, Lughnasa, Brón Trogain) – the harvest festival in Ireland, and the Fire Festivals.
In fact, Lughnasadh is mentioned in the old text, the Tochmarc Emire, along with a small piece on all the Fire Festivals.
The ancient local Celts used to split the year into two main seasons, a bi-seasonal year, and their New Year coincided with the first day of the month of Samhain which today corresponds to our November (in the Gregorian calendar). There was a precise day in which great festivities were held and this day was called Oiché Shamhna (literally the night of Samhain). The local population at the time used to define it a ceann féile that in Modern English would mean chief or main festival. It was actually one of the most important festivities based on their lunar calendar.
As Celts used to begin the new day at sunset of the previous one, the big festivities for the first day of Samhain were held on the night of October 31st that they considered the early hours of November 1st.
What we know about the traditions and costumes of these folks in the pre-Christian era is uncertain, but this Celtic Druid Great Fire Festival was celebrated in Scotland (Samhuinn) and in Ireland (Samhain). We don’t have many records of them nor do we know if there were great assemblies on that date, most likely there were as many peasants seemingly used to kindle bonfires and dance around them.
The “Fire Festivals” involved the main festivities throughout the year, and especially there were middle-summer fires on the day of the summer solstice. On the longest day of the year, many villagers would dance around bonfires to celebrate the abundance around them: their crops and their cattle were the most precious possessions that would let them get through the icy winter.
The Samhain period was first and foremost that in which the flocks returned from the pasture and the cows were welcomed back into the stables or sold in large fairs that were held precisely in those days, with all the usual corollary of popular entertainment. The Samhain period was also the one in which, at home, the cattle that were not intended to be kept for the winter were slaughtered, with predictable large binges of that fresh and precious meat.
Besides dividing the two seasons of the year, Samhain also made it possible to create a division between this world of the living and the world of the dead. In fact, during that night, a thinner threshold could let entities pass through and get into our 3D world.
It is narrated historically as a cultural heritage still honoured by many Irish families to this day that during that night the ancestors of each family were honoured and invited home although evil spirits were warded off.
Since that early time, people used to wear costumes and masks to disguise themselves as harmful spirits and therefore avoid harm. Bonfires and food played a major role during the festivities. The bones of slaughtered cattle were thrown into a communal fire, household fires were extinguished, and started again from the bonfire. Food was prepared in bigger amounts than usual to have enough to distribute. Therefore everyone could enjoy it: the living, the dead, and as the families’ ancestors were not able to eat it physically but only symbolically, it was shared with the poor people.
I interviewed a friend of mine, Ms Ilaria Emma Borjigid Bohm, PhD, an anthropologist, historian, linguist, shaman, psychologist and hypnotherapist whose life is an amazing journey by itself, in the hope to shed some light upon Samhain and Morrigan, the Goddess of Death. Ilaria described Samhain and explained many concepts in such an enlightening way that I hope these explanations will delight you all as well: “Samhain marks the end of the harvest and of the Celtic year and also marks the time when the doors between worlds are thinnest: it begins and ends between sunset on October 31st and November 1st. Sunrise and sunset are the moments of passage, the access portal of the shaman of the native European culture. In the Neolithic era, the tombs in Ireland, as the Etruscan tombs, are aligned with the cycles of light both annual and day/night light, and they are aligned with the stars so in these places there is contact with both the deceased and the ancestors – the passages into the afterlife being present. The contact with the dead also recalls the contact with the giver of death, the Bird Goddess also depicted as a raven, Morrigan, who is both the creative goddess and the destroying goddess: it is at her discretion to create and destroy and no one can say a word on that, and this is in every woman, and so there is this vision of the giver of death in Samhain who chooses what has to be destroyed and what has to be reborn because without destruction the new cycle cannot begin. There was always this recurring concept of shamanic death which is also represented by Samhain since at that time the woman in these archaic societies and societal context still had a prominent role. She was chaste in her capacity to know what was best for herself, and that was and it is in every woman; there was the Goddess of Sovereignty or several the Goddesses of Sovereignty – if you go even more backwards – that taught people how to treat women by treating each other as sacred and divine, and trusting every choice of a woman and never undoing it. In Samhain, there was like at the end, a quintessential point, this moment in which the woman embodied the “destructress”, the Death Giver, she was deciding what had to be killed for the Spring to come back, a preparation and a ritual for the Solstice to return, for the Sun to return as well. Samhain is the darkest time of the year and this concept is integrated into the most archaic conception of this transition which is really centred on death and rebirth for a new cycle to start. In fact, Morrigan represented the circle of life and was associated with both birth and death. The “Great Queen” as her name translates from ancient Irish was and is often depicted as a triple goddess but this also depends on the source. In Celtic mythology, the number three has a mystic and meaningful significance. Morrigan is oftentimes featured as one of three sisters while other times she is a single creature. The Death giver needed to be trusted and didn’t have to be demonized as she was also the Mother of the Community and without the Goddess to choose what had to die, the world would have ended. The world would have been taken over by Death, the Death of the Soul, and not the natural death of the shape that kept on changing shape. In this context, we can also think of a mythological allegory of the passage of seasons symbolically represented in such a way. The Mother of the Community encompasses all creatures, not only humans. So death is not intended in the dramatic sense the modern Western view expresses or in the Christian vision of separation, but more of a transformation. It is such a positive and necessary part of life that there is an interchanging role between life and death, and the Giver of Death also gives Life back in order for the good to continue to blossom in many forms and shapes.”
Centuries later, Christianity destroyed the Celtic Druid rites honouring the dead and integrated it further into the Christian calendar with All Saints (All Hallows) on November 1st, followed by All Souls on November 2nd. The feast in honour of all the saints in heaven used to be originally celebrated on May 13th, but Pope Gregory III moved it to Nov. 1st. The wearing of costumes and masks to ward off harmful spirits survived as Halloween customs. During the XIX century, thousands of Irish people emigrated to America, particularly famine hit Ireland during the 1840′s.
The Irish people carried their Halloween traditions to the United States, and today it is one of the major holidays of the year not only in Great Britain and Ireland.
To mention the famous lighted pumpkin which nowadays symbolizes Halloween more than anything else, it is interesting to notice that over time the ancient Gaelic and Irish traditions of the Celts blended into the American harvest time habit of carving pumpkins.