From: lilleyc@cs.man.ac.uk (Chris Lilley)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.sabaean,alt.pagan,alt.magick,alt.astrology
Subject: Re: HALLOW'EEN
Date: 28 Sep 92 16:50:48 GMT
Followup-To: alt.sabean
Organization: Dept Computer Science, University of Manchester, U.K.

In article <Bv6yKn.6nr@ddsw1.mcs.com> eshin@ddsw1.mcs.com (Eshin-Fun) writes:

>[stuff about various festivals tenuously connected to November]

>Druid and Celtic tribes of Britain 

Oh? and were the druid tribes conquered by the celts, or vice-versa?

>celebrated this same time as a tribute to
> "Samhain", the Lord of Death, in the hope that he be merciful to those
>individuals who had died in the previous year. 

A reference for this notion, please

>Because the Druids regarded
>black cats as sacred and embodying the souls of persons punished by Samhain for
>evil deeds,  cats played an important role in early Hallow'een rites.

Ditto

>Pumpkin carving on the other hand, started with a biblous and gluttonous
>Irishman named Jack O'Lanter. 

Ditt..err, no. Where did you get this preposterous notion? Off the top
of your head?

>After Jack died it is said he couldn't enter the 
>Netherworld because of his reputation as a trickster. The Lord Samhain angrily 
>threw him out of the Netherworld on Halloween night but allowed him to
>hallow out the pumpkin he was eating and put a glowing coal inside for
>illumination as he was condemned to wander in the darkness of the earth.
>Irish imagination has no doubt left a profound influence in Hallow Eve
>myths. 

Excuse me, but this is a load of old crap!

If you want to read up the origins of the pumpkin lantern drag out
your copy of the Silver Bough and look up :

guizing or guizers
sowens

That should do for a start. 
>The custom of trick or treat goes back to an early Irish law that
>allowed farmers to solicit food for the poor villagers at Halloween.
>Willing givers were promised a treat in the future while the miserly or
>uncharitable folk could expect some undignified trick in public.
>
>Thus the first of November was with the ancient Druids of Britain a night full 
>of mystery in which they annually celebrated the reconstruction of the world.
>Relics remain to this day, for in our calendar we will find November first
>marked as "All Saints Day"; and in the pre-Reformation calendar the last
>day of October was marked as "All Hallows Eve"; as with the second of November
>named "All Souls" 


Wow! a bit that was accurate ;-)

>indicating clearly a three day festival of the dead, 
>commencing in the evening and originally regulated by the Pleiades.

Well it was too good to last I suppose.

>In Ceylon and far distant Peru a like festival took place at this season 
>of the year and was the basis of the later's primitive calendar.
                                              ^^^^^^^^^
>The actual observance at the present day of this festival is to be found
>among the Australian savages. 
                      ^^^^^^^

Curious language, don't you think? A little ethnocentric? 

Now, go away and read up some sources before mixing up a similar
mish-mash!

>Many Masonic organizations of the present day have memorial services to the
>dead about the middle of November.

I think that was more related to Armistice day. No don't tell me let
me guess - the end of the First World War happened because of the
rising of the pleiades.

<grin>

One last point. Look up diffusion theory. Recently (over the last
thirty years, say) the notion that all culture came from the
mysterious near East and diffused out to the brutish, primitive areas
of Europe has been undergoing some setbacks. Or hadn't you noticed?

>Many more are the traditions that we have inherited from the Irish and Scotch

Scots. Scotch is cheap whisky consumed by foreigners ;-)



--
Chris Lilley
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