Diabolical!

Bishops' Nightmare!

 A new spectre is haunting Poland…the spectre of spectres!  Alas, no sooner had the country got rid of communism than an even greater danger has appeared - Halloween.  Polish bishops recently urged worshippers to ignore the festival because it “promotes harmful and diabolical behaviour.”

The poor old prelates face a more dreadful challenge.  The battle against communism was easy: there are no laughs in communism; there is no fun.  There is lots of fun and laughs in Halloween, which makes the danger all the more diabolical.  The archbishop of Warsaw, Kazimierz Nycz, said the festival went against the Church's teaching by promoting "the occult and magic". 

The truth is that Halloween, which has become increasingly popular in Poland in recent years, undermines the authority of a church that is becoming as literal-minded and humourless as the old communist oligarchy.

No word from the Vatican itself this year, silence perhaps being the best policy.  A few years ago the Holy See was warning parents not to allow their children to dress up, dismissing the festival as a celebration of ‘terror, fear and death.’ So, they are a bit worried then! The message went out in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s official newspaper, in a piece headed Halloween’s Dangerous Message.

So, what, one asks, is this ‘dangerous message’? Is Halloween not just about having fun and maintaining traditions, ancient traditions? No, it’s not; it’s riddled with a dark current of occultism and is “absolutely anti-Christian.”

Aldo Bonaiuto of the Church’s anti-occult and sect unit said that the event could spurn Satanic sects without scruples. “Halloween”, he continued “pushes new generations towards a mentality of esoteric magic and attacks sacred and spiritual values through a devious initiation to the art and images of the occult. At best it gives a helping hand to consumerism and materialism.”

Let me get this straight: Halloween initiates people into the occult and encourages materialism. So it seems to cover all angles!

No, I don’t take this silliness seriously from an organisation that not so long ago condemned the Harry Potter books and then in its fallibly infallible way changed its mind. Let’s strip away the Satanic nonsense.  Halloween or Samhain is simply an ancient Celtic festival marking the passage of the seasons, one celebrated in Christian and pre-Christian times. It has nothing to do with ‘trick or treat’ or Satanic cults and everything to do with casting light on a dark season.

But the desperation of the Church is understandable because it is largely of its own devising. It’s part of an ancient investment, it might be said, now bearing unexpected dividends. For, you see, I cannot think of a single Christian festival, major or minor, that was not based on the Church’s early usurpation of an older pagan holiday, from Ostara to Yule/Saturnalia. Even St Valentine’s Day was created around the festival of Lupercalia. Christmas Day itself is no more than the old Roman festival of Sol Invictus, the Sun God, whose birthday was celebrated on 25 December.

The simple truth is that as Christian faith falls away these old holidays re-emerge, have been re-emerging for years, partially in their original form, material and celebratory rather than spiritual and introspective.  So remember this when you see yet another jeremiad, as you inevitably will, bemoaning the ‘materialisation’ of Christmas. 

I have no idea how Polish Catholics received this latest piece of nonsense, but I rather suspect most will simply ignore it. People will continue to enjoy themselves, to have fun on Samhain or Saturnalia, without fear of the Archbishop of Warsaw, the Pope…or of Satan.

I had a good one.  I hope you did too.  

 ...Burn to me perfumes! Wear to me jewels! 

Drink to me, for I love you! I love you!
I am the blue-lidded daughter of Sunset;
I am the naked brilliance of the voluptuous night-sky...

Mother of Darkness, Mother of Light

Another year has past, another season gone. The witches gathered on the funeral hill, waiting at the feast, for the first winter’s day, the first winter’s sun arising in the east; for death has come for the summer time and to take the leaves of spring; Hecate, Nemesis, Dark Mother take us in.

The light has gone, the dark begins, but we still fire the darkness; I did fire the darkness. Once again we had a marvellous festival of the dead, we the living, all my sisters and all my brothers, together for another sabbat, Samhain-Halloween, the most important of them all, a celebration of the past, of the past united in the present and flowing on to the future.

I did something different this year, away from London, deep in the Surrey country. Sisters and friends joined me for a ritual, a celebration and a party, made all the more complete with a traditional bonfire. We give renewed power to the sun, to ourselves, through the winter days ahead.

I paid particular reverence to Hecate, the goddess of witches and of magic; of crossroads and new beginnings, new beginnings in new life; goddess of moonlight, of thresholds and of gates, looking in three directions at once. Although her main festival follows later in November, All Hallows is also of great significance to her, the night of the dark moon, the night of the wild hunt.

A wild journey, a wild hunt, a supper by the crossroads, a dedication by the Trivia, that’s what makes it all so exciting, these sacred nights, that sacred night past, rich in meaning, rich in significance. Bliss was it in that darkness to be alive but to be young, and a witch, was very heaven. Let’s fly! :-)

Belladonna and aconite
Give to me the gift of flight
Take me up, airborne in the night
In a dream, across the sky
A hundred-million miles high
Take me ever onwards in the night
Dark sisters join my night flight
See how far you can climb
Holt’s with us on this bright night
Ride with him ‘cross the sky
As a screaming horde
We cut the scape
The Devil’s Apple exacerbates
To the sabbat on a demon steed I ride
Across the astral plane we race
The universe my fingers trace
And I am lost forever in my mind

Season of the witch

There are times when it seems to me that the English know more about the customs and traditions of, say, the French or the Americans than they do about the nations with whom we have long shared this island.

Take Halloween, for instance. So many people are under the deluded impression that this is an American import of fairly recent provenance. Yes, it’s true that there are pronounced American features to the contemporary festival, notably jack-o-lanterns and trick-or-treat, but Halloween has been celebrated here for ages past in Scotland and Ireland, where it emerged from the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain.

It has long been part of Scottish tradition for children to go out ‘guising’ on Halloween, visiting houses, dressed for the occasion their way lighted by a lantern carved not from a pumpkin but from a large hollowed-out neep, a turnip. In the homes they visit they perform a set-piece, a poem or a song in return for small gifts of sweets or nuts or whatever the household could spare. It was such customs that were carried by Scottish and Irish migrants to the Americas.

There are also English customs which, at root, belong to a pagan past, though here the tradition is much more heavily sublimated. Dominic Sandbrook in a polemical piece in the latest issue of the BBC History Magazine argues that the ‘foreign custom’ of Halloween should be scrapped in favour of the ‘traditional’ English festival of Bonfire Night (If I ran the country, I’d throw Halloween on the bonfire).

Celebrated on November 5, Bonfire Night, or Guy Fawkes Night, marks the foiling of the Gunpowder plot in 1605, in which Fawkes and a number of Catholic co-conspirators planned to blow up the opening session of Parliament with the king in attendance. But this is just a political gloss on another pagan practice, the lighting of huge bonfires to give renewed power to the sun, which ancient communities, governed by the law of the seasons, believed was in danger of dying at this time of year, with the nights growing longer and the days shorter. The Samhain bonfires, moved to a more acceptable occasion, also included the burning of an ‘old guy’, clearly the vestiges of a human sacrifice, long before anyone had ever heard of Guy Fawkes!

Samhain, the long dark night, the night when the dead are nearest to the living, is also the night of the witches, warlocks and imps! My coven will assemble, flying in to celebrate the turning of the seasons and to honour the Goddess. The fires shall burn and the wheel of life shall turn, and the dead come back home on Samhain. Yes, they shall, and join with the living, witches and straights, in a big Halloween party at my London home!

Terror, Fear and Death

The Catholic Church has come out against Halloween, warning parents not to allow their children to dress up, dismissing the festival as a celebration of ‘terror, fear and death.’ So, they are a bit worried then! This new moral panic comes in the latest issue of L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s official newspaper, in a piece headed “Halloween’s Dangerous Message.”

So, what, one asks, is this ‘dangerous message’? Is Halloween not just about having fun and maintaining traditions, ancient traditions? No, it’s not; it’s riddled with a dark current of occultism and is “absolutely anti-Christian.” Aldo Bonaiuto of the Church’s anti-occult and sect unit said that the event could spurn Satanic sects without scruples. “Halloween”, he continued “pushes new generations towards a mentality of esoteric magic and attacks sacred and spiritual values through a devious initiation to the art and images of the occult. At best it gives a helping hand to consumerism and materialism.” Let me get this right: Halloween intiates people into the occult and encourages materialism. So it seems to cover all angles!

No, I don’t take this silliness seriously from an organisation that not so long ago condemned the Harry Potter books and then in its fallibly infallible way changed its mind. As I described in a recent blog (Happy Halloween!) this is an ancient Celtic festival marking the passage of the seasons, one celebrated in Christian and pre-Christian times. It has nothing to do with ‘trick or treat’ or Satanic cults and everything to do with casting light on a dark season.

But the desperation of the Church is understandable because it is largely, it has to be said, of its own devising. It’s part of an ancient investment, it might be said, now bearing unexpected dividends. For, you see, I cannot think of a single Christian festival, major or minor, that was not based on the Church’s early usurpation of an older pagan holiday, from Ostara to Yule/Saturnalia. Even St Valentine’s Day was created around the festival of Lupercalia. Christmas Day itself is no more than the old Roman festival of Sol Invictus, the Sun God, whose birthday was celebrated on 25 December. The simple truth is that as Christian faith falls away these old holidays re-emerge, have been re-emerging for years, partially in their original form, material and celebratory rather than spiritual and introspective.

I have no idea how Catholics will receive this latest piece of nonsense, but I rather suspect most will simply ignore it. People will continue to enjoy themselves, to have fun on Samhain or Saturnalia, without fear of the Pope…or of Satan. :-))

My Favourite Pagan Holiday

From the west comes old Death
A-riding on the storm
With hungry eyes for funeral fires
To burn till the morrow's dawn
For tis the night, here comes the dead
Unbound from the Underworld
And the children dress as the babes of Hell
All the boys and all the girls
And the fires shall burn
And the wheel of life shall turn
And the dead come back home on Samhain
And in the night sky
On the lunar light they fly
And the dead come back home on Samhain
At the Sabbat high on the funeral hill
Wait the witches at the feast
For the first winter’s day
The first winter’s sun
A-rising in the east
For Death has come for the summertime
And to take the leaves of spring
Hecate, Nemesis, Dark Mother take us in

I love Halloween, Samhain, if you prefer, the death of summer, of the old year; the night of the dead, of witches, sprits and ghosts. It’s the perfect time for spells, for rituals, for dumb suppers, divination, séances…and parties!

The tradition as we have come to understand it is really an amalgamation of two things, the Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced Sow’en), meaning ‘summer’s end’, and the Roman celebration of Pomona, the spirit of the crops. Add to the brew several other festivals of the dead, including that of the Corn Mother, and one of the great Witches’ Sabbats. I had my own Sabbat last year, just as I will this year, with lots of witches and warlocks, dressed in various guises, and the spirits mingling freely! Last year I was Erzebet Bathory; this year I shall be Ayesha, the sorceress queen, she who must be obeyed. :-))

The real fun, the heart of the Sabbat, is at midnight, as we cross from one season to another; as the spirits of the dead, of fairies, wights and spirits break through the curtain of the night and join the living. On the lunar light they fly. The wheel of life shall turn. Have a super witchy Halloween, one and all.