Is anyone else disturbed by the negative spin put on the western festival that takes place at the end of October / beginning of November? It seems that the “Cult of the Grotesque” has taken over, aided and abetted by commercially-driven media, selling ugly plastic products that pander to the darker side of the human psyche. No, it is not “just a bit of fun”! but it is a sad reflection on our warped modern society.
I myself am a Celtic Shaman. At this time of year, I celebrate the ancient Celtic festival of “SAMHAIN”. I do not take part in “Hallowe’en” or “Day of the Dead” or “Witches New Year” or any other “Freak Fest” because it is not part of my culture.
The Celtic Fire festival of Samhain honours the ancestors, not “Monsters of the ID”. In fact, the word “Samhain” is Gaelic for “Summer’s End”. It marks the end of the agricultural year but not the Solar year. The new Solar year begins at Winter Solstice, when our part of the planet once again tilts back towards the Sun, bringing longer days, warmer weather and a new growing season.
The Celts were an agricultural people. Before mechanisation, harvesting grain meant hard physical work, involving the whole community. By late October, the harvest was over. To celebrate, the Celts held a great feast, to thank the Goddess of the Land for Her bounty. Their Druid priests, who were renowned astronomers and astrologers, fixed the date of this important feast at the mid-point between Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice. In 2024, astrological Samhain takes place on the 7th November, not 31st October, because the Gregorian calendar is out-of-sync with our planet’s orbit!
These days, humans have moved away from an agrarian society to an industrialised, city-based culture that is barely aware of the changing of the seasons. Most people only notice the days getting shorter when they must use lights at work or at school and they need to turn the central heating up. Other than that, the only way they register what time of year it is, is by what junk appears on the supermarket shelves. Even then, you will find ugly plastic Hallowe’en junk appearing side-by-side with tacky Xmas junk.
The main theme of the Cult of the Grotesque involves death and monsters. They don’t seem capable of separating these two ideas, although our ancestors certainly understood the difference.
The ancients believed that the veil between the two worlds of the Living and the Dead is at its thinnest, when our part of the planet tilts away from the Sun and faces the darkness of Space. To them, this opens a doorway to those family members and Ascended Masters, who have died, so that we can seek their help and advice. Afterall, without out ancestors’ DNA, we would not exist! Without them sharing their knowledge and experience, we would remain ignorant of our place in the world. Our ancestors loved us enough to conceive us, nurture us and leave us the great legacy of Life. So why should we view their Souls as evil and out to harm us?
The simple answer is that modern society seems terrified of the “D” word! Doctors regard the death of a patient as “failure” and believe that they must keep everyone alive, in order to prove their medical worth. The profession is loath to admit that we all have a limited life-span and that death is a natural process, experienced by everyone. Instead of dealing with the issue, they try to sanitise it and “hide” death, which of course vilifies the whole process, turning it into something fearful that no-one wants to face. It leads to the conclusion that: “Death and dead people represent a threat to the living!” In other words, all dead people must be Monsters!
In contrast, the ancients were well able to deal with death as a valuable mystical experience. Even when Christianity converted Samhain into “All Hallow’s Eve” (abbreviated into Hallowe’en, meaning the day before All Saints Day), it was still honouring the dead, including the ancestors as “All Souls”.
In many Christian countries, people still celebrate All Saints Day (1st November) by tidying and decorating the graves of family and friends and by holding memorial services for deceased members of the community. Here in France, people place pots of colourful chrysanthemums on the graves, while in Mexico, they place colourful marigolds. These customs follow the original tradition of Samhain.
So, how did this ugly, commercial horror-fest come into being? It is hard to tell without analysing the popular elements used by the Cult of the Grotesque. The obsession with skeletons stems from centuries of plagues and wars that brought people into close contact with corpses, generating ghoulish artwork, as a way of coping with trauma.
Warlocks and witches were terms used by medieval Christianity, to describe anyone, who defied Church authority, especially those who still practised the ancient pre-Christian beliefs. They were also convenient labels to place on anyone “different”, whom the rest of the community did not like and wanted to victimise, which is why witches are usually portrayed as deformed, ugly, old, living alone with animal pets. You get the picture!
Other elements appeared after the discovery of the New World. For instance, Apples were the Celtic symbol for Samhain, whereas Pumpkins originated from North America, where they were used as decorations at harvest festivals.
Zombies derive from African-American folk lore.
Mesoamerica recalled its own ancient past with a Christianised “Festival of the Dead”, complete with parades of people dressed up as skeletons and monsters, probably representing their ancient gods, who had demanded human sacrifice.
Bram Stoker’s novel “Dracula”, was influenced by travellers’ tales about South American bats, which drank the blood of settlers’ cattle, which he merged with an unpleasant historical figure from Transylvania, known as Vlad the Impaler!
The other iconic novels, about “Frankenstein” and “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”, were influenced by the burgeoning science of psychology, which was exploring the shadow side of the human psyche. The new science argued that our monsters existed INSIDE the mind, (aka Monsters of the ID), rather than the old religious idea that God, the Devil, monsters etc, were external and disconnected from us!
All these negative beliefs were embraced by movie-makers, pedalling their fantasy world to vulnerable audiences, who were looking for any and every form of escapism from a dissatisfying lifestyle. They were unaware that the horror movies, brought out at Hallowe’en, were merely the nightmares of the collective Unconscious, asking to be healed and then released.
Mind you, this kind of healing work, healing the Shadow Side, needs a lot of courage! Most people prefer to just dress up in silly costumes, watch more horror movies and pretend like this kind of behaviour is “normal”. It is easier to face fantasy monsters than to clean up your own act, isn’t it?! Personally, the only monsters that I see, come from the Land of the Living: monsters, who victimise others and those, who let them get away with it.
So, I don’t watch silly horror movies at Samhain (they are so boring anyway!) Instead, I get out the photos of my ancestors, light candles and say prayers. I place flowers on my loved-ones’ graves. This makes me feel GOOD! It is not healthy to want to feel negative emotions of fear, anxiety, panic or pain at any time of the year, not just at Hallowe’en!
Wishing you all a HAPPY and monster-free November!
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Author: Veronica Smith first published on 25th October 2016
https://brighidsoghamgrove.com/2024/10/30/reclaiming-samhain-from-the-cult-of-the-grotesque-by-veronica-smith/
#AllSaintsDay #europeanFolkLore #Halloween #HistoryOfHalloween #meaningOfSamhain #Samhain #wheelOfTheYear
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