The Ancient Roots of Halloween
Part Two, exploring the meaning of the survived ancient traditions of this time of the year.
“…when November opens, the harvest has long been reaped and garnered, the fields lie bare, the fruit-trees are stripped, and even the yellow leaves are fast fluttering to the ground.”
– Sir James George Frazer, “The Golden Bough”
From the end of October and through November our European ancestors would honour the now rather tabooed and even feared topic of death which is mirrored in the vanning outer expression of the natural world. To this day this idea most notably survives, albeit distortedly, in the Halloween celebration.
The commercialised and Hollywood-ised Halloween has its roots going way down to the ancient Celtic celebration of Samhain (pronounced as sau-ween in Irish). It’s a mid-point festival, fires of which burn right between Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice. If you are curious about how that came to be, I have a good introductory essay on this topic from the last year:
Today I invite you to go deeper into the half-forgotten, distorted meaning of this time of the year so you can enrich your own connection to the natural cycles and the symbolism behind surviving traditions.
As I have covered in the first part of my exploration of the ancient roots of Halloween, cross-culturally the time from the end of October and through November has been an auspicious, magical period of remembering ancestors and honouring their lives. Besides Samhain, you may have heard about Día de Los Muertos in Latin American tradition or Grandfathers Day (called Dziady or Didi) and the Night of Veles in Slavic pagan cultures. All Hallows Eve, All Hallows Day, and All Souls Day are the Christian adaptations of the ancient pagan celebrations.
Communing with the ancestors
Beltane (May Day) and Samhain1 are two festivals on the Wheel of the Year that mirror each other, having exactly half of the year between them.
On both days the usually closed gates between the world of the living and the world of the dead are open wide, and the inhabitants of the two worlds can come in contact with more ease than at any other time. On Beltane, people go to graveyards to visit their ancestors and leave some offerings. On Samhain, it’s the other way around: the spirits of ancestors come out to join the feasting of their descendants.
“…the time of year when the souls of the departed were supposed to revisit their old homes in order to warm themselves by the fire and to comfort themselves with the good cheer provided for them in the kitchen or the parlour by their affectionate kinsfolk.”
– Sir James George Frazer, “The Golden Bough”
Let’s take for example the customs common among the Slavic countries, where the pagan celebration around the time of the 1st of November is called something like “Grandfathers” – meaning ancestors in the widest sense of the word. The traditions include walking outside and calling for your ancestors so they can find their way home. First, the “grandfathers” were invited to wash themselves in the heated bathhouses (banya). After that, they were awaited at the feast inside the family house: there were extra spoons laid out specifically for the spirits of the departed family members, so they knew they were welcome there. The dishes had to be warm so that the Forefathers could inhale the smell and the steam. When the ancestors had washed themselves and eaten, it was time to show them their beds and let them get some rest.
When the homage is paid, you can ask your ancestors for support and their blessing. If we imagine the pre-industrial revolution times, going into winter was a precarious period for pastoral and farming populations around Europe where famine and illness were known to take lives during the colder months. The question was: “Will I survive the winter?” And so our pagan ancestors sought out a blessing of their ancestry before seeing the otherworldly guests off.
Ancient worldviews in modern Halloween traditions
Halloween costumes
It’s not only the world of ancestors that is closer to us at the time of Samhain. In the esoterical belief, it is the time when the physical world and the spirit world merge in a more intense way than on other turns of the Wheel. The ancients would gather at sacred sites and in open groves for rituals and mysteries in order to commune not only with ancestral realms but with spirits from Underworlds and Overworlds. Doing that requires caution: there are spirits that you don’t want to come in contact with. And so, disguising yourself by putting on a mask, a veil, or a special scent is, on one hand, a way to protect yourself from being identified, and on the other hand, a way to blend in with the spirit world and to ensure that you do not bring an unwanted guest into your home when the ritual is closed and you “become yourself” once again.
This idea has been carried through time and even though most of the people who dress up for Halloween do not engage in rituals, the disguising silently fulfills its purpose.
“Trick-or-treat!”
The notion of giving some food, essentially a treat, to anyone who knocks on your door on the night of the celebration has come up in various books and stories, in different cultural contexts. The common thread I see in it is that the spirits of your ancestors are going around during this night, as well as the spirits of those whose bloodlines died out and whose names are no longer remembered. And so when you give a treat as an answer to a genuine human’s request, you might also be offering it to the spirit that stands nearby, seeking a bit of warmth and kindness.
It’s not only us who need support from the spirit world, but it is also the restless spirits that need us to remember them. We are the messengers of each other’s worlds.
Jack-o'-lanterns
A carved pumpkin is a symbol of Halloween known to everyone, everywhere, whether the celebration is part of their cultural code or not. Its origin is strongly associated with the story of Stingy Jack who bargained with the devil and ended up doomed to roam the Earth until the end of days, for there is no place for him neither in Heaven nor in Hell.
Judging by this rather recent story of Jack, we can see the carved pumpkin lanterns as symbols of all those souls who didn’t manage to go through the rite of passage called death and now cannot rest. Yet, a head without a body is a more ancient motif. In the Celtic understanding, the head is the place where the soul lives, it is the center of life itself and a symbol of the otherworldly powers. In northern traditions, there are many stories of heads that lived without the body, usually possessing divine wisdom. Think about the head of Brân that entertained his companions for over 80 years and was then buried on the White Hill of London, prophesised to protect the British Isles from invaders as long as it lay there. Or the head of giant Mimir whose council was sought out by Odin at the End of Times, when Odin’s extraordinary wisdom was not sufficient.
It may be that carved pumpkin faces represent the otherworldly wisdom of the mighty beings of the past – the wisdom we can connect with, if we know the ways, on the night of Samhain.
For Celts, Samhain also marked the beginning of a new year, a new whorl of the Spiral of Time: death ends one cycle and heralds the beginning of a new one.
Again, you can learn more about it in this first exploration:
And I leave you here for now. My hope is that you’ve gained some new insight and will start noticing threads of the ancient tradition in the modern version of the celebration.
You are welcome to reply to this email or leave a comment: discussions are encouraged and connection is appreciated. Truly.
Have a beautiful night crossing to the other… season.
Take good care,
Nika
I’m using the Irish names of the celebrations for ease and coherence, but what I am really talking about is a more universal, at least among Northern European cultures, understanding of these times of the year.