Nights & Days

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Associations with the Spring Equinox - Lemuria/Matyrs/Orthodox All Saints

Notes gathered regarding All Saints’ Day establishment:

First a summary of information, then the sources and the info specifically obtained from them.

Ancient festival of Lemuria held in Rome. Its date is May 13th. The purpose is to propitiate “lemures”, the shades or spirits of the violently dead. The action on that day was to feed these spirits black beans, which were hurriedly thrown whilst not looking and returning quickly indoors for safety.

Lemures are mentioned by Horace, a prominent poet of the reign of Augustus in his Epistles - Horace lived 65BC-8BC.
By 4th century: May 13th become adopted within the Church as a day to remember martyrs and saints: Martyrs of course were violently killed, fitting perfectly with the spirits attended to at the Lemuria.

AD609: May 13th dedicated to All Martyrs by Pope Boniface IV. This is performed during the restoration and rededication of the Pantheon in Rome between AD608-15. In 610 on this date the temple is dedicated to Mother of God and all Holy Martyrs.

AD731-741: Papacy of Gregory III. G3 builds a new chapel at the Basilica of St Peter and it is dedicated on November 1st to All Saints (as distinct to the Pantheon dedication to martyrs). He fixed the date of the feast of All Saints to November 1st, the anniversary of the dedication.

AD831: Pope Gregory IV (827-84) extended the feast of All Saints on November 1st across the entire Church.

AD2003: Pope John Paul II affirms the meaning of All Saints Day as “We celebrate today the solemnity of All Saints. This invites us to turn our gaze to the immense multitude who have already reached the blessed land, and points us on the path that will lead us to that destination”.

The May date is well after the Spring Equinox, but follows on after the Spring Equinox-determined festival of Easter, with the Greek Orthodox Church showing the direct association to the SE by still celebrating ASD on the first Sunday after Pentecost.

Other feasts associated with the dead about the SE include: Roman feast of Feralia February 21st, where rest and peace provided to the departed at the end of the Roman Year.

Late February: Lesser Eleusian Mysteries: Persephone daughter of Demeter bathed at Ilissos ant Agrae near Athens.

Late February/Early March: Anthestia, Feast of Dionysis dealing with underworld.

17March: Feast of St Joseph of Arimathea: he buried Jesus in the Tomb. Also Feast of St Gertrude of Nivelles: he watches over the souls of the recently departed.

End of Summer feast with implications of future rebirth is the Late September/Early October (Autumal equinox association) Greater Eleusian Mysteries - ritual bathing in sea and three day fast.
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“Bookmark” Sources:

Horace (65BC-8BC)

American Journal of Philology, Vol. 94, No. 2 (Summer, 1973), pp. 182-187
URL - single page of Journal readable/subscription to Journal required for further access: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-9475(197322)94%3A2%3C182%3ALAL%3E2.0.CO%3B2-F

see also:

www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/resolve?id=doi:10.1086/429941 (pdf document)

http://home.att.net/~b.b.major/horace.htm

http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/bl/bl_text_horace_satintro.htm

Brief info ASD dates:
BBC Religion and Ethics

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/holydays/allsaints_1.shtml

Halloween info site:

http://www.theholidayspot.com/halloween/history.htm

Lemuria info:

http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/rome/p/lares.htm

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More Saints info gleaned

Good background on the establishment of a remembrance day for martyrs at

http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/religion/re0199.html

Fr Saunders write knowledgably on info within his specialty but the Samhain info is clumsy. That doesn’t matter since the point of the page is to show a Church based development of All Saints.

A useful list of Roman feasts is given at:

http://www.musesrealm.net/rome/festivals.html

A ‘type’ site promoting the idea that Samhain influenced the development of Halloween is at:

http://thegreenman.net.au/mt/archives/000972.html

Something that strikes me is that Samhain in earlier accounts does not have ‘dead walking the earth’ themes - it is more noble in its presentation before the move of ASD to November (from May) in the period AD700-850.

The story of King Dathi illustrates this well: set before Patrick, King Dathi is travelling through Ireland and attends the Sahmain Druidic gathering. It is here he gains prophetic knowledge regarding his next summer’s campaigns and their outcomes, but there is no “hiding indoors from roaming spirits” theme expressed in this story. King Dathi simply rests the night and the Druids gather on the hill and greet him the next morning.

This backs up my thoughts about Samhain being influenced by All Hallows Eve rather than Samhain inspiring it. Only after the demonising of the Belataine fires by Patrick and the adoption of Novemebr All Saints Day throughout Christendom late in the first milennium AD did spirits and ghosts become part of the Samhain traditions.

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Reproduced Article - “Surprise Halloween Never Was A Pagan Festival

Note - This posting is so useful I’ve recorded it wholesale for referencing. The replies on the original site are also interesting, but too brief and disdainful to be of use. The comment about the author being an unsatisfactory candidate to express this information because he has a vested interest are useless since anyone wishing to peel back fallacies has the authority to publish their findings - for this author the findings are affirmatory for his world-view and if anything his action to post his findings is educational. Perhaps those attacking his posting also have a vested interest- in which case they would prefer the article suppressed?

Surprise: Halloween Never Was A Pagan Festival

Author: Sound of Trumpet |
Date: 04-03-2006 |
Posted in: alt.bible |
Show original

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/47/story_4771_1.html

Surprise: Halloween’s Not a Pagan Festival After All

The holiday and its customs are completely Christian, and some are
uniquely American.

By Father Augustine Thompson, O.P.
Excerpted from Catholic Parent.

We’ve all heard the allegations: Halloween is a pagan rite dating
back to some pre-Christian festival among the Celtic Druids that
escaped church suppression. Even today modern pagans and witches
continue to celebrate this ancient festival. If you let your kids go
trick-or-treating, they will be worshiping the devil and pagan gods.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The origins of Halloween are,
in fact, very Christian and rather American. Halloween falls on October
31 because of a pope, and its observances are the result of medieval
Catholic piety.

It’s true that the ancient Celts of Ireland and Britain celebrated a
minor festival on October 31–as they did on the last day of most other
months of the year. However, Halloween falls on the last day of October
because the Feast of All Saints, or “All Hallows,” falls on November 1.
The feast in honor of all the saints in heaven used to be celebrated on
May 13, but Pope Gregory III (d. 741) moved it to November 1, the
dedication day of All Saints Chapel in St. Peter’s at Rome. Later, in
the 840s, Pope Gregory IV commanded that All Saints be observed
everywhere. And so the holy day spread to Ireland.

The day before was the feast’s evening vigil, “All Hallows Even,” or
“Hallowe’en.” In those days Halloween didn’t have any special
significance for Christians or for long-dead Celtic pagans.

In 998, St. Odilo, the abbot of the powerful monastery of Cluny in
southern France, added a celebration on November 2. This was a day of
prayer for the souls of all the faithful departed. This feast, called
All Souls Day, spread from France to the rest of Europe.

So now the Church had feasts for all those in heaven and all those in
purgatory. What about those in the other place? It seems Irish Catholic
peasants wondered about the unfortunate souls in hell. After all, if
the souls in hell are left out when we celebrate those in heaven and
purgatory, they might be unhappy enough to cause trouble. So it became
customary to bang pots and pans on All Hallows Even to let the damned
know they were not forgotten. Thus, in Ireland at least, all the dead
came to be remembered–even if the clergy were not terribly sympathetic
to Halloween and never allowed All Damned Day into the church calendar.

But that still isn’t our celebration of Halloween. Our traditions on
this holiday center on dressing up in fanciful costumes, which isn’t
Irish at all. Rather, this custom arose in France during the 14th and
15th centuries. Late medieval Europe was hit by repeated outbreaks of
the bubonic plague–the Black Death–and it lost about half its
population. It is not surprising that Catholics became more concerned
about the afterlife.

More Masses were said on All Souls Day, and artistic representations
were devised to remind everyone of their own mortality. We know these
representations as the danse macabre, or “dance of death,” which was
commonly painted on the walls of cemeteries and shows the devil leading
a daisy chain of people–popes, kings, ladies, knights, monks,
peasants, lepers, etc.–into the tomb. Sometimes the dance was
presented on All Souls Day itself as a living tableau with people
dressed up in the garb of various states of life.

But the French dressed up on All Souls, not Halloween; and the Irish,
who had Halloween, did not dress up. How the two became mingled
probably happened first in the British colonies of North America during
the 1700s, when Irish and French Catholics began to intermarry. The
Irish focus on hell gave the French masquerades an even more macabre
twist.

But as every young ghoul knows, dressing up isn’t the point; the
point is getting as many goodies as possible. Where on earth did “trick
or treat” come in?

“Treat or treat” is perhaps the oddest and most American addition to
Halloween and is the unwilling contribution of English Catholics.

During the penal period of the 1500s to the 1700s in England, Catholics
had no legal rights. They could not hold office and were subject to
fines, jail and heavy taxes. It was a capital offense to say Mass, and
hundreds of priests were martyred.

Occasionally, English Catholics resisted, sometimes foolishly. One of
the most foolish acts of resistance was a plot to blow up the
Protestant King James I and his Parliament with gunpowder. This was
supposed to trigger a Catholic uprising against the oppressors. The
ill-conceived Gunpowder Plot was foiled on November 5, 1605, when the
man guarding the gunpowder, a reckless convert named Guy Fawkes, was
captured and arrested. He was hanged; the plot fizzled.

November 5, Guy Fawkes Day, became a great celebration in England, and
so it remains. During the penal periods, bands of revelers would put on
masks and visit local Catholics in the dead of night, demanding beer
and cakes for their celebration: trick or treat!

Guy Fawkes Day arrived in the American colonies with the first English
settlers. But by the time of the American Revolution, old King James
and Guy Fawkes had pretty much been forgotten. Trick or treat, though,
was too much fun to give up, so eventually it moved to October 31, the
day of the Irish-French masquerade. And in America, trick or treat
wasn’t limited to Catholics.

The mixture of various immigrant traditions we know as Halloween had
become a fixture in the Unites States by the early 1800s. To this day,
it remains unknown in Europe, even in the countries from which some of
the customs originated.

But what about witches? Well, they are one of the last additions. The
greeting card industry added them in the late 1800s. Halloween was
already “ghoulish,” so why not give witches a place on greeting cards?
The Halloween card failed (although it has seen a recent resurgence in
popularity), but the witches stayed.

So too, in the late 1800s, ill-informed folklorists introduced the
jack-o’-lantern. They thought that Halloween was Druidic and pagan in
origin. Lamps made from turnips (not pumpkins) had been part of ancient
Celtic harvest festivals, so they were translated to the American
Halloween celebration.

The next time someone claims that Halloween is a cruel trick to lure
your children into devil worship, I suggest you tell them the real
origin of All Hallows Even and invite them to discover its Christian
significance, along with the two greater and more important Catholic
festivals that follow it.

Father Augustine Thompson, O.P., is an associate professor of religious
studies at the University of Virginia.

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Introductory Remarks for N&D

Nights & Days aims at gathering together the way people marked the turning points of the year - we’ve already compiled the Celtic calendar and the Celtic fire feasts. There are clear signs that the annual solar stations were recorded in the luni-solar cycle-driven Celtic calendar: Ogronnos, Semiuisonna, Aedrini and Duman mark the autumnal equinox (”Colder”), winter solstice (”The Source”), the vernal equinox (”Warmer”) and the summer solstice (”The World”), as well as the main division of the year into Summer (headed by Samon “Summer”) and Winter (headed by Giammon “Winter”).Nights and Days will expand the parameters backward and forward in time to include a look at the megalithic monuments - they were intimately involved in the Celtic world, a mystery to them as they are to us. Stonehenge summer and New Grange winter stand out, but other monuments and their general arrangements can be looked at here.

Then there’s the Nebra star disc, with what looks like the Pleiades cluster - so influential in Hesiod’s Works and Days of 750BC, and coinciding with Beltaine. There’s the Hyperboreans (British?) celebration every 19 years - a backward link to Stonehenge? - when the moon completed its oscillations, something thought to be recorded on the bronze age ‘hats’ found in Europe - this celebration reported to begin at the vernal equinox and end at the rising of the Pleiades.

There’s the influence of Easter calculations, associated with the vernal equinox: the Celts had a lot to say on this matter, unhappily for Rome! And that brings in Roman thought, both from the Pantheon and Christian realms - the solstice of winter being met with the nativity of Sol Invictus on December 25th, Constantine’s vision of the Cross in the Alps, and the nativity of Christ on December 25th.

The development of England and its Germanic traditions mixed onto the British canvas - how much did each become expressed in the new people? And now there’s the 8-fold year (yes, here too: it must be addressed!) There’s a comment in Ronald Hutton’s Stations of the Sun that the interest in neo-pagan philosophies in North America is strongly influenced by the way the seasons unfold there more strongly aligned to the solstices than in Europe where the Fire feasts match the transitions.

The reason to compile this is to address the intertwined interests in Megalithic, Celtic and neo-pagan systems: these are all of importance in the development of a fuller understanding our civilization.

John. October 1 2006.

The capacity to virtually experience the astronomical setting in ancient times is provided by computer simulations of planetariums. An excellent source of information about the Celtic astronomical capacity is the article by A. Gaspani, linked on the worldwide links on Caer Australis, where the concept of bright stars signalling the seasonal celebrations is given.

In order to explore this concept, a computer program to display the stellar arrangements on particular days in the ancient world - and the present as well - has now been located, for which screen shots can be taken for presentation. The program is freeware called CyberSky, and it is downloadable at http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/downloads/2127700/cyber-sky

You can view the sky from any location on Earth and set the date as required. To appreciate the Celtic calendar during its period of active use, it is possible with CyberSky to view, for example, the sunrise of November eve in 500BC, and there on the Eastern Horizon is clearly viewed Antares rising with the Sun; Aldebaran is setting - the two red stars do indeed define the seasons of the Celtic year.

This being found, it is now possible to produce a presentation that displays the months of the year and the sky as it was seen. Being able to provide a visual guide to the year in this way, a greater appreciation for the Celtic calendar will be achieved. As 2007 begins a new five year cycle, this will be an excellent opportunity to present this!

John. October 27 2006.