BS: Wicca and Halloween??

Subject: RE: BS: Wicca and Halloween??
From: Peg
Date: 31 Oct 04 - 12:52 PM

Walpurgis Night is not at Hallows, it's actually the other end of the celendar, May 1, at Beltane...

I call myself a witch, not a "Wiccan," but I can say that one reason these celebrations are getting banned in more and more places each year is related to a very sneaky and calculated effort on the part of Pentecostal and other right-wing Christian groups to "beat us at our own game." In other words, by mounting campaigns that sound like poltically-correct attempts to "not offend" anyone they are making sure a holiday they see as "satanic" is not going to pollute their children's minds...and they do it in the guise of trying to censor Hallowe'en celebrations so as not to offend Wiccans. It's quite insidious actually.

Witches celebrate this holiday as they celebrate others included in their calendar, which are based ona nd borrowed from agrarian and fertility festivals in western Europe and the British Isles and Ireland. Most of the USA's Hallowe'en customs arrived with Irish immigrants. The "Wiccan" ways of celebrating Samhain or Hallowmass tend to borrow more from Scottish and English tradition: dumb suppers, Harvest Home celebrations (also based on the Thomas Tryon novel of the same name), mystery plays, and feasts of the dead. It's an acknowledgement of the changing season (Samhain is Gaelic for "summer's end"), and of the Irish belief that this is a time (it also occurs at Beltane) when the "veil between the worlds," or the barrier separating this world from the realm of the dead, is thinner than usual, allowing us to contact the dead, and to assist in sending recently-deceased souls onward in their journey to the afterlife...

It's not "new age clap-trap" as Clinton Hammond so wrongly puts it--it's a belief system drawn from ancient and time-held customs and practices from the lands of our ancestors. Many of the rituals I have attended are highly literate and poetic and very powerful. And most modern witches take this holiday very seriously...but we attend our share of parties too!

peg

Subject: RE: BS: Wicca and Halloween??
From: NH Dave
Date: 31 Oct 04 - 12:38 PM

Subject: RE: BS: Wicca and Halloween??
From: chris nightbird childs
Date: 31 Oct 04 - 12:31 PM

Hey Lynne, shame you couldn't cast CH off then... (haha, blessed be indeed.)

Subject: RE: BS: Wicca and Halloween??
From: Scooby Doo
Date: 31 Oct 04 - 12:29 PM

Sorry i got it wrong i knew what i meant to say "guest".Well anyway Happy New Year to you all or Happy All Saints Day

Subject: RE: BS: Wicca and Halloween??
From: GUEST
Date: 31 Oct 04 - 12:12 PM

Not "evil" spirits, Scooby Doo, but spirits of the deceased.

Whether it is referred to as Halloween or Day of the Dead, it is a European derived ancestor worship holiday, with some aspects of both cultures.

In the US, where the British/English conquered and settled, the holiday as celebrated by the Scots and Irish, with a bit of the Spanish thrown in. In Mexico, a country conquered and settled by the Spanish, the holiday celebrated is Day of the Dead, and it too shares some of the same ancesor worship rituals with Halloween.

BTW, considering all those skeletons we see for Halloween, why isn't the question being asked if Latinos are insulted by the use of the skeleton imagery?

Subject: RE: BS: Wicca and Halloween??
From: MBSLynne
Date: 31 Oct 04 - 12:04 PM

Halloween is the name the Christians gave to an already-existing, very old, pagan festival. A lot of pagans tend to use the celtic name Samhain to distinguish it from the Christian OR the commercial festival. Clinton Hammond, as usual you are talking out of your arse, but then that's so normal an event I don't know why I bothered to comment on it.

As a Witch (not a Wiccan) I don't find kids dressing up offensive, I do find the fact that it's yet another excuse for commercial operations to make even more money slightly offensive. That, however, doesn't really have much to do with my religious beliefs...I'd still find that offensive if I weren't a Witch.

I shall be celebrating this evening, as I know a lot of other Mudcatters will. We will be celebrating the harvest, in one way or another. Not just the bringing in of crops and food, but the good things we have done or received during the year. As it is our New Year, we will be casting off the bad from the past year and looking forward to what we hope for in the next. We will also be thinking of the departed, as this is the festival of the dead, and inviting them to share our feasts

Happy Samhain everyone!

Love Lynne

Subject: RE: BS: Wicca and Halloween??
From: Scooby Doo
Date: 31 Oct 04 - 11:08 AM

Hallowe'en is also know in the Occult calender as "Walpurgis Night"on which evil spirits were free to roam.

Subject: RE: BS: Wicca and Halloween??
From: Chris Green
Date: 31 Oct 04 - 10:56 AM

As far as I know, "Hallowe'en" basically means All Hallows Eve, or the day before All Saints Day in the Christian calendar. Rather than a pagan festival, doesn't that make it a kind of inverted Christian festival?

Subject: RE: BS: Wicca and Halloween??
From: *daylia*
Date: 31 Oct 04 - 10:40 AM

I'm not a Wiccan, although I do know a little about Wicca ... enough to know that the festival known today as Halloween pre-dates the religion known as "Wicca" today by at least two millenia, and perhaps even three, four or more.

As such, the festival of Halloween embodies a cultural heritage common to all northern Europeans - Christian, pagan or whatever. And Halloween is not strictly a European tradition ... see the thread called "Halloween, C17 Huron style" for an eyewitness account of how "Halloween" was celebrated by one "nation" of the indigenous peoples of North America before the arrival of the Europeans.

So, imo a Wiccan's opinion of present-day Halloween traditions carries no more weight or relevance than that of a Christian, a Native North American or any other genre of "pagan".


daylia

Subject: RE: BS: Wicca and Halloween??
From: Rapparee
Date: 31 Oct 04 - 10:37 AM

"How do Wiccans actually feel?"

With their hands!!


BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Wicca and Halloween??
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 31 Oct 04 - 10:33 AM

" How do Wiccans actually feel?"

Most that I've ever met have been uptight, high-strung (or should have been) mouth breathers....

And given that Halloween predates their new age clap trap by a long shot...

I have to answer that question with another...

"Who cares?"

Subject: BS: Wicca and Halloween??
From: artbrooks
Date: 31 Oct 04 - 10:25 AM

[I'm starting a new thread, since a lot of people ignore the Is {fill in the blank} rubbish? threads.]

Is the celebration of Halloween US style, with children dressing up in costumes, begging from door to door and school parties, offensive to practitioners/believers in Wicca? At least one elementry school, in Puyallup, Washington (story here) has banned this on school grounds. IMHO, children dressing up as witches is not intended to be offensive to Wiccans any more more than dressing up as Indians is meant to offend them. In fact, I'd guess that 99% of American children (and 95% of their parents) have never heard of Wicca as an actual religion.

How do Wiccans actually feel?