Happy Halloween, All Souls Night, and Samhain!

October 31, 2021 — bunkerville

This week we celebrate Halloween, All Hollows Eve, All Souls Day, and for others Samhain.

In the eighth century, Pope Gregory III designated November 1 as a time to honor all saints; soon, All Saints Day incorporated some of the traditions of Samhain and included all souls.

The evening before was known as All Hallows Eve, and later Halloween. Over time, Halloween evolved into a day of activities like trick-or-treating, carving jack-o-lanterns, festive gatherings, donning costumes and eating sweet treats.

This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the veil between the living and the dead became the thinnest. On the night of October 31 they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. Today, there are those who choose to practice Wicca and hold many similar beliefs.

Loreena McKennitt Dantes Prayer

More from the History Channel Here

Halloween Origins: What is Samhain?
These Halloween origins are a time in which Druidism and Celtic Reconstructionists celebrate Samhain as a feast for the dead. Divination and fortune telling is believed to have better communication with the spirit world because the fall season holds the thinnest partition between the two worlds of the living and the dead. The Druids built huge sacred bonfires to offer sacrifices to the many Celtic deities that number over five hundred named gods. Before each yearly sacred bonfire, the Celts would extinguish their hearth fires and relight them with embers from the bonfire.

Samhain, All Souls Night, Celtic New Year. Music by Loreena McKennitt

Wishing everyone a wonderful week and a magickal Halloween, All Souls Night and Samhain.

Posted in Religion. Tags: , , , , . 5 Comments »

An ode to the Autumn Equinox (Mabon) “She is dying”

September 24, 2017 — bunkerville

The wheel keeps turning. On Friday the Autumn Equinox took place. Many cultures celebrate this event, and have for thousands of years. For my respite I give you this. The song is by Clannad, sung in Gaelic, in the Donegal dialect. Have a wonderful day.

Posted in Religion. Tags: , , . 9 Comments »

Sunday Respite – Celebration of Summer Solstice, Litha

June 25, 2017 — bunkerville

This week the wheel turned once more with the celebration of the Summer Solstice or Litha. It has been an important date since Neolithic times. Wishing you a wonderful day.

Midsummer, also known as St John’s Day, is the period of time centered upon the summer solstice, and more specifically the Northern European celebrations that accompany the actual solstice or take place on a day between June 19 and June 25 and the preceding evening. The exact dates vary between different cultures. The Christian Church designated June 24 as the feast day of the early Christian martyr St John the Baptist, and the observance of St John’s Day begins the evening before, known as St John’s Eve.

 

 

In Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Quebec (Canada), the traditional Midsummer day, June 24, is a public holiday. So it was formerly also in Sweden and Finland, but in these countries it was, in the 1950s, moved to the Friday and Saturday between June 19 and June 26, respectively.[5]

The solstice itself has remained a special moment of the annual cycle of the year since Neolithic times. (For Neolithic and Bronze Age astronomy, see Archaeoastronomy.) The concentration of the observance is not on the day as we reckon it, commencing at midnight or at dawn, as it is customary for cultures following lunar calendars to place the beginning of the day on the previous eve at dusk at the moment when the Sun has set. In Sweden, Finland, Latvia and Estonia, Midsummer’s Eve is the greatest festival of the year, comparable only with Walpurgis Night, Christmas Eve, and New Year’s Eve.

H/T: Full history at Wikipedia

Posted in Religion. Tags: , , , , , . 6 Comments »

Celebrating the meaning of the Spring equinox

March 20, 2016 — bunkerville

As we prepare for the upcoming Christian celebration of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we can also acknowledge and choose to celebrate the event of the Spring Equinox. Actually very much intertwined. I invite you to explore a relationship with the Christian tradition and many ancient and present religions, and their commonality. Among the Roman Catholic church and Protestant denominations, Easter Sunday falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after MARCH-20, the nominal date of the Spring Equinox. Its ancient linkages to sun and moon worship are obvious.

The Moravian Church (the earliest protestant church) of which I am a member, Easter begins with a Sunrise service. Before the Sun has begun to rise, members gather at the Church. We take a long wistful walk to the cemetery. A brass Choir heralds the rising of the Sun. A beautiful service. Link More Moravian faith.

We recognize the new dawn – resurrection with the rising of the sun. How much different from our ancestors? I offer you this video when you have some time for self-reflection, and then the links below for your consideration. 

Belsebuub & Angela Pritchard from Belsebuub expand upon the symbolic and spiritual significance of this time.

“…Throughout the world, the spring equinox is a time of great confrontation between the forces of darkness and light, in the death and resurrection of the central deities of sacred teachings throughout the world.

“It symbolizes what an initiate goes through in a definitive and important stage of self-realization, where the struggle between darkness and light creates the opposition needed to attain immortality. This is symbolized by the dark half of the year on one side of the spring equinox sun, and the light half of the year on the other…

More Moravian faith

Posted in Religion. Tags: , , , . 11 Comments »