you can mom stomach
you migrate its just like the mask children where every October 31st
Halloween itself has worn many different faces in its in chanting three
thousand-year history
the Halloween we know today all started here
amid the rocky green hills and magical landscapes
apply online
centuries before Christ a tribal warriors called the Celts
live throughout the British Isles in northern France the No
have on the rugged shores and the Irish Sea
the Celts formed an agricultural community and like many people who lived
off the earth
nature could be friends or follow they were at the mercy of the elements
and winter was the scariest time of all
to the early celts much home it wasn't that was all you've got
there was no way of getting more and as the dark days kaelin
he would look to the winter with a certain amount of trepidation
and it became a time when perhaps your own mortality
and mortality appeal community became relevant
as winter approached the Celts asked their priest known as Drew which to pray
for them
and the most important item prayers occurred
late their fall the last day of the harvest and the first day of the dark a
point
on that the Celts believed that the boundary between the world of the living
and the spirit was unusually think showcasing
at the souls of the dead Rome really back and forth
that night was enormously important to the Celts
they called it soured Gail for November selling
represented the transition from the
summer to the winter and nice transitional times
the times between the light in the dark dusk and dawn
word very magical times to the Celts
weird things could happen at these times that don't happen
at other times months our night only the Celts believed those who died in the
past year
walk the earth once more
but not every visiting ghost was friendly so the Celts devised ways to
appease the speech I'll comes in
from this very archaic since the dead return you have to placate them you have
to do something with them where they might
he might return stating might trouble UN
you haunt you in various ways in
to appease the spirits the Celts would parade out to the edge in their villages
with offerings trying to coax the evil forces
away from their homes on
they would leave food and sweets outside as gifts for the dead
a tradition that would eventually become trick-or-treating
the dead come back to life at Halloween
and that's why a great fear the dead
around Halloween and many other devices and practices and customs a Halloween in
Europe or
its attempts to keep the dead in their graves I'll
the Celts believed that the gods controlled the Sun
and the shortening days were sign up there awesome power
so they built bonfires to honor those gods and to pray
for the return of the Sun I'll
to thank the earth for giving up her bounty at harvest time
the Celts offered the gods blood sacrifice
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and other animals were thrown onto huge bonfires
pick up the sacrifices something has to be offered back
if the other had given up her reaches in every way
then the early celts would have considered it only polite
to offer back some have their own life essence to the
to this life essence offered clues to the future
drew which would read the bird entrails of the animals like
tea leaves defining who would die who would prosper in the coming year
Sao one night when the curtain into the netherworld was parted
was considered the best night a ball for predicting the future
they hatin it was it a good time to move who was gonna be alive who was going to
die
with leaders going to be healthy for another year so they look into the
future on that night because that was the night with the changing seasons that
the spirits came life
and might have answers the prophecies that the Druids redwood spread through
villages becoming stories told long into the night
this is thought to be one of the origins of telling
ghost stories on Halloween
these ancient Celtic traditions live on among
the new pagans over Ireland add to that the song the air at this bar &
and let the earth the songs no purpose
these pagans worship nature using age-old rituals to keep the Celtic
sow in ways alive at this hour in time we stand
in the Gateway to be at the world
we're not so different from the Celtic peoples
two thousand years ago we still look over my shoulder before we walk into a
dark room
we still look over our shoulder we hear footsteps behind this we still
fear the unknown I'm do ok we
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on Halloween Chris Thompson's fellow pagans
summon ancient deities to their solid the celebration
a night for invoking the spirits of the dead and thanking the earth spirits
for life okay thanks I will be lit by
agree man figure who represents the green fire in the darkness
I'm
enough time between time
and let's play between make in its low
between were never
celebrate but dont the life in the DOF what we wanted to experience
it the feeling that we are both in all time and no time
a sense the Gateway the green lying
of light Don dark
the Irish called the mysterious stone piles donning their countryside
fairy mounds Celtic tales tell us that I saw one night
it is the fairies in these mounds who roam the earth
just as trick or treaters today roam the streets
dressed aspirant and other-worldly spirits
the belief in death belief in the wandering spirit
the idea of dressing up in costumes
and being allowed to performance chip and pranks
much as supernatural creatures would much of our contemporary homie
traditions seem to
be reflected in this ancient Celtic
holiday called someone if
the agent kill to walk these hills and their beliefs about spirits of the dead
and nature's mystical powers gave us the ingredients in the Halloween we know
today
%uh on the other side up europe at around the same time
ancient Romans were celebrating a night at mystical reverie
that also played a big role in shaping modern Halloween
the night was called homeowner the Romans worshipped
Pomona that gotta serve gardens and fruit in a festival that took place
around November 1st
Burke to thank homeowner for a bountiful harvest
Romans laid out apples and nuts in tribute
apple bobbing on Halloween today in fact
comes from this homeowner tradition the
in 15 BC the Romans conquered much of northern Europe
spreading Pomona the land the silent these two traditions
began to emerge the traditions of honoring the dead
and the harvest but just as the trends shaping
early Halloween began to form a new force
bitterly opposed to all things pagan was taken root
all across Europe Christianity salan would soon find itself in the center of
a raging moral battleground pagan
versus christianne
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dubbed
at the dawn of the first millennium the world was dominated by people whom we
now call
pagans people who like the Celts worship natural spirits
and were not part of any formal religion
but the pagan world would soon colliding head-on
with a powerful movement on the rise across the world
one that would try to conquer everything non-christian
in its path in the first century there is this Christian conviction
that all the spirits that other people worship
as the car to the waterfall on stars and the air
all the other forces which we would call force natural forces forces of the
universe
are actually D Monique be X actually are
hostile evil belonging to the world
which is opposed to God early Christians attack
the pagan world all around them the missionaries recognize that the
Celtic people had true supernatural experience
but they felt that if these people thought there was a pantheon of gods and
goddesses
that must be the work of the devil who deceive them in the early 4th century
the pagan Emperor over on constantine had a vision of Christ while he was on a
battlefield
he converted to Christianity paving the way for its rise
everywhere in 325
constantine summon the Council of Nicea which laid out Christian doctrine
and inspired missionaries to go out and save thousands of pagan souls
across Europe but missionary soon found that steering the public away from
paganism
would not be easy these cultural traditions are so deep in the images is
so deep that you can't just wipe them out
so what you do is baptize them and try to
turn them internet give them a Christian twist interpretation
and sanctify them in some way the first concrete plan was lady in around the
year
600 by Pope Gregory the first
Pope Gregory recognized that Christianity was still
a young movement struggling to gain acceptance
and he knew he'd never persuade the pagan state in their ways
and take up Christianity all in one step he said if you should come across
a group of people worshipping a tree said rather than cut the tree down
and tell them that they were ignorant and error
said instead consecrated to Christ and tell them to keep meeting as they were
accustomed to meeting at the same spot
but old ways persisted and the churches success
was mixed the regular folk were not really interested
in Christianity the idea that you had to wait until the next life to have a good
life was not exactly a popular idea
so the Christians had to
make Christianity more attractive to the Celts
and so they basically grafted are on
the new religion onto the practices at the old religion
of by the 8th century the church had had enough
trying to accommodate the pagans Pope Gregory the third decided to challenge
pagan beliefs
head-on by turning their most important holiday
South into a day up the church November 1st was claimed as
All Saints Day a day to honor those Christian saints
who did not already have a Saints Day have their own
pulsing stay is also known as all hallow's
day threat hello be equivalent to saint it was the Evolve Hallows
that became known as all hallow's evening
into a corruption up the evening Howell relieved
be cut the contemporary word Halloween home
the church had taken the first step in absorbing the ancient holiday
ups I'll but there were still many pagans
who carried on the old beliefs and practices anyway
people continued to dress and strong costumes are in kennel scans
continue to put out offerings for the souls of the dead who were traveling at
that particular time
continue to do much have what they had been accustomed to doing
but now doing it under the name Halloween rather than under the name
someone
in the 10th century the church took its campaign
one step further it declared November 2nd to be
All Souls Day a day to remember everyone
shade or not who died in the last year
it was a direct appropriation Uppsala
but it would take more than that to loosen the grip
above age-old traditions the practice that concern the most was witchcraft
witches were a long time symbol to the church the very worst
paganism especially at sound time my
the word which comes from the Old English wiccan more
wise one usually a woman and witches were long seen by the church as
unruly feminine powers who tapped into the darkest
aspects of Halloween in the 1400
churches zealots hunted them down punishments were cruel
on
the presence of powerful women resource rooms
reaches would have been particularly troubling to the Christian community
particularly troubling to the clergy is no question they would find out
more reprehensible than anything else and as the Devils
handmaidens witches were portrayed as gruesome
violent hag spent on evil and destruction
in 1486 pope innocently eighth published a book
claiming a direct link between witchcraft and the devil
he then outlawed the pagan Celtic religion