An Ending and a Beginning
by Judie C. Rall
nature of Samhain, or as we know it today, Halloween. This viewpoint of the holiday,
however, is often adopted by those who are ignorant of its true spiritual significance
and rich historical tradition. Often, all we in Christian circles are taught that it is the
high holy day of Satan, and that on this night witches get together and do evil rituals
and some even sacrifice children. We are told to avoid allowing our children to
participate in it altogether. However, before we launch into a true and accurate
accounting of its history and significance, I must point out that one cannot pinpoint
Halloween as a day on which more evil happens than any other. Those who today do
call themselves witches are bound by a strict code of honor to “do no harm.” If they
choose to go against this code and commit evil, they are no different than a Christian
that goes against the Bible or an average citizen who chooses to break the law. We
should not look at them as being worse or more evil than the average person who
breaks the code of law that they say they believe in and follow. And, you cannot look at
the actions of a few people and form a belief about all people in that group. That would
be like saying that all Christians are hypocrites because a few are. All witches are not
evil because a few are. Most of them love the Creator as much as Christians do. They
simply have a different form of worship than others. Most people have a highly
distorted view of what a witch actually is, and on this point I hope to provide some
illumination.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1). This is a
quotation from the Bible that is familiar to almost everyone. However, there is much
that is not understood about the construction of this verse, and the historical and
literary context in which it was written. As a result, there are many misconceptions
about the nature of God and also the roots of the Jewish religion.
The word “God” as translated in our English Bibles, came from the Hebrew word
El-ohim, which we give the English meaning of “God the Creator.” This meaning is
correct, but not complete. The word El-ohim is plural, indicating that in creation, there
were a plurality of deities involved. Most Christian scholars prefer to interpret this as
showing that Jesus and the Holy Spirit were present with God and all three participated
in creation. They look at the plural nature of this word, and are willing to accept that
the plurality is legitimate. However, they fail to explain that the word El-ohim is also in
the FEMININE gender. The word "Elohim" which is the word normally translated "God" in -------------------
Genesis 1:1, and normally understood to be male only, is actually a plural form of the
-------------------singular ALH, Eloh, by adding IM to the word. IM is usually the termination of a masculine
-------------------plural, and by adding this masculine ending to a feminine root, it can be understood as
-------------------"a female potency united to a masculine idea" (Kabbalah Unvieled, MacGregor Mathers',
-------------------p. 108). This means that El-ohim, the entity responsible for the creation
of the world, was FEMALE. Since it is also plural, we can assume that it refers to a
group of female deities, or a group of deities whose leader or main personality is
female. Few Christian scholars will share this point though, because long ago it was
decided that the Jewish religion would be patriarchal. They do not want to reveal that
their own Hebrew scriptures identify the creator of the universe as female. This would
throw a monkey wrench into their teachings, and pretty much destroy their doctrine.
The Christian religion, which was based upon Judaism, would also be forced by this
admission to acknowledge their error and change their entire doctrinal structure. This
is unlikely to happen in the near future.
Because it is known that the Old Testament Scriptures were not written down until 500-
600 B.C. during the Babylonian Captivity, Biblical scholars can easily say that the
writers of the these scriptures, under the influence of pagan Babylonian beliefs,
introduced this idea of a feminine deity. However, if they make this admission, they will
be admitting that the Bible is not word-for-word inspired and without error. If one verse
in the Bible has error in it, there is every reason to assume that other portions of it also
have errors. So they either accept the idea of a feminine deity as real, or they admit
that the Bible is susceptible to error because it is written by humans. Personally, I
believe both these positions to be true. Now, that doesn’t mean there is nothing of
value in the Bible. There are still parts of it that are sacred, universal spiritual truths.
But it must be read and understood to be primarily a manmade creation that includes
some unique and accurate spiritual observations.
Thousands of years before the Bible was written down, and long before the Jewish
nation was ever formed, it was generally accepted that the deity responsible for
creation, as well as the maintenance of our lives, was female. The Goddess was
worshiped throughout most early cultures. How did these early cultures get the idea
that God was female? According to Romans 1:19-20, God placed in nature evidence of
the divine nature, evidence which was so plain that humans who rejected God would be
held “without excuse.” In other words, the evidence in nature is so plain that it can’t be
missed. If we look at nature, what do we learn about how life is created?
Early cultures recognized that life was created from the womb of the mother. Even
though today we know that it takes a genetic contribution from the man in order for a
woman to conceive a child, thousands of years ago this was not readily apparent.
Because there are months which elapse between the conception of a child and its birth,
it was not recognized that the sexual act of man and woman created this child. As a
result, it was believed that woman had the power to create life on her own,
spontaneously, according to her own will. And as a result, early cultures held women in
awe and extreme respect for this ability. This pattern of female power caused early
cultures to conclude that their creator was female. Also, most early healers were
women, and these women served as midwives and herbalists. These wise women
were the first true physicians. They assisted women in giving birth (or ending an
unwanted pregnancy) and their knowledge of herbs for cooking and medicine caused
them to be looked at as being extremely spiritually powerful.
This power, however, was threatening to men and as a result they created the doctrine
of original sin....that because Eve was disobedient, women would have pain in
childbirth and would be required to submit to male leadership, and as a result of her
husband Adam’s failure to assert his leadership, all humans would inherit this sin
genetically. How convenient this doctrine was. It tied up all the loose ends, made
woman the villain, unable to help herself resist evil, and requiring males to protect her
from herself. If man had only realized that both males and females have their own
legitimate power, they would not have felt the need to persecute and lord it over women
all these years. Both men and women could have been existing in harmony side by
side, each accepting their own divinely bestowed power and fulfilling their destiny to
have dominion over the earth. Instead, humans destroy the earth and each other.
Early cultures understood the message God had left in nature: the creator was female,
the Goddess. And even though early Judaism sought to stamp out any trace of the
worship of the female deity, by destroying shrines, temples and images of her, they
could not erase her from nature, and from the minds of those who understood. When
one reads the Bible, one gets the feeling that human history started with the Bible and
the people written of in its pages. There were many thousands of years of human
history that took place before the pages of the Bible were written or any Bible
characters were even born. One of these cultures was the Celtic culture.
The Celts divided the year into four quarters: Samhain (the winter quarter), Imbolc (the
spring quarter), Beltane (the summer quarter) and Lughnasadh (the autumn quarter).
The calendar and lives of the Celts were guided by the lunar and stellar cycles, and
they were very in-tune with nature. The Celtic day began at sunset, reinforcing the
influence of the moon and stars on the culture. They believed that the new year began
at sundown on the eve of November 1st, which falls on October 31st or “Halloween” for
us. Oidhche Shamhna, the Eve of Samhain, was the most important part of Samhain.
Villagers gathered the best of the autumn harvest and slaughtered cattle for the feast.
The focus of each village's festivities was a great bonfire. Villagers cast the bones of
the slaughtered cattle upon the flames. (Our word bonfire comes from these "bone
fires.") With the great bonfire roaring, the villagers extinguished all other fires. Each
family then solemnly lit their hearth from the one great common flame, bonding all
families of the village together.
The beginning of the Celtic year was a very holy time. They believed that on this night
there was a gap in time. During this gap, the people of the earthly realm and the spirit
realm could mingle together. The dead would return to the places they formerly lived.
Little did they know, they dead are always around us and don’t need a special day or
time in order to contact us. But that was the origin of most of the traditions of
Halloween.
Celts put out food and drink for the dead, left their windows, doors, and gates unlocked
to give the dead free passage into their homes (another misconception: spirits don’t
need doors or windows in order to enter your home). As the spirits of our ancestors
entered the world, other not-so-friendly spirits took advantage of the open spiritual doorway
and entered as well, so Celts carved the images of spirit-guardians onto turnips. They
set these jack o'lanterns before their doors to keep out unwelcome visitors from the
Otherworld.
There were also fun, lighthearted traditions for the younger people. Young people
would put on costumes and roam about the countryside, pretending to be the returning
dead or spirits from the Otherworld. Celts thought the break in reality on November
Eve not only provided a link between the worlds, but also dissolved the structure of
society for the night. Boys and girls would put on each other's clothes, and would
generally flout convention by boisterous behavior and by playing tricks on their elders.
Bobbing for apples, another traditional Samhain pastime, was a reference to the Celtic
Emhain Abhlach, "Paradise of Apples," where the dead, having eaten of the sacred
fruit, enjoyed a blissful immortality. As you can see, the sacred Celtic festivals were
intertwined with Biblical tradition and beliefs. Many ancient Celtic customs proved
compatible with the Christian religion. Christianity embraced the Celtic notions of
family, community, the bond among all people, and respect for the dead. The Western
Church gave Samhain a Christian blessing in 837 AD when November 1 was
designated the Feast of All Saints or Hallow Tide. Oidhche Shamhna became Hallow
E'en.
Although the Goddess was seen as the supreme deity and the creator of the universe,
it eventually was recognized that, because nature contains both male and female, there
must also be a male deity. The Celts believed that the Goddess gave birth to the God
every year during Yuletide (which is where the Christians got the idea that Jesus was
born in December, and why Mary was considered the “Mother of God”....the whole
virgin birth idea came from this, it was not originally a part of the Bible, although it was
a part of church tradition and Constantine used it to his advantage to have Jesus
declared Divine so that he would not challenge Constantine for the actual literal
throne). He grows in power throughout the spring and at Beltane, the mature God and
Goddess lie together to insure the fertility of the earth. During ancient times, this act
was carried out literally by a priestess of the Goddess and the King of the land. By
autumn, the God’s power is weakening and he prepares to die and rejoin the world
through rebirth at Yuletide. This is the essence of the doctrine of reincarnation, which
Jesus also taught (John 3:5 “You must be born again”). All these truths are evident by
observing the signposts left for us in the natural realm by the Goddess and God, who
wanted us to learn of their existence and left us clues to lead us to them.
Are there really a God and Goddess or two different genders? The Bible tells us that
God is a spirit (John 4:24). A spirit is an electromagnetic force, and has no gender.
Gender has to do with your physical sexual organs and hormones, which spirits do
not have nor need. The idea of gender is one specific to our physical realm. The infinite
intelligence which we call God has no gender, but allows us to conceive of it in any way
which is helpful in order for us to understand. That is why the pattern created in nature
was male and female, to show us the two opposite but complementary parts of the infinite
intelligence. So as we realize that the infinite intelligence has no gender, we also realize
that using the idea of gender as a vehicle for better understanding was God's idea, and
therefore we are free to express our understanding of the infinite intelligence through the
expression of the God and Goddess. When ancient cultures made up different lesser
gods and goddesses, they were simply trying to express their understanding of the
different attributes of the infinite intelligence. It was their way of bringing spiritual meaning
to their understanding of the Divine. We should not look on those people as pagan in a
Christian sense, because all gods are One God. And the ancient celebrations which
originated in these cultures are not anti-Christian or evil, they simply embrace the
common man's attempt to understand the Divine.
The celebration of All Hallows Eve, or The Festival of the Dead, is a celebration
honoring our beloved dead. It is not the origin of human sacrifices or the work of Satan
or the devil (who also never existed). It is the celebration of the end of the harvest and
the beginning of a new year.
Incidentally, the word “witch” did not appear in the Bible until the time of the King
James version, who had it inserted because of his great fear of witches. The original
word in the Bible was “poisoner.” Remember that the wise women of the villages knew
how to work with herbs, and it was believed that women, because of their tendency to
sin and be led away by their power, would use their knowledge of herbs, of birth and death,
the body, and spirituality to kill others with poisoning, or to lead them astray in other evil ways.
This is once again a misconception and extreme injustice. How many innocent women
were burned as witches simply because people do not understand the natural order of
things? Also, how many were burned just like Joan of Arc, for talking to God and
believing that she heard the voice of God and other spiritual messengers? It is these
truly spiritual women who have paved the way for our spiritual freedom.
Women who call themselves witches are no more to be feared than those who call
themselves Christians (although, the way I have been treated by some Christians
causes me to feel myself more closely aligned with the witches, who have been nothing
but kind). They are simply wise women, who intimately understand the workings of the
spiritual world, often more accurately than Christians. They seek to bring meaning to
all of life, to recognize the divine in every human being, and exercise their
personal spiritual power for their betterment and the betterment of humankind in
general. My hope is that we will celebrate them as wise spiritual teachers rather than
cause them to be outcasts in our society. Hopefully, the witch hunts are over.
I hope all people will engage in the rich traditions of Samhain with their families, and
bring spiritual meaning to every aspect of their lives throughout the coming year. Follow this
link to see some of our own special Samhain family traditions and Favorite Harvest Recipes.
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