ShermanAndGreg Technology and Business

Flagging Our Tangled Past
Jesus Would Be Disgusted
Dangerous Nationalist Thought

by PHILIP WHITE – This was originally published on Australia Day 09 – I publish it again after the ridiculous hoo-haa in the British press upon the record price an old Union Jack has just brought at a British auction, after being flown at the battle of Waterloo and languishing in a drawer in Sydney since the ’sixties.

At Easter, the chalk board outside the little Protestant bookshop in Clare sported a sketch of a cross. “Jesus built a bridge”, it said, “with two planks and three nails”.

Overlooking the fact that the bridge was actually built by the Italians, whose consequent, un-Christlike version of Christianity turned the cross into the world’s most powerful trade mark, I began wondering again about the Australian flag.

It was very strange, hearing people decry the savage hoods of Cronulla for draping themselves in their flag during Sydney’s race riots those short years ago. Even stranger were the subsequent demands that mosques should be flying it. The crescent moon and star on the flags of many Islamic states represent life and peace.

That should do at a mosque. The Australian flag – really the British Blue Ensign with some southern stars on its blue fly – carries five primitive representations of the Roman form of the gallows. Perfect poncho for rioting yobbos.

And that’s just the beginnings of the religio-racial horrors involved in our flag. Some of these are explained in an amazing little book that every Australian should have read: Carol A. Foley’s The Australian Flag, (Federation Press; 1996).

It says something for the musical Welsh that they never insisted on having a cross, a leek, or even a harp, included in the current Union Flag of Great Britain: the Blue Ensign that we disrespectfully call the Union Jack. Maybe they realised that their harp would have to go in the middle of all those crosses, on top of the cross of St. George, which the English would never permit.

The Scots scored with the cross of St. Andrew – a white saltire on a blue ground, a saltire being a diagonal, X-shaped cross, like the tail of the early Christian fish graffito. Roman crucifixions were conducted on saltires, not on the standard vertical cross later popularised by revisionist Christians, who made it their logo, and used its shape as the floorplan of their church buildings. There would be many fewer right angles in modern architecture had the saltire correctly been the model.

Nobody knows exactly why the Scots adopted Andrew as their patron in the eighth century. Foley makes clear that he wasn’t a Scot, and his saltire didn’t begin to appear as a national emblem until about 1290. At least he was crucified, a distinction begrudged Saints George and Patrick. St. Andrew died on his saltire in Greece, at Patras, in 69AD. Three hundred years later another Greek, called Regulus, took some of his preserved bones and a tooth – for good luck – on a journey which ended with him shipwrecked on the coast of Scotland, where he eventually started a Roman church called St. Andrew’s.

St. Patrick was the dissolute son of a Scots monk. He eventually took the cloth and worked his way up to Bishop before heading south to Ireland as a missionary. While there were never any snakes in Ireland, his famous purging the Emerald Isle of them had a lot more to do with him ridding its infant church of its dangerous tendencies to accommodate wisps of Druidic, Moorish, and Coptic theology, not to mention its obsessive confusion of the Virgin Mary with a sort of profligate faery queen, the Mother of Life, whom they celebrated with keystones in the arches of their churches. Other bas reliefs of this woman, squatting on her bottom, her arms about her vertical shins, her hands holding open the labia of a vagina that extended to her grin, were installed decoratively about church walls, like stations of the cross. These stones, called sheilagh na geeks, gave Australia its colloquial term for females. While the pious St. Patrick had them removed from the church walls, thousands of them miraculously survived, and still lie in the basements of the museum in Dublin. But Patrick was never crucified. He died of long life in Armagh in 463AD.

The Irish used the golden harp or the shamrock as their emblem, and we don’t know precisely how the red saltire on the white ground ended up representing them on the Union Flag, although it seems to have been convenient to the graphic artists of the time – its red saltire fitted neatly within the white of saltire of St. Andrew. But it also has to do with the fact that this saltire, finally named after St. Patrick, was in fact the flag of the Fitzgeralds, who’d been sent by the leonine Henry II, father of Richard I, to bash the Irish into submission in 1169.

The English cross of St. George, a ‘cross throughout’ in heraldic terms – in this case a vertical red cross on a white ground – came from France. French warriors fought beneath it in their invasion of the Islamic east in the Third Crusade (1189-1192). Their English mates carried a white cross on a red ground. By the Seventh Crusade (1248-1254) the English had adopted the French version and sometime thereabouts also adopted St. George as the patron of England.

There’s a serious move afoot to have St. George’s Day (April 23rd.) made a public holiday in England. In its St. George’s Day Special Issue of 19th. April 2008, The Spectator’s Diary was written by that venerable scholar, Beryl Bainridge, who calls St. George a scroundrel. “Why on Earth [he] was made our patron saint is a mystery”, she wrote.

Born in 303AD, George was a soldier in the time of the Emperor Diocletian. He made a great deal of money selling pig meat to his fellow troops before he was ordained Archbishop of Alexandria, a position from which he gorged his coffers by taxing the bejeesus out of the Christians while he gave everyone else, like the Jews, the horrors, by pillaging their places of worship. Eventually he was imprisoned, but a mob broke into the jail and chopped him into bits which were chucked into the ocean. Call that a matyrdom if you must; he was certainly not crucified. His spirit was believed to have miraculously assisted the English by visitation to battles fought centuries later by the terrible warriors Richard I, Lionheart, (who was tough on Jews, Moslems and the Pope), and Edward I, Longshanks, (who was tough on the Scots, the Welsh and the Moslems). The bit about the dragon was invented by an Italian biographer of saints, Jacobus de Voragine. George killed many pigs, but a dragon? Uh-huh.

Bainbridge recounts asking her grandson whether they’d taught him anything about St. George at school. “No”, he said, he hadn’t, “apart from the fact that George had a friend who was a dragon.”

That accounts for three crosses. The fourth is a phantom: it’s not really there. Then, you could say it was always there. When the first Union Flag, named after Queen Anne, was designed in 1606 to symbolise the union of Scotland and England, the creative types down at heraldry found they had to retain some of the white background of England’s flag in the form of that narrow white border around the red cross of St. George. At the same time, had they not retained its blue background, the white saltire of St. Andrew would have disappeared into the white ground of George’s cross. And the English cross, of course, had to lie atop the Sottish one, lest the Scots dream of dominance. So the fourth cross represents nothing more than the English presumption of superiority.

The fifth cross is even more ethereal. To somehow imagine a group of stars was put there by God to remind us of his son’s crucifixion is well, stretching it. Why didn’t he stand it up the right way? Shouldn’t it be a saltire? Why is there the annoying fifth interloper? Is that the original Crux, the middle star, slipping down to the right?

It’s too late now to ask Augustin Royer, the French astronomer who first named it Crux Australis in 1679. In those days austral meant something grave, sober, harsh, stern, austere, dry, windy, threatening, astringent and tannic in the great southern unknown.

On the 1901 version of the Australian flag, the five stars in the group each had a different number of points, indicating its magnitude of brightness in the heavens. Poor old Epsilon, the stray one, rarely visible these days from our cities, scored only five. Which it still has. For ease of manufacture, the rest had officially settled at seven points by 1908.

The seven was convenient in that the large Federation Star, aka the Commonwealth Star, below the Union Jack, has seven points, indicating the six states and Papua New Guinea. Yep. Papua New Guinea.

If the Gaelic states, Ireland and Wales, had united and colonised Australia, we could have a flag bearing a sheila, playing a harp amongst the shamrocks.

Which reminds me of South Australia’s first official state badge, or cartouche, which showed a helmeted Britannia standing coolly on a beach, surrounded by cliffs like those at Rapid Bay. Her blowing, flowing robe looks as loose and casual as hippy cheesecloth. She has casually put her shield on the sand, resting it against her right hip, and extends her left hand to an aboriginal bloke who’s hardly dressed at all, sitting on a rock, holding his spear. Maybe it’s her spear. They’re obviously having a chat. Might just as well chat about spears.

Just what the Australian flag represents to aboriginal people gives me the horrors. There are many aboriginal words for bits of the Crux Australis; of course many tribes had their version of how those stars got into the sky, or who, or what they are, but they never, of course, saw a cross in it, preceding, as they did, the invention of God and crucifixions by tens of thousands of years.

Pretty hard, too, to imagine what a God-fearing Islamist sees in our flag. Unless, of course, it’s wrapped around the shoulders of the white crusaders of Cronulla, where it makes absolutely perfect sense.

The Australian flag was best summarised by Seinfeld during his visit to Adelaide. Having spotted the huge bugger flapping in the square outside the Hilton, he said “I love your flag. It’s like England at night.”

COMMENT

As a soldier who has “served under” that flag I do not share the sentiments of so many of those, who in resisting change to a more appropriate bunting, always use the defence that the flag is somehow sacred because so many have “died under it”.

From my experience that is a load of codswallop. Certainly, in Vietnam there was no such flag sentiment that I ever noticed. Unit logos, badges and other less formal signs, usually of black humour, dotted the unit lines at Nui Dat. I don’t recall seeing too many Australian flags flying although there may have been at Task Force HQ. Vehicles carried stenciled red kangaroo logos to identify us as Australians and there were no Australian flags on our uniforms (I do note that our modern day diggers in Iraq and Afghanistan have Australian flag badges on their uniforms and fly Australian flags on their vehicles but I presume this is because they operate in multi-national forces and they do it to be recognised as Australians). It is always a good idea to ensure that you cannot be mistaken for an American.

I reckon soldiers, particularly those in war zones, are not very flag conscious at all. Not in my day anyway. Everyone was too busy getting the job done and getting home in one piece to be that patriotic – although scratch a digger not very deeply and patriotism will gush forth.

In 1967 if you had asked an Australian digger in Vietnam what the Australian flag should be he probably would have said it should depict a can of VB with two Melbourne Cup winners rampant.

PAUL CLANCY

As we pass into the final quarter of the year 2009 and recall the ancient understanding and meaning of mans life on earth and his relationship with the Almighty it is well to try and honor the old appliction of the feis of Tara in its policy of not only holding pleasurable games, food feis, literary readings and music, but also in learning and teaching .
The feis went on from Nobember 1 and lasted till December 15 th when all the noble tribes of Erinn returned totheir respective provinces and homesteads for the winter months.
Taking with them good feeling, full bellys, satisfied arrangements and contracts and many purchases aquired at these gatherings; including some from merchants from abroad.
Ireland at those days was a propserous and secure nation.
One of the many losses the island has incurred while the rest of the world progressed from slash and burn technology to the advanced agra buisness and nationalism of today, Eire suffered not only the loss of its sovereignty and its people but the almost complete obliteration of its ancinet native Gaelic language sopken and written.
As Irish Gaelige is one of the languages discribed as being a root language equitable with Latin, Greek and Hebrew it is tragic to allthat this language is being forgotten.
Knowledge of it is hard to come by and in the americas which houses some half of the decendants of this old islalnd very little teaching or material is avaialbe to learn or recover any of this speech or written material.
Some try to memorise phrases from English sayings such as the famous
God Bless all here :
Go Mein ne Dia inseo!
which actuallys says
To wish all children God is here!
Not a blessing among these words.
However those of us who do not have photographic memorys or anyone to speak the language to promply forget all these phrases but’ parle vous franceis madomoselle’.

The present modern Irish which is begun in 1958 with the governments publication of what it calls the official standard defines the basic rules of tense, pronunciation and so forth and is taught in the Republic schools.
This does not always conform with the language spoken at the Geailteach areas of the country or the words and endings used in the 3 main provinces of speaking ,Ulster, Munster and Connacht.
For some reason the Laigen[Leinste]r is not included in this dialectical difference.
Any language must include a subject, an action and a discription noun verb and adjective and Irish is no diferent from the hundreds of other languages on earth in this respect.
It has a subject noun and it has verbs and it has discriptive ajectives.
This formulates a sentance eventually.
One of the great drawbacks of anyone studying basic irish or gaelic is the old tense structure still in use.
We in the western world are used to present, past and future.
we have no conditional or imrerfect tenses in our everyday heads, and no mood tenses.
Our moods are not noted in our speech.
This is quite easy for us to conjugated most verbs.
The romance languages have systemitized their pronoun structure added to the ending of words making only one list fo all words and verbs.
Irish has not done this and hence when we see an irish word and think we have learned that word the ending changes in the next usages and confuses us.
The root is there but added onto it is some hodgepogde of other stuff not familiar and not understood.
Irish has 7 tenses in all.
Oye Vey! you say
Well not that bad.
There is the present tense
the past tense
the future tense and
the imperfect tense
that makes 4.
Than there are 3 moods
the conditional mood
the imperfect mood and
the subjective mood.
So not bad just a lot to learn all at once.
If you are a baby you just sbsorb them long before you go to school.
If not from english speaking {and that unintelliagel to all outside the country} or from our new communicator from afar, the tv set.
Standard irish is spoken and channel 4 and Gaelteach radio not always understood bythe gaelteach people.
However it is the official standard.
Based on the most usually spoken word through the island and the early modrn irish form used from 1200Ad till 1700Ad
After the english conquests in the 1600, the written language was basically lost and the nobility was defeated and either left the country or was absorbed into the peasant population who could neither read nor write and never were taught that until the Rising in 1916.
There speech was remembred however and is incorporated with its usual slang into the official standard model.

The verbal pronouns used nowadays are as follows:
aim=I
ann=you
ann se/si= he /she
aimid= we
ann sibh= you [pl]
annsaid= they
in the past tense:
me=I
tu=you
se=he
si=she
amar, amair, muid= we
sib, abhair= you [pl]
said= they
future:
faidh me= I shall
faidh tu= you will
fiadh se=he will
faidh si=she will
faimid-we shall
faidh sibh= you will
faidh said= they will
* In Ulster the ending chaid or chad is used instead of fiadh ‘ch’ being pronounced as a Q or K hard c
the imperfect tense:

ainn=I used to
ta=you used to
adh se= he used to
adh si=she used to
aimis= we used to
adh sibh= you used to [pl]
aidis= they used to
those are the 4 tenses still used in irish speech.
the suffix endings denoting with regularity the situation of future present past or imperfect .

Now the moods.
The subjuntive mood express a question ‘May I’
These verbs are proceeded always by ‘go’ than the root verb such as bog which means move and the standard pronouns
me, tu, se, si, aimid sibh, said
Thus go bogh me asks may I move
go bogh tu = may you move
the phrase actually says in literal tranlasion to english:
to move I
to move you

but may is a nice word dont you think,so polite and civilized.
to move i is a bit authoritive over may i move.
the conditional mood always attaches a suffix to the word
in the 1st person
fainn=I would
fa= you would
fadh se=he would
fadh si=She would
faimis=we would
fadh sibh=you would [pl]
faidis=they would
This suffix indicates the word is synthetic when it is welded or attached to the end of the root word
the last mood:
the imperfect mood
root word+the suffix making again a synthetic word
bogaim=let me move
bog=let you move
bogadh se= let him move
bodadh si=let her move
bogamis=let us move
bogaid or bogaigi=move [you is understood]
boghaidis=let them move
There are 7 basic suffixs in Irish they are
eadh
iu
eam
eail
i
eacht
These suffix ending atached to a verb word make it a noun .
aAverbal noun.
they all basically mean ‘to’

bogadh=to move
deanam=to do
labhairt= to speak
Most of the english words used in irish have the ‘eail’ added to the end of the root making the ‘ed’ in english

flashail= flashed
fluideail= fluided

That is enough to learn this quarter so get busy guys.
A history of the language indicates that the latin roman alphabet was adopted by the island irish around 6 century Ad.
Before that no one knows what the cronicles looked like now.
This was called old irish.
This writing and speech lasted till 12 Ad when the French noramn came in and the new script and dialect was styled. Early Modern Irish with french spellings injected into the copy.
Admininstrative, commerce and legal and all walks of society.
With the fall of the Gaelic order in 1607 withthe exodus of the Great ONeill and the confiscation at last by Elizabeth and James I of the ulster lands the language was only left to the laboring classes. The cottiers and rural people who could not read or write inthe main.
This speech was at last desimated by the Great Famine in 1845-50 when over half the population died in their hovels and the rest migrated out fot their native land to american and europe to find food and shelter.
Irish was of no help to them in this persuit.
Any literature that was still in posession of the country people was lost and the nobility of ireland ,now all pub owners and ministers, took no interst in their heritage or their language
which was finally attempted to be saved from complete extintion by the prodistant elite Douglas Hyde and others who formed the Gaelic League in 1893.
The society for the Preservation of the Irish Language 1876[the year of my grandmothers birth] and the Uslter Gaelic Society 1830.
The Rising of 1916 bought some help for the dying sounds as did the formation of the Free state in 1922.
In 1937 the irish language was enshrined in the new constitution of the Irish Republic as
‘the first offical language’
It is however hardly heard in its native land, the railroad doing justice to it on the trains but hardly the ministers or the major news sheets and tv stations.
Or least of all , the mothers ,teaching their babes and these getting the english understood only by themselves alone a real sinn fein bunch of ladies
And so as we pass into this modern Samain , the Samna ,and begin anew the quest for the meaning of life on earth I hope the kinfolk I accost each quarter with the memory of a past in space and time will begin anew to gain knowledge and end this stereotyle that the irish are ingorant and poverty stricken and only st patrick has saved them from eternal damnation.
They have and they will in future save themselves.And that may begin at TARa the god of Thunder according to those old seafarers from Lochlainn laid out onthe mountain tops intheir mighty cairns.
Marsin Beit!

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Samhain
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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This article is about the Celtic holiday. For other meanings, see Samhain (disambiguation)
Samhain
Observed by Gaels (Irish people, Scottish people),
Neopagans (Wiccans, Celtic Reconstructionists)
Type Festival of the Dead
Begins Northern Hemisphere=Evening of October 31
Southern Hemisphere=Evening of April 30
Ends Northern Hemisphere: November 1 or November 11
Southern Hemisphere: May 1
Celebrations Traditional first day of winter in Ireland
Related to Hallowe’en, All Saints Day, All Souls Day
Look up samhain in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Samhain (pronounced /Л?sЙ‘ЛђwЙЄn/, /Л?saКЉ.ЙЄn/, or /Л?saКЉn/ in English;[1] from Irish samhain [Л?sЛ aunКІ], cf. Scottish Gaelic samhainn [Л?savЙЇЙІ], Old Irish samain [Л?saб№ЅЙЁnКІ] “summer’s end”, from sam “summer” and fuin “end”) is a festival held at the end of the harvest season in Gaelic and Brythonic cultures. The festival has aspects of a festival of the dead. Many scholars believe that it was the beginning of the Celtic year.[2][3][4]

The term “Samhain” derives from the name of a month in the ancient Celtic calendar, in particular the first three nights of this month, with the festival marking the end of the summer season and the end of the harvest. The Gaelic festival became associated with the Catholic All Souls’ Day, and appears to have influenced the secular customs now connected with Halloween. Samhain is also the name of a modern festival in various currents of Neopaganism that are based on, or inspired by, Gaelic traditions.[3][4][5]

Samhain and an t-Samhain are also the Irish and Scottish Gaelic names of November, respectively.

Contents
1 Etymology
2 History
2.1 Gaelic folklore
2.2 Ancient Ireland
3 Related festivals
3.1 Brittany
3.2 Wales
3.3 Isle of Man
4 Neopaganism
4.1 Celtic Reconstructionism
4.2 Wicca
5 In Pop Culture
6 See also
7 References
8 Further reading
9 External links

[edit] Etymology
The Irish word Samhain is derived from the Old Irish samain, samuin, or samfuin, all referring to 1 November (latha na samna: ’samhain day’), and the festival and royal assembly held on that date in medieval Ireland (oenaig na samna: ’samhain assembly’). Its meaning is glossed as ’summer’s end’, and the frequent spelling with f suggests analysis by popular etymology as sam (’summer’) and fuin (’sunset’, ‘end’). The Old Irish sam (’summer’) is from Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) *semo-; cognates are Welsh haf, Breton haГ±v, English summer and Old Norse language sumar, all meaning ’summer’, and the Sanskrit sГЎma (”season”).[6]

Whitley Stokes in KZ 40:245 (1907) suggests an etymology from Proto-Celtic *samani (’assembly’), cognate to Sanskrit sГЎmana, and the Gothic samana. J. Vendryes in Lexique Г‰tymologique de l’Irlandais Ancien (1959) concludes that these words containing *semo- (’summer’) are unrelated to samain, remarking that furthermore the Celtic ‘end of summer’ was in July, not November, as evidenced by Welsh gorffennaf (’July’). We would therefore be dealing with an Insular Celtic word for ‘assembly’, *samani or *samoni, and a word for ’summer’, saminos (derived from *samo-: ’summer’) alongside samrad, *samo-roto-. The Irish samain would be etymologically unrelated to ’summer’, and derive from ‘assembly’. But note that the name of the month is of Proto-Celtic age, cf. Gaulish SAMON[IOS] from the Coligny calendar, and the association with ’summer’ by popular etymology may therefore in principle date to even pre-Insular Celtic times.

Confusingly, Gaulish Samonios (October/November lunation) corresponds to GIAMONIOS, the seventh month (the April/May lunation) and the beginning of the summer season. Giamonios, the beginning of the summer season, is clearly related to the word for winter, Proto-Indo-European *g’hei-men- (Latin hiems, Slavic zima, Greek kheimon, Hittite gimmanza), cf. Old Irish gem-adaig (’winter’s night’). It appears, therefore, that in Proto-Celtic the first month of the summer season was named ‘wintry’, and the first month of the winter half-year ’summery’, possibly by ellipsis, ‘[month at the end] of summer/winter’, so that samfuin would be a restitution of the original meaning. This interpretation would either invalidate the ‘assembly’ explanation given above, or push back the time of the re-interpretation by popular etymology to very early times indeed.

Bealtaine, LГєnasa and Samhain are still today the names of the months of May, August and November in the Irish language. Similarly, an LГ№nasdal and an t-Samhain are the modern Scottish Gaelic names for August and November.

[edit] History
see also Celtic calendar.
The Gaulish calendar appears to have divided the year into two halves: the ‘dark’ half, beginning with the month Samonios (the October/November lunation), and the ‘light’ half, beginning with the month Giamonios (the April/May lunation). The entire year may have been considered as beginning with the ‘dark’ half, so that the beginning of Samonios may be considered the Celtic New Year’s day. The celebration of New Year itself may have taken place during the ‘three nights of Samonios’ (Gaulish trinux[tion] samo[nii]), the beginning of the lunar cycle which fell nearest to the midpoint between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice. The lunations marking the middle of each half-year may also have been marked by specific festivals. The Coligny calendar marks the mid-summer moon (see Lughnasadh), but omits the mid-winter one (see Imbolc). The seasons are not oriented at the solar year, viz. solstice and equinox, so the mid-summer festival would fall considerably later than summer solstice, around 1 August (Lughnasadh). It appears that the calendar was designed to align the lunations with the agricultural cycle of vegetation, and that the exact astronomical position of the Sun at that time was considered less important.

In medieval Ireland, Samhain became the principal festival, celebrated with a great assembly at the royal court in Tara, lasting for three days. After being ritually started on the Hill of Tlachtga, a bonfire was set alight on the Hill of Tara, which served as a beacon, signaling to people gathered atop hills all across Ireland to light their ritual bonfires. The custom has survived to some extent, and recent years have seen a resurgence in participation in the festival.[7]

Samhain was identified in Celtic literature as the beginning of the Celtic year[8] and its description as “Celtic New Year” was popularised in 18th century literature[9] From this usage in the Romanticist Celtic Revival, Samhain is still popularly regarded as the “Celtic New Year” in the contemporary Celtic cultures, both in the Six Celtic Nations and the diaspora. For instance, the contemporary calendars produced by the Celtic League begin and end at Samhain.[10]

[edit] Gaelic folklore
The Samhain celebrations have survived in several guises as a festival dedicated to the harvest and the dead. In Ireland and Scotland, the FГ©ile na Marbh, the ‘festival of the dead’ took place on Samhain.

The night of Samhain, in Irish, OГ­che Shamhna and Scots Gaelic, Oidhche Shamhna, is one of the principal festivals of the Celtic calendar, and falls on the 31st of October. It represents the final harvest. In modern Ireland and Scotland, the name by which Halloween is known in the Gaelic language is still OГ­che/Oidhche Shamhna. It is still the custom in some areas to set a place for the dead at the Samhain feast, and to tell tales of the ancestors on that night.[3][4][11]

Traditionally, Samhain was time to take stock of the herds and grain supplies, and decide which animals would need to be slaughtered in order for the people and livestock to survive the winter. This custom is still observed by many who farm and raise livestock [3][4][11] because it is when meat will keep since the freeze has come and also since summer grass is gone and free foraging is no longer possible.

Bonfires played a large part in the festivities celebrated down through the last several centuries, and up through the present day in some rural areas of the Celtic nations and the diaspora. Villagers were said to have cast the bones of the slaughtered cattle upon the flames. In the pre-Christian Gaelic world, cattle were the primary unit of currency and the center of agricultural and pastoral life. Samhain was the traditional time for slaughter, for preparing stores of meat and grain to last through the coming winter. The word ‘bonfire’, or ‘bonefire’ is a direct translation of the Gaelic tine cnГЎmh. With the bonfire ablaze, the villagers extinguished all other fires. Each family then solemnly lit its hearth from the common flame, thus bonding the families of the village together. Often two bonfires would be built side by side, and the people would walk between the fires as a ritual of purification. Sometimes the cattle and other livestock would be driven between the fires, as well.[3][4][11]

Divination is a common folkloric practice that has also survived in rural areas. The most common uses were to determine the identity of one’s future spouse, the location of one’s future home, and how many children a person might have. Seasonal foods such as apples and nuts were often employed in these rituals. Apples were peeled, the peel tossed over the shoulder, and its shape examined to see if it formed the first letter of the future spouse’s name. Nuts were roasted on the hearth and their movements interpreted – if the nuts stayed together, so would the couple. Egg whites were dropped in a glass of water, and the shapes foretold the number of future children. Children would also chase crows and divine some of these things from how many birds appeared or the direction the birds flew.[3][4][11][12]

[edit] Ancient Ireland
The Ulster Cycle is peppered with references to Samhain. Many of the adventures and campaigns undertaken by the characters therein begin at the Samhain Night feast. One such tale is Echtra Nerai (’The Adventure of Nera’) concerning one Nera from Connacht who undergoes a test of bravery put forth by King Ailill. The prize is the king’s own gold-hilted sword. The terms hold that a man must leave the warmth and safety of the hall and pass through the night to a gallows where two prisoners had been hanged the day before, tie a twig around one man’s ankle, and return. Others had been thwarted by the demons and spirits that harassed them as they attempted the task, quickly coming back to Ailill’s hall in shame. Nera goes on to complete the task and eventually infiltrates the sГ­dhe where he remains trapped until next Samhain. Taking etymology into consideration, it is interesting to note that the word for summer expressed in the Echtra Nerai is samraid.

The other cycles feature Samhain as well. The Cath Maige Tuireadh (Battle of Mag Tuired) takes place on Samhain. The deities MorrГ­gan and Dagda meet and have sex before the battle against the Fomorians; in this way the MorrГ­gan acts as a sovereignty figure and gives the victory to The Dagda’s people, the Tuatha DГ© Danann.

The tale The Boyhood Deeds of Fionn includes an important scene at Samhain. The young Fionn Mac Cumhail visits Tara where Aillen the Burner, one of the Tuatha DГ© Danann, puts everyone to sleep at Samhain and burns the place. Through his ingenuity Fionn is able to stay awake and slays Aillen, and is given his rightful place as head of the fianna.

[edit] Related festivals
Further information: All Saints and Halloween
[edit] Brittany
In parts of western Brittany, Samhain is still heralded by the baking of kornigou, cakes baked in the shape of antlers to commemorate the god of winter shedding his ‘cuckold’ horns as he returns to his kingdom in the Otherworld. The Romans[who?] identified Samhain with their own feast of the dead, the Lemuria. This, however, was observed in the days leading up to May 13. With Christianization, the festival in November (not the Roman festival in May) became All Hallows’ Day on November 1 followed by All Souls’ Day, on November 2. Over time, the night of October 31 came to be called All Hallow’s Eve, and the remnants festival dedicated to the dead eventually morphed into the secular holiday known as Halloween.

[edit] Wales
Main article: Calan Gaeaf
The Welsh equivalent of this holiday is called Nos Galan Gaeaf (see Calan Gaeaf). As with Samhain, this marks the beginning of the dark half of the year and it officially begins at sunset on the 31st.

[edit] Isle of Man
Main article: Hop-tu-Naa
The Manx celebrate Hop-tu-Naa, which is a celebration of the original New Year’s Eve. The term is Manx Gaelic in origin, deriving from Shogh ta’n Oie, meaning “this is the night”. Traditionally, children dress as scary beings, carry turnips rather than pumpkins and sing an Anglicized version of Jinnie the Witch. They go from house to house asking for sweets or money.

[edit] Neopaganism
Samhain is observed by various Neopagans in various ways. As forms of Neopaganism can differ widely in both their origins and practices, these representations can vary considerably despite the shared name. Some Neopagans have elaborate rituals to honor the dead, and the deities who are associated with the dead in their particular culture or tradition. Some celebrate in a manner as close as possible to how the Ancient Celts and Living Celtic cultures have maintained the traditions, while others observe the holiday with rituals culled from numerous other unrelated sources, Celtic culture being only one of the sources used.[5][13][14]

[edit] Celtic Reconstructionism
Celtic Reconstructionist Pagans tend to celebrate Samhain on the date of first frost, or when the last of the harvest is in and the ground is dry enough to have a bonfire. Like other Reconstructionist traditions, Celtic Reconstructionists place emphasis on historical accuracy, and base their celebrations and rituals on traditional lore from the living Celtic cultures, as well as research into the older beliefs of the polytheistic Celts. At bonfire rituals, some observe the old tradition of building two bonfires, which celebrants and livestock then walk or dance between as a ritual of purification.[3][4][11][14][15]

According to Celtic lore, Samhain is a time when the boundaries between the world of the living and the world of the dead become thinner, allowing spirits and other supernatural entities to pass between the worlds to socialize with humans. It is the time of the year when ancestors and other departed souls are especially honored. Though Celtic Reconstructionists make offerings to the spirits at all times of the year, Samhain in particular is a time when more elaborate offerings are made to specific ancestors. Often a meal will be prepared of favorite foods of the family’s and community’s beloved dead, a place set for them at the table, and traditional songs, poetry and dances performed to entertain them. A door or window may be opened to the west and the beloved dead specifically invited to attend. Many leave a candle or other light burning in a western window to guide the dead home. Divination for the coming year is often done, whether in all solemnity or as games for the children. The more mystically inclined may also see this as a time for deeply communing with the deities, especially those whom the lore mentions as being particularly connected with this festival.[3][4][11][14][15]

[edit] Wicca
Main article: Wheel of the Year
Samhain is one of the eight annual festivals, often referred to as ‘Sabbats’, observed as part of the Wiccan Wheel of the Year. It is considered by most Wiccans to be the most important of the four ‘greater Sabbats’. It is generally observed on October 31st in the Northern Hemisphere, starting at sundown. Samhain is considered by some Wiccans as a time to celebrate the lives of those who have passed on, and it often involves paying respect to ancestors, family members, elders of the faith, friends, pets and other loved ones who have died. In some rituals the spirits of the departed are invited to attend the festivities. It is seen as a festival of darkness, which is balanced at the opposite point of the wheel by the spring festival of Beltane, which Wiccans celebrate as a festival of light and fertility.[16]

[edit] In Pop Culture
In the movie Trick ‘r Treat, Samhain is the name given to the Spirit of Halloween who goes around enforcing the rules of All Hallow’s Eve.

In the TV series Supernatural’s 4th season episode “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester”, Samhain was also referred to as a Halloween demon. Releasing Samhain breaks one of the mystical 66 seals needed to free Lucifer upon the world.

[edit] See also
Holidays
Beltane
Halloween
Imbolc
Lughnasadh
Calendars
Celtic calendar
Coligny calendar
Irish calendar

Welsh Holidays
[edit] References
^ Random House,[1] OED. The spelling pronunciation /sГ¦mЛ?heЙЄn/, while inaccurate, is common in the US media.
^ Chadwick, Nora (1970) The Celts London, Penguin. ISBN 0-14-021211-6 p. 181: “Samhain (1 November) was the beginning of the Celtic year, at which time any barriers between man and the supernatural were lowered”.
^ a b c d e f g h Danaher, Kevin (1972) The Year in Ireland: Irish Calendar Customs Dublin, Mercier. ISBN 1-85635-093-2 pp.190-232
^ a b c d e f g h McNeill, F. Marian (1961, 1990) The Silver Bough, Vol. 3. William MacLellan, Glasgow ISBN 0-948474-04-1 pp.11-46
^ a b Hutton, Ronald. The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy. Oxford, Blackwell. pp. 327–341. ISBN 0-631-18946-7.
^ Pokorny, Julius. IEW (1959), s.v. “sem-3″, p. 905.
^ Samhain 2007 photos and account of Samhain ritual on the Hill of Tara (and worldwide), Oct. 31, 2007
^ Chadwick, op. cit. pp. 180-181
^ Hutton, Ronald (1996) Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain. Oxford, Oxford University Press ISBN 0192880454
^ The Celtic League Calendar
^ a b c d e f O’Driscoll, Robert (ed.) (1981) The Celtic Consciousness New York, Braziller ISBN 0-8076-1136-0 pp.197-216: Ross, Anne “Material Culture, Myth and Folk Memory” (on modern survivals); pp.217-242: Danaher, Kevin “Irish Folk Tradition and the Celtic Calendar” (on specific customs and rituals)
^ Campbell, John Gregorson (1900, 1902, 2005) The Gaelic Otherworld. Edited by Ronald Black. Edinburgh, Birlinn Ltd. ISBN 1-84158-207-7 pp.559-62
^ Adler, Margot (1979, revised edition 2006) Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today. Boston, Beacon Press ISBN 0-8070-3237-9. pp.3, 243-299
^ a b c McColman, Carl (2003) Complete Idiot’s Guide to Celtic Wisdom. Alpha Press ISBN 0-02-864417-4. pp.12, 51
^ a b Bonewits, Isaac (2006) Bonewits’s Essential Guide to Druidism. New York, Kensington Publishing Group ISBN 0-8065-2710-2. pp.179, 183-4, 128-140
^ Starhawk (1979, 1989) The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess. New York, Harper and Row ISBN 0-06-250814-8 pp.193-6 (revised edition)
[edit] Further reading
Carmichael, Alexander (1992). Carmina Gadelica. Lindisfarne Press ISBN 0-940262-50-9
Chadwick, Nora (1970) The Celts. London, Penguin ISBN 0-14-021211-6
Danaher, Kevin (1972) The Year in Ireland. Dublin, Mercier ISBN 1-85635-093-2
Evans-Wentz, W. Y. (1966, 1990) The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries. New York, Citadel ISBN 0-8065-1160-5
MacKillop, James (1998). Dictionary of Celtic Mythology. Oxford University Press ISBN 0-19-280120-1
McNeill, F. Marian (1959) The Silver Bough, Vol. 1-4. William MacLellan, Glasgow
[edit] External links
Halloween and Samhain – Bilingual, Irish folklore.
Samhain: Season of Death and Renewal – Celtic Studies and Reconstructionism.
Feast of Samhain/Celtic New Year/Celebration of All Celtic Saints – Celtic Christians in Massachusetts, USA.
Samhain at the Hill of Tara, 2007 – Photos of the lighting of the signal fires on Tlachtga and Tara
Irish Fire Festivals: Samhain Celtic Pagan lore and customs.
The Witches’ New Year – A Wiccan’s account of her celebrations and beliefs regarding Samhain.
Samhain in Dorset – Various images of a modern Samhain celebration in Dorset, England.
Hallowe’en Information Sheet – Free pdf document from Witchology.com.
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