H A L L O W E E N ! ! !

[joequinn]

OK, nobody else has taken the plunge, so I will. Let's talk Halloween, my fellow creatures of the night... And no, we are not gonna talk about little Jimmy and Peggy Sue cutely toddling from door to door as a devil-angel combo with their little bags in their pudgey little hands, sweetly lisping "Twick or Tweat!" after ringing old Mrs. Murphy's doorbell. Oh no, my fellow residents of Pandemonium, we are going hard-core. Allow me to begin...

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away there was a Scots Presbyterian minister named Robert Kirk, who served as the minister of the Kirk of Aberfoyle from 1685 to the time of his rather mysterious death on 14 May 1692. He was a seventh son, was quite conversant in Gaelic, and had studied theology at Saint Andrews University in Edinburgh. He was drenched in Scottish folklore and mythology, and in 1691 he published a rather remarkable book --- remarkable for its dispassionate descriptiveness rather than for theological rancor --- entitled The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Faunes, and Fairies.

This book has attracted a great deal of attention during the past three hundred years. Sir Walter Scott was quite familiar with it, as was the comparative mythologist Andrew Lang. And Jacques Vallee, one of the finest ufologists of our time, summarized its sixteen basic points in his Passport to Magonia (1969), one of the finest works on the UFO phenomenon of the 20th century. (The reason for this, of course, is quite obvious, isn't it?) Please give me a Dave Letterman drum roll... 'Cause here they are...

Characteristics of The Good People or The Gentry:

01. "They have a nature that is intermediate between man and the angels.

02. Physically, they have very light and fluid bodies, which are compared to a condensed cloud. They are particularly visible at dusk. They can appear to vanish at will.

03. Intellectually, they are intelligent and curious.

04. They have the power to carry away anything they like.

05. They live inside the earth in caves, which they can reach through any crevice or air passes.

06. When men did not inhabit the world, they used to live there and had their own agriculture. Their civilization has left traces on the high mountains; it was flourishing at a time when the whole countryside was nothing but woods and forests.

07. At the begining of each three month period, they change quarters because they are unable to stay in one place. Besides, they like to travel. It is then that men have terrible encounters with them, even on the great highways.

08. Their chameleonlike bodies allow them to swim through the air with all their household.

09. They are divided into tribes. Like us, they have children, nurses, marriages, burials, etc., unless they just do this to mock our own customs, or to predict terrestrial events.

10. Their houses are said to be wonderfully large and beautiful, but under most circumstances they are invisible to human eyes. Kirk compares them to enchanted islands. The houses are equipped with lamps that burn forever and fires that need no fuel.

11. They speak very little. When they do so, when they talk among themselves, their language is of a whistling sound.

12. Their habits and their language when they talk to humans are similar to those of local people.

13. Their philosophical system is based on the following ideas: nothing dies; all things evolve cyclically in such a way that at every cycle they are renewed and improved. Motion is the universal law.

14. They are said to have a hierarchy of leaders, but they have no visible devotion to God.

15. They have many pleasant books, but also serious and complex books, rather in the style of the Rosicrucians, dealing with abstract matters.

16. They can be made to appear at will before us through magic."

Bottom line. The creatures of the night exist. They are not good guys (angels). They are not bad guys (devils). They are (daimons). They have always been here. They will always be here. They are here now. If they like you, then you are in clover. If they do not like you, then you are in trouble. They can be pacified by symbolic acts of homage. (On Samhain Eve and Beltaine Eve, you had better believe that I make symbolic acts of homage to the Children of Dana. But that is easy for me. I am half-Irish and half-German and all Kelt. And these beings are the titulary deities of my race.)

Not everybody does make symbolic acts of homage to the Old Ones. Kirk did not: after all, he was a Scots Presbyterian minister. So on 14 May 1692, according to his successor as minister at the Kirk of Aberfoyle, he suddenly collapsed while he was strolling over a fairy mound (something that it is never wise to do, even in broad daylight). The official verdict was heart failure, but the people in Scotland believe to this day that he was stuck down by a fairy dart of power for his lack of deference, that his soul was "taken" by the Gentry, and that he will live in the hollow hills until the end of time.

Now, I have dropped my eye of newt into the bubbling cauldron. Which one of you is going to add the toe of frog?

Regards and best wishes to you all,
And Ireland forever,

Joe Quinn

[Iris]

Great Halloween post, Joe!

[Joolz]

Aaaahhh… a timely topic, Joe…

Your mention of Robert Kirk made me think of a passage in R.J. Stewart’s book Earth Light. R.J. Stewart has written many books about Celtic lore and myth, the Tuatha de Danaan (the Sidhe), and what he calls the Otherworld/Underworld, as well as a book about Robert Kirk (Robert Kirk: Walker Between Worlds). I thought you might be interested in what he wrote about Kirk here, Joe. I have more I could, and likely will, add to your thread, as time permits, but for now, I will share this anecdote as an interesting aside on Robert Kirk:

In the summer of 1982 I traveled to Scotland to visit a friend who was studying mysticism at Stirling University. Although I am a Scot, I had lived in England for most of my life; this visit was to prove a homecoming in many ways. I was to visit Stirling and the home region of the Reverend Robert Kirk who studied the Gaelic faery tradition in the seventeenth century. The invitation had been given by Deirdre Green, author of Gold in the Crucible (Element Books, 1989). She took me to Aberfoyle, where Kirk’s grave may be seen, and where a local faery tradition involving him persists to the present day.

In brief, the local tradition reports that Kirk was taken into faeryland, and that although his body was found upon a nearby faery hill, this was not a true death. Attempts were made as late as the twentieth century to recover Kirk from the faery realm, where tradition insisted that he still dwelt. I was aware of this story, but not particularly responsive to it. My enthusiasm diminished when, with Deirdre and another friend, John Hicks, we found that the faery hill at Aberfoyle was conveniently marked by a trail of red mushroom-shaped signs for presumed tourists.

The hill itself was wooded and wild … we were the only people there despite the markings and the path set out along the local ‘faery trail’. We climbed to the top of the hill and then individually found quiet locations to sit and meditate. I sat by a rowan tree, a major tree in faery tradition, and used by the Gaels as a protection against malice, for guarding gateways and thresholds.

I sat and meditated for some time, feeling peaceful and quiet, but with no overt faery contact. Nor did I expect one, as I was quite cynical about the entire matter and had, anyway, closed myself to that part of my ancestral heritage for some years. Just as I was about to stand up and leave, I suddenly found I was communing with someone. He was a short man, fairly plump, who declared himself to be Robert Kirk, fully alive in the faery realm. The communication came suddenly and was quite a surprise. This person seemed quite human and normal, but had a curious energetic quality about him. Without any preamble he told me of an entire group of men (specifically males) who were in the faery realm, including people from Celtic tradition and from other quite unlikely (and, to my mind at the time, faintly ridiculous) sources and time periods. This group was called the order or brotherhood of ‘Justified Men’. I only report what I experienced, and make no claims to represent or understand this group of mortals apparently dwelling in the immortal faery world. The tradition, however, is one that occurs in various forms worldwide, though I was not aware of this until some years later.

After describing the group, who are all people who had physically translated to the faery realm, Robert Kirk made a strong invitation for me to join them. The sensation was of a doorway opening from one world to another, and that I could physically step through. I stood to take that step and as I raised my foot I heard, in the distance, a horn blowing. Let me be precise; it was a car horn, and its sound summoned me back to my responsibilities in the present place and time. I did not step through. But I do not wonder what would have occurred if I had stepped through, physically, into the faery realm, as I have visited it often in various ways during the last ten years.

That night, staying in the region, I had vivid dreams in which Robert Kirk and certain allied faery beings educated me in faery metaphysics, philosophy and the art of the Seven Directions. Much of this education was to appear in my later books. I was also taken, in dream or vision, on a lengthy journey around Scotland to many powerful locations, some of which I was to visit physically in later years, recognizing them suddenly from this intense dream communication.

Perhaps I should state, at this point, that I am not concerned over the so-called identity source or nature of this sequence of communications. I see no reason why it should not have been Robert Kirk, especially as other people have experienced similar contact with him in the region. Various people claim to have contacted him upon inner or imaginal dimensions in meditation and visualization.

The significance of the encounter, I believe, is that I had not studied for it or looked for it; indeed, I was sceptical of anything happening. I realized later that my scepticism masked a deep but uncertain connection with the faery realm, something inherited from my Celtic ancestors and based in part upon obscured childhood memories of Otherworld contact. The value was that a mass of lore, teaching, specific workable material came out of the contact, material that I have since developed for work with other people.

So Kirk or not, something happened that involved the faery realm and the ways in and out of it, for myself, and for others. My opinion is that it was indeed the Reverend Robert Kirk, and some of the techniques that I learned during my time under his tuition put me into contact with other people, historical humans, living in the faery realm. Many of my previously held, rather glib interpretations of the faery tradition as quaint folklore were radically changed by this adventure.

During my editing and commentary upon Kirk’s Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies, undertaken in 1989, I felt his pervasive advisory presence, but no direct contact of the dramatic and concentrated sort I had experienced in his native territory.

From: Earth Light: The Ancient Path to Transformation – Rediscovering the Wisdom of Celtic & Faery Lore by R.J. Stewart, copyright 1992, published by Element Books (Great Britain) and Element, Inc. (United States), pages 25-27.

Edited to correct a few typos - Joolz

[Joolz]

This might be of historical interest as well regarding Kirk. It's a link to a .pdf file of his book that both Joe and the author I quoted above mentioned:

http://www.morningstarpublications.com/ ... Isles.html

[racehorse]

Great posts Joe and Joolz.

[Joolz]

Now… to get back to Joe’s original topic (the origins and history of Hallowe’en) I’ll submit one more book excerpt (since I overslept and am missing my morning class today anyhow ). This was written by a real Witch and her now-deceased husband, so read on at your own peril No, seriously, Janet Farrar isn’t really scary – she’s actually a really nice British woman who has lived for many, many years now in the Irish countryside, and who is very intelligent and scholarly, as well as witty, charming, and very pretty (not the stereotypical “witch” at all). And yes… my bookshelves hold allll sorts of strange texts… I read all kinds of things…

The eve of 1st November, when the Celtic Winter begins, is the dark counterpart of May Eve which greets the Summer. More than that, 1st November for the Celts was the beginning of the year itself, and the feast of Samhain was their New Year’s Eve, the mysterious moment which belonged to neither past nor present, to neither this world nor the Other. Samhain (pronounced ‘sow-in’, the ‘ow’ rhyming with ‘cow’) is Irish Gaelic for the month of November; Samhuin (pronounced ‘sav-en’ with the ‘n’ like the ‘ni’ in ‘onion’) is Scottish Gaelic for All Hallows, 1st November.

For the old pastoralists, whose herd-raising was backed by only primitive agriculture or none at all, keeping whole herds fed through the winter was simply not possible, so the minimum breeding stock was kept alive, and the rest were slaughtered and salted—the only way, then, of preserving meat (hence, no doubt, the traditional use in magical ritual of salt as a ‘disinfectant’ against psychic or spiritual evil). Samhain was the time when this killing and preserving was done; and it is not hard to imagine what a nervously critical occasion it was. Had the right—or enough—breeding-stock been selected? Would the coming winter be long and hard? And if so, would the breeding-stock survive it, or the stored meat feed the tribe through it?

Crops, too, had all to be gathered in by 31st October, and anything still unharvested was abandoned—because of the Pooka (Puca), a nocturnal, shape-changing hobgoblin who delighted in tormenting humans, was believed to spend Samhain night destroying or contaminating whatever remained unreaped. The Pooka’s favourite disguise seems to have been the shape of an ugly black horse.

Thus to economic uncertainty was added a sense of psychic eeriness, for at the turn of the year—the old dying, the new still unborn—the Veil was very thin. The doors of the sidh-mounds were open, and on this night neither human nor fairy needed any magical password to come and go. On this night, too, the spirits of dead friends sought the warmth of the Samhain fire and communion with their living kin. This was Feile na Marbh (pronounced ‘fayluh nuh morv’), the Feast of the Dead, and also Feile Moingfhinne (pronounced ‘fayluh mong-innuh’), the Feast of the White-Haired One, the Snow Goddess. It was a “partial return to primordial chaos…the dissolution of established order as a prelude to its recreation in a new period of time”, as Prosinias mac Cana says in Celtic Mythology.

So Samhain was on the one hand a time of propitiation, divination and communion with the dead, and on the other, an uninhibited feast of eating, drinking and the defiant affirmation of life and fertility in the very face of the closing dark.

Propitiation, in the old days when survival was felt to depend on it, was a grim and serious affair. There can be little doubt that at one time it involved human sacrifice—of criminals saved up for the purpose or, at the other end of the scale, of an ageing king; little doubt, either, that these ritual deaths were by fire, for in Celtic (and, come to that, Norse) mythology many kings and heroes die at Samhain, often in a burning house, trapped by the wiles of supernatural women. Drowning may follow the burning, as with the sixth-century Kings of Tara, Muirchertach mac Erca and Diarmit mac Cerbaill.

Echoes of the Samhain royal sacrifice have also lingered in that of animal substitutes. Our village Garda (policeman), Tom Chambers, a knowledgeable student of County Mayo history and folklore, tells us that within living memory cockrels’ blood was sprinkled at the corners of houses, inside and out, on Martinmas Eve as a protective spell. Now Martinmas is 11th November—which is 1st November according to the old Julian calendar, a displacement which often points to the survival of a particularly unofficial custom… So this may well have been originally a Samhain practice.

The ending of the custom of actual royal sacrifice is perhaps commemorated in the legend of the destruction of Aillen mac Midgna, of the Finnachad sidhe, who is said to have burned royal Tara every Samhain until Fionn mac Cumhal finally slew him. (Fionn mac Cumhal is a Robin Hood –type hero, whose legends are remembered all over Ireland. The mountains above our village of Ballycroy are called the Nephin Beg range, which Tom Chambers renders from the Old Irish as ‘the little resting-place of Finn’.)

Ireland’s bonfire-and-firework night is still Hallowe’en, and some of the unconscious survivals are remarkable. When we lived at Ferns in county Wexford, many of the children who ambushed us at Hallowe’en hoping for apples, nuts or “money for the King, money for the Queen” included one who was masked as ‘the Man in Black’. He would challenge us with “I am the Man in Black—do you know me?”—to which we would reply “I know who you are, but you are the Man in Black.” We wonder if he realized that one of the significantly recurrent pieces of evidence in the witchcraft trials of the persecution period is that ‘the Man in Black’ was the coven’s High Priest, whose anonymity must be stubbornly protected.

In Scotland and Wales, individual family Samhain fires used to be lit; they were called Samhnagan in Scotland and Coel Coeth in Wales and were built for days ahead on the highest ground near to the house. This was still a thriving custom in some districts almost within living memory, though by then it had become (like England’s bonfire night) mostly a children’s celebration. The habit of Hallowe’en fires survived in the Isle of Man, too.

…(there is more here pertaining to present customs in the area as they have come down from the past, regarding divination and foods, and I can add this at another time, if there are any who are interested, but I will leave it out now to save space)…

Hallowe’en nuts and apples still have their divinatory aspect in the popular tradition; but like the nut-gathering of Bealtaine, their original meaning was a fertility one, for Samhain, too, was a time of deliberate (and tribally purposeful) sexual freedom. The fertility-ritual aspect is, as one might expect, reflected in the legends of gods and heroes. The god Angus mac Og, and the hero Cu Chulainn, both had Samhain affairs with women who could shape-shift into birds; and at Samhain the Dagda (the ‘Good God’) mated with the Morrigan (the dark aspect of the Goddess) as she bestrode the River Unius, and also with Boann, goddess of the River Boyne.

Samhain, like other pagan festivals, was so deeply rooted in popular tradition that Christianity had to take it over. The aspect of communion with the dead, and with other spirits, was Christianized as All Hallows, moved from its original date of 13th May to 1st November, and extended to the whole Church by Pope Gregory IV in 834. But its pagan overtones remained uncomfortably alive, and in England the Reformation abolished All Hallows. It was not formally restored by the Church of England until 1928, “on the assumption that the old pagan associations of Hallowe’en were at last really dead and forgotten; a supposition that was certainly premature” (Doreen Valiente, An ABC of Witchcraft).

…(again, there is more on various customs, which I can add at another time IF anyone is interested in them)…

Paul Huson, in his interesting but magically amoral book Mastering Witchcraft, says: “The Dumb Supper may be performed in honour of the beloved dead, and wine and bread be ceremonial offered to them, the latter in the shape of a cake made in nine segments similar to the square of Earth.” He probably means the Square of Saturn, which has nine segments like a noughts-and-crosses game (and which Huson himself gives on p. 140 of his book). There are magic squares also for Jupiter (sixteen-segments), Mars (twenty-five), Sun (thirty-six), Venus (forty-nine), Mercury (sixty-four) and Moon (eighty-one), but none for Earth. In any case, Saturn would be more seasonally appropriate; he has strong links with both the Holly King and the Lord of Misrule—in fact, the three overlap and merge a good deal.

One thing Samhain has always been, and still is: a lusty and wholehearted feast, a Mischief Night, the start of the reign of the Lord of Misrule, which traditionally lasts from now until Candlemas [1st February]—yet with serious undertones. It is not that we surrender to disorder but, as Winter begins, we look ‘primordial chaos’ in the face so that we may discern in it the seeds of a new order. By challenging it, and even laughing with it, we proclaim our faith that the Goddess and the God cannot, by their very nature, allow it to sweep us away.

From:
The Witches Bible – The Complete Witches’ Handbook: Part I: The Sabbats and Rites for Birth, Marriage and Death by Janet and Stewart Farrar, copyright 1981, 1984, published by Phoenix Publishing (United States), pages 121-128.

There is more… much more…

Oh, and to prove that Janet is not the sterotypical old "hag," here's a recent photo of her I found on the web (she's in her 50s, I'd say) -- I dunno why I want to post her pic, other than just to help dispell that old sterotype?



Here are a few links that may be of interest to anyone who wants to learn more about the history of this holiday and/or how it is celebrated by most neo-pagans today:

These two are from Isaac Bonewits, a practicing Druid in America:

Halloween History: the Real Origins

Halloween Errors and Lies

And this one from an unfamilar writer but from a source familar to me:

History of Halloween: Myths, Monsters and Devils

OK... turning the floor back to Joe now!

(Well, you DID ask for someone to add "toe of frog"! )

Edited for typos (and to add above photo of Janet Farrar)... Joolz

[theWAVE]

Wowzza!
This thread is better than "Ghost to Ghost'...

And here i always thought Halloween was just fun and games and candy..
Apparently I have been in the dark, way too long.

Me and Charlie Brown waiting for the Great Pumpkin' to arrive, in the pumpkin patch..

[Linnea]

Pen and ink on canvas ~ Howard Weingarden
.

[mudwoman]

Great Thread!

[joequinn]

Did any of you listen to George Noory's interview with Penny Kelly of Lily Hill Farm on Tuesday night? (An interview, by the way, which Noory conducted quite well, in my opinion.) The entire point of the interview was that the Gentry not only exist but that they exist here in America: they certainly exist on a farm some 35 miles southwest of Kalamazoo, MI (which means that they are not locked up in some cage somewhere on "the Celtic Fringe" of Western Europe). And if you had Vallee's sixteen point checklist in your hand while you were listening to the interview, absolutely nothing that you heard in it would have surprised you. What a synchronicity, huh?

By the way, we all owe a great debt of gratitude to Joolz, who single-handedly resurrected this thread from the dead. What she did was wonderful. No, magical. Hmmm, perhaps too magical... Smells like witchcraft to me. Hmmm, I wonder how much the Holy Office (the one in Rome, NOT the one in Washington) would give me for reporting her...

Regards and best wishes to you all in this devilish season,

Joe Quinn

[Joolz]

Did any of you listen to George Noory's interview with Penny Kelly of Lily Hill Farm on Tuesday night? (An interview, by the way, which Noory conducted quite well, in my opinion.) The entire point of the interview was that the Gentry not only exist but that they exist here in America: they certainly exist on a farm some 35 miles southwest of Kalamazoo, MI (which means that they are not locked up in some cage somewhere on "the Celtic Fringe" of Western Europe). And if you had Vallee's sixteen point checklist in your hand while you were listening to the interview, absolutely nothing that you heard in it would have surprised you. What a synchronicity, huh?

Oh, I did, Joe! I was quite intrigued with that interview... and yes, it does fit right in with our discussion of the Gentry. They most definitely ARE here, IMO, although there are some minor differences due to it being a different continent. R. J. Stewart points out that these entities are tied to place in many aspects. However, I do think that our ancestors dragged with them their concepts of the these beings from Europe and elsewhere, and that opened some sort of window, so what we have here is a mish-mosh in that realm, just like we do with the physical peoples of this continent in modern times. Make sense? There are some writers who incorporate this theme in very interesting ways (Charles de Lint comes to mind...).

I thought the interview with Penny Kelly and the references to Findhorn were fascinating! I read a book about Findhorn in the late 70s and was greatly influenced by what I read. I do try to work with the spirits of the land in my gardens... often with very interesting results. Anyone else?

By the way, we all owe a great debt of gratitude to Joolz, who single-handedly resurrected this thread from the dead. What she did was wonderful. No, magical. Hmmm, perhaps too magical... Smells like witchcraft to me. Hmmm, I wonder how much the Holy Office (the one in Rome, NOT the one in Washington) would give me for reporting her...

Hehehehe, Joe! Well, it seems that RC has had a hand in this, too. So, many thanks to RC for his help! (Now, get some rest, she says in her most stern mommy-voice, which is not all that stern, come to think of it)

Magic? Witchcraft? Ooooooooo D'ya think?

Cackles & Shivery Samhain Blessings to All...
Joolz

[Joolz]

This just arrived on one of my email lists from a guy who heads up the biggest Druid group in Sacramento. I just thought I'd share the content of his email in the spirit of this thread, so you can see what one of our local Pagan groups is doing to celebrate Samhain/Hallowe'en this year. Heck... Corvid and I may go check this out! It sounds a lot like a Ren Faire with a twist, and Tempest is a great local band! (The festival is open to the public, and is also, I noted, a benefit for a worthy cause.)

Come join us at the first annual
Celtic New Year Festival:
The Feast of Samhain!

For something different, meaningful, and outrageously fun this Halloween, join Sacramento Grove of the Oak, Inc., EnTouch Services, and the Celtic Rock Band TEMPEST at the first annual Celtic New Year Festival: The Feast of Samhain, a benefit for Operation Care (helping families in the foothills escape domestic violence). This will be a festival like none you have ever attended before. Step back into the mists of time to the world of woad painted warriors, great stone circles, wise Druids, Celtic kings, faeries, beautiful goddesses and gods, haunting poetry, echo music, mythic heros, and magic. There will be Musicians, Stage acts, Roving minstrels, Vendors, Celtic games, Costume contests, Historic reenactments, Quidditch games, High King Brian Boru, Druids, Warrior heroes and heroines, A Masquerade Ball, Seers and Diviners, Actors, Storytellers, Faeries, a Poetry Contest for Honnored Bards, an Ancestors Altar display, Trick-or-Treating, Live magical creatures, Pumpkin carving contest, Scarecrow dressing contest, a Celtic round house, Magical folk, Crafts, Food, and STRAWHENGE. So dress up in your Halloween best, grab kids, and come celebrate the highest festival of the ancient Celtic calendar (Samhain, now called Halloween) the way our Celtic ancestors did.

*************

In ancient times, the Celtic people celebrated the seasons of the year with annual festivals. The festival of Samhain (pronounced Sow-en) was the most sacred of these festivals and it lasted for three days. The modern Halloween celebration has its roots in this Celtic celebration. It was a time for honoring the ancestors (like the Day of the Dead) and a time for celebrating the final harvest and the preparations for winter. It was called "the time of no time and the place of no place," a break in the Celtic calendar year where the rules were temporarily suspended (like the modern Mardi Gras). Folks dressed up in costumes, danced, feasted, played games, lit bonfires, and perpetrated innocent pranks. Children were allowed to go begging for treats at the neighbors' homes. It was the final big party before the quiet of winter descended. In the evenings, things calmed, and people gathered together to remember their departed loved ones in the land of eternal youth called Tir Na Nog, often dishing up plates of food for them at the evening meal, or setting up an ancestor altars with mementos from their lives. The Celts believed that the veil between the material world and the spiritual one was thinnest at this time of the year, so sacred communion with those who had gone before was common during Samhain.

Please feel free to honor one of your own ancestors this year by bringing a memento to lay upon our festival's Ancestors Altar. (We will guard it well.)

May the peace of the evening hearth and the abiding love of the ancestors be with you this Samhain, good friend.

[Iris]

Just wanted to chime in to say that I'm enjoying this thread too. Thank you Joe and Joolz for taking the time to demystify Halloween -- as I know that misconceptions about it abound. I was thinking about discussing the holidays in the other thread Joe started here, but decided not to overstay my welcome. You two did a splendid job of it here!

Joolz, wish I could go to your Samhain party with you and Corvid -- and I wish you a splendid celebration! You've inspired me to check out what's going on around here -- in between packing up my house for the big move.

Okay... here's what I've found in the Seattle area. There's also stuff going on in Olympia and Portland -- as I'm sure in all major cities.

~~~~

Seattle Cuups Calendar

Please forward to any person or list that might be interested.

UUC-CUUPs October/November 2003 Calendar

The Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans (CUUPS) is a gathering of practitioners of liberal religion, Earth-based Spirituality, U.U. Pagans, and Witches. Our annual calendar includes the solar and earth holidays, discussion groups, classes and business meetings. For more information, call Betsey Page (206-244-4399, evenings). All rituals and classes listed
below are open to the public and unless otherwise stated are held at the University Unitarian Church (UUC), 6556 35th Avenue N.E., Seattle, Washington, 98115.

ADVANCE NOTICE! CUUPS will celebrate Samhain on Saturday, November 1st. Gather at 6:00 for a 6:30 PM ritual. Please bring a potluck dish to share. Look for more information in our Nov./Dec. calendar. Contact Monk at m7o7n7k@h... or (206) 478-6311 for more information if you can't wait.

For information on Seattle CUUPS, visit our web site at
http://www.seattlecuups.com

For information on National CUUPS, visit the Web site at
http://www.cuups.org.

~~~~

Sat 11/04 -- Samhain Spiral Dance

Saturday, November 4, 2000, 7:00pm
Samhain Spiral Dance

Turning Tide, Seattle Reclaiming is excited to announce a major Samhain event. The Spiral Dance, a ritual and pageant that has been building and growing in the Bay area and in many parts of the country since its beginning in 1979, will now be a part of Seattle's Samhain celebrations.

The gates of life and death are open. Come and join us as we celebrate the Elements, Gods, Ancestors and Fey with song, dance and costume. As we set sail to the Isle of Apples to commune with our Beloved Dead. And as we raise our
power to begin a new year of beauty, harvest and peace, to plant the seeds of our own rebirth.

Doors open at 7pm, ritual begins at 8.

Location:
Russian Center (indoors)
704 19th Ave. East
Seattle Washington
Near 19th and Roy. Nearby busses are the 48, 34 and 10.
Bring: donations for the food bank, snacks or finger food for feasting afterward, $15.
Tickets are $15, with a sliding scale of $10 to $20 based on ability to pay.
Advance tickets are available at Edge of the Circle books 701 E. Pike and Gotrocks, 8516 Greenwood. Tickets will also be available at the door.

Music by Gaia Consort!
Portion of the proceeds go to Climate Solutions, whose mission is to stop global warming.

Festive attire encouraged. Drumming and dancing after the ritual.
All Reclaiming events are clean and sober, no drugs or alcohol, please.

More info or to volunteer call Amy MoonDragon at 206.523.7907

~~~

Samhain

Greetings!

We, the Witches of TURNING TIDE, the Seattle Reclaiming group are planning our 2nd annual Spiral Dance for the Celebration of Samhain. It will be held on November 3rd, 2001 Saturday eve gather at 7 start at 8. We have tentative approval for the Olympic room at the Seattle Center. As usually we want our community to participate and give you the opportunity to get involved in the Ritual.

[joequinn]

Why do I have the horrible image of the Gobernator arresting all of the wiccans as they arrive for the Calyfornyan ceremory, dressing them in animal skins and tying them to stakes (like Nero did with the Christians in the Vatican Gardens after the burning of Rome), and then igniting them all with a single button-push and an "hasta la vista, baby"?

I hope someday to live in the Seattle area. It's quite a comfort to know that I will not burn alone there...

Regards and best wishes to you all,

Joe Quinn

[joequinn]

What would Halloween be without movies? Now, of course, I have seen most of them, just as you have, and I need not mention the obvious ones here. Like many of you, I regard The Exorcist as the most horrifying film of all time, and as luck would have it, I was actually present on the set when they filmed a couple of its scenes at my college oh so many years ago. But what I would like to do in this post is to bring to your attention some six films that might be overlooked but that merit your attention, at least in my opinion. The first three are horror films, and the last three are Irish ghost comedies...

Three great, and often overlooked, horror films:

'Salems' Lot (1979):
I have never been a big Stephen King fan: in fact, I have not read anything by him since the uncut version of The Stand. But 'Salems' Lot, King's second novel, has always been my favorite novel by him, and the mini-series made from it and directed by wildman Tobe Hooper is first-rate. An unsuccessful journalist (played by popular 1970s television star David Soul) returns to his home town to lick his wounds, just as some mysterious neighbors (represented by James Mason, a truly incredible actor in one of his last roles) move into the local mansion. Soon people start dropping like flies, and everybody begins to dread the setting of the sun. High point of the film for me: a dead little boy floats through the air to his elder brother's locked window, frantically scratching at the glass with his fingers to get at him with his fangs. Whoa, mama!

An American Werewolf in London (1981):
A truly shocking film, a deeply tragic story intensified by the film's refusal to regard it as being anything other than a grotesque farce. Two American lads, David and Jack (played, respectively, by David Naughton and Griffin Dunne) ignore the warnings given them at "The Slaughtered Lamb" and foolishly race across the misty moors at midnight to the background noise of intensifying wolf howls. It all goes downhill from there, in spades. Fantastic special effects; neat acting; first-rate script. High point of the film for me: Jack comes back to visit David in the apartment. "You'll change, David, you'll change."

Shadow of the Vampire (2000):
This film came and went in a flash, but not before I managed to see it. An excellent film with an astonishing performance by Willem Dafoe. This film about a film details how, in 1921, the German director F. W. Murnau (staring the superb John Malkevich) directed the first great vampire movie, Nosferatu, starring Max Schrenk (played by Dafoe) as the vampire, Count Orlock. The stunning premise of this movie is that Schrenk, who plays a vampire, is a vampire in real life. Needless to say, this confusion between life and art leads in the end to violence and tragedy. Dafoe needs to be seen to be believed: his characterization is unerringly perfect. High point of the film for me: Murnau interviews Schrenk for the role.

And now, on the lighter side, my three favorite Irish ghost comedies:

The Luck of the Irish (1948):
Directed by Henry Koster (who later went on to even greater fame two years later with Jimmy Stewart in Harvey) this was the first Hollywood film to deal with the myth of the leprechaun. A young and astonishingly handsome Tyrone Power plays an American journalist who visits the Ireland of his ancestors, only to run across a Cupid-playing leprechaun played by Cecil Kellaway (who was nominated for Best Supporting Actor that year for his role). Love conquers all, as the leprechaun manages to hook Power up with the Irish lass of his dreams (played by the equally radiant Anne Baxter) and manages to rescue him from the grip of a slave-driving publisher for a sentimental finale in the Emerald Isle. Lush Irish scenery and tons of Irish blarney. I love it. High point of the film for me: the journalist's attempts to prove to himself that his pal is indeed a leprechaun.

Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959):
My first exposure to the Gentry at the age of ten, and one that I have never forgotten. What can one say about this film? It was one of Walt Disney's pet projects, and the production values, for the 1950s, are first-rate. Almost every Irish stereotype in the book is hung out to dry with pride, and the plot is just as gloriously predictable as that of any other Disney movie. A rascally old groundskeeper (Albert Sharpe) enlists the aid of the King of the Fairies to save his home by making his daughter (Disney child star Janet Munro) fall in love with the new groundskeeper (played by a delightfully miscast Sean Connery, just three years before Dr. No). High point of the film for me: Darby's fight with the banshee to save the life of his daughter. It scared the living daylights outta me when I was a kid!

High Spirits (1988):
Perhaps my favorite Irish ghost comedy, although many critics did not like it at all. (Of course, I first saw it in something of an altered state of consciousness in the company of very dear friends, but I continued to laugh, years later, when I saw it again in a more normal condition.) A down-at-the-heels owner of an Irish castle (gloriously played by a totally-out-of-control, and probably quite drunk, Peter O'Toole) turns the place into a bed-and-breakfast in order to pay the delinquent taxes on it. To give the place a bit of a cachet, he orders his servants to impersonate some ghosts, a decision that does not sit right with the real ghosts who live there (Liam Neeson and Daryl Hannah). A comedy of supernatural errors results, as the ghosts and the guests begin to get it on, in more ways than one. High point of the film for me: the evening theatrical entertainment in the main hall!

Any suggestions from you, fellow creatures of the night?

Regards and best wishes to you all,

Joe Quinn