metapunk

Well, it’s that time of year again, folks!  Halloween is my favourite holiday, for so many reasons.  You’ve got the candy, the costumes, pumpkin carving, the wild parties, and the wandering the streets until all hours of the morning, and all that jazz…  plus you can just feel something in the air.

Maybe it’s the chill of autumn, or the harvest moons, I don’t know, but the energy of this time is unmistakable.

The Celts called it Samhaine (roughly pronounced “sawhaena”), and made it their harvest festival and new year’s celebration.   It is when the last gasps of summer give way to the coming winter, and when the veil between this world and the other world is at it’s thinnest.   It is a time when spirits walk, visiting friends and loved ones, begging  for offerings to tide them over the long cold months ahead.

It is a holiday steeped in mysteries, from the tricks the spirits play on those who refuse to honour them, to the costumes people wear to frighten each other, and perhaps ward off unkindly spirits.

All I really know is that it’s time when my mind conjures images of my ancestors dancing and singing around bonfires, having fun, and paying respect to their own ancestors, to the Earth, to the Gods, and to the universe.

It is a primal and liminal time, a connected and sacred time.

If you’re into the whole Halloween celebration thing, please just remember, somewhere in the back of your mind, to honour your ancestors wherever they came from, and to thank the universe that gives you so much.   You may not think any of it is real, but the act of caring, even for the long dead and the imaginary order of it all, may bring you some peace in an otherwise rocky world.

Think about it, and have a safe and happy Halloween!

One of my most interesting teachers in university was anthropologist David Turner. After bringing convocation hall to order with a Didgeridoo, he and three other teachers began the first day of my first year anthropology class, describing the four branches of anthropological science (physical, linguistic, archaeology, and socio-cultural). Later that year, Turner taught the socio-cultural portion and I think for the first time in my life I realized that indigenous people really don’t think like us “civilized” folk at all. I mean, like night and day.  As someone who has been dissatisfied with the conventional thinking of Western Civilization all of his life—well, I took that realization to be a sign that there may, in fact, be some intelligent life still left on Earth. (continue reading…)