THE MEANING OF HALLOWEEN
My name is Trisha of fearless afterlife encounters ltd.
Halloween today as adults we dress up and be who we want to be. We see children get as excited as they do about christmas because they can dress up how they like and go door to door trick-o-treating (collecting candy). Our children today see this as normal and enjoy this because it is fun, but trick o treat has a sad beginning where the poor would send their children to the wealthier parts of towns asking for food and money.
For many of us we see this date as a time when the veil between our world and the spirit realm is thinner so it is the perfect time to make contact with the spirits of the dead.
It is said that spirits wander from sunset until midnight. At midnight it is believed that they then go back to lay to rest.
Halloween is an astronomical holiday, it is the modern day descendants from samhain (end of summer/beginning of winter), a sacred festival of the ancient Celts and druids which can be traced back around 2000 years.
But is also a cross quarter day.
A cross quarter day is a day more or less midway between an equinox (when the sun sets due west) and a solstice (when the sun sets at it’s most northern or southern point on the horizon).
There are four cross quarter days but Halloween is the spookiest and this is probably because the days are becoming shorter, dark nights are drawing in.
Halloween (all hallows eve) as we know it is fixed on the 31st of October, however the cross quarter day actually falls on the 7th of November.
When Halloween was fixed on the 31st of October the Julian calendar was in use. The Julian calendar was about one week out of step with the seasons.
If the Gregorian calendar was in use back then the cross quarter day celebration would have been the 7th of November.
This means that when the calendars changed the date for halloween stayed the same.
I am not highly educated astronomically but when I come across this a few years back I wondered how many others had never looked into where Halloween originated and what it meant.
My question was that if this is true then why is it on the 31st of October we believe the veil is thinnest and many experience/communicate, or believe to have experienced/communicated more with spirit on this date, when it is said that the veil will actually be thinnest on the 7th of November.
Or is it that the veil does not become thinner astronomically on the 7th of november, but it is that the spirits walk the earth on the 31st of october because that is when we set the intention of calling forward the spirit world.
When people all over the world are sending this energy out to call in the spirit world then our collective energy acts as a strong magnet. The more people on the magnet the stronger the pull bringing the spirit world closer and closer.
What does Halloween mean to you?
Do you have another theory or explanation?
Trisha
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I celebrate Samhain as the Pagan New Year’s Eve, the time when Nature “rests” til Spring. To me the practice of “welcoming back lost souls” sprang from an ancient tradition. This was the time of year (after final harvest) when tribes decided if they had enough food to keep prisoners through the winter. If not they would send them on there way, released to go home without ransom being paid. Hence the “setting a spare place” at the table or placing a candle in the window for weary travellers as a sign of welcome.
I think you are on the right track with the “power of intent” being most probably the magnet that draws more communication with spirit and that having a notoriously specific date allows people who wouldn’t normally show an interest to be more open to that communication 😀 XXX
Hi Georgina. Thanks for leaving a comment. I didn’t know about the prisoners and there is so many different stories and traditions around Halloween. And yes the power of intent is what I believe in. ☺