• She/her

Game Designer at Blizzard, opinions are my own and do not reflect my employer. Cymraeg, Gaeilge, Gàidhlig.


Since it's Halloween, I want to share a little tradition. I always like to take a little time to cue up this song and do a little meditation.

This song isn't traditional by any means. In fact, declaring any pagan religious practice official traditional or Celtic is complicated. A sort of bourgeois revivalism started in the late 19th century, which led to things like the Rider-Waite tarot deck. People just thought the occult was cool and trendy, so they made up lots of stuff, then called it Celtic.

But here's a general summary I've learned from scholars who start their book with LONG forewords on the trouble of establishing historicity: Samhain, or the eve of Samhain, as "Samhain" just means "November", was a harvest festival focused on ancestor reverence. The ancient Celts believed in a cyclical, reincarnating afterlife. You died, you crossed the sea Southwest to Tech Duinn, you reincarnated on the other side and lived a life in this other world, one influenced by your actions in this life, and vice versa. This belief was so strong at times that there is records of debts being allowed to be repaid in this other world.

The eve of Samhain was when the veil between this world and the Other World was at its thinnest, and you were most likely to be able to commune with those in the Other World. Christians appropriated this into All Saint's Day, and the idea that instead of ancestors being seen through the veil and instead ghouls, goblins, and spirits was possibly some form of disparagement of ancestors with pagan beliefs. I don't know. Then, of course, it's followed by All Saint's Day, when the Saints rise and protect you from the ghouls and such.

Just no one tell the Christians that in ancient Celtic belief, the day started when the sun went down, so the veil is thin all the way through All Saint's Day until the sun goes down again on All Saint's Day.


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