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BELIEF AND UNBELIEF - W. B. Yeats 1902
THERE are some doubters even in the western villages. One woman told me last Christmas that she did not believe either in hell or in ghosts. Hell she thought was merely an invention got up by the priest to keep people good; and ghosts would not be permitted, she held, to go 'trapsin about the earth' at their own free will; 'but there are faeries,' she added, 'and little leprechauns, and water-horses, and fallen angels.'
I have met also a man with a mohawk Indian tattooed upon his arm, who held exactly similar beliefs and unbeliefs. No matter what one doubts one never doubts the faeries, for, as the man with the mohawk Indian on his arm said to me, 'they stand to reason.'
Even the official mind does not escape this faith. A little girl who was at service in the village of Grange, close under the seaward slopes of Ben Bulben, suddenly disappeared one night about three years ago. There was at once great excitement in the neighbourhood, because it was rumoured that the faeries had taken her. A villager was said to have long struggled to hold her from them, but at last they prevailed, and he found nothing in his hands but a broomstick. The local constable was applied to, and he at once instituted a house-to-house search, and at the same time advised the people to burn all the bucalauns (ragweed) on the field she vanished from, because bucalauns are sacred to the faeries. They spent the whole night burning them, the constable repeating spells the while. In the morning the little girl was found, the story goes, wandering in the field. She said the faeries had taken her away a great distance, riding on a faery horse. At last she saw a big river, and the man who had tried to keep her from being carried off was drifting down it--such are the topsy-turvydoms of faery glamour--in a cockleshell. On the way her companions had mentioned the names of several people who were about to die shortly in the village.
Perhaps the constable was right. It is better doubtless to believe much unreason and a little truth than to deny for denial's sake truth and unreason alike, for when we do this we have not even a rush candle to guide our steps, not even a poor sowlth to dance before us on the marsh, and must needs fumble our way into the great emptiness where dwell the mis-shapen dhouls. And after all, can we come to so great evil if we keep a little fire on our hearths and in our souls, and welcome with open hand whatever of excellent come to warm itself, whether it be man or phantom, and do not say too fiercely, even to the dhouls themselves, 'Be ye gone'? When all is said and done, how do we not know but that our own unreason may be better than another's truth? for it has been warmed on our hearths and in our souls, and is ready for the wild bees of truth to hive in it, and make their sweet honey. Come into the world again, wild bees, wild bees!
SERMON
Good morning!
My sermon this morning is related to Halloween and the Celtic celebration of Samhain that predates and shaped our modern Halloween.
The word “Pagan” comes from the Latin word paganus, meaning “of the countryside”. During the late Roman Empire, as new religions like Mithraism and Christianity gained adherents, people in the country side, being more conservative, held on to the worship of the old gods. That is not unlike today where people in the rural areas are more likely to hold onto a conse4rvative view of Christianity, while people in urban areas are more open to other religions or to secularism.
The word “Pagan” as used by the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam is applied to any religion other than a monotheistic one. That clumps together a wide variety of religious movements.
Because this is a Halloween related sermon I will be concentrating on the western European religion of the Celts, but will refer to a broader sense of Paganism as well.
As Christianity spread, what it could not suppress of other religions it attempted to absorb and sanctify to itself. So, for example, December 25 was selected as the birthday of Jesus because it was the birthday both of the Roman God Sol Invictus, and of the God Mithra, whose cult was the greatest competitor with Christianity during the late Roman Empire.
In the Celtic tradition that gave us Halloween, about which we actually know very little, there seem to be differing ideas about death and afterlife. Julius Caesar reported that the Celts believed in transmigration of souls, but the oral and ritual traditions—the old bones of the ancient religion—indicate that there was a belief in a separate plane of existence and, at the same time, a belief in an underworld that seems to be similar to the that of the ancient Semitic peoples, the Sheol of the bible, or to the Hades of the ancient Greeks. In both of these underworlds the dead had an existence of gray dreariness, eating dust.
Whether the two Celtic ideas of the underworld and the other plane represent different traditions within the Celtic world or were held in tension within individuals, I do not know.
Samhain, the Celtic New Year festival, was the time when the veil between this world and the other world was at its most fragile. Some scholars say that the beings on the other side of the veil, including the dead, could come through to this side, and some scholars say it was the time when the dead of the past year traveled to the other side of the veil. In either case, the dead visited their old homes and were treated to warm fires, food and fresh sheets on their beds.
The Church could not suppress this festival, and so it was “tamed” by the church by first naming November1 as All Saints Day with the night before called “All Hallows Eve”, to honor all of those saints that did not have their own festival dates. All Hallows Eve became Hallow Evening and later, Halloween. Honoring the saints did not fulfill the needs of people to honor their own dead, and so the Church later created All Souls Day on November 2 which was intended to absorb to itself and so Christianize the honoring of the family dead.
[In the Reform movement October 31 is Reformation Day in honor of the date that Martin Luther nailed his treatises on the Church door.]
Yet none of these fully worked, the old Pagan spirit continues to break through, and Samhain persists in modified form.
Halloween has been through many cycles and changes over the years, banned or celebrated large or small. It is possible, and some scholars think probable, that one reason for the long lasting popularity of Guy Fawkes Day in England, with its bonfires and celebrations, including ,kids asking for “pennies for the guy” on November 5, is that people initially transferred some of the old Samhain fervor to it.
Why does the pagan spirit at this time of year persist despite the efforts to destroy or transform it?
I think there are a number of reasons. One has to do with the changes of the season at our latitudes. Halloween is an autumnal festival. Were we in Brazil, we might not be as drawn to it; and, in fact, Halloween is not really celebrated in Australia. Google “Australia AND Halloween” and several sites will tell you that Australian Halloween takes place on Guy Fawkes Day.
But for us, this time of year is the time of dying leaves and plants. It is the time of shorter days, of darkness closing in around us seeming at times almost to be a living thing encircling our world.
The cycle of the year serves as a reminder of the cycle of life: Spring as the bouncing, exuberant stage of infancy, childhood and youth when every day is different and full of discovery, of new ideas, of new vision. Summer as the steady stage of adulthood when there is a slower pace of change, a steadier flow of time and being when we find and do the work of our life and become the guides of the new young. Early autumn as the time of retirement and change of status, as old responsibilities are put down and a new staged of creativity and existence come into being. And late autumn as old age when things begin to fade, when loss is more common--loss of ability or of friends who pass on. And winter as the time of death, when all is done, is peace and rest; but also as the time when new life begins to stir beneath the frozen ground—new life that may result in new birth, even rebirth. This cycle of life tied to the cycle of the earth becomes a metaphor for the cycle of the spirit, of spiritual growth and development. There is little in this that the Christian Church would seem to find objectionable except that the monotheistic religions reject the idea of cycles in time and reject the idea of rebirth in this world. The Pagan concept as tied to the seasons of the Earth is one of time cycling around in a never ending pattern. Plants grow and die and grow again with the seasons. The monotheistic concept—the Zoroastrian, Judaic, Christian and Islamic concept--is of linear time. We live this life and die and then there is judgment day. And how we have lived this life is how we will be judged, whether on the basis of works, knowledge or faith or all of these. The monotheistic concept of time is that of one life and of a choice to be made either for God or against God. And therefore it struggled against life re-cycling Paganism. Not all Paganism saw time as cyclical in nature, and as I have said the Celtic tradition seems mixed on this, but clearly the idea was present within the Celtic world.
At a Catholic memorial service recently someone said to the members of the family, “I just know that your mother is looking down on you now, smiling and wishing you peace and comfort”.
And that is a common expression of belief or hope expressed at many services and in many private conversations.
It is not, however, Christian doctrine.
In Christian theology, the dead will remain dead until the Day of Resurrection, the Day of Judgment. At that time decisions will be handed down about whether, according to various Christian traditions, one is going to heaven or hell or Purgatory or to second death. But right now, in Christian Theology, aside from a small number of individuals named in the Bible, Heaven and hell are both empty. The souls of the dead are asleep, and so there is no room in Christian doctrine for ghosts or spirits so none can be trapped in this world or on this plane of existence. And the idea that our loved ones can look down on us, watch over us, be present to us as guides or comforts, comes from the Pagan tradition, not the Christian. But the comforting aspect of that pagan belief is so powerful that it overrides formal theologies.
The spiritual meaning that I draw from Celtic Paganism is several fold. I do read the cycle of the seasons as a metaphor for the cycles of human life. Within the Celtic tradition that includes the possibility of rebirth in another body. For me as a Humanist that latter point is not a possibility, but I recognize that it is for many and that it may be so for you. For me as a Humanist the “truth” is more one of being a part of the cycle, living briefly, and then being reabsorbed into nature to remain in that sense part of the ongoing cycle of birth, death and rebirth feeding future life.
I am in the stage of life equivalent, I suppose, to late summer; still actively and creatively working, but my child rearing days behind me. I have noticed that the first leaves begin to show autumnal colors of yellow, red and orange as early as August. And I see within myself as well the first hints of change leading to winter.
In my late summer I should be deriving great pleasure from work and productivity, and should also be preparing for early autumn though it is still some years away.
When losses do come, when loved ones pass away--and such losses come now more frequently than they used to—it is appropriate to mourn and grieve, but also to note that it is the season of life for loss.
As a child and as a young man I thought little of death except for those occasions when it broke through surprisingly and unexpectedly.
In this season of the year, as the beauty of the trees bursts in grandeur all around us, it is right to remember that death is, that it is part of life’s great pattern and that the time preceding death can be full of life’s greatest beauty.
And in the weeks to come, as the darkness of autumn closes in, that darkness which brought fear to our forebears, we are reminded of the darkness into which some of our loved ones have already passed and which will ultimately envelope us as well.
The pagan tradition has lived on because our heart’s long to reach our loved ones, to touch them again, to be touched by them, to catch a word, to see a smile, a nod or a wink. We wish in the depths of our hearts to know that they are well beyond the grave, and to know that somehow they can be present to us or at least can sense our presence near them. We want for them a continued sense of love and happiness.
And so human beings bring flowers or food to gravesites, bring offerings to groves or temples, and speak to headstones or to thin air, all to contact once again one with whom we shared some part of life. We seek to break the darkness into which they have fallen, though so often we also seek to make it a darkness of quiet comfort. And we know that the same awaits for us.
Whether we individually envision that darkness as the end of our existence, as the sleep from which we will arise to heaven, or as the womb of new birth in a new body, when it does come may it come at a time when we feel we have done life’s work, may it fall as gently as the leaves of autumn and may it be as welcome as a warm fire on a cold winter’s eve. And may we draw from the Pagan traditions of the world the hope and belief that in some way live on in the world we leave behind if only in the memory of others. And while yet alive, may we keep warmed the hearths in our minds and in our souls, and may the best part of our unreason, the openness to awe and wonder, live within us.
So let it be.
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