Staff writer
“Trick or treat!”
As costumed children go from home to home on Halloween collecting goodies,
they will be acting out rituals dating back to a popular pre-Christian festival
called Samhain, says David Lertzman, a PhD student in Community and Regional
Planning.
Lertzman, who has studied “the Old Religion,” will perform Halloween songs
and ritual theatre at 8 p.m. as part of the Oct. 31 festivities at Green College.
The word Halloween comes from the feast of All Hallows which was instigated
by the medieval church to coincide with Samhain, he says.
“To the old earth-based cultures, Samhain was a time of change, a time of
darkness and chaos, where normal rules no longer applied,” says Lertzman.
“Samhain was seen as a doorway between this world and the Otherworld, a time
out of time, when the realm of the ancestors and fairies was closest. These
spirits provided boons to good people, and played tricks on those who had taken
advantage of others.”
Wicca, a Saxon word meaning “to shape” or “to bend,” may be the root of the
modern word witch. It’s also one of the names for the Old Religion, says Lertzman.
“Those we call witches were the medicine people. Their demonization and persecution
in the Middle Ages and later was part of the reaction of the Christian church
against the older, earth-based religions,” he says.
Lertzman also believes our familiar Halloween witch is based on an ancient
crone figure, who had positive powers of healing.
Europe’s ancient agrarian cultures were based on a lunar calendar, he says,
and the three phases of the moon were characterized as a maiden, a mother, and
crone. All three were aspects of one great goddess.
“Since Samhain marked the approach of barren winter, it was the time of the
Crone. She was the grandmother of time and decay, holder of powers of divination.
Her ability to die created the possibility for rebirth.”
Lertzman is fascinated by the differences between the ancient conception of
life as guided by cycles of birth, death, and rebirth, and modern society’s
aim of attaining ever greater levels of production and consumption by controlling
nature.
His PhD thesis examines how ancient earth-based knowledge systems may contribute
towards the transition to ecological sustainability.
“When we go back to the ancient roots of customs like Halloween, we see people
attempting to be more integrated within the natural systems of the planet.”
For more information on Halloween festivities at Green College, call 822-8660.
