PORTSMOUTH PAGAN GIVES HALLOWEEN INTERVIEW

Added: (Wed Oct 28 2009)

Pressbox (Press Release) - Ian Edwards, Portsmouth based Pagan and the author of the book “The Wizard’s Way to Wealth” is giving an interview about some of the origins of Halloween and its’ meaning to modern Pagans on Radio Solent this Friday 30 October at 13:00 GMT.

“Halloween, called Samhain, literally meaning “Summers End” in Celtic is just one of the eight festivals celebrated by today’s Pagans but is the one most known about by the general public” Ian explained. “The festival is a time for honouring the ancestors, both in the form of family members who have died and key people who have given their lives for others including the armed services, emergency services, and acts of individual selflessness.”

The Celts celebrated this holiday as the beginning of the New Year and as it was a ‘between time’ the veil between the mundane world and the Otherworld that existed parallel with, but only connected to it through specific holy places grew thin and made passage between the two easier.
Thus the dead could be invited back should they wish to come, and divinations could be done to foresee key events in the approaching year.

“The early Church tried to make the festival scary when they found they couldn’t eliminate it” Ian said “The returning dead were said to be non-Christian and therefore coming directly from hell. Thus anyone who had anything to do with them was said to be working with the Christian Devil to capture souls to take back to hell with them, or to corrupt. Looked at now from the more information- free perspective it can be seen as a multinational conglomerate trying to get rid of the competition any way it could”.

Today’s Halloween celebrations are based on folk traditions that began in Ireland and Scotland, were taken to America during various mass migrations were they blended with other cultures, then returned to England in the mid 20th Century. In other parts of the world such as Mexico’s ‘Day of the Dead’ similar celebrations are enacted at this time of the year.

To learn more listen to Ian Edwards on the Charlie Crocker show on Radio Solent live or on the web at

http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/hampshire/hi/tv_and_radio/

this Friday 30 October at 13:00 (1pm) GMT.