Correct me if I'm wrong, but October 31 is 'All Saint's Eve" Rigtht? The
day 'BEFORE' the dead are honored?

This seems pretty messy. I've had priests tell me Nov 1 is reserved for
Saints that don't have thier own day.

November 1 is the "Day of the Dead".

I never really understood this but I am sensitive to it because I was born
on Oct 31.

I would appreciate any input from people who really understand this. I am
hispanic background, partially, but no one in my family is qualified to
explain it.

I love this group, and I think twice before posting here.

Thanks you all,
Sandoval

wtrplnet wrote..., On 10/29/2005 23:30:
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but October 31 is 'All Saint's Eve" Rigtht? The
> day 'BEFORE' the dead are honored?
>
> This seems pretty messy. I've had priests tell me Nov 1 is reserved for
> Saints that don't have thier own day.
>
> November 1 is the "Day of the Dead".
>
> I never really understood this but I am sensitive to it because I was born
> on Oct 31.
>
> I would appreciate any input from people who really understand this. I am
> hispanic background, partially, but no one in my family is qualified to
> explain it.
>
> I love this group, and I think twice before posting here.
>
> Thanks you all,
> Sandoval

Hmm, I googled and found reference to "day" and "days" of the dead. The
hits said that Nov. 1 is All Saints Day and Nov. 2 is All Souls Day. My
guess is that traditional Halloween is the evening before Nov. 1, as I
seem to recall the suffix "-een" meaning evening, much like xmas eve. So
it is "Hallowed Evening," the night before Day of the Dead.

Personal observation: Day of the Dead is dead in Mexico, having been
replaced by Halloween. Having been in Mexico on Oct. 31, I saw children
in the usual Spiderman costumes and Jack-O-Lanterns galore.

Among us Satanists, Halloween is one of the two major holy days, the
other being Walspurgisnacht on April 30 (the day Hitler committed suicide).

Peter Panda wrote:

> Hmm, I googled and found reference to "day" and "days" of the dead. The
> hits said that Nov. 1 is All Saints Day and Nov. 2 is All Souls Day. My
> guess is that traditional Halloween is the evening before Nov. 1, as I
> seem to recall the suffix "-een" meaning evening, much like xmas eve. So
> it is "Hallowed Evening," the night before Day of the Dead.

There are recurring themes in world mythology.

The History Channel explained that the pagan Celts had an Autumn
holiday called "Samhain". The Celts were concerned with the seasons and
the shortening of days and they worried that the Sun might just go away
and never come back and what would happen to the people then? They
built the great astronomical observatory at Stonehenge to keep track of
the exact days when the Sun turned around to signal the beginning of
spring and new fertility in the Earth.

The Celts believed that the dead left their graves and walked the Earth
at this time of year. The graves were man-made caves inside of great
piles of rocks on the relatively flat land of Britain and Ireland.

The Celts lit bonfires and chanted spells to appease the dead. People
wore masks and costumes during the rituals.

The Celts also made human sacrifices to their gods. The victim would be
placed in a wicker cage woven of willow branches and burned alive.

And the pagan Romans had a harvest festival called "Pomona". They
arranged offerings of fruits and nuts to their animist gods so the
abundance would keep flowing.

Of course the Romans and Celts and Saxons, etc., were all in Britannia
a thousand years ago, and the Samhain observances became mixed up with
the Pomona festivals.

The Catholic church's missionaries came along a bit afterwards,
believing that, while the Celts might have actually had mystical
experiences, their pagan beliefs were caused by Satan and they had to
be exorcised.

But the Catholic church was too weak to do very much to eradicate
paganism for hundreds of years. The priests would come around during
druidic ceremonies and bless the oak trees that the druids were holding
their rituals under, consecrating the trees to Christ.

The Catholic church created the "All Saints' Day" holiday to honor all
Christian saints that didn't already have a day named in their honor,
and the following day was "All Souls' Day", honoring all the Christian
dead.

So the Catholics managed to expropriate the pagan Celtic Samhain
holiday. By about 1400 AD, the pope outlawed the Druids entirely. But
modern pagans still celebrate Samhain and they still light bonfires on
hilltops in the British isles.

Now, what Samhain and Pomona and All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day
have to do with Mexico's Day of the Dead may be little or nothing.
Maybe some cross pollination of cultures? Some of the pre-Coulumbian
tribes were obsessed with death and human sacrifice.

The Aztecs and Toltecs were warlike tribes and they sacrificed captured
warriors and honored virgins and the physically and mentally
handicapped to their gods. The captured warriors were treated
respectfully and they regarded being sacrificed as an honor.

Chichen Itza means "Well of the Itzas". There is a huge sinkhole filled
with water near the complex of Toltec pyramids, ball courts and
sacrificial altars.
One of the sacrifical altars is called "Tzompantli". It has hundreds of
skulls
carved on it. There is a limestone rock platform sticking out over the
sinkhole. The priest would chant his rituals, and then kill the
sacificial victim and throw him or her into the sinkhole.

Native American tribes usually had mythology about how their tribes
emerged from the underworld, in fact, they came through a number of
underworlds before emerging into this one.

Caves are universally underworlds in the mythologies of both Old World
and new World religions. The Babylons believed in a Hell which was
where people were buried. They believed in a resurrection from the
grave long before Jesus Christ preached of resurrection.

There is a cave underneath the pyramids near Mexico City and the entire
Yucatan area is a limestone sponge of caves where gawd only knows what
went on in the Mayan/Toltech religion. Caves seem to figure prominently
in all religions.

The catacombs under Rome was where the early Christians hid from
persecution.

The catacombs under Paris were used to bury the dead.

Edgar Allen Poe wrote a horror story about a guy who walled his enemy
up in a catacomb of a cellar. "For the love of God, Montressor!" was
what the victim cried as the last brick was mortared into place,
sealing him up forever.

There are catacombs in one Mexican town where the mummies of the dead
are stored. Ray Bradbury once wrote a paranoid horror tale about some
tourists who get stranded in that town when a nuclear war starts.

It seems that the graveyards in that Mexican town really are owned by
rich families that don't sell the cemetery plots outright. The plots
are only rented, and eventually the time comes that the families of the
dead can no longer pay the rental and the corpse is removed to the
catacombs and stacked in the catacombs and tourists were allowed to
view the mummies.

The Tarot represents the Bi-Polar wisdom of the Kaballah. Everything
has its opposite, but opposites are complementary, both are necessary.

If you look at a Tarot deck, you will see that one of the major arcana
is the Death card with the symbol of a skeleton on it. The Tarot adept
is supposed to learn that there is a matching card that symbolizes
healthy and abundant Life and that while we are in the process of
Living we are Dying, but the adept is supposed to realize and accept
that this is just the natural cycle of life.

And the impoverished Mexican peasants fatalistically realize that in
Life they are only a heartbeat away from Death, so they make a fiesta
of the Day of the Dead. It's a sort of Carpe Diem approach to the facts
of Life and Death.

In a word, the Day of the Dead symbolizes acceptance.