Balder Ex-Libris

Author : Markale Jean
Title : The pagan mysteries of Halloween Celebrating the dark half of the year
Year : 2001

Link download : Markale_Jean_-_The_pagan_mysteries_of_Halloween.zip

Introduction. It is an autumn evening, the evening of October 31, to be precise. A biting wind churns the clouds and tears the last leaves from the trees to send them spinning every which way over the damp ground, rich with the fragrances of autumn. It is the end of the day, the beginning of the night, that twilight period when light and shadow commingle and it is difficult to determine where one ends and the other starts. In appearance it is a simple autumn evening, like any other. However, in the villages and cities as well as in the remote rural regions lost in the valleys, there is something else going on, something out of the ordinary. It can be seen first in the behavior of the men and women leaving work. They appear relaxed, if not happy. They linger willingly in the bars, or, if they have returned straight home, they have done so knowing that tomorrow they will have broken the infernal cycle of work for a day. Ah! It is true. The next day is a holiday, what was formerly called, under the Ancien Régime, a “church solemnity,” or a religious festival, which even the very secular French Republic has preserved in the official calendar, to the satisfaction of all its citizens, both believers and nonbelievers. It is, in fact, All Saints’ Day. However, in the minds of most people it is a sad day. Families make visits to the cemetery to leave chrysanthemums on the tombs of the dearly departed. This ritual gesture of commemoration of the deceased is usually accompanied by a kind of sorrow that the weather often echoes. When it is raining or the sky is “low and heavy,” as Baudelaire pounded out in evocation of the hammer blows necessary to build a scaffold, don’t most people say it is All Saints’ Day weather, even if it occurs in the middle of spring? Once the night has grown darker, bizarre apparitions make their appearance. Someone knocks at the door. You open it and find yourself in the presence of a strange mob of boys and girls. ...