The Witches' Book of the Dead (27 page)

One custom that I draw from the Chinese in my own practice is the burning of Hell money, also called Hell bank notes. Hell money is burned in bundles to the spirits in a variety of ways: to ask for favors from the dead, to purchase the salvation of lost souls, or simply as an offering. I often use the offering cauldron on my altar of the dead to burn Hell money as a means of buying favors from the spirits, and it's a practice I recommend highly. You can write the names of the dead on the notes or even write out spells for things you're manifesting. Gift shops in virtually any Chinatown offer Hell money for sale, or you could buy it online.

I was raised in a Roman Catholic family, and even though we were not strictly observant, respect for our dead was taught to me from my earliest childhood. This honor for the dead permeates the Church of Rome, rooted as it is in the pre-Christian Empire that nurtured its early development, and so we have the holidays of All Saints' Day (November 1) when the Saints are venerated, and All Souls' Day (November 2) when prayers are said for the suffering souls of the faithful dead. It has been questioned whether the Church placed these holy days at the time of much older Roman and Celtic holidays. Various days dedicated to the martyrs who were killed under the rule of pre-Christian emperors are recorded beginning in 373 CE and included Easter Week, the Sunday after Pentecost, and May 13. The Romans preferred May 13, and Pope Boniface IV codified this in 609 CE at a rededication of the Pantheon.
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For those who have been paying attention, the May 13 date falls within the days of the pre-Christian Roman festival of
Lemuria—when rituals were held to appease the unquiet dead. That this was intentional is a matter of debate for scholars, but I simply cannot believe that this is coincidental. It certainly seems that the Roman Church was hoping to direct the focus of its people away from the appeasement of the “evil” dead and more towards prayer for the exalted saints. The later move of All Saints' to November 1, the date still celebrated today, officially began in 731 CE with a proclamation by Pope Gregory III. Scholars over the last hundred years or so have argued that this was to eradicate another holiday of the dead that we shall explore further on.

Despite the wishes of the Church, people continued to pray for all of the dead at All Saints' Day. The Church just couldn't seem to eradicate the earlier practices of spirit veneration in favor of just the saints. So, two centuries later, Saint Odilo of Cluny established a separate day when all souls of the faithful could be honored, presumably setting aside November 1 for the true saints and martyrs and declaring November 2 a day when we could pray for those souls who reside in purgatory, that their sins might be cleansed and they be ushered to heaven.
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Thus, the Day of the Dead was born. Of course, this didn't become the norm everywhere, as many Catholics still embark on their graveyard visits on the 1st. As we will discover, the Day of the Dead penetrated most thoroughly in the Americas. Elements of both the Roman Parentalia and Lemuria have survived into the modern Catholic All Saints' and All Souls' Days, as they are both times when families visit the graves of loved ones to leave flowers and other offerings. In particular, All Souls' Day is a time when the more tarnished souls are prayed for.

The attention to the graves is still very much the norm in my beloved New Orleans, where, on
Touissaint
, French for All Saints' Day, people leave immortelles (elaborate mourning wreaths), burn candles, and even dine with the dead at their crypts—legacies of the Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, Mesoamericans, and Africans, all blended into modern Catholic beliefs. In New Orleans, where a history of frequent disease and death prompted celebration and festivity, funerals were often accompanied by much revelry, evolving into such customs as The Jazz Funeral, when processions of mourners and
musicians parade the streets of the French Quarter and partake in a lively wake, second only to the traditional Irish wake in terms of mirth and cheer. The Crescent City really knows how to honor the dead!

We cannot speak of festivals of the dead without mention of Día de los Muertos, the Mexican Day of the Dead, celebrated each year on November 2, with some practices beginning as early as October 31. Sugar skulls are inscribed with the names of the living and given as gifts; all manner of skull-and death-related candies and foods are shared; toys of skeletons, skulls, and coffins are given as gifts; and offerings to the dead are laid out on elaborate altars typically covered with photos, religious icons, statues, candles, gourds, food, and countless marigold petals. The tombs are washed, repaired, and painted and, like the altars, lavishly decorated with marigolds, candles, and foods.

Seen as an odd and morbid custom by many outside of Mexico, this lively and festive holiday represents the culmination of the old world and new, the natural evolution of European pre-Christian and Christian beliefs as they blended with those of the indigenous people of the region. Spanish Conquistadors arrived in the New World to discover a people who venerated the dead just as their own ancestors had in Western Europe so very long ago, with rituals, chants, and offerings of wine, tobacco, and many kinds of foods. Whether these were direct precursors to later practices remains very much a source of debate, as, at the time of conquest, the Spanish weren't exactly trying to preserve the history or the practices of the natives. There are many examples in medieval European history of soul cakes, sweets, flowers, and other offerings made at the time of All Souls' and All Saints' Day—all pointing to numerous European influences on the holiday.

To see why the collision of the old and new worlds created a holiday so fixated on the dead, one has only to look to the archeological remains of the indigenous people of Mexico. Throughout the region, including in the ruins of both the Aztecs and Mayans, skulls and skeletons abound and are incorporated into both the architecture and statuary, including clay sculptures of either gods or humans with skulls for faces. I was lucky to see the wall of
skulls at the Mayan temple of Chichen Itza in 2005, and it was breathtaking to see the ways of death so integrated into a culture. The native peoples of Mexico saw death as the extension of life, a passage to the next world, and so festivities were held to honor the departed. Unable to eradicate these observances, the Spaniards consolidated the various practices that would have taken place over the course of the year to coincide with the Catholic holy days of All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day. While the Aztec religious practices were forbidden, the festivities remained and were incorporated into Catholicism. This must have seemed as an ancestral homecoming of sorts to the Spaniards for European Catholics had inherited their own days of the deceased from the Celts, Romans, Greeks, and Egyptians. The old wisdom never dies, and the Mexican people still honor the festive celebration of the dead inherited from both their Mesoamerican and European ancestors. It has become a time of feasting and merriment that endures today, and now blends many of the practices of the Halloween celebrated by their neighbor to the north.
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Halloween: Modern Holiday, Ancient Roots

America being the melting pot that it is, it stands to reason that this is where the modern holiday of Halloween would develop, with its trick-or-treating, costume balls, and spooky fun. Oddly, the holiday had long been forgotten in most of Europe until the Americans made it cool again, and now it's seeing a revival in European countries as well. While the American Halloween has become mostly about begging for candy, bobbing for apples at Halloween parties, and the whimsically scary costumes that I so cherish from my childhood, the holiday has a much deeper spiritual meaning. It is the Witches' New Year, when we gather with our covens to speak with the dead, perform divinations, and cast spells for the coming year, for it is believed that on that day the veil between the worlds of matter and spirit are thinnest and that both the living and the dead can journey between those worlds at will. Thus, on Halloween, Witches are at their strongest. But, where did all
this come from? While the stereotypical images of scary Witches flying on broomsticks and frightening children fit with the more secular Halloween folklore, real Witches also hold this day in great esteem. This is because Halloween is far older than the candy corn, plastic masks, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, or even that cheap, no-name candy that no self-respecting child ever wants in her trick-or-treat bag. Halloween was so named because it occurred on the eve of the Catholic All Hallows, another name for All Saints' Day, and so for centuries it had an association with the dead. But the legacy of this mysterious night doesn't end with the Church. Halloween contains traces of many of the holidays discussed thus far, because there is a silver thread of truth that connects them all, but there is one holiday above all others that the Church is argued to have drawn upon most when they placed All Hallows Eve on October 31.

Yes, the practices of Halloween can be traced back to most of the death festivals we've explored thus far, but the strongest influence is said to belong to the ancient Celtic harvest holiday known as
Samhain
(pronounced sowen). Samhain, drawn from the Gaelic words
sam
(summer) and
fuin
(end), marked the end of the Celtic summer and heralded the beginning of the new year. Many folklorists argue that this was a time when the Celts believed the veils to the otherworld would part and the spirits of the dead, faeries, and other supernatural beings would maraud the land in a great wild hunt of frolic and fright. The numerous customs of Halloween, from the jack-o-lantern to the festive costumes, are but collective memories of the ancient peoples whose energies still swim in our blood, now blended into a hodgepodge over centuries of cultural assimilation. Old Witchcraft families have kept some of those traditions alive while modern magical scholars have dug into the past to find other pearls of wisdom that might have survived from the ancient worlds, hidden in songs, legends, and old wives' tales.

Samhain is said to have been one of the four great “fire festivals” along with Beltane, Imbolc, and Lughnasadh, held over the course of the Celtic lunar year.
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It was the last harvest, when it was known that the days ahead
would be colder and harsher and that much of the plant life would soon be dying. The herds were culled and slaughtered to ensure that the remaining livestock would have enough to eat for the winter, while foods were stored for the brisk months ahead. It was the perfect time to meet and celebrate one last time before the weather made it much harder to do so. Great feasts were held on hilltops, like the Feast of Tara in Ireland, when the tribal chiefs gathered, games were played, dances held, and the doors to the otherworld were opened that the dead might be consulted and divinations cast for the coming year. Much merriment was made, and the people got drunk on beer. Anyone who has attended an Irish wake knows that little has changed; such rites of the dead are still steeped in both joy … and booze. As my good friend Bloody Mary loves to say, spirits
love
spirits, so always remember to have a toast to the ghost!

Costumes were worn and gourds were lit with candles—to frighten away evil spirits, or to light the way home for the beloved dead. I prefer the latter interpretation, especially when one considers the Obon festival of Japan, where candles are still lit to show the dead the way home. Anthropological research reveals that shamans in indigenous cultures still wear masks to become possessed by the spirits and the gods. Either way, these practices endure. Halloween costume balls are held throughout the world, and the jack-o-lanterns are still lit on countless doorsteps, though Americans now use the orange pumpkins indigenous to the new world instead of the original turnips.
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While Samhain is certainly the most recognized influence on the modern Halloween, it's not the only one. Scholars have detected the traces of the Roman holiday of Pomona—the early November festival of the goddess of fruits and seeds when apples—long a symbol of Witches—became an offering to the gods, and also the Parentalia, Lemuria, and Anthesteria referenced above, when both the beloved and not-so-beloved dead were honored and appeased. We have no written texts from the Celts themselves, and one of the earliest suggestions to be taken seriously that Samhain was a Celtic “Festival of the Dead” was made by social anthropologist James Frazer in his 1890
classic,
The Golden Bough
. Frazer usually gets the credit for connecting Samhain and the dead, but there was at least one other author before him making the same connection. In 1782, a British military surveyor, General Charles Vallancey, suggested that Samhain fell in the month of November because it was “the season appointed by the [Celtic] Druids for the solemn intercession of the quick, for the souls of the dead, or those who had departed this life within the space of the year” and that souls, “according to their merits or demerits in the life past were, aligned to re-enter the bodies of the human or brute species.”
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Frazer's scholarship has been called into question and Vallancey's even more so, but both make powerful arguments for an ancient Celtic time of the dead.

Historian Ronald Hutton, in his book
Stations of the Sun
, makes a compelling argument that records that prove a connection between Samhain and the dead are scarce. Hutton argues that Frazer may have assumed a Festival of the Dead based in part on the choice of the Church to place All Saints' Day on November 1 and that Frazer's assertion that the Church layered their holiday over an older pre-Christian one was weak. Hutton bases his argument in part on the fact that there were other dates of All Saints' Day prior to its placement on November 1—he focuses particularly on the date of May 13. However, Hutton seems unaware of Vallancey's earlier contributions, and also neglects to mention that May 13 was also the dark Roman festival of the dead known as Lemuria. Moreover, after establishing his point that All Saints' Day originated as a holiday to celebrate first the martyrs and later all of the saints, Hutton then argues that “the dead arrived later” in the form of All Souls' Day, apparently making the argument that All Saints was not a festival of the dead before this point.
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Yet, when you think about it, the martyrs and saints are all the spirits of people who are dead. While All Souls broadened the types of spirits Catholics were supposed to address in prayer, it certainly didn't alter the original nature of the holiday. As I said above, it makes more sense that the Catholics would have placed All Souls' Day on May 13 to encourage people to stop making offerings to the evil dead of Lemuria and instead honor only the lofty saints.