There is one given in the Anglo-Saxon calendar in which the spirits and the witches they meet knows to you. � the night between 31 October and the first November .The popular festivity of Halloween (from the contraction of All Hallows Eve that is the eve of Ognissanti): whose cimiteriali intrattenimenti in mask to topic lugubre, decorations and prescriptions made up of zucca in the last years have made rubble also in many restaurants and nocturnal premises of our Country.
Halloween , as we know it today, is the autumn carnival. A sabba unconventional, where to scare he is of obligation, where children in begging speed up dolciumi under the threat of innocents dispetti and where, sometimes, someone door the joke to the excess. A night in which it is felt sorry to taste the voluptuous side to us of the fear, in which s' they wear the cloth of the abitatori of the darknesses with the scope to exorcise them or ingraziarseli. � generally in this way that it illustrates it the America (if we think next to innumerevoli citations in the cinema, not only in the films horror ).
And in that macrocospic nation-display window the most ancient customs become commerce occasion. They are several, in fact, the storees specialize you that they supply also the smallest detail so that is not arrived to 31 October with the sguarnita house of the signs of the festivity. From the customs to decorations, the instruments in order to carve the zucche, which, second a legend, has meant tutt' a benign other that, than it does not have null to that seeing with the image of infantile candor evoked from the figure of the Great Cocomero than the Linus of the comic strips of Schulz one is obstinate to attend to the eve of November of every year with useless wakings in the garden.
It is told that the zucche, emptied and carved like lugubri masks within which come ignited a candle, reproduce the disfigured face of Jack O' Lantern , an individual dissoluto that the devil had raggirato with which had tightened a pact; which the devil, but, when the defunct Jack had been introduced to the hell, had hunted it with the launch of a burning coal that had dug it the face, where continues to burn. This is between the many storys that are tradition to recall, or to invent, the night of the eve of Ognissanti. But the story telling from the chilling contents it is diffused also in countries like Ireland, Scozia and England, where brumose climatic conditions offer ideal scenes to fantasies from the gloomy accents and that, being to the words of English umorista J.K. Jerome, seems to belong to a connaturato taste: "Null us power of attorney more satisfaction that to listen to anecdotes that speak about phantoms".
It was, between the other, in these Lands of the Nordeuropa, then dominion of the Celti, than the "dance macabra" of Halloween taken abbrivio the many centuries ago.
Halloween (written also Hallowe' en ) in the antiquity was Samhain ( Samain or Oidche Samhna ). One of the more important dates in the rituale calendar of the Celti.
It means the end of the summer and established the beginning of the year. On the sacred ground of Tare (a not far area from odierna the Dublino, where the archeologi they have characterized rocca the regale center of the principle-clergymen from the ancient Ireland), once every three years kept a Feis , one great assembly. This solemn festivity, that it re-united the smaller king of Tare and the other monarchs with to ollamhs (the poets whom to the court of the king they had vary roles like holders of the knowledge), began three days first Samhain and you finished three days after. Ancient gathering was celebrated and, than from the fifth century d.C. in ahead it will be held only to the beginning of the every reign of new monarch.
Many other recurrences of celtica mythology, however, come made to coincide with Samhain . In the year it was the moment of greater exchange between two worlds, the supernatural and the land, considers parallels you. Even if, to times, in conflict.The first one delivered attacks to the second, which it could not that to defend itself. Someone is told that Aillen Mac Midna, of the semidei Tuatha D� Danann, burnt Tare in occasion of every Samhain, until was not killed from Finn, heroic figure in leggendaria part but, says, also historically lived, of the saghe.
That last border of October was the magical night in which the creatures of the afterlife and the divinity that was thought they dwelled within mound or sid (tumuli, knolls) salted to ramble on lands of the dead woman them. It was believed that from the fatata quarry of Cruachain , in the county of Roscommon , fuoriuscisse an army of spirits guides to you from Morvigan the "Great Queen".
It was moreover in that period that, in Ireland, the sudditi ones paid the taxes to the monarchs. But it was be a matter also of pays of blood pours to you in honor of supernatural authorities. The season in which it came celebrated Samhain was the antechamber of the winter and immolating victims it sacrifices them, animals or human, the populations adored Crom , the God of the grain and agriculture."In a time in which the divinity it was seen like threatening,the propiziatori rituals could equally be terrible" write the student Daragh Smith.
And, in this dawn of November, the campaigns s' illuminated of sacred bonfires, Tlachtgha sayings ,and they were animated of dances inspired to the solar course.They were rising of prayer of thanks for the sun of the summer, of which the fire it was an obvious symbol, let alone propiziatoria for the fertility of the year to come, that therefore it would have assured the survival of the people celta. Which, more than a millenium than distance, is not from considering of all the extinct one if an inheritance of its customs lasts. Large casseforti of the tradition they are the angles more isolates to you and western of Ireland and Great Britain, where the conservation spirit is more tenacious. Even if, unavoidablly, what it has reached we is passed through the centuries not intact but like one plasmabile clay matter on which various civilizations they have impresso their print. The Christianity as an example, as it observes Nora studious Chadwick of the protocristiana scene in Ireland and Great Britain, tried "eclissare the practical ones pays some adopting and adapting to the Christian tradition cults already it consolidates to you".
The custom to ignite fires to fine October still is diffused in the rural zones, in the inviolate chain plates, in the places even indicates to you from the tradition, where the stratifications of ashes of pire ancient and modern remember those operated in the course of the history. And they are an evocative atmosphere test, to this purpose, the first pages of the novel "the Brughiera", of English Thomas Hardy: "While men and boys were working to construct the stack, something happened far away in the mass of shadow of the landscape. Single red and fire dazzles s' ignited, one after the other, punctuating the surrounding campaign. They were the bonfires that the inhabitants of other districts and other villages ignited in order to commemorate the same fact.Some, far, in a foggy atmosphere, irradiated fan make us of pales beams color straw. Others, large and near, tore the darkness with their scarlet ardor, similar to hurt in one black skin ".
In England to this ceremony the tradition of 5 has ended for sovrapporsi November, in which the Conspiracy of Powders is commemorated (the blanketed conspiracy with which, in 1605, a group of catholics had tried to blow up the Parliament in which the king Giacomo I� found itself), burning fantoccio a symbol of Guy Fawkes , the leader of the plotters."We know very well like the bonfires, similar to that one around to which they were collected today gladly the countrymen - Hardy still wrote - they are inheritance of one confusion of druidici rituals and ceremonies sassoni, rather than invention of the excited popular feeling from the Conspiracy of powders".
To ignite the fire is moreover the instinctive and persistent action that the man completes when, to the beginning of the winter, sound the curfew of the nature. It reveals one spontaneous, prometeica rebellion against the law that, to resorting of this season, died sentence the earth to inclemencies, cold darkness, poverties and.The black chaos sopraggiunge and of chains to you in the grembo of the earth says: "It is the light". |
