Best Traveling Camera Backback

The truth about Halloween.

For thousands of years, the period that marks the halfway point between the autumnal equinox and solstice Winter has been identified as important in many cultures, this is because our ancestors were still able to notice and see what we see now because of our modern lifestyle. This period marked the end of the harvest and early winter when the days became shorter and the nights beginning the longest long, harsh winter.

In everyday life we \u200b\u200bthink it is not important the passage of the seasons, not to worry because the winter arrives and will have to go hunting, there is no longer the custom of honoring our ancestors and spirits visit is something you see on TV. However, despite the mirage of our modern security is still part of that whole has enveloped us since the beginning of time.

These parties in the present have turned to jokes and sweet, ruled by marketing, have different origins, one of them, Samhain was considered as the beginning of the Celtic year. Calendar divided the year into two halves, the dark half the lunar cycle which began in October-November (Samonios) and half clear that began with the April-May lunation (Giamonios). It was the dark half the year as beginning this without giving any negative connotation now gives the dark Christian influence. Understood the darkness as The Beginning and The End, the womb, where everything is created and where it will: in the loving arms of Mother Earth to be transformed death into new life. This is also why the spirits of the dead was a matter for them in this time of year: it was believed that the boundary separating the living and the dead disappeared in this time, and so the spirits could roam freely around the world. Food offered to the spirits for two purposes: one was to share with their families killed and another was to appease the wandering spirits that they could be evil spirits were not only the dead who could move into the world of the living but entities of another nature.

When Christianity triumphed over the pagan peoples, the efforts of the Catholic Church to remove these beliefs and traditions were not successful and that's how Samhain became the eve of All Saints "All hallows Eve" that contraction the word became "Halloween."

Herne the Hunter

All these fears and doubts were beginning to legends such as The Night Parade, whose theme is repeated in several places in Europe: Ireland, England, Wales and Scotland, as well as Germany, France and some parts of northern Peninsular (Iberian). The Hunter is the God of the Hunt and at the same time the God of death in Wales Gwyn ap Nudd was called and Ireland, Gaelic language Cumhaim Finn mac. The interesting thing about this myth is what hunting the hunter: souls. Yes, this person was in charge of collecting the souls of the dead in the battlefields. In some parts of England is called "Herne the hunter," perhaps his most famous name, and even today it is said that his appearance predicts some misfortune for the country or the monarchy.

The Legend of Jack: turnips, pumpkins!

The Irish had a habit of turnips to within a yard to light the way of their dead relatives and ward off evil spirits, which to come to America to find the pumpkins became in what is now Halloween pumpkins. A curious 18-century Irish tale picks up this tradition in the form of the famous Jack.


Many, many years, a mean and tough Irishman named Jack, had the misfortune to meet the devil in a tavern on Halloween. Jack, known drunk, drank a lot but could trick the devil offering his soul for a nightcap. The devil was transformed into a coin to pay the bartender, but Jack quickly took it and put it in your wallet. As Jack had a cross in his purse, the Devil could not return to its original shape. Jack would not go to hell until he promised not ask his soul in 10 years. The devil had no choice but to give Jack his claim.



Ten years later, Jack met the Devil in the countryside. The devil was ready to take the soul of Jack, but Jack thought quickly and said: "I will gladly, but before you do it, bring me the apple tree that is in that please?". The devil thought he had nothing to lose, and jumped reached the tree, but before the devil it knew, Jack had quickly carved a cross in the trunk of the tree, then the Devil could not come down.


Jack
the devil made him promise never to ask him his soul back. The devil had no choice but to aceptar.Jack died a few years later, but could not enter heaven, because during his life had been a gulf, a drunkard and a swindler. But when he tried to enter, at least, in the dreadful hell, the devil had to send it back because I could not take his soul (he promised). "Where will I go now?" Asked Jack, and the devil replied, "Go back where you came from."




The way back was dark and terrible wind would not let him see anything .. The Devil threw Jack a burning coal directly to hell, to be guided in the darkness, and Jack put in a turnip he was eating, so they do not go out with viento.Jack was doomed to wander forever in darkness. ..