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Posted: October 11, 2011
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What
Real Witches Practice After Halloween
All Hallow's Eve Is More Than
Candy and Playtime For Some Members of Society.
Halloween comes and goes for
most of us. But for members of Wicca--one of the fastest
growing religions in the world--the season of Samhain is a
magic time.
 The
Halloween Sabbat (celebration) concludes for Wiccans on
November 1 with the final turn of the year-wheel. Mother
Earth nods a sad farewell to the god who will be reborn at
Yule (December 20), and the life cycle begins anew. This is
a time to honor the Earth Mother, remember the Ancients, and
revere the Horned god of the Hunt.
According to the Celtic
Almanac, the Wiccan year begins following Halloween. The
seasonal scenario that follows is reminiscent of the earth
goddess and dying-god cults of ancient civilizations.
* Yule is on December 20
and celebrates the goddess giving birth to the Sun god.
* The next season is Imbolc
and marks the recovery of the goddess after giving birth
to the god.
* The Spring Equinox (Ostara)
marks the first day of Spring. The goddess awakes as the
days grow longer and the light overtakes the darkness. The
goddess fills the earth with fertility.
* Beltane celebrates the
transformation of the boy god into manhood. He is filled
with lust for the goddess and lies with her in the grass.
The earth becomes pregnant with her vitality. Crops begin
to grow. Flowers bloom.
* Litha (midsummer) arrives
as the powers of nature escalate. The Earth Mother is
filled with fertility. Wiccans practice numerous kinds of
magic during this season.
* The next season is
Lughnasadh, the time of the first harvest. The Wiccan god
begins to lose his strength as the Sun rises higher each
day. The nights grow longer. The god begins to die.
* Mabon is the completion
of the harvest. The Wiccan god suffers death, draws back
into darkness, and waits to be reborn at Yule.
The Wicca year-cycle
described above is similar to concepts held by early pagans
who viewed the natural world with awe and superstition.
Ancients watched the changing of the seasons and wondered
about the life and death of crops. They perceived such
natural processes as mystic, and developed fertility cults
with gods and goddesses who died and were reborn. The
worship of the earth's "spirit" as a mother, and
the incarnation of the earth's fertility forces within dying
gods and goddesses, developed into one of the most
widespread forms of paganism in antiquity.
Whether it was Inanna of the
Sumerians, Ishtar of the Babylonians, or Fortuna of the
Romans, every civilization had a sect of religion based on
the embodiment of the earth's spirit as a caring
mother-goddess. The Egyptians worshipped Hathor in this way,
as did the Chinese, Shingmoo. The Germans worshipped Hertha
as the great Mother Earth, and the apostate Jews idolized
"the queen of heaven." In Greece, the queen of the
Olympian goddesses and Mother Earth was Hera. Before her was
Gaia (Gaea), the creator-mother earth, and beneath her were
many other earth goddesses including Demeter, Artemis,
Aphrodite, and Hecate.
MOTHER EARTH TODAY . . .
AND IN ANTIQUITY
 The
principal idea was, and evidently still is among Wiccans,
that the Earth is a sentient being. The ancient and
universally accepted idea that the "living Earth"
was also a fertile mother was conceptualized in different
ways and in various goddess myths and images throughout the
ancient world. In The Golden Asse, by second century
Roman philosopher Lucius Apuleius, the spirit of the earth
was perceived as a feminine force that could express itself
at various times and to different people within the goddess
mothers. Note how Lucius prays to the earth spirit:
O blessed Queene of
Heaven, whether thou be the Dame Ceres [Demeter] which art
the original and motherly source of all fruitful things in
earth, who after the finding of thy daughter Proserpina
[Persephone], through thy great joy which thou diddest
presently conceive, madest barraine and unfruitful ground
to be plowed and sowne, and now thou inhabitest in the
land of Eleusie [Eleusis]; or whether thou be the
celestiall Venus [or] horrible Proserpina, thou hast the
power to stoppe and put away the invasion of the hags and
ghoasts which appeare unto men, and to keep them downe in
the closures [womb] of the earth; thou which nourishest
all the fruits of the world by thy vigor and force; with
whatsoever name is or fashion it is lawful to call upon
thee, I pray thee, to end my great travaile.
The earth spirit responds to
Lucius:
Behold Lucius I am come,
thy weeping and prayers hath mooved me to succour thee. I
am she that is the natural mother of all things, mistresse
and governesse of all the elements, the initial progeny of
worlds, chiefe of powers divine, Queene of heaven, the
principall of the Gods celestiall, the light of the
goddesses: at my will the planets of the ayre [air], the
wholesome winds of the Seas, and the silence of hell be
disposed; my name, my divinity is adored throughout all
the world in divers manners, in variable customes and in
many names, for the Phrygians call me the mother of the
Gods: the Athenians, Minerva: the Cyprians, Venus: the
Candians, Diana: the Sicilians, Proserpina: the Eleusians,
Ceres: some Juno, other Bellona, other Hecate: and
principally the aethiopians, Queene Isis.
One could assume, based on
such texts, that a single spiritual source (or realm)
energized the many goddess myths. Likewise, in the ancient
Hymn, To Earth, The Mother Of All, Homer illustrates
how the earth-spirit was universally involved in the affairs
and lives of nations. Through Homer's dedication to the
earth we discover how far-reaching and omnipresent the
mother-earth spirit was thought to be:
I will sing of well
founded Earth, mother of all, eldest of all beings. She
feeds all creatures that are in the world, all that go
upon the goodly land, and all that are in the paths of the
seas, and all that fly: all these are fed by her store.
Through you, O queen, men are blessed in their children
and blessed in their harvests, and to you it belongs to
give means of life to mortal men and to take it away.
Happy is the man whom you delight to honour! He hath all
things abundantly: his fruitful land is laden with corn,
his pastures are covered with cattle, and his house is
filled with good things. Such men rule orderly in their
cities of fair women: great riches and wealth follow them:
their sons exult with ever-fresh delight, and their
daughters in flower-laden bands play and skip merrily over
the soft flowers of the field. Thus it is with those whom
you honour O holy goddess, bountiful spirit. Hail, mother
of the gods, wife of starry Heaven; freely bestow upon me
for this my song substance that cheers the heart! And now
I will remember you and another song also.
From these and other ancient
records, it is obvious that the earth was more than an
agricultural or herbaceous facility to the pagans. She was
the personable and "eldest of all beings," the
"holy goddess," the "bountiful spirit,"
the all-nourishing mother of men who manifested herself
within the popular idols and mother goddesses.
Modern Wiccans and neo-pagans
perceive the earth similarly, often referring to the earth
as Gaia--a living, caring entity. We are told that people
are just one of Mother Earth's species, not her dominators.
She provides the living biosphere -- the region on, above,
and below her surface where created things, both physical
and spiritual, live. During the Samhain sabbot (Halloween),
pagans celebrate the time when the veil between the living
and the dead is at its thinnest, a period when those spirits
beneath Gaia's surface can more easily communicate with the
living.
SOMETHING WICCA THIS WAY
COMES
 Wiccans
might find it interesting that many Christian theologians
agree with the idea that the physical earth contains
spiritual forces. For instance, in the Book of Revelation,
chapter nine and verse fourteen, we read of "the four
angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates."
Likewise, in Job 26:5, we find "Dead things are formed
from under the waters." The literal Hebrew translation
says, "The Rafa (fallen angels) are made to writhe from
beneath the waters."
Additional biblical
references indicate that the earth is a kind of holding
tank, or prison, where God has bound certain fallen
entities. (2 Pet. 2:4; Jude 6) That such fallen spirits seek
to communicate with, or participate in the affairs of
humanity, is defined in Scripture. The Hebrew people were
warned that earth spirits pretending to be gods might seek
communion with men, and, when the witch of Endor
communicated with the same, they ascended up from "out
of the earth" (1 Sam. 28:13). It would seem therefore,
based on such Scriptures, that the dynamic or energy behind
the earth-goddess-spirits of Halloween is indeed real, and,
according to Christian doctrine, identical with the legions
of fallen spiritual forces bound within the earth.
As in antiquity, those who
practice modern paganism are guilty of worshipping
"devils" (Rev. 9:20). The dogma once embraced and
that continues through such earth-centric paganism as Wicca
is defined in scriptures as the "doctrines of
devils." The Apostle Paul said, "the things which
the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils" (1
Cor. 10:20).
In Acts 7:41-42 (Jerusalem
Bible), it describes those who worship idols as joining
themselves to the "army of heaven" [stratos, the
"fallen angel army"], and Psalm 96:5 concludes,
"all the gods of the nations are idols" (elilim,
LXX daimonia [demons]). Thus, pagan images, such as those
that represented the ancient gods and goddesses were "elilim"
(empty, nothing, vanity), but behind the empty idols were
the living dynamics of idolatry and spiritual objects of
pagan adoration: demons.
Because the Bible clearly
defines such goddess worship as the homage of demons, and
since demons are eternal personalities that desire the
worship of humans, it is fair to characterize Wiccan
deities, including the god, goddess, and Horned god of the
Hunt, as neo-pagan titles attributed to demon spirits.
WITCHES ARE PEOPLE FOR
WHOM CHRIST DIED
The New Testament tells the
story of presenting the Gospel to pagans. It records
conversions to Christ and the abandonment of earth-centered
goddess cults. So powerful was the spread of the early
Christian faith that pagan religions that had dominated the
Middle East for thousands of years, crumbled. The cold
embrace of Mother Earth could not match the magnetic warmth
of the love of God. In fact, the last recorded utterance of
the oracle at Delphi seems to indicate the spirit of the
Olympians understood he was no match for Jesus. From Man,
Myth & Magic, we read:
"Apollo delivered
his last oracle in the year 362 AD, to the physician of
the Emperor Julian, the Byzantine ruler who tried to
restore paganism after Christianity had become the
official religion of the Byzantine Empire. 'Tell the
King,' said the oracle, 'that the curiously built temple
has fallen to the ground, that bright Apollo no longer has
a roof over his head, or prophetic laurel, or babbling
spring. Yes, even the murmuring water has dried up.'"
The worship of Diana in
Ephesus was another stronghold of earth-centered goddess
cults. Dianic witchcraft was the greatest unifying religion
among all pagan people up to that time. It took 220 years to
build the massive temple to Diana in Ephesus.  Yet
when Paul preached the Gospel of Jesus to the Ephesians,
"Many of them also which used curious arts brought
their books together, and burned them before all men: and
they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand
pieces of silver. So mightily grew the word of God and
prevailed" (Acts 19:17-20).
May we with joy declare such
a life-changing Gospel and not be ashamed "of the
gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation
to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to
the Greek" (Rom. 1:16).
To help
pastors, Christian education directors, Sunday School
teachers and ministry leaders address such topics this
Halloween, a 270 page teachers guide and two books on the
subject in pdf format can be downloaded at no cost on the
God's Ghostbusters page at http://survivormall.com/thedeparture-3-4.aspx
by simply right clicking the link and "saving as"
to ones computer.
The new
best selling book Gods Ghostbusters is also
available on the site.
ALSO SEE:
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