On the Occasion of Halloween

I want to speak on this occasion to a comment left by our friend Lars Walker in the Níðstöng Pole post below. Halloween seems like the right time to discuss it.

Lars Walker said...

Speaking purely as a saga reader, without any more credentials than a lifetime of interest in the subject, I have a theory that putting a head on an inanimate object (Viking ships would be an example) transformed them magically into magical creatures, which would be empowered by the magic of the runes. Thus the nidstang becomes a living witch-being, constantly cursing the object of the curse.

I grieve over the slide of the Icelanders, and other Europeans, into pre-Christian magic. They will suffer for this, not only in eternity, but in this life. I take no pleasure in saying it.

To the first point, I definitely think there is something to that. I wrote an essay years ago called The Smell of Death that also spoke to the power of the severed head, both to create the impression of a being and to destroy it: 

Today, among Americans, only hunters have encountered this directly. It comes in the time when you are cleaning a kill. You cut the head from the body, and hold it in your hand. Though you slew the beast yourself, though your own knife did the cutting, seeing the head disjoined from the body is the most disquieting experience it is easy to know.

Indeed, the hunter finds, it is as if the whole power of the animal were in the head. The body, with the head set aside, no longer really resembles an animal at all. It is plainly dinner, and a hide to use as a blanket in winter.

We do not react to the severed leg as we do a severed head: a drumstick is a delight to the eye; the haunch of a deer or a pig both looks and smells fine as it roasts on the fire. Or think of a fish, if you have ever had one served as they serve it in China: with the head still attached. It is a very different experience to eat such a one, than to eat a fillet.

This is why some hunters take the heads of their beasts, and place them as trophies upon the wall. It is why the ancient Gael took the head of his famous and noble foe, and tied it by its own braids to his chariot as a warning to others. It is why the more ancient Celt built temples to the severed head, with alcoves and emplacements specially constructed for displaying honored skulls.

It is why we have legends of Mimir, and Celtic tales of other severed heads that spoke wisdom to the wise. They conversed with us from the realm of death; they kept the power of great men.

The second of his points, though, is the one I wanted to discuss on Halloween, that day of Celtic rather than Icelandic carry-over of magic and surviving echoes of pre-Christian traditions (well, and Yule; but we'll get there in due time). 

For one thing, Icelandic magic has flourished throughout the Christian period: consider the Galdrabók. Scholars estimate it to be from around 1600, which is to say six centuries after Iceland was Christianized (by elective choice, rather than conquest or imposition from a ruling king). It retains the names of some pre-Christian beings, but also uses names that are explicitly from the Christian tradition. I wouldn't say that the thing that is wrong with it is that it isn't Christian enough; indeed, the beseeching of the aid of Satan in working one's will on the world is far more troubling than any reference to an elder god. 

Tonight I will perform Halloween celebrations in that most-American, and least-religious, way: I will be at the VFD distributing candy to children dressed up in costumes. There is exactly nothing of the religious aspect left there: we are neither burning fires to welcome the darkest time of the year, nor attending midnight Mass to celebrate the Feast of All Souls. Yet I don't think there's anything wrong with this at all; we are giving some joy to children in a way that lets their parents know that the gifts they are receiving will be safe and trustworthy. 

Theologically and metaphysically, I think of Matthew 18:18. The power to bind and loose is a kind of magic, too: a divine grant of it, an assent to support a working of the will that will hold in this world and the next. There is some debate about who precisely was granted this power. I think the Orthodox position is that it belongs to the Church by apostolic succession (leaving aside the practical dispute among the churches about which one is entitled to wield it). Yet I have heard even a Roman Catholic priest -- a Franciscan -- suggest that the power there belongs to any Christians acting in concert; the next verse seems to say that explicitly, although in such matters interpretation even of the apparently explicit is always contentious. 

Such a wide interpretation is defensible: perhaps, being commanded to love one another as ourselves and even our enemies as ourselves, we might all wish for a broad power to loose. Yet then there is also the question of what to bind, which would be similarly broadly granted on that interpretation. The Church's stronger position makes more practical sense: if there is an authority that alone has the power, then you won't get the problem of one group of nuns deciding to bind something and another one deciding to loose it. 

I think there are more pragmatic than theological problems with a broad notion of forgiveness. It is plausible to me that God would want Hell to be empty, and would not wish to see anyone suffer eternally. Here on earth, however, we seem to need some controls on human behavior: it would be helpful to enlist the church in that, many societies have thought; it would even be decent, as it would provide an alternate source of authority to counterbalance that of the state where the state grows overweening. Of course there is the problem that the church could merely choose to reinforce the overweening state: that was what Mussolini wanted, more or less. In such a case, a rebel tradition that preaches wild forgiveness would be welcome. 

I leave all of this as matter for reflection, and discussion if you like, on this All Hallows Eve.