Should I Celebrate Halloween? Find out about it Origins.

As Halloween approaches, I often over hear many conversations and the debate of the whole Halloween issue as to should one partake in the festivities or the proverbial ' it's an evil day' and some want no part of it.

As with everything, one should be aware/educated of it's Origins:

Let's become more informed of the Origins of this 'Halloween' thing. First, Halloween or All Hallows' (Eve)
is celebrated on the night of October 31 with traditional activities such as bonfires, costume parties, trick or treating, jack-o-lanterns and haunted houses.

Halloween has it's origins in the ancient Celtic festival known as Samhain (sow-win). The Samhain festival celebrated the end of the harvest season in Gaelic culture. This is the time of the season was used to take stock of supplies and prepare for the winter. The Gaels believed that October 31 was the boundaries between both worlds of the living and the dead overlapped and that the deceased would come back to life and cause havoc like illness and/or damage crops. It initiates the triduum of Hallowmas, the time in the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead, including saints (hallows), martyrs, and all the faithful departed believers.^[7]This to me seems more like a superstition than a fact.

In the eighth century, Pope Gregory III designated November 1 as a time to honor all saints and martyrs; the holiday, All Saints’ Day, incorporated some of the traditions of Samhain. The evening before was known as All Hallows’ Eve and later Halloween. Over time, Halloween evolved into a secular, community-based event characterized by child-friendly activities such as trick-or-treating. 

Halloween didn't really become popular in North America until the 1930's. Yet early national attention to trick or treat was given in October 1947. This so-called holiday is right up there with Christmas, and is gaining in popularity. I think like Christmas,  it brings out the child in us and more and more adults are enjoying this particular holiday. So, with all that said, and you now have the basic origin, the question still remains. Of course I can't tell you what to celebrate and what not to, all I can do is present you with some of the facts. Seems like society has taken this and made it into something more sinister than it's original origins.
Not to be naive, I'm sure there are some terrible things going on but you have to blame that on society and not the origins of this holiday in it's entirety.  

5 Things you might not have known about Halloween

1) Halloween Is The Second Highest Grossing Commercial Holiday After Christmas
What used to be just a singular holiday with minimal things to purchase has turned into an entire "Halloween Season." Between decorative lights and lawn ornaments, elaborate costumes and loads of candy, the average American spends a pretty penny on this fall holiday. However popular Halloween has become, the recession has affected spending for this year's spooky night. Spending is down, according the the National Retail Federation. Shoppers will spend an average of $56.31 on the holiday compared to $66.54 in 2008. Some ways people are cutting down include making homemade costumes, using last year's decorations and buying less expensive candies. For the children's sake, let's hope everyone doesn't resort to giving out apples and pennies. Didn't you just hate that as a kid?
2) Harry Houdini Died On October 31, 1926
The famous magician was killed (accidentally) by a McGill University student named J. Gordon Whitehead who was hitting him in the stomach repeatedly as part of a stunt. A week later he died of peritonitis from a ruptured appendix. Despite acute appendicitis, Houdini refused to seek medical treatment.
3) There's A Phobia For That
Samhainophobia is an intense and persistent fear of Halloween that can cause panic attacks in sufferers. Other relevant phobias for this time of year: wiccaphobia (fear of witches), phasmophobia (fear of ghosts), and coimetrophobia (fear of cemeteries).
4) The First Jack-O-Lanterns Weren't Made Out Of Pumpkins
They were originally hollowed-out turnips. The modern practiced mutated from the Irish tradition of carving faces of the the dead onto the gourds and putting candles inside to make them glow. These days your Jack-O-Lantern is most made out of a pumpkin, which most likely came from Illinois--a state that grew 542 million pounds of pumpkin in 2007.
5) One Quarter Of All The Candy Sold Annually Is For Halloween Night
Yes, no matter how much we eat for Christmas and Thanksgiving, Halloween has corned the market on candy. As a country we consume 20 million pounds of candy corn a year. Handing out Halloween treats is the perfect excuse to eat some too, as four-in-ten (41%) adults admit that they sneak sweets from their own candy bowl. And if you're a kid, hang on to your basket, because home is where the candy thief is as 90% of parents admit to sneaking goodies from their kids' Halloween trick-or-treat bags. But whether your stealing some, handing out some or having yours stolen, chances are you'll get your hands (or miss getting your hands) on a Snickers bar, it has been the number 1 Halloween candy for years. 

The choice is yours!

WHO are the Anunnaki? Brief Overview

Who are the ANUNNAKI?

Here is a brief Wiki definition: I will go into depth with this in another post.


The Anunnaki (also transcribed as: Anunna, Anunnaku, Ananaki and other variations) are a group of deities in ancient Mesopotamian cultures (i.e. Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian, and Babylonian). The name is variously written "^da-nuna", "^da-nuna-ke₄-ne", or "^da-nun-na", meaning something to the effect of "those of royal blood"^[1] or "princely offspring".^[2] According to The Oxford Companion to World Mythology, the Anunnaki "are the Sumerian deities of the old primordial line; they are chthonic deities of fertility, associated eventually with the underworld, where they became judges. They take their name from the old sky god An (Anu). ^[3]
Their relation to the group of gods known as the Igigi is unclear – at times the names are used synonymously but in the Atra-Hasis flood myth the Igigi are the sixth generation of the Gods who have to work for the Anunnaki, rebelling after 40 days and replaced by the creation of humans.^[4]
Jeremy Black and Anthony Green offer a slightly different perspective on the Igigi and the Anunnaki, writing that "lgigu or Igigi is a term introduced in the Old Babylonian Period as a name for the (ten) "great gods". While it sometimes kept that sense in later periods, from Middle Assyrian and Babylonian times on it is generally used to refer to the gods of heaven collectively, just as the term Anunnakku (Anuna) was later used to refer to the gods of the underworld. In the Epic of Creation, it is said that there are 300 lgigu of heaven."^[5]
The Anunnaki appear in the Babylonian creation myth, Enuma Elish.^[6] In the late version magnifying Marduk, after the creation of mankind, Marduk divides the Anunnaki and assigns them to their proper stations, three hundred in heaven, three hundred on the earth. In gratitude, the Anunnaki, the "Great Gods", built Esagila, the splendid: "They raised high the head of Esagila equaling Apsu. Having built a stage-tower as high as Apsu, they set up in it an abode for Marduk, Enlil, Ea." Then they built their own shrines.
The Annunaki are mentioned in The Epic of Gilgamesh when Utnapishtim tells the story of the flood. The seven judges of hell are called the Annunaki, and they set the land aflame as the storm is approaching.^[7]
According to later Assyrian and Babylonian myth, the Anunnaki were the children of Anu and Ki, brother and sister gods, themselves the children of Anshar and Kishar (Skypivot and Earthpivot, the Celestial poles), who in turn were the children of Lahamu and Lahmu ("the muddy ones"), names given to the gatekeepers of the Abzu (House of Far Waters) temple at Eridu, the site at which the creation was thought to have occurred. Finally, Lahamu and Lahmu were the children of Tiamat (Goddess of the Ocean) and Abzu (God of Fresh Water).

Metaphysical Interpretations of the Bible

Metaphysical  Interpretations of the Bible

 

Based on  

Thomas Troward's 'Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning' 

Thomas Troward, late Divisional Judge, Punjah, India, is recognized as one of the greatest authorities on the subject of Mental Science. His sincerity, the lucidity and profoundity of this thought, his great ability to make the complex simple, his profound faith and complete devotion to truth, made him a rare messenger of G-d.

     Troward opens his Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning by saying, The Bible Is the Book of the Emancipation of Man. Really? I say. Maybe to some degree.

Here is and ex cert from the book, Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life:

We all remember that Jesus admonished his followers: Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. He had already located the Kingdom of Heaven within. Moses affirmed that there is a creative word in our own mouth which is the arbiter of our fate. Again we are told that we shall decree a thing and it will happen; that our word will not return unto us void but that is shall accomplish and prosper.

Troward tells us that these promises are based on the idea of our acquiring a certain type of information. Jesus declared that it depends on our keeping his sayings; Job said that it depends on a right interpretation of the meaning of some law or presence in nature, and Moses said that the gift which he offered his followers would be either a blessing or a curse, according to whether or not they kept the Commandments.

Just what does these saying mean, and what are these Commandments> It is evident that they must have something to do with Universal Truth and our relationship to It. The Bible begins with the simple proposition that the Creative Intelligence of the Universe, which it call G-d, is pure, evenly-distributed Spirit, Mind, or Intelligence. The only instrument of Mind is the movement of Its Intelligence within Itself. This we call thought or contemplation. the Bible clearly states that creation is the result of the Word of G-d.

The Bible assumes a Law of Mind through which Creative Intelligence works to produce form, thus giving us a trinity which we call The Thing, the Way It Works and What It Does. From beginning to end the Bible teaches that everything which happens in our lives depends on an understanding of the right relationship between the Universe and ourselves.It assumes that just as G-d, or the Creative Spirit, is a Trinity, so is man a trinity; spirit, soul, and body. In other words man is a microcosm within a macrocosm; a little world with a big world.  He partakes of the nature of the Creative Principle. This is neither by preference nor by compulsion.Thought is creative not because we will it so but because it is its nature to be creative.

The Bible teaches what might be called a law of parallels. That is, the physical universe is an out-picturing of a mental universe; laws of mind are just as tangible as are laws of physics. Of course both are invisible. The invisible is always the cause of the visible. Spirit passes from the Universal into an individualized consciousness. Whatever form the consciousness of Spirit takes it is always in accord with One Primary Law. The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.

If you want to begin to make changes in your life, the above mentioned book is a good first step.

Happy reading!