VirusHead

Enjoy this night of liminality and carnivale – but be safe!

My view of Halloween

Our Halloween traditions are just a snapshot image taken from a long history of blended beliefs, rituals and perspectives from diverse sources; some bits competed or converged with one another, while other aspects were forgotten or overwritten.

I enjoy the mix of all the folkloric and religious traces as part of an appreciation of a celebratory imagination, one that nourishes the human spirit (soul / heart / mind) and keeps us attuned to (and in atonement / at-one-moment with) our souls, our communities, and our planet.

Such imagination and celebration help keep us from becoming spiritless and heartless.

I love the food traditions (pumpkin pie, spice cake, mulled cider, apple everything).

There is nothing intrinsically evil about Halloween, although some people do take it as an opportunity to explore their “shadow side” (Jungian analysts believe this is preferable to repression, since it may contribute to better integration of the self).

Autumn is a time of reflection and remembering, and anyone sensitive to the flow of seasons can feel that. In America today, the celebration of harvest and reflective gratitude has been moved to Thanksgiving, while themes of honoring the dead have been dissipated out into various bank holidays and memorials of war. Figures of death appear in decorations of ghosts and skeletons, but the “holy evening” has been disconnected from most of its various source-roots and made a secular holiday.

Today, Halloween is driven primarily by the “trick or treat” tradition for small children.

“Tricks” are on the way out, and children get their “treats” under increasingly controlled conditions. Some places have replaced Halloween celebrations with “fall festivals.” As the leaves fall, adults can still have a bit of fun in the form of costume parties, although such celebrations have become much more subdued.

The neo-puritans who would now abolish Halloween after so many years of celebration in America would have to take a hint from Jehovah’s Witnesses to be consistent; they would have to stop celebrating the other holidays as well because all of the major holidays are composed of such mixtures. Ironically, some protestant churches honor the powers of transformation by celebrating “Reformation Day” (Martin Luther chose October 31, 1517 as the date upon which to post his Ninety-Five Theses).

I would like to see more frolic/dancing/revelry brought back into the holiday. We have become schizoid in this country, split between decadence and hypocritical self-righteousness. I would like to see more balance, more of a healthy middle ground of conscience and enjoyment.

I say “Boo”! Have we become so fearful even of our own? Are we so afraid of the company of people of all ages and backgrounds? How have we become so alienated from one another?

We share more in common than we tend to think. While we are thus divided, kept busy trying to survive, encouraged to distrust and even hate one another, we are all being robbed of our birthright.

The freedoms that we used to cherish, the rights we used to uphold, and even our viability as a secure nation are being systematically stolen from us. As crony capitalism (corporatism, fascism) in America increasingly devalues the individual in favor of corporate greed, our country is becoming just as corrupt as the instances of communism that we always opposed (and it has less to do with party/church affiliations than one might suppose).

As winter approaches, scattered and diverse traditions thousands of years old suggest that sometimes the metaphorical is real and the real is metamorphical; sometimes the dark is light and the light is dark; sometimes there are rhythmns and patterns to change; sometimes mysteries walk among us – and sometimes, there are twilight spaces where everything is a little more open to transformation.

Even as light wanes, we can share a meal together in community to celebrate what we have and to remember the best of what we have lost – and we can prepare ourselves for more difficult times to come with light and hope and gratitude for our belonging to all that is. As the nights get longer, this Halloween carnivale cheers me somewhat, and gives me hope for another turn of the cycle after this long hard winter will have been done.

World Tradition: Halloween, All Saints, All Souls, etc.

The word “Halloween” is taken from Hallowe’en, a contraction of “All Hallow’s Eve.”

“Hallow” is an old word meaning to treat as sacred or holy (as in “hallowed be thy name”), and e’en means evening. Hallowe’en therefore means an evening to treat as holy/sacred.

November 1 became “All Hallows Day” (”All Saints’ Day”), a Catholic day of observance in honor of saints. Originally held on May 1, it was moved in 834 in an attempt to christianize the festival of Samhain. In the year 1000, the Church designated November 2 “All Souls’ Day.” Christians would walk from village to village to ask for soul cakes (bread or pastry with currants), for which they promised to say prayers on behalf of the donors’ dead relatives to hasten their passage from limbo to heaven. All Souls’ also memorializes the dead from the Deluge (the biblical flood).

Similar holidays include Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), Teng Chieh (Lantern Festival), Yue Lan (Festival of the Hungry Ghosts), Chuseok, Mahalaya, Phi Ta Khon, and Alla Helgons dag. In Islam, the Night of Power (Laylat al-Qadr) falls on one of the last ten nights of Ramadan, most likely on one of the odd nights, especially the 27th night of the month. Muslims believe that this night is “better than a thousand months,” and some spend the entire night in prayer.

Um… Samhain?

Samhain (pronounced sow-inn or sow-ayn, sow rhymes with wow) is an ancient “turning point” or “doorway” celebration that marks the start of winter and the Celtic (Irish) New Year (”Samhuinn” or “Samhainn” = Hallow-tide). Samhain celebrated the last harvest of the fall, and the final reaping of what was sown (as in the figure of the Reaper).

The idea that “pagans worshipped the devil” was a construction of the christian church that aimed to suppress the native religions prevalent in Europe at the time.

The festival provided ways for people to physically and psychologically navigate the beginning of darkness and winter. Individual hearthfires were extinguished and relit from a common source to rebind the community. The 3-day festival of bonfires (literally bone-fires that consumed the feast-remains) recognized the cycle of death and renewal. Faeries as well as spirits of all kinds were imagined as particularly active at this season.

At the cusp of this turn of the seasonal tide, the boundaries between the worlds were considered to be most porous, allowing contact and exchange between them. Hallows Eve was/is thus a time to be attentive to death and endings, to venerate the dead, and to acknowledge their energy (or their DNA, if you prefer), which still flows in and around and through us.

At this liminal moment of magical potency, one might invoke spiritual transformation by expressing recognition and gratitude toward the sacred cycles, intentionally nurturing an atmosphere of protection and blessing.

Burying apples in the earth and leaving plates of harvest’s bounty outside the door were thought to nourish beloved spirits, while a candle placed in the window helped to light their way along the journey to the lands of eternal summer.

“The legislation directly conflicts with the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, requiring the government to obtain a warrant before reading the e-mail messages or listening to the telephone calls of its citizens, and to state with particularity where it intends to search and what it expects to find. Compounding these wrongs, Congress is moving in a haphazard fashion to provide a “get out of jail free card” to the telephone companies that violated the rights of their subscribers. Some in Congress argue that this law-breaking is forgivable because it was done to help the government in a time of crisis. But it’s impossible for Congress to know the motivations of these companies or to know how the government will use the private information it received from them. And it is not as though the telecommunications companies did not know that their actions were illegal.” – Studs Terkel, New York Times

Tell Congress: No Amnesty for Verizon and AT&T
Bush wants retroactive immunity for the telecom companies to thwart civil liberties lawsuits that threaten to expose his own lawbreaking. If these lawsuits aren’t allowed to go forward, we may never know the extent of the Bush administration’s illegal efforts to spy on American citizens without the required warrants.

“Why is the president of the United States trying to get the telecommunications companies off the hook for their illegal activity? He is supposed to be upholding laws, not encouraging companies to break them. Businesses that break the law should be held accountable. We expect these companies to keep our personal information private, and if they break the law, there should be consequences – not a re-write of the rule book. The House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees wisely rejected the president’s efforts to carry the water for the telecom companies and voted down an amendment that would add telecom amnesty to the bill. Members of Congress should not re-write laws just to get giant companies off the hook. They were elected to represent the American people, not big business.” – Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office

Tell your representatives to only pass a FISA modernization bill that has individualized warrants for people in the United States and NOT to provide telecom companies with immunity for breaking the law.

H.R. 3773, the “RESTORE Act of 2007,” currently being considered by the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees allows blanket, basket or program “warrants.” This means the government can vacuum up the international telephone calls and emails of Americans. Blanket, basket, program, no matter what these “warrants” are called, they aren’t really warrants at all, and they aren’t constitutional.

A very spiritual, devout and holy priest dies and is immediately swept up to heaven.

St. Peter greets him at the Pearly Gates, and says, “Hello, Father, we’ve been waiting for you for a long time. Welcome to Heaven! You are very well known here, and as a special reward, because you are such a spiritual and holy man, we’re going to grant you anything you wish even before we enter Heaven. What can I grant you?”

“Well”, the priest says, “I’ve always been a great admirer of the Virgin Mother. I’ve always wanted to ask her a question.”

St. Peter nods his head to one side, and lo and behold who should approach the priest but the Virgin Mary!

The priest is beside himself, and he manages to say, “Mother, I have always been a great admirer of yours, and have studied everything I could about you and followed your life as best I could. I have studied every painting and portrait ever made of you, and I’ve noticed that you are always portrayed with a slightly sad look on your face. I have always, always wondered what it was that made you sad. Would you please tell me?”

“Well”, says Mother Mary, “to tell the truth, I was really hoping for a girl.”

(thanks, Sharon P!)

Nancy A. Nord was nominated by President George W. Bush to be a commissioner of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) for a term that expires in October of 2012. The CPSC is supposed to protect the public against unreasonable risks of injury and death associated with consumer products. You know, lead. Things like that.

Nord is also the president of Executive Women in Government, a nonprofit professional women’s organization. Sorry, women.

In two different letters, Nancy Nord has asked lawmakers not to approve legislation that would increase the agency’s authority, double its budget and increase its ever more pathetic staff. She opposes increasing the maximum penalties for safety violations. She opposes making it easier for the government to make public reports of faulty products. She opposed protecting industry whistle-blowers. And of course she opposes prosecuting executives of companies that willfully violate laws.

Hello? Anyone home in America?

The agency has suffered from a steady decline in its budget and staffing in recent years. Its staff numbers about 420, about half its size in the 1980s. It has only one full-time employee to test toys. And 15 inspectors are assigned to police all imports of consumer products under the agency’s supervision, a marketplace that last year was valued at $614 billion.

I am ashamed to share a syllable of my name with Nancy Nord. My mother’s name is Nancy, too. I haven’t felt this bad since people started asking me if I was related to OJ Simpson because of a character he played. Sorry, children.

The very direction of North – what Nord means – is blasting its winds in her general direction.

Anyone who doesn’t think the agency needs more resources “does not understand the gravity of the situation and does not understand the concerns that America’s parents have for the safety of their children,” Pelosi said.

Government Bad. Corporations Good. Yar yar.

Family values? Children’s safety?

Lead, good. Whistleblowers bad.

Good government? Promote the general welfare?

Bah. We don’t need your stinkin’ children.

This question and answer session with Valerie Plame at the Washington Post is really worth a read.

Plame Wilson was online Tuesday, Oct. 30, at 1 p.m. ET to discuss her book, Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House, which details her CIA training, covert status, experiences, responsibilities, the outing and her life now. Portions of “Fair Game” are blacked-out and indicate, say the publishers, places where the CIA has demanded redactions. The extensive afterword by reporter Laura Rozen, drawn from interviews and the public record, is included to provide context to Plame Wilson’s story.

Here are some tidbits, but go read it.

If none of this had happened, I would be overseas right now, with my family, working on counterproliferation issues of great concern and interest to me.

Mr. Armitage has been in Washington for decades. In fact, he served at the CIA for some time. He should have known better than to “gossip” about me to journalists. However, his involvement, no matter how it might be characterized, does not preclude the fact that there was a simultaneous conspiracy “by many in the White House” in the words of Spec. Prosecutor Fitzgerald to undermine and discredit Joe Wilson.

As far as Armitage – don’t forget that Mr. Libby was convicted on obstruction of justice – meaning that the Prosecutor could not really get to the bottom of what happened.

I did not suggest nor recommend Joe Wilson, my husband, for the trip to Niger. A reports officer who knew of Joe’s bona fides (including several previous trips on behalf of the CIA) suggested Joe. When we went to our boss to tell him about the interest in the alleged sale of yellowcake from Niger to Iraq, he asked me to ask Joe when I went home that night to come into CIA Headquarters the next week to discuss what we should do. That was the extent of my involvement in Joe’s trip.

The CIA did a damage report after I was outed. That is standard procedure. I have not seen it, nor any members of Congress. However, I can say that the damage was serious.

I have never met Judith Miller. I think it’s fair to say that the vast majority of her reporting on the WMDs in Iraq in the run-up to the war has all been discredited. She relied heavily upon Iraqi exile Chalibi, who the CIA early and often knew was not a credible source, to say the least.

(About Dick Cheney) I think he has a very dangerous view of Executive Power and is simply wrong about how our Constitution should be interpreted.

While we expected the administration to go after Joe for his criticism of their case for war, we certainly did not expect them to commit treason by betraying my covert identity.