Vero Beach Shipwreck Gold

Treasure hunters are still finding gold coins from a Spanish fleet that sank off Vero Beach, Florida in 1715. The most recent discoveries: over 200 coins recovered about 100 feet offshore, in only six feet of water.

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Recently salvaged shipwreck gold from 1715 Plate Fleet reaches market

Coin World, October 7, 2016

The Truth About Halloween

A Christian friend once told me that he didn't like Halloween because it was "the Devil's holiday." That struck me as dreadfully misinformed, but when I tried to set him straight, I found I wasn't quite sure of the facts. Thus began my one-man crusade to uncover the truth about Halloween. 

Pagan Festival of the Dead
In the Catholic liturgy, Halloween is the same day as All Hallow's Eve. According to folklore scholar Joseph Campbell:  

"The day after Hallowe’en is All Saints’ Day, followed by All Souls’ Day. In Europe on these days people go to the graves of their beloved ones who have passed away. Hallowe’en, the eve of the holy days (that’s what the word means), is a festival of the ancient Celtic world particularly... In the Celtic world—the world with which Hallowe’en is associated—it is the dead who come to visit the homes. Hallowe’en is the night of the re-entry of the dead into their domiciles, visiting again the people with whom they had dwelled." (Joseph Campbell on the Roots of Halloween - The Daily Beast)

Looking further back, scholars believe the historical origin of Halloween lies in the Celtic festival of Samhain. Larousse World Mythology refers to October 31 as "Samhain's feast." In his monumental work The Golden Bough, Sir James Frazer refers to Samhain as "an ancient pagan festival of the dead": 

"Halloween seems to have been the night which marks the transition from autumn to winter... when the souls of the departed were supposed to revisit their old homes in order to warm themselves by the fire and comfort themselves with the good cheer provided for them by their affectionate kinsfolk." (The Golden Bough - A Study in Magic and Religion, Sir James George Frazer)

Frazer states that on Samhain, the Celts used "manifold methods of divination... for the purpose of ascertaining their destiny in the coming year." He also suggests  that it may have been the Celtic new year.  Nora Chadwick's excellent book The Celts also describes Samhain as "the beginning of the Celtic year, when any barriers between man and the supernatural were lowered." 

Going beyond dead relatives, there was a further supernatural side to Samhain, as Frazer points out: 

"It is not only the souls of the departed who are supposed to be hovering unseen... Witches then speed on their errands of mischief... the fairies, too, are all let loose, and hobgoblins of every sort roam freely about." 

Chadwick puts this into perspective by pointing out "the naturalness with which men, women and the gods to pass in and out of the natural and supernatural spheres (in Celtic mythology). In many circumstances, there does not seem to have been any barrier." 

Based on the above, it's hard to make the case that Halloween is the Devil's holiday. Rather, Halloween seems more like a relic of an earlier belief system, in which looser rules were thought to be in effect on this one day of the year. 

The Lord of the Dead
A diabolical controversy erupted when I consulted The World Book Encyclopedia, the fount of all knowledge when I was a child. The World Book describes Samhain as "the festival of the Celtic god Samhain, lord of the dead." Could this "lord of the dead" be an earlier representation of Satan? 

A detailed treatment of that subject by the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance maintains that there never was a Celtic lord of the dead called Samhain. Rather, they say, this was an 18th-century author's error that has been perpetuated by the popular media. 

Cernunnos, the horned god

That appears to be the case. After further searching, I found no scholarly source which mentions a Celtic god called Samhain. The Celts did worship a horned god, Cernunnos. He was the lord of wild things, according to The Encyclopedia Britannica. Some say he was the Celts' god of fertility, life, animals, wealth, and the underworld. To my mind, that description is too multi-faceted to support a belief in Cernunnos as an evil supernatural being.

What then was the original source of the connection between Halloween and the Devil? The most satisfying explanation I have found is that of tensions between early Christianity and the pagan religions which preceded it:   

"(The feast of) Samhain, with its emphasis on the supernatural, was decidedly pagan. While missionaries identified their holy days with those observed by the Celts, they branded the earlier religion's supernatural deities as evil, and associated them with the devil. As representatives of the rival religion, Druids were considered evil worshippers of devilish or demonic gods and spirits. The Celtic underworld inevitably became identified with the Christian Hell." (Halloween: The Fantasy and Folklore of All Hallows by Jack Santino, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress)

Here, perhaps, we have come to the heart of the matter: an ancient pagan festival of the dead returning from the underworld, later characterized by Christians as a night when evil beings from Hell are let loose. It's only one step from this explanation to that of "the Devil's holiday."  

The Old Devil
Unless my sketchy research has missed something,  it seems we safely can lay to rest the notion that Halloween is the Devil's holiday -- a conclusion made easier by the fact that I don't believe in "the ol' Devil" (as my granny used to call him) anyway. I welcome any information or opinions to the contrary. Just share your thoughts by leaving a comment in the space provided below. And have a frightfully happy Halloween.  

Further Reading

• All Hallows Eve - Catholic Education Resource Center
• All Saints Day - The Catholic Encyclopedia
• Cernunnos - The Encyclopedia Britannica
• Halloween's Celtic Roots - The Archaeological Institute of America 
• Halloween in Scotland, by Ben Johnson: article published in History UK - The History and Heritage Accommodation Guide
• Halloween, Samhain, All Saints Day - The Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance 
• Samhain: Season of Death and Renewal, by Alexei Kondratiev: article published in An Tríbhís Mhór: The IMBAS Journal of Celtic Reconstructionism, volume 2, issue 1/2

The Stephen King Renaissance

Author Stephen King’s career has been marked by enormous output paired with repeated tragedy and recovery. His latest comeback is, to this longtime reader, the most surprising of all.

King has experienced a remarkable burst of creative energy in the last few years. His productivity alone is surprising -- six novels in three years – but what’s even more impressive is the quality of these recent books. I found them to be superior to anything he has produced for decades.

The King renaissance began in 2013 with Doctor Sleep, winner of the Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers Association. In this sequel to one of his best-known works, we’re reintroduced to Danny Torrance, who escaped the haunted Overlook Hotel as a child in The Shining (1977). Danny is a troubled adult now, drifting through life in a series of menial jobs but with precognitive powers still intact. 

Also in 2013, King followed this strong performance with Joyland, the story of a college student who spends his summer vacation working in an amusement park. Naturally, the funhouse is rumored to be haunted. “Who dares to enter the Funhouse of Fear?” asks the teaser on the cover. King has said he built the entire 282-page story from a single image he carried in his mind for 20 years: that of a boy in a wheelchair flying a kite on a beach.

The amusement park theme reappears in King’s 2014 novel Revival. It’s the tale of a church pastor who conducts esoteric experiments on unsuspecting subjects culled from carnivals and tent revivals, becoming an amusement park attraction and evangelist along the way. A supernatural element appears at the very end, but even without this nod to his fan base King’s strong storytelling carries book tale along in fine fashion.

That same year, King published Mr. Mercedes (2014) a straightforward crime novel about a retired detective on the trail of a serial killer. Something of a bold departure for King, with no horror elements at all, this novel won the Edgar Allen Poe award from the Mystery Writers of America. The central character and his crew reappear in Finders Keepers and End of Watch, both published in 2016.

Six novels in three years. It’s a marvel that King can keep up this level of quantity and quality at this stage of his career. This is a writer who overcame multiple substance abuse problems in the 1980s, survived a near-fatal car accident in 1999, suffered chronic pain and Oxycontin addiction thereafter, and announced his retirement from writing in 2002. Now approaching age 70, the man is back with a vengeance.  

Listen to Stephen King’s 2013 interview with National Public Radio’s Terry Gross here.