Blurry Creatures - EP: 202 Festival of the Dead with Luke Eastwood

Episode Date: November 4, 2023

Luke Eastwood joins us this week to discuss his book "Samhain: The Roots of Halloween" and the Irish genesis of the holiday. A practicing Druid and founder of the Irish Druid Network, Luke brings a unique perspective on the topic. We discuss how the modern celebration of Halloween is derived from the ancient festival of the dead in Ireland known as Samhain. Eastwood contends it is from Ireland that most of the Halloween traditions we have in the West have been inherited. Delving into the ancient past, our guest this week uncovers the history of this festival in Britain and Ireland, including the forgotten goddess Tlachtga and the sacred temple of the Druids in county Meath, named after her, where the first Halloween fires were originally lit. We discuss how this time of year it is believed the veil is thin, how candles are lit on Samhain to invite in the spirits of the dead, how fairies are real and can be found all over Ireland, and what this festival means to the pagan Irish and Druid class.  support the show! blurrycreatures.com/members Guest: https://lukeeastwood.com Intro song: Dreamkid83 contact: [e-mail] blurrycreatures.com Socials instagram.com/blurrycreatures facebook.com/blurrycreatures twitter.com/blurrycreatures Music Kyle Monroe: tinytaperoom.com Aaron Green: https://www.instagram.com/aaronkgreen/ Mastering: ironwingstudios.com Outro Song: TimeCop1983: timecop1983.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Luke's so often, people email us, and they have this story. They're out in their woods, and they're looking in the bushes, and they go, what's that? And when you are pouring your dog food and your dog's bowl, that's the last thing you want to say. What is that? What is this stuff coming out of this bag? You know, I don't think a lot of us think about maybe what we feed our dogs, and that's why we partner with rough greens.

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So, you know, your parents and grandparents probably lived at the same place. And you would set a table with a place for them too. You'd invite them to come back to your house. At this time, the idea being the veil between the other world, as it's called and the world reality we live and is so thin that they could pass backwards and forwards and come back and visit them and you might be able to commune with them to talk with them and it's a time of prophecy and divination as well very much so saueran kind of basically means summer's end you're probably going to run across the souls of the dead or ghosts at this time i certainly say that as happy

and in my own experience. The history of our Earth is so different from what we can imagine. The Smithsonian that if they found out about a large skeleton somewhere was to go get it. I'm going to assume at least one person

is right, because if one person's right and bust the paradigm, it all goes back to the fallen chair. And the problem with the modern day church, they have a very truncated view of the supernatural. This backdrop is just pregnant with all kinds of meaning associated with this Mount Herman event. And this guy defects from the kingdom.

That's a big deal. Welcome back to blurry creatures. This was supposed to come out on Halloween. We're a couple days late. As you can tell, a little bit of a head cold over here. And we did the last minute run down to Orlando to guest on Ninjas or Butterflies podcast. So we've had a busy week.

Yeah. We have a Halloween episode for you. Bring it on author today. Luke Eastwood. he is, I wrote a book about Halloween and, you know, a lot of people ask us. What do you guys think about Halloween? What are your thoughts? It's really hard to find people who are experts on this.

But, you know, there's a lot of history there and a lot of blurry history. And so we're going to bring Luke on and talk about it. And sort of the ancient roots of it and the festivals surrounding it. Yeah. Luke is, you know, an author and an artist. And he's written specifically about, Sowan, the ancient druid festival of the dead that originated in Ireland. And Luke is the founder of the Irish Druid Network.

So he's a practicing druid. And he believed the roots of our modern day Halloween holiday in celebration here in the West finds its genesis, if you will, in this ancient Irish pagan festival called Sowen. And so we're going to bring him on and talk to him about why he believes that. Talk to him about fairies and spirits. and what the druids and the ancient pagan Irish believed about this day and why we can draw straight lines from Sowan and how perhaps in the West this Halloween holiday

we've inherited a lot of the traditions, you know, from the ancient past and the ancient history of this festival in Britain, Ireland and Brittany and, you know, where the first Halloween fires were lit. Yeah. You know, we could talk about this all day long, Luke, but it's always good to bring someone on he's done the research in the 10,000 hours. So we're going to get Luke on the show, get into it.

The Saladin and the roots of Halloween. Good to have an Irishman on. All right. Just a wee episode. Just a wee. Welcome to the show. Luke Eastwood. Welcome to Blurry Creatures.

You're an author and a horticulturist and artist, musician. I know a little bit about that. from Ireland, and you wrote some books on kind of the roots of Halloween, and we were thinking about doing an episode on Halloween here on Friday the 13th. Welcome to Blurier Creatures. We kick off our show every time with, we ask all our guests, what are your thoughts on Bigfoot? What do you think about the big guy? I know he's probably not as popular over there as he is over here, but welcome to the show, and what do you think about Bigfoot? Hey, well, thank you very much for having me. I'm very glad to be.

here and yeah I you know I've read a little bit about it over the time and you know I realize there's this uh is it Sasquatch is another name yeah I remember watching

oh god what's that film Tenacious Dease film there's a whole bit about the Sasquatch in that this whole scene where he's on the pick of destiny that one the pick of destiny yeah but obviously that's just a bit of fun

but like you know I think there's a lot to suggest that there were giants in the past and there were kind of other kinds of humanoids that existed in the, you know, in the ancient past. And I mean, it is possible in very remote parts of the world that they may have continued to exist, you know. And just as like there's been, you know, tribes people, you know, completely isolated from the rest of humanity found somewhere, you know, in the middle of Africa or the middle of the Amazon. It's quite possible that, Yeah, there is a strange creature that lives, you know, I don't know,

is it the Appalachians or somewhere like that or up in the, it's fun of the mountain ranges, doesn't it, where they've been found or supposedly found? All over, Luke, actually. And you know, I just said for fun pulled up Ireland, and they're, they call them the Wildman out there. And apparently there's been siding since the 1900s of some Harry Wildman. I don't know about, I believe you're in County Kerry. I'm not sure if you have one there, but there are.

A mountain range here, the Macalacote Reeks, which has got Ireland's biggest, biggest mountain. But, no, I don't think there's any reports of that as such. But, I mean, throughout history, there's been reports of, like, feral people, like, hairy people that have been found. You know, there's been even cases where people have been lost, like, children, and then they were recovered years later as, like, savages. And they've grown really, really hairy, not just long hair, but body hair, too. They reverted to sort of like a caveman-like state seemingly, you know, as they just, you know, became savage, you know, and animalistic because they didn't have any civilization. They were basically survived like animals. And, you know, maybe there's something in that. Maybe these wild men were actually people who were like stuck out in the wild away from everyone and sort of reverted. There's actually a story about this woman called Mish, which is about that.

At the end of this peninsula where I live is this Sleave Mish mountain rains, the story about Mish who witnessed this terrible battle, and she runs off into the hills after her father's killed. And she just goes completely crazy. And apparently she lives up there as a wild woman on top of the mountain. And anyone who goes near, she just rips into shreds and kills them. And eventually this guy, he's like a bard, and he plays harp. up there and he's like the only person who's brave enough and he kind of seduces her with his

harp and then he seduces her with his tricking stick they call it but you know what that is you know it's that you know so once she gets a taste for the tricking stick she sings oh i kind of like this so between the music and the you know the romantic interludes he manages to like get her back to being civilized again and brings her down off the mountain and she's like a normal person again. And I think the king rewards him loads of money and they go off and live happily

ever after. But that's kind of similar story in a way of like a one person up on the mountain, you know? It's like Harry and the Hendersons, except he has a romantic relationship and brings her home and she lives there. That's wild. That's crazy.

That's a very old story. That's going back to the time of like Finn McCool. which is like, sort of, oh, you're talking about a couple of hours and years ago, that kind of time period, you know, this story took place, you know? Yeah. Well, it's good. We talk a lot about giants on our show. We've talked just about anybody we can about the history of, you know,

the stories and the legends and the myths. Even people who've dug up the skeletons. We've gotten into a lot of that history. So it's, I think this, the roots of Halloween would be interesting to kind of know. if it relates to some of the other stories we've heard on our show over the years. It's kind of like this alternate history we've discovered. There's sort of modern history, and then there's the history that all these people are independent dig up, you know, and archives, or, and there's so much evidence.

There's certainly a lot there. Not so much about giants, particularly, although there, and there's certainly some stories of giants in Irish mythology. Yeah, one particular, you know, there's ones relating to, Lou and these three brothers who really pissed Lou off. So he kind of gives these 12 Labor of Hercules-type tasks. And the last task, they have to go up this mountain and then, you know, and shout at the top of this hill.

But it's guarded by these giants and they have to fight them. And they end up like they do it, but they end up like so badly injured that they're dying at the end of it. And Lou has all the stuff they collected. He could save him, but he's like, I know, I'll just leave you die because I hate you. So tough. And there's, yeah, there's a few other stories that have giants featuring in them, you know,

with various heroes having to fight them. But when it comes to Halloween, there's not a lot really giants-wise. There's stuff relating to other creatures, such as, you know, vampires. That certainly comes from Ireland, a lot of that. And you've got weevils, that's a big thing in Irish culture. And then you've got more modern stuff which has come from other countries to like, you know, zombies.

That's become part of the, very much part of the modern Halloween tradition but actually comes from Haiti via Africa. You know, that's sort of, that's ended up. It's interesting how some of the modern traditions have come from other countries, like from the USA, from Mexico, like Haiti, as I mentioned. And they've kind of melded together in the whole Halloween story because they kind of fit like with Mexico, they've got the

Day of the Dead, which is really, really close to what Salon was, you know, Halloween has mutated very much because of the influence of the Roman Church, whereas originally Salon as a pagan festival would be, you know, the festival of the Ancissus were dead. So it's very, very similar to what you had in Mexico in that respect, which is still running today. And I'm sure, sure probably that the church there probably tried to kill it off but they didn't succeed and they didn't succeed in killing off Halloween either. There have been various attempts, you know, in the past with Irish bishops condemning Halloween and the practices and saying, you know, it was on Christian and you shouldn't do it, shouldn't do that. But, you know, I guess ordinary people just ignored,

ignored the priests and went ahead and did it anyway, what they had always done in the past. you know. So Luke, can you, can you take us back then to like sort of the beginning? Because you're Irish and... Well, I know I'm from Scotland actually originally, but I've been living here for about 25 years. So you're, you've adopted Ireland. Yeah, I'm an adopted son of Ireland, I suppose. You know, I've a mixed heritage, including some Irish. So same here. A lot of Irish here. And we just happen to be on the other side of the pond, if you will. So, but yeah, take it take us back because your book really starts at the beginning. You talk about Irish cosmology and a lot about how

about Sawayne and its roots in druid practices. So can you take us back to the beginning to kind of walk us through? Because I know that you said there aren't before we started recording, there are neo-druids now, but we don't know a whole lot about maybe the original. We know a fair amount, but not a whole lot because there was not a lot of written stuff, number one. But yeah, can you take us back? Because I think that's a place to start if we're to kind of draw this string all the way forward to what we consider it as modern celebration of Halloween. Yeah, sure. Well, we'll start off, I suppose, with the druids. I mean, there is a lot written, but the thing is what's missing is there's no like kind of manual on how to be a druid or here. There's a list of what ceremonies we did and how we celebrated them.

All that kind of detail is missing. There's loads of mentions in mythology of druids. There's a lot of histories that mention the druids, but the gaps are really, it doesn't explain exactly what they did or how they went about doing what they did. So you've got to fill in a lot of blanks down. There is some information, you know, there is kind of curriculums, but, you know, a curriculum of what, say you'd do something between 13 to 20 years study to be a druid, you know, and they did have some indication of what you'd be studying, but You know, that's not fleshed out. And none of the books really give you that information.

A lot of it was done verbally anyway, you know, the idea that it's a verbal tradition to a large extent. So, anyway, the Druids, they were the priestly caste, if you like, of Irish society. Ancient Irish society was, wasn't as ideal as many people seemed to think that, you know, the Celtic society was amazing and wonderful. It was great in many ways in that, like, women had equal status. men, but you also had a caste system kind of not that dissimilar to what modern Hindus have. So, you know, at the top, you had the druids and the king and chiefs and lower and lower chiefs right down to being a serf or like a slave.

You could be, slaves were slightly different from the kind of modern idea of slavery. In theory, you could get by your way out of being a slave. But, I mean, practically, that was really very, very difficult. to you know to happen like st patrick who you know began the conversion he was a slave here in Ireland before he escaped back to wales so i mean in the society the druids are right at the very top the only person who would be allowed to speak before the high king would be like his druid you know because he'd be such a high status sometimes it feels like when you get that phone bill it's like the crash site document you can't read it there's a bunch of numbers random fees vague

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They know about the laws, the genealogy, the kings, a whole of the history. They'd know loads of poems and stories. That'd be part of the required to learn this all by wrote, by heart. So, you know, they were very, very important, very influential. And then that kind of got wiped out over a period of time. St. Patrick come here around, you know, the early 400s. And it took probably about 400 years before paganism disappeared out of Ireland. You know, it gradually got smaller and smaller.

They know it was still existing all that time later because of the pagan graves, which are different styled from Christian graves. So, you know, 400 years later, you're still getting a few pagan graves. So they know that there's still some pagans alive at that point in time. But so you could see, you know, they're getting less and less important as the church is coming up and the Christian priests are getting more powerful.

You know, the druids started disappearing completely. And then they just ended up being in the books, in histories, and a lot of the knowledge was kind of carried forward, you know, things like Ohm is written about in some of the old Irish books and all the law associated with that. But, of course, you've got a lot of love gaps. And then what's happened is, I think about it roughly about 1,700 or so, there was a big interest in druids and all things Celtic, particularly in Britain. There was an Irish guy called John Toland who actually left Ireland and came to live in Britain after studying in Europe,

because, like, actually, he was a Catholic and he converted to Protestantism, which, you know, there was an embargo on Catholics being allowed to get an education. So the way round, I suppose, was to convert, and then he was allowed to go to university. He became, like, a really big philosopher in his time. But he kind of started with other people, the kind of modern, sort of druid movement in London. And then that kind of grew and grew. It's very kind of romanticized. you've got kind of overlaps with the Freemasons.

You know, a lot of Freemasons got interested in druids. And so this whole movement grew and grew and grew, but, you know, it was totally different from the original druids. For start, they didn't speak any, like, they didn't speak Welsh or didn't speak Irish. So they wouldn't have read all these old books, which, you know, during the 1800s, mostly a lot of these were translated into other languages, you know, into English or German. And then so, you know, you started getting a real picture of what these these druids were really like instead of these romantic ideas. A lot of which came from the writings of the Greeks and Romans.

So now we have a much better understanding, but like the whole neo-durood or modern druid movement, you kind of have two real factions. You have the sort of romantic type druids that's based on a lot of the last 300 years. and then you have people who are really super reconstructionist. They want to go back to the 2,000 years ago or whatever type, do it and reconstruct that. Whereas I suppose I'm sort of somewhere in the middle and that, you know, I'm really interested in the history, but, you know, I am aware of the fact that we live in modern times,

you know, you can't, like the, you know, head hunting cult, people used to keep the heads of their victims as trophies and stuff. You know, because they, you know, they believe that the soul reside in the head, you know. The modern idea is if there's a place where your soul is, it would be in your heart, whereas, you know, that belief was different. You know, we don't have slaves anymore. We don't have these sort of tribal wars the same. So, and if we now have judges, you have doctors, you have artists,

which fulfill many of those roles that the druids have. So you can have modern druidism, but you're never going to be able to reconstruct it the same as it was, you know, 1,500 or 2,000 plus years ago. So I think you kind of have to, I try to take a middle path and I do disregard a lot of the romantic stuff as nonsense. At the same time, I realize you can't create the world as it was back then. Yeah, so from that time period, so when druid culture, Celtic culture is, is dominant in Ireland especially, but probably some places across the UK. This Sawawain was what kind of festival? So it happens at the same time as we celebrate,

or we in the West would celebrate Halloween or whoever. I was trying to think about this before we came on the show. Just like, I don't know how widespread Halloween is celebrated. Oh, now it's everywhere. It's all over the world. But at the time, actually, funnily enough, the Mexican festival is roughly the same time period. But back in the day, it would have been associated with the astronomical time.

Not the Gregorian calendar is, we got that from a Roman church. So the 31st of October, we have these two festivals of the church, which is all-hollows Eve, which is the following day is all... Saints Day. All-Hellows Day. And then all Saints Day. So you have these two holy days, all Saints Day. on the Hallows Day.

And Hallows just means holy object, holy thing. So the church created these two festivals to put on top of Salam to obliterate it. That was their idea that if they replaced this festival of the dead, which it is basically veneration of the ancestors. The main thing is venerating your ancestors and inviting their spirits back to your home, which probably is their home, their ancestral home, because families kept their houses. they didn't like move all over the place like now.

Right. So, you know, your parents and grandparents probably lived at the same place. And you would set a table with a place for them too. You'd invite them to come back to your house. At this time, the idea being the veil between the other world, as it's called, and the world of reality we live. And it's so thin that they could pass backwards and forwards and come back and visit.

And you might be able to commune with them, to talk with them. And it's a time of prophecy and divination as well very much. So Salwin kind of basically means summer's end. And this is this time when you finish up everything, you kill your cattle, you collect the last year, your vegetables and fruit, and you kind of prepare for winter, and then you have this festival for celebrating your ancestors.

And you have a big fire. That's very much an important thing. And there's a particular place that's associated with these bonfires, and throughout the year you have eight different festivals in the Irish year each time they usually have a fire of these. In Ireland you had five provinces and the middle one called Mida is where you had Tara

and you also had this place called Clopter which is named after this ancient goddess. Tara was the place where the king, the high king of Ireland was. He'd be the king over the whole. whole place and you had four regional kings and he'd be in the middle province and he was kind of an important guy. He's like the president of presidents, if you like. He'd have a big fire which would be lit first. So everyone throughout the land would put out their fires at this festival, which would normally be in the beginning of November based on the, you know, the astrological

or astronomical calendar, it actually falls a bit later than modern Halloween. So this appropriate time, you put all the fires out, and then the fire was brought from the place of the druids, which was clocked, they brought this fire in some kind of container, and they lit the sacred fire at Tara for the High King. And once that was lit, everyone else could light their fires up, and they'd light old fires all over the place. then there'd be hundreds, probably even thousands of little fires lit all over the country. But people would wait for that first, you know.

And one of the reasons you may know the story about St. Patrick going to Slane Hill at Easter or would have been around near enough Easter. That would have been for the, I think the Spring Econox. And he lit a fire upon Slane Hill, which would be invisible from Tarrow. That was like a, that was a challenge. challenge to the authority of the existing Irish pagan order and the authority of the king and the druids you know it's basically like two fingers to you kind of thing using a fire to like you know give them that you know up yours kind of basically yeah yeah so the fire is really

important symbolically you know and of course fires and were very important anyway because to get for the the winter you're going to need, you're going to need fires, you're going to need firewood. It's not like today where people had central heating and, you know, gas and electric and all that kind of thing. So apart from its sacred function, the fire was a really important thing. Without the fire, you probably wouldn't make it through to the other side of winter. So you have this, it's essentially the end of the harvest, right? So you have this harvest and then you have this festival. Why in tradition do they believe that night to be the night that where the veil is thinnest?

What, what is that sort of, you know, where that belief comes from or that mythos? Because I know that that's not, that that carries on into today. People still believe that. There are people to practice and believe that's when, when you. Yeah, well, there's different ideas about when you say day. Some people think it lasted for a day. some people would suggest three days. There's a calendar from gold, which would suggest a three-day festival.

And then, you know, the whole month of November is called Sowan, in modern Irish, the modern Irish word for November is Sowan. So, I mean, other people think it went on for a whole month. So, you've no way of actually proving that which way it went. But at that particular time, I think it's more experiential than anything, because if you think about people, their spiritual lives were so important to them. You know, the secular society we're used to now

doesn't really exist. And I would say there's three traditional times in Ireland when they say the veil is very thin, which is Bieltener is directly opposite Salon in the year. So that's coming into the beginning of summer at that point, whereas we're going to the beginning of winter at sound. basically the year was split into two halves the light and the dark half.

It wasn't like four seasons now, it was basically two in Old Island. And then you have this other time, which is the, you know, the middle of the summer. That's another time when the, you know, the fairies, the veil was very thin. That was at the summer solstice. So you've got these three points in the year

where it was considered. You could just say probably that based on the experience of life that people with sensitivity to the other world, that could see ghosts, that could see fairies, that had, were tuned into this stuff, they would go,

oh, well, this is interesting. Over time, they probably noticed that there's three different points, that there was a peak in activity, a peek in visibility of these things. So that's probably why that evolved.

So I can't give a reason why that's the case, but it just seems to be that is the case. And I could say from my own personal experience, you're probably going to run across the souls of the dead or ghosts at this time. I certainly say that has happened in my own experience, whereas other times a year, not necessarily half so much. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough.

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It matters where you stay. Hilton for the stay. Do you feel like there's places in Ireland where the veil is thinner than others? Yeah, I could say there, I mean, there's certainly places where you're going to find a lot of spirits there might be ghosts. I mean, there's a lot of haunted

places in Ireland. And I'd say a place where I think is quite special is where you get sort of a large area of, say, a big massive beach where you've got these idea of these three realms, the land and

the sky and the sea where they meet. I found that's like what you call a very liminal space where you kind of feel this, you know, huge sky and this huge stretch of land and the huge bit of sea in front of you there were these

convergence of these three energies and that can be very powerful certainly in my own experience that's been a great place for you know accessing this kind of other world and then there's there's of course the traditional thing

of what the you know these mounds and rats ancient rats and mounds are places where you access the other world where you can enter the fairy realm and where the fairies can exit out of their realm into this place. That's why there was a lot of fear.

I mean, the church instilled a lot of fear in people and just say, you know, don't go near that mound around Halloween. There's also a tradition of people wearing iron pins in their lapel or their collar because supposedly the fairies don't like iron. So in order to ward them off, you might go, if you had to go out, you might wear an iron pin or something like that. on your clothing to try and keep them away from. You can say we're often regarded as malevolent.

You know, the Victorian image of these little cute fairies, like, what's that from? Tinkerbell. Think about. Yeah, that's not the Irish fairy at all. Not a bit of it. You know, sometimes they're even bigger than humans,

taller than normal humans. And sort of generally, kind of very bright, but it can be quite dark as well. They're not always kind, you know, and they, they've been known to play tricks on people. There's a lot of traditions also of things like changelings where they steal your children and give you a changeling back in exchange, who's like a weird kind of fairy creature that's not a positive thing to have.

You know, it's, so the idea would be they took your child and replaced it with this kind of weird, creature looks like your child that isn't. Yeah. It's like a double, but it's a bad one. Yeah. So what are your thoughts on fairies then? Like being sort of in the epicenter of that.

Do you have any experience with that? What do you or? Yeah. Yeah, I have. And I think they can be very favorable. If you're, if you're respectful. Obviously they're quite different.

They have their own space and they, they don't like being interfered with. They really don't like it if you damage their space. That can lead to reprisals. There is even a case of a motorway being moved because of people refusing to chop down a hawthorn tree. There's a lot. There's two particular trees associated with the fairies,

one being the hornthorn, the other the elder tree. And it's considered very bad luck to go and just chop these down. There are, you know, I'd be instances of people being attacked. and things going really badly wrong for them. You could just say it's pure chance, but like somebody, they go to chop a thorn down, and then they ended up with one of the big thorns in their hand,

and their hand gets septic, and they lose their hand or something. That would be almost, you could say that was just circumstantial, but other people would say, oh, well, you know, that's the fairies with revenge for having, you know, chop the tree down.

So, I mean, it's open to, interpretation but I would say that you could describe maybe possibly as of energetic beings that live in certain locations in the land and they they just carry on living their lives separate in a separate dimension from us and if you leave and be they're not going to bother you and if you go and mess with them then you can expect you can expect some trouble that's wow it's funny because it's been so it's been so like a cartoonize or yeah if you will like you like you said like the peter pan you have this little like kind of like a genie right it comes and doesn't and kind of grants wishes and it's and it's it's benevolent and it's uh and then you look at what the tradition of this and it's just it's not it's not

that yeah well it can be helpful to you you know if you kind of befriend them and you could establish some kind of rapport with them they they probably could could help you and benefit you in some ways. But, you know, it's not like you just rock up and go, hey, can you get me a load of cash or something? They're going to go to the hell of you. What are you doing here? Do you want?

What are you doing in our place? You know, it doesn't work like that. I think they don't do well in urbanized places. So you're not going to find them in the middle of a city. You'll find them in the more wild places. I'd say if you've got a good relationship nature and you're respectful to nature you've far more chance of having a positive interaction with them if you're like some kind of guy coming with a bulldoze and a chainsaw you're you're not

going to get on well with them yeah we found we heard a real weird story about early on in the show about a lady who lived up in i want to say she was up in newfoundland and she was out newfoundland she was out in the out deep in the forest and a fairy but this this this was described sort of how you would you would think, like either plucked her a bitter finger and then the next morning she woke up and it was swollen and there was feathers inside. Really strange story, but her thumb was like, the doctor was like freaked out about it. We've heard some really weird stories about people interacting with these smaller entities. That's kind of what we talk about on the show is the blurry creatures out there, the weird, you know, and I always got a bunch of them. You got the leprechauns.

There's different sized ones as well, like gnomes and stuff. Yeah. The whole lepricorn thing is a bit of a con job, really. I don't think they ever really existed. That's like a corruption of a tour de Danon kind of thing, which is going back into really ancient times. And a lot of people have exploited that whole kind of legend, purely just to make money and exploit tourists. Yeah, you know.

Sell cereal. There's some really clever pub owner. He's got like a lepracorn museum, and it's all fake. like it's all made out of bird bones and he's got like miniature Guinness bottle and things and fake clothes

and people go up onto the hill looking for lepreorns and of course they never find anything because the whole thing's just a swindle really this guy's just realized he can make a lot of money out of this I mean there was someone interviewed him I remember this is a while back

and he says oh yeah sure course it real is real and he does this big wink at the camera just to kind of let you know that actually it's all a car and he's just making a ton of money out of gullible people so i mean you know fairies are real but there's a whole lot of stuff which you know because it's ethereal it's one of those things that if you're not sensitive no matter how hard you try you're never going to see them you know same people that can some people can see ghosts and other people can't so for a lot of people, they're just relying on trust when people say, oh, yeah, this, that, and the other,

you can't see it. So you're, you're just hoping that the person you're dealing with is honest and not just trying to exploit you and make a load of cash for themselves. Unfortunately, there's always unscrupulous people that will take advantage of tourists and what have you. So, Luke, going back to Saw Wayne, that night, right? So what you've described is you have this pagan festival, the veneration of ancestors, veneration of the dead. You have the seasonal cycle and the harvest. You were saying that you would traditionally in Saoan,

and you'd set out food and you'd invite the ancestors, the spirit of your ancestors, back into your home. Were there rituals and rights associated with how that went? And do those still exist to today? And then how do we pull that genesis, if you will, of festival forward into what we could kind of look at the modern, day iteration of Halloween. Well, there is stuff that, yeah, there's

definite traditions around that which probably maybe related to folk ritual and possibly even duet ritual, because you'd have to remember that a lot of things that have continued, maybe just by the ordinary folk. You had a, I suppose, a rather sad

event happened in like the early 1600s called the Flight of the Orals. A lot of the elite, if you like, the Celtics the aristocracy fled this country in 1607 after the defeat by the Elizabethan people. So a lot of the bards and sort of the historians, the philosophers, the artists, they lost their patronage when all these people ran off. They ran off to the New World into Europe, mostly. So a lot of them went to

America and Canada and brought a lot of those traditions with them, their knowledge. They'd have brought their books with them and whatever they could bring. But they left the ordinary people behind, obviously. So a lot of additions we have here just from, you know, the lower strata of society because the people who were rich, you know, the lords and what have you, they could afford to go get a boat and go off to the new world and escape from the English occupation. Right.

So a lot of what we don't really know, if it came from, sort of a druid, of inheritance or if it just was sort of like peasants sort of folk tradition you can't really tell where a lot of stuff came from but we do know it's come down through hundreds and hundreds of years of stuff which probably going back some of it thousands of years like the traditions about apples that's very much linked with the other world going back into ancient history so you still have the apple bobbing now that's survived into modern time there were sort of all kinds of traditions about cleaning the house. Like throwing out dirty water, there's an ancient story where a ghost comes back

and they hadn't cleaned the house and they threw the dirty water over the sky and he dies as a result. So it would be a tradition to clean the fire properly, to throw out dirty things, clean the house, get rid of all the dirty water before sound night. There's loads of games to do with divinely. nation going back. And of course, that was a skill of the druids back in the day, but you've got like much smaller type things. Things like putting hazelnuts on to hearth, and depending on how they jump off, you might make predictions. You have even a survival today is this cake called

the barn brack, and it's got a little rig inside it, which is fit on your finger, probably only on your pinky. But if you get that when you're eating it, the idea is that within the next year and a day you'll be getting married. So a lot of a divination, a lot of the prophecy kind of things were to do with love and marriage, that's something that's really big at that time of year. That's still today. You can go to a supermarket. Right now, I could go down to this local supermarket and buy this special cake with

the ring inside. And that's a addition that it's going back. Who knows how old that is? It sounds like it reminds me of like this. stuff they do at, um, at Mardi Gras. It's like the, what is it, the king's cake and these things they have here in the States where there's, yeah, with a baby and. Kayak gets my flight, hotel, and rental car right.

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It's crazy how things continue on, right? You have these very ancient practices that still trudge on. As you say, they're through the spreading of the bards and the diaspora of some of these earls, but also through probably a lot of, like you said, a lot of the folklore of just a common people that had practiced tradition for ages and it becomes this different version, but much the same as in some ways as it was ancient in more ancient times. You know, speaking of neo-Druidism and maybe druidism in general, like from your standpoint, are there certain things that when you celebrate Sawin, are there certain things that you all,

that you do that may be different than what we consider that commercialized version of Halloween that we probably get more so just in the States and across the rest of, of the world. Yeah, yeah, my celebrations would be very different. Like, I don't, we don't put up any, um, any, any decorations at all. You don't get any giant skeletons from Home Depot? You don't put out in the yard? No, no, one of my rules is no plastic. Because one of the things that really upsets me is most of stuff is made in China and there's all this tons and tons of plastic stuff and it all gets, a lot of it gets thrown away. Then you buy more Halloween stuff next year. It's become similar to the Christmas in many wings.

Yeah, it's very commercialized. We would be very, very simple. Like, leave a plate of food. One of the things you should never do is eat that food. There's a tradition that if you ate the food left for the ancestors, when you died, you'd be ostracide from being allowed to return to the family home. So the worst thing you possibly do would be to eat the food left for the ancestors. So if you call they don't eat it,

you kind of have to throw it out for the birds or something. You shouldn't eat the food that was left over. So that would be an old tradition that I continue. And having a fire, that would be an important thing to do. And a light, like the whole thing with the pumpkin, that actually comes from turnips. Because back in the day, I mean, there's no, there's no such thing as pumpkins here.

You can't grow up in Ireland. and we don't have the climate for it. But you can grow turnips. And people, it's much actually real pain to hollow out of turnip. They're really quite hard. It takes the ages to cut a turnip open and hollow it out. But it makes a lamp. And that's where the pumpkin lamps came from from the turnip.

I'd guess people thought, well, this is, hey, much easier to use a pumpkin. You get the turnip. Well, you use a pumpkin instead as much easier. And that makes perfect. sense, doesn't it? Why would you go for that hardship of hollowing at this really tough vegetable when you can use something easier? And it does the same job. I would just leave a light at you, I don't bother to do. I'd like a single candle. And I've often sat in total darkness, just that light in the window. And you try and connect with your ancestors. You might, you know,

have an actual druid ceremony. That's happened where I've met with other Druid. and have done a celebration and a ceremony, and that would generally often involve a character called Kaliak, which is the veiled one, which is this dark kind of goddess of winter, who in this tradition transforms from a beautiful maiden in the summertime into this old hag in the winter. And she brings the cold and the snow and the darkness.

But she's also a very wise woman, a very powerful. She's not a negative character as such. She's not evil or anything like that. She's just old and wizened. But she also represents very much the sovereignty and land. And, you know, there's very stories about her. Some of them are a bit scary. Some of them are more connected to sovereignty and wisdom.

And in springtime, there's this sort of supposed it's a battle between them. And her power fades away. and the young kind of maiden goddess becomes resurgent in the spring and the calliak fades away but that at this time you're just coming into that period so she's just arriving in

so a lot of the story of the ceremony will be perhaps invoking her and her power and her protection for the winter because I mean a lot of people died back in the day winter was a time when loads of people died and it was a time when people

they slaughtered their cattle not all them but the weakest of the cattle and the weakest of the sheep and the pigs they'd all be killed then because there's a good chance they weren't going to survive the winter anyway well you know yourself there's been I remember a few years ago there was a horrific winter that hit New York

and the whole of New York froze up and massive it was nearly the size of France this storm they hit America I remember watching it from here and think, oh, my God, that's amazing. Imagine that happened back in the day, so of 2000 or 3,000 years ago. You know, there'd be mass deaths. Today, you can survive something like that, but you'd have situations where entire flocks if animals could be killed in terrible weather.

That's why a lot of them down from the hills, either put them inside or down and lowland areas away from the harshest weather. And if you got flu or something during winter, you know, horrible treatment and magic might save you, but equally you might not die. You could lose several members of your family for the winter. Right, yeah, cold, starvation, sickness. I mean, it's a lot different for us now, right?

And we can go down to the store and get what you need. But yeah, if you don't, if your flock doesn't survive, that's your food source, right? If you're, yeah. Yeah, I mean, if you freeze, you freeze. because it's different. I think sometimes we forget how much easier it is for us. At the same time, though, it's so much more dependent upon single source, right?

Like, if we, you know, what happens if the food supply drives up? No one these days really knows how to, you know, would know how to take care of themselves. I mean, there are a fair amount of people that probably could, but you would see probably something very similar. That's wild. So the light, though, just so what you're saying, the light is to invite, like, we talk about jack-o-lanterns and pumpkins and the turnips, the lights to invite the spirits back or to guide them back?

Yeah, it's to invite your ancestors back. Okay. To guide them back. You're not inviting just any old spirit. You're inviting your ancestral line to return to your home, you know? That's the purpose of it. But many of these things, it's been forgotten. Right.

You get the scary faces and stuff on pumpkins. That's a kind of misremembering of what the purpose is. People, a lot of times you've got to. the context has been lost. Traditions continue. Right. There was an interesting thing. I think I can't remember which island.

It was one of the Aron Islands where these Irish people, they go there and they do the rounds, where they go round and round clockwise, and they turn these stones. And they say, well, why do you do that? It's just, we don't know. We've forgotten the reason why we do it, but we continue this tradition because it's always been done,

but they've forgotten the reason why they do it. That's so interesting. Yeah. So there's a lot of cases where you kind of maybe have to hunt through history books and through ancient animals to find the reasons why certain things were done. Yeah, you're saying that, like, bobbing for apples. You know, you kind of loosely remember that being associated like a thing that they did at Halloween parties, but no one ever. It's like a kid's game, but it's really like, it's really divination, right?

Is that what you're saying? It's a form of. Well, there's a lot more. dangerous versions of that that existed in the past, where, for instance, you have an apple on the string, but that's not too dangerous, where it's going to hit you in the eye and give you a black eye if you're trying to bite it, swinging back as and forwards and forwards and, you know, there's even other ones where you have lit candles sort of stuck on the top, where it's going, you're going to get burning hot wax on you and burn yourself. So some of them were, the games

or even dangerous. But the apple is very much associated with the other world. You probably heard of Avalon, the Ireland of Apples. That's the English name. You've got the equivalent in Ireland as well. You'll find that even in other cultures, apples being really important. They're like the golden apples. I think that's a Greek thing.

Yeah. So it's magical fruit is something you find. Even in Chinese culture, the story of like the monkey king, you've got these peaches in heaven which give magical powers. So like magical fruit is quite common. Like the hazelnut as well,

particularly is very important. And that's used in divination at Sowan, but that's also linked with the salmon of knowledge and these hazel trees are the source of the Boring River. So it's got lots of mystical elements. so I guess fruit contains a seed and the seed is what gives life so maybe that's where that whole thing

with fruit that comes from down to like at the middle of the fruit you've got something that will bring new life that little seed inside a peach or an apple or whatever will turn into a new tree which is going to provide you know more sustenance and you know for the future

Look, when you celebrate Saw Wayne and you talk about leaving the light out and you do these things, have you had any experiences with spirits and things in those times? Yeah, well, most, I suppose, the most vivid experience would have been an outdoor ritual where it was actually, you suppose, a bit of a mistake. You know, you see, crossroads have a very significant place in this of the other world and spirituality. Yeah. even that's kind of loosely got changed in sort of modern modern mythology with you know the blues singer Robert Robert Johnson we met the met the devil at the crossroads yeah yeah at the crossroads

meeting the devil at the crossroads yeah well that's actually sort of modern distortion and so this otherworldly thing one in that case he meets the devil but the crossroads is a place where the other world and our world can intersect we did a this ceremony on kind of didn't really notice but we're right on top of a crossroads and footpath and there was this flood of spirits absolute flooded them and it's just like overwhelming i remember it was so much that she felt kind of a bit sick quite nauseous from there there's almost like a buffeting of because being hit by by them passing through uh that so actually that was a bit of a silly mistake really doing that but you know that was a very very intense experience we didn't

come to any harm as a result but it was at the same time perhaps a little a little silly didn't done that but in terms of actual ancestors i i've never actually had a really kind of strong experience like that myself you know i've tried to invite my grandparents who died back and i've never had any luck without myself you know i've seen spirits all right i've seen fairies and ghosts, but none of my ancestors have ever come back to visit me so far, which is a pity. Maybe one day, maybe this year I'll be lucky.

Who knows? As a, you know, in practicing juridism, what do you think about just regular people in general just celebrating Halloween and kind of not understanding the roots? Well, I can't blame people for not understanding. I mean, it's become so commercialized. You've gone, people,

got to want to do it because it's become part of modern folklore, modern practice. But I would hope people would be curious just to know why they're doing these things and perhaps want to look into the reasons behind it. And maybe I would hope it might make people more interested in their past, in their ancestry, in the people who went before them. Because, like, you know, we were talking about hardships without the people that struggled for generations and generations, none of us would be here.

You know, if you think about your great, great, great, great grandparents, if they not survived like some harsh winter, you wouldn't exist. Yeah.

Because if they died, all of your ancestors beyond them wouldn't exist either, including yourself. So, you know, going back to the beginnings of time of the earliest humans,

without, we're all descended from, you know, thousands and thousands of generations. back seemingly you know back to to Africa people spread out from there but obviously we can't remember that far back right no but I've had I've had a cool experience like that actually being in Ireland because I got to when I went the one time I've been I went to my tenth great grandfather's grave in Northern Ireland a little

little place called Agadoui and I got to stand there and and at at his grave and it's kind of a surreal experience having been realizing the ten generations before my family was in Ireland and here's my grand here's my grand here's Here's my 10th great-grandfather. I think that's interesting perspective, right? Because you do realize how, almost how much has to go right, too, for you and you and us, us three to be sitting here having a conversation via Zoom, which is kind of surreal in and of itself, right?

But how much had to go right with our ancestors to be here, right? And the odds that we're doing this are so long. Yeah. It's actually quite miraculous, honestly. Our lives are miracles. Yeah. It's really true. I think we've lost something of that perspective

because, you know, really for the last hundred years or so, life has been a hell of a lot easier for most people. But then you've got to bear in mind, not all of Ireland was electrified until the late 70s. Wow. I remember my, yeah, my great grandmother lived in this house that had electric in one room when I was a kid.

I remember going to her, he was a rickety old house. and stay away from the geese, which of course I didn't. I went and I got to come running in. So I told you not to do that. And she had on one room with Electric. And, you know,

a lot of people had outside bathrooms. They didn't have running water in the house until quite late in the mid-century. So, you know, they had a different understanding of the hardships of life. Now everybody here has got modern heating and modern stuff. I've got a heated toilet.

I've had a heated toilet seat, Luke. So, like, I'm living. You know what? I'm taking advantage of this. I've never seen one of those. Well, you know what? Come on down to Tennessee. You can try it out.

I'll let you. I had one more thing for you that we talked about at the beginning. We never got to in close up the conversation. We're recording this on Friday of 13th, and you'd said there were some interesting things about that. This is a Halloween episode, but we're planning ahead. Sometimes the blur and I get ahead of the curve a little bit. We'll talk a little bit about that and why that's maybe there's some superstition around today's date? That's another one you can lay at the fault of the church for being unlucky.

There's a lot of pagan stuff that got changed, that got demonized and turned into bad luck or evil that was really just a matter of trying to replace older traditions with Christianity. And it's really quite obvious. Like the number 13 would have been actually auspicious and lucky number instead of being an unlucky number. I mean, it's so unlucky now that you have buildings, they don't have a 13th floor. Or they skip out the 13th house in the street

because people are so terrified of that number. But you think about it, the lunar year, there's 13 moons in a lunar year. And you think about a woman's cycle of our periods, 13 of them. And women had a much different place in society in earlier times, certainly in the pagan era. So what you had very much was with the Roman church, a very patriarchal system where women had no place in spirituality really at all. The kind of Virgin Mary thing kind of came along a bit later.

And the Romans, they, I mean, they had such a pagan tradition, mistresses. which was actually really all for men. That was like a men's thing. And then, you know, when the church sort of took over things and spread throughout the world, yeah, it was still very much a men's thing. You didn't have any women priests. So the number 13, which is associated,

you could say with women cycle, with the lunar cycle, which would have been seen in a positive thing, they got turned on his head and turned into a bad thing, bad luck, not a good thing. And very much today, people see that number as extremely negative and scary. And really, that's, in numerology, wouldn't be a bad thing either.

So it's very much as a demonization of a number because of what it represents in the earlier tradition. Some people, some people think it's their lucky number. I know that. I had some buddies I played sports with back in high school that that was their, that was their lucky number. It's fascinating though because this tradition, right? These traditions continue. And they continue on just like turning rocks out there.

Yeah, just like turning rocks around and around and around. People don't know why they're going to. You know, you got to get down to Stonehenge and set the clock forward, you know, once a year. You've got to move those stones. Oh, yeah, I've seen a couple of cartoons about that. Yeah, it's quite funny. That whole thing with moving the clocks is all about helping the farmers out. That's where it originated from.

Yeah, you need more daylight. I mean, it is a bit crazy, really. I think probably there have been talks about getting rid of that in Ireland. Here too. And it hasn't happened yet, so I don't know if they ever will stop that. Old traditions die hard, Luke, don't they? They die hard. People want to hold on to them.

Yeah, they're still doing them. Still doing them. But I think knowing where it came from is actually, it's a good thing. You know, it can do no harm to understand the past. And kind of gives you more context through, you know, it's good to know why you do stuff, that. It's very good. I think we should understand.

Yeah, just why do we do what we do? Why is that? What is it the root of the things that traditions and, you know, things of the holidays like Halloween, what's the root of this? Yeah, I think the one more fascinating things that you sort of just casually dropped is that you've had the experiences with fairies. And we've done a couple episodes on with Fritz, Nate, for sure. We did an episode.

Then we had the one with up in Newfoundland. one with the person that had the grandmother had the encounter but it's very such an interesting topic because I think so often like with a lot of things in those get just sort of relegated to spaces of mythos right and but it's the same but here you are and you go those things are real and people have real encounters yeah so yeah this has been fun I totally appreciate your time I've really enjoyed myself yeah yeah it's great to have um you know stimulated questions. You know, the maybe, yeah, it's great. It wasn't the same old, same old questions I always get. So that I really enjoyed talking to you guys. Thanks. Thanks, Lou. Thank you.

Yeah, we'll, we'll give you heads. We'll give you heads up when it comes out. But at the end here, I always will to give people an opportunity to tell our listeners where they can find you, where they can find your books and your work. And so if you want to plug website or anything you've written or did, absolutely. I actually have a copy of the book here. So I'm going to show you that's the Halloween book on air code cell and the roots of Halloween I'm I've got a small number of copies on my website which is sell signed copies if you want to sign one go ahead and have a look at my website which is lute eastwood.com but you'll get it on the usual outlets as well you know in your local bookshop and what have you and I you know

I have a Facebook page an author page and I've got a YouTube channel as well but you'll find all my writing pretty much on the website, and there's links to all the stuff there too. Awesome. Thanks, Luke. Appreciate it. Thanks so much. Thank you for having me.

Yeah. Well, I'll shoot an email when we're getting this thing prepped, and we do some cool artwork and stuff usually. And, dude, just grateful for your time. Thanks for helping us figure out the time zone and then spend some time with us this evening in Ireland and this afternoon or late morning afternoon here in Tennessee. We're grateful.

Thank you, Luke. Thank you, Luke. Thanks a million. All right. Bye-bye. Take it easy. Yeah.