American History · Ancient History · history

The Legend of the Jack O’Lantern

Happy Halloween everyone!!

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. I love to dress up and be someone else for a day. I love the candy and, most of all, carving pumpkins! Where did these traditions come from? As I wrote in my Druids post the other week, many of these traditions are derived from extremely old sources.

Halloween itself finds its origins in the ancient Celtic/Druid festival of Samhain. The Celts believed that just before winter the barriers between our world and the world of the dead were much thinner than usual. The souls of the dead, it was believed, were able to roam between the worlds as they pleased. Continue reading “The Legend of the Jack O’Lantern”

Ancient History · english history · history

The Power of the Druids

It’s almost Halloween so let’s talk about magic in history! I’ve always wanted to learn more about the Celts and especially the druids. Unfortunately, almost nothing is known about the druids except through outside Roman sources, which are naturally biased. There were no written records coming directly from the druids or the Celtic civilizations. There are a lot of misconceptions about the druids due to Roman influence, but also many things that I personally did not know before.

The druids were considered extremely powerful in Celtic society and were basically untouchable. They were society’s religious leaders, people of wisdom and essentially their own separate entity which could overrule most others in society. Being the highest members in society it was stated that they were exempt from taxes, from military service, and almost above the law. They were able to, in a way, to excommunicate people Continue reading “The Power of the Druids”