Dia De Muertos

I find it interesting that we have Halloween on October the 31st, then Dia De Muertos or Day of the Dead on November 1st, but the church uses November the 1st for All Saints Day and puts off All Souls Day until the 2nd.

I have to ask myself why this is. the pagan origins of celebrating the time when the veil between the world of the living and that of the dead is common in so many cultures. Today at a Dia De Muertos celebration in Seattle Center I was privileged to witness a group of South American Native dancers dance an ancient dance and preform part of the old religious traditions of this time of the year. One of the members of the dance troop said that originally this took place over forty days of dance and ritual.

In the Celtic calendar, and today for many Neo-pagans and modern day Wiccans Samhain is one of the holiest days of the year. The modern celebration of Halloween is only a sad reflection of what the rites really meant. The harvest aspect of Samhain is mostly lost in modern city society. Still it warms my heart to see all the kids dressed up in costumes and running around begging for candy. I still look at this as the day when every little girl wants to grow up to be me. When they come to the door dressed in long black dresses and wearing pointy hats I love to look at them and say "you, know, we don't really wear those silly hats". The look on their mothers faces is priceless.

Once again I have gone off on a tangent. Where was I. Ah yes, complaining that the church as co-opted a pagan sabot by calling it All Saints Day. Why All SAINTS on November 1st!!! Sure have a day for all the saints, that's fine, but NOT on the day for ALL the dead. You will notice that they couldn't get the festival out of the hearts of the people. They couldn't keep native peoples from Ireland or France way over to Brazil or Mexico. Honoring our ancestors and celebrating the Turning of the Wheel is a natural part of who we are as a part of nature as opposed to being outside of nature.
But then here we have the Church telling people that this day is only for the super special people that lived lives that were expectable in the eyes of the Church. Since they couldn't wipe it out, they relabeled it as All Saints Day. But since they really couldn't get it out of the psyche of the people they tacked on All Souls Day after. Why not let October 31st and/or November 1st as the Day of the Dead, the time when the we reflect on our own mortality and how fleeting our time is on this earth.

Let's look at what wikipedia says:
The custom of setting apart a special day for intercession for certain of the faithful departed is very old. But the celebration of general intercession on 2 November was first established by St. Odilo of Cluny (d. 1048) at his monastery of Cluny in 998.

All Saints Day used to be on May 13th and coincided with another pagan festival, so when it was moved to it's current date, why chose Nov. 1st? If it was too close to one pagan holiday why not pick something else all together? Or is that to the pagan every day is a holy day so it would have been hard to pick one that wasn't?

At least with the harvest festival of Samhain that has it's connections to the cycle of birth, death and rebirth that can be seen in the changing of the seasons on a yearly basis if not in our own lives until we come closer to the end of them, then with the Dia De Muertos on the following day, moving from harvest to death, then All Souls on Nov 2nd we can see the same sort of need to feel close to our dead being played out in the Requiem Eucharist. The three days flow so well together, community, pagan, christian. Yet when we try to toss All Saints in the middle of it, for me it takes away from the inner connections with the dead by narrowing it to only some day.

What really baffles me is that modern Gnostic churches don't see this. They continue to follow the Roman Catholic liturgical calendar. OK, to put it even more plainly, The Ecclesia Gnostica is the largest modern Gnostic church and since they have put so much into their website and maintain such a great liturgical calendar, theirs is the calendar that seems to get followed.

In my parish we are guilty as charged of doing this. I am proposing that a different date be found for an All Gnostic Saints Day. I have no idea when in the Church year this could be squeezed in but it is worth looking into. After all why are Gnostic Churches trying to just duplicate the Roman Church from the rituals to the Archonic hierarchal system of authority.

I don't mean to throw the baby out with the with the bath water. The liturgical calendar follows the life of the Christos and the cycles that it runs threw serve a purpose that we need to follow. I am simply saying that we don't need to just follow the bouncing ball and do everything that the Roman church does. If anyone in the Gnostic community has a good idea as to when All Gnostic Saints Day should be celebrated, send me an email. I too will be pondering and praying on this. If nothing else I can see All Souls Day being moved to Nov 1st to be the days the Day of the Dead and putting All Gnostic Saints (or All Saints of the Gnosis Day if you will) to November the 2nd.

Just a thought.

Rev. Mother M+