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Alan speaks in a very symbolic and esoteric manner in some parts of his books. Although they can be read anthroposophically, passages speaking of Atlantis, archangels, gods, etc. do not need to be taken literarily to be meaningful. The more you read, the more you will realize he uses many different religions to express ideas in a symbolic manner and not in a religious manner. His writings are not religious. In some places his writings are meant to refer to religious events in a historical way. In some places he is using religious figures (from Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Paganism, Ancient Roman and Greek Religions, etc.) in a symbolic manner. However, at no point is he promoting a specific religion or speaking from a religious point of view.
I have kept the writing as close to one-hundred percent original so you will also find that he speaks of Australia often and some spelling or manners of speaking may be cultural. Any words I have changed are presented like this: <word>.
Also keep in mind that these books are written by a Waldorf teacher with decades of experience who also studied with a Steiner student himself, so he speaks to an audience that is dedicating their lives to the Waldorf method without exception.
Because of this, all of his views are not reflected in the Earthschooling curriculum and not all of them may be ones you want to embrace or are able to use. In all of Alan Whitehead’s writings the opinions are his own and may not align with Earthschooling or Waldorf Books. In some cases, we will be updating some of these chapters in the future with additional and/or updated information.
Ultimately, however, as I read through these passages I find I can distill wisdom from even those paragraphs that do not resonate with me.
We invite you to read with an open mind and heart and with eagerness to learn and discuss…
OCTOBER 31
Halloween
For some Australians, too much American culture is never enough: until we infect our children with the disease of Halloween. that is.
This is a story of light and dark, the lights in the so-called hallowed, hollowed pumpkins of that anachronistic Northern Hemisphere festival, Halloween – and its dark spawn. The corruption of our children by this insidious so-called festival. The notoriously loutish and distinctly unhallowed behavior of bucolic 19th century Scottish youth has trickled down, via America, to corrupt our own vulnerable young.
Halloween, Hallow E’en, All Hallow’s, Allhallow Even – however one wishes to call or spell it – celebrated on October 31, is the eve of All Saints Day, the Christianized ‘ Samhain’ of ancient Celtic Britain on November 1.
Traditionally tillers of the soil sowed and harvested within the timeless rhythm of the usual four-season year, while their herdsman colleagues recognized only two seasons, summer, and winter. Higher latitude flocks and herds were either pastured in the warmer months or stalled in the colder. The celebration of these two annual pivots was May 1 – May Day or Beltane, and Samhain, November 1. As such, the Beltane/Samhain dichotomy was a tenesbi.al rather than celestial cycle.
Mythology tells us that not only the animals sought refuge indoors from the impending Arctic blasts, but the souls of the dead as well. Worse still, so did a whole rogues gallery of demons, witches, hobgoblins, and other unholy spirits! Without the Halloween bonfires, purgatives of evil as they were, these inimical entities would insinuate themselves, following their summer nature habitations, into the warm hearths of the hapless peasantry. How much more removed from this can one get from a balmy Australian November?! So, strings of these fires were lit on hilltops right across Britain in the vein hope of purifying the countryside of this supernatural infestation.
There was indeed perceived to be a life and death duality in the Beltane/Samhain feasts. Beltane rejoiced in the urgency and vibrancy of summer, with its bounteous promise – its Life! Samhain, however, bore a darker portent, one of the privation – and for some the ever-present breath of death of a long, hard winter. It was a time of omen and augury, when divinations of all kinds were cast, whether for marriage, health, or prosperity. One such practice was to form the bonfire ashes into a circle, around which each person placed a stone. Any misplaced stones found next morning predicted the demise, within the next twelve months of the stone’s petrified – as it were – owner. A death sentence by suggestion!
There was a curious, creeping revival of this ‘All Hallows’ day in the 20th Century festal calendar, especially in America. By the mid-1960s bands of children, metamorphosed into the very ghosts, ghouls, and goblins they were supposed to be purging, terrorized the streets ‘with their seriously unfunny ‘trick-or-treats’, causing often serious damage to both property and peace-of-mind. It took another three decades for this pestilential annual rite to reach Australia’s ghoul-free golden shores.
Halloween was unknown to Australian childhood just a couple of decades ago. Today, however, in many hot-spots in our towns and cities children – especially young teenagers – roam the nocturnal streets blowing up letterboxes, smearing public and private property with everything from eggs to excrement, and rending the night with abuse and obscenities.
You can say goodbye to your relaxed· evening if you scowl a refusal to ‘treat’ some diminutive goblin or gremlin. In extreme cases you might be ‘tricked’ with a broken window – or even find your beloved cat hung or dismembered.
In Australia, Halloween is not a solemn seasonal celebration, rather a license to vandalism and delinquency of all kinds. To save the neighbors, and even the children from themselves, the prudent parent might arrange a family visit to grandmother, or safe equivalent, on the night of October 31. Evidence suggests that dressing up children as witches, werewolves, or whatever, injects a chilling, self-fulfilling destructive element into the souls of the young, hence the festivities.
Demonic imagery seems to be endlessly fascinating and infectious for some – in extreme cases, the leprosy of the soul.
So, in 1965, a group of wise heads called on the United Nations to stem this malevolent tide. Through the good offices of UNICEF, they exhorted the American community to encourage – or coerce – their children to collect money, not this time for themselves as a kind of extortion, but for UNCF (United Nations Children’s Fund). This had a meritorious rather than meretricious outcome, gaming strength year by year.
Except in Australia, that is, a tradition-impoverished nation where plagiarism is too often preferred over imagination. So, let’s show some originality, and this October 31 E’en have the children do something positive, like dressing up as their favorite storybook characters to raise money for a worthy cause – help them be the little All Saints we all love.
Children in healthier pursuits than Halloween.
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