Alchemnac - October 2004

Guisers, both adults and children would dress-up in grotesque disguises and go from house-to-house, knocking on doors and windows, holding their lanterns, and often perform innocent pranks while collecting gifts of money or food.

• Pumpkin Lanterns
A pumpkin or turnip is scooped out and holes cut into it to forma demon’s face, impersonating the ancestral spirits who revisit their homes. The mask is lit with a candle placed inside and it is carried about on a pole or a wire at dusk to protect the owner from these spectres.

• Halloween Games
Many variations of Apple Bobbing and Candle Jumping games, etc, derived from old divination-rites are played.

• Mischief Night
Guisers, both adults and children would dress-up in grotesque disguises and go from house-to-house, knocking on doors and windows, holding their lanterns, and often perform innocent pranks while collecting gifts of money or food.

Feast of Christ the King (Catholic)

Held on the Sunday before All Saint’s Day, emphasizing Christ as the King of all saints.

Samhain; Samhuin; Hallowmas; (Gaelic/Celtic)

From Oidhche Samhna, Gaelic for ‘the night of Samhain’, meaning the first day of winter; most Celtic peoples begin their celebrations from sunset on 31^st October, lasting till sunset on 1^st November. (See 1^st November).

• Hallow Fires
Hilltop fires known as Tindles or Teanlas are lit at dusk while horns are blown and ritual dances performed to purify the powers of evil. In Celtic and Pictish lands, white stones are placed in or around the fires and if they were cracked or missing in the morning, it portended an early death for the owner.

• Bon Fires
The ancient Celtic fire festivals at the end of the farming year and celebrating the beginning of the new Celtic year. From November through to the end of January when ‘Imbolc’ began, great ‘bone fires’ were lit, burning the inedible parts of the slaughtered animals, and drum-beating rituals were performed to drive away the Devil and his faeries.

Hallowtide begins (Greek)

Old, five-day festival in which the goddess Kore (Queen of the Living) became Persephone (Queen of the Dead). She abandoned her Mother, Demeter, and eloped to Elysium for the winter to be with her partner, Plouton (God of Death), and accompanied by Hekate and spirits of the dead. Those born on this day shall have second sight. Hallowtide is now referred to as the three days of All Saint's Day and All Soul’s Day.

Persephone Kore (Queen of the Dead)

• Cailleach
The ‘Old Woman’ and hag of the Celtic Triple Goddess who holds the power of winter over Brigit's lamb, is abroad on Samhain, identified with the Halloween witch and sometimes seen as a death-bringing dragon.

Reformation Day
On this day in 1517 Martin Luther posted his Ninety-five Theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg Germany, thereby beginning the Protestant Reformation.

Feast of Sekhmet and Bast (Egyptian)

The original Egyptian forerunner to Halloween; the cycle of life and death was created when the primeval Goddess Sekhmet-Bast divided into two sisters, Sekhmet and Bast. Sekhmet was a lion-headed, black skinned woman with red-flaming eyes and hair and was the goddess of sunset, destruction, death, and wisdom, while Bast was a cat goddess of pleasure, joy, sexuality, and childbirth and one of the Eyes of Ra, her solar-god father.

• Witches Sabbats
One of the principle nights of the year for witches to hold their revels.

• The Death and Rebirth of Count Albrecht Magistus
1864; vampire and clandestine, arch-opponent of Dracula.



1st Oct 08	Fides Day (Roman) Ceremonial rites were performed this day involving purification and a commemoration of the oath of unification at the Capitoline shrine of Fides. • Death of Tereus The Trojan adventurer and hero Tereus was devoured by the underworld dragon Theotholax, during his bid to rescue his lover's soul from Hades.
2nd Oct 08	Feast of the Guardian Angles (Catholic) This feast became official in 1582 in the Roman calendar, as the first available day after the Feast of the Dedication of St. Michael the Archangel. Guardian Angels had since been recognised by the Church for a long time. Memory of the Holy Hieromartyr Cyprian and of the Holy Virgin Martyr Justina Cyprian, a man well versed in false philosophy and magic, used all his skill to unsettle the holy resolve of the virgin Justina. Finally convinced of the treachery of the demon, he went to Anthimos, Bishop of a city near Antioch, Syria, and received holy baptism after having burned all his magic books. He was consecrated bishop and conferred the order of deaconess upon the pious virgin Justina. Seized together, they were both sent to Emperor Diocletian, who ordered that they be beheaded around the year 304.
3rd Oct 08	Festival of Bacchus (Roman) Autumn feast to the Cult god of wine and fertility, whose rights, the Bacchanalia, were noted for sexual excesses and criminality. • Costermonger’s Wake The Pearly Kings and Queens of London, parade at St. Martin in the Fields, for their ‘pitch’ coronations.
4th Oct 08	Feast of St. Francis of Assisi 1181-1226; born of a wealthy father, he denounced all riches and founded of the Franciscan Order, circa 1210. While praying alone on Mount La Verna, he miraculously suffered in ecstasy, the ‘Impression of the Stigmata’, the marks of the five wounds of Christ. Occultation of the Grail In 1189, a great battle with 204,000 knights and soldiers, took place outside Acre, between the Holy Crusaders and Saladin’s infidel Saracens. Among the Christians were the Knights Hospitaller, the Knights Templar and the Knights of Saint Levantius. On that day, many hundreds were killed including Saladin’s son and the master of the Templars, and the ‘Holy Grail was lost’.
5th Oct 08	• The Green Lion A solar eclipse occurred in 1312, in Central and Southern England after a lion had first been seen in the clouds. Amongst notes for this same day in the celebrated Journal of The Alchemist, appeared a painted image of a green lion swallowing the sun, symbolising the process of dissolving gold with aqua regia, required for the making of the Philosopher’s Stone.
6th Oct 08	Feast of Hekate (Greek) Two-day festival to the dark goddess with three heads, the all-seeing watcher, seeing into the past, present, and future. Many believed that Hekate ruled Heaven, Earth, and the Underworld.
7th Oct 08	Pyanepsion Noumenia (Greek) A two-day festival of late autumn fruit gathering that seeks divine blessings for the autumn sowing. This very ancient festival is primarily in honour of Phoebos Apollo as sun god, but also for Helios, the Sun.
8th Oct 08	• Secret of Secrets The extremely influential hermetic text compiled by Rhazes, 850-c. 923, (or Al-Razi), Persian physician and alchemist who practiced in Baghdad.
9th Oct 08	St Denis’ Day d. 230; Bishop of Paris, patron saint of France, ‘Denys’ was martyred in Paris by beheading. His body being recovered from the Seine, St Denis’ Chapel was built over his tomb there. • Theory of Metals A surviving letter dated ‘St Denis’ Day, 1385’, from Bernard of Trevisa to Thomas of Bologna, astrologer to King Charls V of France, argues the merits of the hermaphrodite, philosopher’s mercury over the mercury-sulphur theory.
10th Oct 08
11th Oct 08	Meditrinalia (Roman) Celebrates the end of the vine harvest and deities associated with it. North America: Thanksgiving Day/Columbus Day
12th Oct 08	Proerosia A two-day festival for Demeter's blessings for life, death, and rebirth, in preparation for the ploughing and sowing at the start of the farming season.
13th Oct 08	Translation of Edward the Confessor The pious and generous Anglo-Saxon King who established Westminster Abbey, England’s royal coronation and burial centre. He died in 1086, paving the way for the Norman invasion by William the Conqueror. Subsequently canonized, his relics were translated in 1163 in Westminster where they remain still. Fontinalia (Roman) Well-dressing celebrations. • Brasov Impaling On St Bartholomew’s day in 1459, Vlad Tepes organised 30,000 merchants and nobles of Brasov to be impaled whilst he feasted amongst the forest of their tortured bodies.
14th Oct 08	Full Moon • Battle of Hastings The Norman invasion of England, in which William defeated and killed King Harold, bringing an end to the Saxon dynasty and the start of the medieval period. • Roger Bacon 1219; believed Birthday of Roger Bacon, Franciscan monk and alchemist who believed strongly that everything in the world was composed of the four elements. Sukkot or Feast of The Tabernacles (Hebrew) The seven-day rejoicing of the Harvest Festival and the beginning of the rainy season, and of the escape of the Jews from Egypt to the Promised Land. Special services and processions are held in the synagogues and Huts are erected in gardens for families to gather under and eat their meals.
15th Oct 08	• Modus' Pilgrimage Several pages of the manuscript known as the Hermetic Chronicles were discovered amongst a private collection of papers in Oxford, recounting the pilgrimage of Modus Quintus to Compostela, when he made communication with St James on this day in 1297.
16th Oct 08	St Michael’s Day (alternate) Commemorating his apparition at Mont-Saint-Michel. (See 29^th September). Festival of Cera (Celtic) Goddess of love, beauty, marriage, and fertility.
17th Oct 08	Feast of Sekhmet (Egyptian) One of several feasts to Sekhmet, meaning ‘the mighty one’, an awesome, lion-headed goddess of war and retaliation. Feast of Thesmophoria (Greek) Four-day festival of fertility in honour of the earth-mother Demeter, as goddess of marriage, and women in Athens and other centres in Greece.
18th Oct 08	St Luke’s Day 1^st century apostle and evangelist and one of the first Christians of Antioch, Luke wrote two of the New Testament Gospels. As an accomplished painter he made at least one icon of the Blessed Virgin and is patron saint of artist. • Truffle Snuffling Day Northern European truffling festival, with a boar at the head of the table. Black-robed ‘Masters of the Truffle’ pass alms baskets around the local church congregation for parishioners to donate truffles in honour of Saint Anthony, the patron saint of truffle hunters and their snuffling pigs.
19th Oct 08	Holy Day of Osiris (Egyptian) God and patron of all husbands, fathers, and judges, his body is shown tightly wrapped in mummy’s bindings, his hands holding the crook and flail and on his head he wears a tall white crown with two ostrich feathers.
20th Oct 08	Feast of St. Acca Benedictine monk who became Bishop of Hexham. Two stone crosses were placed at his tomb, inside which was found a portable alter, inscribed ‘Almae Trinitati, agiae Sophiae, sanctae Mariae’. d. 740. Festival of Sebek (Egyptian) Sebek or Sobek was the crocodile god associated with death and burial. As the god who controlled the waters and the Nile, the people of ancient Egypt worshiped Sebek in order to appease him and the crocodiles. (Old) Birth of Upir In 1364, the agathadaemon, (Greek; ‘good daemon’) was concieved in the Otherworld as a vampiric emulous to the predominating revenant legions of evil.
21st Oct 08	• Isaac Newton's First Alchemical Trials After returning to Woolsthorpe in September 1666 following his witness to the Great Fire of London, the fledgling scientist conducted some rudimentary, experimental observations on the qualities of mercury and sulphur. • Burly Dragon A dragon living on Burley Beacon in Hampshire, England, flew down to nearby Bisterne every for food, and the villagers left milk in the hope it would not take their sheep. In time they hired a knight to slay the beast, who covered himself in birdlime and ground glass to protect against the dragon’s fiery breath. The night killed the dragon after a fierce battle, commemorated still by Bisterne’s Dragon Lane. Shemini Atzeret (Hebrew) On Shemini Atzeret, ‘The Assembly of the Eighth Day’, Jews complete the annual reading of the Torah on this eighth day after the start of Sukkot.
22nd Oct 08	• Death of Ramon Lull 1235-1316 Lull, ‘doctor illuminatus’, was born in Majorca, beginning his career as a poet and troubadour. He became a missionary and then a magician, cabalist and alchemist of enormous reputation and influence, conjuring angels and producing many great esoteric works. He travelled extensively and including working secretly in London for King Edward III of England.
23rd Oct 08	Festival of Selket (Egyptian) Selket, Egyptian goddess of magic and medicine, was one of four goddesses that guarded the gilded wooden canopic shrine for the alabaster chest containing the dead king's organs. The Creation Heaven and Earth began as God created the universe at 9.0 a.m. (by contemporary London time, or midnight in the Garden of Eden), on Sunday, October 23, 4004 BC, making it just over 6,000 years old according to the Irish Archbishop, James Ussher (1581-1656).
24th Oct 08	FIRST DAY OF SCORPIO • The Venables Dragon The screen of the Venables chapel in Middlewich Church, in Cheshire, is carved with their family crest of a dragon, with a baby clutched in its jaws. According to legend, during the Middle Ages the people of Moston were terrorised by a dragon that lived in Bache Pool. Thomas Venables courageously went out to fight the creature and shot it in the eye, as it was attacking a child. The wound was not fatal to the beast, so Thomas “afterwards with other weapons manfullie slew him”.
25th Oct 08	St. Clitherow’s Day Wife to a protestant tradesman, Margaret Clitherow was an active Catholic. Arrested for hiding priests and attending mass, she refused to plead and was imprisoned and executed in York in 1586, by being crushed to death.
26th Oct 08	Simkhat Torah (Hebrew) Processions around the synagogue with high-spirited singing and dancing, when as many people as possible are given the honour of carrying a Torah scroll. (Old) Norse New Year The aftermath of Ragnarok.
27th Oct 08	St Odran’s Day On the island of Iona in 563, Odran volunteered himself to his old companion, St Columba, as a human sacrifice for burial within the church foundations in order to pacify its repeated subsidence. Strangely for a Christian, Columba accepted, and the churches foundations did stabilise. Three days after his burial, curiosity drove Columba to uncover his friend, and when his head was unearthed Odran spoke and told them that there was no Heaven or Hell. Columba quickly had the grave re-covered. The cemetery is called Reilig Orain, or Odran’s Crypt. Celtic Tree Month of Ivy ends
28th Oct 08	New Moon Iisia (Egyptian/Roman) Seven-day festival marking the killing of Isis’ husband Osiris, by Set, god of destruction, Isis’ mourning then resurrecting Osiris and conceiving Horus with Him. Osiris then becomes Lord of Amenta, the land of the dead. Celtic Tree Month of Reed (Ngetal) begins
29th Oct 08	(Old) Festival of Herne (Celtic) Also knows as Cernunnos, Atho, or Hu Gadernhe, the ‘Antlered God’ and Master of the Beast guarded the Cauldron of the Otherworld. As protector of nature he provided abundance and fertility and all beast of the forest obeyed him. Herne would receive slain warriors and immersed their skulls in his cauldron for rebirth in the Otherworld.
30th Oct 08
31st Oct 08	All Hallow’s Eve; Halloween Halloween, a corruption of ‘All Hallows Eve’, was the Catholic observance in honour of all undedicated saints when the disembodied spirits of all those who had died in the last year would return in search of living bodies to possess. Fires were extinguished and masks were worn to frighten away the spirits. Beggars would visit homes asking for ‘soul cakes’ in return for prayers to placate the dead. Mischief Night Guisers, both adults and children would dress-up in grotesque disguises and go from house-to-house, knocking on doors and windows, holding their lanterns, and often perform innocent pranks while collecting gifts of money or food. • Pumpkin Lanterns A pumpkin or turnip is scooped out and holes cut into it to forma demon’s face, impersonating the ancestral spirits who revisit their homes. The mask is lit with a candle placed inside and it is carried about on a pole or a wire at dusk to protect the owner from these spectres. • Halloween Games Many variations of Apple Bobbing and Candle Jumping games, etc, derived from old divination-rites are played. • Mischief Night Guisers, both adults and children would dress-up in grotesque disguises and go from house-to-house, knocking on doors and windows, holding their lanterns, and often perform innocent pranks while collecting gifts of money or food. Feast of Christ the King (Catholic) Held on the Sunday before All Saint’s Day, emphasizing Christ as the King of all saints. Samhain; Samhuin; Hallowmas; (Gaelic/Celtic) From Oidhche Samhna, Gaelic for ‘the night of Samhain’, meaning the first day of winter; most Celtic peoples begin their celebrations from sunset on 31^st October, lasting till sunset on 1^st November. (See 1^st November). • Hallow Fires Hilltop fires known as Tindles or Teanlas are lit at dusk while horns are blown and ritual dances performed to purify the powers of evil. In Celtic and Pictish lands, white stones are placed in or around the fires and if they were cracked or missing in the morning, it portended an early death for the owner. • Bon Fires The ancient Celtic fire festivals at the end of the farming year and celebrating the beginning of the new Celtic year. From November through to the end of January when ‘Imbolc’ began, great ‘bone fires’ were lit, burning the inedible parts of the slaughtered animals, and drum-beating rituals were performed to drive away the Devil and his faeries. Hallowtide begins (Greek) Old, five-day festival in which the goddess Kore (Queen of the Living) became Persephone (Queen of the Dead). She abandoned her Mother, Demeter, and eloped to Elysium for the winter to be with her partner, Plouton (God of Death), and accompanied by Hekate and spirits of the dead. Those born on this day shall have second sight. Hallowtide is now referred to as the three days of All Saint's Day and All Soul’s Day. Persephone Kore (Queen of the Dead) • Cailleach The ‘Old Woman’ and hag of the Celtic Triple Goddess who holds the power of winter over Brigit's lamb, is abroad on Samhain, identified with the Halloween witch and sometimes seen as a death-bringing dragon. Reformation Day On this day in 1517 Martin Luther posted his Ninety-five Theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg Germany, thereby beginning the Protestant Reformation. Feast of Sekhmet and Bast (Egyptian) The original Egyptian forerunner to Halloween; the cycle of life and death was created when the primeval Goddess Sekhmet-Bast divided into two sisters, Sekhmet and Bast. Sekhmet was a lion-headed, black skinned woman with red-flaming eyes and hair and was the goddess of sunset, destruction, death, and wisdom, while Bast was a cat goddess of pleasure, joy, sexuality, and childbirth and one of the Eyes of Ra, her solar-god father. • Witches Sabbats One of the principle nights of the year for witches to hold their revels. • The Death and Rebirth of Count Albrecht Magistus 1864; vampire and clandestine, arch-opponent of Dracula.