Samhain, saints, souls and spooks

T’was the Celtic celebration of the end of summer (literally, Samhain), or trepidation over the start of winter. The Celts’ departed souls returned to earth this time to spook those who had done them wrong; everyone kept hearth cold and the Druid priests lit bonfires to ward off nasty spirits, while the faithful cuddled around the warmth of the communal fire, or carried torches around to drive out witches.

The Irish sense of humor claims that Jack was too nasty to enter heaven but too naughty (he ridiculed demons) to be welcomed in hell, so banned from either place, the jack-o-lantern is doomed to roam earth in perpetuity. ‘Tis the Irish wandering Jew!

After the official recognition of the Catholic Church into the Roman Empire’s list of accepted sects in 313 CE, the ecclesiasticals remembered persecuted martyrs, raising them up as exemplars. Prayers were offered May 13, and the day after honored all souls.

The Egyptian sun god Ra descended daily into the netherworld to rise up again in the morn, a dramaturgical element of the Christ’s birth-death-resurrection cycle. Souls who died without making it across the threshold of grace transitioned in purgatory, granted remission of sins on the strength of prayers from the faithful. Novenas lit up the marquee and the clink of the coin in the church coffers sprung a soul from ghoul!

As is often the case of any regulatory/licensing office, corruption comes with the office desks, and it did not take long before a rotund German Augustinian monk took exception to the sacerdotal office’s issuance of release permits to wandering purgatory residents, resulting in the Protestant Reformation.

Like the pre-emption of the hedonist orgies of Bacchus transformed the incarnate Logos into a cannibalistic ritual, aka the Eucharist and Christ-mass, the Samhain got sanctified into All Saints’ Day. All Souls’ Day followed.

All cultures honor their dead. Dusting the tombs of ancestors, known as Qingming in China, is not unlike Kate Winslet character’s smile over the memory of the Leonardo DiCaprio role in the movie Titanic, while Celine Dion croons My Heart Will Go On into the sunset. It is a common enough understanding that my ChEnglish students appreciate when I identify the song as a Qingming song; we use it to navigate through the Titanic pronunciation of English words.

Samhain and other similar climate change rites dot all geographical points across the planet. Saints abound and they do march in, still being martyred. The soul has become an empathetic exclamation point for poets and artists, an energy field for the physicist, and a gastronomic ambience to chefs of the American south. On Saipan, both celebrations provide a good excuse to spruce up the expensive real estate southeast of the cathedral.

It’s the spooks that ground us this year. President-able Mitt Romney finally moved out of the climate-change-denial-stance so jealously guarded by orthodox GOP. A Boston Globe op-ed piece assailed as bad science the explanations attendant to the current dumbfounding reality of climate change—e.g., snowstorm in the U.S. Northeast in October, the increase in tremors, typhoons, tidal and heat waves across the planet, and the severity of droughts and floods in places that have heretofore handled occurrences as simply Mother Nature’s periodic hiccups—which may not be enough to allay the conundrum of Bangkok residents who are wet up to their elbows but are short of potable water!

The previously forested watershed upland off Bangkok toward the north now only 20 from 70 percent after only 50 years may have something to do with the drainage mess that has visited Thailand’s topography, but no one will touch that historical tidbit since government and corporate bodies had all their fingers in that cookie jar.

Spookier is U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s trick or threat stance in his recent Asian tour, prominently asserting U.S. military presence in the Pacific, widely broadcast, aired and inked. It does not mean fortifying Micronesia. It means carriers and destroyers outside the 12-mile limits of China, and drones within striking distance from Alaska-Japan/S. Korea-Philippines-Australia axis. China’s claim of oil reserves near the Japan Sea and in the West Philippine Sea (an invasive new term referring to the eastern part of the South China Sea) is the new arena of conflict.

Stephen Bosworth of State determined that the DPKR-US tete-a-tete in Geneva was hopeless even before he got to eyeball his counterpart. Meanwhile, China’s Vice Premier Li Keqiang traveled to Pyongyang and Seoul to get the six-party talks restarted. Empires in decline tend to be trigger-happy, we are told!

Halloween this year bears the stench of smoldering buildings and burnt oil in the Arab Spring. The financial system that crafted the pyramid of phantom wealth unravels even as the euro drools over possible ¥uan investments to tide the ledger over before reality collapses the market. Main Streets’ occupancy of Wall Street is to naught since the financial cancer has gone viral. The feds are confident they can print more dollars!

Have a Hallowed evening. Boo!
[I] Vergara is a regular contributor to the Saipan Tribune’s Opinion Section.[/I]