Given on Facebook live through the Lighthouse Inc., Church Exorcism Team. (Notes from research by Chuck Missler)

This is a dangerous time for Christians. Halloween appears to some as seemingly “harmless” involvements but they are “entry ways” for the occult withcraft, divination, sorcery, etc, and can prove very tragic for the unwary.

Halloween’s Pagan Background can be traced back to ancient Britain and Ireland, the Celtic festival of Samhain was observed on October 31, the end of summer. In Cornwall it was known as Allantide, or apple time; in Ireland it was also known as Geimredh.

November 1 was the new year for both Celtic and Anglo-Saxon calendars and the date was connected with the return of herds from pasture and the renewal of laws and land tenures. It was one of the most important, and yet sinister, calendar festivals of the Celtic Year.

The Celts were the first Aryan people who came from Asia to settle in Europe. Settling in northern France and the British Isles, the Celtic people engaged in occultic arts, worshiped nature, giving it supernatural, animistic qualities.

The ancient Druids were the learned priestly class of the Celtic religion. Many of their beliefs and practices were similar to those of Hinduism, such as reincarnation, and the transmigration of the soul, which teaches that people may be reborn as animals.

They worshiped the Lord of the Dead on Samhain, October 31. According to Julius Caesar and other sources, the Celts believed they were descended from the god Dis, the Roman name for the god of the dead. (Much of what we know of this ancient culture comes from the records of the Romans.)

Human sacrifice occurred regularly among the Druids. According to the Roman historian Tacitus, the Druids “covered their altars with the blood” of the victims—mostly criminals; according to Caesar, human sacrifice was a common and frequent element in Druidism. In large cages, scores of people were burned alive at once; the larger the number of victims, the greater the yield of crops.

According to Lucan, a 1st century Latin poet, in Pharsalia, three Celt gods in particular were hungry for human souls—Teutates, Esus and Taranis.6

The struggles of the dying victims were held to contain predictions of the future. The Druids had full confidence in human sacrifice as a method of divination. “Horrible indeed was the method by which the Druids divined the future events after a human sacrifice. ‘The Druids,’ says Tacitus, ‘consult the gods in the palpitating entrails of men,’ while Strabo informs us that they stabbed a human victim in the back with a sword and then drew omens from the convulsive movements made by him in his death-struggles.

Diodorus says that they augured from the posture in which the victim fell, from his contortions, and the direction in which the blood flowed from the body. From these, ‘they formed their predictions according to certain rules left them by their ancestors.’”7

(Human sacrifices are still a part of certain satanist and neo-pagan groups.) The Druids believed that on October 31, the night before their New Year and the last day of the old year, Samhain, the Lord of Death, gathered the souls of the evil dead who had been condemned to enter the bodies of animals.

It was believed that he would then decide what animal form they would take for the next year. (The souls of the good dead were reincarnated as humans.) The Druids also believed that the punishment of the evil dead would be lightened by sacrifices, prayers and gifts to the Lord of Death. (This begins to reveal the strange link between this holiday and the non-Biblical concept of purgatory, etc.)

Druid worshipers attempted to placate and appease the Lord of Death because of his power over the souls of the dead, whether these souls were good or evil.

For those who had died during the preceding 12 months, Samhain allowed their spirits to return to earth to their former places of habitation for a few hours to associate once again with their families. It was on these occasions that ancient fire festivals, with huge bonfires set on hilltops, were set to “frighten away evil spirits.”

The souls of the dead were supposed to revisit their homes on this day, and the autumnal festival acquired a sinister significance, with ghosts, witches, hobgoblins, black cats, fairies, and demons of all kinds said to be roaming about. It was the time to placate the supernatural powers controlling the processes of nature. The hilltop Halloween fires of the Scots were called Samhnagan, suggesting the lingering influence of the ancient Celtic festivals.8

On this night, evil or frustrated ghosts were supposed to play tricks on humans and cause supernatural manifestations. As part of the celebration, people donned grotesque masks and danced around huge bonfires to scare away the evil spirits.

Food was also put out to allow the good dead that Samhain had released to feel welcome and at home. Halloween was also thought to be the most favorable time for divinations concerning marriage, luck, health, and death.

It was the only day on which the help of the devil could be invoked for such purposes. Other festivals worldwide also celebrate a time when the dead return to mingle with the living. The Hindus have their night of Holi. The Iroquois Indians celebrate a Feast of the Dead every 12 years. In Mexico, the Day of the Dead begins on

A standard book on neo-paganism highlights Samhain (Halloween) as one of the “greater sabbats” for the celebration of witchcraft.28

Some witches even request a day off from work for their special day while others have actually sought to have schools closed to commemorate their great sabbat.

Most satanic groups consider Halloween a special night as reflected in the view that Halloween “became the only day of the year in which it was believed that the devil could be invoked for help in finding out about future marriages, health, deaths, crops, and what was to happen in the near year.

Satanism and witchcraft share many commonalities. Divergent emphases and differences in ritual cannot obscure the commonalities in source of power, psychic development, anti-Christian worldview, use of spirits, use of evil, etc.

There is genuine power in the occult (Isa 47:9), but it’s demonic power (Mt 24:24; Acts 8:7; 13:6-11; 16:16-19; 19:18-20; 2 Cor 4:4; Eph 6:7-11, 22; 2 Tim 3:8).

Any serious study of Biblical demonology will reveal Satan as the power behind false religion, witchcraft, idolatry and the occult (Deut 32:16,17; Ps 106:35-40; Acts 16:16-19; 1 Cor 10:19-21; 2 Thess 2:9, 10; 1 Tim 4:1f).

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