Origins of Halloween: Samhain, Druidism, and Ancient Traditions: Interview with Luke Eastwood

👻 Halloween Special!!! 👻

Join Generation X Paranormal for a deep dive into the mysterious origins of Halloween. In this episode, hosts Logan and Nicole uncover the ancient roots of the holiday and explore its connection to the Celtic festival of Samhain. Special guest and practicing druid, Luke Eastwood, shares expert insights into the traditions of druidism, the spiritual significance of Samhain, and how these ancient practices have influenced the Halloween we celebrate today. From pagan rituals to the modern-day festival, discover the fascinating history behind one of the world's most intriguing holidays. Don't miss this enlightening conversation!

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Transcript

The old people used to say that there used to be stirrings, and that there used to be things happening around Halloween.

They used to say that there was definitely a vibe of a kind of an other world on the hill.

In their day, that you would not go up on the hill, you would not go near it on Halloween night.

It belonged to the world of the spirits.

That's what the old people said, it belongs to the spirits and leave them be.

Generation X Paranormal.

Well, hey, everybody, welcome back.

Hey, everybody.

I'm Logan.

And I'm Nicole.

Now, it is spooky season.

It is spooky season.

As you can tell by this awesome background here.

So it's time to break out the pumpkins, the candy corn that you love so much.

No, it belongs in the trash.

No, it does not.

It is a-

Reeses, reeses are where it's at.

So I'm not saying reeses aren't good.

I'm just saying that candy corn and those little candy pumpkin, you guys know what I'm talking about.

The little candy corn pumpkins, delicious.

You say that, I say they're not good.

Back me up here, guys.

Actually, let's do a little poll here.

All right.

Who's for reeses and who's for candy corns during Halloween?

Because I'm on the reeses team.

I'm on either.

It's sugar, so I don't really care.

But candy corn is like wax melts.

I'm sorry.

Well, if you want, let's leave a comment.

Tell us what you think.

I think candy corn is delicious.

You guys are probably going to think I'm crazy, but that's OK.

Anyway, so we are at that time.

And as you can see behind us, we have these wonderful things that say Halloween and Sam.

Now there's a ton of Halloween stuff out there.

You can find it.

Don't worry about it.

Probably not a ton of stuff on Sam.

And that's how it's pronounced.

Sam, right?

So we know it looks like Sam Hain.

Sam Hain.

It is not Sam Hain.

Yeah, I'm not going to have a bunch of fun on Sam Hain.

That just sounds really weird.

It sounds like a person.

That's right.

I'm not going to go do Sam Hain.

Anyway, so instead of just doing just the regular Halloween that we all know, guys, Halloween celebrated everywhere.

It's worldwide, okay?

It's not just a US holiday.

It's not just a bunch of people running around with little plastic pumpkins and getting candy.

Incredibly fun, but it's not everything.

So not the origins, not the origins.

So that's what we're about to get into.

So tell us a little bit about Samhain.

Okay.

So it is celebrated, like he said, all over the world.

There are some countries that it did originate in, okay?

And what we are going to focus on today is Ireland.

And it is pronounced Samhain in Ireland.

Okay?

It's pronounced different things in different countries, but we are focusing on Ireland.

That's right.

Okay.

So you are going to be familiar with some of these things.

I'm going to just mention them before we get to our guest.

Okay.

So we have a very special guest to talk to us.

I'm very excited about speaking with him.

But, you know, the typical, oh, will we go around house to house?

Trick or treating, right?

Trick or treat.

You know, give me something good to eat, whatever that is.

Yes.

Well, we got to finish the ride.

I don't remember.

Give me something good to eat.

Something about smelly feet.

It's the part they only really remember, smelly feet.

Which I never thought why they would do that.

However.

Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat.

Yes.

Yes.

How I just remembered that, I'll never know.

Because I said smelly feet.

That's sad that I have to agree.

Yes.

So that is in relation to what they called the mummers play.

Mummers play.

Okay.

So it's an old pagan belief and they would go door to door on Samhain singing a song or the children would beg, beg for whatever candy, probably like food more likely and say different rhymes.

So you see how that kind of translated into what we do now.

It's a rhyme.

It's kind of like a sing song.

Yeah.

And they go door to door.

And now it's a bunch of sugar and candy and Jimmy crap.

All the things that clog my arteries.

If you find anybody even trick or treating anymore.

But you still do.

It's more trunk or treats now.

Which, by the way, sounds even worse.

You know, get a bunch of people in with the back of your car.

It's just it's nuts.

I mean, yeah.

Okay.

I get going house to house.

Fine.

It's it's supposed to be safer.

But I feel like it just takes away from the magic of it.

Yeah.

Here's a bunch of crap from my trunk.

Eat it.

Well, I mean, a lot of people have tents set up around there and they have like little games and stuff.

So it's not just like the old old truck like open up.

You know, it reminds me of I think of like, remember Uncle Buck?

Yes.

John Candy, where he had that.

That's what you imagine when I think about it.

Like open up the truck.

One of their old 80s cars.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's somebody like Beetlejuice comes out.

Hey, kids.

Anyway, so that is in relation to that.

We got to keep going.

All right.

OK.

And, you know, people like to get into mischief on Halloween.

Right.

So the young people back then, they would, you know, like remove doors from the sheds because you're thinking back, you know, when people had a lot of farms and stuff, so they would remove the doors.

They would let the cows out of the field where the farmer would have to go chasing after them.

Cool.

Man, that sucks.

But they would also impersonate spirits of the land.

OK.

So what does that sound like?

Dressing up the old-fashioned ghost.

Right.

The sheet over you.

Right.

With the holes.

Yeah.

You know.

Yeah.

I mean, would they have done that back then with the sheets?

No, I'm saying that's what it led to.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, that's where it started.

Like you think about the first costumes.

That was like the the main costume people would dress up.

OK, that makes sense.

That's weird.

So they would.

It's interesting how we've kind of I want to say perverted, but kind of taking it into translated.

And now we're going to dress up as Iron Man.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, it's cool.

They didn't have Iron Man.

And so did they?

It's no, they did not.

Now, this is a big one.

OK, OK, because you think about divination being a modern thing, right?

Yes.

No, absolutely not.

In fact, that's true, because we do have the finding rods and divine.

No, I'm talking.

No.

All right.

Moving on.

But they had a few like and there's a lot, actually.

OK.

But I just I'm going to mention a few.

OK.

They would put candles by the wind and watch how the flame would go.

OK.

OK.

They would eat apples and hazelnuts.

And I'll get the reason why here in a second.

So those were the two main foods that we kind of focus on.

OK.

And with the apple core, they would put it on like a hot poker on the fire or near the fire, at least.

OK.

And so the reaction of how they would, I don't know, like heat up or they probably like shrivel or something is what I'm going to guess.

I've never done it, so I don't know.

Well, now we have a task to do.

Yeah, I actually I'm curious to see what it does.

And I guess in the direction or however it would move would tell them if they were going to be lucky in love or if they were going to stay with the person they were currently with.

Yeah.

You know, they had translations for that.

I'm not sure what they were.

Sure.

And you could also, if you peeled the apple in one long strand, you know, without breaking it, and you throw it over your shoulder.

Okay.

So the peel and whatever letter it looked like on the ground was supposed to be the first letter of the name of the person that you were going to fall for or lover or whatever.

Interesting.

Yeah.

That's pretty cool.

I kind of want to try that.

I wonder if I'll get an L.

I don't know.

I'll probably get an N though, because, you know, that would be a natural way for it to actually fall.

By the way, it was dowsing rods.

Yes, not divination rods.

Or whatever, diving rods.

Use them underwater.

All right.

Now.

Okay.

Anyway, the hazelnut one is kind of interesting.

So they would take two hazelnuts and they would put them on the embers.

Okay.

And if the nuts would like kind of move towards each other, like jump from probably heating up, you know, they kind of like bounce around.

Yeah.

They determined that was to mean, like if they went towards each other, that they were most likely going to be getting married.

You know, interesting.

Two people coming together.

And they would, I think they would name each hazelnut.

How?

Okay.

Like your name and then like, I'd, Nicole and Logan.

Right.

Okay.

And if they went like this, you're probably going to end up with that person.

If they don't, they go the other way.

Be interesting to see what our nuts do.

I wanted to see my nuts.

PG.

But hey.

Okay.

Now, couple more things.

Okay.

So they always had the bonfire.

Yeah.

You know, the big fire.

Yeah.

Which is kind of what we got sort of depicted.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Well, our man's covering it, or whatever he is.

They would light the fire and pray for the dead by knee, and they would kneel in front of it.

Okay.

So it's kind of similar to a lot of cultures.

I find it in this thing.

Yeah.

I mean, that's pretty common for how they told stories and stuff back then too.

So that makes sense.

And sometimes the farmers and the country people that lived out, they would walk, and they said in a sunrise direction.

Okay.

So I guess whichever direction the sun was going to come up that next morning, they would walk in that direction.

Well, that'd be west, typically.

With a flaming torch or lit straw or whatever they had, basically.

And they would bless the land to protect it.

Makes sense.

Yeah.

For like the coming year.

Okay.

So it was a harvest celebration.

Yes.

Yes.

I mean, a lot of this led to remembering your ancestors, right?

Sure.

Okay.

So in the ancient times, they would sacrifice like animals, possibly even humans.

We don't actually know for sure.

That's about on brand.

Yeah.

To ensure the good harvest for the coming year.

But more recently, now they just leave out food like a plate at the dinner table.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like they were going to come back.

So it's very similar to the Mexican tradition, leaving out food.

And then that translated into what?

What would you think that?

I would think that's getting a tree, getting candy.

Getting the candy.

So now instead of wholesome food, now we just give shirt.

It's easier to get.

Right.

Yeah.

I mean, I remember when I was young, you'd get apples, but you couldn't have any because you could have razor blades.

I know.

We always had to dump it all out on the floor.

Yeah.

And my parents had to inspect it.

And I'm like, how are you really going to see that inside of something?

Two for me, one for you.

Yeah.

I think that's probably how it went.

Yeah.

I do too.

Yeah.

They would also light a candle, like as they're showing signs of respect to their ancestors.

But if they didn't have a candle, that was for the rich.

Oh.

Okay.

So this leads to something we do today.

Okay.

It's very different.

So it was an invitation to return to the family homestead for that night.

Okay.

Okay.

But if you didn't have a candle, because candles were expensive, they would, the poor would carve out a turnip.

Wow.

Put the light inside and turn it into a lantern.

What does that sound like?

We do know.

Pumpkin for sure.

Exactly.

So when they came to the States, pumpkins were much bigger, easier to carve than a turnip.

And that turned into our jack-o-lanterns.

Imagine how hard that was to carve a turnip.

Yeah.

I mean, they had to use what they had to use.

So I thought that was very interesting.

It is interesting how it kind of went from like a very, very difficult thing to do to, hey, let's use a pumpkin and now rip its guts out and cook that too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I guess that's cool.

So that is kind of like the introduction to this episode, all the stuff that we know of today.

Right.

However, there is an ancient beginning to all of this.

Beginning.

OK.

And I don't think we are qualified.

No, I'm not.

To speak about this.

So I wanted I really wanted someone that knew what they were talking about.

So I went on the internet and I searched and I searched and I searched.

And I found this man who wrote this book.

Yeah.

OK.

Happens to be a druid, which I thought was awesome.

But the book is Samhain, The Roots of Halloween.

OK.

OK.

And what can you tell us about Luke Eastwood?

And by the way, he is not Clint Eastwood's son.

But just to clarify, still, that's pretty cool.

Yes.

I sort of abuse that if I was Luke Eastwood.

He's an artist, a designer, musician, a photographer, writer, horticulturist, Reiki practitioner, and is involved in environmental activism with Extinction Rebellion and FOE.

He currently lives in Ireland and is a facilitator of a grove on the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry.

Now, he became an archibald of a druid, an archibald, an archdruid.

Yeah, he became an archdruid.

That's hilarious.

He became, he became an archdruid of Druid Clan of Dana in 2009 and completed his order of bards, ovates, and druids training in 2011 and is currently a mentor for them.

Yeah.

So if you don't know what this order is.

Apparently, I can't.

It's basically, it's a community around the world and they love nature and want to follow a magical, spiritual way that respects and protects the natural world and all its beauty.

Members work with spiritual teachings that combine the inspiration of the ancient druids and the old stories with contemporary scholarship and insights into the relationship between human beings and the world of plants and animals, stars and stones.

Cool.

And it sounds so awesome and I so want to do it.

All right.

Well, let's get let's get on with it.

But first, let's talk to Luke and find out the origins of Samhain.

Yeah.

And not not he's not an archibald.

No, it's not.

Oh, help us.

Well, hey, Luke, welcome to Generation X Paranormal.

How are you doing?

I'm good.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Thanks a million for having me on.

Oh, for sure.

Yeah, we we try to do, especially when it comes to Halloween and a few of the stateside holidays, we try to kind of expand a little bit, get a little bit more knowledge and kind of where things started and those sort of things.

But kind of before we do, can you let our audience know a little bit about yourself?

I live in the west of Ireland.

I'm originally from Scotland, although I didn't live there for very long.

I spent a good bit of time in England.

I lived in London for 10 years.

I was married to an Irish woman, so I've come to Ireland since the early 1991 onwards, and moved here in 1999.

And I've stayed here ever since.

And, yeah, I've done most of my Druid training here in Ireland.

I'm in more than one organization, but kind of, I suppose, the first one I was with is one called O'Bard, which is the Order of Bards of its Druids, which is a worldwide Druid order.

And I think that's the biggest one in the world, actually, as far as I know.

I spent quite a long time studying that.

I'm interested in sort of spirituality generally, you know, Buddhism, you know, the Hindu religion.

In fact, I've studied pretty much everything from Islam and Judaism, you know, Kabbalah, you name it, really.

I kind of had a look at it.

I suppose it took me a long time to figure out what I actually really believed.

And I kind of ended up settling on Judaism, partly because I'm, you know, I've always had a love of nature and environmentalism and an interest in kind of Celtic history and things.

And it's a general philosophy of it just seemed to fit quite well with my my own ideas, you know?

Sure.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

I mean, I get that.

Yeah, we get that too.

You know, obviously, you don't have a show about the paranormal or anything like that spirituality.

If you're not, I think, somewhat on your own journey, you know, trying to find different answers for things.

That's fun.

That's pretty common for everybody who run across.

But, you know, we collectively have a Celtic background.

I've got some ancestry and I know Nicole has some ancestry.

So we were very interested in, you know, especially here in the States.

When it comes to Halloween, you know, like most holidays in the States and I know abroad, everything gets marketed, everything gets UPC stamped to sell it.

Everything becomes so corporatized that, you know, a lot of people and it's no fault of their own.

They just don't know some of the-

Forget the actual meaning.

Right.

The meaning of it in the background.

And I hope today, we kind of, at least when it comes to Halloween and Druidism and things of that nature, that we kind of, I guess, put some information out there that some folks may not know.

Well, you know, it's interesting that you mention that because like, when I was a kid, you know, you still had things like paper bags.

You had, you know, actual glass bottles you took back to the shop and all that stuff.

And you got money back.

So, you know, when people celebrated Halloween when I was a kid, you'd kind of make, you know, things out of bedsheets, like a ghost costume with little eye holes, or, you know, homemade Dracula outfit or something.

And, you know, people made Pepe Amache kind of things.

And they bought a pumpkin or actually original would have been a turnip.

A pumpkin is so much easier to make a lantern out of, to be honest.

People gave up on turnips.

Yeah, they're pretty rough, that's for sure.

My point is, it was like very much homemade.

It's like back in the 70s, everything was less commercialized, there wasn't plastic everywhere.

I would have said, I'd like to burn it all, but actually you shouldn't burn plastic.

No, that would be terrible.

Psych a little.

I'd love to get rid of it all, because the whole thing with these kind of pagan festivals, and actually spirituality in general, is you're supposed to put some effort into it and some feeling and thought.

Just the same as if you're a Buddhist, you're not supposed to go off and buy a bunch of plastic trinkets and think that it's going to get you into nirvana.

It's not right.

And the same applies to all spirituality.

If you're going to try to take shortcuts and cheat to get ahead on a spiritual level, ultimately, it isn't going to work for you.

You're just fooling yourself, really.

Yeah, for sure.

That makes sense.

So let's go back, way, way back.

Start at the beginning of how Halloween came to be.

Okay.

Well, I would say this is something that goes back into pre-prehistory.

And I kind of go back.

I wrote a book about this, which is called Sowing the Roots of Halloween.

And that's kind of as far back as I can go in terms of recorded history.

If you don't mind, I'll quickly show you the book cover.

You see that?

I love the color, but actually I didn't have a whole lot to do with it.

That's the publisher chose that image, but it just so happened that I really liked it.

Yeah, I did too.

We have it ourselves.

We read it, but the problem is we were going to show it.

The green screen.

Yeah, but for folks who are listening, you know, right, right.

For folks who are listening, they don't get to see this, but if you're watching it on the video, our green screen chroma keys completely dashed it out.

So yeah, but yeah, we did pick it up as well.

We'll be plugging in there anyway.

But the point being is that it goes back in sort of the earliest sort of recorded sort of history in Ireland.

But this kind of celebration, you know, didn't spring up in isolation, probably.

This goes back into the Neolithic period, probably sort of into sort of the kind of practices that you find in ancient shamanism and the kind of ideas you'd see in sort of Lapland, Siberia, etc.

that are sort of still extant and in some sort of ancient indigenous cultures.

But, you know, by the time you get to actually calling it Sauen, which is the Irish name for this festival, which means the end of summer.

You know, you're into sort of like the bronze age pretty much.

And you've still got, you know, leftovers, if you like, or continuation of the sort of religious ideas of the Neolithic period.

It's actually really a festival of the dead.

And if you look into it, this idea of a festival of the dead, of the ancestors, you'll find that all over the world.

You'll find very close parallels in somewhere like Mexico, the day of the dead.

And you look at the Chinese, they venerate their ancestors even now.

They have little shrines to their ancestors.

I don't really know much about it, but I think they have like special days for remembering ancestors and such like.

Yeah, they sure do.

So it's a common theme throughout history.

And in the ancient times, this idea of communicating with the spirit world, communicating with the dead, was a lot more prevalent than it is now.

Right.

I think our modern lifestyles, especially kind of being surrounded by the technological life, kind of deadens you to this otherworldly or sort of supernatural world, if you want to call it that.

This place where Samhain was most kind of prominent is a place called Cluptor up in County Meath.

It's now called the Hill of Ward because of the Ward family that came to own it in the 1700s.

So the name got changed, but it's still there, the original site, and it's been excavated and they've proven from the archaeology that it was in use as early as 1350 BC.

Well, that's from like organic materials that they found there.

That doesn't mean it was built then.

It could have been built 100 years again before that, but they're going on what they can actually date as opposed to.

Who knows, it could have been there since, could have been there a thousand years before that still.

For sure.

They think that probably was there quite some time before and was added to over time.

It's just amazing.

I know.

It's so far back.

It's amazing.

So I know with the Hill of Ward and there's other sacred sites in Ireland that there's in the belief or at least you wrote about it in the book about the alignment of all the sites.

Can you talk a little bit about that and like the shifting of the seasons?

Yeah.

Well, most of these ancient sites going back into the Neolithic era are astronomical alignments.

You've got like four really important astronomical events.

There's winter and summer solstices and there's the spring and autumn equinoxes.

So if you go all around the world, you'll find ancient stone monuments and stone circles, which are aligned to these events.

And in Ireland, you'll also find them aligned to some of the sort of, I suppose, Celtic fire festivals they're referred to or cross-court.

You know, those would be Samhain, which is like the beginning and end of the year, if you like.

And then you've got Imbulk, which is in the beginning of spring, that's associated with the goddess Brigid.

And then you've got in May, you have Beeltener.

And then you have Lunasur in August, which is like the beginning of the harvest.

Very much associated with the god Lou and his foster mother.

Anyway, so there's eight festivals within the pagan year.

And this is kind of pretty much standardised now.

Although the names aren't always the same.

Wiccans and other witches have different names from what the Druids use.

Druids in Wales and England have slightly different names from here in Ireland.

But it's basically this wheel of eight.

And you'll find this symbol of the inter sort of a crossed circle.

This is relating to the four main astronomical events, which is the two solstices and the two equinoxes.

So you have like a cross like that, equal or with a circle around it.

That is not a Christian symbol.

That is a very ancient pagan symbol, which is going back into prehistory.

If you go into a graveyard, you see these Celtic crosses.

Right.

That the Christian monks and whatever, they just appropriated a symbol that was thousands of years older.

Oh, I did not know that.

So you've got the shortest day of the year, which is the winter solstice, and you've got the longest day of the year, which is at the summer solstice.

And then you have two equinoxes, which are points of near enough, equal day and equal night.

The exact point is referred to as the equilux, but where it's like 12 and 12.

But the equinox is almost the same, but it's actually the midpoint between the two solstices in time.

And at this point, we're just coming up to that now.

But what happens is as you progress through the year, the time period obviously changes for the days.

And as you're coming at either side of the equinox, it's the speed at which of change accelerates enormously fast.

Okay.

So, you know, the speed of change sort of in September and October is incredibly quick.

So you're noticing that each day you're losing more and more daylight.

And the other way around, on the other side, when you're going through spring, the end of spring, it suddenly starts to get brighter and brighter really quickly.

Because that's all down to the tilt of the earth, the 23 degrees angle.

But like, so that point on both sides, you've got this tremendously fast change.

So you've got this progression from summer into winter and from, you know, winter into summer.

And then you've got the opposite thing happening at the solstices.

When you get to the middle of winter, which is sort of associated with the northern point, certainly in the northern hemisphere it would be, you get this slowing down where the three days in the middle, around the 21st, 22nd, 23rd, even 24th, the sun appears to have just like stopped, where it doesn't descend anymore.

And the sunrise time is exactly the same, only off by a couple of few seconds for that period.

And then it starts to change again.

That's why it's called the solstice, which means sun stopped.

And greenstead in Irish means sun standing still.

So, you know, the ancients understood about all this.

And then you get at the upper end of the summer, you've got the same thing where, for three days, the sun is at its highest point in the sky, and it stays at that same point for three days.

And, you know, the sunrise will be at the same time for roughly three days.

But a lot of people think that the most important time was the winter solstice to many of the real ancients.

In the Celtic year, you've got this strange situation when you had two seasons and the beginning of end is at Samhain.

But to many people, they would say like, it's sort of a stasis period where, you know, things are sort of going into death.

And then you have like a rebirth at the winter solstice, where the sun starts to actually come back again.

Okay.

But that's, there's no coincidence that Christmas is placed right there at the end of the solstice period.

The winter solstice is incredibly important with this regeneration.

And you have an interesting parallel with, in Irish mythology, Angus Macanogue is like, the child of light.

He's born at the winter solstice at New Grange.

And that's where the light penetrates on the winter solstice into the back of the chamber.

And what about Jesus?

Jesus is born, and he's like this, this light of the world.

He's born just straight after, straight after that.

It's no accident that they placed Christmas at this time.

Actually, no one really knows for sure when Jesus was born.

A lot of astronomers have kind of guessed it's more likely around April, but it certainly wasn't December the 25th, that's for sure.

I've heard that before.

Yeah, I've heard that before in the spring.

And it's just amazing to me, like with all the standing stones, how they were able to calculate and place them.

I mean, just, I don't know.

It's not actually as hard as you think.

You can do it yourself, right?

Purely from what I might not be able to do it myself.

Maybe you can do it yourself.

I could teach you how to do it really easy.

All you really need is like like a long stick and like some string.

And like something to mark the ground with, like, I don't know, a bit of chalk or a few stones.

Because you can literally, if you're prepared to get up at the right times, or be there in the evening at the right times, you can stand in your central point and you can observe, okay, I can see the sun set here on this day.

I'll put a marker then and then you can do the opposite markers.

In fact, pretty much, it forms a cross anyway.

Once you've got one of them, you can then make a cross in alignment with that and get the most of the other ones.

You can make it, it's not actually, people think there's this huge mystery to it.

It's just astronomical observation and these are markers to mark it.

It does mean that you don't have to remember.

So imagine if every time you went somewhere to do a ceremony, you had to go and do it all again, every time.

Pain in the ass, wouldn't it?

So you create these permanent structures, these markers in stone, which give you your astronomical alignments.

And they did tend to pick places of, sort of, you could call them like psychic or earth energy, or the ley lines, whatever, you know.

Yeah.

Where there was a special energy is where they will choose to build these places.

But the actual construction of them is not as mysterious and complicated as people think.

That's interesting.

That's very interesting.

I have a hard enough time building a bookshelf.

Well, but in moving the stones, like some of the, like even stone hinge, those stones are so huge.

Like how they got them all there.

And recently there was a discovery.

Now, I'm sure you may or may not have heard of this, Luke, but I think within this year, they discovered that the, I guess, the altar piece stone is actually got Scottish, is from Scotland.

Yeah, I heard about that, yeah.

Yeah, and you wonder, this is prior.

Yeah, how did they get it there?

Well, there's interesting theories around that.

One theory is that they use boats.

Right.

Right.

If you think about, like, the ancient world, a lot of Europe, certainly Ireland and Britain, it was absolutely covered in forests, right?

Prior to the end of the Ice Age, a lot of this was all uninhabited when the ice kind of retreated.

All of these places in Northern Europe and that just got completely full of trees.

And, you know, wildlife gradually returned.

And it's amazing how quickly, if you just have a field and you don't have any animals on it and just leave it, in a matter of like 10 years, there's be like trees all over it and you could barely see the grass anymore.

Yeah.

So imagine if it took like two, three hundred years for people to return to these places, the entire country would be absolutely covered in trees.

So how are you going to get like from, say, well, Cork wouldn't have existed, but you want to get from Cork to Belfast, which is right up in the north.

If you decide to walk through the forest, it should probably take you like a whole month to get there.

If you got in a boat that you made, I mean, boats have been around a long time, and you just sail up the river, you get there in a day or two.

So if you want to transport stuff, doesn't it make sense to make a big, huge boat and stick the stones onto your boat?

And very carefully, my dad...

No kidding.

Something I find interesting, and I know we could probably talk at disgusting lengths about this, but the number three comes up a lot.

And it's not just with religion, but obviously it's utilized a lot in that, because in Christianity, you got the Trinity, the Holy Trinity, and then things seem to be built out in three.

And I know in your book, you mentioned the three realms, which I want to get to, but I just find it interesting that that number is so prevalent in...

It is.

You know, not just with religion, but in earth sciences and a lot of other certain things.

And I honestly personally don't think that's by any mistake.

But if you could talk a little bit, Luke, about kind of the three realms that you spoke of and speak to that a little bit.

Yeah, well, you mentioned the Trinity.

There's the legends about St.

Patrick, and it goes on about St.

Patrick with the tree foil, the shamrock and going, the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, blah, blah.

This idea was not invented of three being special.

That wasn't invented by St.

Patrick.

That idea in Ireland was of three being a sacred number and multiples of three, nine being very important too.

That goes back like, I couldn't tell you how long, but I would say it must be at least for two or three thousand years BCE, could be ten thousand years.

There's no way of knowing because, you know, the written records that relate to the ancient history they're not specific and they didn't have any dates and they were written down at a much later date.

But you've got in Irish cosmology, which has got some similarities to Wales.

The Welsh cosmology has three as a very important number with three realms, although the Welsh version is a little bit different from the Irish version.

So the ancient Druids and their predecessors would have believed in the idea of three realms and three cauldrons, which exist in your body, look quite like chakras, if you like, and not four elements, like you get in sort of the modern neoplatonic elements in magic, nine, nine elements.

So I'll tell you a little bit about this then.

So you've got three realms, which are sky, land, and sea.

And they're kind of where the three of them meet could be quite a powerful place.

So like on a seashore, where you've got the sort of the feeling of the three of them together is a good place to do spiritual or magical workings.

So again, I mentioned about these these cauldrons, and they've got associated with different parts of the body.

The first one would be like the head, which is koi-ra-sois, which that would be the cauldron of knowledge.

And that's associated with the sky, which is around the sky or air or spare and spare the sky.

And then next, you've got the flesh, which is supposed is the main part of your body, koi-ra-an-me, which is a vocation.

And that's associated with Tulluv and Tullun, which is land in Irish.

And then you've got the blood that runs through your veins, which unsurprisingly is associated with the sea.

That's koi-ra-gar, that the cauldron.

And it's the cauldron of warming, which kind of gives you energy, your life energy, if you like.

And that's associated, like I said, with the sea, which words for that are mara and farraga in Irish.

So these three realms are connected together.

You've got like the land, which we live on.

The sky is like the spiritual realm of the gods.

And beneath is sort of not really beneath but around you, the sea, sort of, it's not really beneath you, like the other world.

That's where the realm of the dead, the realm of the fairies and spiritual beings, you know, but not the gods.

They, you know, they're more associated with the sky.

So you can access that through the land, through fairy mounds and stuff.

And you can also access that by riding out beyond the ninth wade, you know, there's a story about O'Sheen on this, going on his horse off into the other world.

He rides across on this magic horse beyond, into the western ocean where the other world was thought to be.

Because I suppose in Ireland, you've got a gap of 3,000 miles before you hit land again.

So the ancients, they did actually discover, they went to Newfoundland and stuff.

I think that's St.

Brendan.

His voyage actually did happen.

But like for a very, very long time, people thought there was nothing.

That was the edge, end of the world.

That Ireland was the edge of the world.

And beyond that was the other world, the realm of the sea.

And nothing else there except the spiritual realm.

And then three is very important, obviously, because of that.

And these three cauldrons are kind of like chakras.

If you take care of your cauldrons really well, then you become like a perfected, enlightened person, hopefully.

And so you have to a quick sip of water.

No, please.

You're good.

And then there's these nine elements which are also associated with these three realms and these three cauldrons.

So they're completely different.

You know, normal Western magical tradition is earth, air, fire and water, and then sometimes spirit or ether.

Forget that.

And in terms of Ireland and its original spirituality, you've got the heavens, cloud and sun, plants, earth, stone, moon, wind and sea.

Those are your nine elements.

Okay.

Quite different.

Kind of reminded me in a way of the Chinese elements, because they have wood and stone and metal, fire and earth.

So not the same, but kind of going in the same direction.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, there's definitely parallels.

Yeah.

You've got this correspondence as well with the human body.

So it's a cosmological model, if you like.

And then you've got like the inner person.

So one is like a reflection of the other.

A bit like this idea as above, so below kind of thing with the macrocosm and the microcosm.

So you've got the head, the brain, the face.

There it's all associated with the realm of the sky and corrissois the, you know, the knowledge cauldron.

And then you've got the hair, flesh and bone, which then that's associated with the land, corra earn me, which is like the vocational one.

And then finally, you've got mind, breath and blood.

And that's associated with the sea.

And that's corra goyra, which is the warming cauldron where you get your sort of strength and power or this idea of what's called not, which is like chi in the Taoism, this kind of energy that flows through you.

And you get this of inspirational power as well, which is like called in bass or our one, which so I suppose that comes really from from the, I suppose, from the divine, from the gods, from the realm of the sky.

But it'll sort of descend on you if you kind of got your cauldron sort of aligned well, and you've got this gnat or chi flowing really well around your body.

You know, it's a bit like Dao where, you know, if you're following the way and you're really sort of following like the course of the river of your life as opposed to fighting against it, then, you know, everything goes really well for you.

You feel inspired, you feel in tune with the universe, et cetera.

And you might even feel like a state of enlightenment as well.

Right.

So there's lots of parallels, even on the other side of the world.

I see a lot of parallels between the ancient Irish cosmology and what you find in the ancient Daoism in China.

Yeah, yeah, there is.

Yeah.

Not by any happy accident.

No, no, not at all.

Well, I don't know.

I mean, I can't say if there's any connections with China.

There's certainly a lot of people who think there's ancient connections between India and possibly the sort of the Vedic Persian Indian culture with the Irish culture that maybe.

Well, there's certainly been huge migrations in the past, you know, tens of, you know, 10,000 years ago.

So, I mean, look at, have you heard of Gobleki Tepe?

That place in Turkey, it's the oldest known excavated.

Actually, not anymore.

They found older still.

That's from like 10,000 BC to temple.

They found even older temples there in Turkey.

And these, you know, people who were there, where did they come from?

They came from probably somewhere else, right?

You know, you've got ancient temples that we're, you know, considering supposed to be more or less cavemen at that point.

A lot of the connections between cultures and ideas that are common may be going back to a far more ancient civilization that was prevalent around the end of the Ice Age.

And it seems to be a bit more than coincidence, perhaps, that some of these, the commonality of the spiritual themes that you find in different places.

Yeah, agreed, agreed.

Even with the Native Americans here, I mean, there's a lot.

Even with the, yeah, Asian, even with some of the Irish.

Yeah.

It's interesting.

Yeah.

We could talk for hours.

Yeah, we could, really could.

You know, I am curious and I know that, you know, a lot of our US, well, I shouldn't say, a lot of stateside folks may not necessarily know this, but obviously, there's in Ireland, you've got the Republic of Ireland, you also have, you know, the UK part of it too.

So there is a difference for those who don't know.

And I'm always curious about how the traditions kind of, I guess, correlate.

You know, you've got a lot of very rich Irish tradition, and then, you know, you've got a British tradition.

There's so many different, I guess, different ways of celebrating, different ways of of communicating, different ways of displaying.

Do you find, and what are the similarities with what's different?

What are the traditions like?

Well, it's kind of a weird situation in that Ireland was all very much one country.

In fact, oddly, the last place that the English succeeded in colonizing was actually Northern Ireland.

The O'Neill's were really fearsome, and Hugh O'Neill was a really, really smart leader.

He almost defeated Elizabeth I, but he lost this nine years war.

And I suppose the North of Ireland, Ulster was considered this great prize to the Tudor monarchs at the time, and then the Stuarts.

And so they kind of took over it with this plantation and stuff.

But then Ireland was still one whole country up until the partition in 1921 after the end of the War of Independence.

So part of this deal was that they got the six counties in the North, and you've got, there's a lot of Protestant people.

I mean, most of Ireland has been Catholic, you know, through its Christian history, and then you've got this kind of Protestant area that was in the North.

And now it's pretty much more or less 50-50.

In fact, I think the Catholic are very, very small majority now in Northern Ireland.

And like we've now got peace, thanks be to the gods that it's all ended, all this horrible warfare and the troubles that was known.

And hopefully it'll stay that way.

But you had this tremendous sort of divide between Protestants and Catholics.

And the culture is very different.

And if you look at the way that people celebrate Halloween, the traditional bonfires in Britain and also including Northern Ireland, the bonfires at Halloween got moved to November the 5th because of what's called the gunpowder plot.

There's a guy, a person called Guy Fawkes, Guido Fawkes, shortened to Guy.

And he attempted with other conspirators to blow up the House of Parliament in London with gunpowder barrels, and he failed.

And from that date onwards, which was, I forget the exact date, well, it was 16 something.

All those bonfires got moved to the 5th of November, and they burned effigies of Guy Fawkes on the fire, and they also burned effigies of the Pope as well, the Catholic Pope.

So there was this ancient tradition, which has survived into the modern era, which was very pagan, but had been survival into Christianity.

Because of this attempted coup, if you like, in Britain, and to get rid of the Protestant monarchy, you then got this traditional pagan fire just got moved by a few days.

I think it's moved by five days.

And that took off in the North.

So even now, you get in the Northern Ireland, the Protestants will have a big bonfire on the 5th of November, and they don't burn Guy Fawkes.

Usually they burn the Pope because they're like, you know, anti-Catholic.

So they'll be like a sort of a stuffed doll made out of paper and straw and stuff.

He's up on the top of the fire and he gets burned every 5th of November.

I wasn't expecting that.

I didn't know that either.

That's crazy.

Well, it's kind of partisan divide is not quite the same anymore.

It has died down an awful lot.

There was this tremendous hatred between Protestants and Catholics and absolute fear and aversion towards Catholicism in the North.

I think that's changed enormously.

And people have realized that they can get along.

And a lot of it, to be honest with you, a lot of this was actually fermented by the British government.

They actually encouraged the Orange Order, which is a Protestant sort of like order in Northern Ireland.

They encouraged and stoked the hatred of Catholics and the hatred of the Republic.

So, I mean, a lot of you could say, from my point of view, having read a lot about the history, I'd say a lot that people were brainwashed, you know, into absolutely hating Catholics, hatening the Republic, hating the Southerners.

And I suppose with the war, you know, and the Irish Republican Army sort of attacking the British government and not just the government, you know, that just made everything even worse.

But I mean, I think now when you're a pagan, obviously you're not Catholic and you're not Protestant either.

So I think it's very different if you're a pagan, you're not, a lot of the most people who are pagan and North would take a lot of our ideas from the ancient history of Ireland.

They wouldn't be so concerned about the sort of more modern habits.

You know, they probably wouldn't be having a fire on the 5th of November and burning the Pope.

They would celebrate Halloween.

They'd celebrate Saturn on the 31st.

Yeah.

Okay.

It wouldn't be anybody burned on the fire probably.

No.

So what is the significance of the fire?

Like, what is it supposed to mean?

Okay.

Well, the fires, generally, you have them at all the festivals.

They generally symbolize the power of the sun, the protective power.

That one of the things, right, going into October, November, the end of that time, you're at the end of the harvest, you're slaughtering your animals, you've got to get through this harsh time.

The sun's getting weaker and weaker, and you want the powers of growth and warmth to come back in spring.

So you're very much having a not just a celebration to venerate the ancestors, but also to placate the spirits of the land, to placate the gods, to get your agricultural life to continue come February, March, April, when you want to start up with growing things and putting your animals back outside, etc.

Because you bear in mind that no one had shops back then.

If you had a crop failure or your animals died, your only hope was really that your friends and family, your neighbors would help you.

People didn't have money, really.

They might have some rich people would have some gold and stuff, but a silver.

But normal people couldn't go and just run down to the supermarket and buy a giant bag of flour or rice or potatoes or whatever.

Actually, there weren't potatoes back then.

That came in the Elizabethan times.

But you get my point.

Yes, yes.

You know, so you kind of rely on 100% on nature.

So if you want to placate the gods and ask for you to be protected for the winter, and the sun will return and, you know, fertilize your, you know, make your crops grow for help fertilize them, et cetera, et cetera.

You've got a very agrarian society.

And this goes back to like, I suppose our times in the cave, even where, you know, people had fires for protection, for warmth, and as a symbol of like the solar power.

In the earliest times, lightning would have come down in the sky and hit the earth and cause fires.

People knew the sun would, you know, they understood it was a big bowl of fire that like kept us alive, you know?

Right.

You know?

Yeah.

Even today, like the sun, the sun is there.

It keeps alive.

It's real.

I've seen a meme and it had, I think it was Native Americans and there's some priest going, Oh, you know, you got to pray to our God.

And the Native American guy in the bubble on the meme says, Well, dude, at least the sun is real.

It's there.

It's actually there.

So people didn't really worship the sun in itself.

The sun represented the power of the creator, the power of God.

They didn't actually literally worship the sun, but they knew that the sun was like a vessel of God's power, if you like.

It radiated this energy and light that come from God, which keeps everything alive.

And that's literally true.

If the sun disappeared tomorrow, we would be dead in about 24, 48 hours.

We'd all be dead.

Well, we freeze for starters.

Yeah.

Nobody wants to go like that.

These fires were really symbolically important for ritual and as gathering places and obviously placating the forces of nature and forces of the creator or the polytheistic gods or whatever, that enabled humanity to survive.

And essential that of course is like the sun coming back.

Because there was this kind of sometimes a sort of crazy belief of some people had, that when there was an eclipse or something, the sun might go away and never come back.

I mean, as late as of like 1500s, 1600s in the Aztecs, they were sacrificing people to appease the sun, the goddess.

You know, of course, that's very misguided.

And I think the Druids knew that, you know, the sun wasn't god and that the sun would return.

But it's part of this whole agrarian belief and sort of an ancient kind of religious understanding of the world that originated with solar and also lunar worship, maybe going back to the times when we were living in the caves.

And it kind of evolved and progressed.

But you've still always had this connection to the sun as a symbol of, of god or the gods or the power of the universe, the creator, you know, whatever you want to describe it as.

Right.

And that still endures even now.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's a lot to unpack.

You know, we kind of unpacked quite a bit and just kind of, kind of starting wrapping up some things.

You know, we usually like to ask folks who come on that have a much more breadth of experience than, than a lot of folks, certainly that I know anyway.

What are some of the, some of the key misconceptions and things and take aways you'd like our audience to know about, you know, Druidism and Pagans?

And I know there's a lot of stuff out there that's just probably misinformation, but what would, what are some parting things that you'd like our audience to know?

Well, I suppose the worst misconception of all is that Pagans are evil, Pagans are Satanists.

I mean, Satanism does exist.

I very much believe that Satanism exists.

I know it does.

And I've had personal experience in dealing with some of them.

It has got nothing to do with Paganism whatsoever.

And, you know, the church might kind of brand Pagans as, you know, devil worshipers, but that isn't actually the truth at all.

I think that's the most harmful misconception that's put around.

But I'd also say that, like, as a general thing, not just applying to Paganism, but applying to all spirituality, is that you really have to use your own intuition and think for yourself.

You know, in New Age spirituality, you know, certainly in sort of oriental, sub-Asian spirituality, you've often got, like, these guru figures.

And, you know, this phrase, kill your guru, well, I really like that, although I'm not recommending murdering gurus.

But what it literally means is really is about actually finding your own path and not letting some person kind of brainwash you or control your spiritual and intellectual life.

Or, you know, even down to you look at some cults where people are, you know, pick who you're going to marry.

And there's that guy, Jim Jones, he went to Nicaragua with all his people and made them drink poisoned Kool-Aid.

I'm sure he did.

All these kind of alternative spiritualities.

And even within some of the mainstream religions, you have like sub-cults as well, which could be really dangerous.

When you get people who are obsessed with power, obsessed with money, obsessed with, you know, having followers.

You know, forget about all that.

Forget these people.

I think you've got to follow your own heart, your own intuition and, you know, carve out your own path through life, because we're all responsible for our own selves ultimately.

And yeah, there's a lot of people you can listen to.

There's certainly a lot of people who have helped me in my life, but I would tell people, don't put anybody on a pedestal.

Always have some kind of critical thinking.

If you've got like this little voice in the back of your head said, I'm not 100% sure if I like that or I feel a bit funny about that.

You know, listen to that voice, you know.

When you see people who are telling you, this is how it is, this is what you got to do, you must follow this, you must do that, you must do this.

Usually those kind of people talking that kind of dogma, sometimes maybe years later, it turns out that they are charlatans and rogues and crooks.

I mean, you look at the history of magic, the history of religion, going back thousands of years, there's always been these people like that who will lead people astray and you become like sheep, you know, and it's actually wolf that's leading you, not what you think it is.

So I would just warn people to sort of like take more responsibility for your own spiritual life and don't let anybody tell you what you should believe, you know, figure that out for yourself.

That's perfect.

Yeah, I agree.

A little way to wrap that up.

Guys, listen, pick up Luke's book.

It's great read.

It's full of great information.

Yeah, and lots of history.

Is there anything else a way for our audience to reach out to you?

I have a website.

Yeah, my website is my name, lukeeastwood.com.

So you'll find loads of stuff there.

I won't tell you more about that.

If you're interested, go have a look.

That's perfect.

Great.

Well, listen, Luke, thank you so much for taking some time out of your day to sit with us and kind of go over Zowin and its genesis and things of that nature.

So we really appreciate it.

Thank you so much for having me on.

It's been great, great fun.

I've enjoyed chatting with you very much.

Awesome.

Thank you so much.

Take care.

Thanks.

Hey, thanks, Luke, for coming.

That was great.

Yeah, it was.

Yeah.

It's just so much out there.

As you guys now know, it's such a rich history behind it.

It's one of those things again, and I know this is really kind of a touchy-ish sort of thing.

But a lot of our celebrations come from like Druid and paganism and things like that.

Most of them.

Right.

Most of them.

And you know, I know a lot of people can find a little touchy, which, whatever, if you're upset about it, you're upset about it.

It's history.

It is history.

So yeah, I thought it was a great, great time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He was super interesting.

And you really should, if you want to know any more about it, because we didn't touch on the majority even of what's in his book.

I mean, he goes detail by detail.

Some of the very old stories in Ireland, you know, of the which he he told us, he goes, don't even try to pronounce the Irish, the Gaelic, because you can't.

So I'm not even even try.

And I appreciate.

Yes.

So but there's so much in this book.

You really should check it out.

It was really awesome.

And Mark, if you're listening, I'm sorry, I wasn't going to try.

I'm listening to McCormick.

Oh, so Mark's listening.

He's probably like, that's a good thing.

He didn't try.

Oh, yeah.

Well, tell us what you guys think.

You know, it's it's a great time of year.

It's one of my favorites, honestly.

Yeah, mine too.

Yeah, especially now.

Now that I know even more about it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Especially the backgrounds and having, you know, Celtic, I guess, blood for lack of a better word.

So it was great.

I would love to go there.

Yeah.

I'd love to go there for a whole host of things.

Well, yes, obviously.

I think all of our listeners, if they've listened to us for a while, know that I would love to be there all the time, however.

But like, especially during the celebration.

Yeah, because they have, you know, parades and all that type of stuff.

It's really, really cool.

For sure.

Guys, remember, Sowin, not Sam Hain.

No, or Sam Hewin.

Even though that rolls off the tongue.

Trust me, if there was Sam Hewin over there, she would just run to it.

He's Scottish, though.

I know.

It's all right.

Well, guys, thank you so much.

Be safe out there for this holiday.

Have a good time.

And we'll see you next week.

See you next week.