HALLOWEEN is an annual holiday observed on October 31, primarily in the United States, Canada, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.
Known also as a harvest festival, called Samhain (“Summer’s End”), it is rooted in Celtic polytheism. The word is also the Irish and Scottish Gaelic name for November.
It was the beginning of a “darker” season on Earth, with less sunlight and shorter days. In place of the usual psychic horrors and scary costumes, we chose instead to consider the symbol of an inner or spiritual sun, represented by a flaming candle placed inside the pumpkin.
Samhain is similar to the Gothic samana, and the Sanskrit sámana. The Hindu God Krishna, symbol of the Higher Self, notably incarnates cyclically at mankind’s darkest times.
In the Bhagavad-Gita (IV:31), Krishna affirms to Arjuna that he reincarnates
“… from age to age for the preservation of the just, the destruction of the wicked, and the establishment of righteousness.”
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In an ideal world, perfect harmony and balance between man and nature would be the norm. Thus, the keynote of Mme. Blavatsky’s worldview was the just and moral treatment of all the beings in nature, the First Object of the Theosophical Society, Universal Brotherhood.
This foundational teaching of Theosophy is expressed in The Secret Doctrine, Summing Up #5, which states that “everything in the Universe, throughout all its kingdoms, is conscious,” and
“…endowed with a consciousness of its own kind and on its own plane of perception.”
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Consequently, Mme. Blavatsky was adamant in opposing animal cruelty. She spoke out forcefully against sport hunting, foxes, birds and big game, and most strongly against vivisection — animals in biological experiments.
“If these humble lines could make a few readers seriously turn their thoughts to all the horrors of vivisection,” Blavatsky wished, “the writer would be content.”
