Halloween: Storia e tradizioni

by Jean Markale

Già da diversi anni, in Italia come nel resto d’Europa, zucche, maschere di vampiri e fantasmi, scope da strega e altri attrezzi consimili, occupano le vetrine dei negozi durante l’intero mese di ottobre; e la sera del 31 adulti e bambini, in un’atmosfera carnevalesca, festeggiano Halloween. Ma di quale ricorrenza esattamente si tratta? Molti pensano, a torto, che questa festa arrivi dagli Stati Uniti. In realtà Halloween – una parola inglese che significa «notte sacra» – riprende gli antichi rituali druidici di Samain, le cui origini risalgono all’antica Irlanda. Durante la notte di Samain – nel corso del plenilunio più vicino al 1° novembre – il mondo dei morti si ricongiunge con quello dei vivi e viceversa, poiché secondo un detto celtico «la morte non è che il mezzo di una lunga vita». In seguito, questa festa pagana fu trasformata dalla Chiesa in quella di Ognissanti. Jean Markale – un autore molto amato dal pubblico italiano – ricostruisce la storia di Halloween a partire dai tempi più remoti, analizza le sue successive metamorfosi, per arrivare al modo in cui si celebra nella nostra società, che, curiosamente, sembra ignorarne il senso e l’importanza.

Genres: Nonfiction, Folklore

177 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Jean Markale is the pen name of Jean Bertrand, a French writer, poet, radio show host, lecturer, and retired Paris high school French teacher.

He has published numerous books about Celtic civilisation and the Arthurian cycle. His particular specialties are the place of women in the Celtic world and the Grail cycle.

His many works have dealt with subjects as varied as summations of various myths, the relationships of same with occult subjects like the Templars, Cathars, the Rennes le Château mystery, Atlantis, the megalith building civilisations, druidism and so on, up to and including a biography of Saint Columba.

While Markale presents himself as being very widely read on the subjects about which he writes, he is nonetheless surrounded by controversy regarding the value of his work. Critics allege that his 'creative' use of scholarship and his tendency to make great leaps in reasoning cause those following the more normative (and hence more conservative) mode of scholars to balk. As well as this, his interest in subjects that his critics consider questionable, including various branches of the occult, have gained him at least as many opponents as supporters. His already weakened reputation was further tarnished in 1989, when he became involved in a plagiarism case, when he published under his own name a serious and well-documented guide to the oddities and antiquities of Brittany, the text of which had already been published twenty years before by a different writer through the very same publisher.
Also a source of controversy is his repeated use of the concept of "collective unconscious" as an explanatory tool. This concept was introduced by Carl Jung, but in modern psychology it's rejected by the vast majority of psychologists.

Reviews

[Степашка · Rating 5 out of 5]

Очень интересное повествование, когда читаешь такие книги, кажется, что сейчас будет что-то нудное, но не в этом случае! На одном дыхании, легко и очень интересно!