The pre-Christian pagan (non-Christian, nature worshiping) Goidelic (pronounced goy-del-ic, Irish) Irish Celts (pronounced kelts, not selts; an Indo-European people) are the undisputed originators of all of our Samhain (🔊pronounced SOW-win NOT Sam-HAIN) traditions.  Ireland is where all of our Samhain traditions began, but we must first understand the peoples from whom they descend in order to understand those customs.

But just who were the Irish Celts?  They were Indo-European and Celtic (the Indo-European tribe that colonized Central and Western Europe and the British Isles and spoke Gaelic) to be sure.  The Indo-Europeans were the fair-skinned horse, cattle, sheep, and pig herding invaders who migrated into Europe from the Caucasus region (hence Caucasian, meaning from this region of central Asia, but also meaning fair-skinned) of the Central Asian steppes in the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age (3300-1200 BCE). Yet the Irish Celts were not entirely Indo-European and Celtic, unlike their continental mainland Gaulish (Gallic) Celtic cousins (the Celts in mainland Europe outside of the British Isles) as well as their Gaelic (Scottish) and Bryonthic (English) Celtic cousins of the British Isles.   

If Irish Celts weren't entirely Celtic, then just who were they?  “Who are the Irish Celts?," is a question whose answer hadn't entirely started to become clear until very recently (in the first quarter of the 21st Century CE).  In the early 21st Century, advances in genetic science helped us trace their origins through genetic science as corroborated by archaeology, linguistics, and literary, mythical, and historical analysis.  

Map of the spread of farming into Europe up to about 3800 BCE.  Here, the early southern European Neolithic farming population from which the first Irish descend is depicted in blue shades.  The Indo-Europeans (and Celts) are depicted by green colors.  Archaeological evidence of Neolithic crops, animals, and technology from the Middle East first appears around 5,000 BCE in Ireland, dating their first arrival to around that time.  Credit: Wikimedia: 2021 Condensed and simplified map showing of the spread of agriculture from Southwest Asia to Europe, between 9600 and 3800 BCE, with approximate dates and routes of diffusion 

It would be one of the early migrations of Indo-Europeans from which the first wave of Celtic invaders arrived from Scotland associated with the genetic population of Celtic pastoralists and horticulturalists from the north and western Atlantic coasts of France.  These people who invaded Ireland from Scotland around 3,000 BCE were genetically different from the early European farmer population that originally colonized from the Brittany Peninsula around 5,000 BCE despite migrating from the same general vicinity of the northwestern coast of France.  The first Celts to invade Ireland did not share those more archaic Middle Eastern genes that came from southern Europe.  However, both groups of Celtic migrants shared similar maritime invasions which occurred by crossing the English Channel into and colonizing Britain first, then colonizing Ireland from Scotland across the North Channel of the Irish Sea.   But the northwestern coastal migration of Celts occured around 3,000 BCE.   

Most scholars agree there is adequate evidence for widespread migrations into Europe of Indo-Europeans occurring between 1700-1200 BCE.  And it would be from this second and largest wave of late Indo-European migration into Europe that brought the second of two waves (around 1,000 BCE ) of Celts into Ireland from across the English Channel and then Scotland across the North Channel of the Irish Sea, but this time these Celts originated in basque northern Spain.  For reference, their northwestern French coastal Celtic cousins had arrived in Ireland via Scotland following the same migration route roughly 2,000 years earlier.   

Thus, the first wave of Caucasian (fair-skinned from the Caucasus region of Central Asia) Indo-European, Celtic maritime invasion of Britain and Ireland occurred around 3,000 BCE, roughly two thousand years after the olive-complected black-haired, brown-eyed Neolithic pastoralist Fomarians analogized from mythology colonized and displaced the Fir Bolg hunter-gatherers analogized from mythology, and 2,000 years before the second Celtic invasion.  

Anthropologists believe the first save of Celtic migration from northwestern coastal France are likely recorded in Irish mythology as the Tuatha Dé Dannon demigods of light, life, and order who heroically defeated the sea demon Fomarians (the non-Indo-European first farmers of southern Europe) of darkness, death, chaos, and wildness and banished them back into the sea.  

The second-wave of migration of fairer-skinned Caucasian Indo-Europeans were Celts from the northern basque region of Spain (the same basques with whom Celts share their more archaic Meso- and Neo-lithic ancestry) is recorded in the earliest histories and mythologies as the Milesian invasion of Ireland (ca. 1000 BCE). The Milesian Celts in Irish mythology are dubbed in the myths the sons of Míl Espáine, recorded in early histories and mythologies as a Spanish Celtic warrior.  This mythology and history is corroborated through genetic science which identified this distinct wave of Celtic migration as originating in the northern Spanish basque region.  

Interestingly, Irish men with Gaelic (Celtic) surnames (last names) today have the highest incidence of a y-chromosome (only inherited through males) genetic mutation or marker (a new genetic change shared by a population) identified as the Haplogroup 1 (or Rb1) genetic marker.  The RB1 marker is associated with this Celtic-basque wave of migration, the last Celtic invasion of the island around 1,000 BCE.  

The Milesian invasion is recorded in mythology and the early apocryphal histories in the Milenesians vanquishing the Tuatha de Dannon (children of Danu, the people thought to be associated with the earlier Celtic invasion from the northwestern coast of France around 3,000 BCE) into the fairy forts under the ancient burial mounds into the Celtic Otherworld.

A darker interpretation of where the Tuatha Dé were sent by the invading (basque) Milesians as being the ancient burial mounds as portals to the Celtic Otherworld might have these myths darkly recording their actual violent displacement by the invading northern Spanish basque Celtic Milesians.  Both groups of Celtic tribes believed in reincarnation, after all, and the Otherworld was where people waited for a time before reincarnating after their death.  Their spirits entered that world through entrances under the ancient burial mounds. In the myths, the Tuatha Dé fight two battles of Moytura with the Fomarians before vanquishing the sea demons (who arrived in Ireland across the Celtic Sea) in the second battle into the sea.  This myth could similarly record the Tuatha Dé violently displacing the older Fomarians as they colonized (prior to their own vanquishing by the Milesians), pushing the Fomarians back into the sea from whence they had come across the Celtic Sea from Brittany (more western than northwestern France).   

In any event, anthropologists believe genetic science has helped make sense of Irish prehistory possibly recorded in their corrupted earliest histories and mythology in this way. Interestingly, both of these Celtic genetic haplogroup markers associated with each of these migrations (the one from northwestern France around 3000 BCE, and the one from northern basque Spain around 1000 BCE) also seemed to rapidly replace the older Fur Bolg-Fomarian gene pool, whether by numerical superiority in interbreeding or violent displacement with both waves of migration. 

Together, these fair-skinned Celtic pastoralist colonizers from the northwestern coast of France (who invaded from Scotland around 3,000 BCE) and the second wave of Celtic Indo-Europeans who similarly invaded from Scotland around 1,000 BCE from northern Spain with the Celtic-Basque DNA make up the largest segment of the DNA for modern Irish people, around a third (with the first third from the Fir Bolg Mesolithic hunters and Fomarian southern Spanish and Sardinian Neolithic pastoralists, and the last third from the late Medieval viking invasions). 

Thus, it appears thanks to genetic science, we know that the Irish began as a farming Middle Eastern people who mixed with the earliest native modern human hunter-gatherer inhabitants of Europe in the descendants of the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers in southern Spain and Sardinia.  Their descendants continued to colonize the Iberian Peninsula of Spain, then moved up its western then northern coast before colonizing the Atlantic western coast of France and crossing the Celtic Sea by boat to Ireland from the Brittany Peninsula and colonized it around 5,000 BCE (the Fomarians).  There they encountered the descendants of the Ice Age Mesolithic hunter-gatherers in Ireland and displaced them (the Fir Bolg).  

Around two thousand years later, roughly 3,000 BCE, the first fair-skinned Celtic invaders from Scotland (The Tuatha Dé Danann of mythology) from the northwestern coast of France arrived and colonized the island, displacing the Neolithic pastoralists (The Fomarian sea demons), vanquishing them back to the sea.  And the final migration of Celts occurred around 1,000 BCE with the Milenesian basque northern Spanish Celtic invasion of Ireland from Scotland vanquishing the Tuatha Dé  to the ancient burial mounds (to the grave?).  

Each of these episodes seems to make better sense of Irish mythology and the archaeology given the revelations from genetic science despite the clearly mythological or fantastical elements recorded in these myths that contradict genetic reality. 

Samhain was the fall Celtic harvest and fertility festival on October 31st to the chthonic (🔊, cthonic means underworld) god Crom Cruach (Cromm Crúaich in Old Irish, pronounced Cromm Crew-ACK 🔊) that represents the earliest known Celtic origin point for our traditions. 

Their language and culture are described as Goidelic (goy-del-ic, or Irish Celtic), differing from the Scottish Gaelic or Pictish Celts, the Brittonic/Bryonthic Welsh, Cornish, and Breton Celts, and the mainland European Gallic Celts.  Now that we have a sense for who the Irish Celts were, a broad overview of the historical time periods in which these customs evolved can help us contextualize the evolution of Samhain rites.   

Samhain traditions were developed by the Goidelic Celts (and modified by the Roman pagans and Christians) during:

• The Bronze Age (3300-1200 BCE).  The Bronze Age was the Irish prehistoric (before written records) time period when bronze tools and weapons replaced stone ones and the fair-skinned, Caucasian Indo-European pastoralist (herding) people from which the Celts descended migrated into Europe from the Central Asian steppes, arriving in Ireland in two distinct waves.  During this time period, the burial practices and solar cult of the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers who colonized Ireland around 8,000 BCE were adopted and adapted by the southern Spanish and Sardinian Neolithic pastoralists who invaded around 5,000 BCE.  The solar cult and burial practices of these first inhabitants of Ireland were then further adopted and modified by the first wave of fair-skinned Celts from northwestern coastal France around 3,000 BCE.  The northwestern French Celts, Neolithic Early European Farmers, or Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, or their genetically and culturally mixed descendants may have constructed the outer stone megaliths at the Killycluggin Stone Circle where Samhain rites began around 2500 BCE.

• The Iron Age (1200-5o0 BCE).  The Iron Age was the Irish prehistoric time period when iron tools and weapons began to replace bronze ones and the fair-skinned Indo-European Celts from northern Spain (the basque Celts) invaded Ireland.  The Milenesian Celtic invaders consolidated Irish mythology and the earliest histories and divided Ireland into the modern four Irish provinces (then kingdoms) of Ulster (Northern Ireland), Munster (Southern Ireland), Leinster (Eastern Ireland) and Connacht (Western Ireland) which is recorded in the Ulster Cycle of Irish Mythology.  Samhain traditions originating with the Mesolithic Fir Bolg hunter-gatherers and Neolithic pastoralist sea demon Fomarians were continued by Bronze-Iron Age Celts from northwestern coastal France (Tuatha De).  These burial and solar cult practices were consolidated by the basque Celtish Milenesian Irish at the Killycluggin Stone Circle in Crom Cruach's cult during this time period. Its originally half-buried central stone hero head with its La Tène curvilinear designs date from about 450 BCE-100 BCE and are associated with the basque Milesian Celts.  The associated Tuatha De northwestern French coastal Celtic Samhain rites at Tlachtga Hill (pronounced clackda hill) were transferred likely in the 6th Century BCE (500s) to Tara Hill, the seat of the high kings in the kingdom of Leinster after the invading Laigin Celtic tribe displaced Tlachtga's Luigni Celtic tribe.   

• Classical Antiquity (700-400 CE) to the Roman Republic &Empire (400 BCE-476 CE).  Classical Antiquity is the historic time period focused on the rise of Greco-Roman civilizations/empires in European history.  The prehistoric (to the Irish Celts, but historic to the invading Romans) time period when the Goidelic, Gaelic, and Bryonthic Celtic tribes of the British Isles united to resist Roman incursions into the British Isles, their early histories and mythologies were consolidated by the Milesians into a framework, and the Bryonthic Celtic tribes were defeated by the Romans.  Towards the end of this time period, Rome adopted Christianity as its official religion which began to spread in the British Isles. Imperial Rome had sought to extinguish Celtic paganism since Julius Caesar's Gaulic Wars in the First Century BCE/BC (100s BCE/BC).  

• The Medieval Period (476 CE-1500s CE).  The Middle Ages, comprised of the Early (Dark Ages), Middle, and Late Medieval Periods, are also known collectively as The Age of Faith.  During this period, monasteries became the center of Western European life after the fall of Rome in Western Europe.  The Bishop of Rome (Pope) and the Roman Catholic Church and French-German Holy Roman Empire rose in power in Western Europe and replaced the political, social, and economic infrastructure of the Roman Empire. The Christian Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire flourished in Eastern Europe and the Levant (Middle East) before falling to the Ottoman Turks.  Some historians date the Middle Ages from the fall of Rome in Western Europe in 476 CE/AD through the Renaissance (cultural rebirth of literacy, art, secularism, and humanism) of the 1300s CE/AD.  Other historians include the Renaissance and dating the Middle Ages then through to the 15th Century's (1400s CE) Age of Exploration birthed by the Renaissance.  During this time period, Goidelic Celts resisted St. Patrick's and Roman-Catholicism's mission to extinguish Celtic pagan practices. The first mythologies and histories were finally written down in Latin in the Late Medieval Period (1000s-1200s) when the first castles in Europe were being constructed and the Crusades took place.  Or, they were compiled from earlier source material from the Early Middle Ages (Dark Ages, 400s-800s) that has since been lost to the ages.  During this time period, Celtic Samhain traditions syncretically blended with with Roman Catholicism's Allhallowtide or were practiced covertly, and customs more familiar to us began.

Tracing the precise origins of our Samhain (Halloween) traditions from Irish prehistory into the Medieval Period is a difficult task.  We've prepared a more exhaustive treatise about Samhain's prehistoric origins (click here) for those hoping for a more thorough discussion or review of the prehistorical and historical evidence for- and the evolution of- Samhain rites, as well as competing claims over its cultural hearths and birthplace(s).  

In the following digest of Celtic prehistory and history written with the purpose of explaining the iconography of our logos, we clarify the visual meaning we intended in the symbols appearing in them lest they be misconstrued.  

Likewise, the basis for Crom's cult is explored in some detail here as little is known about him and what is thought to be known is largely speculative and subject to debate.  In addition, other Celtic deities are also associated with Samhain in Irish myths and at other sites that serve as cultural hearths for Samhain customs. Thus, it's important to differentiate in explaining why it appears that it is Crom's cult at the Killycluggin stone circle (vandalized/destroyed by early Christians) that best represent our most educated guess at where they actually began, and why it figures so largely in our logos.

The worldview and cosmology appearing throughout the following sections has been integrated by Celtic Reconstructionists who use: the surviving oral tradition and clan lore; Roman pagan and Christian records; the earliest Irish mythologies and histories; and similar work by Gallic, Gaelic, and Bryonthic Celtic scholars to assumble a coherent worldview and cosmology for the ancient Celts as a whole.    

Recognizing Crom as a chthonic deity can mislead.  Unlike Gallic Celts (mainland continental European Celts from Roman Gaul), the Goidelic (pronounced GOY-del-ic, Irish) Celts did not imagine the afterlife as a dark or sinister place in their mythology (except in those myths associated specifically with Samhain but that likely represent Christian influence as their mythology wasn't recorded or their history wasn't compiled until late during the Age of Faith).  In most of those myths, they did imagine that the entrances to it were fairy forts existing under the ancient human burial mounds and other sacred sites (often constructed over caverns or crevices) in being located underground.  

But the world they imagined there as an Otherworld depicted in mythology as the Land of Youth & Plenty where endless food, joy, youth, and immortality were enjoyed before departed souls were reborn.  Even if supernatural otherworldly spirits, demigods, gods, departed spirits, and creatures of all kinds—both dark and light—inhabited it (the fey or fairy of folk Celtic faith), the Celtic Otherworld was a heavenly magical realm, described with ethereal mists and shimmering in silver and golden light.  Crom is depicted as the wizened old man shrouded in the mist sitting atop the highest mountain, broken or bent one of the hill, and this is his domain in the earliest cosmology according to clan lore and surviving oral tradition. 

The earliest archaeological evidence for the Celtic Samhain arguably exists at the Iron Age Killycluggin Stone (pronounced Coil a Chlogáin 🔊) hero head or cult icon in County Cavan, Ireland with relative dates from 400 BCE-100 BCE (from the curvilinear La Tène artwork designs inscribed or carved into it, definitively associating the central Killycluggin stone with the Milesian invasion ca. 1000 BCE, and not the earlier Tuatha Dé  Celtic invaders either).  Its encircling megaliths relatively date (from similar Mesolithic to Bronze Age stone circles in Ireland) to around 2500 BCE, prior to the arrival of the Milenisian Celts on the island, and probably too early for the Tuatha De northwestern French coastal Celts either.

Thus, Crom's cult at the Killycluggin stone circle nearly necessarily represents the continuation and modification of a much older solar cult and burial practices which were modified by each succeeding wave of migration.  The more ancient mound burials and megalithic circles around Ireland definitely date older than the Celts' arrivals, so must have been originally erected by the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers or Neolithic southern early farmers. 

As the outer (destroyed) stone circle here dates from 2,500 BCE, it was most likely erected by the original Mesolithic hunter-gatherers or else the invading southern European Neolithic (Fomarian) farmers who crossed the Irish Sea from the Iberian Peninsula around 5,000 BCE.  The outer circle could have also been erected by the first wave of the late Bronze-early Iron Age Tuatha Dé Celtic invaders from northwestern coastal France who invaded from Scotland.  

Who, precisely, erected the outer stone circle or others like it across Ireland will likely remain a mystery, but its erection at around 2,500 BCE was more likely by the Fir Bolg hunter-gatherers or Fomarian Neolithic pastoralists as the Tuatha Dé first wave of Celtic invaders from northwestern coastal France were just relatively recent arrivals (who'd been there for about five-hundred years).

It could be that both groups of the farming and pastoralist invaders (the southern Spanish and Sardinians who arrived ca. 5,000 BCE, and the first wave of Celtic invaders ca. 3,000 BCE) that arrived a thousand years apart and their descendants were both already culturally and genetically mixed by the time the outer stone circle was erected.   Perhaps the descendants of the Neolithic south Spanish and Sardinian farmers and Mesolithic hunter-gatherers had already integrated with the recently arrived and colonizing first Celtic wave from northwestern coastal France from Scotland around 3,000 BCE in that half century before the surrounding stones were erected.  We may never know who, specifically, erected the outer stone megalithic circle but from other ancient mound burials and megaliths scattered across Ireland, we can guess they were initially constructed by the descendants of the Neolithic farmers and Mesolithic hunters who were mixing with the the Tuatha Dé Celtic invaders from northwestern coastal France (Normandy).

But from artwork on the central stone at the Killycluggin stone circle, we also find the oldest discovered (450-100 BCE) authentically Celtic origins of Samhain rites in Ireland in its curvilinear La Tène design, explaining why the central Goidelic (Irish) Celtic Killycluggin Stone and its encircling twelve megaliths (a circle of large stone menhirs) figure centrally in our logos.  The solar cult of the Neolithic Sardinian and southern Spanish farmers appears to have been adopted and adapted by at first the Tuatha Dé (~3,000 BCE) Celtic invaders, and then the final Celtic wave of Milesian basque Celts (~1,000 BCE).

Spoiler alert:  Contrary to legend, it's actually fairly unlikely that the child and human sacrifice recorded by early Irish Catholic monks (or earlier Roman pagan or Catholic chroniclers at other Celtic sites) actually took place there.  There is literally no physical archaeological evidence of the same at any of the locations associated with Samhain rites.  Thus, it appears to be an invention of anti-Celtic Romans and Christians.  This topic is discussed in some detail in a forthcoming section.

According to all the annalistic (historical) sources, on October 31st's Celtic New Year, Samhain, inter- and intra- tribal marriages were arranged, taxes and tribute were paid to one's liege (lord) or the high kings /lords (or queens), tribal rendezvous and meetings were held, wars were stopped and peace was made, or new inter- or intra- tribal wars were announced for the spring, and Samhain chariot and horse racing festivities provided a unifying and homogenizing effect on Goidelic (Irish) Celtic culture and peoples despite their tribal and regional cultural differences. 

In the spring, six months opposite Samhain, Beltaine (pronounced bel-tuh-NAH), or “the first day of summer," marked the continuation of the pastoral cycle begun on Samhain in the turning out of cattle to graze after being wintered since Samhain.  Beltaine's name may derive from a Celtic god of healing and fire called Beil, may mean bright fire from the Goidelic “belo-te(p)niâ," or may come from the Gallic (mainland European Celtic) name for their sun god Belenus, analogue to the Goidelic (Irish) Celt's sun god Lugh (pronounced LuuH with a hard h).  

May 1st's Beltaine marked the first day of summer and the arrival of the annual time of year when Celts began driving cattle herds out to graze for summer.  Celts danced around decorated trees, picked the first flowers, and washed their faces in dew. The Celtic cattle pastoralists (herders) drove their herds through two bonfires for good luck.  Celtic youth jumped over bonfires three times for good luck in the coming light half of the year that it signaled as the second of the two liminal festivals of the year (a threshold festival in which otherworldly creatures and spirits could interact with our world), straddling the boundaries of the two halves of each year, the light half, and the dark half, when otherworldly beings were able to enter our world and interact with us.

Interestingly, although not liminal between the light and dark halves of the year as May 1st's Beltaine or October 31st's Samhain, during the other sacred fire festivals of Imbolc (pronounced im-bolk; Feb. 1, the first day of spring), and Lughnasadh (pronounced LuuH-nah-sah; named after the sungod Lugh, pronounced LuuH with a hard h; Aug. 1, the first harvest of summer), spirits and supernatural creatures were believed able to enter our world and interact with us in addition to the two liminal days.   But their activity on the festival days of Imbolc or Lughnasadh paled into comparison to their activity on the liminal Beltaine and Samhain fire festival days that demarcated the transitions between the dark and light halves of the year.  Otherworldly beings were most active of all of the fire festival days on Samhain.   

Similarly worthy of note, although also similarly not liminal, Litha (pronounced lee-thuh) or the Midsummer Solstice (the longest day of the year) on June 21st, and An Grianstad (pronounced uhn gree un-SAHD), or the Winter Solstice (sunstop, because the sun rises and sets at the same point on the horizon; the shortest day of the year), so-called cross days,were also times otherworldly beings and creatures were thought to be similarly active as well as the four quarter cross fire festival days (Samhain [Oct. 31], Imbolc [Feb. 1], Beltane [May 1], & Lughnasadh [Aug 1] in oder).  

Winter darkness began the dark half of each year on October 31st with the Goidelic Celtic New Year through Crom's Samhain rites at the Killycluggin Stone Circle.  In ancient times, it likely began with sacrifices of valuables, food, and livestock as an annual ransom or tribute to Crom for the return of Lugh in the spring and in order to ensure a mild but wet winter to ensure a bountiful harvest the next season.   

St Patrick casts down Cromm Cruach and the twelve idols; from a 1911 illustration by Curtis Dunham.  

Credit: Wikimedia: Wurra-Wurra; a legend of Saint Patrick at Tara

However, we can be reasonably certain from both the archaeological (prehistoric) and annalistic (historical, textual mythologies, poems, and histories) evidence that Cromm is the oldest Celtic pagan god of fertility (and the harvest) and death or the Otherworld.  But as one of the oldest ancient gods of the Celts not figuring prominently in Irish myths and with both the literary or historical textual sources scant, he is a mysterious deity and thus subject to much speculation and debate today.

Because Crom isn't featured prominently in Irish mythology, some scholars differentiate him from the Celtic pantheon (the whole group of gods and demigods) of Irish mythology as simply an ancient prehistoric personification and deification of darkness, winter, and death of a superstitious, primitive people.  These scholars think Crom isn't an actual pre-Christian pagan god of the Goidelic (Irish) Celts or the original people they displaced. Some consequently think Crom is a creation of the monastic culture of Middle Age Roman (Irish) Catholic monks.  However, this view seems to ignore multiple historical accounts of St. Patrick's intentional eradication of Crom's cult as an actual deity as recorded in the earliest Christian annalistic sources, the existence of Crom's central Killycluggin stone and the folklore surrounding it as a Celtic hero head or his cult icon and its encircling megaliths that were destroyed by the early Christians (corroborating the early Christian histories of St. Patrick's destruction of it), and Crom's cult's continuance in Crom Dubh's derivative cult surviving to modern times today all over Ireland.  

It seems this interpretation that Crom was never an ancient pagan god was ironically influenced by the same dubious and clearly biased Medieval Christian accounts of Crom as famously one-dimensional in being cruel, bloodthirsty, or evil. The proponents of this interpretation cite their bias in these early sources as the principal evidence for Crom not actually being a pagan god of the ancient Celts.  But this view disregards surviving oral tradition, practices, and clan lore indicating Crom is an actual deity as well as the clear archaeological evidence that he was a deity once worshipped at the Killycluggin stone circle in time immemorial.  In the lore, Crom may be transcendent, aloof or indifferent—that is, he a non-interventionist cosmic deity—if not at times benevolent and not all menacing or malevolent either.  Crom is just a necessary deity.  

Crom's domain over the harvest and fertility associates him with “The" Dagda (pronounced DOG-da), the giant good god of life and death and the literal father of all the Celtic gods, “who, in the story of the battle of Mag-tured, is said to be so called [the “good god"] because he promised to do more than all the other gods together," illuminating his namesake as the “good god" from dagos, “good," and deivos, “god."  Thus his name the Dagda literally means the good god.  Thus, he's referred to in the myths as “THE Dagda," meaning the good god, literally. 

Crom is also largely analogous to the Dagda in sharing domain over fertility and the harvest (life) and death in mythology with The Dagda's magical club he uses to give and take mortal life.  Thus, many scholars believe Crom is at least an equivalent or alternate overgod deity to The Dagda, with powers greater than all of the other gods and power over them, something else the Dagda and Crom share.  Consequently, some believe he's the same god.

Some also suppose Crom is perhaps a cryptic rebranding and concealment of- Crom to make him more palatable to the early Christians as a jollier more Santa Claus kind of character but with coded references in his myths which would be understood only by the initiate as only Goidelic Celtic Druidic cultural insiders would understand.  It should be noted that there are no archaeological sites associated with the Dagda predating Crom's Killycluggin stone circle, suggesting Crom's cult is indeed actually older.

Some suggest that Crom is perhaps an earlier and more ancient impersonal (aloof, transcendent) antecedent (predecessor) pre-Celtic cosmic god (simply serving a function to explain the movement of the sun and weather at whose mercy these pastoralists were for their survival).  They suppose perhaps Crom is the more indifferent and less involved (if not distant and seemingly cruel) god of a Middle-New Stone- and Ice- Age people.  As Ice Age living was inestimably difficult, they suppose Crom was the indifferent, non-interventionist original over-god of the people (the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and the Neolithic early European farmers from southern Spain and Sardinia) that the Celts displaced.  If this interpretation is correct, then it could be that Irish mythology's representations of The Dagda, the “good god" of life and death could cryptically represent the benevolent enhancement of Crom's original attributes by the invading northwestern French coastal Celts, or else that he might represent a concealment and re-branding of Cromby the northern Spanish basque Milesian Celts after his cult's oppression by the early Christians in Ireland in the fourth-eighth Centuries CE/AD.

In the early records and mythologies, The Dagda is described as: “the lord of great knowledge," “He has power over corn [sic, here not meant as maize but as cereal grains, grasses] and milk" as “the god of the earth," “because of the greatness of his power," “an under-earth god of fertility and abundance," and, “the principal god of the pagans," which is also precisely how Crom is described, perhaps revealing that The Dagda is actually a concealment, and in fact one and the same deity as Crom.

In J.A. MacCulloch's 1911 The Religion of the Ancient Celts, he cites late 18th Century (1700s CE) British General Charles Vallancey's interesting claim (who elsewhere is responsible for wrongly making up a fictional nonexistent Celtic lord of death he named Samhain, a fabrication that erroneously still circulates among Christians today; thus, his claims should be generally regarded as suspect) felt the resemblance so uncanny that he noted that: 

“...citing a text now lost, [Vallencey, sic] says that Crom-eocha was a name of Dagda, and that a motto at the sacrificial place at Tara read, ‘Let the altar ever blaze to Dagda,'" 

suggesting further that Crom and Dagda are actually one in the same deity.  

MacCulloch also illuminates that The Dagda is recorded throughout Irish mythology as “king of the síde" in having domain over the aos sí (otherworldly gods, demigods, spirits, and creatures) of the sidhe Otherworld portals.  He provides another point of comparison to Crom who similarly has domain over these portals and the aos sí, 

“In Irish accounts of the síd, Dagda has the supremacy [over all the sidhe in assigning different deities to different sidhes in mythology, sic], wrested later from him by Oengus [who in the associated myths supplants his father in alternately displacing him as lord of his father's sid or in killing his father], but generally each owner of a síd [sic] is its lord."

MacCulloch elaborates how the confusion of Celtic deities likely occurred over the ages, making them virtually inextricable (impossible to extract to determine which was older and newer) today: 

“Generally speaking, there were many local gods in Gaul [mainland, continental Europe, among the Gallic Celts, sic] with similar functions but different names, and this may have been true of Ireland. Perhaps the different names given to Dagda, Manannan, and others were simply names of similar local gods, one of whom became prominent, and attracted to himself the names of the others." 

McCullouch further illuminates the difficulty of ascertaining the evolution and position of equivalent gods in speculating about how this happens in discussing how a possibly older (or younger) cult of Oengus (Aengus) may have been integrated into Irish mythology as Dagda's son, 

“The beautiful and fascinating Oengus [Aengus, sic] is sometimes called Mac Ind Oc, ‘Son of the Young Ones,' [suggesting Dagda's cult was newer than Oengus' cult, sic] i.e. Dagda and Boand, or In Mac Oc, ‘The Young Son [suggesting the opposite, sic].' This name, like the myth of his disinheriting his father [Oengus was to supplant his father in literally killing him in some versions of the myth or else scheming to steal his domain from him, sic], may point to his cult superseding [overcoming, sic] that of Dagda. If so, he may then have been affiliated to the older god [Dagda, sic], as was frequently done in parallel cases, e.g. in Babylon. Oengus may thus have been the high god of some tribe who assumed supremacy, ousting the [older, sic] high god of another tribe [Dagda, sic], unless we suppose that Dagda was a pre-Celtic god with functions similar to those of Oengus, and that the Celts adopted his [Dagda, sic] cult but gave that of Oengus a higher place."

But if these earliest text references can illuminate anything about an ancient cult to Crom despite their glaring bias against the Celts or Crom, Crom is recorded in both sources as being the chief of all the gods worshipped by the Celts, not Dagda, mythical father of the The Tuatha Dé Danann (Danu's children) of Irish mythology.  This suggests The Dagda was derivative from Crom, not the other way around.  Thus, Crom is likely the Chthonic deity of the descendants of the southern European early farmers and Mesolithic hunters, or possibly the first wave of Celtic invaders.  But as anthropologists associate the The Tuatha Dé with these invaders from Scotland from northwestern coastal French, whose overgod in mythology is The Dagda, it's probably more likely that Crom was the overgod of the descendants of the darker-skinned Mesolithic hunters as they mixed with the olive-skinned Neolithic farmers.

It thus could be that Crom was the older god of fertility, the harvest, winter, death, and darkness of the original darker people (Fir Bolg Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, or Fomarian south Spanish/Sardinian Neolithic pastoralists) displaced by the Celts and whose religion the Celts appear to have adopted and integrated.  Balor and his conflation with Crom fits the Irish Catholic monastic vilification of Crom in replacing this ancient old god with the chief villain of Irish myths.  The outer stone circle at Crom's Killycluggin stone circle was almost certainly erected by these earlier people (or the descendants of the older solar cult mixing with the first wave of Celtic invaders from northwestern coastal France), and so this explanation seems perhaps the most likely.

The Dagda, the over-god of Irish mythology (like the Greek Zeus), was associated with the harvest and fertility (and the giver of both life and death) but also death (with his club having the power of life and death and him doling out both).   Lugh, his great grandson and the eventual successor of his great grandfather as chief god of the Tuatha Dé, led the defeat of the evil Fomarians (sea invader demons, possibly the early European farmers) in Irish mythology. Lugh is associated with the Goidelic Druidic solar cult (and is the most likely the truest namesake of the spring May 1st Beltaine in his Gallic name Belenos, and thereby both the solar cult of both Beltaine and Samhain).  

If mythology is to prove instructive here, perhaps then as the Fomarians were the bad guys of the story (perhaps because they were in the way of Celtic invasion as the Emerald Isle's secondary inhabitants), and The Tuatha Dé, the first Celts arriving around 3,000 BCE, with Crom's cult icon featuring Celtic artwork (from 800-100 BCE), its good guys, perhaps it is doubly clear that he is their chthonic deity instead, and the Killycluggin stone circle records the integration of the older solar cult of the Mesolithic hunters and south European early farmers with the newly arrived solar cult of the northwestern coastal French Celts who arrived ca. 3,000 BCE, about a half century before the outer stone circle was erected, and the Milesian arrival correlates with the central stone cult icon around 1,000 BCE and integration of their solar cult with the 3,000 BCE northwestern coastal French Celts' solar cult.  Thus it might appear that the Milesian over-god and chthonic deity was Crom, so the replacement of Crom with The Dagda as over-god instead records covert cryptic rebranding by Celts now forbidden from his worship.   

Lugh was prophesied to kill Balor in Irish mythology.  Anthropologists propose the mythical epic battle between the Tuatha Dé forces of order and light and Fomarian forces of chaos and darkness (fitting the motif of most Indo-European spiritual cosmologies) encodes the actual displacement and violent end of the original inhabitants of Ireland by the Goidelic Celts.  So perhaps Lugh killing Balor and the Tuatha Dé  vanquishing the Fomarians, and then the Milenesians vanquishing the Tuatha Dé to the fairy mounds in typical Indo-European fashion records the triumph of light over darkness, which seems to be a departure from older Meso- and Neo-lithic solar cult cosmology which was more dualistic.  Perhaps it simply recorded the Celtic triumph and assumption of the older burial practices and solar cult from the Mesolithic Fir Bolg hunter-gatherers and Neolithic Fomarian early farmers, and maybe even the first northwestern coastal French Celtic people replaced by the basque Celtic sons of Mil.

If The Dagda is actually older (which appears unlikely), perhaps instead Crom may have evolved over time as a god over death and the Otherworld afterlife due to the need for a scapegoat juxtaposed against “the good god" of “life and death" overgod The Dagda.  It's also interesting that no other god in the Irish mythological pantheon is recorded or described as “the good god," when being described nor are any other deities described as “the evil god(dess)," when named in myths which begs the question, “Who needed to qualify that The Dagda was the good god or good in the first place, and why?" and, “Isn't his goodness evident in his deeds in each myth without pointing it out?" It's redundant, so perhaps it does point us to something else going on here, a coded reference the initiate will understand revealing The Dagda is actually Crom.

It begs the question, “If there was never the evil god, or similarly a/an evil god to The Dagda, why did The Dagda need clarification as being good, or ‘the good god,' in the first place?"  So maybe scholars who have speculated that The Dagda may, in fact, be Crom, just codified in Irish myth only to the initiated in order to hide his cult and his worship from the Christians who were intent on destroying it.  Maybe there was benevolent enhancement of Crom by the Celts in The Dagda.  So maybe Celtic bards developed this convention in naming The Dagda lest there be any doubt Crom is Dagda or good god, just like from surviving clan lore we know all good Celts actually knew who Crom was before he was demonized and vilified by the Christians and his cult forbade.  

Modern clan lore within the black dragon clan of Celtic Seanchai (pronounced SHAWN-ha, keeper of clan lore and stories) J.D. Castle's family teaches that Crom was actually a dragon—actually two dragons (one of the land and air, or of light and order; one of the sea, or of darkness, chaos, and wildness) as his primordial dualistic avatars.  Castle explains these avatars or physical bodies (as a pair of dualistic dragons) were the embodiment of Crom's neutral draigsl natural energy in perfect neutral balance. He elaborates that his clan lore teaches Crom was the grand chieftain of both the Tuatha Dé and the Fomarians, ranking above The Dagda and Balor, ultimate ruler of all of the aos sí (pronounced ee-SHE), both light and dark, sitting atop Carrauntoohil's peak (or in alternate lore in a different place, Croagh Patrick).  The surviving clan lore, only some of which is shared for public consumption, in elucidating Crom as not an all-menacing and all-sinister god then as the grand chieftain of both the Tuatha Dé and Fomarians, above their respective chiefs in the mythology, Dagda and Balor, may also actually suggest The Dagda in Irish mythology thus could be a cryptic covert concealment or coded covert continuation of Crom Cruach's cult more palatable to the disapproving early Christians.

Recall both Crom and The Dagda share domain over the harvest and death and the Otherworld, and are two of the ancient old gods in the annalistic sources.  Did ancient Milesian Celts contending with the Roman invaders and Christian missionaries reinvent Crom as The Dagda, concocting jovial heroic stories of an essentially good god to conceal and continue his worship more openly perhaps, having a good perpetual inside joke and laugh at the outsiders?

But if this speculative interpretation is inaccurate (The Dagda is not equivalent to Crom, or Crom wasn't resurrected in Irish mythology in a form more palatable to the Christians after nearly being stamped out by them as The Dagda), and The Dagda preceded Crom in the development of Goidelic Druidic religion, perhaps instead The Dagda may have evolved over time into both Lugh with the sun god representing Dagda's good side of light, order, and life, and Crom representing darkness, chaos, and death.  

Some have supposed Lugh's mixed Tuatha and Fomarian parentage also echoes The Dagda's dualistic nature, echoing Crom's older dualistic nature, insisting The Dagda and his cult thus must have preceded both Lugh and Crom, with Crom differentiating as a necessary “evil" but not actually evil, just necessary. Every culture has mythological explanations for death and misfortune—meeting the human need to understand why bad things happen, and at first Crom then Balor and Fomarians by the Medieval Period seemed to have been assigned the job.

It may appear these three old gods and their cults mentioned in The Annals developed together, and their cults worshipped alongside each other.  Lugh (becoming the god of life and light) and Crom (becoming the god of death and darkness) may have evolved in differentiating a possibly older The Dagda (god of life and death whose club takes or gives life) as Irish mythologies began with the good god.  Whether The Dagda and Lugh derived from an older Mesolithic, Neolithic, or ancient Celtic cult to Crom, or Crom and Lugh derived from dualistic The Dagda, or if perhaps there are even older cults from which Crom's, The Dagda's, and Lugh's cults derived involves speculation. Unfortunately, we may never know definitively and are left to endlessly speculate.  The only clue we have is that of surviving clan lore and oral tradition, which many scholars disregard as necessarily suspect.  But if we use them as a clue, we might conclude that Crom is likely older and dualistic and The Dagda and Lugh likely derived from his cult.   After all, the early lore of placename poems assert he was the primary god of all the Celts before the Christians came.   

Some scholars also suppose Crom is actually the Greek Kronos, the king of the dark old gods and titans and father of the Olympians, overthrown by Zeus and the Olympians in Greek mythology.  They do so on the basis of the child sacrifices recorded to Crom which they associate with Kronos' child eating, and Plutarch's description of the place Kronos was imprisoned in sleep in his account on an island off the coast of Britain, surrounded by twelve gods to keep watch on him eternally which they believe are emblematic of Crom's Killycluggin stone's original twelve surrounding stones.  

Crom and Chronus/Kronos are both depicted with sickles in the myths that survive, and are both also associated with death and an underground underworld.  Others say that Indo-European mythologies almost always involve a battle between the gods of light and darkness, with light being eventually triumphant, a motif to which both the Greek origin story and the Celtic Irish mythology conform (the Olympians defeating the Titans and the Tuatha Dé defeating the Fomarians, respectively).  The Greeks were Indo-European cousins to the Celts (they came from the same ancestral people) after all these scholars insist.  

Yet other scholars speculate the twelve stones are idols to the twelve ecliptic constellations of the Zodiac given the indisputable solar cult of the predecessors of the Celts they displaced but whose cosmology they maintained.  See The History (and prehistory) of Halloween for a longer discussion.  Perhaps they did serve as a kind of calendar.  We'll never know because early Christians all but destroyed the Killycluggin stone and the twelve encircling stones and removed all but two of them as they forbade Crom's cult (thus we cannot see if they align with the constellations or sun at certain times of year).  

In review, some scholars of Druidic religion suppose either Crom (fertility and harvest underground Otherworld god) and Dagda (good god of life and death overgod of the Tuatha Dé Dannon) are the same god with Dagda being a rebranding after the disapproval of the Christians or perhaps with the arrival of the Milesian Celts from northern Spain, or else that, alternately if Crom did not precede The Dagda, The Dagda preceded with Crom and Lugh deriving from Dagda to represent a different side of his dualistic nature.  Or maybe it really was that The Dagda and Lugh and Balor all evolved from an older dualistic Crom as suggested by surviving clan lore. 

But we can be sure from these sources that Crom, corroborated by the earliest Celtic relative dates for the Killycluggin Stone's curvilinear La Tène style archaeology as well as the earliest annalistic references, and his cult, is the oldest cult for which we have textual and archaeological evidence linking him to Samhain.

Roman claims of infanticide (infant murder), human sacrifice, and cannibalism were nothing new as the Romans had levied those same claims against the early Christians, leading to centuries of persecution in the first centuries of the common era against Christians throughout the Roman Empire. 

Those persecutions would end with Constantine's conversion and his mother's conversion, with his decree ordering Christianity tolerated and persecutions ended in the 313 CE/AD Edict of Milan, and especially after Theodosius decreed Christianity the official religion to replace Roman paganism in the Empire in 380 CE/AD, now instead making the persecution of pagans the official imperial policy instead.  Please note the Cappadocian Greek Kaymakli Underground City was used by early Christians as defense against Muslims in the Arab–Byzantine wars (780–1180 CE), not Romans pagans as maintained erroneously by many modern Christians today.   

No serious scholar today even remotely believes these anti-Christian accounts of the pagan Romans which appear in the histories of several otherwise trusted Roman historical sources and even in the writings of emperors.  Why anyone would believe them about the Celts then is just as curious.  These claims, having a virtual cacophony of echoes in all of the trusted Roman historical sources, might not be so suspicious if Rome didn't have a long history of levying these very same charges against the Christians.  

It would seem those allegations were common for Romans to make about the people they conquered—whether Christian or Celtic—to justify their dehumanization, conquest, subjugation, and enslavement.  And they also represented genuine misunderstanding of Christian rites concerning Christ's last supper and beliefs about sacrifice for the remission of sin, so why is it such a stretch for many to believe Celtic practices were similarly misunderstood?  Yet there is a veritable cacophony of trusted Roman historical sources that insisted the Celts performed human sacrifice.  It's a mystery why more people today don't apply the same scrutiny to the Roman claims about the Celts that they do apply to the early Christians.   

Despite early Christians having been similarly victimized, demonized, and vilified by such false allegations for centuries in the Roman Empire, they now became the abuser instead of the abused.  In the now Byzantine Roman Catholic, Christian Roman Empire (which would fall in 476 CE in Western Europe, with the monastery system and church in Rome evolving to replace the infrastructure of the Roman Empire with church as state there, but would survive in the Greek speaking east to the middle 15th Century CE/AD [1450s] as the Greek speaking Eastern Orthodox Byzantium), persecutions of pagans at the hands of the Christians would become official imperial and church policy.  The now Christian Roman Catholics continued to denounce and malign oppressed people still under Roman rule with the exact same false allegations they'd faced, and the persecuted became persecutor.  After 380 CE, they had official imperial sanction to do so, and they did.  St. Patrick, the Roman Catholic slave, would arrive in Ireland in 415 CE, five years after the Romans left the British Isles with his mission to drive out the snakes and Christianize the island.  

It's odd how quickly the persecuted can become persecutors.  But as no one would today take seriously the rampant rumors that early Christians practiced infanticide, human sacrifice, and cannibalism, so too ought we remain skeptical of the many claims made over the centuries towards the Celts of a similar nature.  

By contrast, in the case of the human sacrificial practices of the Mexica (Aztec) and the Maya, we have the writings of Bishop Diego de Landa and others and archaeological evidence to corroborate the sacred blood-letting and ceremonial ritual human sacrifice of the Mayans.  We have the writings of Franciscan friars Bernardino de Sahagún, Marcos de Niza, and Dominican friar Diego Durán as well as of Conquistador Hernán Cortés and his men of the human sacrifice of the Mexica (Aztecs).  We also likewise have archaeological evidence to corroborate the sacrifices they recorded. We also have a few extant Mayan and Mexica (Aztec) records to corroborate them.  In the case of head-hunting and cannibalism in Papua New Guinea, we have historical records, archaeology, and the oral tradition of New Guineans to rely on that all corroborate those practices.   

In the case of the Celts, there are no Celtic accounts from Classical Antiquity, the Roman Republic, the Roman Empire or the entire Medieval Period corroborating human sacrifice as a practice.  Oral accounts today flatly reject that these were ever authentic practices of the Ancient Druidic Celts.  There are only Roman pagan and Roman Catholic records that survive that make these claims. As the Celts had no written records of their own and only had their spoken oral tradition and histories, we must rely on archaeological corroboration of the dubious Roman claims about them, as well as the spoken oral traditions in clan lore that deny all three charges of infanticide, human sacrifice, and cannibalism.  

We have found virtually no evidence to date corroborating those claims, so we may safely conclude those claims are highly suspect. We should no more believe them than the accounts of the many Roman historians about the early Christians.  It may not be unthinkable that the Celts might burn their prisoners of war in wicker figures, after all.  But if that is true, then we should find archaeological evidence corroborating it, like we have found evidence of the ritual livestock of animals.  

Thus, more than likely, conquering Roman pagans (greedy for Celtic lands and resentful of their resistance in Gaul in the first century BCE) mistook the legitimate cultural ritual sacrifice of animals and embellished accounts to vilify and demonize the Celts to justify their conquest and subjugation before emperors and Roman Senate.   

We should note a few human cultures did engage in human sacrifice, cannibalism, and infanticide.  In the case of infanticide, it should be noted that it is usually practiced in preference to infants starving to death in bad years for hunting, foraging, farming, or grazing in foraging, pastoralist, and horticuluralist peoples.  When practiced, infants were left out often at the edge of a forest to be eaten by animals and as sacrifices to the gods for a better year in the coming year.  In the case of human sacrifice, it appears associated with bad farming years in agriculturalist peoples with blood equated with life, and an attempt to placate gods that must have been angered.  And in the case of cannibalism, it appears to be practiced functionally as a consequence of inadequate protein rich food sources in the environment.  So it is possible, however improbable based upon our best attempts to verify these claims, that the ancient Celts did perform human sacrifice, cannibalism of their enemies, and the sacrifice of children.   

But what appears far more likely on the whole is that Christian missionaries—whether Catholic or Protestant—were too easily tempted to embellish or use false claims about other people in order to attempt to secure more financial or human support for their missions to indigenous peoples from their respective Crown, or the Pope (or later home churches or Congress or the President), or later to justify their removal or annihilation (as in the case of American Indian Policy during the roughly 150 Plains Indian Wars).  The accounts of missionaries, governors, bureaucrats, and business interests from the colonizing societies generally ought be mistrusted in their accounts when exploring relations with indigenous or aboriginal peoples the world over.  And that skepticism and scrutiny absolutely must be applied against the Roman (Irish) Catholic Christian mission in Ireland as well.   

For an interesting case study of the same, Spanish Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas's descriptive, qualitative accounts of the atrocities of Columbus and his men to the Arawaks on Hispaniola (once seen as awful exaggerations) have in recent years been corroborated by newly discovered writings of friars Antonio de Montesinos and Pedro de Córdoba and even Las Casas's enemy Toribio de Benavente Motolinia.  So it turns out that Las Casas' charges levied at Columbus and his men appear to be actually true, but that he exaggerated in the size and frequency of those atrocities in order to get King Ferdinand and Pope Paul III to intervene.  

Virtually all serious historians today have a nuanced view of his accounts in that they were largely exaggerated quantitatively (exaggerating frequency and total numbers) to influence monarch and clergy, but qualitatively (descriptively) accurate in describing the atrocities committed by Columbus and his men against the native Arawak on Hispaniola. 

There is ample historical precedent beyond this single case for less than fully accurate accounts by missionaries and monastic sources from settler colonizers, which should thus be regarded with suspicion.  The Irish Celts themselves in their own mythology demonized the Fomarian early European farmers they displaced who had in turn displaced the Mesolithic hunter-gatherer Fir Bolg (similarly demonized).  In the same mythology, the Sons of Mil (second Celtic invaders from basque Sapain, ca 1,000 BCE) similarly demonized or villifed the Tuatha Dé (first Celtic invaders from Normandy, ca 3,000 BCE).  

Unfortunately, the Celts had no written language, so what we know about them comes exclusively from outside and ostensibly biased sources.  But we can reasonably bet that what the Romans or early Irish Catholic monks wrote about them is about as accurate as Roman claims about early Christians, or the vilification of the original inhabitants of Ireland in its mythology.  

In Crom Dubh's cult which survives today in pockets throughout Ireland, Crom's remembered on the night before Lugansadh, or on the last Sunday in July (before the August 1st Catholic Lammas or Celtic Lughnasadh) by Roman (Irish) Catholics and neo-Celticist pagans, but no longer on Samhain (possibly due to the stigma Crom devotion gained with Christianization of Ireland to distance it from the stigma applied over the centuries), strangely enough:

• at Liscannor in County Clare, Munster, Ireland with a feast and festival; 

• at Croagh Patrick in County Mayo, Connacht, Ireland with a barefoot climb to Croagh Patrick's peak to where sacrifices were once left to Crom (and then Lugh historically; the site was later appropriated by Catholics dedicated to St. Patrick's descruction of Crom's cult as “Reek Sunday" and a test of their faith, the practice has been continued by Irish Catholics and Celtic Lugh and Crom devotees today); historically, similar barefoot climbs were undertaken by Irish Catholic and Celtic people before Lammas or Luggansadh at all the high places associated with Crom Dubh: Carrauntoohil, Knocknadobar, Drung Hill, Mount Brandon, and Slievecallan in Munster, Slieve Donard in Ulster and Church Mountain in Leinster, representing the Christian appropriation of Crom Dubh's Sunday; and 

• at the Altóir na Greine or Altar of the Sun at Mount Callan in County Clare, Munster, Ireland where Crom's devotees leave flowers and a several day Buaile na Greine festival is held before Crom Sunday, 

The last Sunday of  July (Reek Sunday, Crom Dubh Sunday) or on July 31st (alternately is known as Crom's Day) Irish Catholics and neo-Celts celebrate with gifts of produce and crops taken to the hillside and left for Crom (preceding Lugansadh) and a feast of new bacon, new cabbage, and new potatoes ensues.  Those unable to contribute food are dubbed “wind farmers."  But even to the modern day, the myths and legends of Crom are intimately tied to Lugh's annual journey and his solar cult.  

In some of the clan lore (oral tradition from those families claiming to have carried on the Druidic traditions, most of whom also identify as Irish Catholic), Crom carries Lugh's mother Eithne on his back (whose name means grain or kernel or seed and  is associated with bountiful harvests and Boann [from “Bò Fionn,” meaning White Cow, a sacred animal, and whose associated burial mound is strongly associated as a fairy mound] associated with the health and bounty of livestock) at Lughnasadh (the August 1st first harvest festival named for Lugh).  

Thus, in the surviving clan lore oral traditions, Crom carries the ability to germinate with him into the dark soil of the Otherworld and each Samhain and returns her to the surface each Beltaine as well.  Thus, his fertility power is also derivative from Eithne in clan oral tradition lore, and once again Lugh is implicated with Crom as dualistic light and dark deities juxtaposed and opposing each other—fitting the war of the gods of light and darkness in true Indo-European cosmology motif fashion.  

On Crom's (Dubh's) Day, Crom judges whether or not to have a festival determined by the quality of the sacrifice and demonstrates his pleasure or displeasure today by whether or not the clouds clear in response to the sacrifice (like an Irish Ground Hog's Day predicting the quality of next year's harvest) with Crom breathing fire to clear the clouds to allow Lugh to shine through if he's satisifed by the sacrifice, rewarding the festival with good weather.  Once again, Crom is associated with Lugh in modern practice of the surviving cult.

Their annual struggle hearkens to the Tuatha-Fomarian war's Second Battle of Moytura when Lugh slays Balor with a single slingshot shot to his eye and vanquishes the lords of chaos and darkness back into the sea, the lords of light and life being triumphant over the lords of death and darkness.  It's definitely interesting how in the modern Crom Dubh cult in the clan lore, Lugh and Crom are today comfortable with their roles and annual arrangement like bookends on a park bench, having danced this dance from time immemorial like old friends, judging the sacrifices of the foolish mortals together in tedious boredom and continuing their dance that gives and takes life each year, and, following form, the Roman (Irish) Catholics in Ireland celebrate Reek Sunday next to Crom's or Lugh's devotees in similar fashion.

Most of the creatures who exited the portals on Samhain in Irish mythology surrounding the ancient burial mounds at Samhain were dark, evil, or mischievous even if the vast majority of myths about that Otherworld do not describe it as a sinister place. Thus, the wearing of masks in a practice known as guising (short for disguising) evolved to scare or imitate in order to disguise oneself from the aos si and those recently departed revisiting homes wandering the earth on Samhain that they might not carry one back with them as happened in the stories told around the hearth fire.  

The aos sí were said to live in fairy mounds underground in fairy forts, in an invisible mirror hidden world or dimension invisible that coexists with our plane of existence some seers or shamans are able to see, or across the western sea, but wherever they lived, all sources agree, they were somehow able to enter our world and interact with us and be seen by us on Beltane and Samhain.  Many Neolithic passage tombs have archaeoastronomical alignments with sunrise on Samhain, marking the start of the dark death of winter, Cromm's reign.   

As Lugh sacrificed himself annually in the annual death of the sun, so too did people pay tax or tribute to king or sacrifice to now Cromm as ransom for his return.  They paid tribute to Cromm just as they had to the Fomarians of a third of their harvest to secure Lugh's freedom from winter in the spring.  Lugh paid a sacrifice of death to Cromm's evil powers, and Celts paid sacrifices of crops and animals to fires representing Lugh to satisfy Cromm and allow Lugh's liberation from Cromm's annual subduing.  

Lugh's sacrifice of death to darkness explained why charms to find out the will of the gods or spirits, good and evil, and charms and invocations worked better on Samhain marking the annual death to Lugh and payment of tribute to Cromm.  One tradition in the Scottish highlands surviving today is that of sitting on a three legged stool at a crossroads of three roads where fairies would await questioners.  A questioner would listen for fairies at midnight on Samhain at this location and could offer them gifts of clothing, bread, cream, or milk.  If pleased, the fairies would whisper the names of those who would die in the next year.  With each name mentioned, if pleased by the gift of the questioner, the fairies might intervene and repeal each person's death sentence.  If care was taken not to anger and to pay honor to the good and evil spirits and the dead, the power of charms and invocations was stronger on Samhain on this liminal (threshold) day of the year like its pair match: Beltaine.

The so-called Pomona or Flor Minor - Roman, second half of 2nd Century CE/AD (100s, ∴~150-200 CE/AD).  

Credit: Wikimedia: Dave & Margie Hill / Kleerup

Although Rome never conquered Ireland, they fortified Britannia's western coast against the Goidelic Celts with military outposts to defend against attacks.  Possible incursions of Romans into Ireland would have begun into Ireland around the time of the subjugation of the Welsh island of Mona now known as Anglesey by 60 CE led by Roman General (and Governor of Brittania) Gaius Suetonius Paulinus with 20,000 legionnaires before he returned home to put down the opportunistic rebellion of Boudica, queen of the Brythonic/Brittonic Celtic Iceni, in southeast England.  

Suetonius's contemporary, Pomponius Mela of Baetica (southern Spain, Andalusia) remarked of the people of the land Roman historian Tacitus dubbed Hibernia that they were, “a people wanting in every virtue, and totally destitute of piety," and of a land so luxuriant in grasses for ranching that if cattle were “allowed to feed too long, they would burst," simultaneously capturing the dehumanization required to subjugate another group of people and their motivation to do so.  Romans called the British Isles the Tin Islands before their conquest of Brittania, noting they were conquered for their tin and grazing land. 

The following Roman governor of Britannia, Agricola, is believed to have had Túathal Techtmar, the son of a deposed high Irish king in his entourage who invaded Ireland from afar to regain his kingdom.  However, there are no records of an official Roman incursion into or invasion of Ireland, even if Agricola's (Paulinus' successor) desires to do so are recorded and corroborated in the likely establishment of a Roman trading post at Drumanagh, Ireland by 80 CE and coastal garrisons against Irish attacks by the watchtower they established south of Anglesey on the Llyn Peninsula.  

By CE 150, when Claudius Ptolemy made the first map of Ireland, it noted several Roman settlements in Ireland including royal settlements like Emain Macha (Navan fort) in County Armagh. There is clear evidence too of subjugated Roman allies colonizing in Ireland in the British Brigantes.  The Brittonic/Bryonthic Celtic Ogham (pronounced Aumm) alphabet and writing system is believed to have been derived from Latin through contact and intermarriage through Romanticized Britons.  In fact, several Welsh Ogham stones in Wales were bilingual, featuring both the Old Irish Goidelic and Brythonic (Gaelic ancestor language to Welsh) and Latin.  

The Romans never conquered Hibernia, the land of winter.  It was no doubt a place they desired to subjugate as Agricola's“refuge for fugitives," and the last remaining stronghold of Celtic Druidism in the British Isles after Tiberius and Claudius routed the Gallic Celts from mainland Europe to their British Isle stronghold on the Welsh island of Mona.   Romans throughout the empire began converting to Celtic Druidism so that Emperor Caesar Augustus Octavian forbade conversion on penalty of death.  Tiberius militarily banished the Celtic Druids from Gaulish mainland continental Europe who fled to the Welsh island of Mona.  The Emperor Claudius stamped out the remnants of Druidism in continental Gaul and executed a Roman knight for wearing the telltale badge of a Druid priest in wearing an Adder's Stone or Druid's Egg globe necklace (see Halloween History to learn more) to win a civil lawsuit.   

By the time the Romans left the British Isles in 410 CE (five years later, the Roman slave Saint Patrick came to Ireland in 415 CE), there'd been nearly a century of increasing Roman Catholic Christianity, and Celtic Samhain and Roman Pomonalia began to blend with Roman Catholic Christianity.

The Gallic Druids vanquished by Tiberius and Claudius from Gaul fled to the Welsh Island of Mona (Anglesey) where they were finally massacred by Seutonius in ~60-61 CE by 20,000 legionnaires.  Consequently, with the keepers of its traditions mostly slain, the Druidic religion waned throughout the British Isles.   

After Christian convert Emperor Constantine ordered Christianity tolerated and Christian persecutions to end in 313 CE through his mother's conversion and his vision of the Christian Chi-Rho at the Battle of the Milvan Bridge, and his Christian successor Emperor Theodosius I (the last Roman emperor of a united Roman Empire before his successor Diocletian split the empire into the Latin-speaking Roman Catholic West and Greek-speaking Greek Orthodox East, or Byzantium) made Christianity the official religion of Rome in 380 CE/AD, he and succeeding Christian Roman Catholic Emperors ordered the Druidic religion eradicated from Brittania and Gaul over the next three centuries, replacing it with Roman Catholicism (although Christians probably only made up less then 20% of the Roman Empire).  After 410 CE when the Roman legions left the British Isles to defend Rome after Alaric the Visigoth sacked it, Roman Catholic missionaries like the Roman Catholic slave Saint Patrick and his growing cult would continue that mission.  

The Roman Catholic missionaries to Ireland told the Celtic Druidic holdovers that their aos si pagan gods had been exiled or died after Christ rose again after descending and conquering hell.  Christian church fathers said the fire, candle, nut, and apple omens and charms worked due to “black magic," further conflating Cromm's old Druidic Celtic cult with devil worship or Baal worship.   

Midsummer became St. John's Festival, Lugnasad became Lammas, and so Samhain became All Hallows Eve in preparation for All Souls Day as part of the triduum of AllHallowtide. Samhain's bonfires were still lit, but the Roman Catholic converts were told they would now light souls from “Purgatory to Paradise" as they once lit Lugh to his yearly death on Samhain.  The old sacrificial rites to induce Cromm's protection were now lit to protect them from the same god who now became an evil lord of darkness equated with Baal/Beelzebub, Belial, Lucifer, Baphomet and Satan in black masses to the devil.  That stigma is an unfortunate stain that still haunts Halloween.   

Azriel wished to pay simultaneous homage to the ancient Roman pagan as well as the Roman Christian Roman Catholic origins of many of our Halloween traditions involving apples and nuts — featured cryptically in the iconography of Candlelight's logo as well.  That story is next.

The “Dance of Death" depicted in medieval art. This art was a reminder that no one lives forever, and that we should remember our death and live in a way that makes us unafraid to die and ready to meet Christ our Judge.  Credit: Kyra C Kramer.com

The Doctrine of Purgatory.  The Catholic church's doctrine of Purgatory was defined by the Councils of Lyon (1274 CE/AD), Ferrara-Florence (1438–45 CE/AD), and Trent (1545–63 CE/AD).  In these meetings, the doctrine was first justified in scriptures rejected by Protestants and Jews in the Catholic Bible's apocryphal 2 Maccabees 12:42–45 suggesting prayers and alms for the poor collected for those already dead could redeem those who were killed but not already redeemed. Protestants thought the idea that prayers for the dead could redeem them preposterous, with only an individual's faith in Christ's sacrifice on the cross and God's grace being the only thing that could redeem anyone.  That single difference of opinion would eventually result in the death of 70 million Christians killing other Christians.

Doctrinal Differences that Created the Modern World.  Of course these doctrinal differences led to the Christian: Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation; the Spanish, French, and Roman/Italian Inquisitions; publication of the Malleus Maleficarum (famous witch hunting guide-book, The Witch Hammer) in 1487 CE resulting in centuries of witch hunts, false accusations of the church's or neighbors' enemies, trials, and witch burnings; and, famously, The European Wars on Religion in which 70 million Christians killed other Christians from the late 15th Century (1400s CE/AD) through the early 18th Century (1700s).  Ironically, they led to the freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, and church-state separation that America's founding fathers insisted upon in the Bill of Rights' First Amendment. The framers of the U.S. Constitution, America's founding fathers, wrote extensively about these things as being necessary antecedents for (conditions that must precede) Republican (representative) self government, the rule of law, and even for freedom itself to exist during the age of Political Revolutions starting with the American Revolution (in the late 18th-19th Centuries).  

The aforementioned councils clarified Purgatory was also implied in the New Testament in Christ's “forgiveness in this age and the age to come," Matthew 12:31-32 Peter's “trial of faith" in 1 Peter 1:6-7,  Paul's “cleansing fire" of 1 Corinthians 3:13-15.  These councils constructed the theological doctrine of the Catholic seven sacraments from these scriptures (baptism, confirmation, communion, confession, anointing of the sick/last rites, marriage, and holy orders/service to church) required for a soul to be in a state of grace to bypass Purgatory's cleansing to enter heaven.  

Martin Luther would retain three: confession, communion, and baptism as necessary for a soul to be in a state of grace, and rejected the idea of Purgatory.  Incidentally, this doctrine is also what led to the sale of indulgences (payment for full or partial remission [payment for a debt] for purification of sins on earth or after death in Purgatory) that Martin Luther objected so heavily to, among 94 other complaints, leading to his 95 Theses, or claims/complaints, and The Protestant Reformation (and by consequence, the Age of Reason/Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution).

Soulers would sing songs as they went door to door 'guising to collect alms.  Here's one souling song's chorus (Credit: Roud 304 ; Ballad Index BGMG408 ; trad.):

“Soul! soul! for a soul-cake;

Pray, good mistress, for a soul-cake.

One for Peter, two for Paul,

Three for Them who made us all.

Soul! soul! for an apple or two;

If you’ve got no apples, pears will do.

Up with your kettle, and down with your pan;

Give me a good big one, and I’ll be gone.

An apple or pear, a plum or a cherry,

Is a very good thing to make us merry."

Another chorus that was sung sings (Credit: John Brand in his “Popular Antiquities” (1777) taken directly from the lips of “the merry pack, who sing from door to door, on the eve of All – Soul’s Day, in Cheshire ”):

“Soul day, soul day, Saul

One for Peter, two for Paul,

Three for Him who made us all.

Put your hand in your pocket and pull out your keys,

Go down into the cellar, bring up what you please;

A glass of your wine, or a cup of your beer,

And we’ll never come souling till this time next year.

We are a pack of merry boys, all in a mind,

We are come a souling for what we can find,

Soul, soul, sole of my shoe,

If you have no apples, money will do;

Up with your kettle and down with your pan,

Give us an answer and let us be gone

An apple, a pear, a plum or a cherry,

Any good thing that will make us all merry.

It has since subsequently been adopted by neopagans and occultists from the Victorian late 19th Century (1840s-1940s) to the Aquarian New Age (1960s-1990s) through today as the geometrically perfect symbol representing the five neoplatonic elements (earth-air-fire-water-ether/space) of alchemists, occultists, and practioners of magick. 

Its adoption by Jewish and Christian mystics, Neopagan Celticists, and occultists (who didn't see anything wrong with their practice of magic alongside more formal religion, but as rather complementary to it and actually intended by God himself [the subject of Agrippa's 1651 book])—much like many Medieval Christians viewed astrology (explaining why horoscopes, love signs, and astrology are still so ubiquitous in our culture today) and Victorian Era Christians had no qualms attending Saturday night seances and Sunday church services the next morning—explains how the symbol began to take on more sinister associations in being associated with heretical occultism, alchemy, and the practice of magic and witchcraft thanks to Levi.  Those things became forbidden and outlawed by the church in the 1400s-1600s as a result of the nascent Protestant Reformation and its challenge to the Pope and church's power and authority as more and more Catholics quit Catholicism.  

They became easy charges to levy against enemies of the Catholic Church or Pope and by which they could be placed on trial and burned at the stake in the three inquisitions.  Thus, the pentagram became associated with witchcraft and devil worship irrespective of its right-side-up or up-side-down orientation or inversion, despite the fact that the pentagram had long originally recognized by Catholics as a Christian, not a Satanic symbol. It was the pentagram's inversion just like an inverted cross that was originally recognized as Satanic.  

Yet it is true that Christians symbolically identified themselves and their faith to each other through first the early Christian's cryptic ichthys or ichthus fish as the first Christian symbol (an allusion to Christ's charge to become fishers of men) along with a T cross (without an intersecting line) interchangeably from the start of the first Christian churches.  Those symbols were then followed by the Byzantine Emperor Constantine's Chi-Rho symbol, and subsequently by an upright pentagram or pentacle by Medieval Christians, all of which were used interchangeably in the Medieval Period as Christian symbols.  It was then finally that the intersecting cross or crucifix (the lowercase t instead of the original T or X) was adopted because of the growing more forbidden associations.

Thus the superimposed naturally made pentagram superimposed on a full moon (in a horizontally sliced apple core) pays symbolic homage to the importation of Roman Catholic Christendom grafted onto the more ancient Celtic Samhain and Roman Vertumnalia-Pomonalia roots which reclaims a historical use of the pentagram as a legitimate symbol of Christianity and is a triple-entendre to: 

1. the paganism of the ancient Celts and Romans, 

2. the Roman Catholic Christianity and monotheism of the Roman Catholic Christians and Irish Catholic Christians in souling as Christian charity for the poor as the origin of trick-or-treating, AND 

3. the monotheism and Christianity of the moderns, and Christ's call to all Christians for charity to those less fortunate than themselves, 

even if our modern amnesia of that history and these traditions is staggering.  

Alexandra Kommel of American University explains that the meaning of a lost loved one's life and death must be understood in order to properly grieve and process grief, something late Victorian Era Americans were denied by the Civil War.  Kommel again quotes Faust's 2008 Republic of Suffering:

“ The particular circumstances of the Civil War often inhibited mourning, rendering it difficult, if not impossible, for many bereaved Americans to move through the stages of grief. In an environment where information about deaths was often wrong or entirely unavailable, survivors found themselves both literally and figuratively unable to ‘see clearly what… has been lost...When these soldiers perished far away from home, observance of grief was impossible and the state of the soul of the deceased at the time of death was forever lost to the family. Bodies were left on the battlefield for a variety of reasons: lack of a structured, recovery system, attempts to disgrace the enemy and lower its morale, junctures of battle, and discrimination between officers and their subordinates." 

Kommel continues: 

“ The uniqueness and scope of death during the Civil War left thousands of families without the proper outlets to grieve. It transformed wives into widows, children into orphans, and mothers into mourners."

She continues in quoting historian David Nartonis' 2010 professional journal article, “ The Rise of 19th-Century American Spiritualism: 1854-1873," in The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion:

“ Spiritualist activity increased rapidly in America at a time when bereaved citizens were seeking new assurance of continuity and justice after death and when traditional religion was becoming less able to offer this assurance.”

This movement spurred charlatan, grifter extraordinaire, and huckster Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and her confederate, former Union Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, to found the occult order of Theosophy which led to or further popularized freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, the Golden Dawn, and a host of other occult societies which vastly popularized Spiritualism across the globe. The Fox sisters, Blavatsky, and Olcott toured the world, spreading Spiritualism in demonstrations of spirit mediumship, spirit boards, and the like.   Spirit boards (Ouija), spirit rapping/knocking, and séances—especially midnight ones at Halloween parties on Hallow's Eve—became vogue and standard fare at Halloween Parties throughout Europe and the Americas, and the rest is history.  

But many of the Spiritualist traditions that derived from the Spiritualist camps in Ohio and in Lily Dale, New York, in their efforts to communicate with spirits and divine their dubious Victorian futures left their mark on Hallow's Eve traditions.   

They are captured in the tradition of the telling of ghost stories at Halloween and at Christmas by candlelight (another allusion to our company's name) through the seminal works of horror fiction in the ghost stories of Edgar Allen Poe and Charles Dickens (and others) which then found their way into Halloween Party traditions during the Victorian Era in the reading of horror, ghost, and witch tales by fire or candlelight on Hallow's Eve (also at Christmas which is why Dickens' quintessential A Christmas Carol involved three ghosts visiting Ebenezer Scrooge at Christmas).  This tradition, reading ghost tales and witch folktales by candlelight at Halloween parties, along with the invitation tradition, explain the namesakes of Candlelight Frights.  The crow, a reference to Poe's famous poem The Raven, then serves as symbolic homage to the contributions of the mostly Protestant but slightly Catholic Christian Spiritualists upon American Halloween traditions.