MOONLIGHT VAMPIRE SOCIETY

So as some of you know I’m a bit of geek when it comes to having to know the “story” behind things and with all of the biblical references in SN these days I decided I needed more background. This will be the first in a series of articles/snippets that have to deal with the symbols, mythology and folklore that is at the heart of Supernatural’s storylines. Since the Apocalypse is the big “A” storyline this season I thought I’d start there. What I found blew my mind a bit… Please keep in mind that the comments in red are my thoughts and mine alone. It should also be said that I have no background in religious history or theory.


The Book of Revelation

The Book of Revelation in the New Testament has the literal title in Greek, the "Apocalypse of John." The Book of John is “the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who testifies to everything he saw--that is, the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near.”

Already there are many coincidences in the SN storyline:

The Book of John – This could be represented in the SN storyline by John Winchester, a master hunter and therefore a soldier against evil, and his little book of demons, spells and such

“Blessed is the one who reads the words of his prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written…” - that screams Sam, Dean and Bobby to me! They rely upon the ancient writings and those of John Winchester in their quest to rid the world of evil.

Per several dictionaries, the word apocalypse means revelation. That, which is uncovered. It comes from the Greek word which literally means to pull the lid off something. The word apocalypse also refers to a genre of literature like the Book of Revelation itself. They are pieces of literature that start by revealing something or seeing visions or having individuals be taken up into heaven where they can see what's going on from that vantage point.

Below is on expert’s take on The Revelations, courtesy of James Tabor, a professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
It's a sealed book. It's a scroll with seven wax seals. As you begin to open it, you get this unfolding scenario of events, beginning with war and famine and disease and earthquakes and heavenly signs. It's fairly standard. And then you begin to get these characters introduced, and there are five or six main characters. One would be the false prophet. He's like a dragon, but he speaks like a lamb. He has horns. A beast that is non-descript, some sort of horrible creature that appears to stand for the Roman government to the early Christians, but today could be any power… some sort of evil empire of some type. And then you have the saints or the Christians, the faithful followers of God that are being martyred. You have two people that are very interesting, that many modern interpreters are interested in called the two witnesses. These are, I guess you could say the two final prophets that the book expects to appear on the earth, like Moses and Elijah of ancient times in the bible. You have a dragon, who's actually identified as the devil behind the scenes, and of course you have Jesus Christ, the lamb. So it's as if there's a whole stage set with these characters, and then things begin to unfold one by one, in terms of what's supposed to happen. It seems to me that Eric Kripke and crew are using the theme of two witnesses (and not necessarily the actual definition) to apply to Sammy and Dean. Sammy with his “evil blood” could be loosely interpreted as the devil behind the scenes and Dean as the lamb.

Back to Dr. Tabor…If you open the Book of Revelation and simply begin reading it as an unfolding scenario, it goes something like this. There will be wars and famines and disease epidemics and heavenly signs that will alert the world to some sort of crisis. Then will come an Antichrist as he's called, or a political ruler, that will establish control over the whole earth. (There is a theory among some SN fans that Sammy is the Antichrist, I don’t agree! My thinking is more toward the Two Witnesses theory.) He'll be backed up with a religious ruler, who's called the false prophet. They together establish a unified social, economic and religious system that dominates the world. The only things opposing them are the people of God and these two prophets, they're called the two witnesses, who appear in Jerusalem, and begin to speak against this power. The rest of the book, really the last half of the book is about the overthrow of this system. The beast, the false prophet, who has the number 666, the Antichrist, is overthrown with judgments and plagues. Most of them are very cosmic. Asteroids hitting the earth. The water turning to blood and that sort of thing, until finally, Jesus Christ returns as a warrior on a white horse and sets up the kingdom of God. ...

The way the Book of Revelation is actually written is as a series of kind of unfolding scenes, each one of which gets to something deeper in the story. The first section is in chapters 5 through 11, and in this we have John being shown a series of visions symbolized by the seven seals and the seven trumpets. But if we kind of look at how these things are working, each one is a box within a box, it's sometimes really thought of that way, as a series of Chinese boxes. You open the seals and when you get to the sixth seal things are looking really bad and when you get to the seventh seal we find that the seventh seal is actually the seven trumpets and we start all over again going deeper and deeper into the story. Then when we get to the seventh trumpet in chapter 11, the trumpet blows and heaven opens and you see the revelation of the dragon and the woman. ... So chapters 12 through 14, the woman and the dragon and the beast, really is centerpiece of the story. And it is the underlying cosmic drama that John is showing, which reveals the principals, the combatants upon which the rest of the story is being played out. Then as we go from chapters 15 onward, we're told that those who are on the side of God and the angels, over against those who are on the side of the dragon and the beast, these combatants will come to a final battle and another series of seven plagues and another series of seven responses that will carry out the story to its natural end.

Most apocalyptic literature tends to show the history of the world as a cosmic conflict between God and some evil force, usually called Satan. This is seen in the Book of Revelation, where it describes Satan as the ancient dragon who had tried to consume the offspring of the cosmic woman, a kind of celestial Eve or Mary. Hmmm… another coincidence that the mother of Dean and Sam is named Mary??? I think not…

From Revelations 12.1-9: A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pangs, in the agony of giving birth. another portent appeared in heaven: a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads. Then His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. Then the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born. And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. But her child was snatched away and taken to God and to his throne; and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, so that there she can be nourished for one thousand two hundred sixty days. And war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, but they were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world -- he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.


The Beast

Following this the dragon (Satan) proceeds to make war on the offspring of the woman, i.e., the saints, on earth. At the Lord’s appointed time, “the beast that comes up out of the abyss will make war with them, and overcome them and kill them.” The Beast is the Antichrist—a man that is empowered by Satan. After The Beast kills the two witnesses, John tells us “their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city which mystically is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified. But after the three and a half days, the breath of life from God came into them, and they stood on their feet; and great fear fell upon those who were watching them.” This is long enough for the bodies to have begun to decay. As the Lord did with Lazarus, God waits until there is no question about their death, and then suddenly God intervenes. They will be physically and visibly resurrected. But it gets even better… John records, “And they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, Come up here. Then they went up into heaven in the cloud, and their enemies watched them. And in that hour there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city fell; seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the rest were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven.” This is referred to in the Book of Revelations as the “Rising of Witnesses” and shows us one very cranky and vengeful deity. We’ve heard this term “Rising of Witnesses” a few times on SN and I really hope that this is not a portent of something to come. We’ve already lost Dean and Sam once and I’m really not sure that I would survive a summer if this was the season ending cliff-hanger! Hear me, Eric???

In summary, there are tons and tons of articles written about the Apocalypse and The Book of Revelations and I’ve done my best to condense the volumes of stuff here. The biggest conclusion I have come to at the end of this little research mission is that Kripke and crew have had this Apocalypse story line in mind from the very first minute and that there are no coincidences! The Winchester Boys are in for the fight of their lives and we’re fortunately along for the ride. At first I think I was hoping I’d have an “aha” moment and figure out exactly what these amazing writers have in store for us. Now I’m really glad that I haven’t! I love that I have so many questions and very few answers. How incredible is it in this day and age of TV that we’re all on the edge of our seats waiting to see what happens next? Buckle up folks its going to be a wild ride!
Sources: World Book Encyclopedia
Bible.org
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline ... pocalypse/

Whoa! You did such a great job on this Flo. I love how all these things are matching up. Like you said it seems like Eric has had this planned out since day one. I can't wait for the show to progress and to see the myths and lore explained.

I almost feel like I should raise my hand if I have a question. Supernatural spoke a little bit about Samhain on this most recent episode. Do you have any more in depth explanation or backstory on the history of Halloween and Samhain? **Wink**

Thank you and no need to raise your hand...it's already in the works! And I promise it will be shorter than this one... the Bible is a great read but those dudes were very wordy.

BTW, all suggestions are welcome. I've tried to go back and make a list but if there is something you'd like to know more about, MVSers, please pass it along.

Thanks, Mel. You should check out the post I wrote a few weeks ago called Getting to Know your SN Angels and Demons. There's more about our angel friends there.

Samhain, Halloween, All Hallow’s Eve... Whats the Real Story???

In this past week’s episode of Supernatural, “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester”, the Winchester Boys and their winged friends Castiel and Uriel were preoccupied with stopping the The Dark Lord/Pumpkin God/Samhain (pronounced Sam-Hane), from walking the Earth and thereby breaking yet another of the 66 seals. Research shows that there is no evidence in Celtic or Druidic lore that The Dark Lord ever existed. It seems to be creation of modern day movie makers and writers that have taken liberties with some of the Ancient Celtic and Druidic beliefs. Below you will find the story of Samhain (the holiday), the origins of Halloween and some of its traditions.

Samhain (pronounced Sow-EN), is a Celtic word meaning "summer's end." The Celts, like many other cultures, saw the dark of the day or year as the beginning. Thus their days began at sunset and the winter half of the year, starting on November 1st, was the beginning of their new year. The Ancient Celtic society was a highly structured and regimented one, in that everyone knew their place. To break the strain, Samhain was celebrated by Celts from October 31st through November 2, also known as “the three days time” when chaos ruled. People did crazy things, men dressed as women, women dressed as men, pranks were pulled and children knocked on doors for food and treats – like today’s Trick or Treat.

The Druids celebrated Samhain a bit differently. The Druids knew that the “three days time” was when the veil between this world and the World of the Ancestors was drawn aside and journeys could be made to the other side. The Druids’ rituals, therefore, were concerned with making contact with spirits of the departed who were seen as sources of guidance and inspiration.

Halloween, one of the world's oldest holidays, is still celebrated today in several countries around the globe. The autumn rite is commemorated in the United Kingdom, although with a surprising and distinctive British twist. In Mexico, Latin America, and Spain, All Souls' Day, the third day of the three-day Hallowmas observance, is the most important part of the celebration for many people. In Ireland and Canada, Halloween, which was once a frightening and superstitious time of year, is celebrated much as it is in the United States, with trick-or-treating, costume parties, and fun for all ages.

The word itself, "Halloween," actually has its origins in the Catholic Church. It comes from a contracted corruption of All Hallows Eve. November 1, "All Hollows Day" (or "All Saints Day"), is a Catholic day of observance in honor of saints

Trick or Treat:
The custom of trick or treating probably has several origins. During Samhain, the Druids believed that the dead would play tricks on mankind and cause panic and destruction. They had to be appeased, so country folk would give the Druids food as they visited their homes.

An old Irish peasant practice called for going door to door to collect money, breadcake, cheese, eggs, butter, apples, etc., in preparation for the festival of St. Columb Kill.

Also a ninth-century European custom called souling. On November 2, All Souls Day, early Christians would walk from village to village begging for "soul cakes" made out of square pieces of bread with currants. The more soul cakes the beggars would receive, the more prayers they would promise to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the donors. At the time, it was believed that the dead remained in limbo for a time after death, and that prayer, even by strangers, could expedite a soul's passage to heaven.

Black and Orange:
The meaning of the association of using orange and black with Halloween goes back to the Druids. The traditional colors of Halloween reflect its Celtic origin. Orange is the color of the autumn harvest, black the symbol of death.

Bobbing for Apples:
When the Celts were absorbed by the Roman Empire, many rituals of Roman origin began. Among them was the worship of Pomona, goddess of the harvest, often portrayed sitting on a basket of fruits and flowers. Apples were the sacred fruit of the goddess, and many games of divination involving them entered the Samhain customs.

The Witch's Broomstick:
The witch is a central symbol of Halloween. The name comes from the Saxon wica, meaning wise one. When setting out for a Sabbath, witches rubbed a sacred ointment onto their skin. This gave them a feeling of flying, and if they had been fasting they felt even giddier. Some witches rode on horseback, but poor witches went on foot and carried a broom or a pole to aid in vaulting over streams. In England when new witches were initiated they were often blindfolded, smeared with flying ointment and placed on a broomstick. The ointment would confuse the mind, speed up the pulse and numb the feet. When they were told "You are flying over land and sea," the witch took their word for it.

Black Cats:
The black cat has often been associated with witches. It was even believed that a witch could shape shift into a cat. Others believed the cats were the spirit of the dead. The most common superstition is if a black cat crossed your path, you would experience bad luck. People would actually turn around and go the opposite direction to avoid bad luck.

Jack-O-Lanterns:
Irish children used to carve out potatoes or turnips and light them for their Halloween gatherings. They commemorated Jack, a shifty Irish villain so wicked that neither God nor the Devil wanted him. Rejected by both the sacred and profane, he wandered the world endlessly looking for a place to rest, his only warmth a glittering candle in a rotten turnip.

Halloween Masquerade Mask:
From earliest times people wore masks when droughts or other disasters struck. They believed that the demons who had brought their misfortune upon them would become frightened off by the hideous masks. Even after the festival of Samhain had merged with Halloween, Europeans felt uneasy at this time of the year. Food was stored in preparation for the winter and the house was snug and warm. The cold, envious ghosts were outside, and people who went out after dark often wore masks to keep from being recognised.

More Halloween Superstitions
There are many other superstitions associated with Halloween. For example, the Welsh believed that when you sneezed you blew the soul out of the body, which is where “God bless you” originated. If someone sneezed on Halloween, it was especially dangerous because the devil could capture your soul. Other cultures believed that owls swooped down to eat the souls of the dying. If they heard an owl hooting, they would get scared and believed that turning your pockets inside out would make you safe. While eating dinner on Halloween, the Africans brought to America as slaves would eat in complete silence to encourage spirits to come to the table. And in Britain, people believed the devil was a nut gatherer. On Halloween they would wear nuts as magic charms. There is also a lot to be said about babies born on Halloween. It once was thought children born on this day can see and talk to ghosts and spirits, called the gift of second sight. Additionally, Halloween babies are supposed to enjoy lifelong protection against evil spirits.

Halloween also has some close ties to superstitions dealing with love. Some believe if you catch a snail on Halloween night and lock it in a flat dish you will see the first letter of your sweetheart’s name in the morning. Another one says that if a girl puts fresh rosemary and a silver coin under her pillow on Halloween, she will see her future husband in a dream.

I hope this answers some of your questions. I’m distressed that I missed my chance to divine my future husband but you can bet that this gal will have rosemary, silver and if necessary a snail under her pillow next Halloween!

Thanks Flo for all the information, it's always interesting and fun.
Too bad Samhain doesn't really exists as a demon or something, I really wanted to be some true to that SN storyline ....
xoxo

AMAZING job Flo! I don't know much about SN but this was very interesting info. Makes me want to know more about the show.
You need to teach a college class.....Supernatural 101

Yeah sure, Supernatural 101. Have you heard about the college that has Buffy 101? Its part of their theatre and civics programs! Too funny...

I want to be in the Supernatural 101 class. I think I'd be a good student. I promise not to pass notes during class. Swear!

I really loved this education on the behind the scenes meanings going on Supernatural. Thank you very much Flo for bringing this stuff to our attention. It's very interesting and so much fun to learn about.

God I hope there's not a pop quiz. Ha!

Question 1: Why Orange and Black?
Answer: Because Sam looks really hot in it. HAHA!

Aw, I'm really happy that folks are enjoying it. I promise no pop quizzes! And speaking of Sammy looking hot check out the new photos I just posted! They are H O T!

Wowza! This was cool. I really like all information you've put into here. Thank you for educating us. If we act up in class will you paddle us? ::Snicker::

I'm thinking of an XXX movie with the theme of student and teacher. Thank you for the cool inforation on the stories of the show. I like that Eric has done his homework before producing an episode.

Boys, boys, boys, you have no idea what I'm capable of! As Mike would say - Bwahaha!
Now using your best penmanship, get your chalk and write, "I will misbehave" 100 times! Oops, let me erase that board for you...