Candlemas: one of the most innocuous of Witches' Sabbaths!

[RandyMistie]

I love the riff of "The City of the Dead" hilarious and some really great Black&White cinematography considering the budget and subject matter. And Christopher Lee is always fun!

But this is yet another example of the "gyshin" (there are many spellings for that, I just went with phonetic as it is a very folkloric, pagan word....) or non-witches, of the late 60's early 70's getting a little info about real witches and turning it stupid.

Candlemas is a festival of light, a celebration of the first blush of spring... on Feb 2 we do our Spring Cleaning ceremony, which first means cleaning out old ideas, habits, or evil spirits, (if you believe in that sort of thing), and then we physically clean our homes from top to bottom. This is where the idea of "Spring Cleaning" comes from as well as Groundhog Day, which was a great movie.

In ancient times, a high priestess would wear a crown of candles and take on the role of risen Persephone from the Underworld to vouchsafe Spring from the clutches of Winter. It was just as harmless as that.  No sacrifices... no blood rituals...

The 60's and 70's were full of movies and books that knew a lot about Witchcraft but put the sexy Satan spin on it, which I love, BUT, it's important that people realize that is just Hollywood Witchcraft...

That being said, fantastic riff, and a fun movie.... that I will watch, probly, another 200 times before I die.

Next, is "Prisoner of the Lost Universe"! Can't wait to see Richard Hatch with his oddly distorted or dubbed voice!

Witch reference: There are 8 Sabbaths or Sabbats, which are Sun based, The Winter and Summer Solstice, the Autumnal and Vernal Equinox, Samhain or Halloween, Beltane or May 1st, Lammas, the last Harvest, and Candlemas, which has a Gaelic name that escapes me right now...

Esbats are moon ceremonies and they occur on full and new moons every month.

10,000 years ago there may have been blood sacrifice on some of these days, usually animal, sometimes human, (the Celts were pretty brutal), but we all gave that up centuries ago... really. I'm serious.... we NEVER do that! Hardly EVER!

Sometimes... KIDDING! I kid.... NEVER! Forbidden! My neighbour just moved out! WHAT??!?!? A person can't just leave in the middle of the night and not tell anyone? Is that what America has become!??!! A buncha busybodies trying to find out what happened to a buncha Christian neighbours that often spoke of moving to Utah, assuming new identities and becoming Mormons? Really? I mean, that is saaaad....

Jeeze, I mean... a person or people can just vanish overnight. That is their right...

My tomatoes are doing GREAT this year! Must be that new fertilizer I'm using....

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

It's worth noting that Candlemas is also the name of a christo-pagan fusion holiday where people would predict the coming weather by the movements of hibernating animals and get their new beeswax candles blessed by the village priest to ward off storms. Not terribly ominous or potent. More of a filler holiday, like President's Day or Valentine's Day.

[Sideswipe]

So a holiday created by the notoriously greedy beeswax candle industry.  Got it.