Halloween a pagan ritual veiled in harmless fun has its roots in    Babylonian and Egyptian darkness.

                       An article by Joseph Dumond of Sightedmoon.com 

As October 31 approaches, the world dons its masks and lights its lanterns, calling it innocent fun. But at Sightedmoon.com, we expose Halloween as a direct heir to ancient pagan sabbaths, steeped in sun god worship, spirit veneration, and occult rites Yehovah forbids (Leviticus 23). Drawing from Alexander Hislop’s The Two Babylons (1853)—a cornerstone exposing Satan’s counterfeit from Babel—we trace its Celtic facade to deeper Babylonian and Egyptian mysteries. These festivals mock Yehovah’s holy days, echoing the deification of Noah’s family through Ham’s perverted relationship with his mother, birthing idolatry that spreads to Egypt’s gods. As we near the 2300 days’ end (July 12, 2026), with the 10 Days of Awe as prophetic years (2024-2033) judging modern “gods” like Egypt’s plagues,

Halloween signals the great deception. Give heed to what Yehovah says: 

“Learn not the way of the heathen… For the customs of the people are vain” (Jeremiah 10:2-3).

In this newsletter, we delve into the layers of deception that make Halloween not just a night of candy and costumes, but a spiritual trap designed to lure the unwary into the very idolatry Yehovah has condemned since the days of Babel. We’ll explore its Celtic origins, its Babylonian and Egyptian roots, and how Catholic syncretism—fueled by figures like Simon Magus—has perpetuated this darkness under a Christian veneer. As we connect these threads, we’ll see how Halloween’s themes of death, spirits, and deified figures align with the judgments on Egyptian gods outlined in our teachings on the 10 Days of Awe, reminding us that Yehovah’s plagues are not relics of the past but prophecies for our time.

The Celtic Facade: Samhain and the Thinning Veil

Halloween’s most immediate roots trace back over 2,000 years to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced “sow-in”), celebrated by the Gaels in Ireland, Scotland, and Britain. This marked the end of the harvest and the dark half of the year, when the Celts believed the veil between the living and the dead thinned, allowing ghosts, demons, and fairies to cross over. To ward off these spirits, Druids—Celtic priests—lit massive bonfires (often called “bone fires” from the remains used) for purification. Families extinguished their home hearths and relit them from these communal flames, seeking protection for the winter ahead.

 

Sacrifices were central: crops and animals were offered, and while human sacrifice is debated among historians (with Roman accounts like Julius Caesar’s possibly exaggerated for propaganda), archaeological evidence from bog bodies suggests ritual killings occurred in some contexts. Nocturnal symbols emerged—bats, owls, and black cats as spirit messengers. Costumes of animal skins disguised the living from vengeful ghosts, and divination with apples and nuts foretold the future. Hollowed turnips or beets, carved with grotesque faces and lit by coals, represented damned souls or warding talismans—precursors to the jack-o’-lantern, rooted in the Irish tale of Stingy Jack, a wanderer cursed with a hellfire-lit turnip.

 

When the Romans conquered Celtic lands around 43 AD, they blended Samhain with Feralia (honouring the dead) and Pomona (goddess of fruit), infusing apple rituals that survive in bobbing for apples. But this was no mere harvest fest—it was a night of fear and appeasement, aligning with modern Wicca’s eight sabbaths, where Samhain is the holiest, honouring the “horned god” and crone goddess in a cycle of death and rebirth.

 

The Celts’ belief in a thinned veil between worlds wasn’t unique to their culture; it echoes ancient ideas of the dead returning to demand tribute or wreak havoc if not appeased. This theme of interaction with the spirit realm, complete with offerings and disguises, sets the stage for Halloween’s modern observance. But to understand why such practices are so dangerous, we must dig deeper into their origins, where Babylonian and Egyptian influences reveal a pattern of idolatry that Yehovah has judged time and again.

Deeper Roots: Babylonian Mysteries and the Spread of Paganism

Samhain’s darkness didn’t arise in isolation. As Alexander Hislop masterfully demonstrates in The Two Babylons, many Western pagan practices stem from ancient Babylon, and Egypt, and before them from Assyria, the cradle of idolatry after the Flood. Babylon’s religion, centred on Nimrod (the “mighty hunter” of Genesis 10:8-10, whom Hislop identifies as a type of the Antichrist) and his wife Semiramis, which involved sun worship, fertility rites, and underworld veneration. (Ham’s name means the sun) 

A) Mh% (Mh% HhM) ac: Heat co: Sun ab: ?: The heat from the sun heats the contents of the bag.

mm) Nmh% (Nmh% Hh-MN) – Sun idol: An object of worship representing the sun god. [freq. 8] |kjv: image, idol| {H2553}

V) Mmh% (Mmh% Hh-MM) – Warm: The warmth of the sun or from passion. [freq. 13] (vf: Paal, Niphal, Hitpael, Piel) |kjv: hot, heat, warm, enflame| {H2552}

Nimrod’s deification as a sun god (Baal or Tammuz) and Semiramis as the “queen of heaven” (Ishtar) spread via the dispersion at Babel and Egypt (Genesis 11), influencing Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Hindu, Buddhist and eventually Celtic cults.

 

Hislop connects Halloween to Babylonian “All Souls” observances, where the dead were invoked and offered food to prevent their wrath—parallels to Samhain’s spirit appeasement. In Babylonian lore, the underworld (Irkalla) was a grim realm where unburied ghosts (etemmu) roamed if not honoured, much like Celtic fears of wandering spirits. 

Autumn festivals mourned the dying god Tammuz (Ezekiel 8:14 condemns this), with lamentations and offerings echoing Samhain’s harvest end. Hislop argues that Phoenician traders brought these eastward mysteries to the Druids, blending Baal’s fire rituals with Celtic bonfires—sacrifices intended to purify and summon the sun’s return.

 

Even the jack-o’-lantern ties back: Hislop notes Babylonian lanterns for the damned, symbolizing souls trapped in purgatory-like states, adapted westward. Bats and black cats? Babylonian omens linked them to underworld demons, influencing Celtic superstitions. Human or animal sacrifices? Babylon’s rituals involved offerings to appease gods like Molech (Leviticus 18:21), a practice Yehovah abhorred and which filtered into Druidism.

Ezk 8:2  And I looked, and behold! A likeness as the appearance of fire; from the appearance of His loins and downward, like fire. And from His loins and upward as the appearance of brightness, like the color of polished bronze.

Ezk 8:3  And He put out the form of a hand, and took me by a lock of my head. And the Spirit lifted me up between the earth and the heavens, and brought me in the visions of God to Jerusalem, to the opening of the inner gate facing north, where there was a seat of the image of jealousy, which provokes to jealousy.

Ezk 8:4  And, behold! The glory of the God of Israel wasthere, according to the vision that I saw in the plain.

Ezk 8:5  And He said to me, Son of man, lift up your eyes now to the way of the north. So I lifted up my eyes the way toward the north, and behold, northward at the gate of the altar the image of jealousy was at the entrance.

Ezk 8:6  And He said to me, Son of man, do you see what they do; even the great abominations which the house of Israel is doing here, that I should go far off from My sanctuary? But turn again, and you shall see greater abominations.

Ezk 8:7  And He brought me to the opening of the court; and I looked, and behold, a hole in the wall.

Ezk 8:8  And He said to me, Son of man, dig in the wall now. And I dug in the wall, and, behold, an opening.

Ezk 8:9  And he said to me. Go in and see the evil abominations that they do here.

Ezk 8:10  And I went in and saw. And behold, every kind of creeping thing, and hateful beast, and all the idols of the house of Israel, were carved on the wall all around.

Ezk 8:11  And seventy men of the elders of the house of Israel, and Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan, standing among them, these were before them, and each man with his censor in his hand. And the odor of the cloud of incense was rising.

Ezk 8:12  And He said to me, Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel do in the dark, each man in his image room? For they are saying, Jehovah does not see us; Jehovah has forsaken the earth.

Ezk 8:13  He also said to me, You turn again, and you shall see greater evils that they are doing.

Ezk 8:14  And He brought me to the opening of the gate of Jehovah’s house, toward the north. And behold, women were sitting there, weeping for Tammuz.

Ezk 8:15  And He said to me, Have you seen, O son of man? Turn yet again, and you shall see greater evils than these.

Ezk 8:16  And He brought me into the inner court of Jehovah’s house, and behold, at the opening of the temple of Jehovah, between the porch and the altar, were about twenty-five men with their backs toward the temple of Jehovah and their faces toward the east; and they bowed themselves eastward to the sun.

Ezk 8:17  And He said to me, Have you seen, O son of man? Is it a light thing to the house of Judah that they do the hateful things which they do here? For they have filled the land with violence and have turned to provoke Me to anger. And lo, they put the branch to their nose.

Hislop’s thesis is profound: This mystery religion began with Ham’s perversion with his mother (Noah’s wife), deifying her as Semiramis and birthing Nimrod as a “divine child.” This incestuous origin spawned the “unholy trinity” (father-mother-son) that permeated global idolatry, from Babylon’s Baal-Ishtar-Tammuz to Egypt’s Osiris-Isis-Horus. The spread westward via trade routes carried these motifs, where the deified figures manifested as Celtic “horned gods” and crones, demanding sacrifices and veiling the truth of Yehovah’s creation.

 

The Babylonian emphasis on mourning the dying god in summer (Tammuz month, June-July) and honouring the dead in autumn aligns thematically with Samhain’s death-rebirth cycle. While primary Tammuz weeping was summer, Babylonian autumn rites for the underworld (as rains returned) involved ghost offerings, creating a harvest-death focus that influenced Celtic practices. This underscores how Halloween perpetuates the very idolatry Yehovah judged through the plagues on Egypt’s gods—deities like Osiris (dying/resurrecting, judged in flies/hail) and Isis (queen of heaven, judged in boils via healing cults)—as detailed in our 10 Days of Awe teachings.

Egyptian Connections: The Deified Perversion Spreads

Babylonian false god foundations are explained by understanding that Egyptian idolatry began at the same time, helping to explain these mysteries, with Semiramis as Isis (goddess of magic, fertility, and the throne) and Nimrod as Osiris (lord of the afterlife, dismembered and resurrected). Hislop notes Ham (as Cush or Hermes) as the conduit, spreading perversion westward. Isis’s role in resurrecting Osiris mirrors the Babylonian dying-god motif, judged in the plagues: flies (plague 4) on Khepri/Beelzebub (scarab of renewal), boils (plague 6) on Isis/Imhotep (healing deities), and hail (plague 7) on Nut (sky goddess).

 

Halloween’s thinned veil and spirit roaming echo Egyptian Duat (underworld) beliefs, where unappeased dead caused chaos—similar to Babylonian etemmu. Jack-o’-lanterns as damned souls parallel Egyptian ushabti figures for the dead. The “horned god” (like Osiris with bull horns) and crone (Isis as protector of the dead) tie directly, with costumes/disguises mimicking Egyptian mummification rites to fool spirits.

 

Our 10 Days of Awe book reveals these plagues as judgments on Egypt’s pantheon, repeating in 2024-2033 as end-time curses: boils as incurable plagues (Revelation 16:2), flies as invasive hordes (Revelation 9:1-12), and hail/fire as heavenly wrath (Revelation 8:7). Halloween’s veneration of death/spirits perpetuates this idolatry, inviting the same judgments on modern “gods” like environmentalism (Nut/Gaia) or pharmakeia (Isis’s magic/drugs).

Catholic Syncretism: Perpetuating the Deception Through Simon Magus

By the 8th century, the Roman Catholic Church, unable to erase Samhain, overlaid it with All Saints’ Day (November 1), formalized by Pope Gregory III to honour martyrs, shifting from an earlier May date. All Hallows’ Eve (Halloween) absorbed pagan rites: bonfires became vigils, costumes morphed into saint parades, and divination games were “sanctified.” Hislop argues this perpetuates Babylonian hero-worship, with “saints” replacing deified Nimrod or Tammuz, a syncretism Yehovah hates (Deuteronomy 12:30-31). 

Deu 12:30  take heed to yourself that you do not become snared by following them, after they are destroyed from before you, and that you do not ask about their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods, that I too may do likewise?

Deu 12:31  You shall not do so to Jehovah your God. For every abomination to Jehovah, which He hates, they have done to their gods; even their sons and their daughters they have burned in the fire to their gods.

Yehshua rejected human honor: 

Jhn 5:39  You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life. And they are the ones witnessing of Me,

Jhn 5:40  and you will not come to Me that you might have life.

Jhn 5:41  I do not receive honor from men.

Jhn 5:42  But I know you, that you do not have the love of God in you.

Jhn 5:43  I have come in My Father’s name, and you do not receive Me. If another shall come in his own name, him you will receive.

Jhn 5:44  How can you believe, you who receive honor from one another and do not seek the honor that comes from God only?

Instead of honouring Yehovah and keeping HIs commandments in Leviticus 23, the world has replaced them with pagan feasts and it is these that you seek to honour. You go all out to decorate your houses for the pagan festival seasons and dishonour Yehovah by doing this.

 

This blending traces to Simon Magus (Acts 8:9-24), the Samaritan sorcerer who amazed crowds with Babylonian magic (pharmakeia, sorcery). Seeking Yehshua’s power, he offered money for the Holy Spirit, rebuked by Peter for his wicked heart. Early Church Fathers like Justin Martyr and Irenaeus identify Simon as the founder of Gnosticism, mixing Babylonian mysteries (e.g., sun worship, underworld rites) with distorted teachings about Yehshua—portraying him as a “divine child” like Tammuz/Osiris. Simon travelled to Rome, influencing Emperor Claudius and establishing a cult that blended pagan gods with Christian elements, paving the way for Catholicism’s syncretism. Hislop links Simon to the “Simon Peter” myth, where Babylonian deification (Ham’s perversion) fused with apostolic faith, turning saints into idols and festivals like Samhain into “holy” days.

 

This Catholic overlay connects to Egyptian judgments: Simon’s magic echoed Isis’s sorcery (plague 6, boils on healing cults), and his underworld focus paralleled Osiris’s resurrection (judged in flies/hail). Halloween’s “saints” honoured through the customs worn at this time, perpetuates this, inviting end-time plagues on similar idolatry (2024-2033).

Biblical Condemnation: There is No Room for Compromise

Does Scripture command honouring saints or mingling Torah with pagan ways? Yehshua warned, “I receive not honor from men… How can ye believe, which receive honor one of another, and seek not the honor that cometh from God only?” (John 5:41, 44). Ezekiel 8 exposes Babylonian abominations in the Temple—women weeping for Tammuz, men bowing to the sun. Halloween mocks the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15), glorifying death instead of Yehovah’s feasts like Sukkot, where we rejoice in His provision.

 

In our Jubilee teachings, we’ve observed how such deceptions signal the great falling away (2 Thessalonians 2:3). As plagues and famines loom in 2027-2033, and the 2300 days conclude in 2026, Halloween symbolizes the enemy’s snare—religion blending Baal’s shadows with “fun.” Teach your children Torah’s light, not the world’s vain customs. As Proverbs 4:18 declares, “The path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.”

 

Halloween glorifies death, not Yehovah’s resurrection hope. Choose Sukkot’s joy in Yehovah’s provision, not the world’s darkness.