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The Shocking Ancient Pagan Origins of Halloween Monsters

I’ve written an awful lot about how, contrary to popular belief, there is extremely little about the way people celebrate holidays in the United States in the twenty-first century that can actually be historically traced back to ancient “paganism.” (See for, instance, this article I wrote in April 2017 about how there’s very little about modern Easter that is legitimately “pagan,” this article I wrote in December 2019 about how there’s very little about modern Christmas that is legitimately “pagan,” this article I wrote about the history of Santa Claus, this article I wrote in February 2020 about how there’s nothing “pagan” about Groundhog Day whatsoever, and this article I wrote in April 2020 about how Easter has nothing to do with the ancient Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar.)

Until now, I have not published any articles about whether Halloween has any connections to “paganism.” This is partly because I think Halloween’s connections to ancient pre-Christian belief systems are much more substantial and complex than Christmas or Easter’s (which are extremely minimal). Although Halloween itself is nominally a holiday of Christian origin, there is an awful lot about how we celebrate Halloween today that is demonstrably influenced by genuine, ancient “pagan” ideas.

In particular, the most famous monsters that are most closely associated with Halloween today—including ghosts, werewolves, revenants, and reanimated mummies—have real and well-attested origins in ancient, pre-Christian belief systems. The association of these monsters with Halloween is a relatively recent development, but the monsters themselves have origins that go way back. In this article, I will explore the ancient origins of the monsters I have just named, using ancient historical sources as evidence.

“Comedy” and “Free Speech” Are Not Moral Justifications for Bigotry

If you’ve paid any attention to the world of stand-up comedy over the past decade, you’re probably already aware that there are a handful of straight, cisgender, male comedians who like to portray themselves as “edgy” who have made many transphobic jokes and statements and have attracted a great deal of controversy as a result. The most prominent of these comedians are Ricky Gervais, Dave Chappelle, and Michael Che.

This subject has come up in the news recently, because, on 5 October 2021, Netflix released a seventy-two minute stand-up comedy special starring Dave Chappelle titled The Closer. In the special, Chappelle devotes large chunks of his time to mocking LGBTQIA+ people and transgender women in particular. He repeats many age-old transphobic talking points and hackneyed jokes that people have made a million times before. Among other things, he says that TERFs (i.e., “Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists”) see trans women the same way Black people see white people wearing blackface before explicitly saying he agrees with them and calling himself “Team TERF,” he implies that trans women’s genitalia are in some sense “fake” by comparing them to plant-based meat, and he expresses disgust over having been “trapped” into calling a trans woman “beautiful.”

In this article, I don’t intend to go in depth about why the things Chappelle says in the special are inaccurate, bigoted, and harmful to trans people, since his lines are so unoriginal that they have all already been debunked a million times. (In fact, I literally debunked some of his exact claims myself in this article I wrote in November 2020 and this other article I wrote in March 2021.) Instead, I want to talk about Chappelle’s justification for what he said, which is the exact same justification that many other transphobic comedians like to use. Chappelle and his defenders have tried to justify his statements in the special by claiming that he says these things in the name of comedy and free speech. I want to address why “comedy” and “free speech” are not inherently benign and are not adequate moral justifications for saying things that are bigoted.

The Ancient Astronaut Hypothesis Is Racist and Harmful

The so-called “ancient astronaut hypothesis” is a popular genre of pseudohistory which centers around the claim that extraterrestrial beings visited earth in pre-modern times, leaving behind supposed evidence of their presence. The supposed “evidence” for this “hypothesis” is based entirely on flagrant misinterpretations and misrepresentations, tendentious reasoning, false assumptions, forged artifacts, and often outright lies. As a result, the “hypothesis” is universally rejected among professional academic scholars, historians, and archaeologists.

I have written about the ancient astronaut hypothesis before. For instance, I wrote an article back in January 2020 about how we actually know that the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids as tombs for their pharaohs, in which I debunked claims made on the show Ancient Aliens. I also posted an article a few days ago in which I debunk the popular ancient astronaut theorist claim that Alexander the Great saw flying saucers while on his campaigns. In this article, however, I am not going to try to debunk the ancient astronaut hypothesis. Instead, I want to explain the history of the ancient astronaut hypothesis, why it is not just a “harmless” conspiracy theory, and why it is actually harmful.

No, Archaeologists Have Not Found the Trojan Horse

On 10 August 2021, the website Greek Reporter published an article written by a contributor named Philip Chrysopoulos titled “Archaeologists Claim They’ve Discovered the Trojan Horse in Turkey.” The article claims that archaeologists have discovered the remains of a wooden structure inside the ancient city of Troy that they think is the actual Trojan horse. On the same day, The Jerusalem Post copied Greek Reporter’s story, publishing their own article titled “Did archaeologists find the Trojan horse?” that cites the Greek Reporter article as its only source.

The problem is that the whole story is a steaming pile of horse manure. The Greek Reporter article contains obvious signs that it is a deliberate hoax written in order to attract views in order to drive up ad revenues. By publishing this ridiculous, easily debunked story, Greek Reporter and The Jerusalem Post are both showing that, at the very best, they do not conduct even the most basic fact-checking or source verification and that they are not trustworthy news sites.

How Accurate Are “Photorealistic” Portraits of Roman Emperors?

In 2020, the digital artist Daniel Voshart used a neural net called Artbreeder to create a series of “photorealistic” portraits of fifty-four Roman emperors spanning from Augustus (ruled 27 BCE – 14 CE) to Carinus (who died in 285 CE). As the term “photorealistic” suggests, his portraits look almost like photographs. Unfortunately, a lot of people do not realize that these portraits are modern artistic impressions, not scientific recreations of what the Roman emperors really historically looked like.

I’ve seen many people over the past year cite Voshart’s portraits and others like them as though they were authoritative, scientific recreations of what the Roman emperors really looked like. In particular, I’ve noticed a worrying number of white supremacists trying to cite these kinds of portraits as “evidence” that the ancient Romans were all white. In this article I would like to discuss why Voshart’s portraits—and others like them—should be taken with several grains of salt.

Was Jesus a Communist?

People have been claiming that Jesus of Nazareth was actually a communist or socialist for a very long time. Notably, Francis Bellamy (lived 1855 – 1931), who is best known today as the author of the United States Pledge of Allegiance, was a Baptist minister and self-proclaimed “Christian Socialist” who attracted a great deal of negative attention during his lifetime for frequently claiming that Jesus was a socialist. In more recent years, various pro-communist memes about Jesus being a communist have gone viral on the internet.

I’ve seen so many different expressions of the idea that Jesus was a communist over the years that I’ve decided to write an in-depth article examining whether this is an accurate characterization of Jesus’s teachings. There are indeed some genuine similarities between the views that are attributed to Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels and communism. There are, however, a number of enormous differences between Jesus and contemporary revolutionary communists that make the claim that Jesus was a communist a profound mischaracterization of his teachings.

Alluring Anecdotes about the Olympic Games

The 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo are now officially underway, having been delayed by a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I have absolutely no interest in sports and, in all likelihood, I will not watch any part of the ongoing Olympics. Nonetheless, I do know a little bit about Olympic history, due to my intense study of ancient Greece and Rome and, on account of the occasion, I’ve decided to share a few of my favorite anecdotes about Olympic history.

The first is a legend about why ancient Olympic athletes were required to compete naked, the second is about a woman who disguised herself as a man in order to attend the Olympic Games, the third is about how women were sometimes able to compete in the ancient Olympic Games due to a loophole, and the fourth is about how the modern Olympic Games at one point included competitions for literature and the arts.

Yes, Loki Is Genderfluid in Norse Mythology!

On 9 June 2021, the streaming service Disney+ released the first episode of the series Loki, which is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The series stars the English actor Tom Hiddleston as the Marvel character Loki, who is very loosely based on the Norse god Loki. In the show, there is a shot of an official document which clearly lists Loki’s gender as “fluid.” This means that the Marvel character Loki is now officially genderfluid in the MCU. Some people are upset about this revelation, claiming that it is a shoddy attempt to shoehorn unneeded gender diversity into the MCU.

What these people don’t seem to realize is that Loki has always been what a modern person would describe as genderfluid—even in the original Norse myths. In Norse mythology, Loki can shapeshift and, although they are most commonly male, they sometimes adopt female forms. For instance, in one Old Norse poem, Loki is said to have lived on earth as a woman for eight years, during which time she milked a cow (which the Norse saw as a feminine chore), had sex with a man, and gave birth to children. The Prose Edda tells another story that Loki once turned into a mare, had sex with a stallion, and gave birth to a foal. Additionally, the Marvel character Loki has also been explicitly genderfluid in the comics for nearly a decade now, so Loki’s genderfluidity isn’t even a new thing for Marvel.

Peter Singer’s Extraordinarily Bad Take on Apuleius

On 30 May 2021, the online open classics journal Antigone published a piece written by the Australian moral philosopher Peter Singer about the ancient Roman novel The Golden Ass, which was originally written in Latin in the late second century CE by the North African writer Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis (lived c. 124 – c. 170 CE). Antigone promoted the article on their Twitter account. Their announcement begins with the words: “Today we are delighted to share an article by Peter Singer, renowned philosopher and animal rights advocate…”

Antigone’s publication and promotion of Singer’s article immediately sparked backlash over the fact that Singer has spent the past three and a half decades publicly advocating that infants who have observable physical disabilities at birth should be killed. He even co-authored and published an entire book in 1985 titled Should the Baby Live?: The Problem of Handicapped Infants, in which he advocated this.

Many classicists, myself included, feel that Antigone should not have published Singer’s article about Apuleius because, even though the article itself did not discuss infanticide, he is not the sort of person that they should be platforming. Even beyond this, though, Singer’s take on The Golden Ass is so extraordinarily bad that, even if he didn’t have a long history of advocating infanticide, no classics journal should have published it.

Is Yoga Really Ancient?

Yoga has become quite an international cultural phenomenon in the past few decades. It is now estimated that somewhere around three hundred million people practice yoga worldwide, which is nearly the same number of people who live in the entire United States. Yoga is consistently advertised—both by the yoga industry and by the current government of India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi—as an extremely ancient Indian spiritual and physical practice that dates back thousands of years in more-or-less its present form.

This narrative, however, is not entirely accurate. It is true that there was an ancient Āstika philosophical school called yoga and that modern yoga has been influenced by traditions that ultimately grew out of this school. Nonetheless, nothing closely resembling modern āsana-centered yoga-as-exercise ever actually existed in the Indian subcontinent in ancient times. Haṭhayoga, the immediate precursor to modern postural yoga, only first started to emerge around a thousand years ago during the medieval period and did not start to develop into modern yoga until the nineteenth century, under the heavy influence of European “physical culture” exercise regimes.