Halloween — Samhain and the Deathless Warrior

The Deathless Warrior rises from a black tourmaline nugget. His Skull head was hand carved from Baltic Amber. His Skeletal frame and the ornamentation of his teak base were were hand carved, shaped and formed from 95 grams of 99% pure silver. It took over five hundred hours to create the Deathless Warrior Art d’Objet. In total it weighs approx. a third of a kilo and is about 7 inches tall and 4 inches wide.

Although the Deathless Warrior is significant in his own right, he is a rather apropos representative of Halloween. Halloween was originally known as Samhain. It was the day that marked the end of the autumn season and was a time to enjoy the bounty of the freshly reaped harvest.

The name Samhain appears to be derived from the ancient god, Samana (the Semitic Sammual), who shares some associations with the Egyptian Osiris, the first Pharaoh who as legend recalls was cut to pieces by his jealous brother Seth. Osiris then back the king of the underworld.

Samhain was unable to be repressed by the church so they tried to redirect and redefine it as all Saints Day, which is celebrated on November 1. Samhain is the twilight of the seasons when the door between worlds, between the living and the dead creaks open if only slightly.

The Samhain was in honor of the dead and joy and merriment of the night was a sort offering to those who had already passed away. It was time full of spirited play, divination and magic. As it is today! We still carry on the tradition and carve spirit faces out of hallowed pumpkins. The infamous Jack-o’-lantern hearkens back to the time of legend.

The Deathless Warrior is also between worlds. The chasm between the temporal and eternal, is the rich realm of pre-vibrate potential. The Deathless Warrior is known as Mrtyum-jaya and Yamataka. Mrtyum-jaya “The conqueror of death” is one of the thousand faces of Siva—in this form Siva is in pure communion with the transcendent peace of thoughtless bliss.

The Deathless Warrior is that legendary being who confronted illusion until all its precepts disappeared, revealing in its wake the liberated peace of pure pleasure. He is known as Mrtyum-jaya, ‘the conqueror of death’, one of the thousand forms of Siva. Mrtyum-jaya like the Tibetan Yamataka, transcends death by consciously embracing ‘that’ which is beyond its limits.

In the single minded state of Samadhi, the yogic pinnacle of absorption, the phenomenal world dissolves into the blissful expanse of unlimited joy. It was Siva/Rudra, the lord of yoga,  who in the Vedas, refused to create a world that was subject to death, and instead, to the consternation of Brahma, populated the universe with his immortal mind-born sons (the Rudras).