Lexx name analysis
quote:
Originally posted by DalekTek790:
By the way, Walpurgis Night is not made up. It is a genuine part of ancient superstition, going all the way back to witch trial times.
Well, superstition as much as one could call any religious day of observation a superstition. Walpurgis Night (or Walpurgisnacht) is the Germanic witches’ sabbath held on May 1 (the name comes from the Catholic festival which is held on St. Walpurgis’ canonization date of May 1, 779…it’s part and parcel of the Christian church’s tradition of replacing pagan festivals with “holy days” and renaming them. See also Samhain’s transformation to All Hallow’s Eve or Hallowe’en and the Winter Solstice’s transformation to Christmas). Judging from the publication of the [i]Malleus Maleficarum[/i] in 1486, this puts the witch hunts at about 700 years after the establishment of Walpurgisnacht, which has an even longer tradition than the Catholic name’s history.
–Aleck