74 Comments
Oct 26, 2022·edited Oct 26, 2022Liked by Dr Tess Lawrie, MBBCh, PhD​

Once more Dr Tess comes up with insightful uncommon sense. Opening the door and engaging with the youngsters with a smile and a lot of love will do more for their self-image (and be more of long-term value) than any sugary potion. Find something fun to give them and be kind. Most of the time they're just regular kids. Give them love. Ask their names. Show an interest - and let them go away with a warmed heart.

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Oct 26, 2022Liked by Dr Tess Lawrie, MBBCh, PhD​

I enjoyed reading this. We have had the beautiful opportunity to attend a Samhain gathering for a few years now. This year my family is hosting a gathering with our homeschool community. All the parents make treats, we’ll sing, have a fire, share foods of ancestors and rejoice. It’s such a beautiful tradition that I feel grateful for my child to be a part of.

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Oct 26, 2022Liked by Dr Tess Lawrie, MBBCh, PhD​

Halloween is not recognized or celebrated in Thailand where I am, but there is a related festival around the 12th lunar full moon which usually falls in November but in 2020 did indeed fall on October 31st. It is called Loy Krathong and is all about the magic and mystery of the season with the lanterns floating high in the sky, alms for the dead and krathong boats with wishes for the year. This had me reminiscing to the many fall bonfires we had over the years growing up. With the excess mortality so elevated for so long I don't have great tolerance for real horror movie Halloween shows...

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Great topic. I'm in Mexico, and Dias de muertos still stays with what you have described. In altars photographs of the deceased are placed along with their favourite food. In the past, the bones of the dead would be taken out of the crypt to be remembered. That isn't done so much anymore, if at all. At least not in 'proper' society. The catholics stopped the practice.

Processed sugar as toxin. Thank you writing that.

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“Imagine it: music and dancing under the stars with the people we love, the spirits of our ancestors dancing with us”.

A wonderful turn of phrase & vision, Tess. Thank you.

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Our highly commercialized world distorts everything towards buying and selling. Consumption, spending and work.

Valentines day. Christmas. Easter.

They have a myriad of older and deeper meanings than what we typically see today. They have been painted over by the big corporations.

Guy Fawkes is coming up soon too. Remember remember...

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Oct 26, 2022Liked by Dr Tess Lawrie, MBBCh, PhD​

What a lovely post, Tess. I’ve always been attracted to Samhain and celebrating this way, like the ancients. I think I will now actively seek to do it, instead of just thinking about it. The candies these days are wretched. I don’t remember them tasting like they do now. The quality is completely lacking. Thank you for the reminders!

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Oct 26, 2022Liked by Dr Tess Lawrie, MBBCh, PhD​

Over Here, Hallowe'en seems to have merged with Bonfire Night. Popular traditions evolve, until the original idea seems to be a very faint vestige. Look at some of the popular miscoceptions about recent pharmacological interventions, for instance....

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Oct 26, 2022·edited Oct 26, 2022Liked by Dr Tess Lawrie, MBBCh, PhD​

Describing Samhain as "remembering the dead, being together, sharing food and making space for the unseen but not forgotten," is beautiful and accurate to what I experienced as a child. Did you practice Samhain when you were younger, Dr. Lawrie?

The connection with community is something that I reflected on this year, as well. I long for those happy days running about with friends and returning home to spend time with my family. We would put out a plate at dinner, and offerings at night. If readers would like to see what Samhain felt like to a Canadian as a child, please be welcome to have a read. A part two will be up in the next week or two.

https://oicherua.substack.com/p/samhain-rituals-part-1

(I hope that sharing this here is acceptable etiquette)

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NOPE it's all devil worship. As for me and my house........

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Up to the last paragraph I would have shared the article - I feel a need to give a heads-up in case you really don't realize - children are the treat for folks who still celebrate ancient ways of Halloween. Insider whistleblowers and other witness survivors have shared, there is a large group, roughly 1% of the population who tortures and sacrifices children on Halloween, and other dates on the calendar that I don't know. Well meaning article, poor taste to suggest celebrating Samhain on Halloween when so many people know that some children are going to be harmed.

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Oct 26, 2022Liked by Dr Tess Lawrie, MBBCh, PhD​

It’s what the candy makers use to make the colours brighter eg. Skittles Instead of sweets we could offer any children that call fruit ,apple or orange packet of dried fruits and nuts .

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Dear Doctor Tess you are close - but there are deeper meanings From the bible it is clear that talking and interacting with the dead (who know nothing) is to interact with satanic demons. The papacy is happy to do so as it has a quite different agenda to that of Christ. Moving on to sugar - watching the societal impact of the rise of inflammatory disease during Queen Vic's reign and the closely associated tobacco and alcohol - i noted the close association with the two paths. The embryological implications took a little unravelling - but I claim to have been guided. It is tobacco -alcohol - sugar that expels the cranial Neural Crest cells leading to suboptimal midface growth of the upper airway - from there to chronic intermittent hypoxia and thus to (Greg Semenza 2013 Nobel prize for HIF1a) the inflammatory process. It is this that subtends today's pathology - from endothelial failure (leaky gut; vascular disease; BBB/Alzheimer's as indicated by Macey/Kherandish-Gozal in a pilot of 13 snoring 5-10 year olds vs 138 non-snoring. It was the snoring that made the regional cortical thinning and increases of tissue density ~ classic AD signs. Covid is a critter with a dark history linking back to the Carnegie formation of the Federal State Medical Boards and the dissolution of nearly 2000 homeopathic and naturopathic medical schools replaced by pharma-based plants. Please do not waver in what you are doing. I am focussed on spreading the above and supporting it in research and clinical application. The past week young mothers all declared in their own way that their chronic global pain esp. vulvodynia- PCOS Endometriosis low back and neck/shoulder girdle along with brain fog has been more intense than child birth. These radical changes influence babies at 6 months (snore/mouth-breathe and breath-hold go on until age four - on a dose-dependant manner creating a large group of 7-8 year olds who have missed so many milestones they are special-needs children. I suspect that those who don't fall into a smaller -suboptimal naso-maxilla don't generate high levels of inflammatory chemicals (Goldbart 2012 exhaled breath condensate in non-obese snoring 3 year olds) and are much less exposed to the perils of Covid. As a volunteer researcher into Covid for a Government I am continually horrified at the widespread duplicity that is simply accepted, lauded and applauded. God bless you and those around you for insight and love. Dr David Zimmerman BDS DAACP Cert Musc Sk. Pain Mgmt. Auckland New Zealand.

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This year I'll be dressed as the Reaper in honor of all of those who have been vaccine murdered. Good post.

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I agree that Halloween used to be more about neighbors and friendship than store bought candy. I grew up in a small town where most made cookies, popcorn balls, divinity, fudge, and countless other homemade delights. Some passed out pencils, erasers, pens, crayons, and other consumable school supplies. A few neighbors passed out candy purchased at the store and the occasional neighbor passed out nickels or pennies. Kids only knocked on doors on the street they lived and a street adjacent on each side. Parents went out with the kids having pieced together homemade costumes and enjoying quick conversations with neighbors about how creative the foil covered box was that made one of us look like a robot was or explaining who or what we were pretending to be. The entire trick or treating lasted for a couple of hours starting just before dark and ending just after dark. We didn’t go to the door of strangers. It was a time to visit friends, share small homemade treats and school supplies. The evening generally ended with coffee for the adults and hot chocolate for the kiddos and samplings from our treats bags. Parents laughed and chatted while we sprawled our bounty on the carpet and negotiated exchanges for favorite homemade treats or school supplies.

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Oct 26, 2022·edited Oct 26, 2022

Lovely piece. Somehow the things you write, no matter how different the topics, all fit together so beautifully. That only comes to pass when words emanate from a true and pure soul. Tess, you ARE a light. It is a joy to find you in my mailbox.

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