Halloween’s folk logic—that the spirit world draws especially near once a year—mirrors parallel festivals (Día de Muertos, Hungry Ghost Festival) and likely rests on shared, evolved intuitions. Modern, consumerist Halloween obscures this older cognitive substrate that also surfaces in biblical and Christian miracle stories. Reading the holiday through cognitive anthropology recovers its deeper, cross‑cultural meaning.
— This reframes contemporary debates about tradition and religion by grounding popular rituals in universal human psychology rather than purely local history.
Razib Khan
2025.10.10
100% relevant
The article pairs Samhain, Día de Muertos, and Hungry Ghost Festival with Manvir Singh’s claim of a universal shamanic mind shaping rituals and scripture.
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