The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (930 page)

Halloween
or All Hallows Eve
.

A Christian festival on 31st Oct., the evening before All Saints, 1 Nov. It absorbed and adopted the
Celtic
new year festival, the eve and day of Samhain; as such, it was a time of reversals associated with liminality (see
RITES OF PASSAGES
), and much of this character has persisted in the now secularized customs associated with Halloween, especially in the USA.

 
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Halo
.

Circular symbol of holiness or enlightenment, surrounding the head of the person thus distinguished. In Buddhist iconography, halos surround
arhats
,
buddhas
, and
bodhisattvas
, often infilled with designs borrowed from
ma
alas
. They are found in Christian art from the 3rd cent. for Christ alone; then from the 5th cent. for Mary, saints, and angels also. In the Middle Ages Christ's nimbus was distinguished, usually with a cross. In the case of Christ and the Virgin Mary (and the Persons of the Trinity), the halo is extended to a gilt background, indicating glory, called the aureole. In early Byzantine art, it is of an oval shape and is known as
mandorla
(Ital., ‘almond-shaped’).

 
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Ha-Maggid
(Jewish
asidic leader)
:

see
DOV BAER
.

 
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Hamallism
.

A W. African Islamic brotherhood. It began from the attempt in Mali of a mystic within the
S
f
and
Tij
niyya
tradition, al-Akhdar (1909), to restore original Tij
ni practices. In 1925 his saintly disciple, a half-Fulani, Hamahu’ullah ben Muhammad ben Seydina Omar (1886–1943), now known as Hamallah, formed a separate Tij
ni brotherhood, whose aggressive reforming and missionary activities led to violent clashes with the Tij
niyya order and the French colonial regime. As a modernizing African Islam, Hamallism appealed to young élites as an ally against Arab and French influence, and was identified with the struggle for political independence, but has since gone into decline.