Clouds are gathering. The wind smells rain. If I turn my head to the right, I can see the empty roads. It’s getting dark. People are going home. It’s All Hallows Eve.
It’s sad how most of our traditions were hijacked by corporations and other profit-seeking entities. It’s even sadder when we let them.
I find myself yearning to celebrate these special days during the year.
I don’t know what it is. Some sort of internal clock that ticks according to the passing of seasons — and these celebrations help me to articulate the intangible feelings.
You know, back then, everything mattered. They say the veil thins during times of uncertainty and danger. When it gets colder, when we light bonfires, when the night becomes longer. Back then, we were closer to death, closer to life.
Halloween was an opportunity to create strong bonds within the community. Banish the negative energy, honor the dead.
This stuff mattered. It did. It still does, we’re just so desensitized to the, well, everything that it doesn’t make sense, time-wise, attention-wise, to focus on silly costumes and trick or treating.
Yet, we’ve found other, more efficient and sophisticated ways to satisfy the rhythmic demands of our psyche.
Things that go bump in the night…
This year, I’m gonna keep it simple. Take a walk in nature. Bring some dirt in the house. Light up a cigarette, look at old photos, burn sage, meditate. And then, I’ll go out with friends and drink a bunch. I’ll try to anyway. Funny, drinking and staying up all night is one of the best ways to celebrate Halloween. Like we needed an excuse.
No, I won’t dress up. We usually do this in February here in Greece, harvest season is longer. But in any case, I’m gonna spend the day indulging in the “vibes” of the season.
(Read this tweet)
One last thing I’ll do is watch a scary movie. Ah, the quintessential horror slasher or eerie haunted house. I don’t watch that kind of stuff regularly but I will tomorrow (today, if you’re reading this).
Some guy once said that scary movies invite demonic possession. See, he got part of it right.
Movies, guising, trick or treating, dancing around bonfires are dramatization rituals that simulate the supernatural, allowing you to experience the terrors and the unseen in a safe environment.
We banish the evil by pretending to be monsters and vampires and other folkloric “nonsense”.
These “childish” traditions are either apotropaic or sympathetic magic. In any case, they serve their purpose even today. They can create a structured narrative that will lead, through the dramatization and theatricalism, the “initiate” to experience an alchemical transformation of the psyche. Something that’s lacking in today’s stale, “take DMT”, flavor of spirituality.
The devil might not visit you if you watch The Exorcist or wear vampire fangs, but you’ll get to have a simulated experience of that. And that’s healthy. We don’t deal with the unseen enough these days, we like to rationalize and hide when things get “bumpy”, noisy, and spooky.
Trust me. It’s good for you. It exalts your spirit.
To look away when faced with fictional horrors, whether it’s movies or books or scary costumes, invalidates this whole thing anyway…
Peek Under the Veil
“Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg and howlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Cool it with a baboon’s blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.”
In 2020, there was a big spike in interest regarding the occult. Specifically, TikTok fostered the rise of… WitchTok?
A sort of digital coven-like community of, mostly female, witches producing hippy content about “esoteric” subjects — with the necessary Zoomer inclusive flavor of course.
I mention that mainly because I kinda hate it. But also because it’s a great example of how we still crave to engage with the otherworld.
We literally tried to burn ALL the witches only a few hundred years, and it was illegal to claim to be able do this voodoo woo-woo up until very recently. Like the 1950s I believe?
Yet, they keep coming back. Because there’s something deeper, a connection we severed the moment we started moving away from traditions like Halloween.
In the coming years, I speculate that we’re going to see an even bigger return to older traditions.
Spooky Scary Skeletons
I digress. The point of this short piece isn’t to push you towards heretical ideas. Not at all.
I simply wanted to invite you to reject the kind of dogmatism that baptizes these traditions as superstitions and silly customs. Especially when it’s coming from major religions.
(The religions that borrowed their tech from country folk…)
And reject the homogenizing effect of modernity that applies a corporate structure to every human expression.
So, light the bonfires. Bond with your community. Peek under the veil. Remember your ancestors. Prepare for winter.
That is the purpose of Samhain.
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