I overheard a man from England saying how disturbing he finds the American Halloween. Apparently, in the old world the day has more sinister connotations, so to see groups of demons & Barbies roaming the streets at night is to him a truly frightening thing.
Thread #1: Most religions have a time of year when the visible and invisible worlds are closer; in Catholicism the time is now. Halloween is not a Catholic special day, but “All Saints” day is. On All Saints day we here in the Valley of Tears are closer to the worlds in which live the human saints, and also the beings of other orders, such as angles & arch-angles. It has always surprised me that Archangel Michael is referred to as a saint. I will have to look into that.
Many of us speak with our dead loved ones, and when we do we often know that they live in some other world. Yes, their body is dead, but “dead” is a term that is stuck in the linear time of the senses. There are so many rooms in the mansions of this universe that are not visible to the senses, and are not stuck in the little slice of time we call the present moment. The loved ones we choose to speak with are of course usually the ones that have touched us most deeply, the ones that we have previously asked for help, the ones that we know care about us becoming the best versions of ourselves.
Thread #2: The Feast of Fools highlights an impulse in the human soul that cannot be suppressed. Victor Hugo has a moving description of this in his Hunchback of Notre Dame. The usual rules must at times and places be abandoned. The poor must become as if rich, the hand-laborer must for a day impersonate the priest. There is a day in Ireland when the women are allowed to ask the man in marriage.
This is not only an impulse in the human soul, these reversals are required. The rules we live by are absolutely necessary, and it is also necessary that they sometimes be not only loosened but even abandoned, maybe reversed.
Thread #3: Let’s play dress up. If you have never done it, you probably have seen it - the particular glee of a young child dressing up. The human soul comes from a very high place, and becomes incarnated (put-into-flesh). The young child still has a foot in the other world, and finds this new world of sense quite fascinating. I can almost hear the young soul’s thoughts “wait a minute! I can put on clothes and become something different?!”
As adults we usually have become so narrowed, so limited, that putting on a silk suit jacket, or wearing a decorative hat seems outrageous. Yet, there is still a trace of that young child in us, yearning to play dress-up.
Thread#1 + Thread#2 + Thread#3: Seems to me that American Halloween is the Other World meets the Feast of Fools added to Let’s Play Dress up.
Good distinction between past and present. Feast of Fools is a delight without the sinister denoting a time of seasonal transformation as well in a psychic harmony.