(Author of The Fifth Sacred Thing...) Came upon this,
this morning, from her Pagan/Earthbased realm of
experience & elemental tarot archetypes...beautiful... ;)
It's Halloween—and every scary movie ever made is playing
on Netflix. Ghouls and goblins and ghosts of all kinds
decorate the streets, and even the major media publish
semi-serious reports on how to defend yourself in the
Zombie Apocalypse.
Halloween is always a contradictory holiday for real
Witches—those of us committed to the ancient earth-based
spirituality and healing practices from pre-Christian,
pre-Judaic Europe and the Middle East. For us, Halloween,
the Celtic Samhain, (pronounced sow-rhymes-with-cow-in)
marks the ending of the old year and the beginning of the
new.
The veil is thin between the worlds, the dead are close
by—but that’s not scary. Our Beloved Dead, family,
friends and loved ones, are still part of our community,
and this is a time to remember them and celebrate their
lives. Death is merely a station on the circle of
rebirth.
But this Halloween, there are real ghouls and goblins all
around us, and there is so much to genuinely make us
afraid. Here’s a quick guide to some of the grimmest of
them:
👻 The Ghoul of Dehumanization: The very worst things we
humans do to one another are inflicted on others when we
define them as non-human, subhuman, animals. This Ghoul
manifests as racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia,
anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim prejudice, hatred of all
kinds. Just in the last few weeks, we’ve seen Hamas
commit atrocities against Israelis and Israeli leaders
respond by unleashing a firestorm of indiscriminate
bombing against the people of Gaza as a whole, calling
them ‘human animals’, killing thousands of children.
This Ghoul warps our thinking and sucks away our
compassion, and it’s running rampant right now.
👹 The Goblin of Revenge: This is the sidekick of the
Ghoul of Dehumanization. I suppose it is a natural, human
urge to want to strike back at someone who has hurt you,
but when the Ghoul and the Goblin ride together, we lose
all sense of proportion and end up slaughtering the
innocent. Violence begets more violence, pain begets
pain. The abused become abusers in turn, and only the
carrion eaters benefit.
🧟♂️ The Zombie of Indifference: While the Ghouls and
Goblins rampage, the Zombie strikes us mute and paralyzes
us. We stand and watch, dumbstruck or distracted, while
the carnage goes on.
🧛🏼♂️ The Vampire of Despair: Partner of the Zombie, the
Vampire sucks away our hope, our energy, and our will to
action. Paralyzed, we lose even the will to struggle.
What’s the use? It won’t do any good. The work of change
seems overwhelming, and even if we were to undertake it,
it won’t change anything.
Scary creatures, indeed—and they are all around us!
To counter them, I can only offer the four traditional
Witches’ magical tools:
🗡 The Sword of Discernment: Instead of condemning whole
groups of people to subhuman status, we cut through the
miasma and recognize that we are all human beings, all of
us capable of doing terrible things, all of us with the
capacity for great works of kindness and beauty. People
may do evil things, but none of us are ‘pure evil’—and
the most evil acts often arise from the deepest,
unresolved pain. So we look to underlying causes for evil
acts, and, instead of responding with atrocities of our
own, we ask, “How do we change the conditions that spawn
such horrors?”
🪄 The Wand of Energy: The wand is the tool of fire,
passion, energy! To wield the wand, we must acknowledge
and embrace our rage, but not let rage be our ruler. We
must feel and express our anger, but not let it guide our
decisions and actions. Anger is a life-force emotion,
that energizes us when we are under attack, but anger is
not strategic nor compassionate. Embracing it without
valorizing it, we can resist zombification, and use that
energy to not to just inflict blows but to create
regenerative change.
🍵 The Cup of Compassion: The cup is the tool of water,
of emotion. When we drink from the cup, we feel our grief
—the deep grief of our losses, the pain of death, the
longing for those we miss, the dismay and disgust at what
we humans are capable of. And when we do, we open the
door to compassion, the ability to imagine another’s
pain, to see the world from another point of view, to
feel the humanity in one another.
🌟 The Pentacle of Manifestation: The pentacle, the five-
pointed star, represents the four elements coming
together under the guidance of spirit, bringing life and
growth back into the world. The five-petaled flower is
the apple blossom, symbol of rebirth, and the rose, the
flower of love. Holding this tool, we do something,
anything, in the physical, material world to call for
greater understanding and love. Call the President,
march in the streets, feed a hungry child, clean up your
room, do whatever most immediately lies before you, small
or large. That’s how we vanquish the Zombies and the
Vampires, one small step at a time.
Wielding our magical tools, representations of the four
elements, we evoke the fifth: spirit, that intangible
quality that unites them all. There are some losses too
deep for comfort, some hurts too great to bear. Yet we
live in a world that is filled with compassion greater
than indifference, beauty more intense that the worst
horror.
We can never stamp out violence with more violence. Yet
we can overcome hate with love. Happy Samhain 🌀
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