Paganistan: Notes from the Secret Commonwealth

In Which One Midwest Man-in-Black Confers, Converses & Otherwise Hob-Nobs with his Fellow Hob-Men (& -Women) Concerning the Sundry Ways of the Famed but Ill-Starred Tribe of Witches.

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Secular Samhain

Autumn cold brings the pagan dead

to seek the warmth of the Samhain fire.

Glenn Danzig, “Samhain”

 

Don't get me wrong; I love Halloween. It's probably one major reason why I'm pagan today.

But after nearly 50 years of Samhain, I have to admit: Halloween just seems to drift farther and farther away every year.

Halloween: the secular Samhain. Increasingly, it reads to me as a parody, a cartoon of Samhain. Much as I loved trick-or-treating as a kid—and taking the kids around, as an adult—already at age 11, I knew that something was missing: something that (I was certain) was out there waiting, in the woods, in the dark: something Deeper, something Realer.

Already I heard the rustling among the fallen leaves: the “Changer of Shapes, alone on hoofs” (Danzig again).

Sometimes I pity them, the Halloween people. I suppose that what they have is better than nothing.

Still.

Long live Halloween. Long may it cast its spicy spell.

But out there in the Dark, beyond the parties, the lights, the costumes, there's Something Real, Something Vital, waiting.

Waiting, my heart, for you.

 

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Tagged in: halloween Samhain
Poet, scholar and storyteller Steven Posch was raised in the hardwood forests of western Pennsylvania by white-tailed deer. (That's the story, anyway.) He emigrated to Paganistan in 1979 and by sheer dint of personality has become one of Lake Country's foremost men-in-black. He is current keeper of the Minnesota Ooser.

Comments

  • Tyger
    Tyger Saturday, 20 October 2018

    Lovely! And real.

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