Gilligan's Halloween

[Luminakisharblaze]

October 31 is the night the veil is thinnest.  Many people hear that and they don’t know what it really means.  The veil refers to the veil between the seen and the unseen.  This is the beginning of the Wheel of the Year and a night to honor ancestry.  In Italy it was always customary to set a place at the dinner table for those ancestors who have passed, for on this night they can be seen and felt by those who can walk between worlds.  It was also customary to make fava bean soup because the fava flower was a traditional funeral flower.   But aside from the known customs and traditions, this night has been celebrated as far back as Homo erectus as was told by cave drawings and recorded in ancient Italy though those libraries were both burned between 395 and 425 A.D.

This year I was handed a situation that made me rethink this whole day.  Since we live on my husband’s disability and it has been an exceptionally difficult month, we have no money for candy and the usual decorations.  Now it is tradition in our family to bury each human member during this month.  Not in the literal sense of course, but we make fake graves to represent each one that lives in our house.  So that is the extent of the decorations we have this year.  At first I was really depressed, wondering what I could do for this year, then I realized that I was not given this situation to mope and cry over, but to remember.  What was it like for the first ones who figured out this night?  How did they honor this night?  What was the true beginning of this night as far as celebration goes?

I figure the early man would have had fire, first and foremost.  That I can do.  That is simple.  So in our little trailer park, we decided to have a bonfire tomorrow night out in the center where I have built a small fire pit.  We will keep it going as long as we are out there, just like early man.   Then I wondered how they would have known?  I suppose they would have been more in touch with the side that sees through the veil since way back then mankind was more an instinctual creature than not.  Stop and really see for a moment a bit into the very ancient past, before the advent of lights or even basic housing structures.  They would have lived much like the feral cats around here, in a pack full of instinct as hunters.  There would have been nothing to obstruct the view of all of the lights in the heavens because all on this planet was still raw and unused.

Maybe call this my Gilligan’s Island Halloween.  You know no phone, no lights, no motorcar, not a single luxury.  Like Robinson Caruso, it’s primitive as can be.  Of course we do have all those things, so perhaps it is more a lack of the traditional candy and trick or treater supplies.  Fortunately we never get trick or treaters where I live so it will make it that much easier.  I do have some night fairy wings from several Halloweens ago and a 3 ½ foot tail from the first Anime convention I took the kids to, so I guess that will be my costume.  But it begs the question why?  Or perhaps, where?  Where did the first humans get the idea to dress up?  If I were to take an educated guess, I would postulate that being very primitive and living in packs like wild pack animals and being in tune with instinct more than any other faculty would have made them much like wild lions or tigers.  I know my cats see through the veil easily and this month has been enlightening to say the least.  We have a kitten running around the house this year and he makes you ultra-aware of how thin the veil is getting.  I suppose the first ones to celebrate this day had the same enthusiasm as my kitten is showing as I watch him grow in curiosity at the odd nature that fills the air.

 

I have also noticed a time issue this particular year.  I don’t know if anyone else has had this, but around here everyone I know has noticed that this October seems to be dragging along unusually slow.  It is as if time has slowed or been tweaked somehow.  What is even stranger is that at the beginning of this month, first the clock on the stove went out, the next day the clock on the stove was on and the microwave clock was out and the day after that the clock on the stove was back out and the microwave was working and it has stayed that way ever since.  Is this kind of thing how the first humans figured out this day?  Was it a year like this one for them and things this month just seemed off in some way that they finally discerned much like I am while writing this?  I mean, this is the first time I have really figured out the significance of the two clocks.  That is exactly how time seems to have worked with this whole month, like it started to go forward and then stopped and went backwards so time could slow again.

So perhaps the first time they dressed up, the veil was thinning slow and deliberate like it is this year and just maybe they started seeing through the veil a day early and in some quest to blend in to this world that was opening before them, they saw a sudden need to dress the same as the beings they were noticing encroaching upon their world.  After all, camouflage was a known for hunting and hiding from predators.  Something unknown would surely have been counted as a potential predator, at least enough until you could blend in and discern whether it was to be hunted or hidden from.  And so we have a possible, at the very least plausible, scenario in which the first ones to dress up would have had for doing so.

So we have the reason potentially for them to have begun the tradition of costumes on this night.  The tribute to ancestry is easy to figure out.  They saw the dead through the veil and perhaps even talked to them, seeing as how a primitive mind would be more likely to accept such a thing.  As for the giving of offerings, well that was a natural part of early man’s understanding of Divinity, both sides.  So once they figured out, dressed in like coverings, that these beings were from an origin they would have considered Divine, they would have thought to give offerings if for no other reason than to appease the restless shadow side of Divinity.  Early man at least understood that the year ran in cycles and that there was two sides of Divinity, two polarities of beings that held more ability to manipulate the seen and the unseen.  And the fact that they understood there were cycles would have been how they knew to do this every year following, not because they counted days or it was on some calendar, but because they saw this cycle repeat itself, all on instinct and from watching the world and its natural cycles and being aware of repetition. 

 

So there you have it, a retelling of a Halloween never before written down.  So maybe you will walk with me this year and recall the meaning of this day instead of just blowing it off to candy and scary movies.  After all, it is all about ancestry and if it weren’t for those ancient ancestors being aware of the changes, what would this be but another meaningless Monday night?

[Myriel RAouine]