The Night-Thinned Veil, Part 2
Who does Halloween belong to?
In Part 1, I started to sketch out an analysis of a particular symbolic interface—Halloween—as a means of relating to Death as a hyperobject.
To recap:
Humans need a way of relating to Death at a human scale, for a variety of cultural purposes, beyond just playing with aesthetic forms.
The goal is to develop a sense of participatory consciousness: a way of breaking down the subject-object divide between people and the forces within their environment—acting as if they have some relationality with these forces—which is neither complete control nor total helplessness.
This requires two things: first, an effective symbol set that humanizes certain aspects of Death, and second, an ongoing (ritual) process of regulating symbolic resonance. Properly balanced symbolic interfaces should be somatically resonant1 as well as intellectually and aesthetically satisfying. Hyperobjects must feel physically and emotionally immanent—real and present—without being so overwhelming that they push the operator away. Maintaining this somatic resonance requires artful handling of the symbols used in the interface, invoking the reality of the hyperobject “behind” the symbolic interface. (This, according to my own definition, is the process of enchantment.)
Enchantment degrades over time and must be periodically renewed. Otherwise, it erodes into disenchantment: the gnawing alienation of being stranded on the wrong side of the subject-object divide, constantly grasping for control over the (misperceived) objects in our environment, and suffering from our inability to escape the forces we can’t control. (Sound familiar?)
Effective enchantment is made difficult or impossible by metaphysical conservatism. This is the materialist impulse to treat symbolic interfaces as simple containers for human-created meaning, rather than living conduits for the hyperobjects to which they correspond2. Metaphysical conservatism imagines that all legitimate symbolic interfaces originated from some distant Mythic Age, which can’t be replicated in the Modern Age. The Hotline to Heaven rang once, a long time ago, and might never ring again; we’re left as eternal curators for the symbols that were handed down from the mountaintop. The discovery of new interfaces is viewed with suspicion; attempts to renegotiate the old interfaces are strongly discourage, if not outright persecuted3.
Once metaphysical conservatism has set in, symbolic interfaces become cultural artifacts, valued according to their historical pedigree. From a materialist perspective, older artifacts contain more quantitative meaning than newer objects; groups that can demonstrate a longer history of interaction with symbol sets are understood to “own” them, as if they were invented ex nihlio, through the anthropocentric process of “creativity,” rather than entrusted or gifted4.
Cultural appropriation is bad when outsiders treat symbolic interfaces as signifiers of identity, rather than the metaphysical relationships they represent. For example, the “pretendians” that
exposes are reprehensible because they’re cheating the rules of metaphysical conservatism. They claim that their fraudulent use of cultural symbols—language, tribal lineage, mythic narratives, etc.—makes them authentic members of a group, while completely ignoring the metaphysical relationships and obligations that originally shaped the culture.On the flipside, insiders are in danger when they follow the rules of metaphysical conservatism. Succumbing to the pressures of modernity—accepting disenchantment as inevitable, treating symbolic interfaces as nothing but aesthetic signifiers—is the road to ruin. If materialism goes unchecked, symbols become nothing but badges for group identity: just a particular style of fancy hat, just a cultural tradition that regulates membership for its own sake. When this happens, disenchantment becomes terminal. (Again—sound familiar?)
Competing claims of authenticity and ownership prevent re-enchantment. According to the materialist perspective, insiders are the only ones allowed to recharge “their” symbolic interfaces. Authenticity is derived from accumulated historical meaning, rather than effective metaphysical praxis. This drives cultural conflict on multiple axes: between insiders and outsiders, and among competing factions of insiders.
Anybody who sincerely wants to make use of a symbolic interface must wade into the culture wars. Metaphysical conservatism requires operators to choose a side, onboard a particular cultural narrative, and go through the conversion process. Because symbolic interfaces are understood to originate from some distant Mythic Age, which can’t be replicated in the Modern Age, there are very few “open-source” symbolic interfaces available for civilians. using these interfaces for their intended purpose—reinvigorating participatory consciousness with a particular hyperobject—means choosing a side, going through a process of cultural credentialing (“conversion”), or risking accusations of theft.
These competing claims elide the fact that all metaphysical praxis is syncretic, because there are forces behind all symbolic interfaces that defy cultural contingency.
There is one crucial point in all of this. While it seemed self-evident when I first started thinking about it—probably because I’ve been steeping in occultism and applied metaphysics for a few years now—I think it requires special emphasis:
Engagement with Death and care for the Dead should function independently of any religious belief or observance.
It’s not optional.
This is why talking about spirituality in terms of “belief” seems so inadequate: not only does it diminish the experiences of exomodern (phasmatopian) cultures—it also presumes that people within modernity can choose to ignore these hyperobjects, and get along just fine without any experience of participatory consciousness.
Belief is a choice.
According to Western epistemology, you choose what to believe by rationally sorting through the available evidence and coming to a conclusion. If that evidence does not, in your estimation, support the persistent influence of the Dead as a real force in the present world, then you’re free to ignore any obligations they might put on you and skip merrily on your way.
Modernity’s particular brand of metaphysical dualism presents “spirituality” as a hobby—a niche pursuit on the same level as fly-fishing or collecting stamps. If you decide to get into it in your spare time, go ahead. Just don’t bother anybody else with it.
This is the ontological equivalent of coming up with your own parachute design: it works until it doesn’t.
Regardless of how you think the Dead continue to influence the world of the living—whether that’s metaphorically, psychologically, or literally—they are still with us. And we’ll all be joining them someday. There is no opting out. Death continues to lurk around the edges of the world we’ve built, even in our supposedly secular, rational, materialist culture.
So it’s strange that we’ve relegated our Death-centered rituals of participatory consciousness to the sideline of religion, and then made religion unimportant, and then wonder why so many people have such pathological fear of death and dying—why our whole culture is motivated by the relentless extension of life at all costs.
While this would probably merit a whole post in itself, it’s worth taking a brief detour to poke at the idea of what “religion” is even supposed to be.
People who are conversant in occultism are familiar with the fuzzy distinction around “religion” and “magic.”
In practical terms, it’s a distinction without a difference. It’s all the same stuff: whether it’s prayer or worship or conjuration or invocation, trying to win God’s favor by going to church or standing in a circle and calling up Paimon, you’re trying to exert some influence on the subtle forces that undergird reality. To borrow once again from J.N.B. Hewitt’s formulation—it’s all about aligning your orenda with the orenda of the greater powers outside yourself, to attract what you want and repel what you don’t.
Islam is understood to be a “religion,” and yet personal interactions with djinn are recognized as commonplace, and talismans are used for many different purposes. Judaism has Kabbalah. Catholics pester saints for all sorts of favors, and the structure of the traditional Mass is almost identical to the process of spirit invocation in ceremonial magic. Buddhism, the fashionable spiritual pastime of Western rationalists, is shot through with ghosts and demons and protective mantras. Hinduism is a head-scratcher for Anglo-American academics: many of them will openly admit that “Hinduism” doesn’t even represent a single tradition, let alone anything that fits neatly into the category of “religion.” But they’re satisfied to treat it as a puzzling anomaly, rather than an inherent problem with their preferred terminology.
And so the distinction persists.
Religious conservatives will tell you that religion is real and magic is fake, but this is just begging the question: who decides what’s real? Earl Fontainelle over at the Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast says that “religion” is whatever is officially sanctioned within a particular culture, and “magic” is used to discredit whatever is illicit, off-book, or taboo. Stephen Skinner, the expert ceremonial magician, has drawn the distinction between religion as a public performance and magic as a private practice. And so on, and so on.
(Incidentally—this is why I prefer to use “applied metaphysics” as an umbrella term, to avoid getting bogged down with arbitrary distinctions.)
My own suspicion is that the supposedly universal concept of “religion” conceals a uniquely Christian understanding of ontological dualism, which distorts our view of the global field of applied metaphysics. Rather than providing a solid ground for comparison, the formulation of “religion” flattens the whole world into a very specific ontological frame: we only look for the forms of participatory consciousness prescribed by Christianity, and ignore the loss of other metaphysical systems.
In the English-speaking world, the academic disciplines that adopted these terms all grew up taking a Christian cosmology for granted. God was up there; humans are down here. The relationship was explicitly defined as being between the Ruler and the Ruled. The faithful could only relate to the Divine through the indirect medium of worship and prayer—leaving God a voicemail and hoping He’ll call back—and through sanctioned intermediaries. Commoners don’t approach the Throne directly. They certainly don’t try to force the hand of the Divine.
We can plainly see this inherent bias in “Orenda and a Definition of Religion.” As I described in my old post on that essay—in one sense, it’s an indirect account of one man’s religious and colonial trauma. But Hewitt’s traumatized perspective took a very specific form because of the warped views of his adopted (Christian) culture. He set out to describe the applied metaphysics of the Haudenosaunee culture—an inarguably animist and non-dual cosmology—and could only see a bunch of frightened savages cowering at the feet of imperious “environing bodies.” Because that’s the relationship he expected to find. As a Christian, that’s what he thought religion was supposed to be.
That same bias informs the whole trajectory of Western ethnography specifically and Western culture generally. A small group of people grew up with a cosmology defined by separation: the Ruler up there, the Ruled down here, with the medium of worship and devotion (and the threat of eternal damnation) in between. When they encountered other cultures with different cosmologies—animist, non-dualist realities—and even the history of their own spiritual traditions5—they found the same dynamic everywhere they looked.
Everything that could be forced through the narrow aperture of metaphysical dualism became “religion.” The frustrating, stubbornly non-dual practices of participatory consciousness became “magic” or “mysticism” or “superstition”: primitive, unsophisticated, presumptuous, or outright Satanic attempts to meddle with what the monotheists understood to be God’s sovereignty.
So when it comes to Halloween—an upwelling of the persistent human awareness of non-duality, the recognition that the Dead are neither gone forever, nor taken as hostages into some sort of cosmic holding pen—all those universal expressions of participatory consciousness are boxed up and parceled out into competing “religious” observances.
And so Halloween becomes an absolute clusterfuck of metaphysical turf wars and backbiting claims about authenticity, which ultimately serves no one—least of all the Dead.
Right off the bat, in spite of that metaphysical mess, we can see something potent happening with Halloween.
Here in the United States—global heavyweight champions of no-you-sure-fucking-can’t when it comes to applied metaphysics, adopted homeland of ass-clenched fundamentalists who had to find a different continent because they thought the Church of England was having too much fun—we find ourselves with a megawatt celebration of death in all its forms, at least on the surface: haunting, gruesome, gory, desiccated, reanimated, vengeful, shambling.
In spite (or because?) of being one of the most death-averse cultures on the planet, we’ve built entire industries around whistling past the graveyard. Slasher movies, ghost movies, monster movies, zombie movies. Zombie walks. Haunted houses with resources that rival some nation’s militaries. The fear industry is big business in America, and it finds its focal point in the celebration of Halloween.
But is it functioning well as a symbolic interface?
With which hyperobjects does Halloween generate a sense of participatory consciousness?
While it’s difficult to parse the complexities of a major cultural event like Halloween, without making too many unhelpful generalizations, I would suggest this as a possibility: maybe Halloween has stopped being a symbolic interface with Death, and transformed into a celebration of violence.
That’s a whooole separate analysis, looking at the relationship between America and the hyperobject of War, with Halloween as a psychospiritual eruption of those repressed emotions/ psychic traumas/ literal and figurative demons. The zombie phenomenon alone could occupy an entire post series. Maybe I’ll tackle that as a more seasonally-appropriate offering on the other side of summer.
American culture reflects a fascinating, nightmarish paradox: our culture is addicted to the power of outwardly-projected violence, but terrified of our own deaths6. More than almost every other human society in history, we would benefit from some carefully-constructed public rituals around Death—if only in the interest of self-preservation, to say nothing of exorcising our murderous demons.
And yet we’re the least capable of maintaining the necessary rituals and symbolic interfaces.
There’s room for improvement, then. But who can do this work? Who can re-enchant Halloween? Who’s capable of making a normative claim about our spiritual wellbeing, as it’s reflected in this most visible and popular symbolic interface?
According to the rules of metaphysical conservatism, we must first ask: to whom does Halloween belong?
This article from 2022 is a fun snapshot of the fight over authenticity, typical of metaphysical conservatism and the deadening effects of disenchantment. It was written as a Catholic response to the Protestant accusation that Halloween is a pagan celebration of black magic and devil-worship. By my count, we’ve got no less than four different factions represented in the article, each with their own version of the “true origins” of Halloween:
The Secularists, who don’t give a witch’s tit for any claims to antiquity, and just want Halloween to be a modern carnival: a celebration of pop-culture cosplay, candy, booze, slasher movies, and the annual Olympic contest to find the dumbest thing to turn into a sexy costume. The Secularists’ historical imagination tends to be measured in decades instead of centuries; for them, the Halloween tradition began at the very dawn of time (the 1930s) when the holiday was rescued from boring churchgoers.
The Neopagans, who claim that Halloween is a contemporary survival of Samhain and should be respected as part of an ancient tradition, reaching back into the mists of prehistory. While they’re naturally aligned with the Secularists against Christian prejudice, they’re more likely to disdain the wholesale modernization of what they consider a sacred observance. One would expect the Neopagans to be leading the charge in re-enchanting Halloween; unfortunately, many of them have fallen victim to the modernist conceit that this is about beliefs, defending Neopaganism as a contemporary religion and preserving a particular set of cultural signifiers (rather than stewardship of a universally accessible symbolic interface).
The Catholics, who contend that Halloween is actually just the evening vigil before the feast of All Saints’ Day, and doesn’t partake of any pagan rituals or symbolism whatsoever. The article linked above goes as far as denying that Samhain was ever a culturally significant event in the first place: “only” 500 years old, says historian Ronald Hutton, which makes the commemoration of Christian martyrs the true font of antiquity. Checkmate, pagans.
The Protestants, who are only too happy to take the Neopagans at their word, because it allows them to condemn all three groups simultaneously. The Neopagans and the Secularists are obviously pawns of the Devil, but the real heresy lies with the old, familiar enemy: the cursed Papists and their “saints,” up to their usual tricks as fifth columnists for idolatry, keeping paganism alive under the guise of religion. They’re one of the most powerful forces in American culture—and they’re completely illiterate when it comes to the power of enchantment7
None of this is nefarious; each faction is playing politics by its own values, trying to preserve the interests of its constituents according to modernity’s rules of engagement.
But it’s not a fair fight. In the absence of any metaphysical intervention, the Secularists win by default. Disenchantment is just as patient and relentless as the entropy of thermodynamics. Living symbols become traditional signifiers; these become the relics of stuffy old conservatism, which cultural progressives delight in replacing. It’s a biological fact, if nothing else: tradition for its own sake will always be vulnerable to the somatic longings of newer generations.
If we accept the basic premise described up above—that engagement with Death and care for the Dead are essential functions of a healthy human society, and should transcend any particular set of cultural or religious observances—then there’s urgent work to be done. The Secularists are on the march. If Halloween devolves any further into National Cosplay Day, we’ve lost the last remnant of engagement with the Dead as anything more than horror movie props.
Metaphysical conservatism prevents us from addressing this as a communal problem. Each faction described above sees competing narratives as a threat to their integrity. If their version of the historical narrative is challenged, then it shakes the legitimacy of their cultural project. It’s another form of identity politics. So we get these Oxford debates between the Catholics and the Protestants and the Pagans about timelines and archaeological evidence—a bunch of academics whipping out their records of continuous practice to see whose is the longest.
This is where we get conflicts around ownership, cultural appropriation, and valid access. Conversion becomes very important for regulating participation. Civilians feel like they don’t have the right to touch anything with real metaphysical heft. Once again, the Secularists win by default: people who don’t want to go through the hassle of conversion, gatekeeping, and historically literacy will will end up in the camp that offers the most fun for the least responsibility.
These petty squabbles can go on for centuries, as the article above shows. Meanwhile, materialism rolls on unopposed; the Dead go hungry, and the Living grow more and more terrified of them, which produces all kinds of psychotic cultural outbursts.
The only way out is to advocate for what Halloween does, rather than what it is. Membership is not required for that kind of cross-cultural critique. If we have a culturally agnostic vocabulary for describing these practices, then any old asshole (me, in this case) can point out that it’s not working anymore.
Whether anyone listens is another question. But at least we can advance the conversation on practical terms, instead of endlessly arm-wrestling over authenticity.
There’s a lot more to say, and this is already running long. Part 3 will cover my prescriptions for re-enchanting Halloween, based on this culturally agnostic analysis. In the meantime, check out this video by the inimitable Gordon White.
references a quote from Orland Bishop, which is right in line with this essay: “the answer will not be traditional, because the world is no longer traditional.” Gordon recently brought over to Substack; if you like the kind of stuff I write about here, definitely subscribe (since most of my work is just poaching in Gordon’s preserve anyway).This is a crucial factor that I only recently started to appreciate (thanks to Josh Schrei of The Emerald Podcast): somatic resonance is the experience of feeling the influence of a hyperobject/entity within the body, physically and emotionally—something that I rarely seek out deliberately, and occasionally bump into by accident.
Given enough time and inattention, metaphysical conservatism is psychologically overdetermined. Hyperobjects are terrifying and uncontrollable; it’s easier to bolt the door shut, instead of leaving it to swing on its hinges, letting in the unmediated reality of the hyperobjects on the other side. Effective symbolic interfaces also represent a democratizing power that temporal authorities find politically troublesome. (See also: the entire history of institutional religion and colonialism.) Treating symbolic interfaces as self-contained objects gives people on all sides of sociopolitical conflicts a means of controlling mundane cultural space. Power corrupts, etc.
For example: consider the Vatican’s official stance on Santa Muerte. According to Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, devotion to Santa Muerte is “anti-religious” and blasphemous. “Religion celebrates life, but here you have death,” says Ravasi (which is a completely incoherent definition, coming from a representative of the world’s most expansive death cult). Folk saints happen when people’s needs aren’t being served by mainstream religion. Santa Muerte answers the call, as one would expect in the spiritually populous cosmos described by Christianity. But the Church’s only response is denial: Santa Muerte didn’t apply for permission through the official channels, doesn’t fit the narrative of metaphysical conservatism, and therefore can’t be tolerated.
If you invent a telephone, you own the rights to all applications of that invention as a form of intellectual property. If you “invent” a god—well, did you? Really? If you invent a trance ritual, or discover a method for making one of the most powerful hallucinogens in the world—who really did the inventing? Are you sure it was just you? How would you know if it wasn’t? This is the Gordian knot that monophasic consciousness tries to slice in half: if all your thoughts are sealed inside the locked room of your skull—and the only way to add or remove anything from the container is through the well-regulated doorway of “normal” consciousness—you don’t have to worry about any pesky gods or spirits or Minds sneaking anything in there without your consent. From there, you’re free to take full credit for all your “inventions.”
Putting a pin here to return to the shamanistic, spirt-possessed, almost-certainly-entheogenic history of Judaism and Christianity, which is now treated by mainstream religionists with the same quiet embarrassment as a gay alcoholic uncle in a conservative Midwestern family.
After centuries of committing colonial violence—literally bulldozing sacred sites from one end of the continent to the other—how do you think a curse works?
Few people in human history have misunderstood the art of enchantment more profoundly than Brad Winsted of the Christian Broadcasting Network. Can you imagine—can you imagine—being the kind of institutionalized headcase who thinks that Reformation Day is a worthwhile substitute for Halloween? You’re going up against trick-or-treating, ghost stories, and “Thriller” with… a living history lesson? Check out this baying madness:
You can transform the fellowship hall into Wittenburg, Germany or Geneva. Here is an opportunity to go over the great "solas" of the Reformation: by Scripture alone, by grace alone, by Christ alone, by faith alone, and to God be the glory alone. Have people explain them. Show a video of one of the reformers. Draw murals of Reformation events. Here are some other things our church has done over the years: Medieval line dancing (a lot like Scottish line dancing), Medieval relay races (put the indulgences in the bottle), bobbing for apples, German cover dish dinner, acting out your character (don't tell anyone who you are, but act it out—the ideas are limited only by time and background).
And why do we need to mount such a vigilant defense against the Satanic incursions of Halloween? Brad paints a chilling picture:
It would be something like walking home late at night, past a graveyard on a windy, partially cloudy night, with a quarter moon peering through the overhanging, leafless trees. Hurrying past the cemetery you hear the ghoulish sounds of frivolity and celebration in the air as a group of merrymakers are vaguely seen reveling in the darkness, thoroughly enjoying themselves amidst the gravestones and bidding you to join them. You try to ignore it and rush home with a sense that something is VERY wrong. [My emph.]
Jesus Christ, Brad. Sounds absolutely terrifying. I’m sorely tempted to email him and see if he survived the stampede of kids fleeing from his church after last year’s Reformation Day festivities. How many cringe-related injuries has your congregation suffered, Brad?
(This is deeply triggering for me, as a former member of a Protestant youth group. Our own Pastor Cool tried to convince us that secular culture’s diabolism could never compare with the rock-n-roll rebelliousness of Our Lord and Savior, the Big J.C. After a few years months weeks hours of being subjected to that kind of quiet desperation, Satan’s wiles start to sound pretty appealing. I mean… just look at me now.)