Saving Schrödinger's Cat

Searching for the Spirit of Halloween

October is upon us, and with it the annual tradition of Halloween, All Saints’ Eve, Dia de los Muertos, or whatever the regional tradition is. It takes place on the halfway point between the solstice and the equinox, by rough ancient reckoning (which is often pretty accurate). This day is called Samhain in Gaelic and was celebrated as harvest day by the Celts before Christianity co-opted this tradition for its own purposes.

Another name for this day is the lesser-known (at least in North America) Nos Calan Gaeaf in Welsh, denoting the last day of the harvest which included the culling of herds and distribution of meat to the population. In fact “Nos Calan Gaeaf” literally translates as “Winter’s Eve” and marks the beginning of the “darker half” of the year, when temperatures drop, food becomes scarce, and the barrier between the world of the living and the world of the spirits weakens. To me, this source hews the closest to the aesthetic of Halloween as practiced in North America, with people donning strange and often macabre costumes and heading out into the night to “trick” the neighbors.

The Welsh believed that a terrifying spirit walked the earth during this time called Hwch Ddu Gwta (do NOT ask me how to pronounce this), which took the form of a tail-less black sow with a headless woman. In some sources, the people in a village would gather around a bonfire to celebrate Nos Calan Gaeaf, and when the fire burned down they would flee to their homes, lest Hwch Ddu Gwta catch the last one and devour their soul. In other sources, a man would dress up as the tail-less sow and come out at night to chase the children home, instilling in them the fear of staying out too late.

There are variations in the Autumnal traditions throughout western history, but this particular holiday fascinates me on different levels. In countries like Japan, India, or in Native American pre-Columbian traditions, the concepts of humanity’s links to the spiritual world are recognized and celebrated throughout the year. But spiritual links often manifested through the celebration of events like the solstice, equinox, and other reliable, unshakeable events that marked different parts of the year. I think these celebrations were early humanity’s attempts to feel closer to the inscrutable world they lived upon. You can see this yearning in the ancient pre-Christian folklore throughout Europe as well. What the spirits did was often as mysterious as whatever was powering the forces of nature. The spirits had their own agenda, and humans would do what they could to coexist with them. Then, along came Christianity, and with it the attempt to explain everything in terms of a single spirit which put humanity at the pinnacle of all creation. In this context, whatever the spiritual world had to offer became irrelevant except for how it related to humans. This new religion drove the ancient spirits into the shadows, where they gained an often undeserved reputation as evil or monstrous. Undoubtedly this was due to their strange nature, and people’s innate fear of the unknown. In the West, the celebration of the spirits was similarly driven into a single day of the year and its meaning watered down and all but forgotten.

However, the spirits live on, if only in the aesthetic of an annual candy hunt. But hints of this mysterious pagan spiritualism peek through. In the East, cultures such as that of Japan still honor the spirits, or kami, with offerings made throughout the year to millenia-old shrines that still dot the modern cities that have grown up around them. Japanese animism even inspired the hugely-popular Pokemon franchise, with kami being represented by cute and colorful animal-like spirits. While the Japanese do celebrate Halloween (in fact it's a huge event there) I think that they still maintain their connection to their animistic past. I have seen the schoolchildren stop by the shrines on their way home to tie ribbons to the statues of kami they are honoring.

With a preference for the fantasy genre I have an affinity for these mysteries, not necessarily in solving them, but in watching them weave the tapestries of culture around themselves. The most intriguing thing about them is the mystery of these beings. Many of the things that the spirits do make no sense to us. But not all mysteries need to be solved, and not every mystical element in the story needs to be explained. Doing so can backfire (hello, midichlorians!) and rob a fantasy world of some of its beauty. Reading about these ancient stories in pagan folklore, eastern folklore, or even the Brothers Grimm reveals entities with motivations beyond human understanding, and that is okay! I’m perfectly content to let the spirits exist as the bridge between nature and our own imaginations.