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The Old Halloween Story

As the days get darker and Russian bombs continue falling, revisiting the holiday’s ancient wisdom

by
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
October 31, 2022
C.P. George/Getty Images
C.P. George/Getty Images
C.P. George/Getty Images
C.P. George/Getty Images

Halloween has arrived, a sugar-infused time for trick or treats, with costume-clad children going door to door at dusk. It is also a moment to remember the holiday’s deeper, darker roots, brought by Irish immigrants to America and possibly traced back to the cave of Oweynagat in Ireland, the so-called gate to hell. Here in the Celtic tradition the worlds came together, the Otherworld, home of Ireland’s immortals, as well as myriad beasts, demons, and monsters. And here the celebration of Samhain took place at the end of harvest season and the beginning of winter, when the walls between the worlds briefly dissolve and otherworldly beasts emerge. According to legend, the local people “disguised themselves as ghouls to avoid being dragged into the otherworld.”

At this time of seasonal darkening, our attention is also drawn to Ukraine, where recent Russian bombing of power grids promises a dark and freezing winter for many of its inhabitants. When I awoke on the morning of Feb. 24, as the first bombs fell on the country, I knew that our present way of life was over, even here, in our small community beside the ocean half a world away, where the only danger comes from colliding with a deer on the road. Something essential was being shattered, not just peace and prosperity, not just dreams of a better life, or even the simple ordinary things like taking the children to school and buying milk from the store. A way of life had been invaded, for no other reason than to destroy its freedom, for no purpose other than power, and the nostalgic dream of an old empire.

We may have sanitized much of our lives, turned a festival to ward off the darkness into a time for children to gather candy, but it can be helpful at times to remember the old stories—to recognize that what we are witnessing is not just bombs and missiles, images of torture chambers and stories of rape, but a darkness that has invaded, the gates to the underworld opened. This is what happens when darkness spreads, hostages are held in hospitals, doctors and patients at gunpoint, people lining up for bread become bodies in the street.

Our ancestors held a deeper wisdom than is present in much of our contemporary minds. When the darkness invaded Ukraine it brought blood and suffering, but also a more primitive power than our world of reason can easily digest, beyond what science and technology can fix. This is no internal war in another country, but instead it has created a global energy crisis as well as bringing hunger to millions in Africa as grain shipments were halted, grain stores stolen. And we do not know how it will end—how the darkness will spread, what further destruction and desolation it will bring, whether this war is heading towards uncontrolled escalation. When the gates of hell are opened reason cannot forecast the result.

Previous cultures that lived closer to the land and the cycles of nature had a greater understanding of the way the worlds come together. For example in some old Celtic rituals, after a wedding the couple walk to the celebration preceded by a young boy and girl with brooms, who sweep away the evil spirits so that the couple have a happy marriage. These ancient rituals speak to the unseen worlds that surround us, and influence us more than we know. Because reason and science have sanitized and censored so much of our consciousness it does not mean that the darkness has vanished, but rather we have lost our ability to more fully understand what is happening—what it means when a people are brutalized, and how this affects all of us, even here beside an ocean half a world away. Part of the fabric of our lives is being torn and we do not know how to repair its tear.

How does one respond to this darkening? There is the immediate response seen in those taking in refugees, the kindness of strangers, the generosity of communities. Love, care, and community are fundamental answers to collective darkness—a way to hold the light of humanity when confronted by forces that seek to destroy the basic human qualities of care for others. But it can also be important to recognize the larger story, what it means that our way of life is over, that something essential has been broken. Otherwise, rather than responding to the real need of the moment, we will remain caught in images of nostalgia, unable to recognize that how we have lived for the past decades is over. We have entered a different era, even if we do not fully understand what is happening. It is not just about inflation or culture wars, even if these are the stories that grip our attention.

Loss of humanity is tragically visible in the ongoing brutality in Ukraine, but also present in many of the forces of our contemporary soulless world. It can be seen not only in the continued exploitation of the natural world, but also in online and social media giants that consume so much of our attention. Their currency is often our personal data, which they ruthlessly mine and exploit. Their pollution is less visible than the fossil fuel corporations, but one can recognize that a certain humanity is absent—the dark side of technology, of algorithms and endless data.

As we walk into an unknown future, with the fractures in our contemporary culture becoming more and more visible, it can be helpful to remember that just as there are doors to the underworld, so are there other unseen worlds that support our humanity. We are a part of a multidimensional world, told in stories and myths. And even though we have censored these inner dimensions from our rational consciousness, believe only in what we can see and touch, this does not diminish their presence or their hidden influence.

For many years I have been deeply moved by the Jewish mystical tradition of the Lamed Vav Tzadikim, the 36 righteous men living in each generation, “whose role in life is to justify the purpose of humanity in the eyes of God.” They do not know their role and are unknown to each other and when one dies another replaces him. For the sake of these 36 hidden saints, God preserves the world even if the rest of humanity has degenerated to the level of total barbarism. They are similar to the Sufi tradition of the awliya, the friends of God, “who redeems His human servants from disasters for their sake.” Traditionally they number 40 (though others say are as many as 4,000), who look after humanity and the spiritual well-being of the world, without whose presence “the rains cannot come, the crops cannot grow.”

Stories influence us more than we realize, giving meaning and sustenance to our lives. The war in Ukraine was born from the story of a lost empire, while the climate crisis is founded on a story of exploitation and infinite greed, which became the more recent fairy tale of endless economic growth. What are the stories to sustain us through the coming years? How can we hold the light that we need to guide us through this winter? I would like to think that the tradition of the Lamed Vav Tzadikim, the 36 righteous men, gives a glimpse of a quality that resides within what is most ordinary and most human that can help us to find our way. That we do not need to descend into the underworld, or allow its darkness to fully invade our surface life. That Halloween can remain a time for the innocence of children, of friends and neighbors sharing candy and kindness.

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Ph.D., is a Sufi teacher and author. He has recently released a podcast, Stories for a Living Future. You can listen to it here and wherever podcasts are found.