The holiday is felt by many to be derived from the Celtic festival of Samhain. On this night the door of the underworld opened a crack and spirits of the dead, as well as other beings, like faeries, traveled back to their old homes.
Costumes developed as a way to avoid being harmed by these spirits, who were not always well disposed to those they left behind.
We have been thinking about possession recently. The idea that spirits can take over our minds and bodies.
It is hard not to feel that extreme moods, and psychosis, aren’t a form of possession. A delightful older woman is in our office on Monday talking articulately about the family that she loves, and by Friday she is immersed in such a sense of darkness and sorrow that the only thing preventing her from killing herself is her low energy and the lack of easy access to something lethal.
The thing of it is, we think that the natural feeling that one wants to hide from these terrible influences is wrong.
We have to turn on the light (of knowledge, of love, of hope) and face our demons directly. That is the only way to find a path through the dark places of our soul.
When we were very young, we had what would be considered a psychotic experience if it happened to us as an adult.
We were terrified of the dark in our room, and, in particular, there was one corner of the room were there was always a pile of clothes and other odd shapes. In the dark we experienced these shapes as evil spirits.
We didn’t think maybe they were evil spirits, we knew that they were. And then when our mother turned on the light the shapes actually transformed themselves into ordinary objects. We were quite sure of that.
A while ago we ran across an interesting survey, 5 – 10 % of Americans reported seeing spirits, or UFO’s – and of these only half seemed to have any kind of psychiatric condition.
In Iceland, Landvættir (“land wights”) or spirits of the land are so important that freeways detour to avoid places where they congregate.
We do believe in spirits and ghosts, we just don’t know that they exist outside of our minds, but that doesn’t matter, they still have the potential for great power and influence.
We have sat with people whose fears were so real to them that it was impossible not to be infected by the fear, even though what they were afraid of was something that was objectively impossible.
In those times we have had to seek comfort in our connections with others, in reaffirming our belief in the strength of love and hope, and we have had to face those fears, fortified by that support, and when we did so they gradually disappeared.
Many months after the period in childhood of our greatest fear of the dark shadows, we stirred up our courage and walked over to the dark shapes. As we approached, in terror, the shapes gradually resumed the shape of a pile of clothes. And they never changed back.