Autumn cold brings the pagan dead
to seek the warmth of the Samhain fire.
Glenn Danzig, “Samhain”
Don't get me wrong; I love Halloween. It's probably one major reason why I'm pagan today.
But after nearly 50 years of Samhain, I have to admit: Halloween just seems to drift farther and farther away every year.
Halloween: the secular Samhain. Increasingly, it reads to me as a parody, a cartoon of Samhain. Much as I loved trick-or-treating as a kid—and taking the kids around, as an adult—already at age 11, I knew that something was missing: something that (I was certain) was out there waiting, in the woods, in the dark: something Deeper, something Realer.
Already I heard the rustling among the fallen leaves: the “Changer of Shapes, alone on hoofs” (Danzig again).
Sometimes I pity them, the Halloween people. I suppose that what they have is better than nothing.
Still.
Long live Halloween. Long may it cast its spicy spell.
But out there in the Dark, beyond the parties, the lights, the costumes, there's Something Real, Something Vital, waiting.
Waiting, my heart, for you.