OCCULT VIEW

My Halloween Costumes

Halloween is a great holiday, and not just for children but for adults too.  It is now considered one of the top party days of the year.  Halloween has many traditions from trick-or-treat to carving pumpkins.  These traditions have pagan origins, which became popularized…and watered down.  My favorite tradition is dressing up in costume and heading out to a nightclub for a costume contest.  Nightclubs with big cash prizes tend to attract some really outstanding costumes.

Nosferatu Halloween Costume

Above are some costumes I’ve worn in Halloween’s past…a Freddy, a Red Devil and a Monster Hunter.  As the Red Devil I covered by face in red face paint, glued on some horns and pointy “Spock” ears and discovered it was a difficult and time consuming to clean off the face paint afterwards.  That was no fun.  I’ll stick with the simple facemasks, so I can quickly escape from the costume when the party is over.

To the left are some pictures I took over the years of others’ costumes that impressed me.  Some are really amazing.  People can put a lot of effort into their outfit. 

What is the point of the Halloween costume?  We could say it is just good fun, and so it is.  But as with nearly all Halloween traditions, there is symbolic and even spiritual significance behind the practices.  Is there a deeper occult meaning behind Halloween costumes and “dressing up”?

Having attended numerous costume parties, I’ve developed my own impression.  Watching partiers dressed up feels like we’ve entered a different world, a world outside of normality, something festive but bizarre.  Before us we have all manner of representations of the unknown.  Have we entered into an unconscious, unintended replica of the invisible spirit world?  Gathered together the costumed participants unknowingly mirror the spirit world, whose inhabitants (like faeries, demons and such) assume all manner of forms and shapes.

Thirteen Ghosts Jackal Costume

Wearing a costume has a psychological effect on the wearer and the observer.  Like an actor in a play, we become the character in a way.  And what characters are we becoming?  Very often creatures of imagination and spirit.  We use popular culture versions of these Beings of Spirit, but popular culture’s monsters have their origins in the folklore and the beliefs of the past.  Dracula, Jason, Freddy and such modern ghouls are a reflection of old beliefs…in ghosts, entities, the afterlife, and religion.

Examples of the role of masks are those worn by shaman or medicine men, which were used for religious and ceremonial purposes. These often-grotesque masks literally symbolized the spirits of the spirit world.  And the imagery often came from the shaman’s actual spiritual journey into this spirit world.  The mask physically represented the spirits, real or imagined.

Freddy Krueger Halloween Costumes

When we dress up in our costumes on Halloween, imagine we attract invisible “visitors” to accompany us on our quest into the night.  Trick-or-treat or costume party, the whole point seems to be replicating the spirit world visiting the physical world for one night.  On Halloween legend suggests the barriers between the physical and the invisible world are thinnest.  The role of the costume is either to scare away these spirits…or to have them join in with us.  One night a year we pretend to be spirits ourselves.  What fun!