The Veil
What if the difference between Halloween night and the next morning was just a matter of perception?
Photo by Altınay Dinç
I’m walking my dog, Max, down the main street in my city. The night is perfectly Halloweeny. No one else is out. Lush fog crawls down the street. A skeleton sits in a tiger-print chair, a snake hangs out of a skull’s eye socket, an oversized spider-web reaches across a front porch. A large pumpkin on a stoop spooks Max, which spooks me.
There’s something in the air.
A crispness.
A crackling.
An opening.
A group of five people in costume emerge from the fog and walk toward us. Something about the night makes their movements seem erratic, otherworldly.
Are they from this world or the other?
Max and I cross the street.
A laugh echoes, and the air feels electric.
On Halloween, we flirt with the in-between, the not-knowing.
We allow ourselves to play with the edge of what is “real,” what is comfortable.
We invite in the possibility that the unseen world might be right here.
We say that “the veil” between worlds has become “thin.”
We mean that the “fabric” separating the physical, seen world and the ethereal, unseen world gets thinner. That those on the other side come nearer. That for a brief period of time, magic is possible. Speaking to the dead is possible. Believing in a world beyond what our eyes see might be possible.
But only because a thing outside of us has made it so.
This thing we call “a veil,” keeping the worlds apart.
Ensuring we are safely tucked into “our world.”
And on the morning after Halloween, everything other, everything unfamiliar, everything uncomfortable, and even that which we find electric and erotic, gets tucked back into a costume box, a candy jar, a blurred string of memories, some photos on our smart phone.
Come morning, our attention turns back to what is seeable.
What we call “real.”
And “the veil” thickens.
But what if there was no veil, as such?
What fears would surface?
What desires?
What if the difference between Halloween night and the next morning was just a matter of perception?
What if the thickness or thinness was something you carry with you, inside of you?
And it determined what you did or did not allow yourself to see.
As well as your beliefs about the unseen world, your intuitive capacities, and whether you felt safe exploring them.
What if you made a decision to get to know the veil, your veil?
And the fears, lusts, hopes, beliefs, and longings that make up its thickness or thinness, its opacity or murkiness, its fluidity or viscosity?
Halloween gives us the opportunity to notice what we wish was possible, so long as we knew we were truly safe.
What if we actually are safe to explore the relationship between this world and the other world?
We can begin by noticing what we allow ourselves to play with, the edges we allow ourselves to dance along, on Halloween.
This Halloween, I invite you to pay attention to:
What seems possible? (Does this change when you’re in costume, shedding your ordinary limiting thoughts about yourself?)
What do you allow yourself to surrender to?
Who do you wish you could to speak to from the other side if you could?
What do you fear?
Why do you fear it?
What desires surface?
What do you take pleasure in?
And, where do you believe it all goes when Halloween is over?
It can be a frightening prospect, that Halloween could be everyday.
And also a liberating one.
But deep down you knew this, didn’t you?
That the veil is you, my loves.
Photo by Stephanie K. Hopkins
