As Halloween has grown in cultural signficance beyond just a children’s holiday but an aesthetic and lifestyle it’s also become religiously sacred in the growing cultural visibility of witches, to practioners of wicca and paganism and Celticists who celebrate the sacred sabbat of Samhain.
These alternative spiritual systems represent more than just a form of counterculture. They are an awakening for people who’ve felt osctracized by mainstream religions. This is an especially relevant issue for the LGBT community who may feel unwelcome inside churches, synagogues or mosques but nonetheless seek spiritual fulfillment elsewhere. Halloween has filled the void. Some even call it the Gay Christmas.
In an article by NBC, a self identified witch records Helen A Bergers, a foremost authority and academic on paganism and wicca as saying, “It’s clearly increasing.” She was speaking of the rise in self-identified witches, pagans, celticists, etc.
Ever since the movie “The Craft” came out in 1996 (imagine mean girls but cat fighting with magic) the visibility in pop culture of what was once known as the occult has exploded over the last quarter century. It’s no longer a question of if Wicca and Paganism will become mainstream but a matter of when.
Indeed, the 2020’s may be the beginning of a new phase of visibility in America for witchcraft. In an article for the Atlantic titled, “Why Witchcraft is on the Rise,” Bianca Bosker writes that interest in witchcraft increases “usually in tandem with the rise of feminism and the plummeting of trust in establishment ideas.”
Be it mainstream religion, the sociological structures governing moral values (like on same sex relationships) or the depiction of various alternative lifestyles in pop culture, this period of disenchantment has led to a growing need for a new kind of religious system that appeals outside the conventional. Bosker writes, “The latest witch renaissance coincides with a growing fascination with astrology, crystals and tarot, which, like magic, practioners consider ways to tap into unseen unconventional sources of power.” This is especially appealing to marginalized groups or disenfranchised individuals weary of working from within the system to enact change.
Witchcraft is in the 21st century becoming the unconventional answer to LGBT rights, feminism, disenchantment, economic inequality and more. It’s a rebranding of a formerly taboo religious system being refashioned for the digital age. Halloween has been a part of that, becoming not just a holiday for fun but a season and lifestyle for the practitioners of the craft and the occult. Even musical tunes for the holiday has become a season staple with songs like Thriller and Monster Mash.
It begs the question- will we one day have a Halloween song as famous during the holiday as All I want for Christmas is You is during Christmas. Only time will tell.
As the popularity of the holiday has only grown, now with increased visibility on social media platforms like Instagram and Tik Tok, the holiday has also morphed into something else entirely- an actual lifestyle and religion, one dedicated to themes such as the macarbe and the demimonde of the underworld- the people and things who hide in the shadows that are rarely seen but deeply felt, most famously described beyond Halloween as Dark Academia.
folklore halloween history samhain
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