aumsworld

Inside Evil

Be good. That’s a song that’s been driven into our heads, like a nail under a sledgehammer, ever since our early childhood, until we can’t help but listen to it. Who’s never heard the common refrain? Be nice; don’t lie; share with your friends; clean up your room; eat your vegetables; don’t forget your prayers; and, for God’s sake, quit complaining like that! And, indeed, as those well-meaning moral instructions are distributed everyday by kindly people from our entourage (in most cases, by our mother), we can’t help but realize that we live in a world where evil (in spite of its being by far more popular than good: who’d choose green vegetables over a bowlful of chocolate ice cream?) is discouraged, hunted, driven underground, until we wonder how it can manage to survive all the attention it’s constantly given.

Thank goodness, however, it does have its own holiday. The thirty-first of October, in spite of its reputation of being a mere children’s celebration after the fashion of Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas morning, is in reality much more important than that: it’s a day of honest indulgence in all those things that are normally forbidden, and yet that we are so secretly fond of doing. Halloween is, not a mask-ups day, but a masks-down; it’s the only day of the year where we are allowed to forget our relatives’ well-intentioned teachings, where we can forget about our (often hypocrite) façade of niceness to indulge in evil. Sure, Halloween evil is diluted stuff; after all, what harm is there in dressing like a bloodthirsty ghoul, holding séances, leaving jack-in-the-boxes at the door of curmudgeon neighbours, and bloating ourselves with Mini-Oh Henrys!, Smarties, fizzy lollipops, Halloween toffees, and other “junk” foods? Nevertheless, it isn’t nice; and that’s exactly what makes Halloween the most entertaining holiday of all.

The simple fact that it’s candy that’s given to children is interesting. Candy is handed out at doors; not vegetables, not bread, not nuts, not fruits (although the occasional elderly lady will give an apple) but candy. And what most unhealthy, most artificial, most unwholesome, and yet most delightfully appealing treat is there than candy? The Halloween costumes (except perhaps for the Barbie ones) are also representative of a desire to stray away from popular values, to express our desire to be something else, or rather, to let our inner, darker self show itself under the light of the Halloween moon. Séances and parties held in cemeteries at the stroke of midnight are even more revealing, for they are open manifestations of our fascination for death and evil, a fascination that’s as old as the world itself, and yet that’s been inhibited by the oft-quoted Deuteronomy 18:10-12: Let no one be found among you […] who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist who consults the dead. For anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord… At Halloween, these words who are the sacred bread for millions of people around the world, and especially in Europe and America, no longer matter. The point is to let that part of us that still belongs among the ancient Celtic pagans, who, centuries ago, sacrificed food to the ghouls and spirits that were said to roam the world on Samhain (the ancient Halloween) evening, take over our modern Christian selves. The point is to let go of our mother’s teachings. The point is to be ourselves, as dark, mischievous, and evil as that can sometimes be.

Be good? No.
Trick or treat? Yessss indeeeed...
*evil laugter*

- Aum
(yeah, I know, I have to work on that evil laugh some more)


If Hell is a swearword, then Heaven should be, too.

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aumsworld  (GC) You don't like it, then don't read it. Simple as that. #524387 by Aum