You may have had the Halloween experience last night, the 31st of the late lamented month of October. It was All-Hallow’s Eve, which must mean that it is All Hallow’s Day today, largely uncelebrated in today’s secular West.

Back when the Government was joined by The Church as the dual oppressors of liberty, it was also known as All Saints’ Day, or maybe the Feast of All Saints, celebrated on the First of November, and the day before All Soul’s Day, which this year will be the Michigan-Michigan State Football game, the closest we get to a religious experience in the Mitten State.

I have partisans on both sides of that particular religious issue, so I am going to give it a rest. We once would have honored all the Saints, known and unknown, but we have dropped that and instead honor the un-saints the night before.

I was ready at the farm, just in case tiny terrorists came down the farm lane and ambushed the Refuge, but nothing untoward occurred. I am also going to honor Halloween a day late, since that was Tracy O’Grady’s decision at the Willow. She figured a lot of her regular customers would be occupied protecting their dwellings or taking the kids out to terrorize the neighbors, and accordingly her annual party is tonight.

I was gong through the boxes in the garage to see if there was something I could adapt as a costume- something mild and inoffensive, you know how sensitive everyone is these days- and came across the faux suede vest I wore three years ago as a German woodcutter, complete with knee socks and Lederhosen and a green Tyrolean hat with a feather. I am glad I did- I won third place and the $25 dollar gift certificate was still in the inner pocket.

As I recall, there was some writhing going on during the celebration, but nothing too extreme.

These days, the found cash is going to come in very handy. Looking out the window, the sky is hanging low and rain is drizzling on the porch and my motivation to go back up north to attend is flagging. This is the first Willow-less week I have spent in a while, since Old Jim and Chanteuse Mary are out in Vegas.

Anyway, no-one came to the door and this morning I put the unopened bag of contingency Snickers back in the freezer (they have been there since late 2008) and started to plow through the overnight mail.

One of my alert correspondents pointed me to a great article about where some of the Halloween imagery came down to us, and thanks to Harry Potter, has morphed into something pervasive in our culture.

It is about drug abuse, of course, though it takes an analysis of mass psychosis across history to get there. Bear with me for a minute- it is pretty cool.

I think you may have heard that there is a mold on grain- ergot- that contains all sorts of psycho-active properties. I first ran across it in a book about Medieval France- a village went mad, and the Church chalked it up to witchcraft. According to the article my pal sent me, there is much more to it.

I will be mercifully brief in the abridgement of Megan Garber’s excellent appreciation of the whole business; if you are interested the whole article can be found in The Atlantic.

The short version is that taken internally, ergot can cause visions and hallucinations- and death, of course. There was an alternate means of getting the pleasurable part into the bloodstream without risking death, and that was applying a potion- salve, ointment, if you will- that involved the porous membranes of the armpits and the “groin,” again, if you will.

Megan is more direct:

“…but when absorbed through the thin tissues of the female genitals, the hallucinogenic effects were more pronounced with less ill effects. The modern image of a witch riding a broomstick was inspired by the sight of a woman rubbing herself on the drug coated smooth stick of her broom, writhing in the throes of hallucinations, and no doubt, some intense orgasms as well.

The literature of the period contains wood block images of naked witches and broomsticks, which were a preferred mechanism for the application of the hallucinogens. Hence, the modern twist on fully clothed hags is only a sop to modern family values, and maybe they have things right in places like Key West.

(Witches preparing to fly. This photo was taken at the recently concluded Phantasy Fest in Key West.)

As a sidelight, it is the growth of cities as the West emerged from dark ages that is partly to blame. You see the expansion of the mercantile society meant that the further the raw grain traveled, the more opportunity there was for the mold to grow, and outbreaks of mass psychosis to occur. Sounds like fun.

It would not be surprising to note that there was an outbreak here in the New World in Colonial times- in a village called Salem. We can thank that madness for the popularity of whole wheat bread, a type resistant to the growth of ergot.

Urbanization in Europe caused the problem, just as urbanization of our coasts into single-party megalopoli appears to be causing our general decline. But I digress. As to witches,
Megan notes:

“The popular icon of a witch is an ugly old woman riding across the sky on her magic broomstick and wearing a pointed hat. But as with all mythologies there is an element of truth behind the image. Witches did ride brooms, after a fashion, the brooms were magic, in a way, and the pointed hat was the mildest of the punishments inflicted on them for their activities!”

I don’t know if it is true, but the pictures I found are pretty cool- in deference to family values I will let you find them for yourself. And one thing is for sure, I will never look either a ham-on-rye sandwich or sweeping quite the same way again.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303