the combination of those two things may be what's upstream of halloween's edge, its trickster nature: its interplay of opposites. its relationship to those bridging "in between" ethereal spaces - that's what spookiness really is: of the spirit, but not in an understood category https://hell.twtr.plus/media/f3fca8c4af56dec6653c5f5984433ee999ff9bc7fe5720cbcf1667c6272e7ea1.file

our halloween isn't a sad day, but it's also not exactly pure or celebratory either. it's kind of both. the spookiness may derive from this. one day, you're celebrating all the souls in heaven. the next, praying for all the dead being tortured in fire in purgatory. back to back.

all saints day is triumphant. really... happy. it's all the saints. that's great. they won. they did it. the energy here is pure, light, victory banners, all that. i suspect the real flavor of our present halloween is the interplay of these two days: all saints and all souls. https://hell.twtr.plus/media/4b52a3ae480276c72d7c15de747f95703397a4b7b2acac4f55395e33e19e4076.file

it started just in his area, but was soon taken on by the whole church. halloween seems tied, by name and practice, primarily to all saints day (the day before all souls day): "halloween", "all hallows eve", it's the day before all hallows day. but, that's not really the vibe. https://hell.twtr.plus/media/008bebdde9111b0619b44479bce80761ee156a19441fc8ec4a8bcbfdc8128e2d.file

the tale is: there was a pilgrim who was stuck on an island during a storm. there, he had a vision of all the souls suffering in purgatory. later he went to odilo and asked if there was a day to pray for all the dead. odilo established one. it took off, and became all soul's day

the long lists of saint names sometimes remind me of a war memorial. i suppose they do call the terrestrial church "the church militant" for a reason. st. odilo was an abbot at the benedictine monastery in cluny, france - right at 1000 AD, crossing over the two millennia. https://hell.twtr.plus/media/1da037aafdd9c870e0140a5e53e7d32998ed969ac302f44fab942804b0939320.file

each halloween season, my mind turns to a lesser known saint: st. odilo of cluny. the idea of a relatively unknown saint is interesting in and of itself: you see the lists of names, it's easy to forget they were all real people who contributed to our spiritual history. ... https://hell.twtr.plus/media/14806a26f1785e196700adc52c52330a4f2840849d6142e049c34dc770795637.file

painful fact. no one likes it. its not aesthetic. but the long video essay is clearly this time period’s art form.

so much of modernity is dominated by “the car”. odd to consider that cities could be full of something like this. this look is a straight line backwards all the way back through carriages to chariots. it reads as slightly comical because we didn’t do it - but it’s way more human: https://hell.twtr.plus/media/c0009f9a0a9beb00ca0372d4ecf3c1f11b4a3247f6914b6585743592315831ec.file

its an interesting modernity aesthetics twist that because they were marketing these cars to people who didnt care about speed or going far, they focused on making them look nice - often retaining the look and feel of the nicer carriages at the time. a totally alt-car aesthetic: https://hell.twtr.plus/media/32c295d7e6cdb7b980a7023778f372ffb32151d6b585dfaae74d6eb696670f61.file https://hell.twtr.plus/media/14a54021c037f0160f2c0538584171a790448f89f807d1a7b622b3b96fca5e3b.file