Masque

Halloween is New Year’s Eve for us Celts. It marks the time of year when the sun recedes and pulls with it the barrier between the material world and the spirit world. Because of this, spirits may be more active and may have much more of an impact on the wake a day world through which we move around this time, and on until the sun returns. Let me tell you something that caught my eye this Halloween.

This year I noticed people going about their daily business, not in costume, but wearing masks. Perhaps they were feeling the impact of the spirit world on their lives, but it is more likely that they were experiencing the power of anonymity. I did not see anyone in a goofy gorilla mask, or an alien mask; they were all wearing well crafted, classic harlequin masks or half masks one would see at a masquerade ball. When they would catch someone observing the mask, or doing a double-take, they would return the stare or exacerbate their normal body language until they were almost a parody of the text of the normal person they portrayed. I didn’t think the masked people were part of a greater effort to mask the populace for Halloween and I didn’t think they were coordinated or related at all.

What gives anonymity power? What is the power of the mask, in the cultural psyche of the West and beyond? Why does the Klansman wear the hood? Why does the executioner? Why is it, and this is is important, that the power afforded by anonymity is almost always misused?

And who does Robin think he’s fooling? We can all tell who he is even with his mask, because his mask is so tiny that it is really just a lot of mascara…