'Becoming' an Other

There are a million names for the devil, depending on which mask he
wears when he leaves his home. Not even the devils gender is static,
changing form as necessity dictates. He is all things, all potentialities,
transgressions and taboos. A fiction we animate with the socially
undesirable tendencies of mankind.

The role of the mask in humanity is ancient and beyond complex. It

forms a centerpiece of the oldest magics, the tool through which the
ancient practitioner could transform into other animal shapes, taking
the role of that being in order to more fully understand its ways.

By the genesis of western civilization masks had been indelibly

marked onto the conscious of humanity. Throughout the world, from
African village to Chinese temples, from Icelandic longhouse to

Amazonian forest the mask is present in the practice of ritual and the
making of magic.

When we look closely at the ritual use of masks certain fundamentals

appear. That the mask represents a being of the other is near
universal. That said being is bound in some form to the practitioner
and their lineage is commonplace.

The mask as transformative

tool in both group ritual and solitary spiritual practice finds its roots
in the dawn of homo sapiens. The earliest rock carvings depicting
humans in animal masks carbon dating to 30-50k years ago. A stone
mask from the pre-ceramic neolithic period dates to circa 9000 BC
and is likely the oldest mask in the world, held at the Muse de la
Bible et de la Terre Sainte.

Over the past few centuries the use of masks has waned considerably
in contemporary magic, though their presence in public and private
ritual is found historically throughout Europe from Scottish Mummers
and Guisers to Austrian Perchta and Krampus.

The ancient Grecian Mystery schools

utilized masks in their subterranean theaters, as many before them in
conjunction with entheogenic substances.
The Romans left behind masks used in their cult of Mithras from the
3rd century.

But what is a mask to a contemporary

magician/folkwitch?
How do these tools help us in our practice?
By the same methods they have for countless millennia.
They allow us to change our physical characteristics outwardly.

Which helps us so that we may become a vessel for that what we

desire to occupy us in our state of transcendence.
Thus, a full transformation to some.

A mask is a personality, a role that we play, a spirit that rides us. Its
place in ritual may have been forgotten but it remains an unassailable
tool in the transformation of the psyche and the prosthetic
transformation of the physical form we take.
The traditional nature of Hallowe'en is one where the mask we choose
identifies us as belonging to a group of specific spirits and wights.

We become the very goblins we intend to

avoid, wreaking havoc on our neighbors in our anonymity, plying the
public for bribes in order to stay our vengeful hand. Under bonfire
lights, the air full of the scent of autumn decay, the mask provides
danger at that peak moment when the Veil has almost lifted. We may
guess at the identity of the wearer, but what lurks behind those eyes
we can not truly know.

Whether solitary or in groups the practice of mask wearing during

ritual is a useful tool that can transform us, giving us that push into
the Beyond we need in order to become that Other that we seek. Yet it
is important to choose ones masks wisely, for what we become when
they are donned is often not as we expect and the ride we are taken
on by the spirits that guide us may lead to roads we had no intention
of exploring.

Mind Space Apocalypse