We hear a lot now about how good vs. evil is an outdated concept, don’t we? That angels and demons are best reserved for conversations with ‘God people’ you tolerate with a smile as shallow as their evidence base.

Evil is clearly a topic few souls dare to explore and fair enough! Among the myriad of stresses placed on us in the modern world, who has time to contemplate the source of all evil? Sounds like a lot. Sounds like that person gon’ sell me Jesus. In fact, it sounds A LOT like it’s not my problem! Perhaps just to compensate, most of us tend to explore evil fictionally by celebrating Halloween, smashing video games or witnessing it in films like ‘The Witch’.

To my own ever-recovering surprise, I recently began to pray to and worship God. This comes after a decade in what I like to affectionately dub as the New Age wilderness. Nothing against crystal-healing and cacao ceremonies, I just decided to simplify my spirituality and return to the Christian mold I once knew. I am not a fundamentalist, nor a Roman Imperialist with a chip on my soldier´s shoulder. Just a guy who needed something bigger to surrender to. But throughout my life, whether I was attending church, kirtan, mushroom trips, festivals, yoga retreats or mindfulness meditation classes, I had begun to notice a common demon-uh-denominator about evil that always captured me.

No one believes in it anymore!

I mean sure, we can believe in evil in the sense that dualistic ideas like good vs. evil (rational and emotional, masculine and feminine, light and dark or any two pairs of opposites for that matter) should be shunned in favour of what Joseph Campbell (among ancient others) describe as the ‘middle way’. Drawing off millennia of accumulated wisdom in world mythology, Campbell makes the case that while Good and Evil are necessary components for a culture’s ideology, your modern day punter is actually best served by transcending these concepts; detaching oneself from morality before voluntarily participating in the ‘dance’ of samsara (life-death cycle): the ‘reality’ each of us find ourselves in. A reality which is considered by much of Hinduism and Buddhism (which Campbell favoured) to be an illusion or maya; a testing ground for souls that is in actual fact all a part of the Universal Mind.

Of course, the world is sometimes ‘mistaken’ by many of us as being a very real and serious place indeed. So how would someone like Campbell explain something straight-down-the-barrel evil like demon-possession?

A co-constructed illusion by all involved. Or Schizophrenia (individually constructed). The demons that haunt us are our fears, desires, attachments etc. made psychologically manifest.

Hauntings?

A trauma (geographical, not personal), imprinted on a place.

Curses?

Placebo with a social function.

It’s an intellectually appealing meal to dine on. With this sociological conception in mind, I’m reminded of the ‘Clan of the Cave Bear’ novels in which the main character Ayla has a curse cast on her by the leader of her clan. As a woman, she transgressed a boundary by learning to hunt – and the penalty was death. While she screams at the people who adopted her to forgive her and take her back, the tribe simply avert their eyes. Ayla, in her wisdom, realizes they now see only her ‘ghost’ and to engage with her would be to welcome in an evil influence, so she leaves – as the curse intended to have her do.

No spirits? No worries.

Thus, the secular understanding of ‘evil’ in the West limits itself to the sociological and the psychological only. It is a hodgepodge of psychoanalysis, neopaganism and determinism that appeals to logic and still manages to fall largely into the empirical framework: That things such as these must be isolated and carefully observed in controlled settings to be worth a sniff of our time, let alone be entertained as ‘true’.

But is it possible though that just because a spiritual phenomenon plays an important psychological and social role in ordering our lives, it doesn’t discount the possibility of there actually being curses, hauntings and the like? Respectable atheists would tell you no.

And do you want to know something even more baffling?

Not even some religious people are interested in talking about Evil!

As a rule, the Christians I’ve met as a newborn again baby Jesus follower (I forget the exact term) fall into two camps.

1. That’s an old thing. We don’t really do hell anymore
2. Ahhh I believe Satan exists, but I’d really rather not go there. Wanna watch TV?

Is this fair? Can we walk away from the spirits/ghosts/demons of our haunted past and head boldly into the 21^st century? Our shining city on a rational hill?

Or does some of this need a second look…

I recently turned down an invite to play music at a Halloween party for a friend and felt like a total dweeb. Yet knowing what I know, I simply can’t pretend to dig Halloween anymore. The experience of chaos and open mindedness is, as an artist, crucial for responding to ideas that emerge in the void of my mind and heart. But there is something catatonically chaotic, not to mention naïve in the way we revel in death and evil during modern-day Halloween. At least Samhain and All Saints Day had a clear ritual role for instance in welcoming in the new season and demonstrated a healthy respect for the spiritual realm, particularly those spirits within it that might wreak havoc on humanity.

Most people will tell you for free that the Devil is a joke invented by Catholics to get their kids not to watch porn. Very few of these however would have the gall or time to peruse 5-star Amazon reviews of books on Satanic rituals to improve their livelihoods or read promo books by Satanists themselves. Still less would have the time to learn about the sometimes harrowing supernatural reality of a Kundalini awakening. And I can’t really imagine my friends – religious or no – tripping on Ayahuasca in the jungle and coming face to face with entities that bash them around like psychic basketballs.

I used to. And if I couldn’t, I would read about it consumptively, needing to understand so I could make clear sense of things…and to act accordingly.

I have heard from Theosophists, New Agers and Satanists, read about what Hindus, Conspiracists and Wiccans believe. Contemplated in awe the things that Zen Witches, Muslims and Psychoanalysts share in common and the points on which Protestants, Catholics and Gnostics differ wildly. Sufis, Wizards, Scholars of Religion…Novelists and Philosophers…the list goes on.

¿Obsesionado, sí?

But what is most interesting about the whole lot is that they tend to fall into two very different categories on the question of evil. And the differences are telling.

For one group, evil exists – spiritually – outside as well as inside the human ego. For the other, evil exists only insofar as humans – evolved mammals – can be awful. This latter group would suggest we have transcended evil as in the devil or entities and that in the age of the internet and Starbucks, that ship has sailed. But the more I looked at the extreme ends of things like Kundalini Yoga, bad DMT Trips and Astral Projection, things started to very much resemble scripture’s idea of spiritual duality in the content of the experiences.

Good and bad guys. Out there in the ether.

Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and the thought leaders of our day would sniff and wash their hands of this kind of proposition. They would argue that the fix is in; That we simply cannot afford to be talking about the Devil any more than we can talk about Climate Change being a natural cycle or Donald Trump’s toupee being genuine Orangutan. That the evidence for a strictly material universe – like Trump’s hair – is clear cut.

Well tuck yourself in and make damn sure that wardrobe is closed cos this Halloween week I am going to count down my top 5 phenomena where the myth vs. reality of evil is not so clear at all. And if you should hear a scratching from the inside of the closet, don’t close your eyes…

*cue twilight zone music