Attention: United Witches Guild
For: Immediate formulation

Throw together and let the hell-broth boil. Simmer three hours, but do beware, it will easily scorch your caldron.

Fellow witches and warlocks, our night has finally arisen. The call of our druidic ancestors is in the wind! As we prepare for the most important eve of the year, another more pressing task has befallen us.

As most of you know, the spirit of All Hallows’ Eve has been weakening for centuries now. Once a Celtic recognition of the fragility of life, it has for many disappeared altogether. This year, however, the witching community will be going to great lengths to punish those who have come to neglect the power and the awe of this hallowed eve.

The Halloween we see celebrated today is far from ancient tradition. Slutty pirates, cheap candy and these things called kegs are all people talk about, if they celebrate at all. They have forgotten that it is a ritual, a liminal moment in which society can be transformed! Halloween is the one holiday that has the power to blur dichotomies. The living and the dead, the past and the present, the young and the old, the summer and the winter, the real and the fantastic – they all become one on Halloween.

This sacred night is the night during which the veil between the living world and the other world is thin. The old act young. The seasons change. What is real and what is not are sometimes hard to distinguish.

Halloween provides the one opportunity people have to step outside the societal constraints by which they are bound and be exactly what they are rarely allowed to be. Kids can be their favorite superhero. Men can be drunk. And women can unleash their inner vixen.

Although I would like to rectify the fact that the Halloween celebrated today has strayed far from ancient custom, we have bigger toads to shrink. Mainly, the non-celebrators.

The majority of you have doubts as to the existence of non-celebrators. I know it is hard to fathom that there are those who do not recognize this sacred night, but believe me, they do exist.

Secretary of broomstickery, Hilda Vladerth, who works during the day for the National Retail Federation, revealed to me that her company’s 2005 poll reported 53.3 percent of consumers planned to buy a costume. With the few individuals with mothers who can sew aside, this leaves a huge proportion of non-celebrators.

It is those un-respectful little snakes’ feet who don’t celebrate at all, the Halloween grinches who turn off their lights and stay “”real quiet”” when trick-or-treaters knock on their door who have become our burden.

It is the store executives who decide to sell Christmas wrapping paper and hideous fake pine trees with crappy frost jobs before Halloween has even come who have undermined the importance of this very sacred night.

It is the disinterested college kids who are “”too cool for ghoul,”” who don’t don a costume because they are too lazy or too uncreative. They have become our enemies.

In the name of all that is dead, we witches and warlocks must unite to combat the rampant disrespect of this most hallow of evenings. To put an end to this blasphemy once and for all, I have concocted the above gruel which we all must make and disseminate before the witching hour (midnight, for you witches on Eastern Standard Time). Immediate death shall befall any non-celebrator who swallows this charm. So dust off your brooms, scrounge up your cauldrons and light those candles because it is going to be one long night.

I am sure most of you are thinking, “”But Vorticia, you have gone soft!””

I know, I know. Believe me, I recognize that the above spell is much too mild for all those blaspheming toad warts, but with union regulations being like they are, we witches and warlocks must exhibit prudence.

As a fair warning, all of you Halloween Scrooges who believe Halloween to be a waste of time or are too lazy to care, consider tonight’s debauchery a little visit from the Ghost of Halloween Past.

Witches and warlocks, our druidic ancestors and the future of All Hallows’ Eve thank you for your service.

To those who celebrate Halloween with a sacred heart and mindful eye, may the witching hour find you with care. But to all those who have forgotten the meaning of Halloween, to those who deny the importance of marking this liminal moment, to those who ignore the power in All Hallows’ Eve, I will get you, my pretties. And maybe your dog too.

Happy witching,

Vorticia Skullwert

Votricia Skullwert attends class during the days disguised as Courtney Smith, an unassuming senior majoring in anthropology and molecular and cellular biology. She can be reached at letters@email.arizona.edu