October - 2026

The Power of Community to Start Something

The Divine Feminine Invites You on a New Journey

There is a lot of messaging about clothes and appearance in our world. “The clothes make the man” and “Dress for the job you want”, but these ideas automatically prioritize the opinions of the people around you, who will surely hold you in higher regard after seeing you in nice clothes. What about your experience in those clothes? What if you fucking hate the feeling of pantyhose even if it “looks good”? 

What value is there in dressing up for you, and how can you turn that into something powerful?

I've been sewing since I was about 7, cutting up old leggings to make hats and coats for my beanie babies. Yet, I've never been particularly fashionable, which you would expect of someone motivated enough to make their own clothes from scratch. I honestly wasn’t interested in the day-to-day existence of clothes, but the florid, fanciful, painstaking creation of costumes.

Even before I considered myself a witch, Halloween was always a favorite holiday of mine. To say I love dressing up is … putting it mildly. It can be a bit of a religious experience, especially when there are blood, sweat, and tears ingrained in a costume, meticulously planned and made by hand. Part of it is about the joy of construction, creation, texture, and the way that sewing rewards rigorous attention to detail. 

But my deep passion and purpose for sewing really started in elementary school, when no Halloween store had ever heard of who, exactly, I wanted to be for Halloween.

I got into anime (Japanese cartoons) when I was in 4th grade, and nobody knew about Sailor Moon, but it didn't matter. I had a sewing machine, a gift card to JoAnn’s fabric, and a mother who would bail me out when I realized I was in over my head. I knew who I wanted to be. I (my mother) made it happen.

When the streets were full of kids dressed up as Britney Spears or Disney princesses, my best friend and I were completely unrecognizable warriors of love and justice. Even though no one knew who I was, I was hooked. As I grew older, I properly got into the international niche hobby known as Cosplay. 

… No, wait! Don't go! I promise this all connects!! I'm not airing out my nerdy laundry for no reason, c’mon!

Okay, still there? Cool. 

(You can tap out at any time.)

Cosplay is a portmanteau of “costumed play”, originating in Japan as comics/cartoon fans began to dress up like their favorite characters to social events, but it has become its own world, and even economy, over the years. The dedication to representing your favorite character goes beyond finding or making the right clothes, and into custom contact lenses, expensive wigs, and even face modifications to really nail the look.

These costumes are mostly premiered at pop culture conventions, which are like weekend-long parties for the nerdiest of nerds. The only event I can really compare it to is Carnivale in Brazil. The costumes lovingly built for the spectacle of it, the competition, the air of glee, the partying, the temporary or liminal nature of it all. It's a celebration, to be sure.

But Cosplay hits an interesting sweet spot of Becoming and performance because of the subject matter and the liminal environment of a Con, where you find yourself dressed with all the intensity of a stage role but without a set script. How much is costume, and how much is play? It's a spectrum.

You can be a body with a costume on it, or you can lean in and play a little. Being a theater kid … what did you really expect of me? Players gotta play.

I loved it. I couldn’t part with it, even for a moment. In high school, I literally planned my life around the next convention, the next costume, the next skill I had to learn to make my clothing even better.

Becoming my favorite characters was even better when the people around me were as excited as I was to “see” them in the flesh, but I began to notice something deeper happening the more comfortable I became with performing and Becoming a character for loving fans. I was getting something out of the experience that wasn’t just pure heroin-intensity attention and appreciation for my sewing craftsmanship … and I was taking it with me, out of the con.

Underneath the wigs and makeup, with every different role I took, my shape was changing. My understanding of myself was expanding, lovingly guided by the silly pantomime from simple performance into integrated possibility.

Regardless of their trappings, all characters are archetypes, and we find absolution and freedom alike in faithful portrayal of these old, old delicious roles. The trickster, the whore, the vampire, the demon, the satyr. The savior, the cynic, the dark woman, the list is endless. Humans love stories; we understand ourselves through characters, and we find ourselves fixated on these archetypes either because we desire to obtain them or embody them. Maybe it’s a trait they have, or a strength we envy, but either way they inspire us to reach and become more than ourselves.

Modern life demands a modern overhaul. Where ancient Greeks may have reached for the Furies when wronged, now we have Batman as a modern icon of vengeance. Superman, justice and goodness. Wonder Woman, a noble feminist icon.

I took an entire Honors course on how so-called Superheroes are just floating power metaphors that adjust to the fears of our times, enemies always changing to reflect whatever crisis our country is in, so it’s impressive how we all know who I’m talking about just by mentioning these names. We know who they are. We can even visualize the colors associated with them. That’s how strong these characters are, how cohesive their concept is despite so many incarnations and series and stories where they may act very differently, and yet still remain themselves.

To me, it sounds an awful lot like the gods. 

It sounds like the enduring curiosity and locality of myths, in which humans try to explain their world in a way that makes meaning, and the endless rephrasing of those stories as society shifts little by little. It sounds like the desire for intimacy and recognition that led to city-specific god cults of a favored deity that were only honored within the city walls. The Athens-based cult of Aphrodite Ourania, or “Heavenly Aphrodite”, was associated with spiritual love and the stars, without emphasis on sex or passion. She was still Aphrodite, just a different flavor, with a different emphasis on certain traits most suited for that place. She is just a glorified aspect of the same whole.

Strangely enough, that’s part of the magic of cosplay. The joy and diversity of purposeful incarnation that naturally results when humans reach for greatness and grandness. We all show up differently, and we show up as ourselves … just different. No two cosplays are alike because no two people are alike.

I’ll refer to pop culture characters as archetypes going forward, to make this sound a little bit less ridiculous, but I have experienced the power in wearing an archetype and what it brought out in me. I just wish everyone had the same chance to experience it.

When we dress up as a hero or an archetype, we aren't imitating a person, which is a real, discrete thing, but an ideal … which is somehow more and less real, but infinitely more flexible. And how that ideal shows up on our body, our face, our energy, will always be unique. It is a raiment we adorn ourselves with, and we remain not only intact but glorified underneath it.

This is in stark contrast to my previous piece about the Sun, shining and being seen: instead of disappearing into these roles and hiding myself and my enormous capacity for shame within their shape as I did in theater, cosplay was expansive. After spending countless hours creating beautiful costumes to honor them, I wore these archetypes atop my own shape and learned what traits I was capable of while safely playing within the permissive embrace of that role, flirting or dancing or whatever else would increase the joy of the moment.

The most immediate transformation was always linked to gender. When I became male characters, I found myself moving differently. I took up space differently and spoke differently, more directly. It was a class-A experiment in gender performance, because in becoming my favorite fantasy men, I found things that felt good in the doing of it that I then brought out with me, into my daily life.

It was a pattern where I became more and more confident, and more and more myself, the more I pursued this hobby. What did a given performance free up in me? What space did I feel able to take up, wearing that role, that was supposedly off-limits to my natural form? And once I felt what it was like to take up that space … could I really go back to being small?

Every role brought a different gift. I have been bold and needlessly gruff and abrasive (and I was not punished for it). I have been sweet and shy (and I didn’t like it very much, so we won’t be doing that again). I have bright and clear felt-sense memories of being brave, and cheeky, and possessed of a certain debonair charm that no one could quite look away from. 

I know what all of that feels like on my body, and in my body. I know it's a feeling, a trait, that I can hold, even just for a short time. It's a possibility, and it wasn’t before I took on that particular form.

I have put on finished costumes and, outside of the pride of accomplishment, felt such shocking belonging in that skin. Oh God, I think, this is me.

And it is. Part of me. And it will coexist with every other part of me, as part of my glorious, multi-faceted whole.

This is why I consider costumed play to be so transformative in my development. It showed me everything I was capable of being and centered my power firmly in myself instead of the costume, because I was the thing that persisted and changed with each role. The clothes do not make the man, but sometimes the clothes are a fun prop to figure out how you can be a Versace suit or a slinky evening gown in energy alone.

It's not uncommon to hear “Oh, I love your (Magician)” as a wonderful compliment in cosplay spaces. It might seem backhanded at first, until you realize there is no actual Magician that we are failing to exactly imitate … only the one you show up as. You-as-the-Magician is your aspect, your incarnation, the one you have lovingly, painstakingly crafted out of your devotion to this energy. It is an acknowledgement of the way we wear the power and the presence of that archetype, unique to us.

If these archetypes were gods (and I'm not entirely convinced they aren't, with pop culture icons replacing treasured folk mythology in our collective consciousness), convention halls would be a theater of worship. 

It’s a spectacle every time. The halls are crawling with homemade angels and demons and superheroes and aliens, each more extravagant than the last, and all of them known and loved by someone. Then there’s the riotous appreciation of those who love them—their bravery, their wit, their strength, their looks!—snapping photos and stealing hugs from their favorite deities, feeling as though they've brushed against something glorious that occupies so much of their thoughts but otherwise has no human form.

The secret lies in the costume, and the play. It is theater, and it is performance, and it is connection. It is a celebration of the love and dedication it takes to bring an ephemeral concept into the real world, and maybe take a photo with it. For the Gram.

My love for costumes and play is why I want so badly to bring theater to worship. I want to craft beautiful costumes, and I want to dress and embody the gods to partake of their strength, or wit, or grace. Safe and blessed in the role, honor-bound to perform to the best of my abilities to honor the archetype, I am encouraged to reach out of the spaces I have constricted myself to. Though frequently derailed from personal freedom by happenstance, gender, or sheer forgetfulness … I must remember that all of this world is open to me.

I think Becoming a god, if just for an evening, can help you remember what that freedom feels like. Sometimes, that’s Halloween.

It’s officially spooky season.

Time for tricks and treats, for pumpkin spice everything, for indulging your goth side. Time for Halloween—Gay Christmas, as we like to describe it—and all the associated witchy-themed traditions.

You may know that our secular Halloween traditions evolved broadly from older pagan practices, most notably the Celtic festival of Samhain. What you may not know is that modern pagans often consider this something like Witchy New Year: The end of a cycle that begins again on the Winter Solstice with Yule celebrations.

Many call that cycle the Wheel of the Year, to capture the image of the cycles of nature as an ever-turning wheel, with the major season changes and holidays as the spokes that ground it. But while the focus is often on the major festivals like Samhain and Yule, the wheel is not just the individual spokes, it is also all the space between. It’s a smooth turning of cycles and transitions and transformations.

At the moment, we are experiencing the transition from Mabon to Samhain. Mabon, the Fall Equinox, calls us to give thanks for what we have harvested this year, to share our bounty with our community, and to make plans to survive the winter. It also marks the dark half of the year, where nights are growing longer. As we move further into fall and closer to Samhain, we turn our minds to the coming of darkness and winter and the end of the cycle.

October is the transition between harvest and rest. We are moving into a period of reflection, looking back and learning what we can from the year, as well as looking inward to see how we can grow for the next cycle. Samhain calls us to reach beyond the mundane—to connect with our ancestors, connect with the past, connect with our power—and to be transformed by what we find.

This is the path of those like Inanna and Persephone: Journeying to the underworld, being changed by what we encounter there, and returning to the overworld with our new perspective and power. Wicca similarly teaches that the God dies at Samhain, journeys through the underworld and is reborn on yule, and both the God and Goddess are changed, renewed and strengthened by it. Many other mythologies and faiths share similar stories. 

The Persephone story, the other similar myths, even the basic concept of the veil being thin during this time of year, all share a summon core: In the dark of the year, we touch the other world and come away with new wisdom.

This underworld cycle is The Story underpinning spiritual pursuits. We reach beyond our mundane lives and the material world to see, to learn, to experience. Doing so requires many different kinds of deaths. And we come out of the experience changed. You cannot survive spiritual experiences unchanged—and why would you want to?

If you are interested in exploring the power of this time of year, try these Samhain inspired activities and rituals this October:

As if it needs an introduction. In honor of the recently passed Tim Curry, check out this raucous celebration of queerness, debauchery, spookiness, costumes and becoming a freer you. Can you feel the antici … pation?

For an excellent primer on Goddesses from many different cultures and time periods, all over the world, check out this well-researched but still easily digestible encyclopedia. Get to know Goddess beyond handful we frequently see referenced. Maybe you’ll find a new archetype to embody.

[Click the image of the book to follow our affiliate link to Bookshop.org, which will allow you to purchase the book while benefiting your local bookshop, and will provide us a small affiliate fee if you purchase.]