“There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin.”
So says Linus Van Pelt in the It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown Halloween TV special from 1966. This was must-see TV during my childhood and perhaps is even more needed now.
For some Halloween fun, let’s bring an archetypal eye and Jungian lens to the show.
While projection often gets a bad rap, the Great Pumpkin shows us its positive side: how this can be the necessary first step in the individuation process. As Liz Greene said, “Jung did not believe projection was wholly pathological. Jung stressed that a projected image is a potential locked up inside yourself, and that when there is a need for this part of you to make itself known, you will meet it through whoever or whatever you have projected it onto” (Greene, Inner Planets).
Linus has a security blanket and would prefer to remain within the psychological comfort zone of home. This projection gets him out of his normal environment and engaging with the numinous. He projects a benevolent Wise Old Man or Great Mother type qualities onto the Great Pumpkin, describing it as “good and sincere.”
Projections are only problematic if they last too long and aren’t withdrawn. In 1998 there were comics showing Linus had a Great Pumpkin Newsletter, which I think is cute. Today he might be a blogger! Maybe his newsletter indicates the process of him integrating the projection and sharing “good and sincere” knowledge of his own.
The integrity of Linus’s vigil is always tested by the outside world, especially by the archetypal Trickster, embodied by Snoopy. The rustling noises he makes in the pumpkin patch make Linus think the Great Pumpkin has arrived.
Of course those hopes were immediately dashed. Charlie Brown leaves in a huff, saying “I was robbed! You kept me up all night waiting for the Great Pumpkin and all that came was a beagle!” Undaunted, Linus remains in the pumpkin patch until 4 a.m., when his sister Sally comes out to retrieve him and lead him home.
Linus’s journey beautifully captures the archetypal ground of Scorpio season, where the psyche prefers to go beyond the superficial (trick or treating) and pursue a deeper truth (the Great Pumpkin). Charlie Brown’s repeated receiving of rocks while trick or treating is an expression of the shadow side of Scorpio season—rejection that strips the ego bare.
Linus is a reminder of the individuation process and brings to mind this James Hollis quote:
I have no vested interest in our becoming saner, or mentally balanced, or even useful to society… We are not here to fit in, be well balanced, or provide exempla for others. We are here to be eccentric, different, perhaps strange, perhaps merely to add our small piece, our little clunky, chunky selves, to the great mosaic of being. As the gods intended, we are here to become more and more ourselves (Hollis, What Matters Most).
The Great Pumpkin confirms that the journey to becoming truly ourselves begins with the sincerity of the vigil itself.
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