Alucard from Hellsing Ultimate has always been my favourite vampire. There is something about him that unsettles yet fascinates, terrifies yet draws you closer. He is not only a creature of blood and immortality, but a paradox of madness, clarity, destruction and wisdom. His presence is magnetic because he is not merely a monster; he is a mirror of something deeply human. Few characters embody the Jungian Shadow Self, or the metaphysical truths of darkness and transformation, as vividly as Alucard, and there is no better time to reflect on this than Samhain, the ancient Celtic festival that falls on the same night as Halloween.
Samhain is not about costumes or playful fright, but about liminality which is the thinning of the veil between worlds. It marks the end of the harvest, the turning of the year and the moment when the living acknowledge the presence of the dead. It is a time when shadows step forward, when the unseen becomes visible, and when we are invited to sit with endings as gateways into new beginnings. To write about Alucard during Samhain feels appropriate, for he thrives in the twilight between life and death, sanity and madness, light and shadow.
Carl Jung described the Shadow Self as the parts of ourselves we repress: the urges, fears, and desires we cannot accept. Most people avoid their shadows, burying them in the unconscious as if denial could make them disappear. But the Shadow does not vanish. It waits, it whispers and sometimes it bursts forth in destructive ways. Alucard is different. He does not run from his Shadow but he is the Shadow made flesh. He does not conceal his monstrosity but embraces it fully, laughing at the horror it inspires and, strangely, this is what makes him feel free. Watching him is to witness the liberation that comes from refusing to fragment oneself.
In metaphysical thought, darkness is not simply evil. It is the void; the fertile nothingness from which all creation emerges. Samhain acknowledges this truth: the death of the year is not an end, however, a threshold into renewal. Alucard’s affinity with shadows echoes this understanding. When he dissolves into darkness, it is not annihilation but transformation. His madness can be read as ego transcendance, the dissolution of narrow identity into a wider, more fluid state of being. He shows us that to step into darkness is not necessarily to be lost, but to find another kind of clarity.
The paradox of Alucard is that his immense power alone is not what makes him free. True freedom comes from his surrender to contradiction. He is immortal yet embraces death, monstrous yet strangely wise, chaotic yet purposeful. He does not seek to tame his darkness, nor does he pretend to be something he is not. Jung argued that repression binds us, while integration liberates us. Metaphysics says the same: wholeness comes when we embrace both shadow and light as parts of the same soul. In this sense, Alucard embodies the truth of Samhain, that is, to honour death as part of life, to embrace the darkness as the path to renewal.
There is a long tradition of “sacred madness” in mystical practices. Shamans, oracles and visionaries often crossed the boundaries of sanity to glimpse truths hidden from the ordinary mind. Their strangeness and unpredictability became a bridge between worlds. Alucard stands in this lineage, although wrapped in gothic attire and vampiric hunger. His laughter amidst the chaos is not only arrogance; it is the cry of someone who has already seen beyond the illusions of order and fear. He embodies the lesson that within the madness we reject lies a doorway into freedom.
Samhain teaches us that the dead still walk with us, that endings carry the seeds of beginnings, and that the veil between worlds is thinner than we think. Alucard, in his unapologetic wholeness, echoes this teaching. He unsettles us, not because he is monstrous, but because he reveals what we might be if we stopped hiding from ourselves. He forces us to confront our shadows, that is, the parts we deny, the fears we repress and the desires we silence. Therefore, in his paradoxical freedom, he hints that liberation comes not from banishing these aspects, but from weaving them into the whole of who we are.
This Samhain, as the nights stretches longer and the air grows colder, I think of Alucard moving effortlessly through shadow. He is not a guide because I admire destruction, but because he reflects what it means to embrace the totality of existence. He reminds me that darkness is not the enemy of light but its partner and that freedom is found not in denial but in integration. To honour Samhain is to honour this truth: that within death lies life, within shadow lies wisdom, and within the darkness we fear most may be the very key to our wholeness.
In conclusion, as the fires of Samhain burn and the veil grows thin, Alucard remains my favourite vampire, not just because of his power, but because of what he represents. He is the monstrous reminder that the Shadow Self is not something to fear but something to acknowledge, embrace and even learn from. In him, we see that madness can hold wisdom, destruction can carry transformation, and shadow can lead us into freedom.
Mystic Anomanly 