Behind great fantasy, there’s usually a great myth

When the late Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon was published in 1983, Bradley (1930 – 1999) had already made a splash in the public’s fantasy reading consciousnous with her Darkover Series which she introduced in The Planet Savers in 1958. For a less experienced, less widely known author, tackling and re-imagining the legends of King Arthur and the Round Table from a femine perspective would have been a great risk.

After all, whoever writes about King Arthur is not only up against  Thomas Mallory’s “Le Morte d’Arthur” (1485), Edmund Spenser’s epic Elizabethan poem ”The Faerie Queene” (issued in 1590 and 1596) and Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s twelve-part Victorian series of poems “Idylls of the King” (issued between 1856 and 1885), but some well-received modern versions of the story as well. Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck’s “The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights” (posthumously published in 1976), Mary Stewart’s Merlin Trilogy (1970, 1973, 1979) and T. H. White’s “The Once and Future King” (1958) probably top the list. Based on White’s novel, the musical “Camelot” had already made a hit on Broadway in 1960 and as a film in 1967.

In her 1983 New York Times review of “The Mists of Avalon,”  Maureen Quilligan wrote, “Of the various great matters of Western literature – the story of Troy, the legend of Charlemagne, the tales of Araby – none has more profoundly captured the imagination of English civilization than the saga of its own imperial dream, the romance of King Arthur and the Round Table.” We continue to be fascinated with versions and off-shoots of the story whether they surface in nonfiction accounts such as “The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail” (1982), “The Da Vinci Code” (2003, film in 2006) or the continuing novels in the Avalon Series written by Diana L. Paxson.

The myths, whether you see them as illustrations of the hero’s or heroine’s journeys or as tales of struggling peoples of a bygone era, feature larger-than-life personages fighting the powers of darkness and opposing armies in quests focused on personal transformation and/or an ideal society. Merlin’s teachings appear and re-appear in various guises (such as Deepak Chopra’s “The Way of the Wizard: Twenty Spiritual Lessons for Creating the Life You Want”) as lessons for seekers on the mystical path, while King Athur and his knights have been presented—through tales of glory and folly—as archetypes to follow after or to be wary of.

Quilligan, in noting that Bradley looked at the Arthurian legends from the perspective of the women involved, said, “This, the untold Arthurian story, is no less tragic, but it has gained a mythic coherence; reading it is a deeply moving and at times uncanny experience.”

The stories of Arthur, his Knights, Merlin, Viviane, Gwynyfar, Morgaine, Igraine, and old Uther Pendragon come to us with such strength that it’s difficult for lovers of fantasy—perhaps even the general public—not to suspect there is a truth or a reality to them that cannot quite be proven. We react to the stories as though the authors are interpreting real events. Perhaps we’ll never know whether there was or wasn’t a King Arthur who had anything in common with the stories we read and rell about him, but we hope there was.

What great myths, though! They bring us the best and the worst we can be as humans with hints of the kind of magic many of us hope in our heart of hearts exists alongside our technological world of science and logic. The myths are a part of our shared vision of the world and humankind, waiting, ever waiting for more interpretations, versions and re-imaginings.

–Malcolm

contemporary fantasy

Two Roads to Knowledge

“There are two roads to knowledge–the longer, slower, more arduous road of rational combination and the shorter path of the imagination traversed with the force and swiftness of electricity. Aroused by direct contact with ancient remains, the imagination grasps the truth at one stroke, without intemediary links. The knowledge required in this second way is infinitely more living and colorful than the products of the understanding.” –Johann Jacob Bachofen in 1854, quoted in Joseph Campbell, “The Mythic Dimension”

While this quotation in a Joseph Campbell essay is directed at the viewing of myths more interms of their central meanings and intents (grasped intuitively) rather than only through laboriously studying the outer-world chronology of their “plots,” I see here a wider application.

I do not suppose that any of us has the skill to obtain 100% of our knowledge–especially about the day-to-day events of our lives–via intuition, dreams, Tarot cards or readings from the I Ching. I do think, as Einstein observed, that even within the most scientific of displines, intuition often paves the way to our discovery of empirical facts.

Learning how to to trust our hunches will, I believe, allow us to walk down the shorter path to knowledge more often–and to great advantage. 

Trying rather than doing

I enjoy my visits to Dailyzen. The studies and commentaries are interesting and are very nourishing, even to those of us who are not seekers along the Zen path.

Currently, Daily Zen is focusing on “Sho-do-ka” (Song of Realization), by Yoka-daishi, and it begins like this:

You cannot praise nor blame realization.

Like the sky, truth has no bounds.

Wherever you stand, it surrounds you.

When you seek it, you cannot reach it;

Your hand cannot hold it,

Nor your mind exclude it.

When you no longer seek it, it is with you.

In silence, you speak it loudly;

In speech you manifest its silence.

Thus the gate of compassion opens wide

To the benefit of all beings.

I am reminded something Yoda told Luke in one of the Star Wars films: “Don’t try, do.”

We are forever trying, and this seems to get in our way, rather like the feet of the proverbial centipede in the old gag who was asked, “when you start to walk, which foot do you move first?” At that point, the centipede was unable to move at all, just for the thinking of such things.

My speculation here is that when we stop wondering about which foot to move first, we’ll be able to walk a lot farther down our chosen paths.

The Sacred Journey

“When we are beginning to understand the soul, the ocean provides a wonderful analogy. Imagine the ocean as a nonlocal reality, the field of infinite possibilities, the virtual level of existence that synchronizes everything. Each of us is a wave in that ocean.” –Depak ChopraWhen most heroes take the first step on their journey into the unknown, they think of themselves as physical beings, the sum total of which is enclosed within the body they see in the mirror.

If this were true, there would be no journey.

As most journeys progress, the hero’s first encounters with the gods and magical beings along the way tend to reinforce his supposition that the sum total of magic is “out there.”

In time, if the hero has been paying close attention to the adventures and other tourist attractions on the road, he will begin to notice that everything he finds helps him take the next step.

How coincidental. Indeed, the gods and magical beings seem to be orchestrating their intrigues and benevolences just for him.

If he becomes full of himself, he will get lost.

When he returns from his journey, the hero may be quite different from the man who answered the call of adventure. As he ponders the wonderful treasures he’s brought home from that adventure to share with others, he may find himself answering questions and telling great stories about what he has done and where he has been.

About one secret, he will remain silent. When he heard a call for help “out there” and rushed into the great unknown to help a damsel in distress or a world in need of a shining knight, he was answering his own plea.

He did not know that when he began his journey, for then everything and everyone appeared separate and disconnected. When he returns he knows that the reason opposites attract arises from the fact they are truly one in the same.

There is nothing “out there.”

The hero keeps silent about this, not because it’s a secret, but because no one will believe it until they experience it for themselves and find it to be true.

Wind

“Nothing is more common to the diverse indigenous cultures of the earth than a recognition of the air, the wind, and the breath, as aspects of a singularly sacred power. By virtue of its pervading presence, its utter invisibility, and its manifest influence on all manner of visible phenomena, the air, for oral peoples, is the archetype of all that is ineffable, unknowable, yet undeniably real and efficacious.” –David Abrams, “The Spell of the Sensuous” 

Perhaps –

more than we know –

air pollution is

spirit pollution.  

Crossing the Threshold

The hero’s destination (AKA, the great unknown) is a land where events are often chaotic and uncontrollable, operating through rules and processes the hero does not understand.

In older stories, we symbolize this place as a dark wood, the sea beyond the horizon, the faerie ring in the meadow, or simply the world outside the village.

In terms of the psyche, the unknown symbolizes man’s unconscious mind; while this realm might contain magic and treasure, it might also contain monsters and daemons and traps from which one might never escape.

Since the unconscious is a dangerous place, the psyche guards the entrance to the deeper level of mind with a Dweller of the Threshold. If we blunder upon that entrance or arrive there intentionally but are not ready to proceed, the Guardian will chase us away.

When we are ready, we can pass by, perhaps not without a fight, and then learn who we are at our deepest levels.At the threshold, mythic heroes may have to take a leap of faith, make a strong, logical decision, and/or contend with guardians there between the known and unknown worlds.

Joseph Campbell (1) writes that beyond the threshold guardian is:“Darkness, the unknown, and danger; just as beyond the parental watch is danger to the infant and beyond the protection of his society danger to the member of the tribe. The usual person is more than content, he is even proud, to remain within the indicated bounds, and popular belief gives him every reason to fear so much as the first step into the unexplored.”

The threshold is a point of no return. Once the hero steps through it or past it, the die is cast, the next phase of the adventure begins, and quite likely the man or woman stepping into the uncertainty of next experiences will never be the same again.

The threshold in the myth about the Athenian youth Theseus is represented by his moment of choice: he must either set out on a quest to slay the Minotaur that lurks in the labyrinth beneath Crete or stay home. His father didn’t want him to go. When he decided to get on the boat with other men and head for Crete, he crossed the threshold.

Likewise, in the myth about Perseus and the Medussa, the threshold moment is a time of decision. When Perseus told King Polydectes that he would accept the challenge to bring back the head of the Gorgon Medussa, he crossed the threshold.

Down through the years, parents have said that various monsters lurk outside in the dark as a means of dissuading their children from sneaking outside at night. Village elders often told the populace that monsters roamed the area outside the village gates to keep people from wandering off into the woods.

Joseph Campbell (2) notes that “the Arcadian god Pan is the best known Classical example of a dangerous presence dwelling just beyond the protected zone of the village boundary.” Humans encountering Pan tended to run in panic, yet he could be a friend to those who paid him the proper respect.Sometimes the threshold is represented as a place.

In the movie Star Wars,“The people at the threshold are the ones who have gone to the other side and come back. They are worldly as opposed to the hero who is still innocent. The experience of the threshold passage is truly strange and exotic. Those at the threshold have seen amazing marvels such as the Hero has never witnessed. Joseph Campbell often commented the threshold passage is one of the most dangerous ‘because it is where one passes from this realm of the reliable world we know, into a realm completely beyond our powers.’” (3)

Reg Harris, (4) co-author of The Hero’s Journey: A Guide to Literature and Life sees the threshold as the place where we choose to move ahead in our own lives when the time is right:“Often at the threshold, we encounter people, beings, or situations which block our passage. These ‘threshold guardians’ have two functions. They protect us by keeping us from taking journeys for which we are unready or unprepared. However, once we are ready to meet the challenge, they step aside and point the way. More importantly, to pass the guardian is to make a commitment, to say: ‘I’m ready. I can do this.’”

Notes

(1) The Hero With a Thousand Faces
(2) The Hero With a Thousand Faces
(3) Stocker, Brian, Star Wars and the Mythic Quest – An Interview with Jonathan Young, http://www.castlebooks.com/.
(4) Harris, Reg, “The Hero’s Journey – Life’s Great Adventure,” adapted from Harris, Reg and Thompson Susan, The Hero’s Journey: A Guide to Literature and Life. 

Conformity

“The surprising reason why many people fail to find fulfilment in their lives is because they are plagiarists. They adopt pre-packaged images that surround them–on TV, in the movies and in print. So prolifically are these images generated that they offer the illusionn of a wealth of options. In the end the mind becomes addicted to the ready-made patterns with which society presents it, and gives up on the possibility of truly evolving.” Mike George in Discover Inner Peace: A Guide to Spiritual Well-Being

Perhaps we shouldn’t just think outside the box, we should destroy the box (or at least hide it).

“Good” thought, “bad” thought

Jesse Kornbluth, writing on his Head Butler review site, recently discussed the popularity of “The Secret” and it’s message.

He finds real wisdom in “The Secret,” while wondering why great thinkers who are said to have known the secret many years ago were not more overt in sharing it.

There is nothing new about the concept that thoughts are things or that the world we find ourselves in is the world we’re creating by thinking “good” thoughts or “bad” thoughts.

Kornbluth notes such events as the Holocaust, the Iraq war, and Katrina and wonders if the victims brought evil and disaster upon themselves.

Many of those who say “good thoughts attract good things into our lives” and “bad thoughts attract chaos and strife into our lives” put the brakes on their beliefs when it comes to horrific events. While they can see that a single person might sabotage his or her life by a sequence of negative thoughts that lead to suicide or “accident,” they are not willing to consider that many people thinking many sequences of negative thoughts can possibly bring about large disasters.

This one-sided view of “how things work,” while compassionate, represents a spiritual hedging of one’s views and, I think, creates doubt amongst those who have the secret in their hands but fail to see it’s scope.

Removing Doubt

Natural High recently posted an entry about the concept of appreciative listening, showing that we’re more likely to meet challenges by asking “what’s right here” than listing everything that’s wrong with the situation.

By listing negatives, that’s where we place our focus; then we miss potential solutions. Appreciative listening reminds me of the Kabbalistic practice of seeking out the areas in one’s life that are running smoothly and strengthening those rather that focusing all of one’s attention on things that are not going well.

Obsession with answers in areas of doubt only strengthens our doubt. We make progress through certainty, not by adding energy to our problem areas.  By reinforcing what’s good in our lives, we bring more light into our lives and clear our minds and find solutions where we previously saw none.

Trees

Trees have traditionally played an important role in myth and magic. This comes to mind as we prepare for Georgia’s Arbor Day tomorrow and make the ground ready for dozens of donated trees we’ll be planting in a city park.

David Abram, in his wonderful book The Spell of the Sensuous, notes that when it comes to our interactions with the environment that when we chance to notice life around us–from Mockingbirds to American Elms to Red-Shouldered Hawks–we usually think of the natural world as something we see, hear, and sometimes touch. It seldom occurs to us that plants and animals also perceive us. We are a part of their experience.

As we race out to the car to head off for our next appointment, we’re too busy most of the time to be aware of everything that sees, hears and sometimes touches us.