Introducing the series, A Literary Search for Meaning by Karen Hughes
Western society is in the midst of a cultural shift. Despite past arguments that secularisation would erode the social significance of religion and cause the “disenchantment of the world” (Weber 155), many scholars now claim that the opposite is happening—modern spirituality has broken free from institutional religion to become more personalised and eclectic, with an emphasis on “non-traditional religious vitality within a secularized context” (Partridge, Re- Enchantment 1: 47). While traditional religiosity appears to be on the decline in many developed countries (Norris and Inglehart 23), there are growing numbers of spiritual seekers searching for individuated mystical experiences beyond the “God talk” and dogma of the church (Tacey, “JMS”), and the current spiritual wellbeing market, following on from the New Age movement of the 1970s and 1980s, illustrates how popular culture can play a major role in the dissemination of spiritual ideas (Oziewicz, One Earth 226). At the same time, the expansion of the traditional genres of science fiction and fantasy into the umbrella mode of speculative fiction provides a diverse medium for writers and readers interested in exploring mystical spirituality through popular literature. Writers working in those genres of speculative fiction that explore the human and post-human condition, embrace alternative versions of reality, and draw on the imagery and metaphor of myth to open the reader’s mind have access to a range of literary tools and techniques that might assist them to incorporate and convey spiritual themes in their work. My aim is to examine how contemporary authors are using speculative fiction to explore spiritual themes, and to discuss how and why such themes are being incorporated into speculative fiction.
In parts 1-5 of this series, I examine secularisation theory and the arguments for spiritual re- enchantment to place my new novel, Gaba Gali, in a cultural context, before exploring contemporary definitions of spirituality to arrive at my own definition for the purposes of this discussion. The quest for mystical experiences is an important feature of the modern spiritual milieu and I explore how this differs from traditional ideas of mysticism, relying on the work of William James, Rudolph Otto, Evelyn Underhill and Albert Maslow, and concluding with a definition of mysticism that distinguishes the quest of the modern seeker from the more religious paths of the traditional mystic. The defining of mysticism and mystical experiences leads me to Otto’s idea of the “numinous” (Idea of the Holy) and to concepts of “the uncanny” (Freud) and “wonder and awe” (Buckland 17), which provide a natural link with the sense of wonder promoted by speculative fiction and its relevant genres. I posit that the use of wonder, the uncanny, and mythic elements in speculative fiction to enchant the ordinary could act as a trigger to bypass the reader’s everyday filters of perception and offer a glimpse into other possible paradigms. I am in good company with this theory, drawing on the observations of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis in relation to their mythopoeic fantasy fiction, as well as the writings of other speculative fiction writers and critics, including one of my favourite American authors, Ursula K. Le Guin. As Northrop Frye notes in his famous study of the mystical poet William Blake, the visionary imagination of such writers and artists provides the audience with alternative perspectives, opening the audience’s eyes to other ways of being in the world, and this is important because: “If there is a reality beyond our perception we must increase the power and coherence of our perception, for we shall never reach reality in any other way” (Fearful 25).
Christopher Partridge argues that the “particular concepts and cosmologies explored in popular culture are not merely expressions of contemporary religious interests and concerns, but they lead, first, to familiarization and fascination, and secondly, to the development of spiritualities” (Re-Enchantment 1: 141). He offers the term “occulture” to denote the “spiritual warehouse” available to the modern spiritual seeker through popular culture—a “vast spectrum of beliefs and practices sourced by Eastern spirituality, Paganism, Spiritualism, Theosophy, alternative science and medicine, popular psychology, and a range of beliefs emanating out of a general interest in the paranormal” (1: 4). Building on this idea, I discuss how specific genres of speculative fiction might provide the writer with the tools and techniques to explore and convey spiritual themes, and how the imaginative works produced could form part of the Western occulture and perhaps contribute to the re-enchantment of the world.
Genres of speculative fiction that offer a mythic or philosophical approach seem to be a natural choice for this project, and to understand why this might be so, I look first to the ancient storytelling traditions, examining the influence of myth on Western society and its literature through the work of four well-known myth scholars—Carl Jung, Northrop Frye, Mircea Eliade and Joseph Campbell. I am particularly interested in the relationship of myth and symbolism to mystical experiences and how the use of mythic language might provide the reader with access to the subconscious and to aspects of Jung’s collective unconscious, including the famous shadow archetype. The clinical observations of psychiatrist Stanislav Grof are useful in this regard and provide practical inspiration for the mystical experiences described in my creative project. After discussing a range of myths, including the myths of progress and scientific triumphalism, and the 5D ascension myths underlying the conspirituality movement, I turn my attention to the alternative cosmologies advanced by various trance-channelled entities, which inspire the new mythologies developed in Gaba Gali. Part 5 of the series culminates in a review of the spiritual climate in Australia and observations about the lack of mythic fiction by Anglo-Australian writers, noting the criticisms directed at authors Patricia Wrightson and Terry Dowling. I also note how First Nations writers, such as Alexis Wright and Ambelin Kwaymullina, use traditional spiritual and mythical themes in their work and how difficult it is for a non-Indigenous writer in this country to employ similar themes.
Having defined Western spirituality and established the cultural context for my novel, as well as discussing the importance of mystical experiences to the modern spiritual seeker, the concept of re-enchantment, and the role of myth, I begin part 6 with a brief overview of speculative fiction, discussing the term as a literary mode encompassing a range of overlapping genres. The most important feature of this mode, for my purposes, is the aim of the writer to evoke a sense of wonder in their reader, thereby opening the reader’s mind to the possibility of alternative realities. In this chapter, I review the development of speculative fiction and examine how two specific genres within this mode—mythic fantasy and philosophical apocalyptic science fiction—might contribute to the broad occulture available to the modern spiritual seeker.
Writers of mythic fantasy employ a variety of narrative techniques to evoke awe, wonder and the uncanny. I explore two of these narrative techniques, the contrastive and the additive augmented methods, relying primarily on the analysis of literary scholars Kathryn Hume and Marek Oziewicz. I then undertake a close reading of the works of three internationally respected writers of mythic fantasy who have influenced my novel: Charles de Lint (Canada), Robert Holdstock (UK), and Margo Lanagan (Australia). Charles de Lint’s first novel, Moonheart (1984), incorporates mythic and supernatural elements into a contemporary realist setting, providing a useful model for balancing modern concerns with mythical and mystical themes. Robert Holdstock’s novel, Mythago Wood (1984), offers a vivid analogy to the archetypes of Carl Jung’s collective unconscious and could be regarded as a literal interpretation of the visionary imagination discussed by Northrop Frye. Margo Lanagan draws on fairy tale and folklore, providing a more contemporary Australian example of how a fantasy writer might use mythic imagery and poetic technique to evoke the shadow and the uncanny in their work.
While I make use of mythic fantasy techniques and tropes in Gaba Gali to create a specific effect, the work is perhaps best described as philosophical apocalyptic science fiction, and I employ a close reading of another work in this genre, Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time (1976), as a comparison. Works of philosophical apocalyptic science fiction often promote themes of human and cosmic evolution, and I explore these themes by incorporating new scientific theories, including James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis and Hugh Everett’s many-worlds theory (Theory of Universal Wave Function), in my creative work. In part 9 of this series, I discuss how writers of speculative fiction might use such scientific theories, together with the tools and tropes of the relevant genres, to create new mythologies, and how these mythologies might contribute to the Western occulture. This discussion is supported by a close reading of Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker (1937) and Neal Stephenson’s Anathem (2008).
In the later parts of this series, I discuss methods used by writers of speculative fiction to convey new myths and to evoke awe, wonder and the uncanny by creating an impression of alternative realities. I review three essential non-mimetic techniques—unnatural perspectives, alien dialects, and the manipulation of time—and demonstrate how these techniques are used in my creative project. The discussion on unnatural perspectives encompasses choice of narrative voice, fragmentation of language, and themes of shamanic journeying and the animal mind, with reference to the poetry of Les Murray and Ted Hughes, as well as extradimensional and out-of-time perspectives, which I examine through Ted Chiang’s 1998 novella “Story of Your Life” (Arrival 109–172) and Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Shobies’ Story” (1990) (Outer Space 71–97). The creation of alien dialects and how a writer might make use of invented languages and foreign words is another important narrative technique, and I explore this further by examining David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (2004) and his comments about his invented language, “Bygonese”. I return to “Story of Your Life” in this section because I am interested in how Chiang introduces and conveys his alien languages without including a single word or symbol of those languages. I am also inspired by the multidimensional change in perspective that Chiang’s protagonist, Dr Louise Banks, experiences upon learning the alien languages. The final technique I address in part 12 is the manipulation of time. In this part, I examine the practical effects of Gérard Genette’s discourse-time versus story-time, and I explore defamiliarisation and the disruption of reader expectations with a close reading of the temporal shifts in “Story of Your Life”.
In writing Gaba Gali, I used Jorge Ferrer’s concept of co-creative spirituality and direct accounts of mystical experiences compiled by Abraham Maslow, Stanislav Grof, William James and others, to explore how the spiritual ideas, beliefs and experiences of my characters would inform and shape the narrative. Drawing on myth, symbolism and the tools of speculative fiction, I incorporated traditional spiritual concepts such as oneness, transcendence and the numinous, as well as more fluid ideas of a creative force and humanity’s participatory role as an embodiment of that force. My aim was to create a work of fiction that would reflect the “mystic collectivity” (Campbell 383) of the modern spiritual milieu, while demonstrating how language might be used to evoke a sense of wonder that could perhaps open the reader’s mind to new spiritual ideas, including the possibility that every experience of reality depends, at least in part, on the perception and self-awareness of the individual.
Buckland, Corinne. “Fantasy and the Recovery of the Numinous.” Towards or Back to Human Values? Spiritual andMoral Dimensions of Contemporary Fantasy, edited by Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak and Marek Oziewicz. Cambridge Scholars P, 2006, pp.17–29.
Campbell, Colin. “Clarifying the Cult.” The British Journal of Sociology, vol. 28, no. 3, Sept. 1977, pp. 375–88.
Freud, Sigmund. “The Uncanny.” 1919.
Frye, Northrop. Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake. 1947. Princeton UP, 1969.
Norris, Pippa, and Ronald Inglehart. Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide. Cambridge UP, 2012.
Otto, Rudolph. The Idea of the Holy. 1923. 2nd ed., Oxford UP, 1950.
Partridge, Christopher Hugh. The Re-Enchantment of the West. T&T Clark International, vol. 1, 2004, and vol. 2, 2005.
Tacey, David. “JMS 2015: David Tacey, Aboriginal Cosmology and Spiritual Renewal.” (Online seminar)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiq5Fc9l1Oc. Retrieved 11 Dec. 2019.
Weber, Max. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Translated and edited by H. H Gerth and C. Wright Mills, Oxford UP, 1946, pp. 129–56.