Part 7 in the series, A Literary Search for Meaning by Karen Hughes
According to Brian Attebery, “Every fantasy proposes a different way of bringing the strange, the magic, the numinous into modern life. Each distortion, each elaboration on mythic motifs offers a new way to relate to ancient beliefs and seemingly timeless mysteries” (Strategies 4). While the powerful psychological effects of the use of mythological symbols and motifs in both world building and conveying the narrative are well documented, combining mythic storytelling techniques with the tropes and techniques of speculative fiction gives the writer even more scope to convey modern spiritual themes. The use of mythical characters and themes in speculative fiction draws on the psychological power of myth and symbol to tap into the reader’s subconscious by employing potent metaphor and imagery to promote access to the imagination, re-enchant the ordinary, and create new mythologies for the modern world.
Kathryn Hume argues that writers of mythopoeic fiction, mythic fantasy and related genres use the metaphoric dimension of myth to provoke an emotional response in the reader, and she suggests several different methods for triggering this response (82). The most relevant for the purposes of this project are the “additive augmented” and “contrastive” methods. Using the “additive augmented” method, the writer adds material that the reader would normally filter out of their everyday perceptions of reality. By drawing attention to the trivial or mundane, juxtaposing competing views, adding gimmicks such as a magic wand or flying carpet, or creating another “mythological or metaphoric dimension” (84) the writer challenges consensus reality, enabling the reader to glimpse a different world. Hume writes: “In any of these numinous worlds, beings with supernatural or superhuman powers penetrate the fabric of everyday existence” and the reader is made “uncomfortably aware” of the “thinness and insignificance of our own material reality” (87). By combining the fantastic or the wondrous with the mythic, the writer can assert the “importance of things which cannot be measured, seen or numbered” (90). Such works invite the reader to engage on an intellectual and emotional level by creating vivid images that bypass our habitual filters and resonate with the subconscious. To quote Jung:
“Who, however, speaks in primordial images speaks as with a thousand tongues … and therewith he releases in us too all those helpful forces that have ever enabled humanity to rescue itself from whatever distress and to live through even the longest night … That is the secret of artistic effect” (Contributions 248).
Using Hume’s “contrastive” method, the writer creates alternate worlds or alternate points of view with the aim of affirming one, both or neither (82). While this is common in generic escapist fiction where everyday reality is mundane and grey compared to the pastoral idyll of the medieval fantasy world, it is also a useful device in more meaningful works. Hume argues that a more “expressive literature with its new vision of reality, lies between escape to illusion and revisionary didacticism in its effects” (100). The dystopian setting in the first part of my new novel, Gaba Gali, contrasts with the more idyllic settings in the alternative timelines in later chapters and ultimately with the otherworldly descriptions of fifth-dimensional Terra. The changing setting reflects the spiritual development of the characters, with difficult conditions, limitation, authoritarianism and no awareness of choice being replaced by individual and collective manifestation of a more utopian reality. As the timelines shift, the reader becomes aware of the illusory nature of the “ordinary” world at the beginning of the story, in much the same way that readers of Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia ultimately realise that England is a “shadowland” compared to the “real” versions of that land and every other, including the fantasy land of Narnia, that exist in Aslan’s Country (“The Last Battle” 228).
Hume’s methods are particularly apparent in the “antiquity particularisation strategies” available to writers of mythic fantasy, namely “ancient locations” (alternative or parallel worlds) and “ancient presence” (forgotten wisdom, ghosts, legacy or prophecy, places of power, etc.). The mysterious aspects of the past, which are gradually revealed to the reader over the course of the narrative, operate as a “secret dimension of the present”, adding depth and richness to mundane reality (Oziewicz, “Antiquity” 4). Charles de Lint takes advantage of these strategies in his first novel, Moonheart, by placing his protagonist Sara Kendell in urban 1980s Ottawa and then gradually filling her contemporary world with a range of ancient mythological characters and mythic themes that transcend the mundane setting. De Lint uses myth and folklore in Moonheart—and in many of his other novels, particularly Forests of the Heart, Memory and Dream and Someplace to be Flying—to explore how ordinary people experience and react to the fantastic. Sara must confront her shadow by facing the shadow side of her Celtic ancestor Thomas Hengwr: the evil half known as Mal’ek’a, “the Dread that Walks Nameless” (Moonheart 256). Through a brutal battle for her soul, culminating in the bloody self-sacrifice of her beloved uncle Jamie, Sara gains spiritual knowledge (becomes “horned” in the Celtic tradition) and discovers her essence, her “moonheart”. Throughout the novel, Sara encounters a range of mythological figures, including Taliesin, the Welsh bard who becomes her lover; Pukwudji, a little spirit man from the Otherworld who is “as sly a trickster as his cousin the Coyote” (278) and is apparently based on the mischievous wood elves of Wampanoag and other Native American traditions; Ha’kan’ta the Moose Girl of the Wild Woods; and May’is’hyr (Summer Heart) and her Viking husband Hagan Hrolf-get. In incorporating this eclectic range of figures, de Lint takes a perennialist approach to his work, borrowing imagery and symbol from a range of traditions to explore “myth as an expression of the relationship between people and the natural world” (Windling, “Charles de Lint”). He also uses myth to evoke visionary states of consciousness and to imagine how his seemingly ordinary protagonists might acquire spiritual knowledge from other realms. De Lint’s Otherworld is built on a variety of Celtic tropes, including magical rings, shapeshifting, doorways between worlds, and the reshaping of time; and he employs lyrical language and poetic imagery to enhance the mystical atmosphere of this alternative world. The Otherworld hosts an ancient Bearstone, for example, where Taliesin meets the spirit of his grandfather, who comes in the shape of “the Green Man in a cloak of oak leaves and mistletoe, face like a fox, narrow and brown” or as “a stag, brow heavy with twelve-pointed antlers, his reddish-brown coat gleaming in the starlight, his eyes heavy with riddles” (Moonheart 274).
As well as drawing on Celtic mythology, de Lint uses myth and symbol from Canadian First Nations traditions both to connect the story with its Canadian setting and to illustrate the spiritual effect that a melding of cultures might have on the land. When questioned about cultural appropriation, de Lint’s response is that “we can’t limit our palette—that’s the death of good writing. But we can make sure that we approach cultural and sexual differences with respect when we write about them. We have to do our research” (de Lint, “Cultural Appropriation”). In de Lint’s work, the old stories are important, no matter who tells them. As Grandmother Toad says, “[R]emember the mysteries great and small, for we diminish without your love” (Moonheart 433). Like de Lint, I have incorporated mythical characters and imagery in Gaba Gali, based on Celtic and other folklore, to re-enchant the mundane rural setting of my novel, namely Branok the bird boy, the acacia spirits, the shadow voices, the mystical underground labyrinth accessed by a spiral palm tattoo and an obsidian rock, and Uncle Bill’s Miyayan ancestors, the star people. As discussed in previous articles, I employed this strategy to take advantage of the universal power of myth, hoping that this might encourage my reader to open their eyes to the hidden magic and richness of the world, rather than to depict any specific cultural traditions.
Robert Holdstock takes a similar approach to de Lint in Mythago Wood (1984), a psychological journey into the otherworld of the unconscious, using myth, symbol, and the rhetoric of the uncanny to create a mysterious forest, Ryhope Wood, where mythical figures or “mythagoes” come to life. The premise of the novel is that “something in humans interacts with something in some ancient woodland to generate or re-generate mythic or archetypal forms” (Harvey, “Discworld and Otherworld” 46). Unlike de Lint, Holdstock creates an otherworld that is “disturbing and dysfunctional” (47), reflecting the shadow realm of the human unconscious. The sensation this work encourages in the reader could be described as “the uncanny”, a feeling of dread that Freud, in his famous 1919 essay, claims a writer evokes when they use images which tap into repressed primitive beliefs, both individual and collective, influencing the reader’s perceptions and causing them to view the ordinary with uncertainty and fear (“The Uncanny”). Holdstock gradually builds this atmosphere with vivid imagery and earthy descriptions:
His gaze darted about, but never seemed to focus upon me. And he smelled. Of mothballs, as if the crisp white shirt and grey flannels that he wore had been dragged out of storage; and another smell beyond the naptha … the hint of woodland and grass. There was dirt under his fingernails, and in his hair, and his teeth were yellowing. (Mythago Wood 11)
The embodied forms of the mythagoes are described in the same manner, bringing the mythic forms to life in a raw and visceral way, and weaving them into sensory descriptions of Ryhope Wood—a “sinister” oak forest “[u]ntouched, uninvaded for thousands of years” (15)—and the ivy-covered house, Oak Lodge, that stands beside it:
The room was rank with the smell of dirt and wood. The branches that framed the ceiling trembled; earth fell in small lumps from the dark, scarred trunks that had pierced the flooring at eight points.
Guiwenneth walked into this shadowy cage of wood, reaching out to touch one of its quivering limbs. The whole room seemed to shudder at her touch (128).
Ryhope Wood feeds on the cultural memories of all who enter it and brings to life the forms and figures embedded in those memories (Senior, “Embodiment” 305). As the narrative progresses, it becomes apparent that the mythagoes, of which Guiwenneth is one, are more than archetypes. They are not fixed in character or form, and it is the unlimited and timeless mix of fragmented mythic images, memories, thoughts and ideas in the human imagination, combined with the creative power of the wood, that gives life to all their various incarnations (309). George, father of protagonist Stephen Huxley, writes in his journal about the “mythogenetic process” where “mythopoetic energy flows in my cortex—the form from the right brain, the reality from the left” (Mythago Wood 34). George explains this further in “The Bone Forest”, a short story written by Holdstock in 1991 as a prequel to the Mythago cycle:
I have coined the word mythago to describe these creatures of forgotten legend. This is from “myth imago,” or the image of the myth. They are formed, these various heroes of old, from the unheard, unseen communication between our common human unconscious and the vibrant, almost tangible sylvan mind of the wood itself. The wood watches, it listens, and it draws out our dreams … (The Bone Forest 9)
While many scholars argue that Mythago Wood is “a narrative intimately concerned with Jungian archetypal theory, with an essential assumption of the novel being the corporeal manifestation of archetypes” (Brown 159), the embodiment of the mythagoes in Ryhope Wood might perhaps be even better explained by Ferrer’s “undetermined mystery or generative force of life” (Ferrer, Participation 195) that interacts with the human imagination to shape the world, and by Blake’s observations about the power of the visionary imagination (Frye, Fearful 19). The mythagoes evolve with the needs of human history and the specific individuals and communities who interact with them, incarnating in various forms depending on the era, “for instance, each of the Huxley men co-creates or invents a different Guiwenneth” (Senior, “Embodiment” 308). Thus, while “[m]any of the novel’s characters have an archetypal quality and one might easily be tempted to apply Jungian psychology to its study” (309, citing Graham Dunstan Martin), the mythagoes are an amalgam of different thoughts, images, emotions and experiences, and are therefore cumulative rather than “individual or monolithic”, and this “creates the distance from a strict identification with the archetype” (309).
In a 1996 interview with Locus magazine, Holdstock observes that “myth and legend work through the familiar being expressed in a new and innovative voice. We retell stories and that is what makes them so powerful” (“Lost Landscapes” 7). The narrative in Mythago Wood, set primarily in the 1940s, is interspersed with ancient myths and legends recorded in George Huxley’s old journal. These stories come to life deep inside the wood and eventually involve Stephen, his brother Christian, and their friend Harry Keeton. The effect of the stories is to draw the reader, like Stephen and the other characters, deep into the eerie Heartwoods to encounter the original mythago, a dreaded beast known as the Urscumug. As is perhaps appropriate in a work exploring the power of perception and the meanings we make and share through our stories, the beast turns out to be the mythical incarnation of George Huxley, Stephen’s father:
The Urscumug was still there, watching me, eyes blinking, mouth opening and closing, showing the glistening teeth within … Then the Urscumug stretched out its left hand to me. I stared at it for a moment, and then I realized what it wanted. I stood up and reached out to the hand, which enclosed mine totally. (Mythago Wood 293)
Stephen confronts his father, and the childhood pain he has around his father, as the original mythago hidden in the heart of the wood. It is interesting to note that Ursula K. Le Guin, whose work is discussed in the next part of this series and in later parts, does something similar in A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), where her protagonist Ged eventually confronts his shadow-self in the open sea at the end of the world:
It drew together and shrank and blackened, crawling on four short taloned legs upon the sand. … Ged reached out his hands, dropping his staff, and took hold of his shadow, of the black self that reached out to him. Light and darkness met, and joined, and were one. (Earthsea 164)
In both novels, there is a sense of dread around the shadow creature, which is evoked by vivid mythical imagery, and in both the resolution comes when the protagonist conquers his fear and embraces the shadow.
While the narrative structure of Mythago Wood is based on the traditional fantasy quest, famously described by Joseph Campbell as the “Hero’s Journey” and generally structured as “a series of adventures experienced by the hero and his or her companions that begins with the simplest confrontations and dangers and escalates through more threatening and perilous encounters” leading to battles and adventures in the wider world (Senior, “Quest Fantasies” 190), the quest in Mythago Wood is metaphorically inward, deep into the heart of the psyche. Senior writes that “while Holdstock observes many of the standard stages of the monomyth or quest structure of genre fantasy, he alters them, often radically. In particular, he omits the final stage, which Campbell calls the ‘return and reintegration with society’” (“Embodiment” 314). My three protagonists Kayla, Tess, and Jordy are each on a spiritual quest, but this does not take the form of a traditional fantasy quest. Instead, they must confront different aspects of their psyche and the collective unconscious in a variety of fluid, co-creative otherworlds— the underground labyrinth, the acacia tea dream states, Kayla’s past-life memories, and the DMT shadow experiences—dipping in and out of alternative states of consciousness, where mythic figures and the shifting of time and space reflect their growing self-awareness and expose them to the darker side of the spiritual journey. In my creative project, the imperative to shift to a fifth-dimensional paradigm means there can be no “return and reintegration”.
Margo Lanagan is another fantasy writer who takes the reader out of their comfort zone and into the shadows. In her short story collections, Yellowcake (2011), Red Spikes (2006) and Black Juice (2004), she employs diverse fantasy settings which “defy location” (Ryan), avoiding the difficulties faced by an Anglo-Australian writer wishing to explore mythic themes. Lanagan’s short stories draw on European folklore, while creating distinctive otherworlds: worlds where angels have stretched-leather wings and “stink like bad potatoes and death” (“Earthly Uses”, Black Juice 141) or where drooling monsters with snail-like skin rise out of the mud to ruin the crops and eat the villagers (“Yowlinin”, Black Juice 183). I am influenced by Lanagan’s rich poetic style and technique, including the use of vivid imagery to create disorientating alternative visions of reality, such as “drops of salt sorrow in its strands here and there like smooth-tumbled crystals in a cunning necklace” (“The Golden Shroud”, Yellowcake 45) and “this forest of people, these flitting firefly eyes” (“Singing My Sister Down”, Black Juice 16). The same techniques are apparent in her novels. In Lanagan’s mythic fantasy novel Tender Morsels (2008), for example, “Snow White and Rose Red”, an old German fairy tale, is used as the basis for a disturbing narrative in which fifteen-year-old Liga escapes her lonely hut at the edge of a dark wood, an appropriate setting for a fearful childhood filled with incest and gang rape, to raise her two children in an alternative dreamlife hidden from the “true world”. The evil dwarf of the fairy tale, here cast as the “littlee-man” Collaby Dought, enters Liga’s world through a portal—the lake—with the help of his old lover, the “mudwife” Annie. Dought’s scenes are written in the first person and the language is vernacular and earthy, evoking both his base nature and the crude world that Liga and her daughters have escaped:
She came to the door—was it a door? Was more like the mouth of a weasel-hole. Gawd knew I would not like to go in there to look—or to sniff any deeper, blimey. (Tender Morsels 67)
In contrast, Liga’s dreamworld is narrated in an omniscient third-person voice, creating a more traditional fantasy setting that belies the darker truth—that because of the trauma she has suffered Liga has somehow created her own artificial heaven to avoid engaging with the true world.
Lucky indeed Liga felt, walking home that day with figs and sugar and good smoke- meat in her basket, and her first lesson with Mistress Taylor set for next afternoon. It was all very different from the noise and bustle and nastiness she had expected to weather in the town …” (55)
In these scenes, the mundane world is reimagined as a magical place in which everyone, even a wild bear, is friendly and Liga and her daughters are completely safe from harm. The bear from the original tale seems to represent different aspects of the masculine and enters the novel as two distinct archetypes: the first a protector who brings gentle strength and comfort, and the second a rough youth with an insatiable sexual appetite. While Lanagan’s main theme, the violence against and oppression of women, is not one I examined in my novel, her use of poetic imagery, myth and symbolism, as well as awe, wonder and the uncanny to explore the shadow side of human nature is a good model for expressing the darker aspects of re-enchantment in speculative fiction.
Most of my novel is written in a naturalistic voice and the setting is an ordinary Australian farm and mining community, though a future one. The mythic elements combined with the futuristic descriptions, however, are an early indication of the novel’s speculative themes. After introducing the initial dystopian setting through the voices of the three adult protagonists, the narrative moves from the mundane to the fantastic, with mythic fantasy references such as the bird boy, great snake-like monsters, and the aos si, the “forgotten sprite”, a reference to the mythological Tuatha Dé Danann. I used a sprinkling of Irish Gaelic to further emphasise Kayla’s ancient Irish connections, to complement the mythic character of her protector Branok (a name derived from bran, an old Celtic word for “raven” or “crow’), and to reinforce the truth of her experiences. The Gaelic builds up and points to the importance and mystery of the Tuatha Dé Danann as an example of mythic and magical narratives explained later as extradimensional contacts and Danu herself as both an extradimensional guide and the personification of the earth as a sentient being. Also, because the Gaelic terms are mixed with terms from other languages, particularly the Miyayan language in the Terran sections, they build a sense of heterogeneity of the various spiritual experiences and a dissolving of boundaries between them as it emerges that this is all multidimensional experience, separate and linear from a limited Earth perspective but continuous and simultaneous from the broader Terran point of view. The traditional mythic elements and languages augment and are contrasted with the modern dystopian setting—the titanium towers of Xīncūn, the rare-earth metals and toxic tailings ponds; the holomax wristbands, surveillance monitors and holographic screens; and the disapproving nurse in her sterile white clinic—to challenge consensus reality and offer the reader an alternative vision of the world.
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