Conclusion to the 12-part series, A Literary Search for Meaning by Dr Karen Hughes
My aim at the beginning of this series was 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. Through textual research into the eclectic nature of modern Western spirituality, with particular reference to the individualistic search for mystical experiences and the arguments for a spiritual re-enchantment of the world, I sought to establish a cultural context for my new novel, Gaba Gali, and develop a greater understanding of the modern spiritual milieu. Re-enchantment led me to Colin Campbell’s term “mystic collectivity” to describe the unifying belief system behind the new forms of Western spirituality and to Christopher Partridge’s ideas about the Western occulture, the vast resource of popular knowledge and belief available to the modern spiritual seeker. In examining these sociological theories of collective knowledge, I was struck by the parallels with Carl Jung’s collective unconscious and Northrop Frye’s ideas about the total mythological structure underlying all literary works. The common thread in all these theories is the idea that the individual has access to a much greater source of knowledge than that offered by the rational human mind and that this knowledge shapes and informs our perceptions of the world. Using these theories as a framework, I examined the modern quest for mystical experiences, the resources available to the modern spiritual seeker, the effects of mythical storytelling, the opportunities for wonder and discovery afforded by the literary mode of speculative fiction, and the need for new mythologies in Western society. By critically engaging with specific works in the mythic fantasy and philosophical science-fiction genres of speculative fiction, using the above framework together with relevant literary theory, I conclude that the genres of speculative fiction discussed in this series offer a variety of tropes and techniques that, when combined with the psychological effects of mythical storytelling, provide distinctive and important tools for the writer of speculative fiction who wishes to explore and convey spiritual themes in their work.
When I began writing Gaba Gali, I believed that I was living in a secular world, a spiritual “wasteland” (Tacey, Spirituality Revolution 16) in which materialism, corporate capitalism and technological progress were paramount. I had long ago shaken off the dry Protestant faith of my parents and, like twenty-six-year-old Jordy at the beginning of my novel, discovered an emptiness in its place. I craved a reconnection with the sacred that I had known, or perhaps imagined, as a child growing up in the Australian bush. I caught glimpses of this longed-for spiritual connection in the works of art, music and poetry that I loved, and in the experiences that I had during meditation, shamanic journeying, yoga and the various other practices I explored in my quest for something more. I thought my spiritual hunger was unusual and, in the world as I perceived it, perhaps it was. As a former Canberra lawyer, I was surrounded by colleagues and friends who rejected mysticism and religiosity, and I accepted without question the apparent worldview of my peers: that the secular was logical, reasonable and morally right, and that having any form of faith was outside the mainstream and something to be kept private (Bouma et al. 27). When I left my legal career to follow other paths, such as writing mythic fantasy novels, studying traditional medicine and teaching creative writing, the senior partner at my law firm shook his head and questioned my sanity. He couldn’t understand why I would give up the money and prestige of a thriving legal practice to follow my bliss. “Are you becoming a feral?’ he asked. I took this as a compliment and set out to reclaim the wildness and magic that I had lost. While this choice turned out to be exactly the right one for me, my assumptions about the secular nature of the world were patently wrong. I soon discovered that I was not alone in my search for meaning—far from it. From my reading on contemporary spiritualities in Australia and my own practical explorations, I found that many people were searching for something more, and they were finding it in online communities, weekend retreats, drumming sessions, meditation groups, yoga classes, ayahuasca ceremonies and all kinds of alternative spiritual pursuits. Institutional religion might be fading but, as Christopher Partridge and many others have written, alternative forms of spirituality were rising to take their place (Partridge, Re- Enchantment 1: 43).
Secularisation theory, the rise of alternative spiritualities and the re-enchantment of the world are often discussed from a sociological or theological perspective, and researchers in this field are generally more focused on social issues than on the practical role of the writer and artist in the modern spiritual milieu. Other than David Tacey, there are few scholars in Australia writing on this subject from a literary perspective, and even fewer from the position of a writer working inside the field. At the same time, globalisation and the internet are giving writers of Australian speculative fiction more international opportunities, with Rjurik Davidson claiming that “the aim of every [Australian] SF writer is to be published in the UK or the US, as the size of the market here is just too small” and Ben Peek saying that “the best choice is actually to get out of the country” (qtd. in Barnett). Given that international demand for works in this mode is growing and that the current popular interest in mystical themes and alternative realities might offer Australian writers the opportunity to reach an even wider audience, it would be useful to have access to further studies on this topic. I would be particularly interested to read empirical research that records and analyses reader responses to popular fiction that explores modern spiritual themes.
My main interest as a professional writer lies in the everyday tools of my trade— language, narrative technique, genre tradition and tropes, the psychological power of myth and symbol to communicate relevant themes, and the role of the writer and storyteller. I am inspired by the visionary writers that I have studied over the course of this project, particularly Ursula K. Le Guin and Robert Holdstock, because I know, from my own efforts, that it takes courage to break the mould and to challenge the reader to question their assumptions about the world. Much of what I have learned from these writers has come as a reader immersing myself in their stories, and this intuitive knowledge about literary style and its deeper effect is difficult to put into words. Like Le Guin, I am now certain that there is no science or methodology that can fully explain the process of writing a novel (Wave in the Mind 183). There are, however, relevant narrative techniques to add to the writer’s toolbox and useful structures that the writer can employ and, despite Le Guin’s scorn about the commercial use of literary genre (Outer Space vii), I have found that the genres explored in this project within the mode of speculative fiction are more than simply a handy categorisation for publishers who want to sell more books on Amazon.
My study of the mythic fantasy genre has provided me with a greater understanding of the power of myth and its relevance to speculative fiction. Brian Attebery argues that it is difficult for the modern writer to create a mythic discourse because the magical web that once connected the ancient “tribal storyteller” to their listener and the natural and supernatural world—a web formed by “kinship and transformation and magic … that was known through the stories but extended well beyond their boundaries” (Strategies 130)—is “no longer part of the discourse of everyday reality, and so our novels and histories do not explode so easily into myth” (131). Perhaps the modern re-enchantment of the world will restore this magical web in new, and as yet unimagined, forms. In the meantime, Robert Holdstock, Charles de Lint and Margo Lanagan are three writers who have successfully managed to overcome this difficulty by using lyrical language and vivid imagery to combine the concrete reality of the mundane world with familiar archetypes and beings of myth, legend and folklore, thereby creating new myths that offer the reader more magical ways of looking at the world. I follow their example in Gaba Gali, incorporating mythic imagery and themes into a contemporary realist setting to challenge the reader’s perceptions before inviting them to imagine alternative, and more hopeful, realities. Even when my narrative moves further into the realm of science fiction, myth continues to play an important role—as I have demonstrated with my discussion in part 8 of this series on the various cosmological theories explored and advanced in my work, and in my examination in part 9 of Star Maker and Anathem, two science-fiction novels that create their own alternative mythologies.
In writing my novel, I have found inspiration in both ancient stories and modern science, particularly cosmology and quantum mechanics, and in the unlimited creativity and freedom promised by the modern spiritual milieu. Like the romantic poet John Keats, I have discovered that being “in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason” (72) is the optimum state in which to approach my creative work, particularly when attempting to evoke a sense of wonder in the reader. Frye’s study of William Blake, in which he discusses the power of perception, the role of the visionary artist and how imagination might shape reality, provides me with some structure for this seemingly nebulous approach, together with a deeper understanding of the possibilities afforded by mythic imagery and metaphor. The myth theories of Frye and his contemporaries, Eliade, Jung and Joseph Campbell, might not be as influential as they were half a century ago, but they still offer a solid analysis of the power of mythic storytelling and thus provide a useful background for my novel. I explored the creative power of the imagination and the influence of myth further by using Ferrer’s work on embodied spirituality and Grof’s clinical research into mystical experiences as the basis for many of my protagonists’ experiences. Ferrer avoids the problems that Ellwood and others have noted about the dogmatic universalism of some of the myth scholars by arguing for a more diverse, co-creative spirituality in which the perception and intention of the individual combines with the “life-generating creative force” to create an infinite number and variety of possible realities (Ferrer, Participation 195). By linking Ferrer’s perennialist ideas to Frye’s total mythical structure and Jung’s collective unconscious, and by incorporating various scientific theories and extradimensional trance-channellings in the same way a modern spiritual seeker might absorb, connect and perhaps reimagine the popular ideas and beliefs contained in the Western occulture, I was able to envision and develop a new mythology in which my characters were physically incarnated human fractals of a higher dimensional oversoul based in the sun and in which the experiences of these characters on the physical plane were solely determined by their individual and collective choices.
Joseph Campbell writes that “a fundamental transformation of the historical conditions of [the world] and its inhabiting humanity is in prospect” and this brings an urgent need for the construction of a new mythology; this mythology “which is rapidly becoming a social as well as spiritual necessity” will be of the entire human race and will be “realised in and through art” (Oziewicz, One Earth 116, citing Campbell). Oziewicz, together with many other modern scholars, including Partridge and Tacey, argues that the need for such new mythologies in the Western world is reflected in the cultural shift away from secularisation to a more individualised spiritual worldview through an eclectic variety of mediums, including art, music, and popular fiction. After reviewing the wide range of scholars writing on “the modern crisis and the spiritual-orientated transformation it portends” (110), Oziewicz notes that
Jung, Eliade, Frye, and Campbell were just some among the many who spoke about the modern transformation of consciousness and said that it was informed by a shift in our thinking from the mechanistic to the organic, from exclusivist to integrative, from competitive to symbiotic, from rationalist to intuitive, and from separatist to holistic modes of knowing and acting. … many scholars noted the exceptional potential of specific genres of fantasy literature to carry this transformative, holistic message. (113)
While speculative fiction is a relatively new area of academic scholarship and there is much debate over its classification and terms, Tolkien, Lewis, Oziewicz, Attebery, Hume, Le Guin and the many other literary scholars cited in this series provide a useful overview and analysis of the mode and the genres it might encompass. It is an exciting time for speculative fiction as diverse writers step up to expand and improve these genres, developing works of literature with the potential to reflect and contribute to the changing spiritual milieu. The works analysed here offer useful examples of how a writer working in this mode might draw on the power of myth and the modern quest for mystical experiences to evoke an emotional response in the reader, opening their eyes to new possibilities and a more enchanted vision of the world.
I began incorporating spiritual themes into my creative work almost a decade ago, when I wrote the mythopoeic fantasy series Kalika Magic (2014–17), and I continue to explore these themes in my work today because I believe there is an urgent need in our society for this more enchanted vision. Perhaps other contemporary writers are doing the same. Perhaps, like me, they are tired of dystopian narratives of fear and despair and are searching for stories of connection and hope. As Le Guin said, during her speech at the 2014 National Book Awards:
Hard times are coming when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom: poets, visionaries, realists of a larger reality.
Speculative fiction offers those writers who are willing to answer Le Guin’s call a mode in which to create works that aim to challenge the reader’s assumptions, judgements and beliefs
about the world, works that might prompt the reader—like many of the characters in Gaba Gali—to expand their imagination, change their perceptions and step into a larger reality.
Attebery, Brian. Strategies of Fantasy. Indiana UP, 1992.
Barnett, David. “Science Fiction and Fantasy: The Wonderful Wizards of Oz.” The Guardian
(Australia), 7 June 2013.
Bouma, Gary. Australian Soul. Cambridge, 2006.
Ferrer, Jorge N. Participation and the Mystery: Transpersonal Essays in Psychology, Education and Religion. State U of New York P, 2017.
Frye, Northrop. Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake. 1947. Princeton UP, 1969.
Keats, John. “To George and Thomas Keats, Sunday 21 Dec. 1817.” The Letters of John Keats (1816-1820). Oxford University Press, 1947.
Le Guin, Ursula K. Outer Space: Inner Lands. The Unreal & The Real: Selected Stories, vol. 2, Gollancz, 2015.
—. The Wave in the Mind. Shambhala, 2004.
Oziewicz, Marek. One Earth, One People: The Mythopoeic Fantasy Series of Ursula K. Le Guin, Lloyd Alexander, Madeleine L’engle, Orson Scott Card. McFarland, 2008.
Partridge, Christopher Hugh. The Re-Enchantment of the West. T&T Clark International, vol. 1, 2004, and vol. 2, 2005.
Tacey, David. The Spirituality Revolution: The Emergence of Contemporary Spirituality. Harper Collins 2003.