Stuff I'm thinking about

Reaching up Toward the Fullness
Art Manifesting the Mythic
By C.S. Thompson
Some of the ancient Gnostic sects spoke of something called the Monad, the noumena from which all phenomena are derived, the unity behind all multiplicity and the Absolute behind all relativity. This Monad, being beyond relativity, could not be defined, for to define a thing is to set it apart, to say it is this and not that, which cannot be said of the Absolute. Unknowable and beyond definition, the Monad could not be said to create in any conscious sense, but the myriad phenomena of reality are its emanations and thus its creations. Like the physical universe exploding from a single point at the beginning of time, the Monad spontaneously gave birth to the Pleroma, a realm of immortal entities known as the Aeons. The Pleroma, in turn, gave birth to our world, a series of emanations from the Monad like ripples in a pond.

The word Pleroma means fullness, and corresponds to everything we mean by the word divine. As for the Aeons, they are "thoughts of God," aspects or modes of approach to the unity of the Monad. They are also "the gods." The Pleroma, in other words, is the realm of Myth, a transcendent although not-quite-ultimate realm beyond the realm of our world.

Where is this "Realm of Myth"? Is it in our minds? The philosopher Sallust defined myth as "That which never was, but always is." It is not, in other words, to be found in the world, in the sense of being bound or trapped by a particular moment in time and space. To reduce Myth down to time and space is the Fallacy of Fundamentalism, just as to dismiss it entirely is the Fallacy of Materialism. So if the realm of Myth is not bound by the physical world, not to be reached primarily through the physical world, then we must find it through the mind- through media such as dreams and imagination, visions and ecstasies. And the things we see in these dreams can be communicated through art, evoking their strange power in the waking world. Reaching up through our minds to the realm of Myth, we bring something of its magic back down with us and incarnate it in a work of art. The work of art then acts as a key, allowing those who can enter into its spirit to soar upward again to the realm of Myth. The Mythorealist artist is a mediator between these two realities, a "priest of the invisible" in the words of Wallace Stevens.

Is the realm of Myth only in the mind? It depends what you mean by that. The boundaries of any individual mind go gray at the edges, and the core elements of Myth seem to be universal. Just as the realm of the mind is a private world behind the realm of the external and physical, might the realm of Myth not be another level beyond that of the mind?

But let us confine ourselves to what is right in front of us. Whether or not the realm of Myth is defined by the mind, the purpose of magical art has always been the same- to access this realm and bring its power into the world. People have been sitting around campfires telling each other amazing stories since the Stone Age. Storytelling will always be popular because it taps into something primal in us- the place inside us from which myths are born. The part of us that believes in magic.

There is a special ingredient that sets what I think of as Mythorealist fiction apart, that marks it as a true representative of that ancient tradition of storytelling. I think of that special ingredient as mythic resonance. What is mythic resonance? The feeling that you're somehow in the presence of magic, whether horrifying or wonderful or both at once.



Just war until the end of time,
Until the sun goes out.
There’s nothing else I still require.
The night has touched my mouth.
Its lips are soft
And I am now
Both paralyzed with fear,
And shaken by ecstatic glory,
Silent, vast and clear.
The world will end in ice, they say,
Or else perhaps in flame.
The horror and the wonder are the same.


This feeling of wonder goes far beyond mere entertainment, evoking the same primal emotions as the Viking Sagas or the Arthurian legends. People crave that sensation of magic, of imagination unconstrained, of Myth made accessible.

Mythorealist fiction takes the magic of Myth and incarnates it in our world, making it clear that there are not actually two worlds in the first place- the magic is all around us. Consider the fiction of Neil Gaiman and Clive Barker, in which ordinary men and women of the modern world come face to face with other realities, vastly complex and beautiful and terribly dangerous.

Mythorealist art presents the image of the realm of Myth in front of our eyes, allowing us to stare directly into the land of dream in all its wonder and all its horror. Consider the paintings of Zdzislaw Beksinski, the weird landscapes and organic architecture of another world, presented just as matter-of-factly as a photograph.

Mythorealist poetry evokes the Otherworld like a prayer or perhaps a talisman, just as comfortable with dream as it is with nightmare.



When dreams demand surrender
Burn the bridges
Close your eyes.
I'll paint myself
Apocalyptic
Colors
And we'll rise.
The holy war
For human horror
Flowers here in me:
Just try to stop our march
And you will see.



Even the horror of nightmare leads us upward to the Fullness, awakening our spirits with its magic- but only if it is embraced. Mythorealist art confronts horror and wonder fearlessly, seeing both of them as pathways. These things do not corrupt the spirit- they help set it free. The Mythorealist artist is a magician, not the tawdry kind that seeks only to manipulate the world through non-physical means, but a far more profound kind of wonder-worker- the kind that helps us to see.