Literary inspiration


Travel musings

Good morning. At least for those of you in the US.

I broke my pattern and took advantage of an opportunity, so I ended up greeting the solstice dawn in New Mexico instead of Arizona. Anyway, I am back now.

On the way back I got to thinking again about the Grey Council thing. As nearly as I can tell, it's based in part on a concept from Babylon 5, with generous portions of Kurtz's Deryni and Rowlings' Harry Potter thrown in.

This isn't the first time that Oberon Zell-Ravenhart has drawn on literary inspiration. Much of the Church of All Worlds was lifted pretty much intact from Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. There is nothing wrong with that, it's just that a faith group created for fictional purposes may not be all that practical outside the story.

And yes, I have heard of The World As Myth. One can hardly be a Heinlein fan and NOT know about that.

Although it is probably a mistake, I would put the founding of CAW as a jonbar point in the modern Pagan movement, I think it's at that point that enthusiastic adherence to the form of the myth took priority in the same time frame that Paganism became wildly public in the United States.

You can make the case that myth factor occurred earlier. Most of what we "know" about Celtic gods is modern fabrication. And during the Spiritualist heyday, it seemed like every other spirit guide was a "wise Indian" of questionable authenticity.

This wouldn't matter except the Pagan movement is poised between the Story and the Journey.

Now I am saying this as a die-hard science fiction and fantasy fan. I grew up reading Asimov, Clarke, Farmer, Malzberg, Hendersen, Heinlein, Norton, van Vought, and a few dozen others. One of my high school English papers compared and contrasted the Lord of the Rings with The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. I was actually at a SF con in 1978 debating if Star Trek or Star Wars was better.

Here is what I think, and I keep coming back to it.

The Story is supposed to be an inspiration and that is all.

The Journey is up to you.

It was true when the stories of Hercules were first told under the stars. It was true with the stories of Arthur and his knights. It was true with Johnny Appleseed. And it is true with the modern films and stories.

I think it is wrong to model a religion on the Story.

At the risk of negating my point, or maybe just double underlining it, there is a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode that illustrates this. Data, an android, has memorized every Sherlock Holmes story. When he goes to the holodeck to play as his favorite detective, it takes no more than a few words to tell him which story is going on. It's only when the story is only based on the Sherlock Holmes characters that Data can't immediately predict the outcome.

The word is not the thing. The map is not the territory. The Story is not the Journey. Or at least not your Journey.

Literary inventions are just that, literary. They should stay that way.

Posted: Sat - June 23, 2007 at 05:04 AM
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