A World With Magic, or Without — Which is Better?

Imagine this. You are sitting at home one evening by yourself, reading or watching television or doing whatever passes the time, when a fairy pops into being and offers you a chance to change the world. She is dressed in a long robe that covers her whole body and stands the height of a mortal woman. A hood obscures her face except for her eyes, exceptionally bright and a vivid shade of green, and the tip of her long nose. You see no wings nor any aura of magic or trail of fairy-dust, and you know that she is a fairy only by the way your eyes open wide and your breath comes in fearful gasps and your heart pounds, and of course by the fact that she appeared suddenly from thin air.

The fairy carries a ball about the size of a tennis ball that glows with pale blue light. You reach out to touch it, entranced, but the fairy draws it back out of reach. “Ah, not yet!” she says. “If you touch this orb, you will change the world. I must tell you the nature of the change before you make that decision.”

“That’s – that’s nice of you,” you say around gulps.

The fairy shrugs. “Informed consent,” she says. “There are rules about these things. Anyway, if a mortal lays hand on the orb and wills it, the world will be infused with magic and many things now impossible will become possible.”

“Such as a fairy materializing in my living room,” you say.

“Precisely, and that is normally impossible.”

“So how did you manage it?”

“I got a special dispensation. You wouldn’t be able to make this choice otherwise. If you say no, the world will continue as it is, with little magic in it except the subtle kind and sorcerers (the real ones) operating under the radar. If you say yes, while grasping the orb, all of that changes.

“Some mortals, perhaps one in a thousand, have the aptitude to become great magicians. They will develop mighty powers, those of them that survive anyway. Magic is dangerous and will become more so if you choose to set it free. But those who survive to master the Art will have great powers to shape the course of fate, to sense and manipulate the minds of others, to bend time and space to their will, to heal the afflicted and afflict the healthy, to make powerful blessings and curses.”

“Will I be one of these people?” you ask.

“Sorry,” the fairy says. “I’m not required to tell you that. You must make the choice not knowing if the powers of magic will be yours to command.”

“Oh.”

“And that’s only the beginning. If you touch the orb and make it so, the worlds of faerie and the mortal world will touch one another more closely. My kind will appear frequently to offer wonders and terrors, to beguile the hearts and minds of men and women, to trade in blood, to be bound by cold iron. Marvelous beasts and creatures of myth and legend will roam the wilderness and the streets. The Sphinx may return to ask her deadly riddles. Dragons will soar above the mountaintops, cruel and wise, benevolent and deadly. Great warriors will arise to do battle with monsters, heroes such as are never born today, and fairy children and the offspring of the gods will walk among mankind.”

“What about the dead?” you ask. “Will we see ghosts, vampires, zombies, those returned from the grave?”

“Of course!” says the fairy. “It’s all part of the package.”

“How about technology? Will that still work for us?”

“More or less. The rules of physics won’t be repealed, but they already ride the waves of probability. With powerful magic flowing through the world, the improbable will become commonplace and technology will become somewhat unreliable. It will still work when it works.”

“I don’t know,” you say. “It sounds like a dangerous world.”

“Oh, that it is,” the fairy says, “but the world is dangerous already. You are protected in the swaddling of civilization for the moment, but just over the horizon of tomorrow are dangers that will freeze your blood. Storms and famine and drought and flood come and the fabric of life itself is unraveled. Safety is an illusion. You will live to see what I mean, and your children (if you have any) will see more of it.”

“Only one person in a thousand can be a magician, you said?”

“That might be a liberal estimate,” the fairy says. “Perhaps that many, perhaps as few as one in ten thousand, will be able to wield the power in a great and artistic fashion. Of course, everyone will have their little spells.”

“Sounds like a world in which the powerful could dominate the rest of the people,” you say.

“Again,” the fairy says, “how is that different from the world as it is now? Don’t the powerful whistle the tune now and make the world’s governments and the world’s people dance to their will? Is money any less elitist than magic as a source of power? The wealthy and greedy will be replaced as ruling class by the sorcerous and enlightened. Will that be better than what you have now, or worse, or neither? That’s for you to decide.”

“We could find ourselves under the heel of Sauron or Emperor Palpatine or Lord Voldemort!”

“Yes. Of course, millions of people in the past century have found themselves under the heels of Hitler and Stalin and similar tyrants. Would they have been more dangerous with magic? Perhaps, but it’s difficult to see how, isn’t it? Magic might have been their undoing. Their enemies of good heart might have stopped them before their crimes could be committed.” The fairy holds the orb out to you. “Enough. You have been informed of the choice and of the consequences for the world, if not for yourself – that must remain a gamble and a choice of faith. Make your decision, mortal. Change the world or leave it unchanged. Touch the orb and will a new world to be, or bid me go.”

What would your choice be?

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Presenting the Weird

Fantasy storytelling is the art of presenting the weird in a way that feels real.

To some extent that’s true of most fiction. (The exceptions present the banal in a way that becomes interesting. I’ve never been good at that, though, nor inclined to become good at it.) It’s especially true of fantasy storytelling, though, more so than any other genre. Science fiction runs a close second, but even science fiction isn’t quite as weird as fantasy.

But here’s a curious thing. Sometimes fantasy storytelling of the past has become so successful in presenting the weird that, in the present, it has become not just real but commonplace. Hackneyed. Cliched. And hence pointless when it comes to telling a good fantasy story.

Keep in mind the etymology, original definition, and archaic meaning of the word “weird.” It can mean (and today often does mean) anything strange, unusual, or odd. Originally, though, the word “weird” had to do with fate or the Fates of Greek and Roman mythology. More recently, but still in the past, the word came to mean anything of an occult, magical, or uncanny nature, which of course makes it perfect to describe fantasy elements. By these older meanings of the word, fantasy is weird.

So the first step in presenting the weird is discovering it. How does one do that? It’s a matter of turning the imagination loose and not being satisfied with the world either as it is or, perhaps even worse, as someone else has already imagined it. At the same time, in order to be good fantasy, the weird one imagines needs to have mythic significance.

How does one discover the weird? There are two ways to do this. First one can imagine something that is wholly new and weird. This is quite difficult, however, and rare. Second, one can take something that has already been imagined and put it in a new context or give it a new twist or two. This is easier to attempt but less certain of success.

Either way, once something has been done a few times, it’s no longer weird (because it’s become part of the established fantasy genre) and one must seek elsewhere for weirdness.

Consider the vampire. When Bram Stoker wrote Dracula, vampires were weird; although they had been around in legends and myths for millennia, they had not found their way into popular fiction (in English anyway) prior to Stoker’s (ahem) rather badly-written Victorian-era vampire tale. He was breaking new ground, and established some conventions: vampires are bad guys; they drink blood; they have superhuman strength and awesome magical powers; they have certain vulnerabilities (sunlight, crosses, garlic, fire); they can turn humans into vampires. Thereafter, vampire stories with the same details could be written only a few times before the vampire became cliche and was no longer weird.

Since then, if one wishes to write a vampire tale, one must twist and turn the creature about so as to break, or at least bend, one or more of these conventions. For example, Anne Rice wrote stories from the vampire’s own point of view, so that vampires ceased to be the bad guys (in the sense of being antagonists). Stephanie Meyer in Twilight made the vampire a romantic figure. Jim Butcher in The Dresden Files introduced several different types of vampire, most of them departing sharply from the Dracula motif, and made one of them the half-brother of the main protagonist.

To do a little self-evaluation, my own novels have featured:

• Sorcerers living in the modern world, rising above and beyond the occult traditions through the effect of “deep-tier talismans,” and engaged in secret conspiracies to change the course of history, while struggling with one another over what direction that should take.
• Gods and goddesses and faerie-folk all of whom were once human; the deities are highly promiscuous and seek to transform humanity by seducing large numbers of them and creating children who are “god-sired” and “goddess-born.”
• Aliens that blew each other to extinction, and then used magic to reincarnate on Earth as human beings and continue their age-old struggle with our planet as the battleground.

The reader will have to  decide for himself or herself if any of that rises to the level of weird; I’m fairly satisfied myself.

Having discovered the weird, the next step is to present it in a way that feels real.

The weird does not feel weird to itself. Nor does it feel all that weird to those who are used to dealing with it. The ideal achievement is to create a story in which the reader is immersed in one of these two points of view and so finds that a part of the mind accepts the weirdness as ordinary and to be expected or even identified with, while another part in the background shrieks, marvels, gasps, or stands in awe of the truly bizarre and unexpected.

There’s another technique that’s sometimes used that I call the meathead perspective. This involves introducing a meathead, a person of fixed modern banal viewpoint who can serve as a foil and express disbelief, skepticism, denial, and downright blinkered stupidity in the face of the weird. You know the type: the dim-witted imagination-deprived dunderhead who insists, contrary to the evidence of his own senses, that there’s no such thing as magic or ghosts or vampires or gods or whatever; that the wardrobe can’t lead to another world; that those mental powers can’t be anything but primitive superstition; that the horde of zombies shambling in pursuit, immune to anything but a head shot, have to be just teenagers on drugs. The value of the meathead perspective is of course to say, in a rather hammer-handed way, that yes, it is real, and look where Stupid, Blind Skepticism gets people (captive of the White Witch, zapped and befuddled by mental powers, or horribly eaten alive). I can sympathize with the desire to portray meatheads in an unflattering light, but find myself uncomfortable with the meathead perspective and prefer to avoid it. Meatheads in my fantasy worlds may exist, but generally don’t come into the stories much. (The closest I ever got was Arnold Bittermint, Johnny’s lawyer in The Green Stone Tower, and although he was a meathead he didn’t play the usual meathead role.)

Rather, present the weird from its own point of view or that of those who accept its reality. Let the weirdness come through in description, dialogue, and action, shining in its own preternatural light, without having to tell the reader how weird it all is. If the job is done well, that should be obvious and require no elaboration.

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Musings on Various Things

A fantasy story is about strength: about the potential we all have to rise above normal human limits, to confront realities that are beyond the norm, to wield power and knowledge denied to ordinary mortals.

At the same time, though, any story at all is about weakness: about the flaws in our nature, our capacity for self-destruction or the destruction of what we love.

Put the two of these together and you have a whole message. We have the capacity to become greater than we are. We also have the capacity to ruin all of this potential and turn our abilities to cruelty, vengeance, pettiness, greed, power-lust, vanity, and shame.

***

Religious people get into quarrels when they focus on peripherals rather than essentials. They become sidetracked; if they did not, no quarrel would ensue. For example, consider the conflict between Muslims and Baha’is. The main point of dispute involves whether Bahá’u'lláh, the founder of the Baha’i Faith, was a prophet in the same sense as Muhammad or Jesus. He claimed to be and Baha’is believe he was; Muslims insist that Muhammad was the last prophet and there can be no more. This disagreement has resulted in the persecution and official murder of many Baha’is by Muslims and the governments of Muslim countries (especially Iran), but the correct answer is that it doesn’t matter. The teachings of Bahá’u'lláh as recorded in his writings must be judged for themselves, neither accepted nor rejected unquestioningly. If one is not able to make that judgment, neither is one able to understand a prophet’s words, which makes following those words useless. Bahá’u'lláh’s teachings (or those of Muhammad or Jesus or the Buddha or any other such person) are the proper subject of study. Focusing on his credentials is getting sidetracked.

The Baha’is themselves are often not much better. The Universal House of Justice engaged in, of all things, a copyright lawsuit alleging that a Baha’i sect that broke away from the main organizational line represented by the UHJ had no right to use the name or religious symbols of the faith. Is that petty or is that petty?

Organized religion is the bane of spirituality. It creates a structure for the exertion of power, and inevitably elevates people interested in power and status to positions of respect. One may ask, paraphrasing the words of Jesus, whether it is harder for a rich man or a powerful one to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The Baha’i Faith isn’t even supposed to have clergy! Obviously, that change in nomenclature is not proof against corruption.

The goal of genuine spirituality is for the seeker to become a prophet (or avatar or enlightened one or whatever term you prefer). A seeker who proclaims himself a follower of a prophet has at best announced he has not found what he seeks, and at worst that he has abandoned the quest, especially if he thinks the prophet has some special divinely-granted status that can’t be achieved by other people.

The Kingdom of Heaven will be realized on Earth when everyone is a prophet and no prophet is honored in particular.

***

In my current work in progress, Refuge, some of the protagonists are centuries old. At the same time, however, they started life as part of an advanced alien species living in a far more progressive society than anything on Earth. They have the advantage of many years of experience and accumulated wisdom, but are protected from the ailment that too often accompanies the old: fossilization and inability to adapt to change. The combination of the two is fun to play with, and I also think it suggests something about our situation. We are confronted with material circumstances that change daily, driven by advances in technology. As our circumstances change, so must our moral values, religious conceptions, and laws and institutions.

In a world like that, greater wisdom (or at least greater insight) is sometimes shown by the young than the old, because the old have preconceptions and rutted thought-patterns that block their ability to adapt. At the same time, the young are still foolish in all of the ways that young people have always been foolish. What’s the solution?

The only solution I can see is for people to maintain open minds and retain flexibility of thought and behavior into advanced years. Abandon the idea of “growing up.” Growing is good, but growing up implies an end to the process and if that happens one has become a fossil. Anything that puts the mind into a cage should be resisted. Fixed doctrine is the death of progress and, in a rapidly-changing world, a death sentence for civilization itself. And so again, organized religion reveals itself as a great evil.

***

I was a Pagan when Paganism was a loose community of seekers. I abandoned it when it started to look like an organized religion.

All Words are sacred and all prophets are true, until they reach the ears of the unenlightened and then they become false — indeed, typically they become the opposite of themselves. A prophet’s words from his mouth are living water. The same words coming from an organized religion, with convenient interpretations, are a cage made of the prophet’s stripped bones.

A prophet’s words have the power to move the heart. That power remains when the prophet is no longer alive to wield it, and it is taken up by the power-hungry who use it to secure their own positions and influence.

Once a prophet is dead, read his words only in secret. Never take advice from anyone claiming to be his follower. These are not guides. They are carrion-fowl.

***

We (by which I mean the human race) face a challenge to our survival created by our own inability to evolve. But in a way, this is a good thing, because our survival as a species is only of value to the extent that we are a good people, a blessing for the Earth and not a bane, happy and enlightened.

If we survive, that is what we will become. If we don’t, we will destroy ourselves and the universe will try again. Eventually someone will get it right.

Optimism is always possible if one takes a long view.

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Fantasy, Spirituality, and the Power of the Imagination (Part 2)

“For I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” A Portrait of Thomas Jefferson as Secretary of State. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The imagination is a dangerous thing to tyrants.

If you look at systems of control, ways to bind and shackle human will so that people will be cowed into serving the selfish interests of others, all of them involve suppressing and controlling the imagination. Two methods are used for this purpose, one affirmative, the other negative.

The affirmative method is to present powerful (but vetted and safe) images for the imagination to fix upon. “If you must imagine, imagine this,” the powers say, pointing to:

• Religious symbols
• Myths (with chosen interpretations)
• Flags and banners
• Patriotic stories
• Enemies of the faith or of the state

The negative method is to set boundaries on the imagination and threaten punishment for going across those boundaries. Sometimes the punishments are real and physical (jail time, concentration camps, execution, torture). Sometimes the punishments are themselves imaginary (hell). In a testament to the power of the imagination, the imaginary punishments can often be more effective than the real ones in shaping behavior, which is of course the whole point of punishment.

I had a recent experience that illustrated this process. A friend of mine who had expressed interest in this blog found it by doing a Google search, but was reluctant to read any of the posts. He spoke of how many hits the search found (I’ve verified that most of the hits are posts or pages from this blog), and how it was spread all over the place and I might find more readers if I paid attention to this and focused and consolidated. I had a hard time understanding what he was talking about at first.

“What do you mean, all over the place?” I said. “All of the posts on my blog are about just two subjects: spirituality and fantasy storytelling.”

Finally he expressed what he really meant: the fantasy part bothered him. Conjoining that with spirituality suggested sorcery to him, which scared him. In his case, the controls were applied well: he had become afraid of his own imagination, and dared not let it roam freely.

Imagination leads to questioning, to disobedience, to heresy, to defiance of authority. That’s why the powers that be, both secular and religious, hate and fear it and wish to keep it under strict control. If they fail to control your imagination, they will also fail to control your beliefs and your behavior — and that can lead to consequences which are terrifying to tyrants.

In fact, one could make the case that freedom in the physical world flows from freedom of the imagination, just as inventions and works of art are also always preceded by their imaginary counterparts. If you are free to imagine, then you will also be free to act. If you are not free to imagine, then you cannot be free to act, because you cannot imagine action, and if you cannot imagine it you cannot do it, either.

Spirituality, if it is genuine, is also free. It does not follow a formula. It does not conform to the dictates of any religion. It is not orthodox. True spirituality is prophecy, and all genuinely spiritual people are prophets of God (or of the gods, for One and Many are only metaphors and this envisioning is itself an act of free imagination). Prophets are those who have a powerful connection with the holy — whose god sense is wide awake — and whose imagination is free. A prophet is always a heretic; if orthodoxy were sufficient, there would be no need of a prophet, after all.

Thomas Jefferson famously wrote in a letter to a collateral ancestor of mine that “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” He was referring specifically to the clergy and their opposition to his run for the presidency, and his phrasing was apt, especially if we also recognize that the human imagination is a key feature of “the mind of man.”

And this, I believe, is a great gift that fantasy fiction can provide to us. It encourages us to think and imagine about spiritual matters outside the shackles of orthodoxy. It encourages us to play with the magical and the religious and the divine, without fear, without bonds, without limits. Tyrants fear this. For that reason alone, we should love it.

The same is true of crafted and invented new religion, although this, unlike fantasy, presents a danger of generating a new imprisoning orthodoxy, as I have seen happening within the Pagan community in recent years (which is the main reason I no longer call myself a Pagan). There are always those within a spiritual community who want power, and who justify their desire for power in terms of imposing order, or even of imposing peace (though such imposition always leads to conflict and frequently to violence, historically).

Perhaps the best solution is to join the two. When engaging in spiritual practice, always remember that what you are doing is creating or enacting myth, and that is an activity of fantasy storytelling. Always let your creativity run free. Let there be no such thing as orthodoxy. Let a hundred heretical flowers bloom. Let eternal hostility be sworn against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

And let no one place shackles on the imagination, ever again.

Fantasy, Spirituality, and the Power of the Imagination (Part 1)

Corcovado jesus (Photo credit: @Doug88888)

I had an epiphany today when reading a short, silly post on Google+ by an atheist that addressed Jesus-worshipers (Christians mostly, I’d imagine) and referred to the ostensible founder of their religion as “your imaginary friend who was never there for you.” After reading that and undergoing my epiphany, I decided to write this blog post on the power of the imagination.

The imagination is very powerful indeed, and because of this many people fear it and want to keep it contained and restrained. Because of that fear, and really for no other reason (as the idea is utterly preposterous on any logical level), many people mistakenly believe that the categories “imaginary” and “real” are mutually exclusive. They are not; in fact, everything in the “imaginary” category is also in the “real” category, although the reverse is not true. (That is to say, there are real things that are not imaginary, but there are no imaginary things that are not real.)

When we say that something is “real,” what do we mean?

There is more than one possible meaning to the word, actually. We may say that something is “real” to indicate that it is genuine: precisely what it pretends to be, not a counterfeit or a fake. We may also say that something is “real” to indicate that it is substantial, consequential, in existence. These two meanings are completely distinct; something can be “real” in the second sense but not in the first. For example, a painter might create a fake copy of the Mona Lisa. If he did, his copy would be “real” in the second sense; it would be a material object, take up space, be composed of substances, have consequence. But it would not be “real” in the first sense: it would not be the real Mona Lisa.

It’s the second sense of “real” that I’m concerned with here, not the first.  By calling Jesus an “imaginary friend,” the fellow whose post provoked my epiphany clearly intended to imply that Jesus was not real, and just as clearly he did not mean the “genuine” sense of real. (Actually that would be a sounder criticism; I doubt very much whether the Jesus imagined and invoked by most Christians bears a lot of resemblance to the prophetic fellow who wore that name a couple of thousand years ago in Judea. But never mind.) He meant that Jesus does not exist. (At least not in the present day.)

Now this isn’t an uncommon assertion as far as it goes; atheists define themselves in terms of the nonexistence of other people’s gods. What provoked my epiphany was not the idea conveyed  but rather the turn of phrase used to convey it: he called Jesus an imaginary friend.

And he meant to imply by this that Jesus is not real.

And that means that his thinking hinged on claiming that the imagination itself is not real!

And that, dear readers, is the very blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, the unforgiveable sin, the abyss of unknowing and blindness, the emasculation of the soul, the evisceration of art, and attempted genocide against all that defines us as human beings, nay, as animals and not plants!

Am I being too harsh? I don’t believe so, no. Look around you. Unless you happen to be camped out in the wilderness, all or most of what you see is made, directly or indirectly, by human beings. That means that every bit of it existed first in the imagination, before it was made manifest on the physical plane.

Who excels at any creative endeavor, be it artistic, commercial, or scientific? Those plentifully endowed with imagination or those who harshly suppress it as not real?

Look at the greatest scientists of history. I don’t mean your average scientist. The typical scientist is a plodder, a mere number-cruncher engaged in cautious, unimaginative research on behalf of a corporation or a university. Such people are never in the news, never associated with any great discoveries (because they make none), and when they die, are remembered only by their friends and family. What distinguishes a great scientist from the common pedestrian sort is nothing else but imagination — and the courage to follow the imagination into unlikely territory, again and again, until they find they have imagined something true.

The same goes for artists, rather more obviously. Now, granted a scientist must also exercise methodical rigor and mathematical precision, while an artist must exercise craft with the medium of his art and a willingness to revise and correct. But these latter qualities define a mediocre artist or scientist; they set all scientists or artists, good or poor, off from non-scientists and non-artists. What distinguishes the great from the mediocre in either pursuit is imagination.

What, in the end, does “real” even imply? Does it not imply that the thing in question can be experienced (at least potentially)? It may be seen, heard, felt, smelled, tasted. Well, the imaginary can be experienced as well. In fact, imaginary entities are not uncommonly more compelling in their immediate reality than anything in the non-imaginary world competing for attention.

Which brings us back to Jesus, the imaginary friend. Does that phrase describe Jesus as he is worshiped by those who worship him? Indeed it does. Whether the historical human Jesus actually rose from the dead and continues to be alive (or even whether he existed in the first place) is irrelevant to that question; even if there was a Jesus and he is still alive, the fact remains that the only experience the believer has of him is imaginary in nature. There is no way to verify that the imaginary experience of Jesus encountered in prayer is of Jesus as he is today in his risen form.

But just the same, it does not follow that this imaginary friend was “never there” for the worshiper. Of course he was there! An imaginary friend is always there — unless one becomes afraid of one’s imagination and suppresses it, condemning oneself to a life of mediocrity.

The imagination, particularly when one is imagining something cosmic like a deity (or a man who was a deity, or even a man who became a deity), has power to move mountains — at least inward ones. The imagination comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. It inspires, awakens, and teaches. In the case of the believer, the imaginary Jesus has a powerful impact on his or her peace of mind and behavior. And that means that, although imaginary, he is very real indeed.

I shall have more to say on this subject next week.

Birthright

Icon depicting the First Council of Nicaea. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Choice is our birthright. It’s one we fear to claim.

Exactly where this fear comes from is a bit of a riddle. Perhaps it’s a fruit of childhood dependence, on the habit of deferring to parents to make decisions. As we mature, we take on the task of choosing in more and more things, but by the time that happens we have become so accustomed to letting others make our choices that we still look for reassurance from parents or parent-substitutes, someone or something to tell us that we have made the right decision. Maybe that’s it or maybe it’s something more cosmic for which the process of biological and cultural maturation is a microcosmic metaphor.

Regardless of where it comes from, though, it certainly happens. We believe things not because the evidence tells us they are so, but because some authority — a doctor, a professor of science, the president, a minister, a movement leader — says they are so.

This is more true in the area of religion and spirituality than any other area of life. (It’s equally a mistake, equally a sad abandonment of our birthright, in any area.) Spiritual experience is murky, difficult to understand, and impossible to put into words in any straightforward fashion. It’s also possibly the most compelling experience possible to a human mind. That combination makes it a great opportunity for the power-hungry to deceive the innocent.

Every body of religious doctrine consists of two parts. One part is an affirmation of spiritual experience and an attempt to put it into an intellectual framework that can be accepted and believed. A religious says to a person who has stood before the face of the cosmos, “No, you aren’t crazy. It really happened. And it means this.” The ability to provide this service is the reason why religions have believers. It’s the reason why the remainder of the body of religious doctrine is able to deceive and enslave.

The other part is an assertion of power. It’s an attempt to make the religious believer surrender his birthright and accept the religious organization, its teachings, and its scripture as the decision-maker. To do this, the religious organization uses doctrinal tricks such as a claim that its sacred writings are divinely inspired and infallible, that its own organization and hierarchy are sacred and established by divine authority, and that unbelievers will be punished by God or the Gods or the cosmic principles in some way, while believers in good standing will be rewarded. These being imaginary punishments and rewards, they can be made extravagant far beyond the materially possible: cruel torment going on forever and ever, or unending perfect bliss. At the same time, though, when given the power to do so religious organizations have not proven shy about using the resources of the state to dispense temporal punishments and rewards which, while lesser in scope, are more immediately effective.

Religion, like government, always attracts those who are interested in exerting power over others. In the past, and in some places to this day, religion and government have been partners. At other times they have been rivals. But the secular authority and the high priesthood have always recognized one another as kin, whether they strove together or against one another, and rightly so.

On a collective level the only way to reduce the danger posed by religion is to separate it from the state, so that no religion can be favored by the state and no religion can make use of the state’s authority. That goes a long way towards de-fanging the serpent. It leaves religion in possession of its more fundamental power, though, which is at root a power to persuade and deceive. If there’s a collective solution to that, it lies in making sure the playing field is crowded: that each religion must seek adherents in competition with many others, so that no one is isolated with only one doctrinal message available.

On an individual level, the answer lies in remembering who has the real final authority: we do. Each of us does. And remember as well, that we contend not with the sacred ones, but with ordinary human beings who want to convince us that they have the answers, and that we should follow them.

Remember that in questioning a scripture, we are not asserting our own judgment over that of God, but asserting it over the claims of mere mortals about what they say is God’s word. (Or, as I put it more sarcastically once in a discussion with a Bible absolutist, “No, I don’t think I’m smarter than God. I just think I’m smarter than you.”) It is in the end our own judgment, and that is our duty as well as our right.

Do I trust a council of bishops called by an emperor for political purposes to be able to tell divine inspiration when they see it? No, I don’t. And therefore I feel no compulsion to accept their claim that certain early Christian writings out of all the hundreds that were generated between the crucifixion and the Council of Nicaea are divinely inspired.

Do I believe that a prophet who was also a political leader, motivated to unite a collection of fractious, backward tribes and bring them into civilization, always exercised pure judgment in what he presented to them as the word of God? No, I don’t. And therefore I feel no compulsion in regard to the Quran any more than the Bible.

But those are only two instances of a general rule. In the end, the deferral of judgment to outside authority is a cop-out and the claim of it is a lie. In the end, each of us has the right to make that judgment for ourselves. In the end, the good that is found in each body of doctrine must be separated from the bad; the valid metaphors and models for religious experience and the profound expressions of myth must be separated from the assertions of power and authority.

In the end, the only true religion is the one you craft for yourself, helped by many, but dictated by none.

There Can Never Be an Enchanted Blaster

English: How Sir Bedivere Cast the Sword Excalibur into the Water. Illustration from: Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d’Arthur. London: Dent, 1894. Français : How Sir Bedivere Cast the Sword Excalibur into the Water (littéralement « Comment Sir Bedivere jeta l’Epée Excalibur dans l’eau). Illustration tirée de Le Morte d’Arthur par Sir Thomas Malory, London: Dent, 1894. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve been thinking some more about contemporary fantasy, and about what might be considered a science fiction-fantasy melange. Futuristic fantasy, we could call it: a fantasy story set in a future world, with projected advances in technology and speculation on the social and political changes that follow from them — along with fantasy elements. Classic fantasy, contemporary fantasy, futuristic fantasy — not a bad classification system!

How can futuristic fantasy work?

It’s been done to a degree, although to maintain a sense of consistency and realism magic becomes psychic power while gods and super-beings become anything from incredibly advanced alien races to psychic projections of the deep unconscious mind to personifications of cosmic principles. Which, of course, simply represents a changing of names for the same phenomena. Magic, gods, quasi-humans, and monsters can all be incorporated into a science fiction setting.

What about magical items, though?

Well, magical items can work, too, but one must recognize the implications of modern manufacturing techniques, which render some of the milieu surrounding the magical items of classic fantasy anachronistic.

Consider a magical weapon such as Excalibur. Excalibur was a marvelous sword gifted to King Arthur by the mysterious Lady of the Lake, a super-being or a goddess. The sword itself was a wonderful blade that would never break and could cut through heavy armor, but the scabbard was even more astounding, for as long as Arthur wore it he could lose no blood from any wound he took in battle. When Arthur was defeated, he returned the sword and scabbard to the Lady of the Lake (with some difficulty), who would keep it for the next champion, or for Arthur’s return.

This works fine in a classic fantasy context. From the time when people learned how to make steel until the gunpowder age, advances in military technology that made much difference in the way war was fought could be listed on a single sheet of paper. The stirrup and the longbow were significant, but despite this a match between a Roman legion (which had neither) and a fifteenth-century English army (with both) would be a difficult battle to call. Put either one up against a twenty-first century force with modern weapons, though, and the result would be a slaughter. If Arthur were to return today, bearing the wondrous Excalibur, he would be hopelessly outclassed.

In classical fantasy, a magical weapon that retains its usefulness for ages and can be preserved by mysterious entities, or lost in an ancient tomb, waiting for the hero to rediscover it and bear it to glory, makes some sense. In futuristic fantasy it makes none. Not only is the weapon sure to become obsolete in a few decades at most, but there’s also the change to the way things are manufactured in modern times and beyond. Modern weapons are mass-produced. There may be a lot of precision and care that goes into them; they may be finely-machined and expertly crafted; with nanotechnology or even highly computerized manufacturing they may even be individualized — but they are still made in large numbers for use by large numbers of warriors. But magic cannot be mass-produced. Bear in mind the meta-laws of magic: magic is an inborn talent, it requires training and education, it exacts a price, and it’s dangerous. If it doesn’t comply with these rules, then it isn’t magic. If it’s something the masses can make use of, it’s a form of technology instead.

For this reason, combined with the fact that in a high-tech world technology advances rapidly, there can never be an enchanted blaster. Oh, to be sure, a wielder of the magic arts could perform difficult and time-consuming rituals, risking life, blood, and soul by invoking dangerous cosmic powers, to create a high-tech weapon with enhanced accuracy, augmented destructive power, or an aura that instills unreasoning terror in foes, but what would be the point? Wouldn’t it make more sense to create an amulet with the same powers, which would then enhance one’s combat abilities with all weaponry — including the Mark IV blaster coming out from the labs next week, which is far superior to the Mark III currently in the enchanter’s possession?

Magic items can certainly exist in a contemporary or futuristic fantasy, but for reasons like the above they will necessarily be different in some respects from the magic items of classic fantasy.

This is just one of the things to consider when mingling fantasy elements with a science-fiction world, or even with the modern world.