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BEVAN THOMAS

~ Writer, editor, storyteller

BEVAN THOMAS

Tag Archives: religion

The Importance of Belief in Fantasy

10 Friday Dec 2010

Posted by Bevan Thomas in Essay

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fantasy, h. p. lovecraft, horror, occult, religion

In his introduction to The Supernatural Omnibus, an anthology of supernatural stories by various authors, Montague Summers claims “Ghost stories told by one who believes in and is assured of the reality of apparitions and hauntings… will be found to have a sap and savour that the narrative of the writer who is using the supernatural as a mere circumstance to garnish his fiction must inevitable lack and cannot attain.” In other words, the good Mr. Summers argues that in order to write good supernatural fiction, the author in question must believe in the supernatural, or his work will lack the required “oomph.”

Conversely, the horror author H. P. Lovecraft, in his article “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” feels that the genius of fantasy authors such as Algernon Blackwood is sometimes marred by “the flatness of benignant supernaturalisms, and a too free use of the trade jargon of modern ‘occultism.’” Blackwood was indeed an occultist, a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a secret society that included such luminaries as fellow horror writer Arthur Machen, poet W. B. Yeats, and self-proclaimed prophet Aleister Crowley. Lovecraft goes further to argue that someone who believes in the supernatural has difficulties writing about it in fiction because he is liable to construct supernatural effects based on what the author believes them to be true, and not necessarily what would create the best emotional effect in the story. Furthermore, to an occultist, the supernatural is often perceived as mundane, a normal part of human experience. Though Lovecraft counts such authors as Machen and Blackwood amongst his favourites, he still perceives their spiritual beliefs as flaws in their art.

So, Mr. Summers argues that a fantasy author should be a believer, Mr. Lovecraft argues that he should not. Before we go any further, it must be pointed out that Mr. Summers was a Catholic clergyman who claimed to believe in literal vampires, werewolves, and witches. Mr. Lovecraft, on the other hand, was an atheist of the most virulent sort who denied any possibility of the existence of God or other higher powers and who scoffed at anyone who did believe. So it is likely that neither of the two were quite unbiased about the subject.

Who is correct? As in many things, they are both correct, up to a point. As with all writers of all fiction, a fantasy writer needs to be believe in his world, his characters. Even if they are not literally real, the ideas and emotions behind them need to have a reality behind them. A person need not literally believe in ghosts to write a ghost story, but he must believe in the truth of what the ghosts mean to them: do they embody the coldness of death in contrast with the vibrancy of life? Are they symbols of loss or revenge? Perhaps a hope or love that transcends the grave. Without the author’s belief in the fantastical as a potent symbol, the story falls flat.

As for Lovecraft’s criticisms about authors who are theists – well, certainly some fantasy books have suffered because the author forced his own beliefs upon the world in ways that were not thematically appropriate, but there are numerous supernatural tales by theists that superbly blend together images of pure fancy with things that they actually believe. C. S. Lewis didn’t believe in literal Greek gods anymore than J. R. R. Tolkien believed in elves and ring-wraiths. That didn’t stop them from putting those elements into their fiction; they entwined together their spirituality and their imagination to create powerful stories that would have been much less effective without one of those two elements.

Fantasy fiction, at its best, is the fiction of metaphors and symbols that present ideas in a mythic and emotionally charged fashion. Anyone can explore their beliefs about the universe through stories of the supernatural, though a person’s beliefs certainly affect the result. H. P. Lovecraft created a horror universe in which God is a mindless amoeba at the centre of all reality, the figurehead of a pantheon of cruel, inhuman deities, and a potent metaphor for an atheist’s belief in how little the universe cares about humans and how wrong existing religions are about everything. Likewise, Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion series revolves around numerous reincarnations of an immortal warrior dedicated to freeing the universe from the yoke of the gods of Law and Chaos so that humanity can forge its own glorious destiny. Though these two cosmologies are very different from each other, both are powerful, engaging, and ultimately atheistic. Contrast them with the theological science-fantasy of Madeleine L’Engle or C. S. Lewis, in which resplendent angels dance in the glory of a universe that is permeated with the resplendent joy and the love that the Divine Creator has towards all Creation. Or of course there is the occult fiction of Grant Morrison, Alan Moore, or the aforementioned Blackwood or Machen, which draws upon their own very personal, idiosyncratic beliefs. And then there’s Neil Gaiman, a man fascinated by all mythologies, but unable to devote himself to any one faith; and who’s writing explores figures from a multitude of faiths: Christian angels rub shoulders with Norse gods and dream kings, and all are treated with equal respect. The universe of each of these stories is shaped by the author’s beliefs.

The existential horror of H. P. Lovecraft, the transcendent joy of C. S. Lewis, the questing spirit of Neil Gaiman. All of these and more have a place within supernatural fiction. All of them have power.

 

-Bevan Thomas

Intellectual Atheist, Emotional Spiritualist

05 Sunday Dec 2010

Posted by Bevan Thomas in Self-Reflection

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atheism, faith, morality, myself, religion

I suppose I’m a post-theist. I had a mystic experience in my first year of university, where I felt a presence all around me that permeated my body and connected me to the cosmos. God was within me. I was a pantheist, someone who believed that the universe itself has an underlying sentience, an “aliveness.” The universe is God, God is the universe, neither can be separated. Of course this is not so much a religion as a general statement of belief without any real framework. After a while, I tried to find a framework for it.

I dabbled in Neo-Paganism in my first couple of years of university, as so many other individuals of my demographic have done, though I eventually lost interest in it. As much as I love mythology and supernatural fiction, I’m ultimately unable to believe in a plurality of deities or that people are able to command the universe with a few well-placed chants and arcane gestures. I was a non-denominational pantheist for a while after I left that particular system, with the occasional experience of my soul being entered by the presence of God, like a cup being filled with water. In time, I discovered the Quakers, the Society of Friends; a religion that matched both my spiritual experiences and my personal sensibilities. For a while I happily prayed in silence every Sunday morning with the community of Friends, as we each opened ourselves up to the divine and waited for the Holy Spirit to bid us speak.

And suddenly I stopped going.

It wasn’t because I felt disillusioned with the Quakers, as I still have a lot of respect and love for their beliefs. It wasn’t because I felt the experience wasn’t useful to me, for I felt a great sense of peace attending the ceremonies, and the religion really helped me deal with the sorrow after the death of my maternal grandfather. But I realized that my mystical experience, those feelings of oneness with the universe, those feelings that existence loves me as dearly as a mother and as passionately as a lover, they didn’t prove that God exists. Logically, such feelings were more likely an eccentricity of my brain, an idle musing of my mind, and that to all logical the universe is impersonal and uncaring in a general sense, even if certain particulars could care about you very much. As much as I may respect and even love a belief system, I am unable to attend a religious service if I do not believe in the deity it invokes. It just makes me feel like a fraud.

And here I am today. I do not believe in God. Though I continue to be fascinated by religion, mysticism, all the rest, intellectually I am an agnostic who stands close to the atheist side of the pole. I believe strongly in truth: clean, objective truth, and cannot believe in something unless I feel that it is True. Many people have argued that this is simplistic and unrealistic; that certain things are true in different ways and that we have no way of knowing unconditionally that something is true, and so it’s better to focus on what view of the world is useful, and less what view is “True.” I concede that these people may well be correct, but I cannot bring myself to think like that. It’s not how I view the world. Some things are true, some things are false, and I want to know which ones are which.

Now, if that was all I felt, then I wouldn’t be too different from a lot of other people in the world. However, though intellectually I’m agnostic, emotionally I still react on very spiritual terms. In particular, I believe in the existence of sin, at least with regards to myself. “Sin” is a particular perspective on “badness” as it carries with it the idea of taint. There is a right way to behave, a particular ideal you should aspire to, and when you sin, you move away from that ideal, you damage it like a person chipping away at a marble statue. Even if the chips are small, with enough of them the statue will collapse. I believe there is a particular kind of person I’m supposed to be, something the universe wants me to be, and I continually fall short of it as I waste the time that has been granted me. The really unfortunate result of a non-theist believing this is that I feel judged by reality, but there’s nothing for me to appeal to. A Christian may feel corrupt and sinful, but at least he can pray to Jesus to forgive his sins.

I wish I could believe again. I wish I could believe in the Lord who is father and mother, sibling and lover, who is the whole universe, and who manifests with unconditional love and understanding. “I know everything that you have done and everything that you have failed to do, and I forgive you and give you my love and joy.” But I can’t. I still can’t.

-Bevan Thomas


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