The Metaphysics of Fiction - The Necessity of Mythic Fiction for the Survival of Nations and Civilizations

Do Books Have Energy?

To say my thinking has been changing these past two years is the understatement of the century. Before, I wrote Fantasy simply because I liked it. There was no real thought behind it. My stories didn’t feel as intuitive as they do now. There was something… almost abstract about it. I can hardly explain it. To look on my first attempts is to look on a works that one of my friends called ‘embarrassing’ recently as he enthusiastically compared them to Crown of Blood which he called ‘great’ when we exchanged a call.

Now earlier the other day,

Librarian of Celaeno

wrote an essay on Christian Nationalism. An essay I heartily encourage people to read, as it analyses the particular nature of Greece’s nationalism during the Medieval period along with how Christianity operated within Ireland. The main thrust of his thesis is that Christianity tends to mould itself and reshape itself to the needs of a particular civilization even as it encourages them in some manner to create.

Tolkien called it ‘sub-creation’ and regarded it as an attempt to imitate the Creator. This is a very important theme of his essays and work, and it is something I wholeheartedly agree with though I’d say that there is more to writing than prayer as there is meditation and union with the heavens that takes place in particular with the greatest of Genres (Fantasy or Mythic Fiction if you will).

But there’s three people whom I’ve recently contact who’ve reshaped some of my thinking. Now my thinking about the Genre has already been undergoing immense change but because of

Donn Harper Jr.

I’ve come to look on the Celts as a very unique and strange people in this world. Speaking to

The Starfire Codes

involved talk during our podcast of how every story has its own ‘energy’ it’s own ‘Metaphysics’ to be exact.

And in his most recent essay

The Black Sun Archives

spoke of this.

In his words he describes the writing of the Mythic as something of a form of rebellion against the age in which an author lives. His words stood out tome as always even as I viewed them with a sense of recognition as correct and also a slight small amount of disagreement.

The disagreement stems from the fact that I don’t think that it is always a rebellion. Homer was indeed rebelling against his age. Virgil was not. He was personifying it and reshaping it in a way to fit with a grand Hymn worthy of his people. There have thus been times when great Mythopoeic works act as a kind of rebellion against the age and other times it personifies it. It comes to reshape everyone’s perception of it.

This is integral.

But it does beg the question; what is a Mythic Great Romance’s role in the current age. It goes without saying that the Modern Age has its conveniences, but it also has its massive problems. The chief most problems are spiritual and metaphysical in nature.

We have been in the words of Black Sun Archives spiritually ‘gelded’ which is to say castrated of our Metaphysical manhoods. And this is somewhat indeed the case since the onset of Modernity which has ever sought to disenchant the world and divide it. It has sought continuously the undermining of all peoples within the individual nations we live in.

Globalism for all its claims to bring people together, seeks always to erase people’s individual natures and spirits. It crushes beneath its weight all. It regards all as exchangeable pieces. What is the difference between a Frenchman and Englishman? Or an African and a Celt? Or a Slav and someone Chinese? Or a Korean and an Irishman? It seeks to do this even as it seeks to undermine the masculinity and femininity of each and every man, woman and child that it touches.

It is the fire which devours all within its path; destroying and eating and creating nothing. It is not the sacred or purging fire which are ever natural and much-needed when the forest has grown far too wild for its own good and needs renewal. It is a fire without rebirth, and a flame that is corrupted.

Man was never meant to live in so vast a world and so small a world. By this I mean that he was never meant to feel so small, and insignificant, cut off from his spiritual Father and cut off from the world around him. He was never meant to be a replaceable commodity for some line on a graph.

The reason this must be said is that people should be the GOAL not the means.

Man is sacred. Man is beautiful.

Those who say otherwise wish to deface the nature of our species. Sure, we can be ugly and evil, but we can aspire after more than just that.

But on this point it must be stated that certainly since Globalism set in, we’ve been debased, cut off and left in a world that seems somehow strange to us, as though we could once hear and have now grown deaf, or we could see and now we are blind.

This is why Fantasy/Mythic Fiction is so crucial; it is meant to uplift us. It is meant to light the world around us. It is meant to re-introduce into our world Enchantment and beauty, it is meant to Enchant and restore awe because it is ultimately not only a prayer for the people of a tribe but a defence of them and serves as validation of their glory.

In essence it is all about Exceptionalism and ‘Manifest Destiny’ so to speak. Aragorn is a character who speaks of, just as Gandalf, Frodo and Samwise of the Manifest Destiny of the English. Just as surely as I hope Fealandvil, Alfrikir, le Sieur David, Plouquenet, Bardulf, Wolffish and Conan the Knight do for France, Scotland and the Norse.

But when doing this, it is also an act in which someone is imbuing something of themselves into a work.

The point I’m driving at is that there’s something of Tolkien that survived in his work. Something of the Metaphysical nature, so that I’ve begun to ponder if maybe one can read something of the man in the works of literature he imparted to the world. So that one could look at it as part of the reason his works are great is because he was himself great.

Fiction is not simply a window to the soul though, but a window to the Divine. Some may well laugh and mock the idea of the Transcendent. But it cannot be denied that there’s something different in and of the Mythic sort of literature. Fantasy isn’t just simply a word, it isn’t something that fundamentally works on the same level as other stories do.

They have their own nature but the reason this one is the greatest is because it connects the most closely with the Divine. It is the ‘Spirit of Truth’ after all, and what is Truth to Catholics and Christians? Thinking about things from this perspective but also the fact that every few centuries or decades in some cases, there’s an outburst of creativity that surges forward and one sees a Great Romance spring to life.

Always it is a great work of Fantasy, as it is that best defines a nation and people. It is these stories that best convey the will and spirit of an author and also of a people and nation. Think now to Homer and his epics, were those not ancestors to our present Great Romances? Or Luo Guanzhong and his Romance of the Three Kingdoms? And what of the magnificent Journey to the West?

The fact is that they always looked to the past and looked also to the Heavens. How many of them wrote with the idea of someone across from them? Few if any. The fact is that Luo Guanzhong was writing yes for a Chinese audience, but he was also writing with the ancients in mind. Because to him they were in some ways still living, and breathing people in a manner of speaking at least on a spiritual, metaphysical level.

That said, there’s something of Guanzhong in his depiction of Liu Bei, Cao Cao and all the rest. This is his legacy, the inheritance he left to others so that in a lot of ways the China of to-day regards itself not simply as the heir of Liu Bang the founder of the Han dynasty, but also that of Guanzhong.

The England of to-day is as much heir to Shakespeare and Tolkien as it is heir to the likes of Aethelstan. The trouble though in England’s case as everyone will tell you is that they are not ruled by those who have that integral sense of fidelity towards the people as the people at the helm and in the publishing industries do not have a sense of what lies above them!

In reality writers of Great Romances have always been as the Flying Hussars charging the hordes of Arabia down in the fields outside Vienna! They are people who make themselves the spiritual equivalents of the likes of those men who charged the fields in Kyushu and along the coast of Honshu when the Mongols invaded Japan.

And why shouldn’t they?

We authors of Mythic works are supposed to be cultural and theological shock-troopers. Our works bolsters our civilization, it harnesses its ancient forces and its oldest ideas and values and acts to funnel them or otherwise re-infuse them back into the culture.

Always and forever since 1945 people have proclaimed that there are no new ideas, forgetting that it is not the idea itself but the manner in which it is told that matters. Also they forget that there are always new ideas, also that finds its way into the civilization the problem is that people have forgotten the roots of their cultures.

They’ve been taught to shun tradition and to atomize themselves and to cease looking up to the stars, looking to the sun and the heavens for guidance. They have turned away from anything not themselves. Individualism was never a concern for the ancients because they were inherently individualistic and collectivist by nature. They knew that the individual was an extension of the tribe and the tribe of the individual.

But always the role of the poet who could sew together the fabric of their ancient lore, their ancient traditions and tastes together into a new poem and song that might honour their chieftain and people was a man treated with dignity. Among the Celts and the Japanese in particular he was someone who was given an honoured place, and treated with favour.

Why was this? Because they understood that a Civilization doesn’t survive on just meat and wine. It must have ideas beyond itself. It must look to the past and the heavens to survive. Because a people without a past have no present and no future as it has been said. To which I shall add; a people without a past don’t deserve to have a present or a future for they have nothing to offer except parasitically devouring all around them.

What was once understood also once upon a time was that the artist, the poet who forges together the grand narratives of a Mythic epic is someone who is a conduit. He isn’t merely the author of his own stories, he is an instrument of the Civilization but more than that of the forces of nature that seek to coax an epic from him.

The Instrument

So is the Epic the instrument by which the Author lives forever? Is it his tool? Or is he it’s tool? Dan Krynn has proposed numerous times that the author is the literal canvas of sorts of the Epic, that it sings itself into existence through him. This is an idea consistent with the way Sculptors think, as they tend to say that a stone will call for how it wishes him to chisel and carve it into shape.

If one considers a work of song or literature as something akin to a stone needing chiselling it means that the Author is little more than an instrument. He is naught more than a tool of some otherworldly force that wishes to engrave into existence an idea or a tale. Beethoven is a good example of this with regards to Music.

However, there is something more than some Divine force here I think. There are the Metaphysics of a people, the blood of the tribe that calls for a tale.

We have seen this with Texas and Ireland when Robert E. Howard a man who was proud of both his Texan roots but also those he shared with Ireland, came to create his stories. He created Kull first, only to become dissatisfied, same happened to Morn, then to Solomon Kane until at last he came to Conan the Cimmerian. So that one must ask was it that the Irish-Texan people needed Conan? Exactly what is Conan then?

Is he the Cimmerian of the stories, or is he given the Archetype also Conn of the 100 Battles? Is he also Gilgamesh, and Herakles and so on? A figure that recurs throughout the world’s myths and comes out when needed. In this case he’d recur as a Texan-Irish icon who steps forward from the storm-twisted and battered lands of Cimmeria into those of Aquilonia, grim-faced and laughing and slaughtering.

This means that not only is there something profoundly ancient about the Genre but that when one dabbles with Art especially that of a Mythic sort one is dabbling with forces beyond one’s ken. It is something that many of my former peers would mock and sneer at, disbelievers of everything as they are.

Yet there’s something there, something beneath the surface that calls. Just as there’s something binding about epics, such as that of Tolkien. They tend to burst forth as though coming out of the earth not unlike a fox from its den, or a whale from the sea, or a Flying Hussar or French Knight or Paladin upon an enemy of Christendom.

It happens suddenly and from nowhere, to bring and rally people together so that it is my view that there can be no ‘Nationalism’ without an epic, a song to rally around. Because why would people care about Germany if it wasn’t for the magnificence and grandeur of Beethoven and the haunting beauty of Parzival? What of England, can we honestly say we’d care about it if it were not for Shakespeare and Tolkien? And what of China or Japan? Would anyone care about them if it were not for the Journey to the West, Romance of the Three Kingdoms and in the latter’s case Genji Monogatari, Heike Monogatari and Yoshikawa’s Musashi?

The Epic Myth brings people together, rallies them and binds them together. The Mythic tale is suppose to be remember a liturgic piece, one that awes its people and sings to them of their individual glory and greatness.

Tolkien’s Legendarium is enjoyable and beautiful. But is it dedicated to France? Of course not. Is it dedicated to Germany? Never. It is a love letter to England. To love it is to love England on some level. To love the Hour of the Dragon is to love Texas & Ireland I’d argue, same with Lord Dunsany’s tales and Ireland.

The song, the epic plays a role. Those nations without one are the poorer for it. They lack some integral element to them. I know some might say that for example; ‘France already has Arthurian epics, the ‘Matter de France’ and Dumas and many others’ to which I’ll say, ‘yes absolument’ but I will ask you this; when was the last Great Romance of France? When was the last Great Romance of Scotland? What of Germany? Or Poland? Spain? Rome? Japan?

They all must have one to not only re-affirm old values and ideas but also act to reinvigorate a people. These stories come from deep within the blood of these people and from their collective spirits.

Myth Versus Modernity

This is the main idea from BSA’s essay I wished to come out in support of (if you haven’t already read his excellent essay do please do so). In it he refers to how Modernity and Myth cannot go hand in hand and he’s right about that.

To which I’ll add one further detail; Modernity has long been at war with the Myth. Look at Rings of Power. It was about destroying the Myths of Tolkien.

So that one can only conclude that these two things are irretrievably exclusive from one another. Modernity is something which as an age seeks to destroy the Myths of all individual tribes and peoples. It is why it has sought to undermine and destroy us and grind us down with weird neurotic illnesses and spiritual scars and ‘Metaphysically Gelding’ us.

There exists however a cure for Modernity. A cure for the ‘Gelding’ as BSA puts it.

That cure is pure Mythic magic, as it is a sort of Magic. It may not be the sort that

Charlotte Pendragon

practices but it is one nonetheless. it is the magic of poetry and song. It is the magic of Mythic works that uplift and bind us together in Wonder. For it is Wonder given form in the shape of words. It is one that has an energy about it.

It is meant to counter the strange spell that’s been cast on the world with the advent of Modernity. It calls for us to look backwards, not forwards.

This is why notions of progress, of universalism do not fit. They cannot because they are antithetical to humanity as a whole, as human beings aren’t blank slates. A Celt is immensely different by nature in a lot of ways as mentioned above from Germans, Slavs, Italians, Arabs, Africans, Asians and so on. Those who believe in the blank slate ideas are people who as a whole I’d argue despise humanity.

The Mythic is meant to counter the Modern. It calls us back to the primitive, to the ancient Wonder of the world. It is meant to be the new Stupor Mundi, the Great Wonder of the World in a fashion. It is created not in a vacuum but does come from seemingly nowhere only to explode to life with a zeal and energy all its own.

Myths are like living organisms just as nations are. They have a life-cycle, and therefore it is high time there are more Myths brought about in this world.

It is why I rail so ardently against Martin’s works, and even Rowling’s as they sought to peel away and tear at the notion of Myths. They deconstructed and subverted, so that they have left nothing of themselves alive, because they are like painted sepulchres all pretty on the outside but full of dead things inside. What was never alive can never take form and live.

Yet Myths of the sort that Tolkien, Howard and so many others have written live still to this day. They’ve not yet grown old, not yet aged away and passed on. They still have a magic and Wonder all their own.

So that the more recent artist and author ought not be one who seeks to stamp out tradition but to elevate it and sing to it and of it. They ought be people who look on the works of the eternal, of the ancients, wonder and seek to add to it. Literature is a long and varied thing and if you’re lucky as Robin Williams once said, you’ll be called to contribute a verse or two.

In a lot of ways because of this, it isn’t that Shakespeare is simply someone who lived during the Tudor period but that he was ‘Father of the Nation’ in a manner of speaking as how many went on to read his works and know his words better than those of their fathers? Is this not the hope and goals of the Mythic-painter? To see his words held up and to become something of a literary ‘pater patriae’?

If Modernity has levelled all the old mountains, smashing down Shakespeare, tearing asunder Scott, Shelley, Dickens, Chaucer, Beowulf and so many others it is for Tolkien then to create a new Mountain. If it has flooded the fields of France where Dumas, Roland, Hugo and so many others once resided is it not the duty of some other to come along and to create a Mountain, one with mountain-water and game to succour its people with and provide shade for them to rest?

Energy of the most Spiritual sort is part of it. But in the Mythic Romance one may well find that all the old traditions, plains, fields, customs, beliefs, folklore, faith, ideas, philosophies and the like are reborn.

This is why the Metaphysics and notion of the Author’s energy of which I speak is not something that can be reconciled with the Modern, with the Liberalism and with ideas such as a ‘Universal Human’. Because this ‘Universal Human’ or Nietzsche’s Last Man as we should call it, der letzte Mensch in Deutsch is an abhorrent creature, an abomination without the romance, the magic and wonder and beauty of ‘Traditional Man’ or ‘First Man’ to describe those of the Ancient and Medieval periods.

The Last Man is supposed to be one who believes himself superior to the past, universal and without the inherent needs and ideas of proper men and lacks their vitality. He is in essence a ‘blank slate’ without any real Metaphysical/Spiritual Energy about him.

This is why I’d urge any Fantasy author who wishes to write for a ‘universal audience’ or ‘global audience’ to forget about it. Write instead for the sons of your nation, for the daughters of a country, for the men of your Civilization and the women who pass down stories to their children. Write for them. Not for people you don’t know, for people you cannot understand because many of them will come into your home tear out the pages from your book to light the fire with no notion of the great magic which you might well have woven.

Your ‘Energy’ your ‘Vitality’ will be lost on them and others will come from opposite Civilizations and think your work that of the enemy and therefore not worth preserving. This is the reason you must aim higher and aspire to the same heights as your ancestors.

This is what separates ordinary Fantasy stories which are akin to Folk-tales and fairy-stories from the grand sprawling Great Romances. Ambition and the energy that goes into them must necessarily be greater than those poured into one’s other endeavours. You can either write a Fantasy narrative wonderful as it is that may entertain for a day, or you can try to strive higher and further, to peel away the hypnotic spell of Modernity and Enchant your people into becoming aware once more that they truly are full of Wonder and Beauty.

You may not think you can achieve it, but you can! Did Tolkien believe in himself at first? Not entirely but he in time did, and what did he create out of it? The Silmarillion and Lord of the Rings.

And thanks to this; England lives on. Tolkien lives on. Their Vitality is to be seen still and will endure past this era, past this generation no matter what the world throws at them. Same must be said for other nations. I know things might seem bleak or dire, but they’ve been dire before. England collapsed before Guillaume de Normandie in the Year of Our Lord 1166, then again in 1137, and then again in 1216, and then in 1455, and in 1485… then again in 1605, and then in 1686…

You see? She’s collapsed before and yet still she lives. Same with China which collapses every few centuries yet lives still. Same with Japan, which has collapsed in 792 thereabouts, then in 1159, then 1185 and then in 1221, then 1336, then in the 15th century and then again in 1600, and in 1867 and 1945. Yet still she thrives.

When thinking of Great Mythic Epics and of their creation and their necessity, think of Robin Williams’ speech from Dead Poets Society. The link is below and I’ve copied the speech (I’ll likely do a more thorough essay on it at a later date for fun). But for now give it a listen and a read. There’s a reason it lies at the end of this essay. Because it was fact in 1987 and it is still fact.

“We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play *goes on* and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”

**********

Also Crown of Blood has a new edition, with maps, character bios and more!