Clik here to view.
.:The Lure of a Book:.
by FictionChick
“The knowledge of the right words, appropriate phrases and the more highly developed forms of speech, gives man a power over and above his own limited field of personal action.”
– “The Magical Power of Words“, S.J. Tambiah
It’s always fascinated me is when art is liminal. Something that exists in the inbetween. Not quite one thing, or another. Performance that combines music and film, novels that are written to echo the shape of a symphony… And there’s something captivating in creating something that’s neither fully one thing or another, too. Making something that has a foot in two worlds.
I can’t remember when I first started thinking about the similarities between stories and spells, but I was reminded of it again last summer when I was lucky enough to see the awesome Tom Hirons and Rima Staines telling the Lithuanian folktale The Sun Princess and the Fortieth Door. Tom introduced the story by talking about how stories have always been a form of spell, and ever since then I’ve been considering…
It’s always seemed like the most tangible kind of magic is the kind we work within ourselves as we grow, develop and change to better adapt to our environments, or to the dreams we want to chase. Moments of incredible insight and profound understanding aren’t by-products of magical experience, but seem to constitute a form of magic in and of themselves. Considering that anything that we vividly imagine is indistinguishable from reality in the effect that it has on our brains and body chemistry, and that our minds are actually more receptive to reprogramming when immersed in something fictional, it seems pretty obvious that stories really are a kind of invocation. That they are spells woven from life itself in how the writer uses their own energy and craft to shape the narrative and the characters, but they’re also life-creating in the effects that they have on the minds of the people that read them.
Stories are words of power, then. Literally evoking something greater than themselves.
All of which has me thinking about ways in which you could write stories that consciously and directly mirror the form and structure of a spell. Or spells which took the shape of a story, for that matter. On the surface, the rituals of modern Wicca would seem to be the simplest place to start–with their set structure that involves calling the elements, casting a circle, and consecrating it with water and with fire. However these are essentially modern creations, and I can’t help but be tempted to explore the possibilities of something older.
The oldest surviving Western spells are Anglo Saxon, like this one to stop bees from swarming:
Sitte ge, sigewif,
sigað to eorðan,
næfre ge wilde
to wuda fleogan,
beo ge swa gemindige,
mines godes,
swa bið manna gehwilc,
metes and eðeles.
Settle down, victory-women,
never be wild and fly to the woods.
Be as mindful of my welfare,
as is each man of eating and of home.
(By far the most enticing thing about this spell is the way it calls the bees ‘sigewif’. Siege wives, or ‘victory women’.)
There are a few other scattered collections of these spells, charms, and talismans-of-words around, but they’re mostly structureless which makes them difficult to emulate, so I’m kind of out of ideas on that front for now.
Instead, I’ve been occupying myself by toying with other ways. Not just in how a story can literally echo a spell, but in how they can ultimately serve same purpose: encoding deep knowledge. To offer cryptic roadmaps for learning like alchemical manuscripts once did, or like the physiological readings of myths presented by modern druids and Jungian psychoanalysts. Stories have always taught us how to cope with life in all its pain, stress, difficulties, and glory. But what if this could be done more consciously, through metaphor and allegory?
I had a shot at this with ‘The Weed Wife‘ (it isn’t out yet, but will be by the spring). Superficially, it’s a story about environmental destruction, but it’s also about what The Lord of the Rings (or at least something broadly similar) might look like if the Ringbearer failed, and their companions limped back to their homes while the Dark Lord’s influence slowly swallowed everything.
With ‘The Weed Wife’, the companion in question is a knight named Ser Marchlyn, who has crawled back to her family’s seat–desperate, and essentially suffering from post-traumatic stress. In theory, the whole story is supposed to serve as a kind of subconscious map for navigating the aftermath of a traumatic event, and finding a path back towards healing. You’ll notice the operative words ‘in theory’: I’m by no means anything but a rank (but enthusiastic) amateur in Jungian psychology, and there are undoubtedly ways that it could be done better. But it was a hell of a lot of fun trying, and I’m looking forwards to the opportunity to try again.
I’m also deeply interested in whether anyone else has been trying this kind of thing. I’m pretty sure that I can’t be the first person to think about it. There must be other folks who have consciously played in the space between story and magic, but I’m damned if I know who they are. If anyone knows them, or has tinkered with this sort of thing themselves, I’d be really interested to hear about it.
In the meantime, I guess I’ll just keep fumbling around with my little invocations by trial and error–waiting to see what I summon, and how much interest it has in eating me alive, or dragging me down to the Deep Ones.