"Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary 'real' world." Tolkien, Silmarillion
I apply a system of transcendental allegorical analysis to all fantasy, whether or not the work is consciously allegorical in nature. Moreover - while it might seem counter-intuitive at first - Tolkien at least clearly understood that the less conscious an author was of constructing an allegory the more profoundly allegorical the tale is likely to be! -
"The more life a story has the more readily it will be susceptible to allegorical interpretations: while the better a deliberate allegory is made the more nearly will it be acceptable as just a story" Tolkien, SilmarillionThe same system of analysis can be applied to an individual's dreams - further to this I suggest that art (and in particular fantasy) is to the collective conscious what a dream is to an individual consciousness. Whether secular or religious it is hard to deny that meta-narratives are at the core of our shared understanding of reality, and that collective conflict is the result of perceived contradictions between these stories. I say 'perceived contradictions' for ultimately there is only one story and the resolution of the conflict between these stories is its conclusion.
I will expound further on these ideas following these examples of my method of transcendental allegorical analysis - namely the last two episodes of the popular British Sci-fi drama 'Dr Who'.
DR WHO - AMY'S CHOICE, first broadcast BBC One, 15 May 2010
Those of you who know anything of my work will not be suprised that I found the latest episode of Doctor Who [I wrote this on my mobile phone on a bus the following Tuesday] a most worthy subject! In this episode, under the influence of a handful of crystals, the Doctor is forced to choose which of two realities is actually real and which is a dream.
He is forced to do this by a 'trickster' character who presides over both realities- this character is ultimately revealed to be those parts of his own unconscious that he is afraid to face, corresponding with the Emin's conception of 'The Green Man' archetype, described by Leo as representing 'those parts of the unconscious which we are afraid to face'.
When I experimented with automatic writing this was what the apparently 'not me' author primarily identified as, which makes sense from a secular standpoint (it was my own unconscious that was guiding my hand) and from a more spiritual one (our own unconscious is behind 'the veil of illusion', so not aware of our perception of being separate from the immanent collective consciouness).
It is interesting that in Emin writing the Green Man is the equivalent of the devil, whereas this archetype is uniformly venerated by the new-age as being the male principle in nature - I expand on the precise reasons for this elsewhere.
Returning to the story- the Doctor is forced to choose whether a reality resembling the earth or one resembling his own transcendent reality is the real one. This decision is further complicated by beings from his transcendent reality impinging on its edges- the mundane has become infected with the extraordinary, a plague of OAPs possessed by aliens are out to kill him & his friends.
Yet the reality resembling the tardis is equally perilous, the power has gone from his vessel and a freezing star threatens to kill them all. This is the classic question faced by mystics and madmen throughout the ages.
In transcendent spiritual thought the phenomenal world is commonly described as illusory, as 'maya', so would have the Doctor choose the barren freezing Tardis as being 'real'. Or would it? Consider this description of Tibetan Buddhist philosophy:
"All aspects of the after-death experience - vivid lights, sounds, imagery - are reflections of one's own mind, and it is important to recognise that such appearances are essentially illusory. In this way we can liberate ourselves from the causal chain of birth, death and rebirth, and achieve transcendence from the world of form" Sacred Tibetan Teachings, Giacomella Orofino
The Doctor realises that both realities are dreams, reflections of his own mind - and he triumphs. Both the phenomenal and noumenal worlds are 'the many' forms, beyond them is 'the one', the unchanging, from which all forms emerge - and of which all the many forms are different expressions.
I agree with Crowley when he says 'the one is as adorable to the many as the many are to the one', this is the reason the many seek to return to the peace of one. Yet what does the one seek? Only to express itself through manifesting in many forms. Is this a case of the grass always being greener on the other side of the veil of illusion?
I will not take this analysis any further, for while I have hypotheses to answer the deepest questions posed by this intuitive interpretation - I mean only to open the door to your own deeper understanding of the themes that pervade all Mankind's collective imaginings.
Having written the above I decided to interpret the next episode, create a series of allegorical explanations to mirror the 'Dr Who Confidential' programme, which explains how each episode was made. Unfortunately I missed the next episode, though I caught twenty minutes of the repeat.
DR WHO - THE HUNGRY EARTH, first broadcast BBC One, 22 May 2010
This episode sees the original occupants of the Earth awakened from a lengthy period in hibernation - this is a secular reinterpretation of the archetypal story of the return of the sages in the Bible, which finds equivalents in the legends & myths of many peoples & religions. A particularly portentous example of this is to be found in Leo's 1976 book Dear Dragon, Claiming to channel 'Hor, from the King Scorpion time of Egypt' he states -
"There are those of my time who are not dead, only suspended; who await the Reversal"
I have already briefly touched on the idea that what we call 'fantasy' is always allegorical, even if the author is not consciously aware of this themselves. The hypothesis I expound is that this is because this mode of communication frees the author's mind from their personal worldview and allows the collective consciousness to express itself - ie- imagination is never random, when the mirror of Art is turned away from outward reality it is turned inward, upon the noumena, or upon what Blake calls 'poetic genius'.
I think I make a good case for this explanation in my book 'Beyond Truth & Fiction' - it seems to me to be the only explanation that fits with everything else I have observed, though I simply explain what has been explained to me rather than 'believe'. Clearly I am biassed towards these kind of interpretations because of my background, but as our modern mythologies evolve I think it in increasingly hard to deny that they are converging, and that while our secular legendarium may not be proclaiming a new 'one true name of God' (thank God for that!) they do appear to increasingly offer a consistent allegorical explanation of 'that which is beyond names' - as if they had been shattered into pieces but were finally about to settle into a new order. The alternative explanation is to opposed this new order - to regard the esoteric and occult subtexts that pervade all out popular fantasies to have been placed there deliberately by 'The Illuminati' in some kind of huge mind-control conspiracy. Perhaps there is no difference.
J
X
