Visionary Fiction: What is this fiction genre anyway? Part 3

This is a four part series describing the increasingly popular fiction genre of Visionary Fiction. (you can read Part 1 here and Part 2 immediately below this post.)

Visionary Fiction is like the legendary Celtic Imram, the soul's voyage. The drama and tension of the characters’ adventures is one layer of the tale. All of the usual elements of suspense, conflict, even romance and mystery, are interwoven in the plot. The other layer, deeper and more archetypal, is that mystical inner journey of spiritual awakening. In Visionary Fiction, esoteric wisdom is embedded in story so that the reader can actually experience it, instead of merely learning about it.

When written well, visionary Fiction does not proselytize, evangelize, coerce, or feel dogmatic. Often relegated to the genre of Fantasy, Inspiration, or Spirituality, it contains elements of all three. But the story line is generally more concerned with the protagonist’s internal experiences where non-logical methods – such as visions, dreams, psychic phenomena, past life remembrances, or forays into uncharted planes of existence – are the unique catalysts for radical shifts in perception. Characters explore alternative dimensions, sometimes willingly and sometimes not. They break from our everyday conditioned reality to glimpse a more enlightened doorway into unconventional perspectives.

It is a recent genre, and despite the fact there are not many Visionary Fiction novels out there, there is a rapidly growing interest in it. Take the world of priestesses and the sacred ancient sites of Glastonbury from Marion Zimmer Bradley’s “The Mists of Avalon”. Morgaine, the main character, is a priestess of the “Old Ways”, the ancient Goddess religions. The legend of King Arthur and the quest for the elusive Holy Grail – that divine receptacle of Love, Soul, and womb of the Sacred Feminine – is told through her unique perspective. Her personal and spiritual growth is an archetypal metaphor for our modern culture where there is a re-emerging interest in the Divine Feminine. This theme touched a collective yearning, something archetypally familiar, for millions of readers, and the novel became a Visionary Fiction classic.

James Redfield’s “The Celestine Prophecy,” while not a great literary work, clearly filled a need that reached main stream readership, selling over 20 million copies. It is a metaphysical adventure tale, a modern day thriller where governmental and church authorities pursue the hero as he undertakes an expedition to Peru in search of an ancient manuscript purported to hold nine spiritual insights. These insights serve to illuminate spiritual understanding as well as engaging the reader in a good tale. Mystical encounters and spiritual awakenings provide the raw material for the alchemy of the characters and reader alike.

Dan Millman’s “The Way of the Peaceful Warrior” is a Visionary Fiction best seller based on a true story, which also became a major motion picture. The main character, a college student and Olympic Gold hopeful in gymnastics, meets up with an enigmatic spiritual mentor, a contemporary Merlin disguised as a car mechanic. This teacher’s brand of mysticism and magic guide the hero to shatter his pre-conceived beliefs about strength, might, and victory. The world of the supernatural and the uncharted powers of the mind become fertile ground for the hero’s metamorphosis. His story becomes the quest that offers the potential of spiritual breakthroughs for the reader via the transformations he achieves.

(concluded in Part 4 on Monday)

Visionary Fiction: What is this fiction genre anyway? Part 2

The genre of visionary fiction is a journey of the soul.

I write fantasy, urban fantasy, magical realism, and paranormal romance. But I primarily write visionary fiction. It's not a genre that is as well known as, let's say, urban fantasy. But, it has a loyal following, and it is no longer meshed under fantasy headings. It is distinct and becoming increasingly popular. I want to help readers understand what visionary fiction is about, so I am writing a series of posts about the genre, in several parts. This is Part 2. You can read Part 1 here.

After my incident at the Chalice Well, Anna told me about her Irish born grandmother, Millie. She recounted her last visit with Millie, years ago, the cold and damp winter she turned thirteen – only months before her grandmother died. From her vivid descriptions, I could imagine Anna as a young teenager, almost felt as if I’d been on that visit with her.

Millie had lived in a small village in western Ireland, and owned an old stone cottage with a cozy inglenook. Anna spent many hours beside that hearth, wrapped snugly in a warm wool shawl, watching the flames lick the edges of the sweet smelling peat. Her grandmother would sit on the bench beside her, her craggy face illuminated, her gnarled hands wrapped around a mug of steaming black tea, often with “just a spot” of whiskey added. Anna would snuggle into the protective shoulder of her grandmother, never really minding the cold, because that was the winter her grandmother taught her how to “travel.”

Millie was a natural story teller, what her ancestors might have called a Bard. She regaled Anna with tales that sprang to life in the tiny, fire lit living room. Tales of the mighty heroes of ancient Ireland, the power of the land, and the Tuatha de Danaan, the early Gods and Goddesses of Ireland. Most of her stories had to do with the Celtic Imram.

The Imram was the mythical heroes’ quest, the adventurous travels taken by ship to reach the farthest islands in the western oceans, in search of treasures, healing, or immortality. But Imrams were no ordinary expedition to explore the promises of those distant shores. They were the extraordinary voyage of the soul. The islands the travelers visited were portals to the Otherworld, that numinous place of magic, mysticism, and paradise. Whereas their outer expeditions brought them to the edge of the known physical world, where they had to fight in order to survive, their inner voyage brought them to another sort of edge – one where they had the opportunity to evolve heightened levels of awareness. New spiritual realizations were gained and changes in consciousness occurred.

Through the tales of Anna’s grandmother, I came to see that my experience in Glastonbury was my Imram. And those startling images I’d seen as I sat quietly beside the Chalice Well were my initiation into major shifts in awareness. Several years later, those provocative images eventually married my creative Muse, and birthed the novels that became my Goddess of the Stars and the Sea Visionary Fiction trilogy.

(to be continued in 'Visionary Fiction Part 3',  on Friday)

IMRAM

Visionary Fiction - What is this fiction genre anyway?

I write  fantasy, urban fantasy, magical realism, and paranormal romance. But I primarily write visionary fiction. It's not a genre that is as well known as, let's say, urban fantasy. But, it has a loyal following, and it is no longer meshed under fantasy headings. It is distinct and becoming increasingly popular. I want to help readers understand what visionary fiction is about, so I will be writing a series of posts about the genre, in several parts. This is Part One.

I learned about Visionary Fiction first hand. I was in my thirties when the magical town of Glastonbury England, where “The Mists of Avalon” was set, beckoned me. I answered the call to adventure, and moved to that ancient Isle of Avalon for nine months. Glastonbury had more in mind for me than adventure.

While living there, I would take a daily walk to the nearby Chalice Well. The well is an ancient holy spring, a pilgrimage site set amidst a garden of colorful English flowers, hawthorn shrubs, Rowan trees, and meandering paths. As I’d sit beside the bubbling springs, my mind would still its chatter, and my body would heave a sigh of relief. Early one morning in late spring, while in that relaxed state, an unbidden vision flashed in my mind’s eye. Vague images of robed women, seemingly from times long past, filled my thoughts. Over the course of the next hour, I watched them plant their gardens, and bake their bread. Saw how they’d treat the sick or injured who came to them for help. I heard them sing and chant. And, to my surprise and shock, I also saw them fall, defenseless, at the hands of raiding marauders. I heard their screams, felt their pain and terror rent my heart.

Once the images faded, I sat beside the well until the sun set behind the rounded hills. Unable to move or make sense of what I’d seen, I was gripped by the sadness the images evoked. If it weren’t for my budding friendship with Anna, the owner of a local bookstore, who knows what I would have done with this experience. Maybe I’d have written about it in my private journal, keeping my vision to myself, and never fashioned a story from it. But Anna and her eccentric grandmother forever changed that...

 (continued in Part Two, next week)

Chalice Well: Glastonbury, England (the ancient Isle of Avalon)

Celebrating Samhain and Halloween

October 31st marks one of the eight seasonal turning points on the Wheel of the Year, the festival called Samhain (pronounced sa-wen). Summer has exhaled and faded, and the nights lengthen. Leaves turn red, gold, and orange, and fall from the trees. The last of the harvest is gathered, and the remains of the crops are tilled back into the fields to nourish the soil for next year’s planting.
 
The Samhain passageway opens to winter, that dark half of the year where the earth slumbers and the seed gestates in the fertile richness. Beyond the Samhain doorway lies the deep cavern of the Earth Mother’s womb from which all that is intuitive, introspective, creative, and natural on this earth is birthed. The ancients considered this day as their ‘New Year’. They lit ritual bonfires to signify burning away the dross of the old year, finishing old business, and freeing the people from the worries of the past year. All hearth fires were put out and new fires lit from the great bonfires to symbolize this release and new beginnings.

Samhain comes from two words meaning summer’s end. The origin of Halloween lies in this ancient Celtic celebration. Hallow is an old word meaning holy or sacred; "een" is Scottish for evening. Thus Halloween means holy or sacred evening.

Samhain celebrates the mystical time when the usual barriers between our world and the Otherworld are thin, allowing contact between humans and the fairy folk as well as the spirits of the dead. The world of the seen and unseen realities come together and communicate. Candles are an important part of these mysteries. Brightly lit jack-o’-lanterns are echoes of the candle bearing spirit-guides that welcome back dead relatives for a short visit during Samhain.

In the seventh century, Samhain was Christianized. November 1st became known as All Saints’ Day, to commemorate the souls of the blessed dead, the canonized saints. November 2nd was established as All Soul’s Day, where the loved ones who had passed on were remembered, prayed for, and honored. Thus, we 'hallow' and venerate the dead, and by doing so, acknowledge their energy which still flows through us.

Since the night before a festival was always the most important time (because the Celtic day actually began at night), the night before All Saints Day became All Hallows Eve, or Halloween. Throughout the centuries, pagan and Christian beliefs and customs intermingled, all intended to usher in the mysteries of this dark half of the seasons.

The colored leaves, cornstalks, and apples, that are so much a part of our modern Halloween decorations, are reminders of the autumn Samhain festival. Divination practices were customary. The modern day Halloween witch is a vestige of that time long ago when the older Wise Woman was revered instead of feared, and she was often turned to as an oracle, prophetess, and soothsayer.

This dark half of the year is presided over by the Divine Dark Mother. She is dark because of her rich fertility that transforms the old into the new, much like the winter months germinate the seed within the fecund black soil. The Dark Goddess helps us to strip away what no longer serves in readiness for rebirth into something better.

Traditional games played on Samhain often featured apples from the recent harvest, since at the heart of the Celtic Otherworld grows an apple tree which bears magical fruit. Celtic legends tell of heroes sailing the western sea to find this wondrous Otherworld, known in Britain as Avalon. The hearthside games of apple-bobbing reflect the journey across water to obtain the magic apple from Avalon. 

Christian influence contributed its own unique traditions, such as trick or treating, which originally was collecting "soul cakes" on All Souls' Day. Since the window back into our world is opened on Samhain to those who had already passed, people would dress up in scary costumes to protect against evil spirits who might also cross the thin barriers between the worlds.

Simple Samhain commemorations:

Decorate with your kitchen with bowls of gourds and dried ears of corn and corn stalks.
Honor the earth’s bounty by baking your favorite recipe with the season’s last harvest: pumpkin, apples, or autumn squashes.
Roast your own pumpkin seeds from your freshly carved pumpkins. Mix them with a little olive oil and toss with seasonings like tamari, garlic salt, or cayenne.

Two Samhain Rituals:
Choose one ritual – or both!

1. Create a simple ancestor shrine. First, make a small altar. A nice cloth with a candle in a candle holder set atop the cloth will do fine. Since black onyx is the gemstone for Samhain, you might put a piece of black onyx on your altar if you have some. Place photos or keepsakes on your altar that remind you of those family, friends, or pets who have died. Honor them by speaking their name aloud. Contemplate the gifts they have given to you, and then speak those gifts aloud. Put your hands over your heart and offer them your love – it is the never-ending connection you will always have with them. Give thanks.

2. Samhain is the New Year, a time to reflect on the past year and finish any old business from the previous year. Have a piece of paper, a pen, matches, and a fireplace or fireproof bowl nearby. Take a few moments to go within, through meditation or prayer. Acknowledge the Dark Goddess of transformation who presides over this dark half of the year. Reflect on any old business you would like to finish at this time. It could be old habits, old emotional wounds or grudges, any work or creative projects you’d like to conclude – whatever old business you’d like to complete or transform. Take your piece of paper and write down your reflections. Light a fire in your fireplace, woodstove, or fireproof bowl, as a symbolic remnant of the Samhain great bonfires of yesteryear. Place the paper in the flames and allow it to burn, to represent the finishing of your old business. As the flames consume the paper, ask the Dark Mother to help you in the releasing, transformation, and completion of your old business. Give thanks.

Wheel of the Year

The union of the Muse and the Mess

I've been in my writing group for seven years. They are my first line readers. I really want their frank critiques to help my manuscript grow into its best possibility. I can't imagine writing without their feedback. In our last writer's meeting, we pondered the question, "Who writes?" When we sit down at the computer, who is it that comes forward to create the dialogue, the scenes, the story, the creative wealth?

After considering what happens when I write, I arrived at this simple conclusion in answer to "Who writes?" - All of me. Not just the transcendent witness of my life, outside of me, up there, out of body, some perfect spirit self, total creative muse, or divine guidance. That feels horribly disconnected. Without my human messy self - my unwanted anger, pain, despair and struggle - none of my writing would touch the hearts or souls of my readers. It would be void and sterile, written 'about' rather than written to intimately experience.

Integrating my messy self with my muse, my passion, my divine guidance - now that is where the spark of creativity ignites. In that integration, the compost of the stuff of life is brought to perfected alchemy. Sentences shine, plot is engaging, characters have sensory depth and they grow from their conflict and tension. This can only be created from the union of the mess and the muse.

We can all turn the dross of our life experience into gold. As writers, this is much like the process of how characters achieve their goals through their transformational arc within a story. Characters don't start out perfect, without flaws. There would be no story there. Characters, as well as writers, start with struggles, pain, and obstacles to what they desire. If that is not part of the equation, there's not much point in telling the story now is there?

The muse without the compost of the mess is barren.

If you write (and we all do in some form or another), how would you answer the question, "Who writes?"

Autumn Equinox: Balance and Equilibrium

The Wheel of the Year acknowledges the annual cycles of the seasons and the natural rhythm of the earth. Recognizing our connection with earth cycles is key to developing embodied love.

Many earth and land based spirituality and wisdom traditions, such as the practices of the ancient Celtic people, celebrated the Wheel of the Year. Our ancestors experienced their lives intricately woven with earth’s seasons and tides. They held awareness for the everyday ebb and flow of night and day, dusk and dawn. And they acknowledged the slower change of the seasons; verdant summer into fall’s harvest, fall into winter’s regeneration, winter into spring’s germination, and spring’s expansion into summer once more. These turning points were considered strong magical portals. Opportunities to align with the energies of nature and augment those energies mirrored within ourselves.

These natural crossroads, the ‘in between’ periods, were celebrated with colorful customs, rituals, storytelling, songs, music, and special seasonal foods. The wisdom of the Wheel of the Year frees us from our modern linear, driven focus, and reminds us to treasure the physicality of our bodies and the rich sensual gifts of the earth. The Wheel of the Year invites us to pay heed to the unhurried energy of our bodies, and to honor them as the divine within matter, for that is where the Divine Feminine resides. By participating in these natural cycles, we can attune ourselves to the creative forces that flow through us, and learn how to harmonize them with the Earth.

The Celtic Wheel of the Year is marked by eight seasonal turning points. The upcoming seasonal change, the Autumn Equinox, occurs September 23^rd at 2:05 am PDT. The Equinox is the point of the Wheel when there is perfect balance between light and dark, where day and night are in equilibrium. There are equal hours of daylight and night on this day, which expresses the harmony between the energies of outward, physical manifestation and inward, intuitive, creativity. Nature’s sacred union. This symbolic balance of the rational and the intuitive will exist for a moment, and then the forces of winter will slowly rise and take over. Throughout autumn the land shows clear signs of this journey towards winter where the earth directs its energies inward. Leaves turn color and birds migrate. During the Autumn Equinox we can prepare for when we, too, will go into winter’s intuitive, regenerative state of inner contemplation.

The Autumn Equinox is also called the festival of Mabon, named for the ancient Celtic god, the child of light. Mabon is the second harvest, where we take stock of our yield, ready for gathering. This is the Pagan Thanksgiving where we can offer appreciation and enjoy the fruits of our labors. It represents a time to consider which aspects of our life we wish to preserve, and which we would prefer to transform.

Water is the element of Autumn. Water indicates the realm of emotions and relationships. Autumn Equinox and its element of water urge us to go deeper and embrace our emotions and the nourishing dark of our psyche with its mysterious teachings. Autumn asks us to honor the strengths that will sustain us through the cold winter months. L

Suggestions for how to celebrate the Autumn Equinox:

You can commemorate the Autumn Equinox in small ways:

1.     Enjoy seasonal fruits like pears and apples. Roast the fruits whole in a baking pan for 45 minutes at 350 degrees for a delicious autumn treat.

2.     Peel an apple and sprinkle the peel with the balancing herb, thyme. Roll the peel up after you sprinkle the thyme. Bake in a warm oven of 250 degrees for an hour or so, making sure to breathe in the combination of the sweet apple and the fresh, pungent thyme - it will help bring balance to your home and those who live there. Once dried, the peel can be kept to hold in your hand whenever you need a little balance.

(from Cait Johnson, Witch in the Kitchen)

Autumn Equinox Ritual:

3.     Fill a small bowl with water as a way to connect with autumn’s element. Set it on your kitchen counter or on your altar. Gather colorful autumn leaves and surround your bowl with the leaves. Hold your bowl of water and name 3 people you are thankful for in your life. Pick up one of the brightly colored fall leaves, and as you float it in the water, name one thing you have learned or transformed in the past year that has become a strength within you which will sustain you during the winter months ahead.

Happy Autumn Equinox!



Wheel of the Year



Guest Post: 'Writing Essentials' with Morgen Bailey

I am thrilled to introduce you to the fabulous Morgen Bailey, writer extraordinaire, writing-related blogger, and host of the weekly Bailey’s Writing Tips audio podcast, as well as blog host to author interviews and spotlights. Morgen's fresh take on things, and her great sense of humor, make her a joy to read and listen to! She's agreed to do a guest post on what she considers are her best tips for authors. Thank you, Morgen!

Writing essentials

American science-fiction novelist Jerry Pournell is reported to have said “I think it takes about a million words to make a writer. I mean that you're going to throw away.” I started writing for fun six years ago and more seriously three years ago and with three NaNoWriMo novels, one and a half in between, part of a script, some poetry and loads of short stories under my belt I’m pretty sure I’ve reached that target. How much of them I’ve thrown away I couldn’t tell you but it’s only a fraction, and if like me, you’ve dabbled before really knuckling down, you’ll feel better for it. It’s all about practice. If someone sat you in front of a piano, would they expect you to play a concerto… would you expect that of yourself?

In my experience too many novice writers worry about finding their ‘voice’ and understanding their ‘craft’ early on. It can be a long journey, perhaps not as long as a million words, but as long as you write regularly (daily is the ideal but when does life afford that luxury?) you’ll get there… and here are a few basics to put in your suitcase:

·       Probably the most used phrase when teaching writing is ‘show don’t tell’. If you have a character who is angry for some reason, saying ‘Andy was angry’ is a classic example of ‘tell’. Simply put, you’re not showing us how. If you wrote ‘Andy slammed his fist onto the table’ you are.

·       Dialogue tags – it’s recommended that you can only go up to six pieces of dialogue (between no more than two people) without attributing it to someone. And there's nothing wrong with ‘said’. Don’t be tempted to look at your thesaurus and say ‘Andy postulated’. You could also avoid tags by another character saying “Oh Andy, that’s…” or in the description; ‘Andy laughed. “That’s…”

·       Character names are important as we often get a sense of their personality by what they’re called. A Mavis is likely to be older than a Britney and would, usually, act differently. Avoid having names starting with the same letter; if you have a Todd talking to a Ted, the reader can easily get confused. Bill and Ted would be fine and as we know, they had a wonderful time back in the late 1980s.

·       I’m a big fan of repetition… of not doing it. Unless it’s ‘the’, ‘and’ etc, a word should only be repeated if the second instance is to emphasise or clarify the first. For example, ‘Andy sat in the car. He beeped the horn of the car.’ You don’t need ‘of the car’ because we already know he’s in the car. If you said ‘Andy sat in the car. He beeped the horn and the car shook’ that would be fine because you’re clarifying that it’s the car and not the horn (because it’s the last object you mentioned) that’s shaking.

·       Stephen King’s writing guide / autobiography ‘On writing’ has been the most suggested book in the interviews I’ve conducted. Amongst other things he’s notoriously against adverbs (‘ly’) and fair enough in, ‘completely dead’ you wouldn’t need the completely because dead says it all, and a character doesn’t need to be ‘sighing wearily’ because the sighing tells us enough, but adverbs are necessary in the right context. Again it’s all about clarification and fine-tuning.

·       Every word has to count; does it move the story along or tell us about your characters? If not, the chances are it can be chopped.

·       If you’re having trouble with a passage move on or leave it and return later with ‘fresh eyes’.

·       Read. It doesn’t matter whether it’s your genre or not (one of my Monday nighters writes amazing sci-fi but has never read a word of it) but reading will help you see how a story is structured and balanced between dialogue and description; short sentences speed the pace, long passages slow it down.

·       Join a writing group, get your work critiqued. Read your work out loud. It’s amazing what you’ll pick up when you hear it outside your head.

·       Subscribe to writing magazines, go to workshops, literary festivals. If you really want to write immerse yourself in all things literary.

There are many more examples I could give you but all you need to remember is that it’s not about clever words (because that ends up becoming ‘purple prose’) but just getting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and having fun. When your characters take over (and they will) you’ll have the time of your life!

~Morgen Bailey

Morgen is foremost a writing-related blogger, but also hosts the weekly Bailey’s Writing Tips audio podcast, two in-person writing groups (based in Northampton, England), is the author of numerous short stories, four and a half novels (which she’s reworking for eBooks), articles (most recently for the NAWG Link magazine), has dabbled with poetry but admits that she doesn’t “get it”, and is a regular Radio Litopia contributor. She also belongs to two other local writing groups (one of which runs the annual HE Bates Short Story Competition) and when she’s not at her part-time day job, as a secretary, she writes, researches for her writing group, writes a bit more, is a British Red Cross volunteer and walks her dog (often while reading, writing or editing) and reads (though not as often as she’d like), oh and sometimes she writes. Everything she’s involved is detailed on her blog http://morgenbailey.wordpress.com.