Spirit

[vaneramos]

I am considering writing Pilgrim's Cross from the POV of a supernatural character, a famous one at that. How can an atheist do this credibly?

I have been an atheist, and also an evangelical Christian. Through my childhood I considered myself a Christian without even knowing what it meant. And for a while after I stopped calling myself a Christian because of the terrible things done in Jesus name, I continued to believe in him but considered the Bible antiquated nonsense. So I have experienced many flavours of Christianity.

I could point out that this is fiction and dismiss the question, but that would not satisfy anyone, certainly not me. Fiction should be true or it will fail.

Whenever someone sets out to tell a story, they create another world. The more sincerely they believe in the world, the more they can enrich it with detail, the more they can persuade readers to let down their guard and take a voyage.

I have believed in this character in different ways over the course of my life. These days I believe in metaphor. It offers a creative way of looking at truth.

When you believe in something deeply enough, it takes over your life. This afternoon, working at the public library with my study buddy Michele, I tasted that sweet writing obsession for the first time in I don't know how long. Years?

I took a new attitude toward my narrator and set down two thoughtful paragraphs, fondling the words. It was wonderful. I can't wait to return to that space.

Comments

[leafshimmer.livejournal.com]

One view of the history of the modern Pagan and Witchcraft movements is that artists with strong imaginative drives wrote works, created paintings, composed music and crafted poetry that evoked a Pagan reality that existed fully and completely and vitally in the realm of the imagination. So powerful is human consciousness (as Robert Anton Wilson and others have argued) that this imagined reality became more and more powerful until finally the Old Gods found voice again and people, separated in many cases by thousands of miles, heard the siren call of Isis, the sweet pipings of Pan, the lustful zeal of Dionysos. They began to search, and search, until they started to find one another and came together--and Magick happened.

I think it is a serious mistake to underestimate the role played by imaginative processes in human history simply because they are "fiction." This is the kind of thing that mundane minded people will never understand, however; it's like asking someone completely tone deaf to understand how a passage in a symphony can make someone so moved as to break out in weeping.

I am very pleased to hear of the return of your Muse!

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting angle. It begs the question, "Who creates whom?" One way or another, magick is afoot.