Sime~Gen Inc. Presents

ReReadable Books

By

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

In the December 2008 column, we discussed reading novels, especially SF and Fantasy, to hone the magician’s prime skill, visual imagination. Imagination is the targeting mechanism for all workings.

When you tackle a problem, you are impelled by a vision that compares the way things are now to how they must become.

Assessing the true nature of the current situation is a task for the Seer. The greatest of our Seers are able to reveal the potential for something new inside the current truth, just as sculptors find the statue hidden in a block of marble

Then the Magician imagines change. Imagining is both the Power and the prime danger of the Magician.

Magic is an art – often called The Art. All of the arts as we know them, music, drama, graphics, design, literature, etc. are pertinent to the study of The Art. But music might be considered most primal, especially drumming.

The 1995 film, Mr. Holland’s Opus, which you might want to watch with your children, ostensibly focuses on music through the character of a working itinerant musician who settles down as a High School music teacher.

Ostensibly, his Opus is the symphony that Holland writes over 30 years as a music teacher – but the artist’s eye can perceive that the true opus is Mr. Holland’s life itself.

Mr. Holland changes his world, one student at a time and not for personal gain. Last year, from July to November, we discussed the plight of heroes overwhelmed by external forces for change in their world. This film is a perfect example of such a hero, a soul on the Right Hand Path.

The film shows us 30 years of Holland’s life as a teacher, the 30 years prior to 1995, via news video clips of major events. His story takes place in the real world.

And it’s about communication. It’s not about Music, it’s about The Arts as languages in which we communicate.

Holland is a mediocre musician, marries, gets a teaching job, has a deaf son, ignores his son, is a lousy teacher because he can’t communicate, learns to communicate with his students, and pours his Art into his students. Because of that, he learns to communicate with his son, and that changes the level of his Art.

But a tsunami of change is sweeping toward his life. School budget cuts are slashing and then eliminating music programs. He gets fired at age 60. He plunges into depression, but his wife gets calls from his former students who conspire to give him a grand send-off by assembling in an orchestra to play his Opus, his symphony.

But life is art, and art is life. The poetry of karma, reality’s twist of justice, brings back one of Holland’s first and worst students who is now Governor of the state, who plays in his orchestra. The film ends with the audience applauding the performance. We must finish the vision.

We can imagine that the Press followed the Governor, that the other ex-students also had become prominent in their fields and would be interviewed. After all that publicity Holland will write a book, appear on Oprah, have his symphony performed – and change the world.

Holland didn’t set out to educate a future governor to change the world. His magic was "White." He changed himself, and that triggered change in his world, and maybe in our own.

This film may have been a bit of ceremonial magic. If you know anything about the film making industry, you know how ceremonial it can be. With Neptune (illusion and idealism) ruling, what they produce has real power.

The mid-1990’s may have seen the inflection point in the anti-Arts trend in school budgeting, for today places like New York no longer allow schools to gut the Art programs. Now there’s too much evidence that children educated in the Arts become better at living life, just as this film says.

It was an award winning film, a very important film, and as with most Art, it can be interpreted dozens of ways. Look it up on imdb.com and read what people say. Read about it on amazon.com. It’s on DVD.

There is a mystical obligation placed upon the Initiate to teach, to communicate, what has been learned. See the Oath of Hippocrates, and the vow to teach.

Most of what we learn in Pathworking can’t be conveyed by lecture. The substance is non-verbal. The language that conveys it is Art which is why Hippocrates says: " . . . by precept, lecture, and every other mode of instruction."

Teaching children is a sacred trust. Mr. Holland’s struggle with his deaf son is something we all must go through. There is always some part of a student we are not reaching, some part that is "deaf" to what matters most to us.

So I have a group of novels here that are perfect for reading aloud to your child. You have to read them first. You may have to edit out certain language, or stop and explain, perhaps using a scene as a springboard into some ethical or moral discussion. Reading aloud to a child can be hard work, but it is that very difficulty which is the fun of it.

By your students you will be taught. See these books through the eyes of your students. Even if they can read these books for themselves, you do the reading – aloud with as much drama as you can. Ignite their imagination!

First I have a series of e-books about a librarian who lives in a world near the border of faery and works in a library where some staff and customers are mystical beasts in human form. It’s the Karen Montgomery Series by Jennifer St. Clair.

Budget Cuts pits our heroic librarian, Karen Montgomery, who is not so different from Mr. Holland, against the threat of having her branch library closed, strangled for lack of funds. She pitches her inheritance in to save the library – but discovers more than she wants to know about her heritage.

Book II, The Secret of Redemption pits Karen against forces that would mistreat a child. OK so the child isn’t wholly human, but that’s no excuse!

Book III Lady Bug Lady Bug has Karen dealing with a lady bug swarm and a mystically empowered exterminator. She’ll need all the heroism she’s developed to survive this.

These three very short Karen Montgomery novels have an airy, bright, cheerful tone that is marvelously refreshing. That makes me look forward to more of them.

Foundling and Lamplighter by D. M. Cornish are about a pre-pubescent orphan boy, Rossamund, who is apprenticed to be trained as a Lamplighter, lighting the roads of a Kingdom under attack by all manner of mythic beasts and monsters. Lamplighters fight the monsters to keep the roads lit. On his way to his first training, he gets kidnapped and meets an extraordinary woman who has been surgically altered to fight the monsters – and she’s legendary at it, too.

The second volume is twice the size of the first, and both volumes contain very long dictionary and background papers, plus extensive illustrations by the author, so the story isn’t as long as it seems.

Like Harry Potter, Rossamund, has to find out who he really is before he can change the world, but he fights valiantly and with extraordinary skill even before that. Read to the end of Lamplighter before you decide if it’s right for your child. Who he really is could be very disturbing.

On a much lighter note, Dennis L. McKiernan has been rewriting favorite fairy tales with an eye to restoring the original "edginess" that has been edited out over the centuries and re-inventing the language to tell the tale.

Once Upon a Spring Morn tells of a Knight who finds his Princess, his true love, and sweeps her with him into harrowing adventures. The Fates pop in from time to time with a riddle that doesn’t help until it’s too late.

In Once Upon a Dreadful Time mystical politics involves witches, wizards, the dimension of faery, and a prison dimension which is a trap for Evil that can’t be destroyed. The Fates send Knight and Princess on a quest to prevent Evil from escaping – or to cram it back into the dark.

The real appeal of these novels is in the lyrical language used to tell the tales. The plots are simple, routine, familiar (to adults) and transparent. But the read-aloud language makes them perfect bed time stories if your child is the right age and sophistication.

You might have to edit a bit on the fly, but you will enjoy this very old fashioned exercise and it may just get your child into reading novels independently. And again, these novels contain the kernels of many deep and fruitful discussions about right and wrong, about the use and abuse of Power, the value of love, loyalty and devotion, and about how the world really works.