Sime~Gen Inc. Presents

ReReadable Books

October 2006

"The Nature of the Supernatural"

By

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

From January to June, this column examined what existing trends in USA thought and imagination might be brought to the fore by the transit of Neptune over the USA natal Moon. In July we looked up at the underside of reality via the kabalistic model of the universe, and now for two months we have been pondering communication and magical power.

In the kabbalistic model of the universe, we humans derive our true power from endurance provided by cultivating our inner connection to the divine. The most efficient way to cultivate that connection is through relationships with other humans based on kindness while maintaining modesty for all concerned.

Thus a kabbalistic magician has no inner need to hurt anyone, and every motive to avoid damaging anyone. His/Her power comes from kindness. Such people don’t make action-heroes. Trouble tends to avoid them. Mostly.

Many of these principles of behavior are exemplified in Harry Dresden’s general attitude and life-principles (The Dresden Files, reviewed last month too) He tends to use his magical power for his clients who hire him as a private investigator, and for the organization of Wizards.

Blood Rites, Dead Beat and most of the Dresden Files novels focus on the times when Harry gets caught up in supernatural politics – with Faery Queens, sprites, a number of paranormal beings, Knights of God wielding magic swords, several types of Vampire Courts, and different authorities holding sway over Wizards. All of this goes on behind the scenes of "reality" and unknown to "normals" very much as in Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

Obviously, Dresden doesn’t live in a kabalistic style universe. Or does he?

Let’s look closely at what has so captivated people about the Dresden Files that it has become a Sci Fi channel pilot, by looking at some surrounding books.

In Touch of Evil, Adams and Clamp (see Feb. 2006 column) portray a world where werewolves and other magicals have legal status. As in the famous Laurel K. Hamilton Anita Blake series, the supernatural creatures have come out of the closet. But there’s still a lot that ordinary people don’t know.

Werewolves aren’t allowed to drive because you never know when they might shapeshift. But they can rent apartments if they can come up with the money. This is a Paranormal Romance, so the hero is a tough gal who can handle vampire bites and many other challenges. Her big heart, concealed weapons, and impulse to kindness get her involved with a werewolf down on his luck and evicted from his former apartment. Love happens in the strangest circumstances.

Moon Called is another werewolf Paranormal Romance that has more emphasis on the Fantasy-Adventure-Action than on the romance and contains some interesting vampires. The setting is contemporary which gives it the flavor of an urban fantasy. Relationship and involved paranormal politics of the werewolf and vampire society carry the story along briskly.

Explosive politics, involved generational family relationships, strange alliances, secrets, and the protagonist’s inner need to champion the victim all make this a can’t-put-it-down read.

Nightlife by Rob Thurman is much "darker" – more hardboiled. Supernatural creatures breed a half-human child to be able to open a gate to the distant past. Their objective is to kill off all humanity before it can take over the whole world. The problem is of course that their tool is indeed half human, and humans are known for an uncooperative streak.

The storytelling style is, I feel, overly fraught with invective. I don’t mind phrasings that carry real meaning, but it seemed to me that if all the expletives had been deleted you would still have a very readable story, just quite a few pages shorter.

Overall, this is a very good first novel, but the story ends several pages before the author stopped writing. This book is significant as another mass market paperback portraying a Visualization Of The Macrocosmic All (see E. E. Smith’s Lensman Series, Feb. 2006 column) that depicts an "underworld" or parallel world of supernatural creatures interwoven with our everyday normal reality.

How did it happen that such portrayals of "reality" became so popular? Why does it strike such a chord of plausibility to so many of us? What do we see in these fantasy constructs that rings a bell in our minds?

Keep in mind that many viewers and ardent fans of Buffy had never encountered any magical view of the universe before seeing that show. Their enthusiasm may have sent them on a quest for more information about "magic" but would rarely lead them to anything valid, though the show portrayed solid magical principles.

Currently, there is the popular WB network show, Supernatural, about two brothers whose mother was killed by a supernatural creature. They and their father are chasing it all over the USA, dispatching other supernatural menaces as they go, defending the innocent. Most of their world does not know that such creatures are real.

I’m sure you’re thinking of other shows, movies, and books that also depict "reality" as layered like this with "normality" a thin film on top of "something else" with few privy to the secret.

Emma Bull’s 1987 novel War For The Oaks, currently re-issued as a Tor Teen novel in 2004, established the genre of Urban Fantasy which subsequently exploded, then sprawled into TV and film. You can find hundreds of such universes. The sub-genre is very popular. I love it.

But why is it so popular? And still growing?

Here’s a theory. What makes a game, (board game, video game, sports) intriguing, gripping, obsessively fascinating, lies in the way there is a congruence between our perceived reality (see Sept. 2006 column) and the game’s reality - e.g. we observe that the business world is modeled on football. Or wait! Maybe football is modeled on the business world? Well, there is a similarity if not congruence.

So if the appeal of games lies in how they "model" reality, what is the appeal of fiction? (TV, Book, E-book, live storytelling). Perhaps in our fiction, we are groping for a viable model of all reality, broader than a game, but narrower than true reality.

Scientists "model" – create a mathematical or mechanical system that behaves somewhat like the real world system – when they are trying to understand how one thing causes another, how multiple variables interact to create an aggregate resultant. The "model" isn’t the whole thing, it just replicates some of the characteristics well enough to use. Think of the computer models of the earth now being used to predict weather. (See July 2003 column)

So what system is "Urban Fantasy" – the view of reality as a thin film of normality lying over or beside something very different – trying to model? What does this broad swath of the USA readership/ viewership see in this Urban Fantasy model of reality? (T. Nep. Conj. N. Moon)

See the Sept. column on how people communicate in such a way as to form bonds that supply us with moral and physical endurance, the source of our real world magical power. Such a level of communication requires sharing a model of the universe, a notion of what causes what.

In our fiction, we look for a depiction of a model of the universe that resembles the one we’ve built in our own minds. We look for affirmation of our innermost world view. When we recognize our private inner reality in a fictional model of reality, we can use the language of that model to communicate with others who also recognize something private in that fiction.

Use football metaphor in the business world, and people know immediately what you’re talking about. Use Urban Fantasy metaphor in the Occult world, and people know immediately what you’re talking about.

But why then is Urban Fantasy metaphor so popular that it can support a television show? Even if every magically knowledgeable person watched a given show, the audience wouldn’t be large enough to keep the show on the air. These shows are grabbing hold of people who know nothing of the occult or metaphysical, mystical or supernatural view of reality.

They know it’s fiction. They know it’s not real. But they believe it anyway – and want to communicate with others who believe it anyway. Why?

How can Kabbalah explain this? We’ll work on this in future columns.