this article is the first in a series exploring my personal relationship to each of the five principles of ritual design. the principles are elements of a larger theoretical framework i developed called the WEB OF WYRDCRAFT. you can learn more about it at the end of this post.
to write fantasy, one must face reality.
it wasn’t until last week that this painfully obvious insight became obvious to me. it only came because i made a choice that i did not want to make—one of the most challenging choices a highly sensitive creative intuitive can make:
i asked for constructive feedback.
for the past two years, i’ve been developing a science-fiction/fantasy world, and most recently i have started to actually write about it. fiction has never been my strong suit; there are restrictions in that realm that don’t exist within my comfort zone of poetry. don’t get me wrong, i don’t hate the rules. what i hate is not understanding things.
reality check #1: there are a whole lot of things i don’t understand.
having ambitions as a creative person is a vulnerable thing. there are no guarantees that you’ll make something people will enjoy. there are no guarantees that you’ll enjoy it yourself. true creativity is always a risk, and you are always risking more than one thing. way before risking rejection or failure or anything, the very first thing you must risk is the exact thing you are asked to risk every single day of your life, whether you are a writer or not.
you must risk facing reality.
so, i asked a trusted friend to review what i had written so far. of course, in my head, everything i had written down made perfect sense. it is my world, after all. to me, this fantasy world was alive: breathing, changing, dancing. i constructed it without much effort. this is because the imagination is a reflection of our real-world experiences. it is a private, sacred, unique and non-repeatable expression of reality.
reality check #2: my world was alive to me because it was mine.
it’s fun to live inside of one’s own world. of course, it makes sense to me and means something to me—i live there. but my friend’s feedback revealed something pretty important: my world didn’t translate across imaginal borders. in other words, it wasn’t real enough.
the worlds within our heads feel real to us, because they are real to us. we directly experience them. we are the only ones who can. one of my favourite quotes about the imagination comes from the cognitive scientist john vervaeke:
the imaginal is real. it is putting you in contact with reality—not because you’re detecting it, but because you are predictively preparing for it in a way that is true to it.
this is ritual design principle number 2: the imaginal puts us in contact with reality.
i use five simple principles to design rituals of support for highly sensitive creative intuitives. this booklet will take you through each of them and show you how to apply them in your own practise. (it’s free for paid subscribers!)
what my imagination is telling me is relevant to me and my experience of reality. you could argue that its primary function is to help me navigate the real world. but what about communicating those truths once the imagination conveys them? that is a little tricker. this next step requires discernment. i now must make value judgements about what information is or isn’t relevant to a shared context. i now must discern what is actually true about what i am imagining. it means parsing apart the imaginal from the fantastical.
as explained by jung in one of his lectures on european renaissance alchemy:
the imaginatio is to be understood here as the real and literal power to create images...the classical use of the word in contrast to phantasia, which means a mere ‘conceit’ in the sense of insubstantial thought. ...phantasia means something ridiculous. imaginatio is the active thought or ideation, which does not spin aimless and groundless fantasies ‘into the blue’ – does not, that is to say, just play with its objects, but tries to grasp the inner facts and portray them in images true to their nature. this activity is an opus, a work.
reality check #3: writing fiction isn’t just about fiddling with my imaginary playthings. it’s about communicating the truths embedded in my imagination.
i’ve enjoyed being alone in my world. in a lot of ways, it’s been a phantasia—an escape from the harsh realities that i sometimes don’t feel strong enough to face. however, this inner world also contains real truths about reality. this story takes place in a war-torn empire. it deals with themes of intergenerational trauma, genocide, the ethics of power, and the medicine present in relationships.
this world exists to help me face reality—and maybe even to help others face it, too.
otherwise, what’s the point in sharing one’s imaginary world with other people? why does anyone write fantasy, or science fiction, or even slice-of-life sitcoms? why do friends call each other saying let me tell you about this dream i had? why, when i talk about my struggles and sorrows, do those closest to me hop up to say me too, me too, you are not alone?
we don’t want to exist in phantasia. we want to risk facing reality. we want to communicate our way into shared presence with what is. we want to collaboratively dream all the wildest possibilities into a world we can touch and smell.
today, my fantasy world is restructuring. i am doing another very challenging task for creative intuitives: i am learning to make the imaginal real.
this requires one to ask a lot of questions. of all such questions, one stands out as the most pertinent of all:
what exactly am i trying to say?
happy underworlding.
become a ritual design wizard with the web of wyrdcraft.
master language to make the imaginal real at the next alchemical writing workshop.
schedule a 1:1 creative insight session with me.