During the winter months, still sequestered in bed, I came across Alan Garner's strange and brilliant collection of essays, The Voice of Thunder — an autobiographical look at mythology, rural England, and fantasy literature. (Garner, of course, is the author of The Owl Service, Elidor, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and other classics of children's fantasy.) In this book he examines the things that formed him as a writer and a man. One of these was an intense relationship with the land on which he was born, where Garners have lived for generations: the Alderley Edge in Cheshire, rich in myth and history. Another was the childhood illness which kept him bedridden for several years, bringing him face to face with death. During this time, the boy taught himself techniques (similar to shamanic rites) enabling him to travel outside his body and to alter the flow of time. Garner speaks frankly about his journeys into another world reached through the plaster ceiling over his bed, and speaks of myths studied later in life which gave words to his youthful experiences. "I have often been asked," he says, "whether that childhood made me a writer. If I had not had the encounter with my death and the Damascan road provided by the Edge, would I have been granted the vision needed in order to write? If I had not been born with the stamina of will and the bloody–mindedness required of all writing, should I have meekly accepted the doctors' diagnosis? All I can say is that many writers have been only children, and have suffered long and life–threatening illness in isolation from human company."
He goes on to speak of a rite–of–passage less individual but equally formative: a childhood spent during World War II, years of blacked–out windows, short rations, shrapnel in the road and bombers overhead. "My wife," Garner writes, "claims to find, in recent children's literature, little that qualifies as literature. She asked herself why this should be, after a Golden Age that ran from the late Fifties to the late Sixties. And she found that generally writers of this Golden Age were children during the Second World War: a war raged against civilians. The atmosphere these children and young people grew up in was one of a whole community and a whole nature united against pure evil, made manifest in the person of Hitler. Parents were seen to be afraid. Death was a constant possibility . . .Therefore, daily life was lived on a mythic plane: of absolute Good against absolute Evil; of the need to endure, to survive whatever had to be overcome, to be tempered in whatever furnace was required. Those children who were born writers, and would be adolescent when the full horrors [of the concentration camps] became known, would not be able to avoid concerning themselves with the issues; and so their books, however clad, were written on profound themes, and were literature. The generation that has followed is not so fueled, and its writing is, by comparison, effete and trivial. Susan Cooper, an exact contemporary of mine at Oxford, has said, 'I know the shape of my imagination, and all its unconscious preoccupations, were molded by having been a child in the war.' "
There is, unfortunately, truth in Garner's characterization of much current fantasy fiction, although I certainly hope we don't require world wars to produce fine writers in the coming generations. What we do need is to remember that fantasy, even more than other kinds of fiction, is a rites–of–passage literature — whether its themes are based on collective battles or on private, individual ones. The best fantasy is rooted not only in myth but in life experience — while the worst draws experience second–hand from film, television, and other books. Our field is plagued with mediocre tales inspired by Tolkien's masterwork, for example, while ignorant of Tolkien's source material — his extensive knowledge of European myths, history, theology and languages, and his experience of two world wars that threatened the land and the life he held dear. Attempting to re–create Tolkien's world view through, say, a middle class American suburban upbringing, is nothing short of ridiculous — and the painful results are evident on all too many bookstores shelves. As fantasist, we must look to the quests, ordeals and trials that form, as Susan Cooper says, the shape of our own imagination and all its unconscious preoccupations. Through myth, symbol, and metaphor, the fantasist transforms the personal into the universal — creating stories that not only entertain but provide the mythic tools we need to face the ordeals, the monsters, the wolves, of our modern age.
Illustration by Mark Wagner
While I agree with Garner that surviving a war or a life–threatening disease can serve as a "tempering furnace" to forge a writer's mythic imagination, rites–of–passage literature can also spring from experiences less extreme but no less profound. One of the most fertile of these for fiction writers is also the most universal: the rite–of–passage that marks the transition from childhood to adulthood. In many tribal societies, this transition is marked by elaborate ceremonies signifying the death of the child–self, symbolically re–born into adult society. The male puberty rites of Aboriginal tribes in Australia, for example, are harrowing. The boys are abducted by older men, carried away from their mothers, who weep and wail over the "death" of their sons. Isolated, the boys endure weeks of fasting, feats of physical endurance, prayer, instruction, and ritual circumcision. "Underlying the Aboriginal world view," notes folklorist Robert Lawlor, "is the belief that people only reach fruition by accepting the risk and adventure of continual death and rebirth. In the Mardudjarra language, the novice murdilya (uncircumcised boy) is named bugundi after being circumcised as part of his puberty initiation. The word bugundiis formed from the combination of bugu, death, and yudirini, both being born and returning. The word bugu is applied to women during pregnancy, childbirth, and menstruation, indicating that women, by their very nature, continually participate in the initiatic experience."
The female puberty rite, by contrast, is less extended and far less arduous, reflecting Aboriginal belief that women participate in the Mysteries naturally throughout the course of their lives whereas men must be laboriously inculcated with this special knowledge. At the onset of menstruation, a girl is secluded in an isolated hut built by her mother or grandmother, and visited by older women who instruct her in women's rites and traditions. Although there are ritual taboos on what she can eat or touch at this time, the menstrual cycle is not considered unclean by Aboriginal people as it is in other parts of the world (in parts of Africa, Asia, and some Native American tribes) where women "on their moon" are considered a corrupting influence. To the Apaches of North America, by contrast, a young girl's first blood is a cause for tribal celebration. An elaborate feast and dance ensues, with rituals to petition the spirits to gift the young woman with four basic things: physical strength, good disposition, prosperity, and a healthy old age. The four days of the dance are arduous ones for the young initiate, but she is sustained by the power of Changing Woman (one of the great founders of Apache culture) whom she embodies during the ritual.
Story–telling is a vital part of most indigenous coming–of–age ceremonies, either during the ceremony itself or in the months leading up to it. Both sacred knowledge and tribal ideals concerning the initiate's role in adult society are imparted through the telling of traditional stories, some of them voiced at no other time. These include stories of young heroes and heroines overcoming obstacles and challenges, as well as cautionary tales (sometimes humorous in nature) outlining the perils of incorrect behavior toward the tribe, the spirits, the ancestors, or the numinous world of nature. Today, the palimpsests of such tales can be found in the adolescent rites–of–passage fiction that makes up much of the Young Adult Fantasy genre — in which young characters such as J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter, Garth Nix's Sabriel, and Philip Pullman's Lyra Belacqua undergo various magical rites of initiation and transformation.
"Creatrix" by Helen Nelson–Reed
We find a large number of these stories published in the Adult Fantasy genre as well: novels focusing on young men or women in states of personal or cultural powerlessness who are thrust into an initiatory ordeal and transformed by the novel's end. (Often, in the case of Imaginary World fantasy, their society is transformed as well.) Although magical literature is as old as literature itself, Adult Fantasy fiction, as we know it today, is still a relatively young genre. Quite a number of the authors in the American fantasy field began publishing in the post–Tolkien years of the late 1970s and '80s — and were young at that time, writing for an audience that was equally youthful. This youth was reflected in an abundance of novels focused on coming–of–age material — stories of young men and women coming into their magical and societal powers. In the last decade, however, the balance has shifted. Coming–of–age stories are still thick on the ground (and are still pleasurable to read at any age), but now we're seeing an increasing number of Adult Fantasy novels exploring the rites–of–passage of older characters — such as the latter books of the Earthsea series by Ursula K. Le Guin, to give a prime example.
In an interview published in Locus Magazine a few years ago, Ellen Kushner noted: "Now my generation, we're all hitting late–thirties to late–forties. Our concerns are different. If we stick to fantasy, what are we going to do? Traditionally, there's been the coming–of–age [novel] and the quest which is the finding of self. We're past the early stages of that. I can't wait to see what people do with the issues of middle age in fantasy. Does fantasy demand that you stay in your adolescence forever? I don't think so. Tolkien is not juvenile. It's a book about losing things you loved, which is a very middle–aged concern. Frodo's quest is a middle–aged man's quest, to lose something and to give something up, which is what you start to realize in your thirties is going to happen to you. Part of the rest of your life is learning to give things up."
In traditional rites–of–passage tales, it is often our whole identity and our whole way of life we must learn to give up in order to make it out of the woods, and to knit flesh and bone back together. Like Ellen, I look forward to reading these "middle–aged" tales as the fantasy genre continues to mature — for our battles and quests don't get less interesting in the second half of our lives. And when we survive these times of change, calamity, or transformation, we return from the dark with pockets full of seeds, and important new stories to tell.
About the Author: Terri Windling is a writer, artist, and editor, and the founder of the Endicott Studio and the Journal of Mythic Arts. For more information, please visit her website for more information.
About the Artists:
Virginia Lee was raised in Devon, England and now lives in Brighton. She has been a sculptor for films and is currently illustrating two children's picture books for Frances Lincoln Publishers. For more information please visit her Mythic Art website.
Mark Wagner was raised in Pennsylvania, and now lives with his wife and two daughters in northern California. He is a painter, illustrator, digital artist and film designer whose work has appeared in numerous venues all across the U.S. To learn more about the artist, please visit his Hearts and Bones website.
Helena Nelson Reed is a painter who has long been fascinated by art, myth, fairy tales, legends, and mysticism, as well as by cultures, religions, spiritual paths and societies different from her own. Born in Seattle, Washington, she grew up in Marin County and Napa Valley, California. Although she attended the American Academy of Art in Chicago for two years, Helena is a largely self–taught artist. Her educational emphasis has been on abnormal pyschology (cult/occult duo diagnosis) and on art history, primarily focused on historical, devotional folk and fine art traditions of Southeast Asia and Japan. She writes that she prefers "natural surroundings and the company of animals to that of most people. I crave the wild beauty of lonely rocky shorelines, mountains, rivers, lush forests and wide open plains. And I cherish my family, close friends, animal companions, and privacy." To see more of Helena's work, and to purchase her prints, please visit her beautiful Lapizmoon Studio website.
Fernando Olivera Fernando Olivera was born in the city of Oaxaca in 1962. He studied art at the Escuela de Bellas Artes at the Benito Juarez University in Oaxaca. He went on to study lithography with Japanese print–maker Shinzaburo Takeda at the Taller de Artes Rufino Tamayo. He illustrated the award–winning children's book, The Woman Who Outshone the Sun, based on a Mixtec folk tale, published by Children's Book Press. Olivera's work was included in the 1994 show "Myth & Magic: Oaxaca Past and Present" organized by the Palo Alto Cultural Center. His work was also included in The Tree is Older than You Are, a 1995 collection of Mexican poems and stories published by Simon and Schuster. To see more of his extraordinay work please visit the Indigo Arts Gallery.
"Dark of the Woods: Rites of Passage Tales" is copyright © 2005 by Terri Windling. Parts of this essay were originally published in Realms of Fantasy magazine, 1999. All art images are © by the artists and may not be reproduced in any form without the expresswritten permission of the artists.