In my first Phantammeron novel, I introduce the reader to two sinister beings called the Emptiness and Nothingness. They are born from the Evil One, their mother, who perished in a prior world. They dwell as vast limitless storms and clouds in the Great Beyond which encircles the forested realm called Phantaia.
These are two of many Mythological beings I fashioned from ancient religious archetypes. In Ancient Greece the Gnostics believed in Humanity and the earth as part of a material universe created against the will of God by a being called the Demiurge. This being was a form of evil as it entrapped Human souls in flesh, conceiving of the world and the physical plane of people….a place unlike the spiritual plane of God.
The Demiurge Wikipedia
“Sophia, or Wisdom, the Demiurge’s mother, a partial aspect of the divine Pleroma or “Fullness,” desired to create something apart from the divine totality, without the receipt of divine assent. In this act of separate creation, she gave birth to the monstrous Demiurge and, being ashamed of her deed, wrapped him in a cloud and created a throne for him to be within it. The Demiurge, isolated, did not behold his mother, nor anyone else, concluded that only he himself existed, being ignorant of the superior levels of reality.”
It was Mankind’s role to see this world as evil and flawed and as all life as a spiritual struggle to supersede it and leave it and embrace God in the spiritual. Interesting concept and a very early and ancient concept of life and it’s connection to a divine world.
I became fascinated by the theme of the demiurge. And so the Emptiness and Nothingness form a type of demiurge in their attempts to recreate new worlds of beings and nature so they can in turn be destroyed. But as the Nothingness tells the protagonist in the first book, the children of the world shall destroy themselves and the world by their own greed and temptations.
This idea of evil as self-deception is one of dozens of hidden themes in my novels. In this form, I’m using Mythopoeia to explore the concept of the world and life as inherently flawed by evil, yet beautiful. This dual view that God (the Spirit Divine) lives in all things yet is a gnostic as well as Eastern idea. But the idea that evil exists in the world is Christian. In my books, I celebrate the two.
As such, the use of a false being or presence forms the basis for both the world’s creation and its destruction. It’s this duality yet Celtic ambiguity that fills many of the motivations and events in my stories. But it’s the rich mythological archetypes I’m using throughout that I’m ultimately exploring in depth.
It’s again my feeling we can access this ancient mythological material like Tolkien did and use it for inspiration to enrich our writing and stretch its spiritual premise beyond ourselves and into the mythological realms of our life and imagination.
– the Author
Created Jan 26, 2017, 8:28 AM
