Mythos Vs Logos

All souls are one.

Yet each soul is unique.

The universe is a vast repository of knowledge, an immense library waiting to be perused by each of these unique souls. How much have you read?

Read on…

True knowledge, Logos, is often found hidden underneath layers and layers of Mythos, stories and fantasies which, all too often, are taken to be mere entertainment, and the Logos remains hidden, unseen by most souls, those too easily satisfied by fantasy, unable to see the Truth in the stories. The magic in these stories is superficial, merely the fantasies and dreams of vain souls. True magic is revealed to those who can see, those who learn how to wake from dreams and smell the rich aromas of the rising sun of Logos.

Many stories are told; most fall on deaf ears, but some are heard by many, spreading like wildfire across the human mindscape, holding the world’s attention for a time. Let us now enter the realm of one such popular story to see if we can find the Logos contained deep within. Let us retell this story, bringing to it new and alternate ideas from some of those souls who were also drawn to it, and let us thereby transform it into a great quest for Logos, buried somewhere beneath the glistening veneer of mythos that encases our story.

Magic. What better allure can there be in a story? Stories that contain it all too easily fall into pure mythos territory. Magic is all too often unexplained, and is therefore used as a way of allowing anything to happen in a story without having to think of an explanation. The wonder of magic is that it can do anything; it can make the unreal real, make possible the impossible. Stories containing this kind of magic attract people because most people think that they cannot understand the workings of the universe and, as such, often wish that they could simply click their fingers and make everything the way they wish it to be. Magic can do this, they think. But those more in tune with Logos know that this kind of magic can never be. It only exists in stories. Nothing can happen that is not in accordance with the laws of the universe. Authors who utilise magic in their stories rarely offer any kind of Logos explanation for this magic. Many would regard this as taking away the fun of it, or even that magic ceases to be magic once it has been explained, like when a magician reveals the secret of his tricks.

But what if it were possible to explain magic in such a way as to make it real? If an explanation could be made showing how magic could work in the real world, wouldn’t that make a far greater story? A mythos story with a Logos explanation for the magic contained within, one that is perfectly in line with the laws of the real world. From this point magic would cease to be something to be vainly longed for, but would become something very real that we can all achieve if we strive hard enough.

So long as the laws of the universe are not violated there is nothing we cannot do. Anything not forbidden is compulsory. It will happen. We will become magicians. We will become wizards. We will become Gods!

With that in mind, let us begin…

The revolution will only come about after a significant increase in creativity. Art must become more than just entertainment or escapism, it must become the driving force behind humanity’s quest for divinity. After the era of postmodernism, the arts have slowed all but to a stop. Postmodernism expanded the boundaries of possibility as far as they could possibly go – to infinity. As a result, no one can think of any new ideas. Artists simply rehash old ideas and the ignorant masses proclaim them geniuses for doing so. Where can we go from here? Hasn’t it all been done?

The solution lies in expansion. If every idea has already been tried, what else can be done other than expansion of existing ideas? Perhaps originality has become overrated in modern times. Why must I be forced to come up with an original story when every possible story has already been told? In this day and age artists are obsessed with owning their creations. Artists wish to survive in modern society doing nothing but creating their art. To do this, they have to make money from their art. Therefore, copyright comes into play. I cannot listen to an artist’s music for free. I have to pay in some way, so that the artist earns money. This is perhaps why originality means so much to artists these days. However, in the society I wish to help create, there will be no such thing as money. Therefore, artists will not have to worry about making money from their art, and, as such, art will be readily available to everybody without the restriction of having to buy it. I therefore have to relinquish any desire to make money from my own creations. Everything I create will instantly become public domain, freely available to anybody, as art should always be. The true artist is the one who works for free, bestowing his works on humanity out of the goodness of his heart, wishing for nothing in return. The added bonus of this is, of course, that I can now steal existing ideas without breaching copyright laws, as I am not making any money myself.

Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.

William Shakespeare is one of the greatest artists of all time. Yet all but one of his plays were based on existing stories, some based on real life events, some based on traditional tales, and some based on previous literary works by other writers. Those plays of the latter category are therefore nothing more than fan-fiction. Shakespeare took a story he liked and retold it, expanding on the original, adding his own characters and situations within the existing story. Shakespeare’s story was nearly always vastly superior to the originals due to his exemplary genius, and no one ever accused Shakespeare of having a lack of originality.

Often it is not the story that is important, but they way in which it is told.

When the great film director Orson Welles returned to Hollywood in 1958, he told Universal studios that he could create a great film from a bad script and asked them for the worst script they had. Welles took this script and produced the film “Touch Of Evil”, truly one of the greatest films ever made. It wasn’t the story, but they way that Welles told it.

Welles and Shakespeare, two of the greatest artists of all time, both took existing ideas and expanded on them to create new works of genius.

I must therefore do the same. I must expand upon an existing story to create something bigger and better, who cares about originality. The way I tell the story will be what matters. If fan-fiction is good enough for Shakespeare, it’s good enough for me.

The Harry Potter series of novels by J.K. Rowling (and the subsequent films) became a huge global sensation for three reasons:

1) The magical nature of the story appealed greatly to the mythos desires of people.
2) The story was told in a simplistic way containing no difficult or intellectually challenging content.
3) Rowling’s story was a great synthesis of existing ideas from the fantasy genre.

Part of the sensation of Harry Potter was the overwhelming amount of fan-fiction that appeared on the internet relating to it. Fan-fiction existed for many other franchises, but Harry Potter eclipsed them all in sheer quantity. The reason for this is the bare, template-like nature of Rowling’s story and her characters. The plot of the story is a series of archetypal fantasy events and each major character is an archetypal stereotype with little depth or true humanity. As such, the Harry Potter universe became a template with which a myriad of stories were possible, with authors fleshing out the simplistic ideas and characters that Rowling had created. Harry Potter arguably lends itself to fan-fiction better than anything else.

The vast majority of Harry Potter fan-fiction was simple, silly stories written by children, but every now and then one would stumble across something written by a competent writer that was just as interesting and entertaining (sometimes more so) than Rowling’s original. Rowling, it must be said, is a rather mediocre author who got very lucky, so it is not surprising that there are amateur authors out there capable of producing works as good as or superior to her work.

I must confess that I have read a great deal of Harry Potter fan-fiction, to the extent that, when I think of something from the Harry Potter universe, I am often confused as to whether I am thinking of something from the original novels, or something from a piece of fan-fiction.

As a result of this, my own ideas began to develop. The Harry Potter world, to me, ceased to be merely the content of Rowling’s novels, but became something much bigger. Two works of fan-fiction in particular engaged me as much as the original novels and my own Potter-based ideas were based on them as much as on the originals (these were the Slytherin Rising series by J.L. Matthews and, in particular, the Two To Lead series by Missile Envy). Eventually, I realised that my own story could become much more than a simple, silly story written by a child. Its basis on the Harry Potter universe mattered not.

So yes, I am going to write a piece of Harry Potter fan-fiction. But anyone deterred by this must remember – I am a Logos thinker not a mythos dreamer, I can take the superficial magic of Harry Potter and show how it can become very real for each and every one of us, I can take mediocrity and produce something of true artistic value, I can release art and creativity from the shackles of greed and return them to their original purpose, that of carrying humanity to the stars, to make us Gods.