I just now read your comment, and I thank you for it. I’m impressed by the generosity of both you and Alan. I’m rushed now because, as I said, I’m getting ready to head out on a five week road. Five week road sparks an idea here, I rarely outline my writing, the idea falls out of the sky, it’s really like that overworked word ‘channeling’. If you ever have time you could consider reading a couple of my posts on ‘plot and structure for novelists. Alan posted a link to it on the netrat.com forum board.

I’m from that notorious sixties generation. We had our famous upheavals and trials, like many generations, but a significant result of our upheavals was a revolution in consciousness, that many would say was one of the most profound since the renaissance and that earthshaking change in consciousness that spiritually conquered the Roman Empire. Countless thousands of us took to the roads. Huck Finn, Ulysses, Tom Joad (Grapes of Wrath), The Pied Piper of Hamlein (Mister Tambourine Man), and yes, Jesus and Gautama Buddha penetrated us with their ‘call’.

We needed the spirit badly. We were swept up in the existential whirlpool, struggling to make sense of the great tragedies of Viet Nam and the assassination of heros.

Existentialism is said to embrace the extreme types of personalities from terrorists on the one hand to the great spiritual masters in world history on the other. The difference is that the negative ones sweep around in the whirlpool and then are dashed down onto the cosmic rocks, while the positive ones are swept up ever higher. It is these last who enter the mystic. Jesus and Buddha were mystics, and they will always be alone as long as the world makes a cliche out of what they were instead of inch by inch transforming themselves into the mystery that was so sublime that these kinds of people were.

It’s near impossible to express in words these levels of the sublime. Words only serve as a kind of roadmap. But the roadmap is worth the drawing. It’s a treasure map, and the ‘real’ treasure maps make for great mystery stories.

Troubadours were often European knights who had been held prisoners by the Saracens (Muslims) during the Crusades. These knights were held for ransom for extended periods of time and were not necessarily rotting in dungeons, but were as likely to be hosted by their captors according to their station in life. A lofty exchange of ideas took place. The Muslims were well-versed in Greek philosophy, advanced mathematics and astronomy, and a far ranging knowledge that came over the silk road through the Himalaya from the Far East. The Europeans were often starved for these ideas since open speculation had been severely limited since Constantine had instituted Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire.

And as they rode home they sang new songs: songs of mystery, of spiritual bliss, and very much of romance. They came home and didn’t act like pigs in a sty as they once had, but had flowered in chivalry.

It is commonly agreed that the song of the troubadours was the birth of modern western literature, and to this day a silver thread runs through a certain strain that is of the mystic, a hidden stream that one who has a certain ear or eye discerns. It doesn’t mean a person must be highly educated to hear the whisper, only that one is open to seek and knock.

Over the last forty years I’ve been compelled to try to voice, often in vain, words that could convey the sublime message. But the quest is, no doubt, worth the effort.

So this is what my first novel is about, and yes I would like it to fly on the wings of a dove.

Thanks again, Lisa and Alan,
Down the road I will surely look in again.

Randy

That’s a pretty fair description of the Templars you posted. The mystery of the Grail endures. For me the several different stories famous over the last twenty-five years, so overwhelmingly popular, have much in common, including keeping the speculation concerning the identity of the Grail on a certain limited level. Some of these famous works are: The Lord of the Rings (an inversion, or turning upside-down of the formula); Holy Blood, Holy Grail; The Alchemist; The De Vinci Code; J K Rowling’s admirable works; The Labyrinth; Indiana Jones.

There seems to me something purposely kept out of the paths of the deeper mystic realms in these works. That’s not to say that I don’t admire them, only that there is much that is not being offered up.

Writers who have explored the mystic, to my mind, on a deeper level are Thomas Mann (Joseph and His Brothers), Hermann Hesse (the last six works), Nikos Kazantzakis (Zorba the Greek, Saint Francis, The Last Temptation of Christ–which explored the Jesus/Magdellen connection long before Holy Blood or DeVinci Code; T. S. Eliot (The Wasteland, Hollow Men), James Joyce (Ulysses, Finnegin’s Wake); Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Robbie Robertson (these last three were saying it before they even knew they were, though eventually they surely did know.

The synchronicity is sprouting here because, though you caught that I was interested in a website for my first novel, what you didn’t know was that the story deals with the Grail, or more correctly the Philosopher’s Stone in a way unlike the first category of writers above, and more similar to the second category. That’s not to say that I place my writing abilities near those of the second category, only that my sensibility is nearer theirs. Again, I have great admiration for the success of all in the first category, even if I disagree with several of them. There is something they are not tackling.

It would be too presumptuous of me to bla bla about my project here and now. Though you, Lisa, and Alan would be very welcome and appreciated if eventually you chose to chit chat about it in the future.

I don’t touch on any of the popular themes dealt with by the first group above. No Templars, no Jesus and Mary chain. But who has ever looked closer at the troubadours in these kind of stories?

There’s the rub.

Best, Randy