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The God in the Pentagram: religion and spirituality in modern Fantasy

Sylvia Kelso

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Abstract

Once upon a time, as certain narratives have it, someone sent me a call for papers for an essay collection tentatively titled "Religion and Fantasy." Since I felt unqualified to pursue some senses of that polysemic word fantasy - fantasy as opposed to Freud's reality principle, fantasy as day dream, fantasy as wet dream, fantasy as the "setting for desire" (Lap lane he and Pontalis 26)-1 turned to the more familiar turf of fantasy as genre fiction. But a cursory scan of my bookshelves showed that religions are very seldom depicted in recent fantasy. At this stage, I was still taking "religion" in the basic sense as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary: "One of the prevalent systems of faith and worship," based on "human recognition of superhuman controlling power" (1029).

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Once upon a time, as certain narratives have it, someone sent me a call for papers for an essay collection tentatively titled "Religion and Fantasy." Since I felt unqualified to pursue some senses of that polysemic word fantasy - fantasy as opposed to Freud's reality principle, fantasy as day dream, fantasy as wet dream, fantasy as the "setting for desire" (Lap lane he and Pontalis 26)-1 turned to the more familiar turf of fantasy as genre fiction. But a cursory scan of my bookshelves showed that religions are very seldom depicted in recent fantasy. At this stage, I was still taking "religion" in the basic sense as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary: "One of the prevalent systems of faith and worship," based on "human recognition of superhuman controlling power" (1029).

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Available abstract

Once upon a time, as certain narratives have it, someone sent me a call for papers for an essay collection tentatively titled "Religion and Fantasy." Since I felt unqualified to pursue some senses of that polysemic word fantasy - fantasy as opposed to Freud's reality principle, fantasy as day dream, fantasy as wet dream, fantasy as the "setting for desire" (Lap lane he and Pontalis 26)-1 turned to the more familiar turf of fantasy as genre fiction. But a cursory scan of my bookshelves showed that religions are very seldom depicted in recent fantasy. At this stage, I was still taking "religion" in the basic sense as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary: "One of the prevalent systems of faith and worship," based on "human recognition of superhuman controlling power" (1029).

Key concepts: Fantasy, Faith, Dream, Narrative, Literature, Psychoanalysis, Spirituality, Worship

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