Re: Religion
The other day, I was actually talking to someone about the fact that I'm a religious person (Christian) who writes supernaturally themed stories, and he asked me if I thought my beliefs were integrated into the supernatural bases of the story. This is what I ended up saying in reply.
I do believe in some supernatural entitites- God, angels, demons, etc, but you won't see those particular supernatural entities in my books, and nothing I write is meant to reflect the way I view reality, despite the fact that some people would consider my actual views to be fantastical. That said, I think that there's a real chance that because I've got dualist tendencies (ie believe in both physical and immaterial things to begin with), it might be easier for me to imagine and write supernatural things than it would be for a person who's coming from a more physicalist point of view. So basically, my religious beliefs don't overtly affect the magic and mythology of my fictional worlds, but I think the fact that I hold beliefs of that nature might contribute to the ease with which I can imagine the type of things I write about. If that makes ANY sense at all.
As for importing aspects of any actual religions into the text, I try- for the most part- to steer clear of borrowing much from modern religions, just because I like to feel like I can play around with the concepts I use pretty unbridled, and it's a lot harder for me to do that if I know I'm treading on areas that are sacred to someone else. So, for the most part, the religions I play with in TATTOO are ancient- Greek and Celtic mythology, and I don't even follow either of those exactly. There are some aspects in the book (equinoxes as days of power; certain phrasings of spells) that might overlap with some modern religious beliefs, such as Wicca, but if so, this was completely unintentional, and more the result of the fact that over time, I've absorbed ideas from other fictional pieces (ie Buffy, Charmed, movies, books, etc) that might have imported (and subsequently distorted) aspects of certain religions themselves.
In contrast to the more overt magical hierarchy in TATTOO, the stories set in the GOLDEN universe tend to rely much more on innate power than on any kind of greater supernatural scheme- if there's an overall supernatural hierarchy or organization in that world, I haven't gotten to it yet, and as far as I've been able to tell, there's nothing that's innately good or innately evil there, only people who use the powers they're born with to positive or negative ends.
Not sure if I'm actually making sense on any of this, but for what it's worth, there's my two cents.
-Jen
I do believe in some supernatural entitites- God, angels, demons, etc, but you won't see those particular supernatural entities in my books, and nothing I write is meant to reflect the way I view reality, despite the fact that some people would consider my actual views to be fantastical. That said, I think that there's a real chance that because I've got dualist tendencies (ie believe in both physical and immaterial things to begin with), it might be easier for me to imagine and write supernatural things than it would be for a person who's coming from a more physicalist point of view. So basically, my religious beliefs don't overtly affect the magic and mythology of my fictional worlds, but I think the fact that I hold beliefs of that nature might contribute to the ease with which I can imagine the type of things I write about. If that makes ANY sense at all.
As for importing aspects of any actual religions into the text, I try- for the most part- to steer clear of borrowing much from modern religions, just because I like to feel like I can play around with the concepts I use pretty unbridled, and it's a lot harder for me to do that if I know I'm treading on areas that are sacred to someone else. So, for the most part, the religions I play with in TATTOO are ancient- Greek and Celtic mythology, and I don't even follow either of those exactly. There are some aspects in the book (equinoxes as days of power; certain phrasings of spells) that might overlap with some modern religious beliefs, such as Wicca, but if so, this was completely unintentional, and more the result of the fact that over time, I've absorbed ideas from other fictional pieces (ie Buffy, Charmed, movies, books, etc) that might have imported (and subsequently distorted) aspects of certain religions themselves.
In contrast to the more overt magical hierarchy in TATTOO, the stories set in the GOLDEN universe tend to rely much more on innate power than on any kind of greater supernatural scheme- if there's an overall supernatural hierarchy or organization in that world, I haven't gotten to it yet, and as far as I've been able to tell, there's nothing that's innately good or innately evil there, only people who use the powers they're born with to positive or negative ends.
Not sure if I'm actually making sense on any of this, but for what it's worth, there's my two cents.
-Jen