“Fantasy is a different approach to reality, an alternative technique for apprehending and coping with existence. It is not antirational, but pararational; not realistic but surrealistic, a heightening of reality.  In Freud’s terminology, it employs primary, not secondary process thinking. It employs archetypes, which, as Jung warned us, are dangerous things. Fantasy is nearer to poetry, to mysticism, and to insanity than naturalistic fiction is. It is a wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe.”   – Ursula K. Le Guin

Worrying about safety holds us back from the truth about ourselves and the world. In fact, it’s a hindrance that, among other things, makes us fear walking into the dark wood.

We’re familiar with the Divine Comedy‘s lines, “In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself, in a dark wood, where the direct way was lost. It is a hard thing to speak of, how wild, harsh and impenetrable that wood was, so that thinking of it recreates the fear. It is scarcely less bitter than death: but, in order to tell of the good that I found there, I must tell of the other things I saw there.”

I suggest that this dark wood, like so-called “hell” itself, is not a place but a state of mind fed by the unconscious where, as Jung says, the shadow awaits us, that is to say everything we generally perceive as negative. Folklore and fantasy (among other things) lead us there, into this wilderness that comprises the parts of ourselves that we fear to meet.

We find clues in faerie tales, fantasy, and folklore and, as Le Guin notes, in archetypes that many of us see in the Tarot, the KabalisticTree of Life, and our dreams. To some extent, we fear the deeper, dark-wood part of ourselves because confronting it might change us, might lead to death or–worse yet–insanity. But confronting that dark wood might also lead to the wonderment of discovering the true power and knowledge from which we are built.

Helen Luke and others have shown us how to survive the dark wood–how to survive ourselves–with such wisdom as, “The true light never hides the darkness but is born out of the very center of it, transforming and redeeming. So to the darkness, we must return, each of us individually accepting his ignorance and loneliness, his sin and weakness, and, most difficult of all, consenting to wait in the dark and even to love the waiting”

Instead of fear of the dark wood, our stories urge us to confront it with excitement and a sense of adventure. This is one reason I like mythic literature, including folklore and fairie: it’s scary but positive.

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of contemporary fantasy, magical realism, and paranormal stories and novels all of which are set in the dark wood.