![]() To illustrate, let’s explore the teachings of a man called Srila Prabhupada.Ī. The notion of a temporary world that exists within the ordinary world yet dedicated exclusively to performance is a common facet in video games, films, and other media as much as it is in religion, spirituality, and consciousness. All are temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart. forbidden spots, isolated, hedged round, hallowed, within which special rules obtain. The arena, the card-table, the magic circle, the temple, the stage, the screen, the tennis court, the court of justice, etc, are all in form and function play-grounds, i.e. Just as there is no formal difference between play and ritual, so the ‘consecrated spot‘ cannot be formally distinguished from the play-ground. The term ‘Magic Circle’ was first introduced by Johan Huizinga – Dutch historian and cultural theorist – in his book Homo Ludens, a study of the play element in culture ( read here). Is there a spiritual, religious or psychological substratum to our innate affinity for a Magic Circle? This got me thinking about the various ‘other-worldly’ experiences mankind has been seeking since the dawn of time. Upon first hearing of The Magic Circle, I was intrigued by the evocation of a man-made haven through experiences such as games. Author trancescripts Posted on MaMaCategories Uncategorized Tags Books, Change, Fiction, H.G.There exist many conceptions of social, mental and cultural borders when it comes to play and the zone in which it takes place. He sees land transformed over hundreds of thousands of years, while he himself sits safely (albeit uncomfortably), within the circle drawn by his machine, occupying a sphere of local, personal, existential time, divorced from the duration of the years passing around him. It’s as if the Traveler has drawn around himself a magic circle, like the kind described by Johan Huizinga in Homo Ludens and Mircea Eliade in The Sacred and the Profane. By sitting upon it and manipulating a pair of levers, the Traveler observes his life-world transforming rapidly all around him, the whole flashing as in a sequence of motion studies projected onto a kind of spherical surround. The Traveler claims to have departed the space-time of the dinner party by boarding a vehicle he built in his laboratory. Tolkien, Johan Huizinga, Literature, Magic, Magic Circle, Magical Realism, Magico-Psychedelic Realism, Narrative, Play, Portal Fantasy, Portals, Realism, Storytelling, Surrealism, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Worldbuilding, Worldchanging, Worlds Leave a comment on Portals, Circles, and Worlds The Magic Circle “What if, in so doing,” replies the Traveller, “we followed the paths of the Alchemists and the Surrealists? What if, as Magico-Psychedelic Realists, we brought them together, allowed them to merge?” Author trancescripts Posted on OctoCategories Uncategorized Tags Alchemy, Capitalist Realism, Faerie, Fantasy, Genre, Hermeticism, Homo Ludens, J.R.R. “But what if, instead of distinguishing these worlds as ‘primary’ and ‘secondary,’” adds the Narrator, “we opted rather to call them ‘partner worlds,’ or ‘corresponding pairs’ - as in the Hermetic saying, ‘As above, so below’?” We who are “created sub-creators” in one reality get to be creators of worlds of our own. Created in that being’s image, he says, we too possess a capacity to create. In keeping with his Catholicism, he believes that humans are handiwork of a single god, a single divine creator. That the worlds that result from this sphere are temporary in nature leads Tolkien to assume them “sub-creations” - “secondary” worlds, as he says in his 1938 essay “On Fairy-Stories” - but not in a way that diminishes their value. Tolkien, as one of the preeminent figures of twentieth-century fantasy, shares Huizinga’s interest in this other, “temporary” sphere born of play. ![]() “It is rather a stepping out of ‘real’ life into a temporary sphere of activity with a disposition all of its own” (8). “Play is not ‘ordinary’ or ‘real’ life,” writes Huizinga. ![]() The world in the circle is the realm of Faerie - or what Huizinga would call the realm of play. ‘Tis a magic circle, of the kind theorized by Johan Huizinga in his book Homo Ludens. Do Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, the heroes of Tolkien’s fictions, pass through portals? Their home in the Shire features a circular door, through which they step when they begin their journeys.
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