I’ve been following a beautiful garden path of thought as I spend time with Kathleen Raine’s books, Defending Ancient Springs and That Wondrous Pattern. In her essays she mingles with poets like William Blake, W.B. Yeats and Edwin Muir who have all experienced the visionary power of imagination. For them, poetry and myth-telling aren’t just pastimes. They are vital for our health and wholeness as human beings.
Most of us haven’t been taught how to imagine. We don’t make a distinction between imagination and fantasy, but for early philosophers, this was lesson number one. The sixteenth century alchemist Jacob Boehme was quite explicit about it. He wrote: “Phantasy is not imagination, but the frontier of folly.”
As Jeffrey Raff wrote in Jung and the Alchemical Imagination:
Anyone who endeavors to experience the inner world through active imagination will, sooner or later, deal with the thorny issue of fantasy and delusion, especially if one teaches or works with individuals in therapy or analysis. While imagination opens the door to profound experiences of the self, and makes the formation of the self possible, fantasy leads to inflation, illusion, and stagnation.” (43)
I think that the best way to learn the difference between “imagination” and “fantasy” is to do our own imagining, and I have found that one of the most accessible entry points is through fairy tales. The images in the stories are very potent, and for many, they have a magnetic pull on the psyche. If you acknowledge that pull, and you go into a scene to see it for yourself, you will likely see images that are surprising. Needless to say, a certain amount of spiritual courage is needed to go there because the conscious mind is not in control. If we don’t like what we see, and we want the image be something else, Imagination veers into fantasy.
Let’s say I asked you to locate yourself in a mythic place, and the first thing you imagined was climbing a glass mountain. The image expressed how you felt, but you didn’t want to be on a glass mountain, so you changed your image to a sandy beach by a sparkling blue lake. The beach might express where you’d like to be, or how you’d like to be seen, but it wouldn’t be expressing truth. The glass mountain, on the other hand, has something to say about where you are. It may also be suggesting a way to surmount that obstacle, because it’s your glass mountain and nobody else’s.
When you start engaging the symbols of a well-worn story like a fairy tale, it’s easy to veer off into fantasy. In my WonderLit exploration of Jack and the Beanstalk, I wanted to confront my fear of intimidating male authority figures. But when I got into the story, I was much more comfortable on the ground with Jack and his magic beans than I was with the giant in the sky. I didn’t want to see that man-eating monster! But I knew that I didn’t see him with my own eyes, I wouldn’t be getting the medicine that I had come into the story to receive. Just like Jack, I had to step up onto that beanstalk.
When I finally did go and look at the giant for myself, I found him at the dinner table. He had just finished his supper and he was pounding his fists on the table. He wore a bib and looked like a huge BABY. I was shocked by my picture. The giant didn’t terrorize me at all. As I wrote in The Otherworld Journey course:
“The giant’s a big VICTIM. He can’t handle things not going his way. When they do, he automatically turns into a huge cry baby. It’s a conspiracy, everybody is out to get him. It’s like he’s running to his Mama all the time, crying, “Look what they did to me, Mama, they hate me!” And it’s true, they do, but not because he didn’t deserve it. He’s the biggest bully in the schoolyard! But he is completely unable to admit fault. That’s his biggest, most glaring FAULT!!”
Had I skipped that chapter in WonderLit, had I not gone to look at the dark power in the story, I wouldn’t have seen the giant’s fundamental weakness. I might have been able to speak about friendly giants and beanstalks, but I would not have found a way to see through the dark powers that had terrorized me in my life.
I understand how tempting it is cling to our ‘beanstalks’ when we’re engaging in mythic imagination. If we’re not ready to see the big bad wolf or the evil witch, we’ll want to change them into a friendly dog or a pitiful old woman. Of course it’s okay to fantasize if we’re not out to grapple with the gritty stuff, but it is important to learn the difference. Real images produce self-recognition. We see where we are and what we’re dealing with, and from then on, we become interested in the plot of the protagonist because it has become our own and we have a vested interest in the outcome.
The people in Kathleen Raine’s garden of thought have all had transformative experiences of Imagination because they have learned how to imagine. As she writes in Defending Ancient Springs, the poets Dante, Milton, Coleridge, Shelley, Blake and Yeats have all discovered how to speak “the great symbolic language of tradition.”
“The world-tree and its fruits, the birds of the soul, sun, moon, river, loom, dragon, gate, and dark tower, may be likened to words of that language, whose meanings, though not otherwise definable, are exact. Knowledge of these symbols is essentially a kind of learning, but it is the learning of the imagination, not of the merely conceptual mind. It is the learning of the poets.” (p. 13)
These symbols don’t come to life by reading about them in a symbol dictionary. Those sources can only reinforce what we discover for ourselves, because symbols speak to each of us in a unique way. I learned this very early on, and it was the key that unlocked the gate to all the fairy tales. P.L. Travers, one of the earliest contributors to Parabola Magazine and the author of Mary Poppins, wrote that the meaning of a symbol can never be universally expressed for once and for all. A symbol is like a crystal hanging in the window. It has many facets. It has meaning for me, for you, and for all of us. But you can’t get to the universal before you’ve had your own encounter with the symbol. Jack’s giant represents a power in the world, a power that we are all grappling with together. But everyone who engages honestly with that giant will have their own epiphany.
I’m taking a deep breath now as I move through the garden. I’m listening to the conversations that are going on in every corner and under every tree. This is my vision of the way the world is meant to be, one facet of my image of the Garden of Eden. Human beings sharing their discoveries on the inner planes, speaking the forgotten language, and changing the fabric of the world from the inside out.
Feature Image, Poet’s Garden, Vincent van Gogh, (1853-1890)
Other images: Michelle Tocher, from WonderLit Fairy Tales (www.wonderlit.com)
thank you for your post. This morning I have been exploring the meaning of the words you
used…fantasy and imagination.
thank you for your post. This morning I have been exploring the meaning of the words you
used…fantasy and imagination.
Who is the artist who did the garden illustration
Hello Ann, and thank you for your comment. The garden image is “Poet’s Garden” by Vincent Van Gogh. I’ve been surprised to discover that many more than Jung have made the distinction between fantasy and imagination. I’m sure you will have your own sources but I’d be happy to share some of mine. Hope you are well these days. Sending warm wishes!
“A symbol is like a crystal hanging in the window. It has many facets. It has meaning for me, for you, and all of us. But you can’t get to the universal before you’ve had your own encounter with the symbol.”
I loved this whole post but especially this part! It reminds me of something I’ve learned from hosting and participating in a dream sharing circle. I’ve noticed that there is an uncanny synchronicity that seems to happen when a group of people gather regularly to share dreams: each of the dreams shared on a specific day will tend to have a similar theme. In fact, oftentimes we are blown away by the similarities in not only theme but in specific details of the dreams! But each dream shows only a facet of the theme— based on the dreamers own personal experiences. But when each facet is brought together— and held as sort of crystal scattering light in all directions— we can begin to see a more holistic— perhaps universal? meaning to the dreams, which in turn gives us greater understanding of our own individual dream.
Also, I am an astrologer who has a special interest in the planet and archetype of Neptune, since it is an archetype or symbol that is predominant in my own astrology chart. What you’ve written in this blog post hits at the heart of what are the negative and positive aspects of Neptune: fantasy or imagination…… illusion or deep spiritual truth. Maintaining a steadfast loyalty to our own self, no matter how difficult that may be, is the key to unlocking spiritual truth.
Lastly— this post has come at a perfect time for me as just this week I had a significant dream in which the symbols of a cauldron and a witch were included. I knew the dream and the cauldron symbol were important because I had completed an intuitive art journal in 2020 in which cauldrons appeared in three of the pages. However an incredible synchronicity occurred as I was sharing this dream with a friend (who happens to also be in the dream and in my dream group). We were talking on the phone as I was driving and telling the dream when I drove past a house with a real black cauldron as an ornament in the front yard! I couldn’t believe it! And of course I pulled right over and took a photo to send to my friend.
Anyway I’ve been contemplating the greater meaning of this symbol for me and your reminder to face the symbol with my own imagination is important! Thank you!
Thank you for so generously sharing your dream experiences and synchronicities, Juliet! For a long time, I told fairy tales without feeling that I could get inside them. Sitting with P.L. Travers and her book, “What the Bee Knows,” I came upon her description of myth as a multi-faceted crystal and it was the key that unlocked the gate to the stories’ meanings. And as for your dreams and your process, wow, you really know you’re onto something when it shows up in front of somebody’s house!
I remember working with Perrault’s Cinderella and having all sorts of insights about the glass slipper (by telling the story from the POV of the “lost” slipper) and I walked past a hardware store and saw a glass stiletto in the window. Who puts a “glass slipper” in a hardware store window? Haha. It’s a funny world we live in!
A glass slipper in a hardware store!!! Wow! Is that like the antithesis of a bull in a China shop? 🤣
And yes! What a wonderful, silly world it is we live in!
This was very timely, Michelle. I don’t have a story as amazing as Juliet’s but I have experienced similar things. The difference between fantasy and imagination is something I have just been grappling with and so your post here comes at the right time to help me clarify this difference. Thank you!
Great to hear from you, Erika. Your perspective on the distinction, coming from the richness of your own imaginative work, would be a gift! Sending many good wishes your way.
Wow such a great blog post!! And I love the distinction between “imagination” and “fantasy”. I had never heard that Jeffrey Raff quote before but in my personal experience it was spot on! Thank you for writing this and also sharing your personal experiences with the topic. 🙂
Lovely to hear from you, Katarina. Thanks for your comment! It was such a joy to have one of those ‘garden conversations’ with you when we mulled over our different imaginative discoveries in the fairy tale “Catherine and her Destiny.” That was such a fun podcast. Please feel free to tell people about it here!
Oh wonderful! For anyone interested, here is a podcast discussion I had the pleasure of having with Michelle about the fairy tale “Catherine and Her Destiny”.
Take the Forest Path Podcast
Whoops for some reason it didn’t attach the web address above! Here is the correct link to the podcast episode with Michelle Tocher on fairy tales!
https://open.spotify.com/episode/48Lo1OV0uEholIP2RwE3Bc
Thank you for your comments, everyone!
There are many inspiring books on the topic in addition to Raine’s books, and here are some of them: Lost Knowledge of Imagination, by Gary Lachman; William Blake vs the World, by John Higgs; Imaginal Love: The Meanings of Imagination in Henry Corbin and James Hillman, by Tom Cheetham; Jung on Active Imagination, edited with an introduction by Joan Chodorow; and Jung and the Alchemical Imagination by Jeffrey Raff. There are many poets, philosophers, and psychologists who have practiced what has been called: “active imagination”, “real imagination”, “divine imagination” and “creative imagination”… but there is no equal to your own experience and what you learn for yourself about the distinction between fantasy and imagination.
I’m going to add all these titles to my Amazon Wish List! Thank you Michelle!