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Simply put, and I've run through drafts of this so far, locations that exist both magically and physically. Lovecraft based a parallel Massachusetts on the existing one. Burroughs found Interzone in Tangier. Dickens, Doyle and Arthur Machen found London to have many sides. Some places seem hardwired with magical potential, as if they are gateway points of accumulated energy.
I'm not saying one can go here, get hit by a portal of blue light, and cross to Middle Earth. But at these the points "the veil" is almost nonexistant, and you can walk down the dividing line. I had a quasi-scientific theory about this regarding "concentrations of planes of reality" which is one metaphor but not really necessary.
My personal favorite is Sleepy Hollow, the Hudson Valley hamlet immortalized by Washington Irving. Even in Tim Burton's hands it is a place of mystery, of "perpetual Autumn" and wind quietly moving through old trees. There is fear, even terror, to it, and yet there is also a strange benevolence, a warmth. Here anything can happen.
Its correspondant is equally interesting. The Hudson Valley seems a sort of energy glut. Its native residents had numerous legends about it, and then came the settlers, Henrick Hudson, and Washington Irving. Folk legendry I've found regarding the Valley is intense and vivid. During the 60s and 70s it was a favorite settling place for transplanted yogis. And, as publicized in "Fire in the Sky," the Hudson Valley has one of the highest concentrations of UFO sightings/abductions in the US. Not to mention New York City lies at its base.
These specific examples - Lovecraft, Burroughs, Sleepy Hollow - may well be modern occurrances of the type occasioning sacred sights in ancient times. The veil is actually thinner in some places than others. And in the modern world, when such "stuff and nonsense!" had been discarded, the power continued nonetheless - but expressed in different forms. Notice both Lovecraft and Burroughs focus on "the alien" in their work. Lovecraft found hideous representations of primal Other in the ancient groves of Massachusetts. Burroughs, hallucinating madly, saw a gel of the many racial and economic strata around Tangier. The various London mythographers have had other foci.
I'm out for now. Thoughts, or better, experiences? |
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