The Faceless Monk Issues A Warning
In my yet unfinished novel (Dreams: The Final Heresy), one of the darker characters is The Faceless Monk. He is Cardinal Broga’s right hand man, his fixer. When I am actively writing, I write from what I call imaginal space. The characters occupy this space and I can see them and hear them. Since I do not plot or outline or write from conscious expectations or ideas, I am mostly in the position of a kind of scribe. The imaginal contents take the lead in what gets written down.
Recently, I awoke from a nap experiencing either a receding dream or a hypnopompic image. The image was The Faceless Monk and he announced that there would be major and disastrous cyber attacks in 2019. The image pierced me with an intensity difficult to describe. The fictional character was clearly referring to an outer reality and not to a time point or theme of the novel. I wondered how this would change my experience of The Faceless Monk when I return to writing the next scenes of the novel. So, here we have a fictional character, entering a dream (or vision) and announcing future events in the “real” (outer) world.
What is the psychological status of such a phenomenon?
In my experience, I do not question the “reality” of a dream, vision, imaginal space, or things I experience of the outer world. They are all real experiences. The issue for me is not the reality status of experiences of any kind, but more the nature of the eros relation to any experience (regardless of source) and what I do in response to such experiences.
I am aware of the dire warnings of cyber security specialists about the inevitability of major cyber security attacks. As well, I experience the dire warning of The Faceless Monk. The latter warning pierces me more deeply and in response, I not only want to write this brief note, but to prepare for the likelihood of coming cyber disasters. I have my own fantasies as to what these might be as I’m sure you will have as well.
The ontological nature of The Faceless Monk and his knowledge of future events in the world falls readily into the nature of prophetic intelligence. How this comes to be is unclear. Like Pirandello’s characters in search of an author, fictional characters, like dream characters, can function as autonomous beings outside of and independent of ego consciousness. They can “know.”
As more develops out of these reflections, I’ll post again.
Hi Russ, your post of The Faceless Monk, a purely fictional character, having something to say about the waking world and ITS reality reminded me of a legend I had included in my doctoral work in 1996:
“In early times, the legend goes, the world of mirrors and the world of humans were not separated as they would be later on. In those days specular beings and human beings were quite different from each other in color and form, though they mingled and lived in harmony. In that time it was also possible to come and go through mirrors. However, one night the mirror people invaded the earth without warning and chaos ensued. Indeed, human beings quickly realized that the mirror people were chaos. The power of the invaders was great, and it was only through the magic arts of the Yellow Emperor that they were defeated and driven back to their mirrors. To keep them there the emperor cast a spell that compelled the chaotic beings mechanically to repeat the actions and appearances of men. The emperor’s spell was strong but it would not be eternal, the legend says. The story predicts that one day the spell will weaken and the turbulent shapes in our mirrors will begin to stir. At first the difference between the mirror shapes and our familiar shapes will be unnoticeable. But little by little gestures will separate, colors and forms will transmogrify— and suddenly the long- imprisoned world of chaos will come boiling out into our own.”
I barely knew what I was talking about then but the phenomenon has not let me go and I have been circling around its mystery ever since. It opened me to what Jung was up to in The Red Book for example as you know and also world events. For example, we are discovering how much virtual reality can impact empirical reality with software being now able to bring down power grids, ie cyber attacks that you also suggest.
Happy New Year!