How to use Tarot and Astrology in Science Fiction
Part 5
The Story of A Life
Previous entries in this series:
Tarot:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/10/index-to-posts-about-or-involving-tarot.html
Astrology:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html
Part 1
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/12/how-to-use-tarot-and-astrology-in.html
Part 2
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/12/how-to-use-tarot-astrology-in-science.html
Part 3
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/01/how-to-use-tarot-and-astrology-in.html
And we looked at copyright, DRM and phone repair as it intersects the Law.
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/01/copyright-drm-and-phone-repair.html
Which raised the esoteric aspects of "ownership" leading to issues of the reality of Happily Ever After leading to Part 4.
Part 4
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/01/how-to-use-tarot-and-astrology-in_22.html
And here we are at Part 5.
That journey is an archetype.
It is a spiritual journey, the story of a life, a steep climb up out of the mindset of being subjugated to the values of one people and into a free mindset where it is possible to receive a new, different, value system.
The two value sets are not the focus of this blog post -- whichever two you might want to lift from human history, or invent, your Science Fiction Romance novel is the STORY of changing value systems.
This free radical condition, between value systems, the receptive mental state, is dramatically useful to you as a Romance writer. Mastering this value-system-switch process will let you usher your readers into "far away places with strange sounding names."
It is an Inner Journey -- and is driven by inner conflict.
In Theme-Conflict Integration Part 6,
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/03/theme-conflict-integration-part-6.html
we touched on how a Character you are creating responds to being Under The Influence of another Character.
Previously, we discussed how writers can apply the counting of the Omer to plotting Romance novels.
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/08/theme-symbolism-integration-part-3-why.html
Humans, by and large, fight to the death to get free of Influence. Any influence -- good, bad, indifferent -- having someone else tell you what to think just arouses adamant opposition in most humans. (not all, which is what makes humans interesting.)
In the case of the fleeing Israelites, the Influence was Egyptian culture -- not just the Pharaoh bullying them, but the entire society. The Egyptians didn't notice they had a culture -- this was long before scholars studied human behavior with anything other than astrology. The existence of Egyptian culture was only apparent because the descendants of Jacob had inherited a different take on life-the-universe-and-everything than the Egyptians had.
The contrast created conflict.
Study what happened then, and extract a pattern for what will happen at First Contact with non-human Alien cultures.
Humans are adaptable, but not as adults. Humanity does our adapting in childhood -- somewhat in adolescence, but mostly before age 7 or so, we are incredibly adaptable.
After about age 13 or so, dropping a value system and adopting a different one takes much more work, a vertical learning curve where we slide back a lot.
The older you get, the harder it is to internalize the non-verbal content of Values.
Values are hard to write about in fiction because:
a)Values are inherently non-verbal
b)Values are referred to by different words meaning the same thing
c)Values are referred to by the same words meaning different things
We assign words to represent inner experiences and assume everyone using that word means the same experience.
This is why the language of imagery, (such as Tarot), and the disciplined, orderly, non-verbal communication in artistic symbolism works so much better in fiction for conveying Values.
The Romance writer has to answer questions that no real human could ever answer -- for example, "Why do you love that guy?"
We don't know what we see in him, or him in her, because what we see is not something that can be "known." It is apperceived by another sense, informed by an array of sensory input, but ultimately a thing of the Soul, not eyeballs or logic.
So experiencing the shift of Values necessary to weld two individuals into a couple is one of the essential tools of the Romance writer. As it happens, it is also the core tool of the science fiction writer introducing humans to an Alien species.
Any non-humans we meet up with in space will be even more different from us than the Egyptians were to the descendants of Jacob (who weren't Jews, yet.)
We have discussed this upward journey of the Soul previously. It isn't a journey of the body, from place to place, but a gaining of energy by climbing to another soul-level. As when you climb a mountain, you store potential energy in your body -- which can be lost if you fall down the mountainside -- the Soul gains potential energy in a spiritual climb which can be lost by falling down -- and it hurts when you hit bottom.
It is ridiculously difficult to do this 40-day exercise in Spiritual preparation for receiving a new and different value system. The forces of reality sweep in and knock you sideways -- you forget to read the page one night, you forget to do the daily exercise, and you forget that you forgot.
So they made a booklet bound like a reporter's notepad, where you can flip the pages to keep your place.
In this book:
http://store.chabad.org/product.asp?Product=bk-mlc-counteng
Which you can also buy on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Counting-Omer-Simon-Jacobson/dp/188658723X/
...each of the 49 individual Emotions discussed comes with a do-it-today exercise that is a challenge to your ordinary way of looking at the world. These exercises, done in this sequence, strip calluses and leave vulnerability.
As I said, it is insanely, ridiculously difficult to do this very simple thing in step with the Hebrew Calendar ( between Passover and Shavuot), but if you can achieve it (and it might take several years), you will not regret the effort. It will improve your ability to create and depict Soul Mates who deserve and achieve a "Happily Ever After."
In fact, it will make it much easier to craft a story that convincingly presents the Happily Ever After as a very real, everyday, achievable lifestyle for a couple.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
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