inhabit. We have seen also from the cohort readers how it is intrinsically healing
and liberating for the soul to be told the stories, the myths of its tribe, the verities
of an elsewhere-place, the dimension beyond and yet within the mundane.
I am certain that David Malouf, Thomas Keneally and Colleen McCullough
and most of their readers would not think of themselves as shamans. However, the
research affirmed that they are participants in a great tradition, spiritual
functionaries in the realm of place, a tradition that parts the mists of Avalon, that
wonderful metaphor in Marion Zimmer Bradley's brilliantly evocative novel, in which
the parting of the mists that separate the holy isle from the mundane world is a
responsibility and a privilege reserved for adepts of the Old Ways who help us to
define the boundaries of our souls.
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