I point, I raise my eyebrows questioning, I burst into tears of joy if
someone – even a child – understands what I am trying to say ...
wandering all day as if in a dream as if I belonged to another
species (Malouf, 1978:17).And, one might add, another place. Riza, too, was an exile, so much more in soul
than in body but now though, through some secret inner working of the soul, he
has found his makom and is once more in the ‘place of home’.
1.3 Outline of the Thesis
My thesis is complex and is presented in three sections; Part I , I magining
the Real, provides a contextual description and history of the narrative mythopoeic
psyche; Part I I , Prospero’s Books, describes the empirical research, the formulation
of the issues and questions and methodology; and Part I I I , The Narrow Gate,
presents an extended examination from a literary, psycho-spiritual perspective. The
Conclusion, The Sacred Heritage, delineates a new paradigm of the relationship
between consciousness, the I maginal Realm and the role of the mythopoeic writer.
I n I magining the Real, I want to focus my readers’ attention on the
mythopoeic dimensions of life: that of the individual and also the collective,
throughout history. My approach is to provide a narrative of the mythopoeic
psyche, focusing particularly on the three fundamental cornerstones of my thesis:
the significance and nature of the Palaeolithic cave pictographs, shamanism and
manifestations of the I maginal Realm.
Recent research in cognitive archaeology contends that the Palaeolithic cave
pictographs and shamanism are inextricably linked (Pearson, 2002 and Lewis-
Williams 2002); this claim is examined in Chapter 2, The Evolution of the Narrative
Psyche. That chapter also describes a psyche, mythopoeic in essence, which has
taken millions of years to evolve; a psyche ineluctably structured by a profound and
dynamic affiliation between the places we inhabit, physically and imaginally, and the
deepest levels of our individual and collective existences, an affiliation that reveals
archetypal patterns.
Beginning with the Upper Palaeolithic cave pictographs of Lascaux, Altimira
and Chauvet, I develop notions about the consciousness of our Aurignacian
ancestors who produced those incredibly beautiful, complex and detailed images.
I n this section I utilize some of the major readings on the pictographs and of the