Heresy with Psychological
Shadows
Folktales, fairytales and legends hold a repository of
universal shadows. Just as settings can be a link between internal and external
‘soul’ language, so does this literature connect our personal fears and shadows
to find our way through darkness. They offer a childhood’s nightlight to all
ages. We may not all be afraid of the same things but we connect with the heart
pounding, dry mouth sensations when we see them.
It’s most often in the ordinary world that psychological
fears can wreak havoc. Just the slightest noise or silence that is out of sync
causes us to pause and listen. As pain is a warning that something is wrong
physically, so fear warns us of danger. Our intuitive radar activates.
In the novel, The Blue Sword, immediately after she saw
Corlath and his men visit, Harry tumbled back into the insomnia she had first
experienced when adjusting to the desert sounds. And even those few weeks had
been somewhat mild, “a sort of moral
irritability that seems to go with the feeling that I ought to have spent all
those hours sleeping. But this last week had been quite as bad—as sleepless—as
any she had known. The last two nights she had spent curled up in the
window-seat of her bedroom; she had come to the point where she couldn’t even
bear to look at her bed.” And that is where Corlath found her when he
arrived to kidnap her. Her physical body reacted to the danger before her heart
and mind caught up.
Exercise: Choose a
few possible physical radar reactions that your character could have in relation
to an incident that happened in her childhood, or as a result of the situation
she is in now?
Share: How does she
react to the physical trigger, especially when she doesn’t know its cause?
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