The Outlander Mystique
I have an idea forming in the back of my mind. I
say the back of my mind, because it makes more credible sense this way; but
actually, I feel the idea forming about a foot above and behind the back of my
head in my energy field, an idea that is much too deep to explore in today’s
spiritual musing. So, if I may, let me simply expand upon what I think is going
on with the formation of this as yet unapprehended idea for a spiritual
musing...
I’ve been caught up in the Outlander series on Neflix this past
week (I’m three quarters of the way through season 2, and I understand season 3
has just been released), and so intrigued was I by the author Diana Gabaldon
who wrote the Outlander novels that I
had to do a Google search to find out how she came about writing this incredible
historical romance with a mesmerizing time-travelling science fiction plot twist;
and what I learned about her creative process confirmed my insights into the mystifying
art of creative writing.
The idea forming in my mind has allowed me to witness my creative
unconscious at work as it assembles the archetypal energies that are coalescing
into the idea for my spiritual musing on the numinous mystery of creative
writing, something that has intrigued every writer whose characters just appear
to take over a story, like Diana Gabaldon’s Claire Randall did in her first Outlander novel which grew into a
series; and given what I’ve seen so far in the movie adaptation of her novel in
seasons 1 & 2, I believe I have been given a serious glimpse into how the
creative unconscious works for the evolution of the individual soul, in this case
Diana Gabaldon who was called to creative writing unexpectedly.
Gabaldon was a university
professor for twelve years before she got the call to write a historical novel,
“for practice, just to learn how,” with no intention of showing it to anyone;
but she didn’t know where to set her historical novel, and then fate kicked in.
By “coincidence” (I put the word
in quotation marks, because I’ve come to believe that coincidences happen to
connect one’s outer journey in life with their inner journey to wholeness and
completeness), she caught a rerun episode of the Doctor Who TV series called “The War Games.” One of the Doctor’s
companions was a Scot from around 1745, a young man about 17 years old called
Jamie McCrimmon who provided the initial inspiration for Gabaldon’s main male
character, James Fraser, and for her novel’s mid-18th Century
Scotland setting. Gabaldon decided to have “an Englishwoman to play off all
those kilted Scotsmen,” but her female English character “took
over the story and began telling it herself, making smart-ass remarks about
everything,” thus providing Gabaldon with the idea of time-travel because
her character Claire sounded like a modern woman, which gave her first Outlander novel the mystifying element
that allowed her to expand her story into a whole series which explore the
sweet joys and harrowing sorrows of romantic love through time travel, a truly
fascinating concept that has captured the imagination of twenty-five million
readers and more viewers of the television series; but where did Claire
Beauchamp Randall come from? That’s the mystery…
Something about Outlander fascinated me, not in the
usual sense of a good story, but something more serious, something deeper than
the plot twists which were brilliantly woven into the storyline, like the psycho-sexual
metaphor of British imperialism symbolized in the perverse relationship that Captain
“Black Jack” has with the young Scot with the “magnificent body,” Claire’s
husband Jamie Fraser; the story implied a historical connective tissue that
spelled out a karmic link from one lifetime to the next, and then it hit
me—that was the implicit logic of the natural process of soul-making that the
author was called upon to introduce to the world through Claire’s romantic
connection with the past and future.
This, of course, presupposes the
principles of karma and reincarnation which are artfully implied in the Outlander series through the concept of
time travel, how decisions made in one lifetime have karmic consequences in the
future—which seems to be the driving engine of the whole Outlander series with Claire’s love for her husband Jamie in mid-18th
Century Scotland and her fraught marriage to Frank in mid-20th
Century England, and no matter how hard Claire and Jamie try to change the
future they are doomed to fail because karma has inevitable consequences; which
suggest that the writer’s imagination is guided by an omniscient guiding
principle not only to facilitate the writer’s individuation in their destined journey
to wholeness and completenss, but the reader’s as well by providing them with
the karmic wisdom of the stories, a symbolic wisdom that writers themselves are
oblivious to until their creative unconscious works it out through writing,
which in Diana Gabaldon’s case is a historical romance with an ingenious plot
twist.
By paralleling Claire’s two
loves, Jamie in 18th Century Scotland and Frank in 20th
Century England (and America), the connective tissue of love can be seen in all
of it’s glorious and mystifying manifestations as it flows through time—just as
karma does. An incredible story and invaluable message about choices and
consequences, but much too deep for today’s spiritual musing. And that’s the
mystique of the Outlander that I
simply had to explore.
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