Storytelling is an invocation of the magical daemon. While many will not acknowledge this phantasmagoric being, still they will recognize it when they see it. It is the sublime moment when being told a story that the brain suddenly lights up; our inner movie screen freezes and we are momentarily suspended in time. When the daemon materializes the world stops, and the two realities, one real the other fictional, come together as one.
We are naturally attracted to storylines so long as they are well-narrated and they follow the rules of storytelling. There is an element of the macabre, a suggestion of something dark that seeps from the subconscious into visible reality. The protagonist is in danger and is seemingly unaware of this nefarious force that assails him. By the time he realizes he is powerless against it. It might be the long arm of the law that threatens to derail the daring manoeuvres of our charming protagonist, the cop who is hell bent on quashing the robber whose outrageous escapades have thus far delighted us. It could be the story of Tron and the crushing of the human spirit under a technology-driven autocratic rule. And in the classical tales it may be a fiend or jinn, a mythical entity that materializes in the ‘end times’ to corrupt human souls and take custody of this earthly plane.
What is important is that the story delivers a worthy adversary. We must feel that everything, and everyone, that we hold dear is in danger of annihilation. Our adversary is stronger than us, and we cannot stop him. We watch helplessly as our terrible fate awaits us, slowly digesting us as we trundle towards it. Our very soul is at stake. And even if we don’t believe in soul, the storyline convinces us of it—our fear is not of material loss but of something ethereal.
And in this moment of despair we find ourselves in the Third Act. Here we languish while desperately looking for a way out, but finding there is none. Our fate is sealed, and we are overcome by a sense of dread. And that, my friends, is how the magical daemon is invoked—he materializes when we have offered up our last drop of hope, when we have died inside. The gladiator lays wounded on the ground, his tormentor standing over him with lustful eyes peering behind an impenetrable iron mask. Death circles overhead while the mob screams for blood. His life passes before his eyes and his deceased ancestors appear before him, to carry him away to the hereafter. One of them steps forward, an ethereal being of light, and whispers into his ear. His brain suddenly lights up, and time freezes. He is neither alive nor dead, and in that realization he is reborn. Time restarts and he rolls away deftly from the full force of a downward swinging axe; then quickly back on his feet to deliver a mortal blow to his unsuspecting opponent. The mob erupts in total frenzy, possessed by the invoked daemonic force, while blood flows from behind the mask of the defeated adversary. He collapses to his knees and, just before he lurches forward in death’s embrace, he flashes a look of utter bewilderment. The comeback is complete.
We have been fighting these fantastic battles since time immemorial, invoking the magical daemon into our world. Even in defeat, the daemon materializes to carry us into the other realm so that we may taste the afterlife. Such an elusive character appears only in our time of need. He doesn’t accompany the king on his quests but rather assists him from the shadows. He serves the hero and the adversary alike, whichever has the presence of mind to invoke him. Ultimately he serves the storyline itself, for it is through storytelling that he can be invoked—until a time comes that storytelling is no longer necessary. Then the magical daemon will have fully materialized inside our reality, and we will have crossed over into the reality of his storyline.
We are currently caught up in a terrifying modern day storyline, and find ourselves languishing inside the Third Act. Here it feels so real, for the nature of storytelling is that one forgets it is a story. But our story has a special twist, one that has never been seen before. The adversary must try and win at all costs, he cannot be expected to throw the game. The only requirement is he must abide by the rules of storytelling. Once the storyline starts to flow, neither the protagonist nor the adversary can stop it—all they can do is alter its course. Any disruption of this flow, deus ex machina, would itself initiate a meta-storyline that would have far-reaching consequences.
Over many millennia the adversary has been defeated repeatedly at the hands of the protagonist, because ultimately the magical daemon is invoked at the eleventh hour to save the day. The adversary is a cunning creature and is often assisted by the daemon in his rise to power. But in his perennial struggle to defeat the protagonist, the adversary has now turned his attention to the daemon—for without it the protagonist cannot possibly prevail. The adversary does not seek to destroy the hero; this time he seeks to destroy the daemon. The daemon is the enemy now, and this changes everything.
Secularism is a highly effective means of banishing the daemon, to the extent that noone will think of invoking him. The suppressed masses instead take to activism, as their internal world has been crushed and only the outer reality bears any credibility. In our objective world of causes and effects, the inner world is acted on by the outer. In place of the magical daemon we resort to allopathic care, and extended to a social level we take up political reform. In place of soul we have neuroscience, and in place of animism we have simulation theory.
The terrifying prospect facing humanity now is not an impending collapse—for certainly we have suffered worse. It is that the magical daemon, and the aether through which it can travel between this world and the ‘other’, has been written out of the storyline. The universe has been drained of vital prana, and what remains is inert matter being animated by moving electrons. Human has become a golem. When we die, our soul goes nowhere because there never was such a thing. That part of us that keeps the mystery alive is being increasingly suppressed.
Now we must turn our attention back to the daemon and the mythical aether in which he travels. Our adversaries have become devoid of the charismatic quality of the daemon, they are all bland and predictable. We now fight on the side of the daemon, we allow its daemonic presence to light up our brains—to guide us and alter the course of the storyline in which we are currently embroiled. In previous times it was the fight of good pitted against bad, of light against darkness, and the daemon assisted both sides. Now it has morphed into a full on assault on the daemon, and our response must be to reactivate our virtual reality generators in the brain. To move away from the secular world of measurement and neuroscience and return to the animistic view of our ancestors. To invoke the magical daemon.