In all my years of reading books, and of all genres I have read, I must confess, I have never read a Fantasy novel. That is not to say I haven’t watched fantasy movies adapted from stories such as The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter; I have. And I have enjoyed these movies, too, but even so, I never felt the need to read the books themselves.
Why?
I’d always presumed—presumption I now understand is the root of ignorance—that these fantasy novels had simple stories with few nuances, layers, or deeper meanings. And most of them do have uncomplicated plots—the classic hero’s journey and good vs evil—and rich imagery of worlds and peoples and magic.
But everything changed a few days ago when, out of boredom, I picked up the classic, much-celebrated fantasy novel by the master herself, Ursula K. Le Guin. The only gripe I have with her is that her name is too damn long and that she took her husband’s surname, a sacrilege in my eyes for a towering intellectual feminist such as herself.
I fell in love with the book almost instantly.
I have always praised Ursula’s writing, but not this time. This time, the writing seemed unsteady and awkward. I would even say there were stretches where it felt forced.
What I really fell in love with was the depth of the story told. It wasn’t that simple good vs evil trope, Harry vs Voldemort, or Frodo vs Sauron, that is always served in the name of Fantasy, but something far more powerful. This novel was written by one who was awakened. Ursula, I have come to believe, was an enlightened being, a being who saw beyond the veil of Maya. Wizard of Earthsea, then, is the journey of one who is on the path to true awakening. But her mastery is in cleverly masking it all, for if she wrote it out loud, it would’ve surely been rejected. I have come to understand that humans hate everything that takes them away from their desires, from their dopamine and pleasure.
Sparrowhawk, the protagonist, the young wizard from Gont, is one who is born with the seed of awakening within him. As he trains to become a wizard, the seed grows within him, but so do worldly desires. And when one night, he is overcome by his ego, his arrogance, his haughtiness, he brings forth into this world a great evil.
The story is about how Sparrowhawk’s journey of understanding, fearing, and finally confronting this evil. All of it taking place in an endless world of islands and oceans and seas and weather and rain and snow and sleet and magic and mountains and boats and fisherfolk and dragons and fictional animals.
If you are yourself at the beginning of the journey toward spiritual awakening, then this is an unmissable book. This book is right up there with the works and words of Jiddu Krishnamoorthy, Osho, Eckhart Tolle, David Bohm, and so many, many more.
