Introduction
Welcome,
This is the first in a series of posts leading up to the cover reveal of Palingenesis, my debut YA novel about 12-year-old Travis Turner, a bullied biracial geeky boy who learns he’s evil’s chosen. Travis must then fight the devil to protect the boy and world he loves.
Palingenesis is the first in a series and will release September 1, 2021. A recurring motif in the story is that of rebirth as symbolized by the phoenix, but this growth doesn’t come easy. As Octavia Butler said:
In order to rise from its own ashes, a Phoenix first must burn.
Palingenesis
The world palingenesis has its root in Greek, “palin” meaning to come again as in palindrome, and genesis, meaning birth or creation, and it has several meanings depending on the context it’s used in. In politics it refers to a theory of how fascism develops due to a longing for a national rebirth, which you can read more about here.
In the biological sense, palingenesis refers to the exact reproduction of ancestral features in an organism via inheritance, as opposed to by environmental pressures, as demonstrated in the now discredited Haeckel’s Embryos illustrations. In the philosophical sense it has been used by the Stoics to refer to their view that the universe continually recreates itself after absorbing itself and by the Pythagoreans who use it to refer to their view that the soul continues after death, migrating to a new body.
Moreover, philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer used palingenesis to refer to his belief that the human will continued on after our death, being reborn in others. Palingenesis also has a connotation in alchemy, particularly the concept that the alchemist must undergo a spiritual and mental rebirth before they are worthy of creating the Philosopher’s Stone
For these reasons, and others I will explain, I chose Palingenesis as the title of the first book in The Phoenix Diaries series. Initially, I was going to name each book after a different alchemical term, but I’d discovered there were other series that had used this nomenclature, so I switched it.
Transmigration of Souls
Ultimately this worked out since the concept of rebirth and growing into your best self is paramount in this and the other books in the series. It also, has the benefit of alluding to the transmigration of souls, which plays into the plot of this book, because Travis’s body is a vessel for Oblivion, the primordial force of evil in the multiverse, and Prometheus, an alien entity.
From Oblivion, Travis receives demonic abilities such as magic, and from Prometheus he gains several superhuman abilities. However, these powers are sentient, passed down from each generation until only Prometheus and Travis are left to use them. Because Prometheus comes from a race of energy beings, the boys become conduits not just for the powers of their predecessors but also their counterparts in every dimension, making Travis’s body not just a battleground between Prometheus and Oblivion, but between good and evil throughout the multiverse.
As Oblivion explains to Travis early in the book, this war has been raging since the beginning of time, each side choosing their champions to do battle. But every time it ends in a stalemate. But Travis can change that.
For the unaware, the transmigration of souls is also known as metempsychosis and as Oblivion tells Travis, “Evil never dies.” But neither does good. This is similar to reincarnation, except the person keeps their memories and lives a continuous, eternal life in different vessels, with or without a different consciousness but has a continuous karma. This varies from reincarnation, wherein you keep the same consciousness. These consciousnesses are said to be accessible through meditation or hypnosis, which contributed to Carl Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious.
Jungian Psychology
Jungian Psychology, also known as analytical psychology, was developed in 1912 and asserts that in order for individuals to have good mental health, they must achieve self-actualization by being in balance with their unconscious mind. Central to Jung’s theory of psychology is the notion of a collective unconscious as evidenced by his archetypes, which I’ll next cover. The collective unconscious is defined as a segment of the deepest part of the unconscious mind which is shared genetically and not shaped by personal experience i.e., genetic memory. According to Jung, all mental issues arise from either an imbalance of the conscious or unconscious mind. For more information about Jung and Jungian Psychology click here.
Archetypes
“According to Jung, the collective unconscious is made up of a collection of knowledge and imagery that every person is born with and is shared by all human beings due to ancestral experience. Though humans may not know what thoughts and images are in their collective unconscious, it is thought that in moments of crisis the psyche can tap into the collective unconscious.” ( “How The Collective Unconscious Is Tied To Dreams, Beliefs, And Phobias”. Verywell Mind, 2021, https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-collective-unconscious-2671571#:~:text=The%20collective%20unconscious%20is%20a,not%20shaped%20by%20personal%20experience. Accessed 26 Feb 2021.)
He called this imagery and knowledge archetypes, but what are archetypes? I’m sure you’re familiar with the trope of the wise man mentoring the young hero. These are both archetypes. Others include the maiden, mother, and crone, birth, death, anima and animus (the feminine and masculine qualities), the persona and the shadow.
I will be focusing on the shadow and persona for this post. Jung defined the shadow as that part of ourselves that we secretly hate. For example, if you’re a weightlifter, your shadow might be the part of you that hates going to the gym and would rather stay home, order a pizza, and veg in front of the TV. Likewise, if you’re an intellectual, then your shadow might be the part of you that secretly likes sophomoric humor.
In Travis’s case, his shadow is the part of him that wants to be popular and to kill and maim people for making fun of him. And it’s this part of him that Oblivion preys upon to turn Travis to the dark side.
The persona on the other hand is the part of us that deals with how the world treats us. To deal with bullying due to his face and body being covered in burn scars, Travis creates the persona of the tough guy who doesn’t need anyone, who thinks he’s better than everyone and must be stronger than them. But buried under this façade is the want to protect the powerless, and it’s this part of Travis which Prometheus appeals to.
Individualization
Another central concept of Jungian Psychology is that of individualization, which is defined as the process of examining the self and integrating the parts of the unconscious to as Jung said, “…divest the self of the false wrappings of the persona, on the one hand and the suggestive power of primordial images on the other.”
This process is a big part of Travis’s arc in this and the other books in the series. And he takes the first step to this during the climax of the story, where he must integrate the different parts of himself into a whole or die.
Conclusion
But death isn’t the end. Like the phoenix, Travis and the other characters must first die before they can be reborn. They all must undergo a palingenesis to become their best selves, and so do we. Like Travis, we all have the capacity to do great good and great evil. It all depends on whether we listen to our shadow or our persona. Ultimately, we are all phoenixes waiting to rise from the ashes of our fears if only we have the courage to try.
Next week I’ll be diving into alchemy and how that relates to Palingenesis.
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