Sixteen months ago I resigned from my job. There were lots of reasons, but mainly I’d simply lost interest in everything about it, and I think the job had lost interest in me. There were no plans, no ‘next steps’, but various little omens and synchronicities suggested it was the right thing to do. On the day I’d decided to resign, thinking it through on my commute home from Leeds, I pulled into the drive. As my old estate car came to a stop, at that exact moment, the milometer clicked round to 100,000 miles. I took that as some kind of sign. The cards were also supportive.

I spent a few months doing the sorts of things that people in my situation do, but there was no question of not working. In time, I found another job that’s proven to be a good fit, and scratches all the itches my old job couldn’t. One of its major benefits is the office, which is located in the heart of York - a stone’s throw from the Minster, which means I can get out and about at lunch and aimlessly wander the ancient streets.

Last week I wandered into a newly-opened bookshop specialising in horror. For decades York bibliophiles have been under-served, but now the city is enjoying a renaissance. Topping & Co has opened only its fifth outlet here, in a fantastically cavernous and labyrinthine building. A bookshop dedicated to the crime genre opened a while back, and now its sister store - Horrifically Good Books - is here.

From browsing the works on display, what I found interesting was just how meaningless the term ‘horror’ really is. Here were shelves containing gothic novels, sci-fi, weird and strange fiction, flavours of fantasy, supernatural and ghost stories, folklore, body horror, tales of the apocalypse, tales of war and violence. And, naturally, fiction rooted in the occult. ‘Horror’ might be useful taxonomically, but as a genre it’s completely incoherent.

On the summer solstice this year I started a new writing project, and I finished yesterday - Samhain. If I were being lazy I might call it ‘occult fiction’, but the ambition is more than that. So I’ve pretentiously invented a new term, which I’m calling ‘metanoic fiction’ (from the word metanoia denoting a change of mind, a turning or transformation of consciousness.) I want to promote a form of imaginative literature that’s deliberately constructed to alter the reader’s apprehension of reality; a kind of literature of enchantment.

This is very clearly not a new idea. And in fact (good) fiction as a whole is already an instrument through which a writer can alter a reader’s perceptions, emotions, beliefs and behaviour. Take, for example, Chuck Palahniuk’s short story Guts, and its notoriously graphic depiction of a character who gets his… Err… Probably best to just read it for yourself. It’s enough to know that the story became infamous through public readings at which audience members apparently fainted in shock and disgust.

Palahniuk’s ’transgressive fiction’ is one illustration of the way that words are able to produce experiences exceeding the intellectual comprehension of their meaning. Which is another way of saying that reality is greater our representations of it (for this reason, as Iain McGilchrist has consistently argued, the brain’s left hemisphere should be in service to the right, despite the dominance of modern materialistic epistemologies.)

It’s fascinating to explore how different authors have modified their techniques and approaches based on the desired objectives. Thinking about some of my favourites, Joyce’s streams-of-consciousness were experiments in capturing psychological states; Hesse deliberately used a kind of contemplative, rhythmic prose to entrance the reader; Burroughs employed his cut-up technique to do exactly the opposite - to jolt the reader out of the societal conditioning imparted through language; while John Cowper Powys showed how to develop a personal mythopoeia by exalting subjective experience.

Arguably, some of these ambitions stray into the territory of ‘occult literature’, whatever that may be. It’s a slippery term because I think it encompasses two types of fiction: one that simply represents occult or extraordinary experiences; and the other that attempts to work on the reader magically; to unveil and illuminate. Of the latter camp, Dion Fortune was probably the most important exponent. The Sea Priestess and Moon Magic are less ‘novels about magic’ than fictionalised magical operations. We might also include the likes of Charles Williams, Gustav Meyrink, Arthur Machen, and Crowley. Notably, all were members of the Golden Dawn, and most of the works are now out of print.

Which leads to the question: is this kind of initiatory fiction any good? I think it is, although some inevitably struggle beneath the weight of symbolism and correspondence. Besides, let’s not forget the more modern proponents: RAW, Moore et al, as well as the likes of Castaneda and Tolkien, who sit at their own unique intersections.

I’ve occasionally wondered why, in contemporary occult publishing, much of the market is dominated by instructional books. I’m guessing it’s a legacy of the grimoire tradition. Alternatively, perhaps no-one wants to read fiction of the type I’ve described. I guess I’ll find out soon enough.

But gnosis is not propositional knowledge. It’s experiential, imaginal, transformative. It involves a change in the mode of knowing. The act of reading fiction is led by the brain’s right hemisphere - the hemisphere concerned with metaphor, nuance, symbol, context, creativity, holism, and empathy. The subordinate left hemisphere - dealing with literalism, utility, and measurement - assumes dominance when instructional works are read. In other words, the self is more magically-attuned when visualising other worlds, inhabiting other beings; when reading fiction.

It’s therefore odd that the ‘magical’ right hemisphere is not especially well-served in modern occultism (unless I’m missing something.) That’s not a criticism of anyone - but there must be a reason.

So in the last few months I’ve been writing ‘metanoic’ fiction, or at least attempting to. After a period of intense focus and creativity, I now have six stories of various lengths:

• The Wyrd of the White Wolf

• Hatched Upon the Age

• Goat Willow

• The Domain of the Aureate Queen

• Circle of the Tyrants

• The Ways in Which They Speak

These will be published in a collection limited to 50 copies, 220 pages. They’re at the printer as I write, so more details soon. I’ll also be giving away some copies to those readers who have generously donated money via paid subscriptions.

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