What is Spiritual Fantasy?

The storyteller makes no choice
Soon, you will not hear his voice
His job is to shed light
And not to master

— Robert Hunter

Do Dragons Go On Spiritual Quests? I Don’t Know, But It’s An Interesting Question To Ponder.

Fantasy is a big world. There are many types of fantasy novels. Cozy, contemporary, high, and romantasy, to name a few. If you are a fantasy novel fan, there is a magical cornucopia of books from which to choose. Everyone has their favorites and different fantastical elements toward which they gravitate. The books in my Mindful Magic series fall into a few categories, though I wrote them without any specific fantasy sub-category in mind. However, as I look at what I’ve written, I can’t deny that the books in the Mindful Magic series are what I like to call Spiritual Fantasy. I think that’s the category, anyway. If not, it’s time to invent it. If I were a dragon on the astral plane, it would be what I would want to read.

What is Spiritual Fantasy?

Here’s my definition, and I will run with it as I haven’t found any other definitions that are up to the task. Spiritual Fantasy is a fantasy novel that uses spiritual growth and/or spiritual perception as part of the character’s journey. How that spirituality plays out is up to the author’s voice and the ideas they are trying to communicate. Spiritual fantasy novels aren’t message books, but in my view, they employ a particular way of looking at and questioning the world, even when the main quest of the book has been successful and the hero has vanquished the evil wizard, causing trouble and strife.

The Challenge of Writing Spiritual Fantasy

For me, the challenge in creating spiritual quests for my characters — for want of a better phrase — is not to proselytize or preach. I’m not trying to imbue a specific viewpoint or ideology into my characters, regardless of what ideas might inspire me as an author or human. I want my characters to be seekers, and I hope their seeking will inspire others to seek and find whatever their search leads them to.

How Do My Books Fit My Definition Of Spiritual Fantasy?

My Books of Magic characters are all seekers and all in different places on their never-ending journeys. And while most of them are magical in one way or another, they all arrive at their magic following different avenues. All of the change across the course of the books — as any fictional character should — is not just for dramatic effect. Their quests are part of their arcs, even if sometimes they don’t know what their seeker quest is. If I’ve done my writing job, my characters all move and grow.

I should mention that I don’t want to equate my characters’ spiritual growth with self-improvement. Their growth is less practical and more subtle than that. Their growth is about improving their understanding and perception of themselves and their place in the fictional world. It’s about seeing reality.

Spirituality is more than just characters, too. In addition to the characters, I’ve tried to create a world that enables and challenges their spiritual growth.

Why Spiritual Fantasy Instead of Dragons?

As with so many things in the life of a discovery writer, I didn’t choose to write a spiritual fantasy novel, but it chose me. The germ idea of Being Magic followed me for years, maybe a decade, and it came out of a thought about reincarnation. Whether you believe in it or not, reincarnation is a spiritual event. My plot grew from that idea and became a complete book. My only intent is to tell a good story, but since my way of looking at the world is always to look for deeper meanings, I have little choice but to impart that sense of searching into my characters and their world.

Also, I promise dragons will appear somewhere in the Mindful Magic series.

Summary

Spiritual Fantasy is a genre that involves spiritual growth and perception in the characters’ journeys without proselytizing or preaching a specific viewpoint. I suggest a spiritual author’s goal is to create seekers who inspire readers to find their path, with characters and worlds that enable and challenge their spiritual growth.

I was going to list examples of other spiritual fantasy books, but they are hard to find, and the ones that I listed all seem very, shall we say, specifically narrow in their spirituality. What spiritual fantasy books would you recommend?

What does Spiritual Fantasy mean to you?