JOHN CROWLEY’S NEW FANTASTIC SPACE: RECONSTRUCTING THE REALM
OF FAERIE IN LITTLE, BIG
by
Pami Beveridge
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of
The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Arts
Florida Atlantic University
Boca Raton, FL
May 2016
Copyright 2016 by Pami Beveridge
ii iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author wishes to express her sincere gratitude to her committee members for their guidance and support. The author is grateful for the resources and tools provided by the committee members. Special thanks are in order for my advisor, Dr. Thomas Martin.
Without his deep knowledge of the fantastic, and his patience, encouragement, and persistence, this manuscript would be merely fantasy. I am eternally indebted. Thanks for seeing me through the infundibulum.
iv ABSTRACT
Author: Pami Beveridge
Title: John Crowley’s New Fantastic Space: Reconstructing the Realm of Faerie in Little, Big
Institution: Florida Atlantic University
Thesis Advisor: Dr. Thomas Martin
Degree: Master of Arts
Year: 2016
John Crowley’s Little, Big is an innovative piece of fantasy writing. This thesis aims to prove that Crowley’s innovation lays the groundwork for new avenues in which fantastic space can be manipulated and constructed. Deep study in Euclidean geometry, modern physics, and occult astronomy reveal a new fantastic space, and a new concept for the threshold of Faerie. Crowley’s fantastic space is constructed as infundibular; with layers of concentricities that funnels his characters to their final destination of self- actualization and the heaven-like realm of Faerie. Crowley amalgamates the boundaries of Faerie and the primary world in an unusual fashion that is noted as Coalesced Fantasy: a fantasy wherein there is ultimately no dichotomy between Faerie and the primary world, as there is no division between the fantastic and science. This deliberate aim to blend boundaries is to establish an All in One theory. Faerie and the primary world
v oppose each other as antithetical conical space, and Crowley’s Edgewood house serves as the threshold to allow man to access the divinity and vastness of Faerie. Faerie
(Divinity/macrocosm) and man (microcosm) exist in and amongst one another; everything is connected and every path intersects, spinning on a hyperbolic plane in this new, quantifiable space.
vi DEDICATION
This manuscript is dedicated to my loving family, including my parents, and close friends who listened to my ideas, no matter how much of a fantasy they seemed. Particular thanks are in order for my patient, and persistent husband, David. Thank you for pushing me the extra mile, and believing that I had what it takes to see this project through to the end. This work is also dedicated to my daughter, Abigael. I want you to know that whatever you put your mind to do, you can make happen. Remember, magic happens all around you.
All you need to do is believe. Finally, my grandmother, Louise. Thank you for always supporting me in my dreams. I believed in myself because you believed in me first. Thank you.
JOHN CROWLEY’S NEW FANTASTIC SPACE: RECONSTRUCTING THE REALM
OF FAERIE IN LITTLE, BIG
LIST OF FIGURES ...... ix
I. INTRODUCTION ...... 1
II. ESTABLISHING EUCLIDEAN/NON EUCLIDEAN SPACE ...... 8
III. THE HOUSE AS A THRESHOLD ...... 13
IV. THE AXIS MUNDI ...... 18
V. “THE FURTHER YOU GO IN, THE BIGGER IT GETS” ...... 22
VI. ON YEATS’S A VISION ...... 29
VII. THE MICRO AND MACROCOSMS OF PARACELSUS ...... 34
VIII. YEATS, THE THIRTEENTH AXIOM, AND THE AGE OF ARIES: “THE KEY TO FAERIE” ...... 38
VIIII. THE SPACE IN-BETWEEN ...... 50
WORKS CITED ...... 58
viii FIGURES FIGURE I: THE INFUNDIBULUM ...... 10 FIGURE II: THE INTERSECTION OF TIME AND SPACE ...... 21 FIGURE III: THE SITUATION OF CROWLEY’S SPACE ...... 33 FIGURE IV: ANTITHETICAL CONES ON HYPERBOLIC SPHERE ...... 35 FIGURE V: TWO DIMENSIONAL PERSPECTIVE OF THIRTEEN CONES ...... 44 FIGURE VI: DESCENT TO THE DIVINE VIA THIRTEENTH CONE ...... 48 FIGURE VII: YEATS’S WHEEL RESEMBLING RELIGIOUS MANDALA ...... 53
ix I. INTRODUCTION
After reading John Crowley’s postmodern fantasy novel Little, Big, Ursula K.
LeGuin proclaimed that it was a book that “all by itself calls for a redefinition of fantasy”
(P.S. 2). This statement deserves close consideration. LeGuin saw a key difference in
Crowley’s landmark novel. With so many different interpretations of fantasy, what did
Crowley create in Little, Big that “calls for a redefinition”? Crowley challenges the conventional idea of fantastic space, a challenge he features in the title himself. In this novel, Crowley creates a generational epic that complicates the known boundaries of
Faerie as conceived in the traditional fairy tale. The novel shows us how the traditional liminal boundary of Faerie can coexist with a more esoteric postmodern understanding of concentric space. In effect, Crowley combines them in a fantasy world that resembles an
M. C. Escher piece more than something one would read in Perrault or Grimm. In
Crowley’s postmodern fairy tale, the marvelous appears next to the real in infinite parallels on a hyperbolic plane, both converging to one concentrated point, which opens up conversely to the vast infinity of Faerie. Because of the fashion in which Crowley constructs his space, LeGuin’s call for a “redefinition” rings necessary. Crowley’s fusion of time and space cannot be confined to any one subgenre current fantasy labels have to offer, which our analysis will prove. This means that Crowley’s novel must be classified in a new subgenre, which we will confirm at the end of this analysis as “coalesced,” where the elements are fused together.
1 In regards to LeGuin’s reference to a “redefinition,” Crowley's innovation of restructuring the space in which fantasy is situated holds implications for humanity’s place in the world. While it does not in any direct way guarantee that fantasy's engagements with the real world will yield a positive outcome, the novel rewrites the boundaries separating fantasy and reality by including in our reckoning of the fantastic certain esoteric features of the most recent science. The inclusion of precise physics and geometries allows us not to imagine the realm of Faerie as we have done in the past, but actually to grasp it as a tangible feature of space as we know it. It has a shape, a structure: it is in principle measurable and quantifiable along with our own space. It is more a part of nature than it has been before. The sociological implications are not immediately clear since memory master Ariel Hawksquill’s attempt to overthrow dystopian leader Russell
Eigenblick fails, suggesting in this tale that not all fairy magic can trump the destructive forces of which humanity is capable. The boundaries that Crowley draws between the ordinary world and Faerie are so thin that they scarcely serve as boundaries at all, but point to a fundamental wholeness available to humanity—that All is One. Whether humanity will wake up to that possibility before it is too late, Crowley leaves unanswered.
This thesis explores the meaning of fantastic space, parallel worlds, liminality, and concentricity in Little, Big. It demonstrates that Crowley has indeed created a new fantastic space in his novel: one that surpasses previous notions about how fantastic space is constituted, and how the border separating our world and the realm of Faerie is traversed. Crowley’s Little, Big helps redefine how we assume fantastic spaces should be assembled and reached by fantasy characters in a postmodern world. Such features as
2 liminal boundaries, portals, gateways, and intrusive creatures are only part of the intricate infundibulum Crowley creates. The infundibulum is the key to his postmodern fantasy: it is a funnel-like structure of space and time. In short, it is the conical universe in which
Crowley’s fantastic space exists. It can be traveled through; it is constantly spinning (or at least it should, which creates conflict for Crowley’s characters); and it is infinite. The infundibulum has a single concentrated point at its end like the opening at the end of a funnel. This aperture becomes a place of self-actualization, a heavenly space, and the threshold to the realm of Faerie. Crowley’s character Dr. Bramble describes this realm as being filled with
… fairy maidens who capture the hearts of, and can apparently lie with
humans, and who are the size of human maidens. And there are fairy
warriors on great steeds, banshees, pookahs and ogres who are huge,
larger by far than men … they inhabit another world entirely, and it is
enclosed within this one; it is a sense a universal retreating mirror image
of this one, with a peculiar geography I can only describe as infundibular.
(43)
This quote illustrates the fantastic nature of the realm of Faerie in the novel, with the kinds of creatures that inhabit it, and more importantly how it is situated in our own primary world, plotted within the infundibulum.
Continuing with how the realm of Faerie is situated in relation to the primary world, there has always been a straightforward school of thought when referring to the fantastic world: in traditional stories, the fantastic world is parallel to the primary world.
Tolkien in “On Fairy Stories” called this the secondary world. Oftentimes the secondary
3 world is a mirror image of the primary that allows the reader to reimagine the secondary world. Tolkien explains that it is difficult to convince readers in even the most minor divergence of reality that the sun is green. He states that “the inner consistency of reality is more difficult to produce, the more unlike are the images and the rearrangements of primary material to the actual arrangements of the Primary World” (16). A result of this issue for most authors, Tolkien continues, is an underdeveloped fantastic space. The secondary world must be believable, and it has traditionally been accessible to those in the primary world by crossing a liminal border that bisects a standard Euclidean plane, or perhaps stepping into a portal and transporting to another land. However, Crowley’s fantasy doesn’t fully operate under these restrictions: his world(s) is not underdeveloped because he closes the chasm. Crowley challenges prior belief that the primary and the secondary worlds are to be treated separately. We will discuss this at length when we map out the physics of Crowley’s space.
Let us be clear in what we mean by the concept of “crossings,” as in “crossing” from the primary to the secondary world in traditional fantasy. We witness the archetypal
“crossing” into the realm of Faerie throughout the history of the genre. Take three prominent examples only: we follow the lady into the magical woods in Milton’s Comus, we read about Alveric crossing the ebbing boarders of Elfland to find Lirazel in The King of Elfland’s Daughter, and we see Lucy stepping through the wardrobe as a liminal portal to Narnia. In contrast to these Euclidean crossings in a bisected space, I propose that
Crowley’s postmodern fantasy challenges all traditional conventions of the way characters access the realm of Faerie in his unique tale. I propose that Crowley contradicts the concept of bisecting space at all, as he reveals that all space and fates of
4 his characters are coalesced as one. In a word, a Theory of Everything (All is One) commands the special constitution of Little, Big.
Crowley’s new conception of fantastic space is not simply accessed as characters cross the boundary to reach a secondary world. In fact, Smoky Barnable’s first steps into
Edgewood in this novel are just the beginning of his journey. While characters cross boundaries in Little, Big over what Victor Turner calls “liminoids,” as individuals experiencing their rites of passage, their actual encounter with the fantastic occurs in a concentered space. This is what I mean when I say that in creating a new space Crowley is doing something completely different with the fantasy genre. This is a new concept, one that cannot be defined, for example, in Farah Mendlesohn’s taxonomic Rhetorics of
Fantasy. It is not purely liminal, it is not only intrusive, it is not a portal-quest tale, and it is not simply immersive. For the purpose of this thesis, I contrast “traditional, or liminal, fantasy” to Crowley’s postmodern fantasy as it moves beyond earlier known forms of the fantastic. In fact, all of the sub-genres of fantasy Mendhelsohn identifies swirl neatly through Crowley’s infundibulum, even as they are swallowed up in Crowley’s hyperbolic plane. In order to create this new figuration of fantastic space, Crowley references and then exceeds many fantasy greats, even as he employs physicists, alchemists, and mathematicians to set its precise parameters. First, this thesis will define what is meant by liminal boundaries and concentric spaces in reference to Crowley’s model. Second, it will examine how these access points to Faerie intersect and create a new fantastic space.
According to S. I. Johnston, “the Greeks, Romans, and many other ancient civilizations regarded both natural and man-made liminal points of all kinds—doors, gates, rivers and frontiers, as well as crossroads—as uncertain places requiring special
5 rituals … liminal points often mark the beginning of an enterprise: the first step of any journey begins at a door, for instance” (217). We see examples of liminal boundaries throughout much of traditional fantasy storytelling—especially when the protagonist
(along with the reader) is entering a different world—the realm of Faerie—a time and space different from the primary world. In Little, Big, Crowley pays homage to some popular examples of liminal crossroads, and these examples work in tandem with the liminal crossroads he creates: “He [Smoky] went to the tall wardrobe that stood on claw feet in the corner; he threw open its doors, and Smoky saw the wet woods he had come through with Alice” (90). Here, we see Crowley’s reference to C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia as Smoky is redolent of Lucy stumbling upon the wardrobe during a game of hide and seek. The repeated images of crossroads, doorways, stairs, thresholds to the woods, and pathways symbolize the liminal boundaries that Smoky, Auberon, Alice, and
Sylvie must cross to continue their individual quests.
These crossroads, doorways, and wardrobes would be satisfactory were this The
Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, or The King of Elfland’s Daughter, but this is
Crowely’s fantasy world where liminal boundaries are only the beginning of being swept up into the space of fantasy. Circular movement around concentric spaces warp the traditional fantasy’s time-space continuum and unfold as infinite space, sometimes infinitely small, but always with infinite crossroads. While time and space are compressed in this infundibulum, the deeper one goes, the closer one gets to the absolute, which may be Faerie, self-actualization, or some greater Truth, depending on the scope of the infundibulum and one’s position in it.
6 Crowley’s character, Dr. Bramble explains this absolute point of the infundibulum: “And lastly, the vastest circle, the infinity, the center point—Faery, ladies and gentlemen, where the heroes ride across endless landscapes and sail sea beyond sea and there is no end to possibility—why that circle is so tiny it has no door at all” (44). Dr.
Bramble explains a heavenly world, only read about in traditional fairytales, but to reach this world via its tiny access point is the complicated contradiction. How does one access a cast space through a “circle so tiny it has no door at all”? Yes, this point is reached through liminal boundaries, but it is not what we would be able to recognize as a typical threshold. There is also a spiraling or a layering of space—biggest to smallest, until one reaches the most concentrated point. One can picture falling through concentric space either by referring to non-Euclidean geometry and modern physics, or by referring to
Dante’s experience through Paradiso, Purgatorio, and Inferno, continually spiraling through the inner circles of Hell until he reaches the absolute center of the infundibulum and passes through on his way to God. In fact, Crowley repeatedly uses Dante as a reference, perhaps to establish this concentric nature of the quest on which his characters must embark.
7 II. ESTABLISHING EUCLIDEAN/NON EUCLIDEAN SPACE
To begin broadly with the theoretical considerations, space is not easily defined.
To most, it is an abstract idea of nothingness filling our lives. To Euclid, it was a vast three-dimensional structure of the world. Those who followed him, like Newton in the eighteenth century, described that world in great precision as inanimate objects move through its geometric expanse. Crowley’s world(s) coincide with the geometric system created by Euclid, as described in his Elements, only in a local sense. Lobachevsky’s hyperbolic plane in the nineteenth century complicates what we think of Euclidean space as something akin to three-dimensional graph paper extending orthogonally in all directions. Altering Euclid’s postulates, Lobachevsky redefines the parallel postulate. In
Lobachevsky’s new geometry, Euclid’s parallel postulate—that on a point outside a line only one parallel line can be drawn—is replaced with the postulate that there is an infinite number of parallel lines that can be drawn. Thus, instead of the two-dimensional
Euclidean plane, Lobachevsky creates the hyperbolic plane, or a space with a constant negative curve. This image resembles something of a funnel, or a sphere with infinite parallels leading to a concentrated center (see figure I).
Confirming this use of non-Euclidean space, Crowley has made it clear in interviews that his works, especially Little, Big, was largely influenced by Lewis
Carroll’s writings, particularly his most famous work Alice in Wonderland. With this information, it is not unlikely that he also employed Carroll’s piece Euclid and His
Modern Rivals, in which Euclid’s ghost returns to defend his work’s relevance to modern
8
mathematicians, in a fantasy piece on mathematics-turned-literary drama. It is clear that
Crowley takes the cue and goes further. His literary experiment in fantastic space is largely shaped by the interplay of Euclid and Lobachevsky’s mathematical theories via their fellow mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Carroll).
As Carroll says about Euclidean space, one can picture a pair of “infinite lines which have two common points and which therefore coincide wholly,” a pair of lines which “have a common point and a separate point”, and a pair of lines “which have no common point” (19). While Carroll adds Reimannian geometry to the mix, it is clear that when these different cases of line relation are applied to Crowley’s fantastic space, there is a correlation between the Parallel Postulate and the path Crowley’s characters travel within the infundibulum. For instance, the two lines which coincide wholly or
“coincidental” lines would be representational of Auberon and Sylvie, who are the two lovers responsible for the fate of the realm of Faerie and are necessary in fulfilling the
Tale. Within the story, they are travelling on paths that seem different, but it isn’t until the end of the Tale that we realize their stories have coincided the entire time. They were purposed to be the new rulers of the Wild Wood. The next set of lines is “intersectional” and would be those of the paths of the fairies and the Drinkwater/Bramble/Barnable families. These paths cross in order for the tale to be fulfilled. The fairies need the help of humans to save the retreating magical realm. The final set of lines is the “separational”: or the set of lines that will never meet. This would be the relation of Daily Alice and
Smoky. Although Crowley makes the reader believe at the beginning of the story that
Smoky and Alice are the destined lovers who will fulfill the Tale, they are a doomed
9 love, as Daily Alice crosses over to the realm of Faerie, and Smoky stays behind, serving
a different purpose in the Tale, separate from Alice. However, with infinite parallels in a
story, on a hyperbolic, spinning space, intersections are inevitable. The infundibulum is
filled with infinite parallels, as Crowley confirms: “Not one story, no, not one story with
one ending but a thousand stories, and so far from over as hardly to have begun” (534).
Here, Crowley illustrates many stories layered upon each other, intersecting for an
infinite period of time. The infundibulum is swirling in perpetuity with an infinite number
of winding paths; “people in motion; stories starting in a dream, and spoken by unwise
actors into wanting ears, then ceasing; the story turning back to dream, and then haunting
the day, told and retold” (537). This picture of intertwined stories constantly in motion
for perpetuity is the model of the infundibulum, filled with winding parallels, constantly
swirling for all eternity.
Figure I: The InfundibulumFig ure 0-I: Dept. of Mathematics Univ. of Maryland Source: Wikimedia Commons. Nefbor Udofix
Euclid posits that there are three dimensions of space. Using Lobachevsky’s
geometry, Albert Einstein adds the fourth dimension: time. Einstein’s space-time
10 continuum treats the idea of space and time as one concept. The combining of these two concepts, along with medieval Paracelsus’s theory on macrocosm and microcosms, has aided physicists in explaining how the universe works on a large scale (macrocosms), and a smaller scale (microcosms); hence Crowley’s title, Little, Big. One of the specifics of this theory of the time-space continuum includes the notion that when there is a large enough amount of existent matter, then the geometry of space-time begins to bend. The result of this bending in geometry is a curve in space-time, or a Lobachevskian hyperbolic plane. This hyperbolic plane created by the marriage of space-time is the fabric of Crowley’s infundibulum. With the fusion of space and time, Crowley leads us through his infundibulum on a journey where ultimately “all is one.”
Extrapolating from Einstein’s theory of the space-time continuum is cultural theorist Michael Foucault. In Foucault’s “Of Other Spaces,” he describes space as: “… the epoch of simultaneity: we are in the epoch of juxtaposition, the epoch of the near and far, of the side-by-side, of the dispersed. We are at a moment, I believe, when our experience of the world is less that of a long life developing through time than that of a network that connects points and intersects with its own skein” (Foucault). Here, we see that Foucault suggests that time and space are intertwined, providing us with an image of an infinite number of threads wrapping around a large three-dimensional platform. In other words, time and space are in our cultural lives the yarn that intersects and continually weaves around itself to make one entity (the skein).
We can see this phenomenon in Crowley’s Little, Big when Daily Alice explains to Smoky how this interconnection of space works between the place of Edgewood and the manifestation of the fantastic when he first arrives: “Every time you thought you were
11 coming close, it would be just as far off, in a different place; and if you came to that place, it would be in the place you came from; and my throat was sore with running, and not getting any closer” (15). Alice cannot get any closer to a destination because she is essentially running in circles, as the infundibulum wraps around itself infinitely. Daily
Alice goes on to depict what seems to be the center of space itself, as if she has traversed the winding roads of a funnel leading her to that center. Her description closely resembles
Dorothy’s (The Wizard of Oz) transition from a black and white world to the Technicolor
Munchkin country, after being sucked up and spit out by a funnel cloud: “The whole world colored, as though it were made of candy—no, like it was made of a rainbow. A whole colored world as soft as light all around as far as you can see. You want to run and explore it. But you don’t dare take a step, because it might be the wrong step—so you only look and look. And you think: Here I am at last” (15). This center of Crowley’s fantastic space is kaleidoscope-like, infinite color at the end of a cylindrical object, with infinite possibilities of combinations, and no way out.
12 III. THE HOUSE AS A THRESHOLD
The Drinkwater house is situated in the middle of Crowley’s suitably named
Edgewood (being the edge of the primary world). The house was built for Violet by her husband John Drinkwater, and it has been with the family since. After crossing into
Edgewood, the house is the second threshold Smoky steps through. The house has a magical quality to it. The house defies the laws of physical space, as it is described as “an open door, and a small house big enough to hold all this spinning earth; a chair to rock away the year, and a broom to sweep away winter” (515). Because of the fashion in which Crowley describes the situation of the house as in the middle of a town within a pentacle of five towns, it is apparent that the house is somehow stuck in the middle of the two sites: the ordinary world and the Faerie realm it leads to. The house is described as not having one particular style of architecture, but having many such as Gothic, Tudor, and Victorian. This represents the layering of time that Ariel Hawksquill later refers to, which supports Einstein’s theory of time and space intersecting. Daily Alice states that the house was built so “people could come and look at it, from any side, and choose which kind of house they wanted; that’s why the inside is so crazy. It’s so many houses, sort of put inside each other or across each other, with their fronts sticking out” (30). The description of the house is itself in the shape of Crowley’s fantastic space—one layered within the other, or across from each other. This models the way the fantastic world is layered within the ordinary world.
13 In her essay on Crowley’s novel, Bernadette Lynn Bosky clarifies how liminal spaces are stationed within a house
Within a house, stairs, landings, and hallways are liminal areas—places
we pass through, not generally places where people live.
Unsurprisingly, landings, hallways, and stairs are among the most popular
places for sightings of ghosts (us and not us, not alive or dead). Two even
more popular places for ghost sightings are windows and doorways,
which are quintessentially liminal, existing purely to separate yet join
areas of room vs. room, room vs. hallway, inside vs. outside. (Bosky, np)
As Bosky posits, “stairs, landings, and hallways are liminal areas” because they are a space of “in between.” These are not “destination spaces” within a house—they are not an area where someone stations themselves—they are areas for passing through. Crowley depicts these areas of the Edgewood house often, and Smoky’s first step into the house is purposely written to stand out to the reader: “He stepped across the sill. He was inside
(28). Smoky has crossed the threshold that is the front door of the house, and in doing so, he has entered a new space. In Strategies of Fantasy, Brian Attebery states that the house in Crowley’s novel is a “different kind of portal to a fairy world” (43). The house, though filled with “in between” spaces, is also an “in between” space as well—as Violet
Bramble states “the house is a door” (107). The house is ultimately, not a destination space, meaning Crowley’s intention is to use the house as a gateway to another site … a site with more permanence … the realm of Faerie. Again, we see Crowley employing his idea of houses within a house, and spaces within space. While Bosky treats these elements as purely liminal, Crowley is busy imbedding his new space of concentricity,
14 using the house as a model. Continuing with Crowley’s patent of “houses within a house,” the “hallway seemed concentric” (29). The house contains infundibular properties within it. Thus, the theory that the liminoid characters must travel through concentric space is confirmed, as daily they are swirling in this portal that is the
Edgewood estate, traveling, spiraling from room to room via the hallways.
With the above image illustrated, it becomes clear that the Edgewood estate is a symbolic image for the infrastructure of the infundibular space. While John Drinkwater is drafting ideas for Edgewood, two words come to his mind: “Multiplicity,” and
“Combinatory.” These two words, which Crowley italicizes for emphasis, are the key to how Crowley’s space and Drinkwater’s house are constructed. This is the many in one.
John Drinkwater is determined to have many houses within one, just as Crowley is storytelling about many worlds within one. Violet Bramble notes that “no two doors to them are the same” (107). The “them” Violet refers to are the fairies. Her thoughts continue: “…what was a door for one person wouldn’t be for another. She meant also that any door, once passed through ceased to be a door ever after, could not even be returned by. She meant that no two doors ever led to the same place” (107). What seems to be suggested here is that there is no way back to the prior world because once caught in the infundibulum of space, one cannot move backwards in a funnel. One only spirals deeper, traveling to the next layer of discontinuous space—perhaps to a world that is not very different from the prior, until eventually one reaches the smallest rung in the infundibulum: Faerie.
Because the house is a portal space, and the house is not the final destination, the residents are liminal characters situated in the “in between.” Mendlesohn adds that “some
15 of its people—the sleeping Sophie for example—live entirely on the edge of these worlds” (223). The Edgewood estate is a safe haven for liminoids like Sophie, who transports to different spaces in her sleep (Crowley is challenging the notion that dreams are not fantastic because they do not constitute a real space), and Smoky who eventually fails to cross over to Faerie with the rest of the family and dies a liminoid, in Edgewood.
However, as the house grows older with the family, it dilapidates as any structure would.
Mendlesohn suggests that as the house begins to deteriorate, the house as a portal begins to deteriorate as well. Crowley describes the house’s dismal appearance with rooms being closed off, the garden in ruins. As such, Daily Alice feels that time is drawing near for the
Tale to end, that time is of the essence to allow one’s self to move deeper through the funnel.
Crowley states that the house is “the greatest of doors, it stood Somehow, by chance or design, on the very edge or border of Elsewhere, and it would in the end be the last door that led that way. For a long time it would stand open; then for a time after that it would at least be able to be opened, or unlocked, if you had the key” (108). Here,
Crowley qualifies that the way one reaches Faerie is with a key. Perhaps not a physical key as in George Macdonald’s Golden Key, wherein the protagonist Mossy finds a key at the end of a rainbow which unlocks the door that leads to the “land from which the shadows fall.” This key is something else altogether. The reader learns later that it is the aligning of the cosmos, which is discussed in this analysis in the chapter labeled “The
Key to Faerie.” Eventually, this space, as Crowley describes, “would be closed for good, not be a door anymore” (108). This is because the human’s space is taking over; the
16 primary world is slowly spreading over the space of the fairies. Humans are occupying more rungs of the infundibulum, leaving less space for the fantastic.
As the story progresses, the closing off of the portal (Edgewood) is exemplified in
Smoky’s trek from work to home. As Smoky re-enters the grounds of Edgewood, he notices how the gate is “leaned eternally opened, lashed to earth by weed and undergrowth”; however, Smoky is finding himself “unable to pass through the gate”
(135). Instead, he notices the “roads and expressways roaring into the City” (135). In this example, the City is symbolic for the human world, the mundane, the non-fantastic ordinary world. Smoky notes that the road to the City is becoming awfully close to the nature-enclosed Edgewood. One branch of the road leads to the “cracked macadam from
Meadowbrook, which joined the tarred road that went past the Junipers,’ which eventually joined the traffic-loud fugue of feeder roads and expressways roaring into the
City” (135). It is interesting to notice that the farther one travels from Edgewood, the less serene and natural the space is, as the macadam roads of Meadowbrook turn to tarred roads and eventually become expressways. However, that the City expressways are just a few connecting roads away signify that the rungs of the ordinary world are closing in on the space of the fantastic.
17 IV. THE AXIS MUNDI
Now that we have seen how the house is a threshold to Faerie/Divine, we should also see how it is the threshold to the occult. To clarify, the Drinkwater’s family house in
Edgewood is also Crowley’s Axis Mundi (in his fantastic space that is based upon the premise that “all is one”). The Axis Mundi, according to religious philosopher Mircea
Eliade, is regarded as a “meeting point” of heaven and earth (12). The Axis Mundi
“expresses a point of connection between sky and earth where the four compass directions meet.… At this point travel and correspondence is made between higher and lower realms” (Teich np). Most importantly, the Axis Mundi can operate in a number of locales at once (Teich np). Or the Axis Mundi can intersect with multiple Lobachevskian lines at a point. This postulate is significant because this means that the Axis Mundi passes through the park where Auberon and Hawksquill meet. We know this is an interchangeable Axis Mundi because it acts as a mysterious portal between Edgewood and the City. It is also a private space, being that it is only accessible to the descendants of the Brambles. For example, as Hawksquill sits in the park, she mentions to the stranger outside its encasement of bars that “it’s a private park.… It’s only for those who live around it … Who have a key” (350). The repeated emphasis on the park and Edgewood house’s hermetic condition only further validate their position at the Axis Mundi. The spaces in this theory are divine, and are thresholds to the aforementioned firmament, and
Faerie.
18 How does the house meet the conditions of being an Axis Mundi? According to
Jean Chevalier, the Axis Mundi can be an object of nature, or human manufacture, and it may carry religious or secular implications (Chevalier 61-63). As the Axis Mundi is the center of the universe, the Drinkwater house is the center of Edgewood, as Crowley describes a “pentacle of five towns around Edgewood,” and the motif of the crossroads at
Edgewood coincides with the image that the “four compass directions meet” (Teich np) at the Axis Mundi. Hawksquill reflects on the preternatural situation of the Edgewood house:
She at time wondered why the little house had been placed off-center on
its plot of ground, not square with the streets around the park; and after a
little thought saw that it faced the compass points, Winter facing north and
Summer to the south, Spring east, and Autumn west … the designer
thought a true orientation important. (352)
Here, we see the house situated at a crossroads of all directional. Hawskquill’s query solidifies the theory that the house, as Axis Mundi, sits at a crossroads, indicating that the exact coordinates of the house are not mere coincidence. Crowley describes his rendition of how the Axis Mundi functions in his fantastic space in relation to memory (this would suggest that the Axis Mundi can also run inside something within man). Crowley lists potential Axes Mundi within the novel: “choose a Place: a temple, for instance, or a city street of shops and doorways, or the interior of a house—any place that has parts which occur in a regular order” (247). These spaces, according to theory, qualify as Axis Mundi sites, and so we see Crowley is in agreement with the qualification that manufactured objects may operate as Axes Mundi.
19 We have seen the quote on page 108 wherein Crowley states that the door could stand open as the “greatest of doors” for a long time, and would be opened with a “key” for a while after that, and eventually be closed and no longer act as a door. This supports that Axis Mundi sites can open and close. In this case it opens at the first degree of Aries, and is not accessible to the public—only the few may access this sacred space—and it will eventually close for perpetuity. Since the house is regarded as a divine space, and the war for Faerie is paralleled with Armageddon, we can conclude that this journey via the
Axis Mundi is relatable to a rapture-like/self-actualization experience. Ultimately, this rapture is akin to crossing the boundary into the realm of Faerie.
Again, Crowley’s space is so intricately weaved, and layered so densely, that he cannot take the cosmos, occult, and geometry into consideration without intertwining the vast stretches of time and space into his skein of the fantastic. The house is the concentrated meeting place of time and space itself (see figure VI). Dr. Bramble introduces the phenomenon when talks about: “Houses made of houses within houses made of time” (41). This quote illustrates how time can be represented in the physical space of a place such as the Edgewood house. Hawksquill lays out the theory for
Crowley’s time-space continuum when she states that the “New concept” is that the world is made up of a framework of time and space (308), or in other words, Hawksquill is operating under a postmodern primary world that accepts Einstein’s theory of time and space.
20 Edgewood House
Figure II: The Intersection of Time and Space.
Source: Wikimedia Commons. Incnis Mrsi.
21 V. “THE FURTHER YOU GO IN, THE BIGGER IT GETS”
The reader is inserted within Crowley’s world when Violet Bramble and John
Drinkwater meet. Violet can “see” worlds other than the primary one. Violet’s father, Dr.
Bramble, is the trailblazer in the concept of “worlds within worlds,” and has convinced
Violet that she has been to these other worlds. Now, if this is certain, this theory would explain Violet’s powers of seeing magical creatures. As stated earlier, there is no regression in the infundibulum; thus if Violet is crossing into other spaces, then she is perpetually positioned in these other spaces—a quasi-existence in between spaces. The consequential generations feel the same existence; they feel their liminal position as they have all encountered the fantastic in one way or another and cannot retreat from their position within the infundibulum. One space in particular that draws the characters deeper to the fantastic is the wood that surrounds Edgewood. The space of Faerie has often been connected with the woods throughout the history of the fantasy genre. Even
Smoky’s son Auberon is a homonym for King Oberon, the king of the fairies who resides in the forest and made famous in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In George
MacDonald’s Phantastes, Anodos is transported to an enchanted forest and discovers the trees are determined to see his demise. And as mentioned earlier, Dorothy and her friends come upon a forest with animated evil trees in Baum’s classic tale. Another earlier depiction of the forest as a fantastic space is in John Milton’s Comus. Written as a play for the Earl of Bridgewater, Milton’s Comus is a masque representational of a young
22 girl’s journey to womanhood through trials and tribulations that challenge her chastity and virtue. The adolescent, whom Milton ambiguously names “Lady,” must face the necromancer Comus, and his minions of witches, goblins, and other creatures of the night. Comus is a masque of low fantasy that follows Lady through her “rites de passage,” as Arnold van Gennep names it in his work, “Rites de passage,” in 1908. The terror the Lady endures is a part of her role as a liminal initiate, and her “crossing over” also reveals that invisible threshold between the primary world and the realm of the supernatural and fantastic—filled with symbols and demarcations that the Lady is enduring the “rites de passage” from chaste child to virtuous woman. The threshold to the woods marks the entrance to a fantastic space—a space different from the “ordinary world.”
Similarly, the way Daily Alice and Smoky trek through the forest after Alice suggests a shortcut: “A path you can take, instead of going all the way around the road”
(86). They enter the woods through an “ambiguous hole in the undergrowth,” where
Smoky loses Alice. The purpose of Alice’s disappearance is for Smoky to experience the forest alone as a liminoid. Smoky continues: “the path led him deeper and deeper beneath the crackling forest; it seemed to unroll before his feet, he couldn’t see where it led, but it was always there to follow. It brought him eventually (long or short time he couldn’t tell, what with the rain and all) to the edge of a wide, grassy glade all ringed with forest giants slick and black with wet” (87). It is imperative to notice here Crowley’s diction. Crowley suggests that the route Alice and Smoky take is a type of wormhole-like portal. The quest and crossing over to Faerie become technical, scientific, and postmodern. The portal is supposed to transport characters to their destination in a timely fashion, though it lacks
23 consistency with the space of the primary world in regards to time. Again, we see the importance of the layering and bending of time has within Crowley’s space. Smoky loses track of time because what he is accustomed to is different from the fantastic space of the woods. This is why Lilac, Sophie’s daughter, doesn’t age while sleeping in Father Time’s lap in the forest. We see similar situations in Lord Dunsany’s The King of Elfland’s
Daughter, wherein Alveric’s one year search for Lirazel in Elfland equated to ten years’ time in his primary world, but without the postmodern trappings we have here.
The space of the forest is a deeper rung descending into Crowley’s infundibulum.
It surrounds Edgewood, which surrounds the Drinkwater house. Thus the closer one gets to the portal, the likelier for a fantastic experience. The forest is closer to the apex of the funnel, and this is why time and space are distorted—because it is slightly different from the ordinary world of everyday experience. The folks that inhabit the space of the forest are similar to those of the ordinary world, but have magical qualities. Smoky meets Mrs.
Underwood, and a fairy-like translation of Mr. and Mrs. Woods, as well as a baby that
“cooed like a mechanical toy,” when it was rocked (we later discover that this is a changeling). It may not be coincidence that the archetypal quest of all fantasies, The Lord of the Rings, sets the stage with Frodo setting off on his trek under the alias “Mr.
Underwood.” Physical space is indiscernible to Smoky because he is unfamiliar with its fantastic properties. This is apparent when Smoky notes the size inside the Woods’ cottage: “inside it seemed much larger than it was, or was smaller than it looked, he couldn’t tell” (88). The dissonance that Smoky experiences in the cottage symbolizes the phrase that Crowley repeats throughout his novel: “the further you go in, the bigger it gets.”
24 At this point of the analysis, it is important to unpack the above phrase. Usually, when one goes deeper and further into something, the smaller it gets, as is the structure of the infundibulum as well. The further one goes in the funnel, the smaller, and smaller the tunnel becomes. However, the deeper one travels down their road of the Tale, and the closer they get to the apex of the infundibulum, the larger the significance in the journey, the closer to Faerie, and the closer to self-actualization. Dr. Drinkwater describes this phenomenon in his sermon: “…the other world is composed of a series of concentric rings, which as one penetrates deeper into the other world, grow larger. The further in you go, the bigger it gets. Each perimeter of this series of concentricities encloses a larger world within, until, at the center point, it is infinite. Or at least very very large” (43).
Now, this is paradoxical to the funnel-like shape he describes—how can a funnel grow bigger the deeper one goes through it? Common knowledge states that a funnel becomes smaller at the bottom. Crowley’s emphasis on the “bigger” a world gets at the tightest part of the funnel lies in its significance. Whatever lies at the center of the infundibulum, the smallest rung of the funnel is the ultimate space within the concentricities. Infinity is very large; yet here it is compressed in a tiny part of space
(space as we know it). Likewise, the realm of Faerie is correlated here with infinity, heaven, the Truth, and is the smallest realm of the concentric worlds. There is also another reason why the worlds get “bigger” as posited by William Butler Yeats: the converse infundibulum, which will be discussed in depth later in the analysis. For the time being, it is important to be aware that Crowley is building evidence for his reader that his influence of the infundibulum lies heavily on Yeats’s theoretical funnels, which assist in the development of Crowley’s fantastic space.
25 Finally, after being given a magic carpet bag, Smoky is led out back into the forest through a wardrobe, where he is reunited with Daily Alice. They then venture out of the forest and come upon the Woods’ residence. Crowley denotes this as the primary world, using ordinary imagery such as a “dripping clothesline,” “a pick-up truck,” and cat prowling. After having encountered the fantastic in the forest with Mr. and Mrs.
Underwood and experiencing a space governed by an unusual space-time in which he is acquainted with, Smoky is left with a weight “which he could not shake off.” Crowley compares Smoky’s journey into the forest with the imagery of a ladybug coming out of a hornet’s nest: “its fine paper-work was broken in places and showed the tunneled interior.
A ladybug crawled from it like a spot of blood and flew away” (91). Crowley explicitly reminds the reader that this journey is immersive in nature, and one moves deeper through the funnel having learned more as a liminal initiate. There is an obvious tension within Smoky, because just as Milton’s Lady came out of the forest tested, a bit closer to self-actualization, and her eyes “opened” to the truth, Smokey has become “aware” of the dealings within inner rungs of the infundibulum. Having gone deeper within the funnel, he is closer to the Truth. Even after Smoky’s encounter with the fantastic, he doesn’t fully acknowledge the existence in fairies (perhaps this is why he doesn’t follow the others to the realm of Faerie in the end of the Tale). In Mendlesohn’s Rhetorics of
Fantasy, she discusses how equipoise is created: “(1) by having (her) characters denying the very existence of magic, while the readers continually mark its influence, and (2) by this secondary technique of making the portal undesirable to the characters” (189). These guidelines are applicable because both Smoky and his son Auberon fit the qualifications.
In a conversation, Smoky admits to Auberon that he was never fully invested in the
26 notion of the Tale: “It’s not so easy,” he said. “Living a lie … none of you seemed to mind, really… and it didn’t seem that they minded, that I didn’t believe in them, the Tale went on and all, just the same—didn’t it?” (404) Smoky concedes that he never really believed in the fairies. Similarly, Crowley parallels this with Smoky’s disbelief in a higher power when Smoky states that “there is, of course, no hell after death, only a progress through higher and higher levels” (516). This statement mirrors Dante’s journey in Commedia, wherein Dante progressed through the rungs of hell, deeper and deeper, until he finally meets with God, or the Divine. However, notice how the trek to the
Divine is correlated with a conical, spiraling path. Beginning with the Greek philosophers such as Aristotle and Parmenides, to the medieval Jan of Slupcza, all agreed that the circular and spherical form were the perfect forms because they were representative of eternity, beauty, uniformity, and indestructible in form because of its continuity
(Tatarkiewicz 145). Accordingly, Dante’s Commedia is structurally a funnel that leads
Dante to his moment of Christian transcendence. Hell is a funnel shape when Satan is cast to Earth, and Purgatory the mountain that rises up on the other side. Passing through the doubled funnel, Dante approaches heaven, the Triune God, Christ’s divinity,
Christian Truth, and God’s Love. This is Dante’s ultimate point in his physical, and more importantly, spiritual quest. It is Dante’s movement through concentric space and his arrival at understanding and self-actualization. However, Smoky doesn’t reach the apex of actualization, perhaps because of his disbelief—as a “non” believer would not gain access to the Christian heaven.
Of course, the Christian Truth, God’s Love, and the afterlife all allude to the idea of a heaven, which in the case of Little, Big, the realm of Faerie is a metaphorical heaven.
27 The cousin of the Drinkwaters, and memory master Ariel Hawksquill speculates on this concept of heaven:
But there, the Immortals themselves must dream and ponder too, and take
their spiritual exercises, and search for an even smaller heaven within that
heaven. And that heaven, if it exists, must be yet more wide, less limited,
higher, broader, deeper than the first. And so on … And the vastest point,
the center, the infinity—Faery, where the gigantic heroes ride across
endless scapes and sail sea upon sea and there is no end to possibility—
that circle is so tiny it has no doors at all (504).
Hawksquill describes heaven in an infundibular fashion within its widening, deepening structure. Whether it be Truth, Faerie, or heaven, the journey to the apex, the infinite space, is indeed concentric. While Smoky in Little, Big is unable to move on into the realm of Faerie (perhaps as a Christian allegory for his disbelief and denied entrance), he plays a vital role within the novel working with Henry Cloud’s old orrey. Interestingly, the inspiration Crowley gathers for this infundibular journey to self-actualization was originally envisioned by a fellow story teller of the fantastic sorts, William Butler Yeats.
28 VI. ON YEATS’S A VISION
One fantasy writer in particular that influenced Crowley’s design of the infundibular and the cosmic is William Butler Yeats. Not only is Yeats known for his passionate writings of classic Irish folktales and politically charged poems for a nationalist Ireland, but he also dabbled in fantastic/cosmic memoirs and critical writings.
The pieces that most influence Crowley’s novel are “Magic,” and “A Vision.” Yeats engaged in “frequent sessions of automatic writing,” wherein his wife Georgie wrote scripts in a trance-like state, writing answers down while supposedly contacting spirits from beyond this world. Yeats later compiled this information into “A Vision,” making a complicated system that is aligned with the solar/lunar schedule. This correlation will assist in providing more clarity on the significance of the orrery that Smoky obsesses with fixing, and also how Crowley’s infundibulum is constructed.
First, it is appropriate to unravel Yeats’s complicated system from “A Vision.”
Here, in this work, Yeats connects fate, destiny, space, and time, illustrating how significant opposites are in order for Crowley’s worlds to function. Within all of this, the realm of Faerie reveals itself. Yeats labels his infundibular structures as gyres. The following excerpt illustrates the nature of his gyres:
The gyre starts at its origin and moves progressively wider in a spiral,
while time adds another dimension, creating the form of the vortex or
funnel. Once the gyre reaches its point of maximum expansion it then
29 begins to narrow until it reaches its end-point which is also the origin of
the new gyre. Another way of seeing the same thing, if time is not taken as
being fixed in one direction, is that once the maximum is reached, the gyre
begins to retrace its path in the opposite direction. The gyre can therefore
be seen as a single vortex which grows and dwindles, but the more
commonly used figure is a double vortex, where two vortices intersect and
the apex of one is at the centre of the other's base. (qtd. in Mann)
Yeats’s gyres resemble the conical shape of the infundibulum discussed at length. This is no coincidence. They both gather from a sprawling, moving geometry until they concentrate into a single point of significance. While for Yeats, the space at which these
“two vortices intersect” is transitional to a new point in history, for Crowley it is where the realm of Faerie exists.
For Yeats, the gyre is constantly in motion, its concentric circles continually whirling one way or the other. Yeats describes these movements and counter movements as Concord and Discord:
If we think of the vortex attributed to Discord as formed by circles
diminishing until they are nothing, and of the opposing sphere attributed to
Concord as forming of itself an opposing vortex, the apex of each vortex
in the middle of the other’s base, we have the fundamental symbol of my
instructors (Simplicus/Aristotle) … I see that the gyre of Concord
diminishes as that of Discord increases, and can imagine after that the gyre
of Concord increasing while that of Discord diminishes, and so on, one
gyre within the other always. (413)
30 Below, figure III illustrates the opposites at work in Yeats’s system of gyres as one view with another. One can see that the Primary Gyre, or external fate, is opposed by the
Antithetical Gyre, or internal destiny. This suggests not only these cycles of history for
Yeats, but also the physical body’s separateness from the soul. The two are separate entities that operate according to separate principles. The body’s fate in the physical/primary world is of no final significance to the soul’s destiny. Yet the two encounter one another where physical space and spiritual time meet. In Yeats, it is the apex, and in Crowley’s novel, the realm of Faerie.
As Yeats suggests, Concord and Discord operate as primary and antithetical forces. The primary establishes the macrocosm, the order of God and the equality of all souls, while the antithetical establishes the microcosm, a counter-order of humanity and difference of all people (Mann). These large and small orders live in ongoing tension.
Even in his title, Crowley alerts his reader to the discontinuity and opposition between those orders: Little, Big. The title of the novel connotes opposition. It would seem that the realm of Faerie is infinitely small since it is situated in the apex of the infundibulum; however, as Mann states, it may actually be seen as the macrocosm: infinitely large. Crowley describes the center of the infundibulum as “a heaven deep within, the island-garden of the Immortals. Yes, if it were so, and if it were in fact heaven or someplace like it, then the one thing that could be said with certainty about it was that, whatever other delightful qualities it might have, it must be more spacious that the common world we leave to reach it” (504). Heaven is not “up there,” or “over there,” in
Little, Big. It is a vastly expansive place very much closer. The cognitive dissonance the
31 novel creates for character and reader alike is that the smaller a space gets, the bigger it actually is.
Crowley continues on this heaven deep within: “But there, the Immortals themselves must dream and ponder too, and take their spiritual exercises, and search for an even smaller heaven within that heaven. And that heaven, if it exists must be yet more wide, less limited, higher, broader, deeper than the first” (504). In this quote from the novel, Crowley illustrates an image that seems infeasible: a heaven within a heaven, yet the heavenly spaces grow larger, and wider within. This heaven is the space described by
Dr. Bramble only read about in fairy tales. It is ever expansive, only growing larger as the converse funnel expands. According to Crowley, the trip inside becomes infinitely dense, infinitely rich. Somehow this spiritual nexus is the primary locus of existence on which everything else in the human world depends. How is it possible that a narrowing of space can lead to a vast, “higher, broader” space? The comma separating the adjectives of the title is suggestive: the little realm in the novel we take for the realm of Faerie expands until we realize it actually is the microcosm. If one were to have a bird’s eye view of
Crowley’s space, one would see a vast opening at one end growing narrow, and growing larger, and vaster again, at the other end. The space closest to the observer would be the primary world, and the narrowing space and beyond is Faerie. Faerie is heaven, Truth, the divine, the sublime, self-actualization, and what Dr. Bramble labeled as “the center of infinity.”
32 Realm of Faerie
(Antithetical gyre)
Primary World
(Primary Gyre) Edgewood House
Figure III: Situation of Crowley’s Space.
Source: yeatsvision.com. Neil Mann
Woworld
33 VII. THE MICRO AND MACROCOSMS OF PARACELSUS
Crowley mentions Paracelsus’s theory of the microcosm and macrocosm within the novel. Dr. Bramble references Paracelsus when he is giving his occultist sermon, stating: “[Paracelsus] is of the opinion … that the universe is crowded with powers, spirits, who are not quite immortal—whatever that means or meant, perhaps made of some finer, less tangible stuff than the ordinary world. They fill up the air and water and so on; they surround us on every side, so that our every movement … we displace thousands” (42). Esoteric in nature, those who can infer, will, that Dr. Bramble is speaking of Paracelsus’s theory on the microcosm and macrocosm phenomenon.
Paracelsus states in Neo-Platonic fashion that “universe is composed of a duality”
(Farina, 46). In Fabio Farina’s Four Treatises for the Reconsideration of the History of
Science, he explains Paracelsus’s theory: “This duality is made up of the macrocosm, which is the totality of creation and the microcosm, which contains all of the contents of the macrocosm in miniature … all of creation has two sides: a visible external (material) part and an invisible super elemental (astral) part” (Farina 46). Crowley continues with the concept of dualism that has been discussed at length in regards to Yeats and the antithetical cones of Concord and Discord. Everything in Little, Big has an antithesis: fairy and men, large and small, country and city, two Lilacs, two Sylvies, and two worlds
(microcosm/macrocosm, fairyland and the ordinary world). Alice, again feeling the strong connection with the Tale, and a sixth sense about her antithetical nature “couldn’t tell if she felt huge or small. She wondered whether her head were so big as to be able to
34 contain all the starry universe, or whether the universe were so little that it would fit within the compass of her human head” (178). Crowley is illustrating through Alice the concept of the antithetical disposition of humans and the cosmos/Nature/Faery/God.
Alice, being intuitive about her place in the universe, shares qualities with Violet, her grandmother, and often times struggles with the awareness that she is in a constant state of dualism—as Crowley’s world(s) are wholly binate.
Paracelsus’s theory of macrocosm and microcosm also reveals a better understanding of Crowley’s carefully titled Little, Big. There is a macrocosm and a microcosm: a “little” and a “big.” The more we unearth all the elements of Crowley’s astute novel, the more we see that the fantastic space that Crowley contrives is so intricate that there can only be one answer: all is one. Although these dualistic worlds seem separate in nature, when observed from a two-dimensional perspective (like two converse cones facing each other with a shared centered point), they seem only related at their shared point on that plane. This same illustration in three dimensions and beyond reveals a complete sphere. In a complete sphere, everything is one—continually— eternally. Figure V is a blueprint of how Crowley’s completed space would look, with the
Edgewood house as the threshold to Faerie (the absolute center of the sphere).
Figure IV: Antithetical Cones on Hyperbolic Sphere
Source: yeatsvision.com. Neil Mann 35 Crowley’s use of opposites does not end with the title of his novel. In fact, the title is just the beginning of opposites that Crowley utilizes in order to emphasize the dualism in his fantastic space. Paradoxes continue throughout the novel. Oxymoronic statements abound. Alice and Sophie are first described as “delicate giantesses” (5).
Crowley places heavy emphasis on the extreme opposition between the country and the city, with an “almost indistinguishable narrow black line” (4), which denotes the oppositional liminality of the two places. The black line being the road to Edgewood on a map signifies a literal separation of the two places, while Crowley continues to emphasize on the theoretical separation with the cold, metal, and cement setting of the city, and the wispy, warm, and nostalgic feeling of the country (Edgewood). However, as
Crowley continually deepens his layering of space—in order to make the paradox even more extreme—he places Old Law Farm in the center of the city. Sylvie milks goats, gathers eggs, and tends to the farm daily in the middle of a skyscraper infested city. Yes, the reader is supposed to feel the dissonance when painting the picture in their head of tending to farm animals in the epicenter of a city. Contradictions continue with the repeated statement, “The further you go in, the bigger it gets,” which contradicts traditional laws of physics, as well as the conundrum in the novel that winter is always ahead of spring, but at the same time, always behind spring as well. (This image constructs a circling image of winter and spring continually rotating around each other in perpetuity, as the characters in the novel are dealing with until they reach the apex of the infundibulum.) Finally, the illustration of the geography of the infundibulum is inherently paradoxical: “Circumference = nowhere; center point = everywhere” (233). This supports
36 the theory that Crowley and Yeats’s infundibula contain infinity, an ever expansive realm of Faerie in the apex.
37 VIII. YEATS, THE THIRTEENTH AXIOM, AND THE AGE OF ARIES: “THE KEY
TO FAERIE”
As earlier discussed, Smoky’s purpose in Little, Big is fixing the orrery, thus allowing for an opening of the realm of Faerie for his wife and others finally to funnel into. However, upon further investigation, Crowley connects the celestial with the ecliptic, and the Divine with the Age of Aries, all culminating into the great battle (the
Armageddon-like battle for Faerie) at the end of the novel. With the work of Crowley’s character Ariel Hawksquill’s ability to operate the Cosmo-Opticon, which is the device that allows Hawksquill to see into the great vastness of the cosmos, and her knowledge of the zodiac, she can expect the great battle to happen in another twenty thousand years, when “the spring equinox coincided with the first degrees of Aries: where conventional astrology for convenience’s sake assumes it always to be …” (202). This aligning of the cosmos will turn out to be extremely important, as it means that the cosmos are flipped.
They are in a backwards alignment, as Hawksquill notes:
… There was no way to build into a machine of cogs and gears as gross as
this one the slow, the vast fall of the Cosmos backwards through the
Zodiac, the so-called precession of the equinoxes—that unimaginably
stately grand tour which would take some twenty thousand years longer.
(202)
Coincidentally, what Hawsksquill is unaware of at the time is that there is indeed an orerry, or what she describes as the “machine of cogs” is designed in this very fashion,
38 anticipating the precession of the equinoxes backwards, and this is the orrery Smoky possesses, and is trying to “fix.”
Further investigation is needed to comprehend the immense significance the backwards precession of the Cosmos holds in the delicate, yet thickly weaved fabric of
Crowley’s fantastic space, and what it means for the characters involved:
But look now. The ram in his right place, and the hindquarterless bull, the
twins and the crab, King Lion and the virgin and the double-panned scales.
The poised scorpion next, with the goat, the man with the water-jug. And
two fishes bow-tied at the tails … The ram, the bull, the twins … she
struggled to retain her memory that they had been otherwise, had not
always this order, for they looked as old and immutable as the stars they
pictured. She grew afraid. A Change. (338-39)
The description above describes the precession of the zodiac in reverse as Ariel
Hawksquill discovers. She grows afraid because this only happens every 26,000 years, and according to Hawksquill, the story is situated in a point in history wherein this backward precession should not occur for another 20,000 years (based on the Sidereal
Equinox, which comprises the twelve zodiac signs cycles every 2,000 years; thus one full completion of the cycle from Aries to Aries would take 26,000 years) (“The System of
W.B. Yeats’s A Vision” Mann).
Hawksquill notes that she expects great change when the equinoxes align with the first degree of Aries. Neil Mann states that:
The point taken for measurement of the precession is usually the Vernal
Equinox, which in our calendar takes place in March, and which is called
39 the First Point of Aries, since the Equinox occurred when the Sun was in
Aries when the terms were defined. This point is not arbitrary,
representing one of two points where the ecliptic, the Sun’s apparent path
or the plane of the Earth’s path round the Sun, crosses the Earth’s equator.
The First Point of Aries marks the apparent passage of the Sun northwards
over the equator and its counterpart, the First Point of Libra, marks its
passage southwards. (Mann)
This placement of the first degree or point of Aries marks at the fiducial point, as being a fixed place for reference. However, it has come to astrologers’ attention that the first point of Aries is indeed not fixed: “in the 2000 years leading up to the start of the
Christian era, the apparent position of the Sun at the moment of the Vernal Equinox was in the constellation of Aries; it lay on the boundary between Aries and Pisces at the beginning of the Christian era, and has since then been shifting through Pisces and is approaching Aquarius” (Mann). This phenomenon has intrigued William Butler Yeats, who was very interested in astrology. He has given this phenomenon consideration, and has labeled it The Great Year. He applies the slippage of the equinoxes as the moving force behind the cycling of his gyres, which inspires the cycling of Crowley’s infundibulum, and influences the “great change” Hawksquill speaks of.
The significance that the Age of Aries has on the story line Little, Big is inescapable. It is well documented that the Age of Aries is known as an age of unrest, and the Age of War. Thus, if the precession of the equinox is aligned with the first degree of
Aries, then surely Hawksquill’s concern is understandable as it indicates war is on the horizon. The ruler of the Faerie world has returned (Russell Eigenblick), and the battle
40 for Faerie is imminent, as the zodiac suggests. Crowley subtly hints to the coming of the
Age of Aries and the precession of the equinoxes throughout the novel. Once Hawksquill discovers the backwards precession, the imagery of equinoxes and the antithetical zodiac appear often in the novel. For instance, while Auberon is sitting on a park bench,
Crowley describes his point of view and states that “the intersections of paths had symmetry easily adduced from where he sat. It all depended from or radiated outward from the little house of seasons” (356) and later, “Earth rolled its rotundity around, tilting the little park where Auberon sat one, two, three days more facing upwards to the changeless sun. The warm days were growing more frequent, and though never matching quit the earth’s regular progress, the warmth was already more constant, less skittish, soon not ever to be withdrawn” (363). Crowley is hinting at the approaching spring. The approach of spring means the Spring Equinox, and the first degree of Aries, and the Great
Year—the time for Change. Earlier references to the constant winter include “Brother
North Wind’s Secret,” Crowley’s metaphor for the situation of his characters. Meadow
Mouse is looking for advice on how he should prepare for the impending winter. He is afraid it is the “end of the world.” However, the black crow ensures him it is not, and that
Brother North Wind has a secret about winter that no creature holds. The secret is that winter must end, and spring must come, allowing for summer to blossom. It is a constant cycle. Hence the progressing warmth that Auberon notices; the constant “winter” (literal and figurative) is coming to an end. Spring is around the corner, and change is coming though the characters do not yet understand the significance of the change.
However, spring is not exactly what the characters in the book are waiting for.
Summer unlocks the key to allow for the characters to access the realm of Faerie and
41 reach their point of transcendence. Summer, however, is a myth according to Grandfather
Trout. While Auberon is seeking advice about love from Grandfather Trout, he is told that “Love is a myth … like summer.… In winter, summer is a myth. A report, a rumor.
Not to be believed in” (411). This disbelief in summer is understandable as the characters live in a constant state of “winter.”
Interestingly, the summer unlocks the key to transcendence, to self- actualization—to the realm of Faerie. Western astrology ascribes itself to the twelve signs of the zodiacs/constellations, but there are indeed thirteen signs that lie on the Zodiac path. The thirteenth constellation is Ophiuchus (a serpent bearer). Ophiuchus is located on the ecliptic between the summer constellations (Crockett). Being the summer zodiac that is omitted from the ecliptic precession, this could be the reason why summer never comes; Ophiuchus is always skipped over, and Aries is always circled around as beginning and end. Hence the belief that summer is a myth. Perhaps this is the reason that
Aries’s point, which is supposed to be fiducial, is not fixed at all, but keeps “slipping.” In fact, Smoky’s orrery begins working on a “fresh May night” when “the last of winter had been swept away by a new broom” (516). As mentioned in my previous chapter on
Yeats’s “A Vision,” Smoky does not self-actualize and arrive at the realm of Faerie with the rest of his family. He was unable to because he longs for winter, as Crowley states,
“he wanted winter too, gray days and rain” (517). Summer is the key to access the realm of Faerie, when the zodiac is in the mysterious thirteenth sign of Ophiuchus—the forgotten summer zodiac. Crowley states that on “Midsummer Day, [they] would depart
… (to) … Paradise. A world elsewhere” (517). The antithetical space of the primary world. Crowley’s characters are at a standstill, and the infundibulum cannot funnel them
42 into the apex until everything can get circulating again, or as Smoky says, “you’ve only come full circle. Everything is making everything else go around” (442). The problem that Smoky kept running into is that there was no inertia—no push to keep his orrery (and the infundibulum) spinning. This was because everything kept circling back: Aries to
Aries. Once the ecliptic precession is flipped, the Great Year is initiated, allowing for
Ophiuchus to emerge and bring forth summer. The orrery is initiated, and the infundibulum can keep spinning, funneling the characters through until they reach their final destination: Faerie.
However, Crowley does not stop with the thirteenth zodiac. Crowley indicates meanings on deeper levels as well—levels that only careful investigation could reveal.
The hidden layers of importance Crowley has laid out in his fantastic space begin to surface. As he weaves the Zodiac and astrological influence in his plot line, Crowley is simultaneously working with Euclid’s axioms and Yeats’s Thirteenth Cone. Yeats’s A
Vision is based on opposition and dualism, and his concept of the Thirteenth Cone is no exception:
I shall consider the gyre in the present expanding cone for the sake of
simplicity as the whole of human life. . . and the contrasting cone as the
other half of the antinomy, the ‘spiritual objective’. Although when we are
in the first month of this expanding cone we are in the twelfth month of
the other, when we are in second in the eleventh of the other, and so on,
that month of the other cone which corresponds to ours is always called by
my instructors the Thirteenth Cycle or Thirteenth Cone, for every month is
a cone. It is that cycle which may deliver us from the twelve cycles of time
43 and space. The cone which intersects ours is a cone in so far as we think of
it as the antithesis to our thesis, but if the time has come for our
deliverance it is the phaseless sphere, sometimes called the Thirteenth
Sphere, for every lesser cycle contains within itself a sphere that is, as it
were, the reflection or messenger of the final deliverance. (Yeats 210)
Figure V: Two Dimensional Perspective of Thirteen Cones
Source: yeatsvision.com. Neil Mann
The purpose of Yeats’s cones is to connect Man and Nature/Divine (Yeats used Nature and God interchangeably) as one, or what he labels as Spiritus Mundi. As Yeats describes, for every cone, there is an antithesis. When we are in cone twelve, we are also in cone one, its exact opposite. Figure III, above, shows the cones flattened out in a two dimensional framework for a better understanding of how the cones oppose each other, meeting at each other’s point. However, the cones are meant to be three-dimensional objects; thus they would be conjoined at two ends of the whole, forming a sphere. The sphere can only be complete with the thirteenth cone. The thirteenth cone can only occur within The Great Year, or when Aries is at its first degree. The thirteenth cone is the complete cycle of the zodiac and allows the gyre to assume a complete sphere, “which is symbolically also a complete total of human incarnations … it is seen as the terminal or next stage, at which point the soul may transcend the antinomies” (Mann). The thirteenth cone is the final deliverance; the souls are no longer stuck in a fundibular limbo.
44 Crowley’s characters will meet their destination at the concentrated realm where Concord and Discord meet, and the great expansiveness thereafter.
While this is a lot of layering, and Crowley’s space and his characters’ journey to
Faerie increases in complexity, it is important at this point of the exposition to qualify.
Despite the movements and the greater complexity, we have not left the initial base layout of Crowley’s space. We are still swirling on a non-Euclidean or hyperbolic plane.
Euclid is revisited through August Strindberg’s “Thirteenth Axiom.” Earlier, Euclid was discussed in regards to his postulates, and how Lobechevsky elevated the three- dimensional theories of the postulates to create the four-dimensional interweaving pattern that has infinite intersecting lives and destines of Crowley’s characters on the hyperbolic plane. Euclid is also influential for Crowley’s character because his twelfth axiom coincides with the twelve cones of Yeats, and the twelve zodiac signs—all incomplete without the final thirteenth zodiac sign, cone, or axiom. As August Strindberg states in
Zones of the Spirits: A Book of Thoughts (The Blue Book), there is a thirteenth axiom.
However, this axiom is purely theoretical. Strindberg states as follows: “If [Euclid’s twelfth axiom] is a self-evident proposition, which can neither be proved, nor needs to be proved, how much clearer is the axiom for the existence of God!” (Strindberg, 12) This thirteenth axiom of Strindberg’s closely relates to Yeats’s thirteenth cone, as Neil Mann has connected. Mann notes that Yeats, though mystical and spiritual, did not invest heavily in the theology of Christianity. However, this does not mean he did not write out the concept completely out of his belief system. The thirteenth cone is what Yeats uses to substitute what would be the Divine, or God. Each of Yeats’s other cones (1-12) have an antithetical partner. The thirteenth cone does not have an antithesis—it is the antithesis to
45 man. The antithesis to man is the Divine (Mann). Thus, the thirteenth axiom, the thirteenth zodiac, and the thirteenth cone all represent a complete cycle of something.
According to Mann, “Yeats acknowledges that unity is the source and the goal of existence.” There is a finality that this number brings to Crowley’s characters, and it completes the fabrication of his fantastic space.
It is often discussed in Little, Big that the characters feel “stuck.” We have already discussed that the characters were “stuck” in a perpetual “winter” until the coming of Ophiuchus. Another example is Auberon sitting on the park bench pondering his soap opera “A World Elsewhere.” He comments:
A simple plot was required, a single enterprise which concerned all the
characters deeply, and which had a grand sweet simple single resolution: a
resolution, however, that would never be reached. Always approached,
keeping hopes high, making disappointments bitter, shaping lives and
loves by it inexorable slow progress toward the present: but never, never
reached. (435)
Notice that the story line of “A World Elsewhere” Auberon describes synchronizes with the conflict of Crowley’s main plot line of Little, Big. All fates, all destines are intertwined, and all gyre in a concentric plot. These characters can never reach the resolution Auberon speaks of—can never reach the terminus because the motion of
Crowley’s world(s) is at a standstill until man’s antithesis (God/Divine/Thirteenth Cone) completes the composition of the fantastic space—giving Crowley’s world(s) a hyperbolic spherical shape we have been labeling as the infundibulum. The characters are
“ahead and behind” at the same time because, though they are moving on a rung of the
46 concentric path, there is no forward progression through the funnel. Progression through the funnel is stagnant until the first degree of Aries begins the domino effect, allowing for the battle for Fairieland commence, the Elf King conquer, and the Prince return in this uncanny Armageddon resolution. The Tale, being told in its entirety, allows for the characters to reach their own fiducial point, and transcend into the realm of Faerie and beyond. Even fantastic spaces need a savior.
Perhaps the scene that best represents the notion that Crowley was working under the agency of Yeats’s Thirteenth Cone theory is the scene wherein Ariel Hawksquill attends her meeting with Russell Eigenblick. The folks attending the meeting with
Hawskquill “sorted themselves into two elevators … “The thirteenth [request for desired floor]. The thirteenth” (389). The illustration of the elevators ascending to the thirteenth floor represents the human ascendency towards the heavens—trying to reach the Divine.
Assuming that Crowley is indeed incorporating the Thirteenth Cone in this scene, it is no coincidence that Hawksquill rides the elevator to the thirteenth floor to speak with the
Fairy King. This image can be best illustrated by figure VI, below, as described by Mann as “a ladder of descent from and ascent to the Godhead. Robert Fludd, the English
Rosicrucian, created a fascinating series of diagrams which show the relationship of the
Macrocosmic world of the divine to the Microcosmic world of the human” (Mann). This is akin to Paracelsus’s theory on micro and macrocosms which Crowley builds upon.
47
Figure VI: Descent to the Divine via Thirteenth Cone
Source: from Robert Fludd, Utriusque Cosmi Historia (1621)
Continuing with Yeats’s concept that the Thirteenth Cone is God/Nature, and man is the antithesis, Paracelsus adds:
The conjunction between heaven and man is as follows … There is a
double firmament, one in heaven, and one in each body, and these are
linked by mutual concordance and not by unilateral dependence of the
body upon the firmament. If for example, a discord takes place in the
coordination of the firmament, on the one hand and the human economy
on the other, the latter will be broken … (qtd. Farina 46)
The above extrapolation of how there is a literal heaven, and a “type” of heaven in man reflect the juxtaposed cones of Yeats. In fact, according to Paracelsus, God/Nature is the macrocosm (Farina 47). Thus, the microcosm is anything that is not God, and the microcosm will always mirror the macrocosmic firmament. Hence, this complicates
Crowley’s situated world(s) even further. The heavens and firmament are synonymous.
This becomes purely Aristotelian logic: if the firmament is Faery, and the firmament/Faery is the macrocosm, then Faery is indeed God/Divine, according to
Crowley’s fundamental contrivance of his world(s). 48 Ultimately, Crowley’s fantastic space is tightly weaved, and the characters can anticipate continuing on their descent through the infundibulum when the thirteenth zodiac chariots in the Great Year, or when Yeats’s thirteenth cone completes the
Lobachevsky-esque hyperbolic spherical formation. Until then, the characters wait, and are restless in their waiting. Daily Alice, who is naturally intuitive with her destiny, feels that a change is coming, understanding that when Aries is at its fiducial point she must leave to find the border of the realm of Faery (though the specifics are unclear to her).
Daily Alice states that “it’s just about over … not over, not yet; but just about” (448).
Alice understands that the Tale involves her; what she doesn’t know is that the Tale involves everyone, because everyone is intertwined.
49 VIIII. THE SPACE IN-BETWEEN
It is not very often that a reader gets to enjoy such a complicated net of subjects treated so differently, considered as separate genres representing different branches of knowledge. However, Crowley seems to amalgamate the science of Einstein and mythology of the cosmos with the magic of Yeats and geometry of Euclid and
Lobachevsky. This of course brings the reader to question the definitions of Crowley’s boundaries and how he can make all these divergent elements work in a single genre.
The premise of Crowley’s plot lies in the fact that the borders of the realm of
Faerie are receding—Fairyland is threatened by other worldly spaces encroaching on its fantastic space. All characters in the novel have a different purpose in the Tale with the intent to save what is left of fantasy in this world. All characters feel an innate drive towards a predetermined fate. Some characters, like Alice feel the pull, while others, like the disgruntled and restless Auberon struggle to understand their calling. In the end, the
Bramble family descendants acquire Faerie, and Auberon is named the Prince.
Now that the Tale is told, and the characters living “happily ever after,” there is still a question hovering in the air: What fantasy subgenre does Little, Big fall into, and how does this shape the fantasy genre for authors moving forward? Yes, Crowley uses references to liminal and portal fantasies through crossing over bridges, and borders, as well as being able to transport from access points (park and Edgewood). There are even blatant references to other liminal and portal fantasy authors (Carroll and Lewis). But
50 these complex sets of relations, which are the building blocks to Crowley’s fantastic space, beg for a new definition, as LeGuin calls for. Interestingly, Mendlesohn labels
Little, Big as a liminal fantasy. In fact, Mendlesohn states that “it seeks to make the fact of liminality storyable” (Mendlesohn 220). She references the portal-type travel the characters traverse, stating, “only toward the end of the novel do we realize that we have been traversing the portal itself, that we have not stepped through, and that this may be a portal constructed from multiple portals, interlocking and embedded” (221). The problem with this viewpoint is that when ascribing a work a liminal fantasy, one must step through and be immersed in the initiate process. Mendlesohn continues: “In Little, Big we have a novel that takes place entirely within the liminal space of the portal. Edgewood, the house that is five houses, has exits and entrances to other worlds. Some of its people—the sleeping Sophie for example—live entirely on the edge of these worlds” (Mendlesohn,
223). While she is correct in her assertions, Mendlesohn seems to leave the fundamental structure of Crowley’s fantastic space, the infundibulum, at the portal.
Some scholars have labeled Crowley’s novel as slipstream or interstitial fiction.
Mendlesohn states again:
… in the realms of liminal fantasy, we begin to approach another liminal
space, the no man’s land in which exist (1) slipstream fiction (a term
invented by Bruce Sterling to refer to work that feels like science fiction
but isn’t marketed as such, and (2) a recent group of works that some
people have designated interstitial (to describe works of all kinds that mix
genres). (228)
51 Mendlesohn continues to explain that many of these interstitial works are by-products of magic realism. Surely, Crowley’s novel has affinities with magical realism, as it is written in such a fashion with facts, and theorems, that it feels to the reader that the majority of the events in the novel are more or less believable as reality. And conversely,
Crowley could be writing in a mode of slipstream, (the elements of the fantastic could also be considered science fiction) wherein he is marketed as a science fiction writer.
This is also a possibility, as we have discussed that Crowley heavily references many scientific, astrological, and cosmic subjects.
However, the label of “interstitial” is problematic because even though Crowley does make the primary world feel very real by referencing tangibles like George
Washington, American cities, and popular brands like Ford, it doesn’t allow for the explanation for the make-up of the fantastic space. Suggesting that Crowley’s work is immersive (which Mendlesohn posits is all too similar to interstitial), like Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series is problematic because we are not immersed in a secondary world as a way of escape from the primary’s mundanity. In fact, Crowley attempts to accentuate the mundane in his novel with characters like Smoky Barnable, who travels through anonymity, trying to find his purpose among the “chosen family.”
Perhaps the reason we are never immersed in a secondary world in this novel is because Crowley never fully dichotomizes the secondary world from the primary world.
Indeed, Crowley plays upon Tolkien’s definitions of the separations of worlds, and even the juxtaposition of size, especially through the title of his novel. There is a direct correlation between the separation of fantasy and reality in regards to size, according to
Tolkien. Tolkien borrows ancient knowledge when looking for a definition for fairies and
52 their diminutive stature always seem to be the motif. His definition is as follows:
“supernatural beings of diminutive size, in popular belief supposed to possess magical powers and to have great influence for good or evil over the affairs of man” (Tolkien 2).
By convention, then, fairies are small in size, but can influence man in big ways, which is the premise of Crowley’s plotline. In fact, Crowley seems to take seriously the following statement by Tolkien, working it in to the foundation of his fairy story: “Man who is, in contrast to fairies, supernatural (and often of diminutive stature); whereas they are natural, far more natural than he” (Tolkien 2). This is significant because of the way
Crowley has layered his realities together in his hyperbolic plane of fantasy. Fairies can seem more natural than man, because they are more natural—because the fairies inhabit all of Crowley’s space, intermingling with man—no separation—no boundaries. All of
Crowley’s beings are swirling through a funnel, encased in a sphere, all connected at one point. For a clear depiction of this, one can envision a traditional religious mandala as an eagle-eyed view of this space, (fig. V) with its geometric interlacing, and crossroads encasing a single point.
Figure VII: Yeats’s Wheel Resembling Religious Mandala
Source: yeatsvision.com. Edmund Dulac’s woodcut of the Wheel of the 28 Phases of the Moon (1937 version; A Vision B 66)
53 In essence, Crowley does not stipulate between a primary and secondary world because, as we have deduced through his baroque use of physics that “All is One.” In this sense, Crowley is employing a “Theory of Everything” in this novel. The fairies and humans, though they may juxtapose each other, are not inherently separate. The fairyland and ordinary world are antithetical twins, but are not inherently separate. This is because in Crowley’s fantastic space, all elements are interlaced, reliant on each other. Time and space intersect, God and Nature are one, and the infundibulum of the human space is conversely connected at a firmamental point, leading to the vastness that is the paradise of Faerieland. Faerie is the firmament. The cosmos affects the orbit of Crowley’s sphere, while the house lies at the center. The center is the Axis Mundi, the Axis Mundi connecting the microcosm and the macrocosm. The general belief that the realm of Faerie is the microcosm is nixed: as Crowley suggests, it is a larger than we can imagine.
Tolkien reports that “Faerie contains many things besides elves and fays, and besides dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons: it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted” (Tolkien 4). But Crowley negates this idea by not being so exclusive, or so prescriptive. According to Crowley’s realm of
Faerie, all things do exist within; however, mortal men need not be “enchanted.” The realm of Faerie is part of the whole—where men, deserving of Faerie may enjoy its nirvana-like riches—Faerie is the end of a quest—a quest within the self. When an initiate self-actualizes (according to van Gennep), then Faerie is available. This notion is perplexing as it is almost desecrating to the centuries long literary labor that has gone in to constructing a traditional Faerie realm. Nevertheless, Crowley does attribute homage
54 where it is due but then rewrites it for our time. Crowley does not forego the “rules and regulations” of previous Faerie contractors like Tolkien, Lewis, or MacDonald, he simply applies what exists to the fabric of his space, and adds on, until he arrives at a universe, fully developed with a relational macro/microcosm, and shared fantastic space.
The continual juxtaposition and antithetical nature of Crowley’s space challenges readers to question their prior belief of a “traditional” fantastic space—one wherein a fantasy writer must make a decision to either fully immerse readers in a fantasy world, or make distinctions between reality and Faerie. The distinction Crowley makes here is that the realm of Faerie is accessible, yet invisible to the reader because it is always there— always around us—like a spirit that guides us—it is more of a reality than the one we are familiar with.
To model this, Crowley sums up the theory of how his space is constructed on page 441 of his novel: “What was expressed here, as by the inflections and predicates of a tongue, was a set of relations: and while the dimensions were fictional, the relations obtained all through, very neatly: for the language was number, and it meshed here as it did in the heavens: exactly as” (Crowley). What Crowley does perfectly and purposefully in this quote is to demonstrate his master craftsmanship of the iconic postmodern fantasy.
Crowley reaches out to his readers in his cryptographic message is that he is telling them, though he can only express the dimensions and layout of his space as words on a page, that everything is related; all is intertwined and is presented as a set of relations.
Crowley, relating math and science, religion and esotericism, man and fairies, concentrates the subjects all together in an absolute point of divinity and apogee that is the realm of Faerie. There is coalesces, existing as one.
55 Thus, arriving at this final point as a convergence of theories and relations, I conclude that as it stands Crowley’s new structure of fantastic space lack a proper identification if only because it has no single precedents. I will not attempt to insist that
Crowley is telling a Tale that requires any categorization outside the genre of fantasy, but at least recognition that his storytelling is not pigeonholed with the likes of interstitial or liminal pieces. As we saw, some fantasy literature scholars may argue that Crowley’s work should be considered interstitial, as it mixes the genre of science fiction with fantasy. But this concept is exactly what Crowley’s space opposes because interstitial fiction’s predisposition is to assume that science fiction and fantasy must be treated separately. As he clearly demonstrates in his novel, this is not the case. Mendlesohn also mentions that slipstream fiction, being one that engages more with science fiction, is akin to a “thriller,” which Crowley’s work is not (Mendlesohn 228). Secondly, Crowley is still fundamentally telling a fairy story, based on Tolkienean logic, which is: “a tale about fairies, or generally a fairy legend; with developed senses” (Tolkien 1). This means that
Crowley’s Little, Big must still fall under a fairy story, and/or fantastic label.
Ultimately, I would label the work as Coalesced Fantasy. In a Coalesced Fantasy, all is one, one is all; there is no intermixing as interstitial suggests, as Crowley treats his space under the umbrella that “All is One.” Coalesced Fantasy begins with the conviction that while in postmodern life we are presented with a world of increasing fragmentation, everything ultimately is connected somewhere in the time-space continuum, and everything exists in a kind of balance with everything else. Destinies too are closely intertwined in the swirling infundibulum that is fantastical space-time—much too interrelated than to think they can be separated. Faerie is the epicenter of all space-time
56 on the hyperbolic plane. In some ways, Faerie is like the sun in our own solar system, exerting its influence with all other elements revolving around on the concentric orbits of the dynamic infundibulum. Faerie cannot be interstitially placed in Crowley’s space. As the heavens are irremovable from the center of the night sky, Faerie is irremovable from the center of Crowley’s fantastic space in his highly innovative narrative that is Little,
Big.
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