RolStoppable said:
Since you study literature, I would like to hear about other examples of mushrooms and magical realms. Doesn't really need to be restricted to books though. Are mushrooms and magical realms as common as Miyamoto makes it sound like? A pipe or a rabbit hole isn't really the point. It's about an entry passage from our world into a fantasy land. |
As to the pipe and the rabbit hole: magical lands on the other ends of tunnels or under the ground have been prevalent in every single mythological tradition in the world. The fae people living under burial mounds, the tunnel leading into Hades, the long road Gilgamesh walked into Hell - I could almost literally go on forever about that one. Carroll and Miyamoto both were calling on some seriously timeless imagery there. To learn more about that mode of storytelling you might want to pick up The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which may or may not ruin such stories for you, forever. It really goes over how certain storytelling tropes are intrinsically powerful to us, and the proof comes in how they are prevalent in every single culture.
And yes, they are, though not specifically mushrooms most of the time. Hallucinogenic drugs, though, are almost always important for spiritual journeys, and they often do mess with scale and one's own sense of mortality. Those perceptions are made more literal in stories.
Malstrom will insist that it draw on Alice, I'm sure, but he's wrong - Carroll himself was drawing on something far older and longer-lasting.
