Story is a potent and consistent factor of the human endeavour. It is a prime component to our interpretations and creations of experience. It is through our propensity for story that we recognize, utilize and expand upon Being, therefore story is a key aspect to our collective and respective existence. The Books of Magra is no different in its focus upon story. There are a number of modalities that are used, but the use of story echoes throughout all of the books and the music. One of the specific devices used with this understanding of story is that of Symbolism by means of a Mythological Perspective.

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    Mythology has been used for many purposes, as a record of history, as entertainment, as a means of teaching, and as a tool of profound experiential enquiry. All such intents utilize the same device: symbolism. The mythological perspective in the creation of The Books of Magra is built upon the use of symbols in a spherical sense - meaning that the symbolic device is fluid in interpretations (this is partially realized at times through the dissolving of differences between prose and poetry). This approach to symbols is concerned with experience and so the symbols are not only tools for thought, speech or visualization, they are also intended to have potential trajectories for all sensation, and so they also include the Bodies (physical, mental, emotional, subtle) while also involving the broad extent and depth of All.

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    These intents enable symbols to be multi-dimensional and multi-functional, and so there is a great deal of potential evolution in meaning. Just as we may read a storybook in our youth, and be captivated by the narrative and acquire some experience and meaning from that story, in later years we may look back in a reminiscence and be struck by a new insight. Then that protagonist or that moment of the story has new significance. The symbolism has evolved with us - it is a symbiotic unfolding, and as such, the symbolism demands nothing of the experiencer, the individual is free to change and shift as much as the symbolism. The capacity for a symbol to have such flexibility in meaning indicates that it wants nothing from you. It does not ask you to interpret it in the same way in perpetuity and so it does not suppose an empirical platform to which the symbolism must conform. Therefore symbols have equal sustaining and nourishing qualities in an individual’s or a communities’ evolution.

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    The Books of Magra is built with such types of symbolism, even the titles of each of the books, which are unique concepts of the series, evolve from book to book influencing one another in mingling relationships. Characters, places, ideas, objects, experiences and thoughts in The Books of Magra all swarm and interpenetrate by means of a Mythological Perspective.