“Whatever is imagined must exist somewhere in the universe… Which [life] is real, which is imaginary, depends upon the position of the observer.”–- J.B. Priestley, The Thirty First of June, 1957.
Neuroscience has made incredible strides, helping us realize how much control over our thoughts and our realities we actually have. “Until recently,” Sanaya Roman writes in “Spiritual Growth: Being Your Higher Self,” 1988, “the existing mass belief has been that people are at the mercy of vast, uncontrollable forces.” There is, undoubtedly, an element of fate to a true love story and to human life in general. On the other hand, what happens is, in essence, a product of our own unconscious desires and visionary ideas of the reality we want.
Looking back on my childhood, one fascinating story, in particular, comes to mind. It is a tale of love that takes place simultaneously in the past and the future – the twelfth and twenty first centuries in England, on the last day of June, the imaginary date of the 31st. “The Thirty First of June,” a two-part fantasy musical, is based on the play “The Thirty-first of June: A Tale of True Love, Enterprise and Progress in the Arthurian and AD-Atomic Ages,” 1957, by British novelist J. B. Priestley (1894-1984). Here is a question of historical memory: Do our favorite childhood fairytales and most cherished reminiscences of them truly define our fate and contribute to our current reality? Dr. Jill Ammon-Wexler writes in “Turn on Your Super Brain: Discover Your Natural Genius,” 2013:
Neuroscientists currently estimate that only a tiny amount of what happens to us is stored in our conscious, word-based memory. And most of those thoughts actually disappear within seconds…
And in contrast to the limited memory span of your conscious mind, your subconscious mind is a storehouse of virtually everything that has happened in your entire life. Although most people are not aware of this influence over their thinking process, this huge library of subconscious experience colors all of your thoughts, perceptions, choices and actions.” Having stayed profoundly in my heart for years, J. B. Priestley’s story has shaped my values, beliefs, and aspirations as well as my perceptions of time and space.
In this romantic tale, King Meliot of Peradore in Arthurian England is looking for a husband for his daughter, Princess Melicent, but she rejects all her suitors. Even in the company of her frivolous two ladies-in-waiting, Lady Ninette and Mistress Alison, the fairy princess refuses to spend all her life in a stale Kingdom among the medieval doom and gloom. The court musician Lamison is constantly trying to entertain the three girls with his lute playing while attempting to master “The Dark Knight Hath My Heart.”The song conveys Melicent’s longings for a romantic hero whom she had seen in the magic mirror: Sam Penty, an artist in an advertisement agency, who lives in the twenty first century. King of Peradore is skeptical about his daughter’s visions, “If he [Sam] isn’t in real life, then he isn’t real.” With a resolute spirit, however, Lady Ninette states repeatedly, “We must makethings happen… We ought to make things happen.”
In the twenty first century, Sam Penty is preoccupied with constructing an image of a "Stocking Girl" for a Damsel Stockingscommercial, which he must finish by the end of the day, June Thirty First. The artist admits that his creative ideas have arrived at a screeching halt. As arranged by Master Malgrim, Sam finds the mesmerizing image of Melicent in the mirror, thinking of a young princess as an imaginary character and just a source of inspiration for a ”Stocking girl.” Sam instantly falls in love with her and when he learns from Malgrim that she does exist, yet in a different realm. The artist immediately wants to marry Melicen, as he explains to the warlock, “because she seems to offer me two wonderful qualities I’ve never found before in the same person – a beautiful strangeness and a loving kindness. A smiling princess – what every man wants.”
Enchanter Malgrim makes it possible for Melicent and Sam to meet briefly, in return for Merlin's ancient broach, which can have magical powers only when passed on as a gift. “The two worlds had to be brought together and joined up,” before the imaginary lunar day would end and everyone would be dispersed back to their own realm. Upon learning that Melicent is not willing to give away the broach, the magician promptly interrupts an enchanted encounter and entices Sam to the twelfth century, in which the two soldiers, Jack and Fred, are locking him in prison. Under such unexpected circumstances, Melicent makes a pivotal decision and resorts to the one and only wish granted by the Arthurian wizard Merlin himself, giving up her Princess status and forgetting everything related to the Peradore Kingdom, as to be with Sam. The story evokes a strong sense of fantasy, uncertainty and bewilderment, for it reminds us all that it is all an illusion, i.e. something existing in our imagination. As expressed by King of Peradore, “No logic, no reason, no sense.”
At times, we may feel that we have no conscious influence over all that is unfolding. Neuroscientist Sam Harris argues in “Free Will,” 2012, that “some moments before you are aware of what you will do next ... your brain has already determined what you will do. You then become conscious of this ‘decision’ and believe that you are in the process of making it.” In this light, we are helpless in the face of Destiny?
In antiquity, the Fates —the female personifications of human Destiny— determined when human life begins, when it ends, and what happens in between. Amongst the ancient Greeks, the Fates were known as Atropos, Clotho, and Lachesis, while amongst the ancient Romans, as Nona, Decima and Morta. They were also called the Moeraeor the Parcae, because they “give mortals their share of good and evil" at their birth. The Fates were always three in number, for they were believed by the ancients to be personifications of a beginning, progress, and end. Based on Plato’s teachings, they represented Time: the Past, the Present, and the Future. There were no other divinities in the ancient world that would be more powerful than the Fates.
Throughout northern Europe, an equivalent of the Greek and Roman Fates was Holle, also known as Holda or Hulda. In Norse mythology, Holle represented a triple goddess of the Moon, embodying the three phases of Womanhood: the Maiden, the Mother and the Crone. What is interesting about Norse Moon myths of Holle is that they give humans the agency, will, and freedom to choose their own Fate and Destiny, but with a sense of the utmost responsibility, as it can be read in these verses:
We spin our life thread so that it becomes the Foundation of our life.
We measure our thread to Glorify our life.
We exercise our Power of choice to cut the thread when we should do so.
Our true Greatness is the understanding of necessity.
Our Knowledge averts the terrible process of a rigid fate.
By choosing to accept personal responsibility and Set into motion the Grace of forgiveness.
In northern European imagination, such evocative literary images had thus constructed the collective consciousness and long continued to shape the understanding of Destiny and Fate.
J. B. Priestley’s fable embraces the brief yet potent period of fated events and developments on the transient lunar day that becomes auspicious for reality of our own making. The tale points out to a certain “time-and-space” moment in our lives when great things can happen, and the result of this event is entirely up to us. A discerning audience may be posing such a question as, “Why not on any other particular day of the year than the illusory Thirty First of June when there isn’t such a thing?” The ephemeral day serves as the metaphorical threshold in between the past and the future - a crossing between the physical aspect of humanity and the uninterrupted expanse of the Universe.
We are thus left with a philosophical dilemma of what is possible in creating one’s own reality and what is not. How far can one get away with being the director and scriptwriter of his or her life? ”Since your reality is your dream,” Sanaya Roman insists, “you can dream it any way you want. You can change the script anytime you want, bring in new actors, and make your new dream turn out a better way.” Imagination is truly a powerful energy that can connect us with the invisible forces of the Universe where anything becomes possible, and “The Thirty First of June” speaks eloquently of it.
—Diana Guber, “The Thirty First of June: Creating Your Reality in the Atomic Era— Good, Bad or Rapturously Sublime?” 2014.