I've always been fascinated by how words can create worlds. Or maybe its better to say they channel worlds. Regardless, what fascinates me the most is that the word is really an expression of reality that is half way between idea and reality. It is the beginning manifestation of possibility into reality, a way to establish something that is separate and distinct from the entropy of all possibilities.
In the Spiritual Dimension of Music, R. J. notes that "The word is the power exhaled by the mysterious source or Spirit. In physics it is known as the origin of the universe while in metaphysics it its known as the origin of worlds" Reading that made me think of the big bang as this explosive word uttered into the void that turned possibility into reality. And why not?
As a writer and also a bibliophile I really appreciate the power of words, in terms of what they present: Concepts made into inky flesh and shared and spread through the comprehension of the meanings embedded in the words. But it goes beyond that. In Pop Culture Magick, I wrote about how I thought of as Fantasy/SF books as channelings of other worlds or variations of this world that could be accessed through the word and also through imagination and magical work. It's still something I identify with. When I read the Shannara for examples, its not just words I read, but a reality I experience. I am there with the characters, experiencing what they experience and becoming a part of that world while I read about it. The word acts as a reality tunnel bridging the gap between the person's imagination and the actuality of the word s/he is reading about.
When people turn the word into ritual and magic it becomes even more real. The work Storm, I, and others have done with Dehara, a system of magic based off the Wraeththu series is the choice to bring something back from a "fantasy" world and turn it into a reality here that people can interact with more directly. Is it just pop culture, or is it more real? When I take the concepts written about in the DeathGate Series in regards to space/time magic and turn them into viable practices that can actually work, does it matter that the concept was initially found in a fantasy series? I don't think so.
I think that what matters is that we are able to turn words into worlds and then interact with those worlds and bring something back to this reality that is meaningful. I don't want to escape into another world, but I do want to learn from the other worlds out there. Even if they don't seem to be real, there is something we can learn from them, and in truth once they've been written about, they've already started to exist somewhere beyond the imagination of the author. They've become a reality of some sort and we are left to translate that reality to our own, if we so choose.