A myth, if it really is a myth and not a legend or a tale, has an independent existence as a structure of intent. In this book, we propose that such a structure of intent, supported by individual experience and general agreement, has the power to shape – even generate – such experience and agreement, even prior to the individual (or the group) being aware of the process. In plainer words, myths as independent structures of intent have the power to shape or even generate experiential reality.

One would have to be very credulous indeed not to dismiss the above statement as preposterous without a very good explanation. This book attempts to provide such an explanation, the full comprehension of which requires that the reader, at least temporarily, agrees to accept sorcery as an existential option. Joseph Campbell, whose work inspired Lucas throughout the long gestation of Star Wars, could not do so and consequently did not further develop his radical theory of the natural history of gods which he outlined in The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology. His late experience of the miraculous (witnessing the practices of the yamabushi, Japanese warrior monks renowned for their magical powers) probably caused a change of heart, as Campbell always accepted the evidence of the senses even when it threatened his most cherished convictions. Had he lived longer, the change would have eventually found expression in his work.

The term edifice has not been used here to relieve one from the boredom of hearing “structure of intent” too many times. Closely connected as they may be, the two terms are not interchangeable. A structure is the underlying skeleton upon which an edifice is built. Any number of edifices can be built on the same structure.

But intent? Is it not just another word for intention or purpose? And is an edifice not always built to a purpose, or, if it is a natural one (all natural phenomena, we argue, are edifices of intent, which is not the same as saying that they are divine creations), does it not always give the appearance of an underlying purpose? Well, a purpose is the ultimate goal of an action or process (“the purpose of life”, answering the question “what do you live for?”), while intention means “something we plan and have decided to achieve” answering a “what” question. Neither makes sense as an edifice.

Within the parameters of this discourse (and some of the discourses from which this one was sourced), intent appears to have at least as much to do with intensity as with intention. Within the same parameters, we shall define intensity as “the degree of whatness”, whatness here understood as quidditas (a quasi-Latin word, used sometimes by French philosophers in its French form, quiddité, and meaning “the quality of being something”). We shall also warn that whatness cannot be described.

Within the parameters of this discourse, then, we could define intent as maximum intensity whatness of phenomena, specific, generic or total, and the pressure thereof, all rolled into one.

There is more about intent and traditions that work with it in the book. It is not as complicated as it appears: without the ability to manipulate intent, neither Vader nor Luke would be able to make inanimate objects such as lightsabers fly into their hands, as a lightsaber has no independent propulsion and a hand is not magnetic. In case you feel like saying that flying lightsabers are just special effects in a movie, remember that hot coals on which Campbell walked were not.

Whilst working an edifice of intent can be very subjective, the edifice itself, if it is well constructed, remains objective and as such accessible to all, affecting even those who approach it without any prior knowledge of what it might be and what to expect of it, sometimes centuries and even millennia after it was first set up. “The more human imagination has dwelt around it to idealise it, the more definite that form becomes,” says Violet Mary Firth Evans (1890-1946), lay psychotherapist, a serious and thoughtful writer and an esoteric teacher of renown, better known under her pen name of Dion Fortune. “Consequently, subsequent generations of seers … are met by these images, the ‘creations of the created’, and will be deceived thereby, mistaking them for the abstract essence itself, which is not to be found upon any plane that yields images to psychic vision…” In spite of her period-specific and therefore antiquated idiom, it is obvious that Fortune is discussing edifices of intent.

At least some edifices of intent could be independent of their creators and could have acquired a life of their own. Fortune: “These forms, once built, became channels of the specialised forces they were designed to represent, concentrating them upon their worshippers.”

Moreover, since in the realm of the abstract time as a continuum does not exist (which pat statement does get elaborated in the book, fear not), it may not be inconceivable for an edifice of intent to be operational before it has been erected, influencing ultimately its own creator or creators.

We propose that Star Wars are such an edifice, bearing in mind that, being a work of art with no set boundaries, they must by definition include the entire universe as we have explained elsewhere on this site. As an edifice of intent, they have, to an extent, made its maker.

Conscious manipulation of intent (not of intentions!) is, within the parameters of this discourse, termed sorcery, which, as we said earlier on this page, we take as an existential option.