There is a peculiar assumption that sometimes follows imagination.

Read about fairies, and someone wonders whether you believe in them.

Create art filled with witches, ravens, moonlit forests, tarot cards, ghosts, or gothic architecture, and someone may assume those images are declarations of your spiritual beliefs.

Explore mythology or old supernatural traditions, and curiosity can suddenly be mistaken for participation.

I know this because it has happened to me.

Edenglow contains a lot of witches. There are ghosts, fairies, mermaids, goblins, folklore, gothic imagery, strange old things, and more than a few dark forests.

I am not a witch—although my husband may dispute that statement.

I simply love the aesthetic.

I love gothic art. I love mysterious old houses and candlelit rooms. I love folklore and the strange creatures human beings have imagined for centuries. I love the history behind superstitions and the question of why certain stories survived while others disappeared.

None of that tells you what I worship.

It tells you what fascinates me.

And I don't believe imagination and faith have to be enemies.

A Story Is Not a Statement of Belief

We understand this distinction almost everywhere else.

Reading Greek mythology doesn't mean you worship Zeus.

Enjoying The Lord of the Rings doesn't mean you believe Gandalf was a historical figure.

Watching a ghost story doesn't require belief in ghosts.

And drawing a witch doesn't make someone a witch any more than drawing a dragon makes someone a dragon.

That would certainly make the art world more interesting, but it isn't how art works.

There is an enormous difference between saying:

“People have imagined, believed, feared, or told stories about this.”

and:

“This is what I personally believe.”

Folklore explores the first.

Faith concerns the second.

Faith and Strange Stories Have Always Lived Together

The idea that religious people historically occupied a world without fantasy, superstition, monsters, or strange stories simply isn't true.

People went to church and told ghost stories.

They prayed and warned their children about creatures in the woods.

They carved grotesques onto religious buildings and painted demons, dragons, serpents, death, temptation, heaven, and hell.

They told stories about fairies, changelings, witches, giants, miraculous wells, restless spirits, mysterious strangers, and things nobody could quite explain.

Some of those stories supported religious teachings. Some contradicted them. Some were remnants of older traditions.

And some were probably told because people have always enjoyed a really good story.

Human beings have never been particularly good at keeping religion, folklore, history, fear, imagination, and entertainment in tidy little boxes.

And Yes, There Are a Lot of Witches Around Here

I won't pretend Edenglow accidentally wandered into gothic territory.

I like witches.

More precisely, I like the imagery surrounding them: crooked cottages, herbs hanging from rafters, ravens, moons, ancient books, bubbling bottles, dramatic hats, black cats who clearly know more than they're telling us, and women who have absolutely no intention of explaining themselves.

That aesthetic appeals to me.

So do mermaids, Victorian mourning customs, old cemeteries, haunted houses, fairy tales, mythology, antique photographs, mysterious forests, and goblins.

Especially goblins.

For me, these are ingredients for storytelling and art.

Someone else may see some of those symbols differently. That's okay.

We don't all have to be comfortable with the same imagery.

Look at What the Art Actually Does

Perhaps a better way to judge creative work is by looking beyond its symbols.

What does it actually encourage?

Cruelty or compassion?

Hatred or empathy?

Fear or curiosity?

Destruction or creation?

Does it encourage people to stop thinking, or does it make them wonder?

Does it make the world smaller, or does it invite them to explore it?

That seems far more meaningful to me than counting the number of pointy hats in the illustrations.

Because Edenglow is not a religion.

It isn't an attempt to recruit anyone into a belief system.

It's a creative world built from art, music, books, history, folklore, family stories, antiques, imagination, humor, strange creatures, beautiful things, unsettling things, and the countless stories human beings have carried with them.

There Is Room for Both

People of faith are allowed to establish their own boundaries.

If certain imagery troubles someone's conscience, they should absolutely avoid it.

But another person's boundary does not automatically become mine.

I can study mythology without worshipping ancient gods.

I can research folklore without accepting every legend as truth.

I can write about witches without practicing witchcraft.

I can draw fairies without believing one lives in my garden.

I can enjoy gothic imagery without secretly pledging allegiance to the darkness.

And I can maintain faith while remaining endlessly curious about the strange things human beings have imagined.

A library is not an altar.

A story is not a creed.

Curiosity is not a confession of belief.

There is room in a human life for faith and fairy tales, prayer and ghost stories, sacred things and silly goblins.

I don't believe imagination makes faith weaker.

If anything, wonder has always been one of the ways human beings reach toward things larger than ourselves.

The world is already mysterious.

I see no reason to make it smaller.