Initiation by participation in imaginative fiction

When we really participate in the process of reading a work of imaginative fiction, we undergo some of the steps of what is sometimes termed "initiation"

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A typical work of imaginative fictions starts out in the everyday and mundane world of ordinary people and perceptions; the business of survival, seeking comforts and pleasures, avoiding suffering, delaying death. 

Then (usually by identification with one or more protagonists) the fiction takes us through rising stages of expanded experience:

1. The strange and marvellous - things beyond everyday experience; perhaps experiences that induce exceptionally powerful emotions.   

2. Exceptional but normal living people - Kings and Queens, Lords and Ladies, Heroes and Heroines...

3. Animals and plants, and nature - an awareness that there are more than people in the world... Befriending animals, maybe mutually communicating; and the same with trees, landscapes; and perhaps ancient buildings or monuments... 

4. Fairies and the like - An encounter with sentient beings that are not human: such as elves and dwarves; or threatening talking beings like dragons and giants

5. Beings of higher consciousness and spiritual power - such as great holy men and women. seers, wizards, enchanters, magicians.

6. Experience of meaning and purpose in reality - being guided by contacts, synchronicities, the workings out of prophecy; at a higher level the workings of divine providence.  

7. Experience of contact with deity - angelic being, gods, and God. 

Not many fictions have all of these stages of initiation - and perhaps not in this "ascending" order; and fewer will even attempt to evoke a sense of participation the highest levels of holiness, ultimate purpose or the divine.   

Low level stories will be contented with adventures among the strange and marvellous, and contact with ordinary humans but of special prestige - and if they include higher beings, then these are treated reductively - just means to a materialistic end. 

At the highest levels of imaginative fiction, there will be indications of the higher levels - whether explicitly or by implication (the opposite of reduction, when for example experience of identifying with strange places or talking animals points at the reality of higher levels of initiation). 

It is these works that provide, potentially, the most transformative initiations.