Visionary Fiction, mindful of our dual nature, now steps in, not to make a villain of technology, neutral by nature, but to transcend its current hegemony and restore it as the balanced and cooperative partner to our spiritual aspect.
When you hear the word “domain,” you likely think of something you own or master like an estate or territory. In most cases, your domain amounts to your home, to which you attach a name and address so that people can locate you. When it comes to your website, you, too, need to claim ownership…
If, to paraphrase Joni Mitchell’s lyrics in “Woodstock,” we are indeed stardust and golden, we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden. When faced with paradox, which our condition inherently is, we humans tend to jump from one extreme to the other. Only after we get dizzy enough from swinging between either/or does it occur to us try both/and.
If you’re still with me after Build Your Own Author Website – Step One, I assume you agree that, as an author, you need a marketing hub open twenty-four seven as the foundation for your marketing platform. With an author website as your base, you can incorporate all the strategies available to you as an Internet…
We ended Part 1 stuck between the opposites of Matter, represented by the infernal machines, and Spirit, as epitomized by abstract ideals. Transhumanism, by definition, seems positioned in the former category, the Dalai Lama’s “half machine,” and our visionary viewpoint in the latter, what His Holiness calls “a stream of consciousness.” That these two elements, one inanimate and the other animate, might join in some unnatural marriage to rival or supplant the current human model was seen, to put it kindly, as far out.
When I was asked to speak at the California Writer’s Club/Sacramento last year about how I’d built my website and decided on my platform and marketing strategy, my first thought was: Hold it! You’re talking to a technological greenhorn here—Miss trial and error, Miss whoops that didn’t work out too well, Miss if you don’t at first succeed, try, try again. In…
I can’t totally rule out the possibility that, if all the external conditions and the karmic action were there, a stream of consciousness might actually enter a computer. –His Holiness, the Dalai Lama
This startling statement made by the renowned leader of Tibetan Buddhism knocked me off kilter on first reading it. It had a similar effect on the renowned physicist who reported it.
Women’s Visionary Fiction is not a new type of Visionary Fiction. It has been around for decades if not centuries. In fact, for all of recorded history (and thousands of years before writing existed) women have been associated with visions, mystical experiences, spiritual powers, magic, the ability to bring new life into the world, heal…
(Read Part 1 of Rory Mackey’s The Visionary Fiction Revolution here)We tell stories for a reason Mythology, which is storytelling at its most essential level, was not purposeless. It played an important role in shaping and sustaining society and, according to Campbell, had four primary functions. The first was to open the eyes of the…
It’s estimated that nearly 130 million books have been published in modern history. 28 million books are currently in print in English alone. When contemplating writing a book, I can’t help but reflect on these staggering statistics, as indeed I think all authors should. Does the world really need another book to add to those…
Part II: The Purer Archetype and the Warrior KingThe second part of this blog explores the warrior king as the Jungian purer archetype with regard to the Qabalistic understanding of the scabbard and sword and its political application. Most of us know King Arthur as the courageous “once and future king” destined to unite Great Britain…
Part I: The Sacred Warrior KingThe first part of this blog discusses Arthur, the sacred warrior king, as the archetypal hero of British legend and his relationship within the Celtic mythological narrative. More than any other works of fiction, except for fairy tales and mythological narratives, Visionary Fiction makes use of spiritual and psychological archetypes,…
Part Two You can view Part One of this intriguing exploration by guest author Stephen Weinstock here. In Part One, I outlined the parallels between Arabic fiction’s uphill battle for acceptance in the first centuries of Islam. I believe the criticism and slow acceptance of Visionary Fiction goes back to the same kind of interdiction…
Part One In researching Book Three of my series 1001: The Reincarnation Chronicles, I read a great deal about the history of Arabic Literature. I am no Arabic scholar, but I had to learn about medieval Persian and Arabic culture. My characters, in their past lives in 10th century Baghdad, collaborate on a special version…
This is the final installment of the Visionary Fiction as Personal Therapy Series. In part 1, we discussed recognition, when a reader experiences a sense of familiarity while reading. In part 2, visionary fiction authors expressed their feelings of recognition while they were writing their stories. In part 3, various authors discussed how they reacted to issues…
This is part 4 of the Visionary Fiction as Personal Therapy Series inspired by an article on bibliotherapy by Debbie McCullis in the February, 2014 issue of the Journal of Poetry Therapy. In part 1, we discussed recognition, which is when a reader experiences a sense of familiarity while reading.
This is part 3 of the Visionary Fiction as Personal Therapy Series, which was inspired after I learned about bibliotherapy in my psychology classes. It led me to discover an article by Debbie McCullis in the February, 2014 issue of the Journal of Poetry Therapy. McGullis listed a four step process used in bibliotherapy, which…
By Eleni Papanou This is part two of the Therapeutic Benefits of Visionary Fiction Series. In part one, we discussed recognition from the reader’s perspective. In this week’s installment, we’ll focus on it from the author’s perspective. Authors have their moments of recognition during the writing process. This phase is important to many of them….