An excerpt for From Atlantis to the Sphinx by Colin Wilson that explains why left-brain development, painful as it might seem at times, has enhanced rather than detracted from the simpler right-brained focus of our ancestors. A valuable differentiation for the VF author to keep in mind: We can be sure that our ancestors of…
[Part 3 of 3-part series based on the relationship between Dr. Dean Radin’s Real Magic: Ancient Wisdom, Modern Science, and a Guide to the Secret Power of the Universe and the theory and practice of Visionary Fiction.] The Practice of Real Magic By this point, it should be evident that using real magic in its…
[Part 2 of 3-part series based on the relationship between Dr. Dean Radin’s Real Magic: Ancient Wisdom, Modern Science, and a Guide to the Secret Power of the Universe and the theory and practice of Visionary Fiction.] As do several accomplished modern scientists, especially those involved with quantum theory, Dean Radin separates science as a…
Growth in Consciousness Linked to the Paranormal The defining statement for the Visionary Fiction Alliance, What is Visionary Fiction?, highlights growth in consciousness as central to the development of theme and character in any VF story. That same article notes that VF authors “oftentimes use reincarnation, dreams, visions, paranormal events, psychic abilities, and other metaphysical…
From the first posts on VisionaryFictionAlliance.com in August 2012 until the present, emphasis has been on defining Visionary Fiction and exploring the art and craft of writing it. In the beginning, we were not sure what content rightly belonged in the genre and what writers were actually or potentially producing genuine Visionary Fiction.
Some months back, John Van de Kamp, a relative of one of our founding members, Margaret Duarte, asked her if she had ever heard of theosophy, suggesting rather grandly, “I believe this concept may be the basis of visionary fiction.” A group of us discussed the idea and concluded that the topic might make for…
Applied Parapsychology: Synchronicity and Super Synchronicity To read or revisit Part One of this series, click HERE. For Part Two, Click HERE. Parapsychology in its various aspects is an enormous field of study and practice both for evolving humans trekking through the maze of physical/mental/spiritual existence and for visionary authors narrating that tortuous saga, aptly…
Undercover Agents of Consciousness To read or revisit Part One of this series, click HERE. Like researchers venturing beyond the known and allowed boundaries of sanctioned science, visionary authors often strike radioactive material that incites incredulity, hostility, and worse. For these, in the words of Carl Jung, “The experience that furnishes the material for artistic…
Introducing Gary E. Schwartz, Ph.D. Parapsychology is a field of study concerned with the investigation of paranormal and psychic phenomena, which include telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, near-death experiences, reincarnation, apparitional experiences, and other paranormal claims. It is often identified as pseudoscience…. Parapsychology has been criticized for continuing investigation despite being unable to provide convincing evidence…
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.
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.
Flybys are not flukes. At first they may seem to appear by accident, luck or chance, which, if true, would make them a dastardly unpredictable source for a visionary story or anything else of worth. While keeping aside the worthy argument that nothing is truly accidental, let’s look at ways to increase the odds of returning from the hunt laden with healthy flybys .
Where do the ideas and visions that eventually become complex cities and timeless books come from? I don’t know actually—how to blunt a piece from the get-go! However, I do know that they first show up as blip of light barely large and lasting enough to evoke a “What the heck was that?” It gets a smidge of our attention before it flicks on by.
I suspect many of you, like me, struggle to define visionary fiction, not to mention how it differs from magical realism. In today’s post, The Visionary Perspective, and next week’s post, Revealing the Magical, I will make an attempt to distinguish between the two genres—how they differ and where they may overlap. An Accurate Place to Land For…