The Red Hibiscus: Anthology Vol. 20 Preface
Your mission here, repair the damage,
and to make the world a better place,
the tools needed will build through your life,
in the cycles you come to embrace.
(Imprints to Ascend, Stewart Brennan)
This edition opens with a poem that offers an excellent counter-argument to our dominant culture of nihilism. Imprints to Ascend is a thought-provoking poem that draws on a plethora of spiritual teachings and influences. The theme of cosmic cycles has been prominent in Rosicrucian and Theosophist writings:
The ancients divided time into endless cycles, wheels within wheels, all such periods being of various durations, and each marking the beginning or the end of some event either cosmic, mundane, physical or metaphysical. There were cycles of only a few years, and cycles of immense duration.
(HP Blavatsky)
Rudolf Steiner viewed the Cosmos as a quasi-fractal vast mechanism comprising of the Old Saturn, Old Sun, Old Moon, and Earth eras. Interestingly, the Saturn era was the most subtle and spiritual according to Steiner. Then our cosmic evolution fell into a greater density until the Earth era, which was the turning point from which things reversed and once again became more subtle. Indeed, many strands of esoteric thought placed humans as caretakers of the Universe. Our task may be daunting, yet being co-creators with the Godhead is our divine birth right.
Saturn, the Teacher, has been the ruler of Capricorn or the Sea Goat. What is the Sea Goat? It’s a powerful archetype for higher consciousness and the depths of the ocean, which has always been a metaphor for space. This brings up to Melissa Davilio who has kindly contributed Venus and her Twin for this anthology. Melissa is a prolific and eclectic writer who works with earth-based themes, children’s poetry, and short fiction from a place that promotes healing and recovery. She has recently published The Book of Seshat, a collection of poems dedicated to the celebration of the written word. Seshat is a supercelestial intelligence associated with wisdom and the essence of cosmic intuition. The Scribe Goddess created the geometry of the heavens alongside Thoth. She was frequently dressed in a leopard-skin, a symbol of funerary priests, because the pattern of the skin represents the stars. To become God-like is to become a sacrifice like Odin, Osiris, Christ, Hiram Abiff.
Finally, we have two excellent poems from Erfan Rezaei. Born in Iran, Erfan is an author, engineer and poet. His passion for writing (which began at an early age) is quite evident in both Saint Jerome and Fire and You. He is influenced by the theory of ancient astronauts. By combining genres like psychology, detective fiction, cosmic horror, philosophy and sci-fi, Erfan tries to answer critical questions about the human origin in his literary debut, The Abduction of Sir John Sheridan: An Unfathomable Novella.
The burden of Sir John’s disappearance not only shocked the Liberal party but also very soon circulated in the London evening papers of 1880, triggering an initial torrent of confusion and speculation followed by a sense of anti-climax — as if the end of a magic performance had been missed. But a Standard exclusive about the air show came very close to Miss O’Brian’s theory of unidentified flying objects, and its coverage of the incident referred to the possibility of creatures from the other planets.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43603226-the-abduction-of-sir-john-sheridan
May Seshat, Great Lady of the House of Books, continue to bless you all with inspiration and gently guide you towards a path of service to human (and celestial) evolution.
Diana Thoresen
Palm Cove, Australia
02/05/2021
