It is with great pleasure that I recommend a website that just came into my awareness. The Visionary Fiction Alliance! For many years, I devoured books and movies that dealt with transformation of consciousness, sifting through a lot of chaff to reach the kernel that resonated inside me that rarely saw the light of day. It was my private quest ~ the solitary yet primary driving force in my craft. Yet, when it came to labelling my works, be it books, blogs, magazine articles or book signing presentations, my writing did not fit into any of the literary market’s genres. Even now, as I work on submissions of a manuscript to my publishing service, there is no way to accurately categorize my work in their formulations.
Early on in my life, my intention was to record dreams and lucid imagination experiences. Later on I wanted to write about the body of information that was being presented to me about Templars and their seeming ties to medieval mysticism. But it was difficult to write about aspects of history that had been banished from orthodoxy. With mysticism and Templar history, most evidence that ever existed let alone flourished, had been not only washed away by eight hundred years of human ‘progress’, but covered up or intentionally destroyed by lust for power and greed.
The evidence of Templars, mystics and their continuum was veiled, circumstantial, tangential, and often times set in codes, patterns and even historic street names. I set an intention of open-mindedness and eagerness to grow, traveling to various places throughout Europe and North America,
My contemplations of symbols started long before my visits to Rosslyn Chapel, countless cathedrals laden with Gothic ‘ornamentations and Templar castles. And yet, I had still not yet discovered an adequate writing style to describe the correspondences (ie connections) that made themselves apparent between mystic traditions and the Templars. Even the layouts of medieval cities, burghs, and abbeys pointed to Templar affiliations with a world beyond Roman Christian dictates. It also pointed to a medieval world very different from what we have been taught in school.
Now fast forward to current times, where my work straddles literary genres of historic fiction, fantasy and spiritual realism. There is little coverage of spiritual literature if it does not fit into religious categories. My writing is not even considered New Age. The writing industry is essentially divided into the mega publishers, vanity, indie and self publishing. Some might say that the massive tectonic shifts in technology has created a mosh pit of hybrid genres. But it is more comprehensive than that. With more folks reading than ever before and the published written word being placed in the hands of the many, we are revolutionizing the way books are published. The result is the transformation of established genres, marketing platforms and social media. Not since the appearance of the printing press has humanity enjoyed such progress in written communication.
And with this newfound freedom has also come the advent of a new literary genre ~Visionary Fiction! And while I am totally new to the Visionary Fiction Alliance, I am no stranger to the books they call their own; from William Blake to Carl Jung to Madeline L’Engle. I am thrilled to know that there is a contemporary group of writers who recognize the spiritual significance of what mainstream readers might conflate with fantasy. Here is a link to the alliance’s examples of Visionary Fiction.
It’s too soon to tell, but I hope that the Visionary Fiction Alliance will be a good fit for me as an author. I am looking forward to tackling their new reading list of authors!
L.S. Berthelsen 