Traditionally an Odyssey serves as a depiction of an epic journey undertaken by an intrepid hero or heroes. History has recorded such events, the most notable being Homer. Yet many others serve as repositories of ancient and contemporary wisdom. Dante and his Paradiso, Goethe and his Faustus, Joyce and his Ulysses serve as examples often drawing from the font of the imagination depicted in the mythologies of all cultures. Contemporary man, by contrast lacks the vision accorded to the ancient mind by virtue of its pursuits within the world, a world all but stripped of vision. Vision which is now reduced to mere entertainment that the many may assuage their deeply felt loss through the surrogate of the so called artist or poet.

C. G. Jung a modern thinker once observed that modern man lacked a myth through which the process of individuation might be realized. Whilst it is true to say that we have our modern heroes, the question remains, to what layer of our vast and complex existence do they speak and what is it that we emulate as a consequence. The epic journeys undertaken are in point of fact undertaken by all, albeit unconsciously in the main for the archetypal powers of which are but reflections, like a mighty river flow through the veins of all that is sentient, be it man, beast, plant or mineral. The journey is life’s quest to know itself and serves as the spur and clarion call that serves evolution.

Religion the great heresy usurped the soul of man and condemned the miracle of life and consciousness to eternal damnation. The purpose of so doing evident to those with the wit to ask the simplest of questions, why does this folly continue to exist? Modern philosophy the sibling of science has appealed to the latent sense within us to see the folly of our ways and words fall upon deaf ears. The mystic poses an infinite range of choice and yet like religion invokes faith as its faltering foundation. The Gnostics of all faiths spoke of direct experience and were branded heretic by the servants of the false ones. Ones who have baptized our very existence in an ocean of blood.

So where are the prophets, the poets, where the visionaries? Those who represent the archetypal soul of man continue upon their journeys unattended, often desolate ones within a world that comprehends them not. Not an unfamiliar story with one simple common denominator, namely, they did not listen to the stories told them by others but, rather, like our forebears embarked upon their own journey and the stories, be it scripted or illustrated that is the fruit of their labours. It is these enterprising souls, past, present and yet to be that this work is respectfully dedicated.

In The Presence Of Extraordinary Reality

Consciousness Takes The Place Of Imagination

Damiana Evohe – London 22 May 2012ev 2.22pm

Shed not a tear for those that have passed

Cast not a sigh on air now spent

Bind not the free to your temple of woe

But rather rejoice in the freedom gainsaid by life

In the immortal lands of deliverance therein i dwell

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