H.M. Forester
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hmforester.bsky.social
H.M. Forester
@hmforester.bsky.social
230 followers 260 following 2.5K posts
Author of sci-fi, psi-fi, and mystical adventure novels • Avid reader • Wikipedia editor • Webmaster • Lover of nature • Peacefully resisting.

Blog: mystical-faction.blogspot.com

Original photo by Gabriela Palai, cropped. Creative Commons Zero licence.
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hmforester.bsky.social
H.M. Forester @hmforester.bsky.social · Dec 7
“Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt”, a story of resistance:

mystical-faction.blogspot.com/2024/11/an-u...

“The Dissidents (Extended 2025): A novel”:

mystical-faction.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-...

Are freely available at the Internet Archive's library and in full as PDFs at the FB group Mystical Faction.
Front covers of The Dissidents and Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt, by H.M. Forester.
Reposted by H.M. Forester
profmsinha.bsky.social
RIP The Washington Post once the terror of tyrants now destroyed by a man who spent obscene amounts on his destination wedding and bribocumentary.
Woodward and Bernstein and Trump and Bezos
February 5, 2026 at 2:03 PM
hmforester.bsky.social
[UK] National Year of Reading 2026:

Whatever you're into, get ready to GO ALL IN ...

literacytrust.org.uk/about-us/nat...
National Year of Reading 2026 | National Literacy Trust
literacytrust.org.uk
February 5, 2026 at 1:15 PM
hmforester.bsky.social
The 7 Levels of the Ego: A Sufi Map of Death and Awakening:

Video (25 min 32 sec).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq26...

#SufiWay #SufiPath #Sufism #Sufis #Nafs #CommandingSelf #Ego #Self #Individuation #Awakening #DepthPsychology
The 7 Levels of the Ego — A Sufi Map of Death and Awakening
YouTube video by The Alchemist’s Heart
www.youtube.com
February 5, 2026 at 12:16 PM
hmforester.bsky.social
Societal Collapse by Design: MAGA’s Big Plan. Very short read (from 20 November 2024).

esowteric.vivaldi.net/2026/01/28/s...

Image: Unemployed men queued outside a depression soup kitchen / Unknown author / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain.
Unemployed men (all wearing hats and coats or jackets) queued outside a depression soup kitchen opened in Chicago by Al Capone, 1931. A large banner above the shop front reads "free coffee & doughnuts for the unemployed, and small lettering on a window reads "free soup".
February 5, 2026 at 9:31 AM
hmforester.bsky.social
“your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.” ...

~ Charles Bukowski, “The Laughing Heart”.
An image containing a poem. The poem, “The Laughing Heart” by Charles Bukowski, reads: your life is your life don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission. be on the watch. there are ways out. there is light somewhere. it may not be much light but it beats the darkness. be on the watch. the gods will offer you chances. know them. take them. you can’t beat death but you can beat death in life, sometimes. and the more often you learn to do it, the more light there will be. your life is your life. know it while you have it. you are marvelous the gods wait to delight in you.
February 5, 2026 at 9:18 AM
hmforester.bsky.social
“Jung realized that the problems of our time are rooted not only in the grip that the mechanistic philosophy of scientific materialism has on our culture, but above all in the loss of a living myth which would give meaning to our lives ...”

~ Anne Baring, The Dream of the Cosmos.
Image containing a text quotation, with a grey silhouette of the side of a human skull and white cogs in place of a brain, in the lower left-hand corner. The text, from Anne Baring, The Dream of the Cosmos: A Quest for the Soul, reads: Mechanistic Materialism and Loss of Soul: “Jung realized that the problems of our time are rooted not only in the grip that the mechanistic philosophy of scientific materialism has on our culture, but above all in the loss of a living myth which would give meaning to our lives. He saw that the dissociation of the conscious ego from what he called the primordial or instinctual soul presented a growing and unperceived danger to humanity. The more we emphasized reason and the supremacy of the rational mind, the greater the danger that instinct — whose power we have failed to acknowledge or understand — would drive, possess, delude and overwhelm us and the more we would fall victim to secular and religious ideologies and utopian goals which could ultimately lead us to destroy ourselves. The paramount goal we need to focus on is reconnecting our conscious mind with the deeper dimension of the soul.”
February 4, 2026 at 8:35 PM
hmforester.bsky.social
“Philemon [Jung's inner guide] explained how Jung treated thoughts as though they were generated by himself, while for Philemon “thoughts were like animals in the forest, or people in a room, or birds in the air” ...

~ Stanislav Grof, The Holotropic Mind.
Image containing a text quotation, with the grey silhouetted profile of a man like Jung lighting his pipe, in the lower left-hand corner. The text, from Stanislav Grof, The Holotropic Mind: The Three Levels of Human Consciousness and How They Shape Our Lives, reads: Some Thoughts About Thoughts “Philemon [Jung's inner guide] explained how Jung treated thoughts as though they were generated by himself, while for Philemon “thoughts were like animals in the forest, or people in a room, or birds in the air.” Jung concluded that Philemon taught him “psychic objectivity, the reality of the psyche.” This helped Jung to understand that “there is something in me which can say things that I do not know and do not intend.”
February 4, 2026 at 9:28 AM
hmforester.bsky.social
“I believe that the disenchantment of the modern universe is the direct result of a simplistic epistemology and moral posture spectacularly inadequate to the depths, complexity, and grandeur of the cosmos ...”

~ Richard Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View.
Image containing a text quotation, with a bouquet of bright yellow and orange flowers in the lower left-hand corner. The text, from Richard Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, reads: Growing Disenchantment: “I believe that the disenchantment of the modern universe is the direct result of a simplistic epistemology and moral posture spectacularly inadequate to the depths, complexity, and grandeur of the cosmos. To assume a priori that the entire universe is ultimately a soulless void within which our multidimensional consciousness is an anomalous accident, and that purpose, meaning, conscious intelligence, moral aspiration, and spiritual depths are solely attributes of the human being, reflects a long-invisible inflation on the part of the modern self. And heroic hubris is still indissolubly linked, as it was in ancient Greek tragedy, to heroic fall.”
February 3, 2026 at 9:01 PM
hmforester.bsky.social
The Hidden Truth of the World
~~~~~~~
“The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.”

~ David Graeber, The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy.
Image containing a text quotation, with a small tree with leaves in many colours in the lower left-hand corner. The text, from David Graeber, The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy, reads: The Hidden Truth of the World: “The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.”
February 3, 2026 at 6:26 PM
hmforester.bsky.social
As Within, So Without
~~~~~~~
“It's even difficult to hear that what we reject out there is what we reject in ourselves, and what we reject in ourselves is what we are going to reject out there.”

~ Pema Chodron.

Image: Walking reflection / Tomascastelazo / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0.
Black-and-white photo showing the upside-down reflection of a person walking in what looks like wet sand.
February 3, 2026 at 9:41 AM
hmforester.bsky.social
Can't Get You Out of My Head
~~~~~~~
Adam Curtis's 2021 follow-up to HyperNormalisation, exploring how the world has become even more surreal, with a focus on the collapse of shared reality and the rise of digital control. Playlist in six parts:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-DM...
Can't Get You Out of My Head - Part 1: Bloodshed on Wolf Mountain
YouTube video by Umar Khan
www.youtube.com
February 2, 2026 at 6:17 PM
hmforester.bsky.social
HyperNormalisation | In the film Curtis argues that since the 1970s, governments, financiers, and technological utopians have given up on the complex "real world" and instead built a simple "fake world" ...

Video gold (2 hr 46 min).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS_c...
HyperNormalisation by Adam Curtis HD Full [2016] [Subs]
YouTube video by L33T GUY
www.youtube.com
February 2, 2026 at 9:23 AM
hmforester.bsky.social
“To romanticise was *not* to be sentimental, lovelorn or overly emotional. To romanticise had nothing to do with candlelit dinners or declarations of love, as we often understand it today. The term ‘romantic’ has metamorphosed ...”

~ Andrea Wulf, Magnificent Rebels.
Image containing a text quotation, with a bouquet of bright yellow and orange flowers in the lower left-hand corner. The text, from Andrea Wulf, Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self, reads: Putting the Romance Back in Life: “To romanticise was not to be sentimental, lovelorn or overly emotional. To romanticise had nothing to do with candlelit dinners or declarations of love, as we often understand it today. The term ‘romantic’ has metamorphosed through several stages since the mid-seventeenth century. There is the original meaning of ‘like a novel’ and our modern understanding that associates the word with love or romance; but for the friends in Jena it was something much more ambitious. They wanted to romanticise the entire world, and this meant perceiving it as an interconnected whole.”
February 1, 2026 at 5:40 PM
hmforester.bsky.social
“We live in a world where the story we're told is that this is the only way things can be, and this is the only way things are. And neither of those things are true ...”

~ Cory Doctorow, “Capitalist Realism vs. Science Fiction”.
Image containing a text quotation, with a grey silhouette of the side of a human skull and white cogs in place of a brain, in the lower left-hand corner. The text, from Cory Doctorow, “Capitalist Realism vs. Science Fiction”, reads: “We live in a world where the story we're told is that this is the only way things can be, and this is the only way things are. And neither of those things are true and, at its best, this is what science fiction can do, is make you question both those assumptions.”
February 1, 2026 at 1:49 PM
hmforester.bsky.social
“[N]othing short of super-extraordinary measures must be taken to ensure that we make it through this interregnum and ensure our survival and that of the natural world we inhabit.”

~ Preface to H.M. Forester, Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt. #Free #eBook

esowteric.vivaldi.net/2026/01/15/a...
A Little Something for Your Ark, Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt
In these increasingly dire times we have plenty of warners, but what we desperately need right now are more arks. As Michael Ventura wrote: “[A]ll of this passing things on, in all its forms…
esowteric.vivaldi.net
February 1, 2026 at 1:49 PM
hmforester.bsky.social
“There is no planet B.”

~ President Figueres of Costa Rica.

Image: Nasa earth / NASA ESA / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain.
A photo taken by NASA from space showing the Earth and Moon.
February 1, 2026 at 10:06 AM
Reposted by H.M. Forester
djvanness.bsky.social
Imagine sociology without being able to discuss race, gender, or sexuality. State control of educational content is incompatible with free society. #AcademicSky #HigherEd
Florida Introduces “Sanitized” Sociology Textbook
The volume was created after a state review found that existing course materials violated a law prohibiting general education courses from teaching about systemic inequality. So far, at least two univ...
www.insidehighered.com
January 29, 2026 at 2:50 PM
hmforester.bsky.social
This Task
~~~~~~~
“You have a duty to perform. Do anything else, do any number of things, occupy your time fully, and yet, if you do not do this task, all your time will have been wasted.”

~ Idries Shah, The Way of the Sufi, from Rumi's Fihi Ma Fihi.
Image: Sowing seed / Kreative Verma / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0. A man in a field stooping as he sows seed by hand. He appears to be barefoot, and is wearing a long ethnic skirt, a checked white shirt and a slightly conical hat with a wide brim.
January 31, 2026 at 10:16 AM
hmforester.bsky.social
If, like Howard Beale in the 1976 film “Network”, you're as mad as hell and you're not going to take this anymore, or you're interested in peaceful resistance, Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt may appeal to you.

A Little Something [Free] for Your Ark ...

esowteric.vivaldi.net/2026/01/15/a...
A Little Something for Your Ark, Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt
In these increasingly dire times we have plenty of warners, but what we desperately need right now are more arks. As Michael Ventura wrote: “[A]ll of this passing things on, in all its forms…
esowteric.vivaldi.net
January 31, 2026 at 10:16 AM
hmforester.bsky.social
Tell It Like It Is!
~~~~~~~
“If you’re gonna write, for God in heaven’s sake, try to get naked. Try to write the truth. Try to get underneath all the sham, all the excuses, all the lies that you’ve been told.”

~ Harry Crews, Getting Naked with Harry Crews.
Image: A lady writing at a desk / Master of the Female Half-Lengths (16th century Flemish painter) / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain. A painting by the 16th century Flemish painter "Master of the Female Half-Lengths", showing a young woman in period clothing sitting at a desk writing. She has short, thin brown hair and a dark headdress with a bright yellow and red trim on the back of her head. She's wearing a short-sleeved maroon velvet dress with red trim, and orange sleeves under that or attached to it. The presence of a large gilt cup and cover in the majority of versions led Friedländer and others to suggest that the young lady represented Magdalene.
January 31, 2026 at 9:51 AM
Reposted by H.M. Forester
georgemonbiot.bsky.social
Please spread this far and wide, as stories don't get much bigger than this. When the government blocks even the intelligence services from telling us we're heading for environmental catastrophe, you know we have a problem. A very big problem.
Thank you.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
The UK government didn't want you to see this report on ecosystem collapse. I'm not surprised | George Monbiot
It took an FOI request to bring this national security assessment to light. For ‘doomsayers’ like us, it is the ultimate vindication, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot
www.theguardian.com
January 28, 2026 at 7:18 AM
hmforester.bsky.social
The Stanford Prison Experiment ...

Video (10 min 23 sec).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRR7...
The Stanford Prison Experiment Was One of the Most Disturbing Studies Ever
YouTube video by Weird History
www.youtube.com
January 30, 2026 at 4:39 PM
hmforester.bsky.social
"Minnesota" - Marsh Family adaptation of "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)" ...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRHx...
"Minnesota" - Marsh Family adaptation of "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)"
YouTube video by Marsh Family
www.youtube.com
January 30, 2026 at 10:30 AM
hmforester.bsky.social
“Wordsworth and Coleridge and the other Romantics taught their readers how to see Nature in a different way, as an object of beauty and a medium of what Wordsworth called ‘unknown modes of being’ ...”

~ Gary Lachman, Lost Knowledge of the Imagination.
Image containing a poem, with a bouquet of bright yellow and orange flowers in the lower left-hand corner. The text, from Gary Lachman, Lost Knowledge of the Imagination, reads: “Wordsworth and Coleridge and the other Romantics taught their readers how to see Nature in a different way, as an object of beauty and a medium of what Wordsworth called ‘unknown modes of being’. “People of course knew Nature before, but the idea of the wilderness as something of value in itself, and not as a wasteland to be tamed, was new. Until then, Nature was a force to respect, and a resource to master and use. Humans for the most part were up against it in some way, struggling to eke out a life from it and to protect themselves from it. Now poets were singing of its power to soothe and heal and inspire the soul.”
January 30, 2026 at 9:43 AM
hmforester.bsky.social
Enslavement
~~~~~~~
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities.

Image: Pentridge Prison Cells / Nickinator / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0.
A photo from inside Pentridge Prison, showing a wide corridor lined to left and right with cells. In one cell doorway to the left and one to the right, a figure stands in the doorway, wearing dark, hooded clothing. Light illuminates the floor of the corridor through the open cell doors. To the left is a large upright red cabinet housing a fire hose and up above is what looks like a mesh ceiling supported by many iron beams fastened to the walls of the corridor, and at the far end of the corridor is an iron staircase leading up to the next floor.
January 30, 2026 at 7:36 AM