H.M. Forester
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hmforester.bsky.social
H.M. Forester
@hmforester.bsky.social
220 followers 250 following 2K 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
“I am speaking of those who cannot tolerate the loss of myth & who can neither find a way to a merely exterior world, to the world as seen by science, nor rest satisfied with an intellectual juggling with words, which has nothing whatsoever to do with wisdom.”

~ Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections.
Demeter Mourning for Persephone, 1906 / Evelyn De Morgan (1855–1919) / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain. = = Greek goddess Demeter Mourning for Persephone, a painting by Evelyn De Morgan (1855–1919). It shows Demeter dressed in bright saffron or golden robes, kneeling down barefooted among dark brown rocks, her long, blond hair plaited, and her hands to her head. In the distance is a winding river, grassy banks, hills, and hints of a sunset on the horizon, amidst the bright and lightly cloudy sky.
December 4, 2025 at 3:12 PM
hmforester.bsky.social
Source: Richard Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View.

Image: Seeking human kindness / Enver Rahmanov / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0.
Photo of a homeless man sitting on a pavement in a chair holding up a brown cardboard sign which reads, in block capitals, "Seeking human kindness". He has a grey beard and an orange woolly hat.
December 4, 2025 at 9:33 AM
hmforester.bsky.social
“Humanity's "progress of knowledge" and the "evolution of consciousness" have too often been characterized as if our task were simply to ascend a very tall cognitive ladder with graded hierarchical steps ... stages in which we solve increasingly challenging mental riddles ...”

~ Richard Tarnas.
Image containing a text quotation, with a couple in fancy dress at a masquerade ball dancing in the bottom left-hand corner. The text, from Richard Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, reads: Busy Making Progress: “Humanity's "progress of knowledge" and the "evolution of consciousness" have too often been characterized as if our task were simply to ascend a very tall cognitive ladder with graded hierarchical steps that represent successive developmental stages in which we solve increasingly challenging mental riddles, like advanced problems in a graduate exam in biochemistry or logic. But to understand life and the cosmos better, perhaps we are required to transform not only our minds but our hearts. For the whole being, body and soul, mind and spirit, is implicated ... Our world view ... is profoundly affected by the degree to which all our faculties–intellectual, imaginative, aesthetic, moral, emotional, somatic, spiritual, relational–enter the process of knowing ...”
December 4, 2025 at 9:33 AM
hmforester.bsky.social
Source: Unknown.

Image: Fantasy landscape (1650) / Pieter Fris / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain.
Fantasy landscape (1650), a painting by Pieter Fris. It shows the corner of a raised narrow track on the left-hand side, running round the outside of a cliff, with a solitary stone cross. In the foreground is a stream or river, further back are stone ruins, and in the distance are very steep mountains and a castle-like structure high up. Here and there are mature trees.
December 3, 2025 at 4:44 PM
hmforester.bsky.social
“The gift of imagination is by no means an exclusive property of the artist; it is a gift we all share; to some degree or other all of us are endowed with the powers of fantasy, the dullest of dullards among us has the gift of dreams at night – visions & yearnings & hopes ...”

~ Leonard Bernstein.
Image containing a text quotation, with a small Native American dreamcatcher in the upper left-hand corner. The text, by Leonard Bernstein and from an unknown source, reads: The Gift of Imagination: “The gift of imagination is by no means an exclusive property of the artist; it is a gift we all share; to some degree or other all of us are endowed with the powers of fantasy, the dullest of dullards among us has the gift of dreams at night – visions and yearnings and hopes. Everyone can also think; it is the quality thought that makes the difference – not just the quality of logical thinking, but of imaginative thinking. And our greatest thinkers, those who have radically changed our world, have always arrived at their truths by dreaming them; they are first fantasized, and only then subjected to proof.”
December 3, 2025 at 4:44 PM
hmforester.bsky.social
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

~ Buckminster Fuller.

Image: Fly's Eye Dome by Buckminster Fuller / Wmpearl / Wikimedia Commons / CC0 1.0 Public Domain Dedication.
A 50-foot prototype of the Fly's Eye Dome by Buckminster Fuller at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. It is a spherical design with a flat bottom and has numerous circular cutouts with raised edges around its perimeter. The prototype sits on grass amid trees.
December 3, 2025 at 11:09 AM
hmforester.bsky.social
The Dissidents (Extended 2025 rev 3.1): A free novel (PDF) By H.M. Forester.

280 pages, 95,000 words of soft sci-fi action and mystical adventure ...

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

#SciFi #ScienceFiction #Dystopia #Resistance #Mystical #Adventure #Free #EBook
A resized version of a photograph depicting the honeycomb of Apis mellifera capensis, the Cape honey bee, taken by the Wikimedia Commons user “Discott” on 1 February 2012. Source: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0. The front cover of The Dissidents (Extended 2025): A novel (PDF) By H.M. Forester, It shows an orange honey comb with many cells, and a bee.
December 3, 2025 at 11:09 AM
hmforester.bsky.social
Source: Radmila Moacanin, The Essence of Jung's Psychology and Tibetan Buddhism: Western and Eastern Paths to the Heart (1986).

Image: The Victory of Eros / Angelica Kauffmann (1741–1807) / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain.
A woman has arms outstretched, holding a length of material around the winged Eros. A playful Eros is looking back and smiling at her, clutching a bow in the left hand and a pink rose in the right. In the distance are green hills and sky, and perhaps a castle atop one of the hills.
December 3, 2025 at 9:03 AM
hmforester.bsky.social
“There are ... some signs in Western culture—albeit a minority subculture—of a slowly emerging trend, a paradigm shift beyond scientific materialism to greater self-awareness & mental receptivity; to interest in meditation and the intersection of psychology and spirituality ...”

~ Radmila Moacanin.
Image containing a text quotation. The text, from Radmila Moacanin, The Essence of Jung's Psychology and Tibetan Buddhism: Western and Eastern Paths to the Heart (1986), reads: From Logos to Eros “In the last decade or so we have seen enormous and increasingly accelerated advances in technology with relatively few advances in the spiritual realm. Militarism, materialism, and consumerism have run amok to the point of drowning Western civilization and rapidly infecting the rest of humanity. Together they emphasize the external and disregard the inner world. As a result our world is not only blind but unconscious and asleep. “There are, however, some signs in Western culture—albeit a minority subculture—of a slowly emerging trend, a paradigm shift beyond scientific materialism to greater self-awareness and mental receptivity; to interest in meditation and the intersection of psychology and spirituality ...”
December 3, 2025 at 9:03 AM
hmforester.bsky.social
“[Owen] Barfield believed that as we look back into the history of language, we see that it becomes more figurative, more metaphorical, more, in a sense, alive and poetic; our own age is, as the literary philosopher Erich Heller said, much more one of prose.”

~ Gary Lachman.
Image: An Allegory of Poetry / Auger Lucas (1685–1765) / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain. = = A woman in bustling clothes and wearing a green wreath on her head is sitting with a pile of papers, having difficulty in writing poetry, a hand resting on her forehead. To the left, there are closed books on the ground, and to her right is a young naked child with what looks like a closed book. Behind the woman is a cloudy sky.
December 2, 2025 at 7:38 PM
hmforester.bsky.social
Source: Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life.

Image: Joan of Arc Hearing the Voices / Luc Olivier Merson / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain.
Grey and sepia-effect drawing of Joan of Ark standing in woodland, of which the tree trunks are visible. She is looking toward the heavens, her sword lowered and clutched in both hands while a dog is laid down by her side.
December 2, 2025 at 6:50 PM
hmforester.bsky.social
“The ancients rightly called this internal longing for wholeness “fate” or “destiny,” the “inner voice” or the “call of the gods.” It has an inevitability, authority, and finality to it, and was at the heart of almost all mythology. Almost all heroes heard an inner voice ...”

~ Richard Rohr.
Image containing a text quotation, with the small figure of a woman sensing an aroma in the air, in the bottom left-hand corner. The text, from Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, reads: Inner Longing and Inner Dialogue: “The ancients rightly called this internal longing for wholeness “fate” or “destiny,” the “inner voice” or the “call of the gods.” It has an inevitability, authority, and finality to it, and was at the heart of almost all mythology. Almost all heroes heard an inner voice that spoke to them. In fact, their heroism was in their ability to hear that voice and to risk following it—wherever!”
December 2, 2025 at 6:50 PM
hmforester.bsky.social
Image: Junger Gefangener in seiner Zelle (“Young prisoner in his cell”) / Hendrik Frans Schaefels (1827–1904) / Public domain.
A painting of a young male prisoner looking small as he crouches in a corner of a large spartan prison cell.
December 2, 2025 at 9:23 AM
hmforester.bsky.social
“These men are in prison: that is the Outsider’s verdict. They are quite contented in prison—caged animals who have never known freedom; but it is prison all the same. And the Outsider? He is in prison too ... but he knows it ...”

~ Colin Wilson, The Outsider.
Image containing a text quotation. The text, from Colin Wilson, The Outsider, reads: Prison: “These men are in prison: that is the Outsider’s verdict. They are quite contented in prison—caged animals who have never known freedom; but it is prison all the same. And the Outsider? He is in prison too: nearly every Outsider in this book has told us so in a different language; but he knows it. His desire is to escape. But a prison-break is not an easy matter; you must know all about your prison, otherwise you might spend years in tunnelling, like the Abbe in The Count of Monte Cristo, and only find yourself in the next cell.”
December 2, 2025 at 9:23 AM
hmforester.bsky.social
The Dissidents (Extended 2025 rev 3.1): A free novel (PDF) By H.M. Forester.

280 pages, 95,000 words of soft sci-fi action and mystical adventure ...

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

#SciFi #ScienceFiction #Dystopia #Resistance #Mystical #Adventure #Free #EBook
A resized version of a photograph depicting the honeycomb of Apis mellifera capensis, the Cape honey bee, taken by the Wikimedia Commons user “Discott” on 1 February 2012. Source: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0. The front cover of The Dissidents (Extended 2025): A novel (PDF) By H.M. Forester, It shows an orange honey comb with many cells, and a bee.
December 2, 2025 at 9:23 AM
hmforester.bsky.social
Source: Iain McGilchrist, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World.

Image: The Five Senses and the Four Elements - WGA13049 / Jacques Linard (1597–1645) / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain.
This allegorical still-life, typical for the period, consists of objects referring to the five senses (sight, smell, hearing, touch, taste) and the four elements (fire, air, earth, water). The objects bear the Richelieu family arms.
December 2, 2025 at 9:16 AM
hmforester.bsky.social
“What is required is a synthesis of both intuition & imagination with reason: the imagined place – though 1 that is nonetheless with discipline achievable – where each is at its best, standing in equitable relation to each of the others .. informed, where relevant, by science.”

~ Iain McGilchrist.
An image containing a text quotation, with a small chalice like the Grail in the lower left-hand corner. In the design of the chalice, or reflected in it, is a human skull. The text, from Iain McGilchrist, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, reads in part: Science, Reason, Imagination, and Intuition: “What is required [in philosophy or in life] is a synthesis of both intuition and imagination with reason: the imagined place – though one that is nonetheless with discipline achievable – where each is at its best, standing in equitable relation to each of the others, and informed, where relevant, by science. As Bergson pointed out, if philosophy is not to be merely the further propagation of the analytic tendency in the modern mind, it must mean ‘to reverse the normal direction of the workings of thought.’ In other words, it is to reverse the normal left hemisphere take, under which we approach everything in the hope of discovering its true nature by analysis, in order to recapture the right hemisphere take by synthesis. And he commented memorably, ‘criticism of an intuitive philosophy is so easy and so certain to be well received that it will always tempt the beginner.’ That’s partly because the applauding audience are already committed to the left hemisphere take – and therefore can’t see that they are missing anything. And partly because an analytic take is so terribly easy to express, whereas an intuitive take is something that some people largely lack, and even where they don’t, is much harder to express in everyday language.”
December 2, 2025 at 9:16 AM
hmforester.bsky.social
Source: Ursula K. Le Guin, Speech at the 2014 National Book Awards.

Image: Ursula Le Guin (3551195631) (cropped) / Marian Wood Kolisch / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0.
Black-and-white photo of Ursula K. Le Guin's upper body. She is smiling and appears to be sitting in a chair, her arms loosely crossed, and leaning toward the camera.
December 1, 2025 at 9:33 AM
hmforester.bsky.social
Freedom
~~~~~~
“I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now & can see through our fear-stricken society & its obsessive technologies to other ways of being ...”

~ Ursula K. Le Guin, Speech at 2014 National Book Awards.
Image containing a text quotation, with a triangular road sign in the left-hand corner, which has a red border, white background and black silhouette of a person at work digging a pile of earth. The text, from Ursula K. Le Guin, Speech at the 2014 National Book Awards, reads: “I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality.” ... “Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”
December 1, 2025 at 9:33 AM
hmforester.bsky.social
Source: Tom Cheetham, Imaginal Love: The Meanings of Imagination in Henry Corbin and James Hillman.

Image: Savonarola Preaching Against Prodigality / Ludwig von Langenmantel (1854–1922) / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain.
This painting shows the Florentine preacher Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498) denouncing frivolous possessions and activities, in preparation for a bonfire of vanities.
November 30, 2025 at 5:48 PM
hmforester.bsky.social
“The passions of the fundamentalist psyche for order, truth, certainty, and conformity, when they are expressed with the unyielding fanaticism of the extremist, are inexplicable without [psychological insight] ...”

~ Tom Cheetham, Imaginal Love.
An image containing a text quotation. The text, from Tom Cheetham, Imaginal Love: The Meanings of Imagination in Henry Corbin and James Hillman, reads: The Fundamentalist Psyche: “The passions of the fundamentalist psyche for order, truth, certainty, and conformity, when they are expressed with the unyielding fanaticism of the extremist, are inexplicable without the psychological insight that complex psychology and the therapeutic tools of the alchemical understanding of psyche can provide. This is in no way a denial of the social and political causes of religious extremism. But lacking work at the level of the psyche, no political solutions to any of the current conflicts can be expected to be adequate.”
November 30, 2025 at 5:48 PM
hmforester.bsky.social
The Cataclysm of Our Time
~
“People often asked Dr. Jung, ‘Will we make it?’ referring to the cataclysm of our time. He always replied, ‘If enough people will do their inner work’. This soul work is the one thing that will pull us through any emergency.”

~ Robert A. Johnson, Owning Your Own Shadow.
Image: Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat / Simon de Myle / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain. Having found dry land on Mount Ararat, gangplanks have been lowered and the animals and birds are leaving the ark.
November 30, 2025 at 10:07 AM
hmforester.bsky.social
Source: David Tacey, “Rising Waters of the Spirit: The View from Secular Society”.

Image: Uncertainty 1878 / Arthur Hughes (1832–1915) / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain.
Described by Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s brother William Michael, as depicting a "female figure perfect in sweetness and maidenhood... The damsel in question [is] blushingly modest and expectant while her suitor is “asking papa” in another room with its door... open. The lover’s fine greyhound, left behind during the colloquy, looks with confident affection at the young lady... Her salmon-pink dress is the chief colour-item..."
November 29, 2025 at 2:50 PM
hmforester.bsky.social
“Spirituality and fundamentalism are at opposite ends of the cultural spectrum. Spirituality seeks a sensitive, contemplative relationship with the sacred and is able to sustain levels of uncertainty in its quest because respect for mystery is paramount ...”

~ David Tacey.
An image containing a text quotation. The text, from David Tacey, “Rising Waters of the Spirit: The View from Secular Society”, reads: Mystery Versus Certainty: “Spirituality and fundamentalism are at opposite ends of the cultural spectrum. Spirituality seeks a sensitive, contemplative relationship with the sacred and is able to sustain levels of uncertainty in its quest because respect for mystery is paramount. Fundamentalism seeks certainty, fixed answers and absolutism, as a fearful response to the complexity of the world and to our vulnerability as creatures in a mysterious universe.”
November 29, 2025 at 2:50 PM
hmforester.bsky.social
The Dissidents (Extended 2025 rev 3.1): A free novel (PDF) By H.M. Forester.

280 pages, 95,000 words of soft sci-fi action and mystical adventure ...

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

#SciFi #ScienceFiction #Dystopia #Resistance #Mystical #Adventure #Free #EBook
A resized version of a photograph depicting the honeycomb of Apis mellifera capensis, the Cape honey bee, taken by the Wikimedia Commons user “Discott” on 1 February 2012. Source: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0. The front cover of The Dissidents (Extended 2025): A novel (PDF) By H.M. Forester, It shows an orange honey comb with many cells, and a bee.
November 29, 2025 at 2:50 PM