Experience Cosmic Consciousness with a Visionary Scribe
“Art is kind of an innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. “
CARL JUNG
Victor E. Smith
Motto of a Visionary Scribe: If you “SEE” it, deSCRIBE it.”
For most of his already long life, Victor E. Smith has considered himself a generalist. From childhood on a communal farm in Pennsylvania, to adolescence in a Catholic seminary, into adulthood with occupations that ranged from counselor and teacher to entrepreneur and corporate trainer, Vic has remained flabbergasted by both the wonders and terrors of human existence. Awe of such opposite has compelled him to write: poetry, journalling, nonfiction, and lately in the visionary historical novel genre.
An avid proponent of human spiritual evolution, he has become focused on paranormal phenomena and their manifestations in the past, present and future. Travel to his topic settings, no matter how remote, is to his research what fingerprints are to a detective. He has two published novels, THE ANATHEMAS and CHANNEL OF THE GRAIL, and a third in the works, all of which explore aspects of reincarnation and the paranormal in known history. All his writings reflect the optimism that, despite the dark side embedded in the human character, there is already a godlike nature in every one of us straining to emerge.
Carl Jung: On the Visionary Mode of Artistic Creation
The eminent Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist, Carl Jung, applied the term visionary in his 1929 lecture, “Psychology and Literature,” to a super-genre forming one of the two major divisions of artistic production: “I will call the one mode of artistic creation psychological,” he says, “and the other visionary. The psychological work of art always takes it materials from the vast realm of conscious human experience—from the vivid foreground of life, we might say.” What is generally called realism.
In Visionary Fiction, he explains, “The experience that furnishes the material for artistic expression is no longer familiar. It is a strange something that derives its existence from the hinterlands of man’s mind—that suggests the abyss of time separating us from pre-human ages, or evokes a superhuman world of contrasting light and darkness. It is a primordial experience which surpasses man’s understanding, and to which he is in danger therefore of succumbing. The value and the force of the experience are given by its enormity…. [They] rend from top to bottom the curtain upon which is painted the picture of an ordered world. And allow a glimpse into the unfathomed abyss of what has not yet become. Is it a vision of other worlds, of the obscuration of the spirit, or of the beginning of things before the age of man, or of the unborn generations of the future? We cannot say that it is any or none of these.”
Carl Jung, 1929 lecture, “Psychology and Literature”
The Visionary Historical Novels
The Anathemas
A Novel of Reincarnation and Restitution
In 553 AD, the eastern Roman Emperor, Justinian, imprisoned Pope Vigilius until the pontiff consented to sign the controversial decrees of the Council of Constantinople. Thus, was any Christian who held that a soul could exist before the present body’s birth or reincarnated after its death declared anathema: condemned to Hell.
In 1879, the Philadelphian Richard Strawn, a man disowned by his Quaker brethren because he chose to serve as a medic in the Civil War, the ghastly memories of which he drinks to forget, has his equilibrium further tested. His teenage daughter, Jennifer, who has dreamed since childhood that she was once a fabulous queen and he was her royal partner, goes public with her story. Richard must either see fact in Jennifer’s assertion or agree with his wife, Lucinda, that their daughter is insane.
He defers a decision until a fire destroys the printing business he manages, and he is blamed. Drunk and despondent, he retreats to his farm in the country, only to be pursued by a dream of his own that does portray him as Jennifer’s king, but a cowardly monarch about to capitulate to a howling mob. Then coincidences, too uncanny to discount, force the father-daughter team to follow the thread of paranormal events. Sometimes in tandem, sometimes in opposition, they find themselves tracking their ancestral identities: the 6th-century emperor, Justinian, and his empress, Theodora, only to discover that their primary adversary, his wife and her mother Lucinda, is determined to prove that history indeed repeats itself, and there is nothing that can be done to stop it.
Channel of the Grail
A Novel of Cathars, Templars, and a Nazi Grail Hunter
n May 1939, German newspapers announced the untimely death of 35-year-old author Otto Rahn, applauding him as “comrade, decent SS-man and creator of outstanding historical-scholarly works.” But his Swiss lover Raymond knew that Otto had neither died accidentally nor while still a member of the infamous SS.
Before the Nazis, Rahn had researched the medieval French Cathars, a heretical sect exterminated by war and the Inquisition, and he published his account of this tragedy as Crusade against the Grail.
His book intrigued Nazi SS leader Heinrich Himmler, himself an occult fanatic, who then enticed Otto into the SS as a historical researcher. Gambling that Otto’s psychic talents might lead to the recovery of the coveted Holy Grail, Himmler coddled the writer, even condoning his illegal homosexuality. Then Rahn discovered that the intent of the SS and its operations were far from benign.
After Otto’s demise, Raymond knew that his partner’s work deserved recognition, but as that of a genuine Grail bearer and not as a member of the SS. To do this, Raymond had to recover his own unique gift: a phenomenal memory that took him back to the Cathar era where the men’s mutual mission, which could only be carried out with them riding two to a horse in the way of the Knights Templar, was originally entrusted to them.
Visionary Novel in Progress: THE SKELETON KEY
Egyptian Alexandria in the first century CE was the consummate “melting pot” in which much of the world’s intellectual and religious foundation for the next two millennia was brewed. Founded by Alexander the Great and built out to be the queen of the Mediterranean by his successors, the Ptolemies, it then saw the tragic demise of its last dynastic ruler, Cleopatra, and the loss of its independence to Caesar Augustus and Rome. Nevertheless, its wealth of intellectual and religious institutions allowed it to remain the empire’s cultural center during and well after the advent of Christianity.
About a third of Alexandria’s population then were Jews, whose monotheism sometimes mixed and often clashed with other elements of the city’s religious amalgam. Among them was a notable family that continued to provide the state with civic, political, military and religious leaders well into the Romans era. One of its member was the eminent philosopher and theologian, Philo, called Judaeus (the Jew), whose writings have survived largely intact. Philo’s longer life span included the years that Jesus of Nazareth lived in Palestine.
In a fairly short piece called On the Contemplative Life, Philo describes and applauds a spiritual community of men and women, called Therapeutae (healers), which settled a narrow strip of land between Lake Mereotis and the Mediterranean Sea, just west of the Alexandrian city walls, a location easily pinpointed today from Philo’s indications.
Enter an uncanny coincidence: so close is the Therapeutæ’s doctrine and practice, as described by Philo, to the later Christian monastic organizations that Eusebius, a respected fourth-century ecclesiastical historian, maintained that they formed one of the earliest known Christian communities, that the books they studied were primitive versions of the Gospels, and that Philo was, in fact, an early “Father” of the Church. This theory lasted into modern times when it came to light that Philo’s treatise on the Therapeutæ was composed “as early as the time of Augustus,” decades before the Gospels could have been written.
Thus far, these are the facts, disconcerting as may be in their effect on what most of us have been taught about the chronology of the founding of Christianity and its impact on the world since. For the visionary fiction based on this history, CLICK HERE to learn more about The Elect, Victor E. Smith’s historical novel-in-progress.
Blog and Featured topics
My Blog is where I can chat with my readers, and they can do the same with me. While the majority of posts stay focused on Visionary Writing (fiction and non-fiction) and my own writing travels and travails, sometimes I diverge to discuss books I’ve read and reviewed, random trips and photos I’ve taken, and those precious insights I’ve garnered from deep meditation and communication with a marvelous group of friends and supporters. I have tried to group related information with the use of the category and tag features supplied by WordPress. Some of these can be accessed through dropdowns under Vic’ s Blog on the main menu or through the listings of Categories and Tags on the sidebars. I will do my best to highlight new material or revisions to old pieces worth a new look. And be generous with your Comments. Writing can be a lonely business and I like to know what my readers are thinking.
MOST RECENT BLOG POSTS
Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane
My interest roused by Tony Ortega’s review of The Ocean at the End of the Lane entitled “In His New Book, Is Neil Gaiman Exorcising His Scientology Past?” (a question, by the way, the book…
Review Dr. Bruce Greyson AFTER
Credit the progression of the Near-Death Experience (NDE) over the past 50 years from an event that raised eyebrows about the experiencer’s sanity to a phenomenon that merited serious consideration by scientific and medical professionals…
Jesus: A New Vision by Whitley Strieber
Book Review Jesus: A New Vision by Whitley Strieber My rating: 5 of 5 stars Well into the process of researching a work of my own what I am calling “Prototype for Christianity” about a…
Featured Topics
CHANNEL OF THE GRAIL–RESEARCH FRANCE 2010
While writing Channel of the Grail, I took two self-conducted research tours of Europe.
(Ah the pleasure of combining business and pleasure!) In the first leg in
August 2010, I visited the Cathar-Templar country in southern France and
northern Spain. CLICK HERE OR ON THE PHOTO ABOVE TO ENJOY
MY 2010 TRIP BLOG.
CHANNEL OF THE GRAIL–RESEARCH EUROPE 2011
From Oct. 4 to Oct. 20, 2011, I traveled to Germany with forays into Austria
and Switzerland with my Indiana Jones hat on In both trips I followed in the footsteps of the
Otto Rahn, the novel’s protagonist. CLICK HERE OR ON THE PHOTO ABOVE FOR MY 2011 TRIP
SEQUENCE.
THE PARANORMAL SERIES
I’m looking to start thoughtful cyber-conversation among people, especially other writers, on an evolutionary premise that is headed in the right direction but requires much more discussion, experimentation, and improvement to be become a practical reality. That theory in a sound bite: today’s paranormal will be tomorrow’s normal. CLICK HERE OR ON THE PHOTO ABOVE FOR MY PARANORMAL SERIES..
ABOUT THIS SITE
A few years back, when planning a redesign of this website, rather than making this my single author site, I wanted it to somehow become a larger portal for the Visionary Literature genre as defined so clearly by Carl Jung. Since the year 2000, I had been connecting with the few out-of-the-closet visionary fiction authors I could find until 2013 when I became an active member of the Visionary Fiction Alliance and a frequent contributor to its website VisionaryFictionAlliance.com, which has become the primary electronic gathering place for writers, readers, supporters and resource providers of the still emerging Visionary Fiction genre.
While remaining primarily the showplace for my work, the site is also meant to showcase the energy, thoughts, and words of this vibrant group of authors, who dedicate their time and talent to producing literature designed to elevate the level of human consciousness, no easy tasks in an era as challenging in our current tumultuous one that tetters on a razor’s edge between disastrous Dystopia and promising Utopia. CLICK HERE to read more about this site’s connection to Visionary Literature.
NEWS AND LINKS
NEW SITE DESIGN AND UPGRADE: In August 2023, on the occasion of the site moving to a new platform and adopting a new WordPress theme, Kadence, Victoresmith.com received a modernizing face-lift with a full content review and several revisions, some still in progress. There’s also a “rumor” that there are plans for several new pages and more frequent blog posts are anticipated. Don’t forget to check back often. Announcements about new materials and major revisions with links will be posted in this section.
May 3, 2016 My latest novel, Channel of the Grail, was published to stellar advance reviews by Quantum Leap Publishing, Tucson, AZ. It is available on Amazon, domestic and international, in print. The e-book can be purchased from Amazon.com and most e-books outlets worldwide.