In October of this year (2017), I announced that this blog had reached its first thousandth post.
I had already conceived the idea of celebrating those first one thousand posts with a book containing a selection of posts from the blog thus far, arranged thematically into the eight categories described in that one thousandth post.
It took a little longer for that book to make it to print, but it is finally here -- just in time to be published in 2017!
And I'm happy to announce that I am very pleased with the outcome.
Entitled Ancient Myths, Ancient Wisdom: Recovering humanity's forgotten inheritance through Celestial Mythology, the book is 866 pages in length adorned with 216 illustrations, photographs, diagrams, maps, and star charts.
You can see the table of contents and some sample content by clicking on the title in the preceding paragraph, or by clicking on the cover illustration above. Of course, you can also visit the "Books" section of my primary website at starmythworld.com, where you can click on the cover images of any of my books to see sample content and tables of contents.
The selected blog posts are grouped into the following eight sections:
- Esotericism and the Ancient System
- Celestial Mechanics and the Heavenly Cycles
- The Invisible Realm and the Shamanic
- Star Myths and Astrotheology
- Self and Higher Self
- The Inner Connection to the Infinite
- Humanity's Forgotten History
- Two Visions
There are several reasons that I decided to release such a book. Some of those reasons include:
a) There are now over a thousand blog posts -- and "flipping through" them on the internet in order to find good things to read from blog posts published over the course of several years is nowhere near as easy as is flipping through the actual pages of a book.
b) I feel that some of my best writing is done on the pages of this blog. A blog by its nature lends itself to an easy and informal tone, and it also invites a format of writing that used to be known as essays (Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose writing I enjoy very much, was an accomplished essayist, in addition to being an accomplished writer of fiction in the form of short stories and novels). I felt that it would be worthwhile to collect some of the best essays from the first one thousand blog posts into a book for those who enjoy reading them in that form rather than merely online.
c) A book can go places where there is no internet connection or electricity or cell signal, although in the modern world such places are becoming harder and harder to find. You can take a book to the beach without worrying about it being ruined by the sand. You can take a book to a remote cabin in the woods which is lit only by a lantern and a fireplace (or a pot-bellied stove). You can take a book on a trip to another country where your phone may not have easy access to internet coverage. And you can read a book by candlelight or climber's headlamp if there is an extended power outage.
d) This book groups the selected essays into helpful thematic categories, which makes it easier to follow the development of various themes (unlike the blog, where those themes develop over long periods of time and where the subject from one post to another typically jumps around between various themes, weaving in and out of several different subjects before returning to a previous one). The essays in the book are arranged chronologically within each theme, such that they go from oldest to newest in the first theme (essays about esotericism and the ancient system of celestial metaphor) and then starting again going from oldest to newest in the next theme (essays about celestial mechanics and the heavenly cycles), and so forth.
e) Although one of the strengths of the online format is the ability to link to previous posts or to other subject matter, throughout this book I have included "links" whenever possible in the form of page numbers to other posts that are mentioned. These page numbers are included in "superscript" (like the number which would normally refer to a footnote in other books), but instead of referring to a footnote or an endnote, these numbers point you to pages where you can find the post being referenced. Of course, many posts were not able to fit into this book: it contains precisely ninety-six essays from the first one thousand posts, which takes up 866 pages of print (including pictures). When a post is mentioned that is not included in the book, I have tried to include the date of that post so that the interested reader can find it online if necessary.
f) While it is true that books made of paper cost money and that there is no charge for reading posts on this blog online, it is generally not true that getting access to the blog is "free." Most men and women have to pay for access to the internet itself, through a business entity known as an internet service provider (usually a cable company or a phone service "carrier"). The monthly cost of this access is usually more than the one-time cost of this book, every single month for as long as you want to access the internet. If you miss one or at most two or three such monthly payments, you will soon find that you have no more access to the free content on the blog.
g) No internet service provider can slow down the page-loading of any of the pages in this book, once it is in your possession.
This book has a very satisfying size and heft, and I believe you will like it very much. At least, I hope that you will.
Like all of my other books, it is available through most booksellers, because it is distributed by Ingram, one of the largest distributors in the business. You can ask your local bookseller -- or local library -- to order it for you, although they may tell you that it will take a few weeks.
You can also order it for rapid delivery from the giant booksellers, such as Barnes & Noble, which have the book in stock and can get it to you in a couple of days. Mega-giant online retailer Amazon also carries the book, with a "look inside" feature where you can see even more pages than you can see in the online sample linked above.
I hope that you will choose to add Ancient Myths, Ancient Wisdom to your home library (or to the library of your favorite college, high school, small town, large municipality, university, sailboat, or remote cabin). You don't actually have to read it by candlelight or Coleman lantern, although you may find it enjoyable to do so, and while you do, you can also think about how nice it is to be off the internet for a little while.
