H.M. Forester

@hmforester.bsky.social

278 Followers 267 Following

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.

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.
An image containing a text quotation, with the grey silhouette of a woman, arms outstretched in joy, in the bottom left-hand corner. The text, from Nelson Mandela, Conversations with Myself, reads: Human Qualities: “In judging our progress as individuals we tend to concentrate on external factors such as one’s social position, influence and popularity, wealth and standard of education. These are, of course, important in measuring one’s success in material matters and it is perfectly understandable if many people exert themselves mainly to achieve all these. But internal factors may be even more crucial in assessing one’s development as a human being. Honesty, sincerity, simplicity, humility, pure generosity, absence of vanity, readiness to serve others — qualities which are within easy reach of every soul — are the foundation of one’s spiritual life.”
A still from the 2026 film Odyssey.
Image: The Unholy Worship / Gwabryel, Illustrator of Weird Fiction / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0. A painting by Gwabryel, based on H. P. Lovecraft's story The Call of Cthulhu. It shows a man with arms outstretched worshipping a very tall, black figure. To his left and right, victims are suspended upside down from gallows, and in front of the dark figure are several other, perhaps tormented figures.
Image: As the Old Sing, so Pipe the Young / Jan Steen (1625/1626–1679) / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain. Jan Steen’s As the Old Sing, So Pipe the Young (c. 1668–1670), displayed at Het Mauritshuis, is a Dutch Golden Age allegory. It depicts three generations of a family demonstrating a popular proverb: children imitate the bad habits of their elders.The painting depicts a chaotic, merry holiday scene packed with satirical symbols of vice and parental influence.
Image: Merrymaking in a Tavern / Jan Steen (1625/1626–1679) / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain. A painting of an old tavern scene with people playing music, dancing, a child playing with a cat, and a woman nursing a small child.
A black-and-white photo of American cultural anthropologist, Margaret Mead standing by a set of library shelves, reading a book.
The black silhouette of a person's head and neck, shown in profile, looking toward the left of the picture. Networks of neural connections are shown in several different colours.
An image containing a text quotation, with the black silhouette of a man in a hat marching and carrying a flag that reads "viva la revolution". The text, from Gil Scott-Heron, reads: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: “The first change that takes place is in your mind. You have to change your mind before you change the way you live and the way you move. So when we said that the revolution will not be televised, we’re saying that the thing that’s going to change people is something that no one will ever be able to capture on film. It’ll just be something you see and all of a sudden you realize, I’m on the wrong page, or I’m on the right page but I’m on the wrong note.”
Image: The Unholy Worship / Gwabryel, Illustrator of Weird Fiction / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0. A painting by Gwabryel, based on H. P. Lovecraft's story The Call of Cthulhu. It shows a man with arms outstretched worshipping a very tall, black figure. To his left and right, victims are suspended upside down from gallows, and in front of the dark figure are several other, perhaps tormented figures.
A photo of a mountain range and sky, with the colour red greatly enhanced to make the scene appear as if taken in the Middle Earth realm of Mordor.
Image containing a text quotation. The text, from James Hillman and Michael Ventura, We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy – And the World's Getting Worse, reads: Materialism: “Of course, a culture as manically and massively materialistic as ours creates materialistic behavior in its people, especially in those people who've been subjected to nothing but the destruction of imagination that this culture calls education, the destruction of autonomy it calls work, and the destruction of activity it calls entertainment.”
Painting of a young lady from below the waist up, in a garden. She has neck-length dark hair, an orangy-red sleeved blouse, lighter-orange loose neck scarf, and dark blue skirt. Her right hand is touching her upper chest with a basket hooked over her arm just below her elbow, while her left hand rests against grass at around waist level. Judging by the title, "The Tryst", she is waiting for her lover.
An image containing text from Patrick Harpur, The Philosopher's Secret Fire: A History of the Imagination. The text reads: An Open Secret: “The secret I have tried to reveal on every other page of this book is in a sense no secret – it is an open secret passed along a Golden Chain of initiates, like the secret of the Greek Mysteries. ‘And as to the philosophy, by whose assistance these mysteries are developed’, Thomas Taylor assures us, ‘it is coeval with the universe itself; and however its continuity may be broken by opposing systems, it will make its appearance at different periods of time, as long as the sun himself shall continue to illuminate the world.’”
A photo of central park with a mass of pink and yellow flowering plants in the foreground, in front of a lake, and with an arched stone bridge and trees in the distance.
An image containing a text quotation, with a pink rose and green leaves in the lower left-hand corner. The text, from Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder, reads: A Sense of Wonder “If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.”
Portrait of the upper body of a young woman, standing in front of a tree or tall bush, with a winding road in the distance on the left. Looking toward her right, with her hands held in front of her up to her shoulders, she has fair hair, tied back in a loose bun, and has a summery white blouse or dress with fine blue patterning.
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 Joseph Campbell, The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work, reads: Inspiration: “Just as anyone who listens to the muse will hear, you can write out of your own intention or out of inspiration. There is such a thing. It comes up and talks. And those who have heard deeply the rhythms and hymns of the gods, can recite those hymns in such a way that the gods will be attracted.”
A smiling Bernie Sanders, standing at a podium, with the words "I, too, have a Dream!" written in the top left-hand corner of the image. Something he might say, though he hasn't, in light of a new dawning of Democratic Socialism in the States, with people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Zohran Mamdani emerging to rally many people who want real change and who really do care about the perils we face and the future of humanity and of the planet.
An outdoor scene showing the head and shoulders of Sir Terry Pratchett wearing a wide-brimmed brown hat and steel-framed spectacles and sporting a white beard and moustache, looking toward the right of the picture. Behind him is a man in a blue chequered, short-sleeved shirt, and further back are groups of young people, trees or tall bushes, a statue of a child on a rocking horse and further back, a brown stone building.
Dance at Molenbeek, a painting by Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1564–1638). A depiction of dancing mania, on the pilgrimage of epileptics to the church at Molenbeek. An outdoors scene, it shows two women suffering from dancing mania being assisted or restrained by four men, and two men playing bagpipes.
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 David Tacey, How to Read Jung, reads: Psychic Epidemics / Mass Psychosis: “In his essays on world events (CW 10), Jung was at pains to point out that society is vulnerable to psychic epidemics, since we no longer have any forms to humanize or contain our nonrational impulses. In these essays he argued not only that we can expect an increase in neurotic or mentally disturbed individuals, but that the social fabric itself is disturbed, and increasingly prone to acts of madness, violence and irrationality.”
A smiling court jester, his left hand touching his face and with a crooked wooden staff into which is carved, at the top, a glum looking juggler's head.
Photo of the author, Philip Pullman signing books.
Image containing a text quotation, with an open book in the bottom left-hand corner. The text, from Philip Pullman, The Secret Commonwealth, reads: T’Other Side: “The other side’s got an energy that our side en’t got. Comes from their certainty about being right. If you got that certainty, you’ll be willing to do anything to bring about the end you want. It’s the oldest human problem, Lyra, an’ it’s the difference between good and evil. Evil can be unscrupulous, and good can’t. Evil has nothing to stop it doing what it wants, while good has one hand tied behind its back. To do the things it needs to do to win, it’d have to become evil to do ’em.”
A bearded captive in a dark prison cell looks up toward the light. Painted in tones of yellow, orange, red and brown.
An image containing a text quotation, with the figure of a man in shackles in the lower left-hand corner. The text from the Foreword to the second edition of Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1947), reads: The Perfect Dictatorship: “The perfect dictatorship would have the appearance of a democracy, but would basically be a prison without walls in which the prisoners would not even dream of escaping. It would essentially be a system of slavery where, through consumption and entertainment, the slaves would love their servitudes.”
A piece of art in a wide paved area with shrubbery, outside a building. The large artwork consists of two words, "real" and "fake", in golden block capitals stacked one on top of the other. The lower word, "fake" is securely bolted down. Behind the artwork are two female passers-by.
An image containing a text quotation. The text, from Bud Harris, Becoming Whole: A Jungian Guide to Individuation, reads: False Doing and Real Being: “All of us, no matter who we are, in the pressures of our busy, complicated lives, lose this fundamental relationship to ourselves, again and again. We get caught in false “doing” that isn’t rooted in the ground of our being, the Self. False “doing” manufactures a hollow or false sense of identity and accomplishments. It assaults us with formulas for changing and bettering ourselves, that ultimately leaves us feeling diminished, frustrated, or empty, like imposters.”
This painting shows a tall, slim queen in an ankle-length white dress with sleeves that reach down to the knee, and wearing a gold crown over very long red hair. She is standing on a stone plinth in front of her throne and touches a sword in her extended right arm on the right shoulder of a kneeling medieval warrior in chainmail who kneels before her, presumably knighting him. To the right, several male courtiers stand observing the ceremony. Above the throne is a window, letting light into the hall.
Image containing a text quotation, with a chalice, perhaps the Holy Grail, in the lower left-hand corner. The text, from Richard Tarnas, “Is the Modern Psyche Undergoing a Rite of Passage?” in Tom Singer (ed), The Vision Thing: Myth, Politics, and Psyche in the World, reads: A Modern Rite of Passage: “I believe our task is to develop a moral and aesthetic imagination deep enough and wide enough to encompass the contradictions of our time and history, the tremendous loss and tragedy as well as greatness and nobility, an imagination capable of recognizing that where there is light there is shadow, that out of hubris and fall can come moral regeneration, out of suffering and death, resurrection and rebirth.”
A green and blue icon of the Earthly globe with a network of white lines and bright nodes where the lines meet.
An image containing text from Idries Shah, Knowing How to Know: A Practical Philosophy in the Sufi Tradition that reads: The Net: “With the Sufis, the address or other initiative by the teacher is based on his perception of the needs of the individuals and collectively in the audience. In other words he casts a ‘net’ to find out how people are thinking and then stimulates them in such a way as to develop their consciousness.”
A young lady in a long summer dress in a radiant fairy circle in the woods, bent down slightly to observe the fairies. It is at midsummer that the veil between this mortal realm and that of the Otherworld is thinnest.
An image containing a poem, with the grey silhouette of a woman, arms outstretched in joy, in the bottom left-hand corner. The poem, by Robert Browning, reads: “Beauty is a waving tree, Beauty is a flower, Beauty is a grassy lea & a shady bower, Beauty is the verdant Spring In our hearts awakening. Beauty is a summer sun Warming all the land, Whose full bounty doth o’errun More than our demand; Spreadeth Beauty her kind feast Lavishly for man & beast.” ...
A large black rectangle with the words, in bold white lettering: "You reduce crime by reducing poverty. You reduce poverty by making healthcare and housing affordable housing and education accessible. You reduce violence by building healthy communities where people aren't forced to compete for basic needs and survival."
Art: Writing in sand / Mrs Logic at Flickr / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0. The word "Sand" drawn in cursive in the sand.
The Ace of Cups from the Rider-Waite tarot deck.
An image containing a text quotation. The text, from Jean Klein, The Ease of Being, reads: The Seventh Direction: “I repeat certain things very often. And I say again that the mind must be informed. It must come to intellectual clarity in order to be open to a new possibility. It is as if you know only six directions and someone suddenly says to you, “There is a seventh direction.” When the mind knows it even if you don’t yet know it for yourself, you are already open to the new direction. Don’t doubt it. The “seventh direction” is your heart.”
Downham Woodland Walk 1 by Dudley Miles from Wikimedia Commons with a CC BY-SA 3.0 licence. It shows a path winding its way through woodland.
A black-and-white photo of Elie Wiesel. He is smiling and wearing a black jacket, white short, and black bow tie.
Image containing a text quotation, with the grey silhouette of a dragon in the lower left-hand corner. The text, from Elie Wiesel, The Night Trilogy: Night, Dawn, The Accident, reads: Taking a Stand: “We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.”
Artwork by William Blake depicting Newton, nude, sitting on a large rock, and bending forward to measure something with a pair of dividers or compasses on a scroll partly unrolled on the ground in front of him.
Grimshaw's painting, Spirit of the Night breaks from his usual urban streetscapes to depict an ethereal winged fairy clad in a transparent veil, hovering above a moonlit coastal village.
An image containing a poem, with the grey silhouette of a woman, arms outstretched in joy, in the bottom left-hand corner. The extract from the poem, from William Butler Yeats, The Land of Heart's Desire, reads: “Come, faeries, take me out of this dull house! Let me have all the freedom I have lost— Work when I will and idle when I will! Faeries, come take me out of this dull world, For I would ride with you upon the wind, Run on the top of the dishevelled tide, And dance upon the mountains like a flame!”
Couple in silhouette dancing, with stars rather than black, against a plain black background.
Image: Step into your place, propaganda poster, 1915 / Parliamentary Recruiting Committee. Lithograph by David Allen & Sons Ld., Harrow, Middlesex / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain. A line of people queuing up to be enlisted for the army in the First World War. The line curves into the distance and as the people progress along the line, they are seen to change into uniformed and armed soldiers. Across the top of the propaganda poster are written the words: "Step Into Your Place" in black block capitals. The landscape poster has a plain off-white background and is surrounded by a bold red border.
Mural on the Berlin Wall at the East Side Gallery (Spring 2002), showing the faces of many people crowding the picture.
Image containing a text quotation. The text, from Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle, reads: A Psychotic World: “A psychotic world we live in. The madmen are in power. How long have we known this? Faced this? And — how many of us do know it? Not Lotze. Perhaps if you know you are insane then you are not insane. Or you are becoming sane, finally. Waking up. I suppose only a few are aware of all this. Isolated persons here and there. But the broad masses ... what do they think? All these hundreds of thousands in this city, here. Do they imagine that they live in a sane world? Or do they guess, glimpse the truth ...?”
A black-and-white photo of a young woman sleeping on a couch. There are long curtains or wall rugs at the head of the couch and behind her back. There is also an open fan pinned to the wall covering behind her. On her head it looks like she is wearing a tiara. On a small bedside cabinet is a hookah pipe; beside it is a bowl of fruit.
Image containing a text quotation. In the lower left-hand corner is the cartoon of a man asleep on a couch. He is wearing a cyan t-shirt and grey trousers and his tight arm is dangling over the edge of the settee with his hand still on an open book. By his head is a tall standard lamp. The text, from Andreas Mavromatis, “Hypnagogia: The Nature and Function of the Hypnagogic State” Volume 1, p12, reads: Reference to hypnagogic experiences goes as far back as Aristotle who remarked that anyone can convince himself of their occurrence "if he attends to and tries to remember the affections we experience when sinking into slumber", and that, in respect to the hypnopompic variety, a person can, "in the moment of awakening, surprise the images which present themselves to him in sleep". In the 3rd century A. D., Iamblichus "the divine" writing on "god-sent" ... experiences and the conditions under which they take place, referred to "a condition between sleeping and waking" and "when sleep is leaving us, and we are beginning to awake" during which time and conditions "voices are heard by us" and "sometimes a bright and tranquil light shines forth".
Close up photo of a red rose with some greenery.
An image containing a text quotation from Dean Radin, “Testing Nonlocal Observation as a Source of Intuitive Knowledge” (2008) that reads: Intuition: “Surprisingly, until recently [intuition] has been studiously ignored. This may be because the quasi-magical, non-rational nature of intuition presents an embarrassing challenge to science, which prides itself on the power of rational knowing. Intuitive knowledge does not appear to function like the methodical interferences associated with rational thought. It arises “in a flash,” or “out of the blue,” sometimes with correct answers to thorny scientific and technical problems, elegant solutions to complex mathematical theorems, and complete scores for intricate musical compositions.”
Ніжний ранковий світло (Gentle morning light) / Balkhovitin / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0. National park "Sviati Hory" (Holy Mountains), Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine. It shows sun-lit trees by a more distant and misty river or lake, with more trees barely visibly over the far side.
A lost soul / Aruba Paradise Photos / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0. The ruins of an old house sitting in front of trees and clear blue sky, on dusty ground from which only tufts of vegetation grow. Though the walls are still standing, the surface is deteriorating and the roof is gone.
Romantic Scene, a painting by Henrik Weber (1818–1866), showing a rural landscape with a rocky outcrop topped with trees in the foreground, and a few figures walking about, and a bright yellow and orange sky.
Image containing a text quotation from Kathleen Raine, “W.B. Yeats and the Learning of Imagination” (lecture) that reads: The Fundamental Ground of Knowledge: “Imaginative knowledge is immediate knowledge, like a tree or a rose or a waterfall, or sun or stars.” ... “The great French scholar Henri Corbin, basing his definition on the Sufi writers, especially on the work of Ibn 'Arabi, has coined the term "imaginal" to describe that order of reality proper to the imagination, since the word "imaginary" is in popular usage understood as something unreal. The word imaginal is the equivalent of the alam al-mithal of the Persian philosophers of the imagination, described by Corbin as that region of the mind where meaning takes on form and, by the same agency, forms take on meaning. The imagination is understood by the Romantic poets as nothing less than the fundamental ground of knowledge.”