John Woodcock

Our modern culture is on a deadly trajectory, the endpoint of which is the total elimination of the psyche or soul as a recognizable experience and even as a concept that may be discussed in any way that could matter to our daily lives. This "attack" on the psyche is taking place at the levels of language and body. Many people who personally pay the price of our erasure of soul are often childhood "trauma victims". They have no way to understand their experiences other than the "soul-less" one of "merely" human abuse. But abuse victims sometimes, inexplicably, break through into a realm of love, transforming into artists, teachers, poets, and authors-as mouthpieces for this love. My book is an attempt to account for this phenomenon from the point of view of soul. The transformation into love from within extreme violence to mind and body is pictured by soul to be a tortured process of the descent of angelic love into "matter", as my essays will show. The first essay is a story of the human experience of receiving an angelic descent into material reality. The second essay Angel of a New World shows how this descent appears as a "linguistic event" along with its consequences for our culture, while my essay Surrender shows some of the complexities involved for the human personality as love seeks to enter the human domain. I include my essay on Yunus Emre, the 13th. C. Anatolian love poet to show how at that time, the movement towards love was an upward striving by the human being, away from the ordinary personality, requiring a very different kind of initiation of the human being. Yunus Emre's ascent to love can be contrasted strongly with my last essay, Unancestral Voice, which explores in detail the kind of initiation required by an individual in our time, the time of hardened materialism, when love seeks to descend into the lowest, often most despised aspect of the human being-our personalities.

Inception and The Vortex are two short stories of cosmic drama and transformation. Inception is a story of three friends who find their way into chaos. Lisel and David emerge transformed, with a new art form: an inception of a new culture. Peter succumbs to the fate of our technological way of being. The Vortex tells of four friends: Ed, Gary, Allen and the mysterious Po'. As young students, they are approached by a black vortex, injected into the chaos of four possible futures, and then returned the present. We then see how each life, now transformed, unfolds in response to their life-changing experience inside the vortex.

Everything we produce-art, entertainment, political events, books, movies, religion, economics, institutions, and money, etc.-is cultural, i.e. formed from within our minds, or more poetically, soul. Cultural productions find their origin in the form-making soul, as it undergoes its mysterious self-transformations. Dreams are also cultural forms and soul productions. So we can say that cultural productions constitute the dreams of a culture. They may become soul phenomena opening up to give us glimpses of possible futures flowing towards us "long before they happen", as Rilke says. Some of these essays focus on the loss of love in the world, others on the abandonment of any connection with something greater than us. Still others speak of chaos and fear, disintegration. Some address the hint of a possible future rooted in love. Finally, we cannot ignore the direst hint of all as one dark possible future gathers behind our current cultural productions-the withdrawal of the light that bestows meaning on our world: the death of psyche Only the soul perspective can apprehend these possible futures bearing down on us at this time, looming behind our current cultural productions or dreams. These essays attempt to make these possible futures explicit from a soul perspective-glimpses appearing for a moment within the chaos that so marks the character of our modern times

Colour Quest (R) Cityscapes takes colour-by-number books to sky-scraping new heights, with 30 incredible skylines and buildings waiting to be revealed. From iconic landmarks such as the Chrysler building in New York, to hidden gems like the stunning Hallgrimskirkja cathedral in Reykjavik, use colouring pens or pencils to colour the numbered shapes and uncover stunning and intricate artwork hidden on the page. Travel the world exploring the most striking, bold and exotic architecture the world has to offer with 30 single-sided designs to complete.

Colour Quest (R): Animals takes colouring books to a whole new level, with 30 wild and wonderful animals waiting to be revealed. Use colouring pens, pencils or paints to colour the numbered shapes and uncover stunning and intricate artwork hidden on the page. The easy-to-use number system is perfect for beginners. Shade in a magnificent mandrill, a colourful kingfisher or a beautiful butterfly, and let Colour Quest: Animals take you on a magical journey as you bring hidden gems to life by shading in shapes. This colouring challenge is perfect for adults who wish to rediscover their playful side, or for children who enjoy an artistic challenge! Colour Quest is a trade mark of Michael O'Mara Books Limited.

The Penguin Atlas of Ancient History illustrates in a chronological series of maps, the evolution and flux of races in Europe, the Mediterranean area and the Near East. From 50,000 B. C. to the fourth century A. D., it is one of the most successful of the bestselling historical atlas series.