Welcome to the New Cultures Press! New Cultures Press is an innovative publishing house whose purpose is to make available books that draw on the past in order to shed light on the present and future. More a collaborative project than a conventional publishing house, and much more attuned to new forms of publicity and distribution, its goal is to encourage cultural renewal and emergent cultures through publication of non-fiction and fiction. In addition to New Cultures Press books, our project includes the imprints Grailstone and New Grail.
Conversations in Apocalyptic Times:
A Guide for the Spiritual Seeker
bn.com and Amazon links to Purchase
In this series of fascinating and profound conversations, clinical psychologist Robert J. Faas and author Arthur Versluis discuss how to deepen your spiritual life in the midst of challenging and even apocalyptic times. In this remarkable book, they discuss the hidden inner riches of mystical Christianity and disclose for the first time in accessible, clear language the secret alchemical path of transmutation embedded in the Grail cycle and in the mysteries of the Western tradition. This book is meant for the spiritual seeker who knows there must be more to life than what we are usually told. In an age of distraction and confusion, what is our path forward to a more meaningful and fulfilled life? To that question this book provides answers.
Robert J. Faas is a clinical psychologist with many years of practice and experience in the Christian alchemical path made available in the works of Jacob Böhme, John Pordage, and Friedrich Schelling.
Arthur Versluis is author of numerous books on spirituality, sacred landscape, and the intersection of religion and literature. He is the founding director of Hieros Institute, a nonprofit devoted to deepening our understanding of the sacred in contemporary life.
This is the best kind of book: it’s useful. I wish I had read it years ago. Henry Corbin would have loved it—it not only comes from the heart but it helps to activate it. If you suspect that your life is supposed to be a meaningful journey but you’re not sure how to act on that intuition, this wonderful dialogue will help give you direction and courage. It is an open invitation to embark on what Corbin called “a journey toward the Light.”
—Tom Cheetham, author of All the World an Icon, Green Man, Earth Angel, and many other books.
In an informal, conversational style, the authors offer valuable advice on how one can proceed on the spiritual path. A refreshing antidote to the materialistic and mechanistic view of reality so dominant within the walls of academia.
—Kyriacos Markides, author of The Magus of Strovolos, Riding with the Lion, and many other books.
Exciting—whether you agree or not with the ideas in this book, you can benefit from the conversation. It has inspired me.
—Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul, and A Religion of One’s Own.
The Secret Island by Arthur Versluis is both an odyssey and an alchemical quest around the known world, a pilgimage to those numinous places marked with megaliths, dolmens, menhirs, and great stone spheres. They bear witness to another world of primordial presences that still hold an initiatic power for those attuned. Most moving is the author’s return, like Odysseus, to find what he sought on his home turf.
—Joscelyn Godwin, author of Atlantis and the Cycles of Time, Upstate Cauldron, and many other books.
Praise for other books by Arthur Versluis
Dr. Arthur Versluis, one of the world’s foremost esoteric scholars, takes us on a journey to the fabled Aegean isle of Samothrace, a center of the ancient Mysteries. This book is a travelogue, and not just in a physical sense—Dr. Versluis guides us on a journey through realms of myth and history to uncover the secrets of ancient Western spirituality. At journey’s end, the author steers us home to who we really, deeply are.
—Leonard George, Capilano University, author of Crimes of Perception and Alternative Realities
This is a book of secrets. In unique journeys around the world, from Ireland and England to Taiwan and Hawaii, Arthur Versluis explores the archaic myths and traditional lore of sacred islands and their ancient cultures written in stone. Megaliths, standing stones, stone spheres, cairns, all are ancient markers for understanding sacred landscape in new and profound ways. More than a book, this is a series of portals into new ways of understanding who we are in relation to the sacred earth and waters and air around us.
Arthur Versluis is author of numerous books on spirituality, sacred landscape, and the intersection of religion and literature, including Entering the Mysteries, Timelessness, and Sacred Earth. He is the founding director of Hieros Institute, a nonprofit devoted to deepening our understanding of the sacred in modern life, found at www.hieros.world.
Near the end of his life, novelist, essayist and poet James Cowan joined fellow author Arthur Versluis in five remarkable conversations on how his journeys into the Australian Outback and his years spent among the Aborigines are indelibly linked with his vision for the reinvigoration of literature and culture through what he terms metaphysical realism. Challenging, wide-ranging, moving, always stimulating, these conversations are indeed timeless.
James G. Cowan (1942-2018) was author of numerous books, including the bestseller Mapmaker’s Dream, as well as titles on Australian Aboriginal spirituality and sacred landscape. He was winner of the Australian Gold Medal for Literature, and held a Ph.D. from the University of Queensland.
Available now: from Barnes and Noble
Shining through these conversations between two remarkable writers and thinkers is a deeply felt need for a re-enchantment of the world, a rediscovery of the sacred in the landscape and a reconnection with our spiritual roots. The re-enchantment of the world may still be possible!
—Christopher McIntosh, author of The Rosicrucians, Gardens of the Gods, Beyond the North Wind etc.
The offspring of two scintillating minds and their lifelong friendship, these timely and timeless conversations cover many engaging topics, ranging from ancient sacred sites and landscapes, traditional ways of knowing, to the spiritual rebirth of literature and culture, and even what it means to be a real writer of substance in today’s world. Very highly recommended.
— David Fideler, author of Restoring the Soul of the World
Entering the Mysteries: The Secret Traditions of Indigenous Europe
Arthur Versluis
Across the ancient world it was known, a mysterious island at the center of a Mystery tradition so secret that even today, we have only clues about it. Ancient Greek myths, myths older than Greece, a mountain whose peak is often shrouded in clouds, and a pagan sanctuary so archaic it probably dates to when the island was part of a mainland. Join Arthur Versluis on a journey to Samothrace and beyond as he investigates archaic European symbolism, myth, and mysteries, and uncovers clues to the secret religious traditions of indigenous Europe.
“A beautiful book that I enjoyed reading right through—simple, luminous from beginning to end.”
—Kevin Corrigan, Emory University, author of Gnosticism, Platonism, and the Late Ancient World.
“A most light-filled book, which gives me hope that the secret traditions of indigenous Europe have a future as well as a past.”
—Christopher McIntosh, author of Masters of the Starlit Grove, The Return of the Tetrad, and other books.
Coming soon:
The Complete Works of John Pordage, Volume 1
Amor Proximi
Clara: Dialogue on Nature & Spirit
by F.W.J. von Schelling
A new translation
Now available! Metafiction in the tradition of Jorge Luis Borges:
A Voyage Around My Pipe
by renowned Australian author James Cowan
These short fictions by renowned Australian author James Cowan, winner of the Australian Gold Medal for Fiction, offer the reader a remarkable flight to places that defy time. They deal with circumstances and events that lie beyond the scope of normal events. Is there a relationship between the fantastic and the real? Whether one is taking a voyage around the bowl of a pipe, or engaging with the magical properties of an elephant, the reader is encouraged to project himself into a state of mind where his own objectivity is questioned.
A letter from Abelard to his true love Heloise, a man who becomes a fish, a journey among lost souls, or an encounter with headhunters in the jungle, these are but a few of the incidents that the author asks us to experience. In doing so, omen birds and anchorites appear to participate in a reality filled with portents and wonders.
A Voyage around My Pipe is more than a match for how we see things. The reader is about to take an unforgettable ride to a place where the imagination is released from the constraints of established forms. In so doing, each story becomes a perfect antidote to what he or she considers to be real.
“Find yourself a secluded garden alcove, a bottle of red and some crusty bread, and become engrossed.” —Diana Ward
“A writer to rival Eco…” —Mary Ryan
To purchase now, click here, or go to bn.com, as well as many other venues.