An History Beside Time reads myth as a current running beneath ordinary history, rather than a relic left behind by it. It treats the oldest stories not as things that happened once and are now finished, but as patterns that keep happening, underneath whatever century is currently claiming to be new.
The book unfolds across seven chapters, closing with an appendix that maps its own terms onto the language of Jungian analytical psychology — a second reading, for anyone who wants to trace the symbols back to their psychological ground once the mythic argument is done.
It is the first book published under The Thinking Press, and the work that the press's other titles, including the forthcoming The Wisdom of Catastrophe, continue and extend.
A limited English leather binding of An History Beside Time is also planned, capped at fifty numbered copies.
A second edition is now being prepared. The original printing read well, but the press is retooling it for higher printing quality, along with a set of textual revisions, refining the book rather than replacing it.
Read an Excerpt ▾
1 In the beginning there was not a beginning, but a fullness without seam; and the fullness was like an acorn, closed upon its own secret. 2 For within the small shell the whole tree sleepeth, and within the seed the forest hideth its thousand arms. 3 So was the cosmos: little to the eye, yet measureless to the inward sight; a round silence containing its own thunder. 4 And the acorn knew not that it knew; and the Whole knew not that it held its own sundering. 5 Yet the law was already there, as the oak is already there: that what is whole must one day disclose what it containeth.
6 Then came the first motion, which no tongue can name without lying. 7 And the Whole clave itself—not as a thing broken by hatred, but as a seed broken by life. 8 What was God hitherto became twain, and the twain became the first distance. 9 From the Light there drew away a Blackening, and from the Blackening there flared a Light; and each called the other forth. 10 For opposites do not merely war; they beget. 11 And the rift between them was not emptiness, but a womb.
Kenosha
Wisconsin, United States
Written and published in Kenosha, on the shore of Lake Michigan, where The Thinking Press keeps its imprint.
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The Audiobook
An History Beside Time, read aloud. The Introduction & Chapter I can be heard in full here, free.
The Introduction & Chapter I · also on YouTube
The Introduction and all seven chapters, narrated by Silas; 1 hour 55 minutes. The appendix, which maps the book’s terms onto Jungian analytical psychology, is in the ebook alone, which comes with the audiobook as a set. Club members can read the ebook and hear the audiobook in their library.
$20
The full audiobook and the ebook, appendix included, sold together as a set: both are yours to download the moment payment clears. Checkout is handled securely by Stripe, and your receipt comes by email.
Members of The Thinking Press Club listen free in their library and read the ebook there, appendix included; the set to keep costs them $17. Sign in if you are one.