Visionary Fiction and the Global Pandemic:
A Brave New World

By Jodine Turner
 

This is precisely the time when artists go to work… We speak, we write, we do language.
That is how civilizations heal.
— Toni Morrison
 

During this turbulent era of the coronavirus, I am sheltering in place, staying at home with my husband and our cats. The situation may or may not have changed by the time you read this.

For now, I shelter in place but feel a profound connection with every other person in our world going through the pandemic, having their own experience, their own struggles, their own fears, horror, sacrifices, and maybe even moments of joy and love and rediscovery.

We’ve catapulted into isolation. Thankfully, modern technology allows many of us a semblance of contact. Still, uncertainty and stress barrage our thoughts. Anxiety floods our emotions and trembles through our bodies. We heave a collective lament of shock, of grief, of mourning. We isolate from each other for all-around safety yet are entrenched in this together. Forced to slow down while life as we knew it changes.

I hope this will prove to be a crossroads that activates a global shift in consciousness. Just like in Visionary Fiction stories.

As a Visionary Fiction author in this time of extremes, I see that we are currently living what the philosophy of Visionary Fiction is all about. This is the genre of transforming consciousness. It ushers in the evolutionary power to ignite our personal and combined potential.
 

What exactly is Visionary Fiction?

Visionary Fiction stories quicken a growth in human awakening, both for the characters in the stories and for us in our lives. I am a founder of the Visionary Fiction Alliance, a website where authors and readers of this genre connect, united in their appreciation for tales about expanding awareness. With that intention in mind, the Alliance defines the genre in this way:

“Visionary Fiction embraces spiritual and esoteric wisdom, often from ancient sources, and makes it relevant for our modern life. Gems of this spiritual wisdom are brought forth in story form so that readers can experience the wisdom from within themselves. Visionary Fiction emphasizes the future and envisions humanity’s transition into evolved consciousness.”

Based on the premise that Visionary Fiction readers can inspire their own deep soul wisdom through a story’s character, the description continues:

“As the world evolves away from the Newtonian model of the five senses to the more evolved quantum model that includes the sense of spirit so resurgent today, Visionary Fiction is rapidly becoming the genre of choice to express that evolution and predict the breath-taking future that might follow the anticipated leaps.”

I can’t help but wonder, in what ways could our current world crises stimulate such evolutionary leaps? What transformations are possible? What new paradigms might emerge?

The Visionary Fiction Alliance goes on to say this regarding the genre: “The emphasis is on our limitless human potential, where transformation and evolution are entirely possible. Growth in consciousness is the central theme of the story and drives the protagonist and/or other important characters. The plot, or story, is universal in its worldview and scope.”

Visionary Fiction takes the reader on a quest, an initiation into the deeper mysteries of existence in story form. It plays an extraordinary role in today’s tumultuous world as a catalyst and facilitator of rebirth.
 

Examples of Visionary Fiction

Three top-rated Visionary Fiction novels illustrate the genre.
 

The first example is from Margaret Duarte’s “Enter the Between Series,” the novel Between Now and Forever:
Medicate or nurture; reform or set free. These are quandaries rookie teacher Marjorie Veil faces when she takes on an after-school class for thirteen-year-olds labeled as troublemakers, unteachable, and hopeless. Faculty skeptics warn that all these kids need is prescribed medication for focus and impulse control. But as Marjorie soon discovers, behind their anti-conformist exteriors are gifted teens, who are sensitive, empathetic, and wise beyond their youth. They also happen to have psychic abilities, which they have kept hidden until now. Can Marjorie help them do what she has failed to do for herself: fight for their spiritual and emotional freedom?

A second sample is the novel The Anathemas by Victor Smith:
This novel weaves the religious controversy about reincarnation into a multi-lifetime saga of conspiracy, redemption and love. A novel, yet a story firmly based on history, notably Procopius's Secret History and Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. With the pace of a thriller, it portrays the spiritual adventure of man and woman coming face-to-face with the life-and-death experience. Reincarnation... heretical but inevitable.

The final example from my “Goddess of the Stars and the Sea Series,” is my novel, Carry on the Flame: Destiny’s Call:
Humanity is in the midst of one of the greatest crises in its evolution. Sharay struggles with a deep soul-calling asking her to help show the way forward, to help humankind move through the fear, chaos, and bleak times of today's world. Born into a lineage of priestesses in modern day Glastonbury, England, Sharay's path is blocked by her jealous Aunt Phoebe, who uses black magic against her to steal her fortune and magical power. When Phoebe commits Sharay to a psychiatric ward and accuses her of murder, Sharay struggles with the temptation to fight Phoebe's vengeance with her own. But Sharay must learn to transform her hatred for her aunt. She must face her grief, loss, and her own dark side in order to claim the mystery held deep within her cells that will allow her to fulfill her destiny and prove that the ultimate magic is the power of love.
 

Visionary Fiction and the Global Pandemic 

We are, of course, worried about the coronavirus and the impact it has, in ways most of us never thought possible — medically, socially, emotionally, and economically. Yet tumult always precedes rebirth. A new paradigm is conceiving itself in our hearts, birthing possibilities for a new and better world. Visionary Fiction is in a unique position to contribute to that. We need these stories that fuel metamorphosis, cultivate empowerment, and bring readers a beacon of hope.
 

Visionary Fiction offers a vision of humanity as we dream it could be. 

Hopefully, as in Visionary Fiction, we are now envisioning a world of our brightest imaginings. During times of crisis, the mists between the current chaos and the imagined world of possibilities are like thin, gauzy veils. When we draw them aside, we get to explore — in our imaginal realms - that normally unseen place where our soul is limitless, and where magic, mystery, and hope thrive. Visionary Fiction parts that veil to glimpse the soul that is inherent all around and within us, those unseen realms that parallel ours and fuel our visions. And from that soul-filled place, we can listen, envision, and act.

Without vision, we endanger our humanity and jeopardize the capacity for our civilization to heal.

Rengeneration Through Embodied Love 

My vision is one of global cooperation and collaboration, in respect and love. That is what embodied love entails. Living it in our daily life, walking through the trenches of suffering, pain, and fear, yet still embodying love amidst it all. That is the central theme of each of my Visionary Fiction novels. The alchemy of embodied love, the greatest healer and ultimate magic.

Today’s world is turbulent. What do you read that invokes your vision of a new world?

What do you envision the world could become?
 

Jodine Turner is a multiple award-winning author of Visionary Fiction, Historical Fantasy, and Magical Realism. While living in Glastonbury, England, the ancient and mystical Isle of Avalon, Jodine began writing her Goddess of the Stars and the Sea series about magical Avalon priestesses throughout the ages to today. The series is an edgy saga of a young Avalon priestess who's reborn during three different critical junctions in history in order to help humankind move through fearful and bleak times — the demise of Atlantis, the Dark Age's suppression of the feminine, and today's turbulent world.

Click here to visit Jodine’s website.