Venetia Nelson, A Myrour to Lewde [i.e., illiterate] Men and Wymmen: A Prose Version of the Speculum Vitae, ed. from B.L. MS Harley 45. Middle English Texts 14. Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1981.
Venetia Nelson, ‘My Father’s House’, in Kate and Dominica Nelson, Sweet Mothers, Sweet Maids. Melbourne: Penguin, 1986.
Venetia Nelson (ed.), On Being Human: Meditations on Experience; foreword by Dorothy Green. Melbourne: David Lovell, 1990.
Venetia Somerset, Neither on the Mountain nor in Jerusalem … but in Spirit and in Truth. Melbourne: Barker Deane, 2014.
The search for self-knowledge and identity is a common theme in autobiographies these days. So also is the search for a spirituality other than that of the conventional religions. Both are found in Seascapes of a Soul: Wholeness and the Sense of Self. This book is an account of a unique spirit on an often solitary journey. With clear argumentation and transparent honesty, this author presents a story that reaches towards individuation, gained partly through discovering C.G. Jung’s ideas about the psyche.
Several themes recur: the onset of old age, Jungian individuation, solitude and aloneness, mood swings, a rejection of orthodox religion, a love for the natural world, an interest in gnosticism, the inner sense of the Divine. Her relationship with her twin sister is also prominent. There is light and dark here: the ups and downs of living with a twin.
In rejecting the Christianity she grew up with she followed an innate urge to a spirituality that ultimately arose from the strong sense of self she had had from an early age. If this has a name it would be ‘gnostic’ because it is a perception of inner divinity, the God within.
This is a woman’s story with a difference. Although, unlike so many, she did not have to struggle through a life of disadvantage and deprivation, she did have to wrestle with a powerful self that sometimes wandered up blind alleys into ego. But she learned to accept mistakes and incorporate them into what Einstein called a ‘calm and modest life’.
Images of the sea, symbols of the unconscious, run through the book. The ‘seascapes’ at the head of each chapter function in the story as a leitmotif for the modes and moods of the spirit.
After waiting for weeks for a reply from a couple of publishers, I sent my manuscript to a firm I’d only recently discovered: Austin Macauley in London. What astonished me was the speed with wh ........
The forty years I spent editing other people’s books taught me a great deal. I have learned even more from working with the staff of Austin Macauley as they prepared my own book for printing. A ........
On page 99 I use this phrase about one of the books I’ve enjoyed. A good conversation about the deep things is what makes my heart sing, what gives meaning to my existence. In pursuing this I h ........
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