Have you ever realized an
unnerving intimacy with someone on your first encounter? Were
you unable to deny the bond between you, even though
acknowledgement might thoroughly disrupt the life and the view of
the world that you currently held and were comfortable with?
Ian Sarin encounters such a
familiar, except she is not of his world. Without explanation,
he is drawn into her world and into various other realities where
they live alternate lives together. The travels have
damaging effects on his health and hers, sending him scrambling to understand
how and why they have come together. Much to Ian’s amazement, he finds
out that he and Katerina are key elements of an ancient ritual
periodically performed by a nature-based order in a parallel
reality, the Sisterhood of Crones. The ritual brings together two
individuals from disparate realities, but of one spirit, to heal
a growing rift in the Collective Consciousness—A breach
that threatens us all—There is more to
the legend of the joining between the couple than the Sisterhood will allow to be
known. As Ian learns the part he and Katerina are destined to
play and the vast ties they have, he and those around him come
to realize that life and the world before them was never as one
dimensional as they had imagined.
Sacred Vow
is first and foremost a metaphysical love story,
a tale of soul mates—twin flames—a journey toward
our
one
true love…in its infinite expressions…bringing together two
individuals from disparate realities—but
one
spirit—to heal the rift in the Collective Consciousness.
.
Born in 1956 on a farm in Efland, N.C., C.G. acquired a hunger
for ever more inspiring stories when his mother frequently read to
him as a very small child. Perhaps his inherited connection to the land was also the
initiation to a lifelong fascination for earth-based spiritual
philosophies.
Never believing that writing was a possible vocation, his
primary focus was always involvement in one of a range of
professions: farm labor, wood working, programming,
construction, and many others—He never found something that his
spirit could be at peace with. His writings—private and hidden
away—were always a means to make that spiritual connection, but
the writing was invariably sporadic since childhood . . .
bringing out something within him that he could neither avoid
nor fully accept.
In 1994, C.G. and his wife left what would appear to most to be
a “successful” life in the countryside outside of a very popular
Southern town. They moved to rustic conditions in the mountains of
NC. He took with him several of his original books that he had
never allowed to be complete . . . and a proclamation that
now he was going to find the one work he could have a
passion for. Though he wrote, the results continued to be
stored away and occupy a secondary priority to employment, walking
up the mountains, and the demands of every day: patching the
roof, chopping wood, etc.
In 2004 Sacred Vow came
from one of his periodic excursions into the growing private
collection of books. It was to be a five-thousand word exercise
to prepare for the return to a specific, long-neglected
manuscript. Several times the new work exceeded the limits of
his intention. Each time he defined the beginning later in the
action and pursued an ending. Finally, C.G. acknowledged the
power and determination of the novel unfolding before him. Once
the writing was complete, he experienced again the capacity of
certain tales to take on a life and will of their own. Sacred
Vow refused to be cloistered as were its predecessors.
A Conversation with
C.G. Walters
Q) Give us an overview of the
story and its main characters - Katerina & Ian.
A) Sacred Vow is a journey toward our one true love…in its
infinite expressions.
An unlimited number of alternate/parallel realities exist in the
very space we believe our world, alone, to reside. Many of these
alternate realities are unaware of each other, while inhabitants in
some are not only aware, but interact with parallel realities for
the good of the whole. The proper combination of energetic
interactions can open up our perceptions of these alternate
lives/worlds. Ian Sarin, a computer programmer with a strong drawing
toward the intuitive, finds that such a portal has opened before
him. Not only is he aware and interacting with a parallel world, but
the person he interacts with, Katerina, is a member of a culture
structured around a monastic order of mystical women, highly
sensitive and attuned to the needs of the universe they live in. Ian
also comes to realize that he has not accidentally achieved this
expanded reality perception.
The Sisterhood to which Katerina belongs has historically assisted
the Collective Consciousness to heal a rift that threatens us all
when it occurs. Since antiquity, when called by the Collective, they
have performed a ritual to bring together two individuals from
disparate realities but one spirit, a member of their order and a
second person who has received a chosen message from the Collective.
Unaware of any such communication, Ian is that second individual at
this time in history.
Q) What is the “rift” that your characters are to resolve?
A) The rift in the Collective Consciousness of the book is
just as in our everyday world . . . a growing disassociation that people
have from other people, the earth we live in, other life forms,
disassociation between their own thoughts and the physical results.
Q) As the book begins, Katerina is seeking the Union. What is
this Union?
A) The Union is a term used by the mythology of Katerina’s
order to refer to an individual outside their primary reality who is
the Spirit Mate of the understudy of the Crone Mother during a time
of a rift in the Collective Consciousness. The solution to the rift
is bringing the Union and the understudy together to realize they
are of one spirit, one true love, thereby bonding over the span
between their separate worlds and healing the rift.
Q) What do you mean by “one true love in its infinite
expressions”?
A) I mean there is one connection, above all others, that can
make us feel whole, like our full selves.
Do you think what happens to Ian and Katerina is really possible?
A) Yes, I believe the experiences that define and affect our
lives frequently exceed the confines of what is readily acceptable
by the purely logical mind.
Q) How did the book come about?
A) It started as a casual conversation my wife, Kathy, and I
were having.
At the time, I had just begun to write short stories to
prepare myself to return to several novels that I had left
unfinished for some time. Sacred Vow was to be the third of these
exercises, but it had greater ambitions. Three times it grew beyond
my five thousand word limit. I started later in the story and
continued. Finally, I accepted that this story would be a novel and
followed where it wanted to lead.
Q) What was it like writing this book?
A) The initial story had a mind of its own. Once I was
willing to accept it as a novel and not a short story, it came quite
fast. My daytime job got downsized, so I started writing full time.
For 3 weeks I would write 10-12 hrs a day. It was like meditating
all the while I followed this story.
Q) What do you want readers to get out of reading Sacred Vow – or
take from the story?
A) With any luck, maybe the story will urge people to consider
the possibility that we are all one and interacting with/affecting
even individuals we are not aware of. We all need to respond to the
call to allow this world to remain an environment conducive to
living, not only surviving.
Mostly I hope the book will be a mantra, to bring people to their
own truth.
Q) If the book is intended to deliver a message, why do you chose
to write fiction?
A) I see fiction not as a “non-truth”, but as a possible
means to induce the reader into comfortably ‘allowing’ their
personal truth—a living, ever progressing truth, fit to their need
at any given time—as opposed to a truth dictated outside themselves
and rigid.
Q) Can we expect a sequel? Does Ian and Katerina’s story
continue?
A) Before Sacred Vow made itself known to me I was in the
process of working my way through a novel about a couple in a
different kind of a paranormal relationship.
Q) Do you have other books?
A) About 5 more in various stages of completion and about
twice that many that are merely in the conceptual stages.
Q) Do you have a message or philosophy that you are trying to get
out? Or are inclined to present?
A) I don’t believe I have any idea that I am trying to get
out. I see my writing as a method of my own learning of something
that comes to me through the solitary practice. Publishing the
result allows me a second stage of learning from the material when
the readers share with me what they perceived from the work.
My personal beliefs may well include what is found in
the book. I may have held the belief for some time, or I may have
only come to be aware of it during the writing of the book.
Q) What is your personal philosophy?
A) At this time?
Q) At this time…
A) I use to search for “the one truth”. The closest I have
ever encountered for me is:
1) Truth is defined by the perceiver. What is salvation to one is
poison to another.
2) Truth is but a resting place until the next revelation. [From
Strike a Chord of Silence, C.G. Walters]
3) In the mind of the Absolute, every ‘truth’ is true, false, both
true and false simultaneously, neither true nor false, all and none of the above. In the human
mind concepts are segmented into subjective categories like truth
and non-truth. In an intelligence so vast as to be able to create a
forest, I do not believe one could dare imagine it would be so
limited to 'either/or'.
"Sacred Vow
is a metaphysical novel about a man who responds to the
mysterious call of a woman, opening the way to redefinition of
both himself and his understanding of the world around him. He
takes his first steps on a journey to accept the world around
him as a place to live, not simply a place to survive
day-to-day. Sacred Vow is both a narrative and the means for the
author to communicate a positive message about life and fully
integrating the most into each moment. Highly Recommended."
—Midwest
Book Review
"Sacred Vow
shares with us the magic of a loving commitment that spans
time and the understanding that such a commitment needs to
be held sacred."
—Monthly
Aspectarian , Chicago
|
Dragon's Beard
Publishing
