Ink and Honey is the story of a sacred journey through the medieval French countryside with the sisters of Belle Cœur, a community of radically independent healers, visionaries, mystics and artisans who live by their wits and their prayers. Goscelin, the dedicated scribe, records her sisterhood’s stories, visions and prophecies in her community’s journal while surrounded by holy madness, suspicion and the imminent threat of death at the stake. The sisters guard a life-threatening secret as they navigate spiritual terrain where faith and creative passion forge the way to labyrinths and cathedrals, hidden rooms and honey drenched hives. This book is alive with women’s ancient wisdom and spiritual practices to inform our lives today.
The Author, Sibyl Dana Reynolds
Sibyl Dana Reynolds is a writer, spiritual director and founder of the Sisters of Belle Coeur, a spiritual, contemplative, and creative community.
Endorsements
Sibyl Dana Reynolds offers us a lush and generous gift of storytelling and immersion in the medieval culture of women monks and mystics. Her novel is filled with sensual details that make her writing and the time period come alive, while her story is compelling, drawing the reader always forward. You grow to care deeply about these characters and come to recognize something of yourself in their journeys and longings.
Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, author of The Artist’s Rule: Nurturing Your Creative Spirit with Monastic Wisdom
This is a magnificent and original, mystical, historical novel. It depicts the intense spiritual lives of a group of holy women that struggle in the thirteenth century against great odds to keep alive the ancient matriarchal wisdom. The time has come for the message of the women in this book to pour down upon the world and green its heart again.
Andrew Harvey, author of Radiant Wisdom: Sacred Love and Wisdom in Action
With the soul of a mystic and the voice of a poet, Sibyl Dana Reynolds has scribed a novel of profound grace and beauty. Ink and Honey is a story of deep faith, community and healing, set in a long-ago time but as relevant and urgent as today’s headlines. Not since Mists of Avalon have I been so swept away by a tale of women’s Mysteries. A stunning work, pure and true.
Kathleen Adams, author of Journal to the Self and Scribing the Soul
This sensitive book merges history with the contemporary through the lens of Wisdom. Embodiment, intuition and visionary experience characterize the writing, which is rich in descriptive metaphor. Women’s creative spirituality infuses all the narrative. I recommend this gentle insightful book to all who are interested in the wisdom western societies have marginalized.
This spiritual companion guidebook is an accompaniment for the author’s novel, Ink and Honey. The Way of Belle Coeur: A Woman’s Vade Mecum details the four spiritual pathways of Spirit, Sacrament, Sisterhood, and Service. Readers will also discover four alchemical chambers: Devotion, Craft, Story, and Study. Journal prompts and creative exercises enrich the experience.
Inspired by the Belle Coeur way of life depicted in the story of Ink and Honey, The Way of Belle Coeur is centered within the heart and teachings of the Beloved, Jesus the Christ, and the Sacred Feminine, Wisdom Sophia.
Iconotypal portraits of the characters of Ink and Honey invite personal archetypal/iconotypal reflection. Woven throughout the book are the stories and wisdom of the contemporary Sisters of Belle Coeur.
Additional inspiration is provided through seasonal reflection, a lexicon of symbols and vocabulary, and prayers and personal sacraments for everyday and special occasions. This is a book for the woman who is seeking spiritual and creative enrichment.
The reader is encouraged to journal and craft her Belle Coeur Sacred Wisdom Codex. Detailed guidance is provided.
The Way of Belle Coeur: A Woman’s Vade Mecum offers a cosmology that is spiritual and practical, creative and evolutionary. This book invites the reader to become a sacred life-artisan and to make an inner pilgrimage to discover the beauty and sacred wisdom of Belle Coeur…the Beautiful Heart.
Visit the author’s website for further information.
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