Ink & Honey
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.
Reviews of Ink and Honey
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 Lectio Divina―The Sacred Art: Transforming Words & Images into Heart-Centered Prayer
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.
Rev. Prof. June Boyce Tillman, University of Winchester, UK. author of The Creative Spirit
The Way of Belle Cœur: A Woman’s Vade Mecum
The Way of Belle Cœur: A Woman’s Vade Mecum, is Sibyl Dana Reynolds’ companion book for her award-winning novel, Ink and Honey. This Vade Mecum of spiritual and creative wisdom and practices draws from the tenets of Belle Cœur spirituality as described in the story of Ink and Honey.
The two books (when read and studied in tandem) offer a feminine cosmology and a sacred template represented as an equidistant cross enclosed within a circle. The template incorporates four pathways: Spirit, Sacrament, Sisterhood and Service and four alchemical chambers: Devotion, Craft, Study, and Story. The pathways and chambers surround the compass at the center, the Beloved, Jesus the Christ (Belle Coeur, meaning Beautiful Heart. The circle that encompasses the template represents Wisdom Sophia, the Sacred Feminine and the whole of Creation.
The cherished Belle Cœur sisters depicted in the pages of Ink and Honey including Goscelin, Beatrice, Petronilla and others, are presented in The Way of Belle Coeur as iconotypes. They share their postscripts and inner self-portraits to inspire your sacred imagination. You will also find an outline and guidance to discover your personal iconotypal self-portrait.
Additionally, seasonal inspiration and a perpetual Belle Coeur calendar provide inspirational guidance, prayers, and journal prompts throughout the year. The “Oratory” section of the book provides prayers, sacraments, and other inspiration for your creative heart and spirit.
This book may be experienced as a personal inner pilgrimage of discovery or shared as a group or community study. The Way of Belle Cœur: A Woman’s Vade Mecum is a spiritual and creative guidebook of ancient wisdom made new for contemporary life.