The Winter Holidays have always occupied a special place and time and carried special significance in many of the traditions and cultures that make up the fabric of humankind.
Even in the most disenchanted and decadent modern societies where the fabric has been torn or disfigured beyond recognition, the Winter Holidays persist against all the odds, still bringing family and friends together in the sharing of gifts, music, food, symbols, and conversation. The grand simplicity and simple greatness of such moments leads us to reflect on the meaning of life in which anything like Holidays and gatherings of generations can happen and mean something to us to begin with. We can meaningfully celebrate and participate in the Winter Holidays because holy-days are an inseparable part of who we are and who we are meant to be in the world(s) in which we find ourselves.
One of the most encouraging developments of recent years has been the thirst to rediscover the ancient, sacred, and initiatic qualities of the Winter Holiday traditions. Long buried underneath putrid heaps of commercial advertising, consumerism, and superficial aesthetics, the Holidays’ great ancient symbols, myths, and rites are being excavated, discussed, celebrated, and re-enlivened. Between so many different interpretations and traditions, what is most significant is that these rediscoveries, interpretations, and traditions are happening — in and through us, instead of nothing or no-one. To bring (re)discoveries to the world is one of the missions that defines such a strange, liminal, fateful entity like a book publishing house in our strange, liminal, fateful time.
As a small but growing, young yet maturing, and unwaveringly independent yet conscientiously corresponding publishing house — whose contributors and authors hail from multiple continents, countries, and traditions —, we at PRAV Publishing are beholding the Winter Holidays of Christmas and Yule with an overpowering sense of gratefulness and motivation.
We are ineffably thankful for the blessings of our readers and supporters who make possible the unpredictable, delicate, and sometimes dangerous vocation that bringing ideas and books to the world is.
We are truly grateful for our authors who dare to think and write and in turn place their trust in us to bring their thinking and writing to countless known and unknown readers around the world.
Your engagement with PRAV is the greatest gift we could possibly ask for. Our gift to you is always, constantly in the making: a library of diverse and unique works which encourage us to radically rethink and re-experience the cosmos and the chaos in which we find ourselves as well as the very “selves” that the powers-that-be don’t want us to find.
Together, our exchange of these priceless gifts is a mutual sacrifice for the sake of something greater than all of us. Every PRAV book, in being thought, written, published, purchased, received, gifted, read, and re-thought and re-experienced, is a holiday, a festival, an Event in which so many people are called and invited to participate.
Bowing in reverent thanks to our authors, readers, supporters, and friends, and standing up in continued commitment to bringing forth momentous works, we at PRAV behold a glimpse of the Great Star directing us onward into the beckoning unknown, inspiring us to travel ever further and to translate and publish ever more. We look back upon what we have seen through thus far, we look around at so much that shows itself as still waiting to be done, and we dare to peer forth into what is to come. Like distant ancestors communing to behold the waning and anticipated resurgence of the Sun on the Winter Solstice, we at PRAV are pleased and honored to find ourselves faithfully anticipating and participating in a New Beginning alongside you.
May this year’s holidays bring luminous, inspiriting, and joyful tidings to you and yours — past, present, and future.
Amor fati.
Sincerely,
Jafe Arnold
Editor-in-Chief,
PRAV Publishing
24 December 2023