Poetry and art from the new gift for lovers book 'Eros' by Paul Sardanas and H. Samarel
Two of the foremost creators of modern erotica, poet R. Paul Sardanas and artist H. Samarel, combine their vision in Eros: The Divinity of Passion. The reader will be taken on a sensual journey that is far more than an expression of the beauty of the human body; this book plunges deep into the soul, exploring loneliness and need, exaltation, fulfillment, and the glory of sexual feelings that ascend to approach the divine. A book for lovers…and also for lovers of the passionate truths that only the finest artists can illuminate.
"Spirituality and sexuality are long overdue for a re-connection. Somehow in
modern life those two great sources of passion have fallen into conflict. There
was a time when respect for the Sacred Feminine was a way of life. Down
through history, even patriarchal cultures like that of ancient Rome had a
place for the concept of Bona Dea—the Good Goddess—a figure suffused
with life, and linked with the pleasures of sexuality. Before that, in the
Egyptian personifications of Isis and Osiris, sex was celebrated as an
experience leading to resurrection and the soul’s immortality.
Contrast that to today, where demonized sex is presented over and over in
terms of negativity: lust is a vice, nudity shameful…the hungers of the body
considered to be violent things, to be tamed in the name of decency. Needless
to say, we don’t agree with that vision of passion.
Throughout our separate careers in the arts, we have championed the beauty
of sexual feelings. The glory of the flesh when set alight with fires of the soul.
In this book we explore that, shaping a journey that moves from loneliness
and isolation to the reclamation of sexual power, to the tempering and
humanizing of that power. The lovers we portray are framed in both darkness
and light—ultimately, we hope, finding balance.
That we chose a woman for the embodiment of that journey is done in full
awareness that our perceptions as men will be tested—carried far into waters
that echo the ocean-deep strength of the Sacred Feminine. And if the images
burn brightly enough to even partly illuminate those waters, then so too can
we join our lovers in journeys of transcendence; incandescent in our desires
and their fulfillment; crowned with fiery halos; finding heaven, in each other’s
arms."
