#thequantumyth

Dedication

For Ray — my wife and best friend, whose grace is beauty itself. And for her Resonant, Alaru, whom my own, Eyodi, shall one day meet beyond death, as we voyage together, one-way, to the Chamber of Vynth, forever unfettered at last, interwoven individual tales to one day become a Resonant Mythsource all their own. 

Thank you for your deep patience and grace through the long years of madness it took to bring The Quantumyth into being. 

Special Thanks to the Author’s Heroes (in no particular order)

a.k.a “ingredients list”

Joseph Campbell, Stanisław Szukalski, J.R.R. Tolkien, Hayao Miyazaki, Fumito Ueda, Guillermo Del Toro, James Cameron, George Lucas, Carl Jung, Yoshitaka Amano, Matt Nava, Douglas Adams, Mike Mignola, Ralph McQuarrie, Doug Chiang, Jenova Chen, Michael Ende, Ursula K. Le Guin, Stephen King, C.S. Lewis, Frank Herbert, Jack Chalker, Isaac Asimov, Peter Jackson, Philip K. Dick, Akira Kurosawa, Nobuo Uematsu, Terrence Malick, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Kahlil Gibran, H.P. Lovecraft, J.K. Rowling, Neil Gaiman, Brian Froud, Terri Windling, Alan Lee, John Howe, Kazuo Koike, Enya, Osamu Tezuka, Moebius (Jean Giraud), Jim Henson, Kentaro Miura, Hironobu Sakaguchi, Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch, Alex Garland, Denis Villeneuve, Christopher Nolan, Greta Gerwig, Andrei Tarkovsky, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Naomi Novik, Richard Adams, Alan Moore, Dave McKean, Terry Gilliam, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, Fyodor Dostoevsky, William Blake, H.P. Lovecraft, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Tove Jansson, Georges Hergé Remi,  Beatrix Potter, T.H. White, Edgar Allan Poe, John Keats, William Shakespeare, Rumi, Hafiz, Laozi, Siddhartha Gautama, Herman Hesse, Carl Sagan, Leonardo da Vinci, Nikola Tesla, Ru Weerasuriya, Stephen Hawking, Amy Hennig, Noam Chomsky, Gustav Klimt, Salvador Dalí, Hieronymus Bosch, Yoko Taro, Hidetaka Miyazaki, Hideo Kojima, Shigeru Miyamoto, Rael Lyra, Satoshi Kon, Hideaki Anno, Mamoru Oshii, Makoto Shinkai, Katsuhiro Otomo, Hajime Isayama, Junji Ito, Anne Rice, Robert Jordan, Gene Wolfe, Janny Wurts,  N.K. Jemisin, Kathryn Lasky,  Brandon Sanderson, Patrick Rothfuss, Clive Barker, Iain M. Banks, Iain McCaig, Octavia E. Butler, Margaret Atwood, Ray Bradbury, David Bowie, Peter Gabriel, Mike Oldfield, Loreena McKennitt, Howard Shore, David Attenborough, John Williams, Yoko Kanno, Takeshi Furukawa, Austin Wintory, Koji Kondo, Mastodon, Tool, Skyforger, Jeff Jordan, Eyvind Earle

⸻

Special Thanks to these works (in no particular order)

a.k.a. “would-be siblings list”

The Last Guardian, 1001 Nights, Kalevala, Prose Edda, The Silmarillion, The Bhagavad Gita, The Popol Vuh, The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Divine Comedy, The Odyssey, The Iliad, Beowulf, The Book of Revelation, The Tao Te Ching, Journey to the West, The Upanishads, The Mahabharata, The Ramayana, The Book of the Dead, Metamorphoses (Ovid), The Mabinogion, The Táin, The Red Book (Jung), The Pathless (Nava), The Holy Mountain (film), The Hero with a Thousand Faces, The Left Hand of Darkness, The Earthsea Cycle, Dune, Foundation, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, The Book of Imaginary Beings, My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water, Avatar, Star Wars, Alien, The Terminator, The Matrix, Cloud Atlas, Arrival, Interstellar, Waking Life, The Fountain, Blade Runner, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Dark Souls, The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy VI, Shadow of the Colossus Journey (Chen), Bloodborne, Sekiro, Elden Ring, NieR: Automata, Okami, Chrono Trigger, The Little Prince, Watership Down, The Plague Dogs, The Book Thief, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, The Neverending Story, The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, Mythago Wood, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Screwtape Letters, A Wizard of Earthsea, The Once and Future King, The Book of Lost Tales, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Fall of Gondolin, Unfinished Tales, Berserk, Akira, Nausicaä (manga), Monstress, Sandman, Hellboy, Saga, East of West, The Arrival (Shaun Tan), The Invention of Hugo Cabret, The Prophet, The Art Spirit

The Man Who Planted Trees, Seth Speaks,  The Cloud of Unknowing, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Zen in the Art of Archery, The Way of the Pilgrim, House of Leaves, The Dhammapada, The Book of Hours, The Secret Teachings of All Ages, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Alchemist (Coelho), The Electrum Archive, The Incal

Chapter 1 - The Vast Harmony, Aeva Ranur

In the time before time, and the space before space, there was The Vast Harmony — an unbroken field of stillness beyond stillness, an endless repose untouched by moment or meaning. It was not darkness, for there was no light to contrast it; nor was it silence, for no sound had yet stirred to define its absence. It was the equilibrium before concept, the breath never taken. No shape moved within it, for there was no ‘within’. It simply was, and in its being, it lacked nothing — not because all was present, but because nothing was required.

Yet here, we must pause. For we humans are not timeless. We are not beings of stillness or formless peace. We are creatures of question, of the urgency of mortality, shaped by endings and beginnings. Restless in the marrow of our bones. We therefore cannot dwell in the Vast Harmony, for it is not built for us. And so, by sheer necessity, the story must move — not because it must, but because we must. Our tale shifts now, not arbitrarily like the myths that speak of divine whimsy, of things coming into being ‘just because’…but because we are here, creator and beholder alike… 

This is myth shaped by witness.