Cista Mystica Press is established to publish the work and ideas of Dr. Martin Shaw and a select group of authors. Its concerns range from mythopoetics, romanticism, philosophy, magic, folklore to initiatory encounters with wilderness. The press believes that eros can be the bedfellow of rigour, and that all these areas have something essential to contribute to the state of our times..

Cista Mystica is a byre of learning, writing, listening and speaking. Some of the learning will come with dismay, at other times easily, maybe even joyfully. We are making a den of books and sounds you can read and listen to again and again.

Are we Romantics? Hell yes. Naive, no. We know what time it is culturally, we are fully aware of the state of things ecologically. But this is not, as the Sufis say, a Caravan of Despair. We don’t roll like that. We are in the business of resistance and delight. Victory is not conditional to this position, old world manners are.

Some of our influences are: Geronimo, Virginia Woolf, Torquay sea front, Kate Bush, The Song of Songs and Howlin’ Wolf.

There is a core team of myself, Lucy Cooper and Michael Martin. I also paint and draw, so the press will be a home for that too. Also audio will be a big thing. We may take on a few other authors over time.

Why Books?

Because of the wondrous interiority of them. The turn to the deep. When life is porcupine quills in the kidneys, books dramatically or quietly intervene. Suddenly we are on horseback in the Altai mountains not Staines job centre on a Monday morning. They smell good, they feel good in the hand, and most of all we can underline stuff, or give them away as beautifully personal gifts. I can’t understand any western home unless it has books in it. All that compressed imagination, all that liberty, all that snorting rumpus between the covers. They are indecent really. Erotic. I involuntarily wave – shyly – every time I pass a library.

Books save us

I read Alan Garner and Susan Cooper when I was ten and my whole mind was filled with light. I could literally climb into their worlds and be restored. Yehuda Amichai and Nazim Hikmet continue that restoration. We all have such lists.

These days to tell a beautiful old tale is a radical act, both graceful and libellous, it pushes your nature out and into things: Prussian blue paint and synagogue doors, and the wise whorls on the fingers of the old woman who lives in the furthest cottage. It makes us deeper.

You may be able to tell by now, we’re not just trying to sell you stuff.
Whatever is truest, and deepest, and most complete in this endeavour may rouse something in you too.

It’s the best kind of infectious magic.

There are plenty of other folk to speak sensibly. But these are not sensible times.

We invite all magical people to come enjoy our stuff.

Onwards!