Selah! Loving the Psalms

This book is a humanist transposition of fifty selected Psalms.

The aim is to liberate these songs of longing and devotion from their religious context, to provide a humanist experience of these intense works liberated from the constraint of religion.

Part of the hope of this work in liberating the Psalms is that there will be other works currently monopolised by religion that can be restored to their human origins, for human beings who will appreciate them on that humble but compelling level.

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Extended Synopsis

Introduction

Selah! Loving the Psalms is a radical re-imagining of fifty selected psalms, transposed from their traditional devotion to God into songs of intimate devotion between human beings, or toward the very concept of Love itself.

The language of scripture is recast as the language of tenderness, grief, longing, rejoicing, and deep reconciliation. It is a book of humane prayer, a meditation on how the sacred might be rediscovered in the human realm, and a song of joyous intermingling with the Lord of Hosts who is simply called: She.

Extended Synopsis

The book comprises fragments of familiar psalms with their address subtly shifted. Instead of speaking to a distant, vengeful God, the psalmist cries out to a beloved, a companion, or to the feminine divine imagined as a loving presence. These reworkings preserve the rhythm and cadence of traditional scripture while opening them to new theological significance.

Across fifty psalms the reader encounters voices of despair and redemption, yearning and comfort. A psalm that once invoked God’s saving power becomes a cry to a loved one whose presence alone can deliver the speaker from anguish. Psalms of thanksgiving become odes to human kindness and fidelity.

The effect is one of radical spiritual intimacy: the psalms transformed into hymns to Love itself, in all its sacred and human dimensions.

These transpositions often employ images of the divine feminine, softening the patriarchal tones of a jealous or wrathful God. In one example, Psalm 107 is rendered:

I cried out to Her in my trouble / And She delivered me out of my distress

As the sequence unfolds, grief and anguish give way to deep consolation, rising again and again in circular return — mirroring the continual cycles of love and loss that shape human life.

Themes and Significance

Transposition of the Sacred: The psalms shift from devotion to a distant God toward a more humane devotion, offering a sustaining sense of the sacred.

Love as Scripture: The work arises from the conviction that human relationships themselves are worthy of scripture, embodying devotion, betrayal, reconciliation, ecstasy, and tenderness.

The Feminine Divine: The psalms introduce feminine divine imagery, unsettling hierarchies and restoring balance. They position themselves as secret psalms to Our Lady the True Tower of the world to come, the Fallen Queen who will rise instantly to save us.

Empathy Training: Echoing one of scripture’s oldest purposes, these psalms train the heart in empathy, openness to suffering, tenderness, generosity, and even — in some moments — tears.

Style and Form

Loving the Psalms retains the brevity and lyrical cadence of the originals, shaped for rhythm and density. The language is plain yet elevated, bridging scripture and lyric into a hybrid genre that feels both ancient and new.

Context in the Author’s Work

This transposition of the psalms serves as both complement and counterpoint to the mythic novels. Where Lupa and Sheolplunge into cosmic struggle, Selah turns inward, suggesting that the sacred is found in the intimacy of love itself.

These transpositions were undertaken before P. Julian fully developed the genre of New Scripture and its rhetorical engine, Hypnogogic (Hyp) Prose. His deep engagement with the psalms offered profound instruction in that form — a style that owes an immense debt to scripture itself.