'A RETURN AFLAME' - BARZAKH E-ZINE #1

**BARZAKH invites artists and writers to submit works responding to the theme 'A Return Aflame', exploring the hidden self, refuge, and transformation. Open to all disciplines: visual art, sound, writing, and mixed media. No AI-generated work accepted. Selected works will be featured in BARZAKH’s first online e-zine with an accompanying interview.**

BARZAKH is a genderless avant-garde jewelry brand based in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. For the first edition of BARZAKH’s e-zine, we invite artists, writers, and creatives across disciplines to respond to the theme of our upcoming collection: 'A Return Aflame'.

**THEME:** This issue delves into the metaphysical cycle of becoming through refuge - the act of seeking shelter not within, but beyond the self. It contemplates the birth of the hidden self, a being not buried within us but orbiting around our existence - an astral counterpart, a celestial double that calls us home. In this vision, refuge is a celestial return: If the hidden self is not inside, then to seek refuge in it is not to retreat inward, but to ascend outward, to meet the distant, eternal “other.”

A pilgrimage around one’s own essence.

A reunion with the divine stranger.

This concept draws from Gnostic and Sufi metaphysics, where the soul, or 'ruh', is seen as a spark estranged from its source, yearning for reunion. The hidden self is not a shadow beneath, but a body beyond. It seeks us as much as we seek it.

**SOME KEY PHRASES TO CONSIDER:** eternal flesh - birth into paradox - umbilical - limbo haze - half light - swell of hunger - safe haven - eternal - birth - transformation