PHOTO: Dipa Sanatani, visionary author and founder of Twinn Swan, channels ancient wisdom through her writing and global experience.
Spirituality Storytelling And The Sacred Feminine
Dipa Sanatani reflects on her literary journey across lifetimes, blending mysticism, spirituality, and cultural insight into stories that challenge tradition and awaken sacred remembrance in the modern world.
Dipa Sanatani writes with the fierce grace of a soul remembering its purpose. Her work pulses with ancient rhythms, yet speaks urgently to the modern spirit, threading the sacred into the everyday with exquisite subtlety. Whether through poetic prose, mystical fiction, or spiritual memoir, she invites readers into a world where storytelling is not mere art—it is ritual, remembrance, and revelation.
In Ink Stained Soul, Sanatani reaches inward and backward—across lifetimes and literary traditions—to uncover the divine undercurrent of rejection and resilience. That same spiritual current winds through The River Empress and Oneness, works that question the boundaries between godhood and girlhood, solitude and connection, silence and speech. Each book is a whisper from the soul, made louder by the courage to listen.
Through the Guardians of the Lore trilogy and her global experiences, Sanatani’s voice becomes a vessel—at once bard and seeker—guiding readers through a universe where every sacred name, every old myth, and every lost civilisation may yet echo a personal truth. In her stories, the divine is not only transcendent; it is remembered, embodied, lived.
How did your experience founding Twinn Swan influence the creation of Ink Stained Soul, especially in exploring themes of rejection and resilience?
Ink Stained Soul is a deeply personal and introspective insight into rejection and resilience. The protagonist is a writer lifetime after lifetime. The naysayers are a necessary ingredient for the flourishment of her creativity, ultimately serving only to strengthen and solidify her conviction.
She writes not only to be read, but to complete the ritual that began millennia ago, in a temple her soul can still vividly remember. Every lifetime, she starts a new story, but it is always the continuation of the ancient ritual. The book is a testament to how the most powerful spiritual forces emerge from an unseen power.
The founding of Twinn Swan was a conscious intervention—a way to participate in the unending story of cultural continuity. Its founding much like the migration of an ancient river and part of a larger pattern of consciousness travelling through the world.
The River Empress is a book that is close to your heart. What changed within you after you finished penning down this work of prose-poetry?
In my book, the protagonist is abandoned at birth for being born a girl. As the story stretches on, it comes to pass that she was a blessing to her adoptive parents and broader society because she was exceptionally gifted.
Countless societies have been worshipping women as Goddesses since time immemorial. But when it comes to honouring the women in their lives, a huge mental block and barricade suddenly rears its ugly head.
Even as spiritual traditions elevate women, revering and honouring them, cultural norms and traditional gender roles rooted in patriarchy continue to marginalise half the population. Writing this book helped me to come to peace with this contradiction.
Your prose poetry debut Oneness examines solitude and intimacy—what inspired that exploration of human connection beyond religious dogma?
Divine whispers emanate from the soul. Spirituality is felt as an intimate, elusive presence—one that invites a personal, visceral and direct experience of the sacred. It’s less about doctrine and more about subtle moments when something deeper awakens from within one’s own depths.
Growing up in multicultural Singapore, I experienced diverse cultures and places of worship. My education in Christian schools and studies in Jerusalem deepened my understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition, leading me to appreciate the Oneness of the Divine within and beyond religion.
Illuminator centres on environmental consciousness and the Green Man—how does nature shape your spiritual narrative within this novel?
This book encapsulated my longing to depict the Divine Masculine. When it comes to the masculine archetype, we tend to focus on the shadow traits of male energy—authority, power and dominance. We downplay and even diminish that when male energy is expressed in a positive manner, it is creative, regenerative and protective.
In my story, the Old Oak represents the patriarch who dominates, hoards and exploits. The stag, however, is the true leader who protects and provides. The tension between these two archetypes represents our own consciousness with regards to Nature…
Your book A Thousand Names uses symbolism from the natural world to explore mystical truths. In your view, how does nature guide humanity toward true abundance, beyond material wealth?
Since war is a prominent theme, I drew on the 108 names of Mother Lakshmi, the Hindu Goddess of Fortune. Why have humans fought wars? The reasons touted may be many, but it has almost always been over wealth. We may claim that there are ideological reasons to go to war, but ultimately, the primary reason is almost always wealth.
This practice of going to war is not true abundance. The true abundance, your true treasure, is the treasure of the soul. It is, ultimately, this treasure that mystics go in search for. It seems that some even find it!
The Guardians of the Lore trilogy consists of three interconnected books. What unifying thread runs through all three, binding them together into a single narrative?
The trilogy is united by the profound theme of continuity across existence—the idea that life persists in new forms even though individual lifetimes are transitory. Souls carry memories, relationships, and karma from one lifetime to the next. For those who accept the possibility of past lives, every ancient city, every lost civilisation, and every historical moment in time is a landscape where one might have walked before, in another lifetime.
This perspective invites readers to view history as a living tapestry… to see themselves as both witnesses and participants in the grand story of life. The true guardian of lore is the enduring journey of the soul itself, forever returning, forever evolving and forever fulfilling its soul destiny.
In Divinely Destined, your bard exemplifies sacred storytelling across time and tradition. How did your time in Singapore, Israel, Australia, Japan, and China influence this exploration, and what can other writers learn about blending spirituality and modern life from your approach?
My global experiences have taught me that religion and spirituality cannot simply be bound to tradition. They migrate and evolve, much like the people who imbue, carry and continue them. In Divinely Destined, I draw from this deep well of encounters to create stories that feel both ancient and immediate, rooted in tradition yet vibrantly contemporary.
Modern sacred literature thrives when writers are open to the world’s living traditions. The most compelling narratives emerge from a willingness to journey—both physically and imaginatively—across boundaries, to listen to the voices of the past and present, and to trust that the sacred can be found wherever stories are told with a timeless soul.
