Review: The Crowned Flame: Illuminated Songs of Becoming by Aroya Wallace

Synopsis:

The Crowned Flame: Illuminated Songs of Becoming What does it mean to become?

Perhaps becoming is not the journey toward someone new, but the quiet return to who we have always been.

The Crowned Flame: Illuminated Songs of Becoming is an illuminated Songbook of poetry, music, and art exploring ancient memory, sacred love, creative imagination, spiritual awakening, and return.

Across seven lyrical movements, these Songs of Becoming journey from the first spark of creation, through forgetting, longing, love, remembrance, and transformation, before returning once more to the quiet landscape of the human heart.

More than a book

This beautifully illustrated hardcover was created as a companion to the recorded album by Aroya Wallace, available on major music streaming platforms.

Each song is accompanied by richly illuminated artwork, inviting readers to pause, reflect, and linger. Whether experienced as poetry, music, or both together, every page offers another doorway into wonder.

Inside you’ll discover

• Seven original illuminated songs

• Full-color companion artwork throughout

• Mystical and inspirational poetry

• Themes of memory, love, imagination, and becoming

• A keepsake edition created for slow, contemplative reading

Perfect for readers who enjoy

• Illuminated poetry

• Mystical literature

• Inspirational verse

• Beautiful gift books

• Sacred art

• Thoughtful reflection

Approach softly.

Listen deeply.

And perhaps remember something beautiful that has always lived within you.

Favorite Lines:

As always with collections such as this one, rather than picking favorite lines, I am picking two of my favorite overall pieces to highlight which were The Seven Gates and Cross Every Veil.

My Opinion:

I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for my honest opinion.

The Crowned Flame is one of those books that is a little difficult to put into a single category. It is poetry, but it is also a songbook, a visual experience, and almost a small mythology of its own. The seven songs are connected by this idea of becoming and remembering: losing pieces of yourself, moving through grief and uncertainty, finding love, and eventually making your way back toward something that feels like home. Wallace actually describes the collection as moving through “forgetting, longing, remembrance, awakening, and return,” and that really is the thread holding everything together.

The first few songs establish the almost mythological feeling of the collection. The Crowned Flame begins on a cosmic scale, with two connected beings separated as one enters a mortal existence and gradually loses the memory of where she came from. That idea of forgetting and remembering becomes one of the strongest threads throughout the book. I Am Becoming brings it inward, focusing more on identity and the feeling of slowly recognizing something within yourself, while The Seven Gates takes the journey through some darker territory. There is grief, shame, old wounds, survival, and the different versions of ourselves we collect along the way. 

I especially enjoyed how the meaning of love changes as the collection goes on. In Cross Every Veil, it initially feels like the story of two souls trying to reach one another despite existing on opposite sides of a physical and spiritual divide. But it gradually becomes less about romance alone and more about what connection can teach us about ourselves. The Queen of the Grove takes that even further by turning toward compassion, grief, and the quieter ways people can care for each other. There is a gentleness to that section that stood out to me, particularly in the way the Queen’s strength comes from offering other people somewhere to rest rather than from having any conventional kind of power. 

The visual presentation is also a huge part of the experience. Nearly every section is surrounded by ornate details and fantasy-inspired artwork filled with stars, flames, forests, glowing landscapes, crowns, and other recurring symbols. It gives the book the feeling of an old illuminated manuscript crossed with a modern fantasy art book. The images aren’t simply illustrations of whatever is happening in the accompanying poem, either. They’re meant to create pauses between the words, and I found myself spending almost as much time looking at some of the artwork as I did reading the actual songs. That slower pace seems very intentional. 

The writing itself is unapologetically spiritual and symbolic, so I don’t think this will necessarily be a collection for everyone. It isn’t particularly interested in grounding its ideas in everyday reality. Instead, Wallace writes about souls, ancient connections, memory, transformation, unseen worlds, and the idea that becoming yourself can sometimes feel more like remembering yourself. There is also quite a bit of repetition, but knowing these were written as songs made that feel much more natural to me. Certain phrases and images return almost like choruses and help connect sections that otherwise have very different moods. The companion album aspect is actually one of the more interesting things about the project because the poems feel designed to exist somewhere between something you read and something you hear.

Summary:

Overall, The Crowned Flame feels more like an experience than a conventional poetry book. There is a surprisingly clear progression underneath all of the dreamlike imagery, moving from separation and forgetting into self-discovery, love, healing, and return. I think it works best when you don’t try too hard to decode every symbol and instead allow the imagery and ideas to wash over you a little. It is unusual, very earnest, and visually beautiful, and I can see it really connecting with readers who already enjoy poetry that has a mystical or meditative quality especially those who enjoy spiritual or metaphysical poetry, mythology and symbolism, visually beautiful books, meditative writing, fantasy-inspired imagery, and poetry collections that tell a larger story across individual pieces. Happy reading!

Check out The Crowned Flame: Illuminated Songs of Becoming here!

---