The Green Lioness Devouring the Sun
A book about becoming capable, seeing the world differently, and choosing better ways to move through life.
Blending personal narrative, philosophy, psychology, history and socialite critique, The Green Lioness Devouring the Sun explores the beliefs, relationships and systems that shape human life.
It asks what it means to grow beyond dependency, take responsibility for ourselves, remain open to intimacy, and participate consciously in the world around us.
About the Book
We inherit maps of the world long before we are capable of examining them. Ideas about morality, success, relationships, sexuality, health, religion and society enter our lives through family, culture and institutions. Some guide us well. Others quietly limit what we believe is possible.
The Green Lioness Devouring the Sun is an exploration of what happens when those inherited maps are brought into the light.
Through personal experience and wider inquiry, Wayne Skinner examines the movement from dependence toward maturity, from fear toward connection, and from passive observation toward meaningful participation. The book considers the importance of reason and scientific thinking while recognising that human beings cannot be understood through logic alone. We are also shaped by touch, affection, desire, community, imagination and the search for meaning.
At its centre is a belief that personal growth carries responsibility. Once we become more capable, the question is no longer only what we can achieve for ourselves, but what stability, courage and care we can bring into the lives of others.
Themes explored
Growth and Maturity
How capability is developed over time—and why genuine understanding cannot be rushed or transferred without effort.
Freedom and Responsibility
Why personal liberty must be joined with consideration for the lives, bodies and dignity of others.
Reason and Paradigms
How inherited beliefs shape perception, and how scientific curiosity and intellectual honesty allow us to revise our maps.
The Systems Around Us
An examination of the social, political and economic structures that influence human behaviour and wellbeing.
Intimacy and Human Connection
The importance of touch, sexuality, affection and community in a culture increasingly shaped by loneliness and fear.
A Higher Purpose
The possibility of using personal strength not merely for individual success, but to create stability and opportunity for someone we love.
About the author
Wayne Skinner
FounderWayne Skinner is a South African-born writer and quantity surveyor living in Queensland, Australia.
His professional life has centred on measurement, structure, responsibility and the practical realities of how things are built. His writing extends those same concerns into the world of relationships and psychology: he explores how people develop capability, how beliefs shape behaviour, and how stable lives and communities are constructed over time.
He began writing The Green Lioness Devouring the Sun after years of personal reflection, study and lived experience. The book draws on his journey through work, family responsibility, solitude, intimacy and the gradual transformation from observer to participant.
He founded Vilyndia Publishing in 2026 to create a home for work grounded in reason, human freedom, courage and consideration.
Featured extract
The Counter Argument
“Now I know that many counter-enlightenment thinkers have argued against what I am stating. They claim that self-awareness is a mistake of evolution, that the horrors of the world exist because of our alien-like capacity to perceive them. In someways they are right. Our intelligence is also very destructive. Therefore, if the world is so terrible, why are we still going about our days as if it’s not? We’re just ignoring it, right?
The truth is, I am not always ignoring it. I stare into the face of evil and recognise something uncomfortable, the capacity for it exists within me as well. The same human nature that allows us to create beauty also contains the potential for great evil. I am capable of anger. Of wrath. Of harm. But the point is not that I am those things. The point is that I know they are there. And because I know they are there, I can choose to contain them. I can choose to create peace rather than conflict and suffering. If both potentials exist within me, does that make me a problem to be solved? No. It makes me human. We are strange creatures. Yet many people fall into simplistic dichotomies, pretending that humans are either good or evil, rather than integrating the full reality of what we are.
My response is not reactive. It is a choice, a choice to face the brutal reality of what being human entails. For someone to then ask “why must it be this way?!” in protest is like asking why the planets orbit the sun, or why the moon affects the tides. The better question is “how?” To understand first. To listen to the Universe. Don’t try so hard to impose your own reasons for why reality is the way it is. It simply is. There are some things we will never know. And you can’t do much about that. The Sun will continue to pull us with it.
So in that sense, we are questioned by life. And I think we respond as best we can by creating more heaven and less hell, because both exist right here, right now. At its best, self-awareness allows us to defend ourselves from horrors before they occur. Knowing that danger, trauma and suffering are possible - makes us ready for it. More importantly it allows us to prepare and potentially avoid it. I’m not here to convince you that existence is a fairytale. But I can tell you this: things only get worse when we give in to nihilism and extreme counter-enlightenment thinking.”