Prospero's Books: The rent you pay to live in the house of life

About this blog

In Shakespeare's The Tempest, Prospero, Duke of Milan, is ousted by his brother and exiled to an island. With the help of a friend, Prospero manages to take with him his beloved library.

Prospero, like his creator, lived in a time when boundaries between disciplines were not as rigid as they are today. Prospero's books would have dealt with the cosmos—spiritual and material, inner and outer—as a whole.

In this blog, I try to do the same. I'm not Prospero, just a student rummaging through his library and writing in the margins. Prospero's Books is a blog about seeing the world as a whole, by looking at
- signs, especially the relationships between signifiers and what they signify
- stories, especially big-picture stories, such as myths and the works of Dante, Shakespeare, and Joyce
- systems, especially complex, nonlinear systems
- spirit, especially as understood by the Christian and Western esoteric traditions
Welcome! Please join the conversation.

—Kenneth W. Davis

(Note: Although I admire Peter Greenaway's film Prospero's Books, this blog is not directly about that film. )

Who, and Some of What, I Am

06 July 2008

The rent you pay to live in the house of life

In the March 2008 issue of Ode magazine, an interview with French psychiatrist Christophe Andre, author of Vivre Heureux, (How to Lead a Happy Life), includes a list of "Six Lessons for a Happier Life." My favorites are the first and last:

1. Accept that there will be unpleasant things in life. All the time, every day, you'll face hindrances: You'll be too late or make a mistake or say something stupid. It's the rent you pay to live in the house of life. . . .

6. Express your gratitude and respect for the good things you experience. . . . (78)

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What I've been reading

Willis Barnstone: The Restored New Testament
My Lenten reading--a beautifully poetic translation of the New Testament, including the "Gnostic" Gospels of Thomas, Mary Magdalene, and Judas, and with all personal and place names in their original Aramaic, Hebrew, and other ancient languages. The experience is one of reading the books for the first time.
Joscelyn Godwin: The Golden Thread: The Ageless Wisdom of the Western Mystery Traditions
Sixteen brilliant short essays on the Western esoteric tradition, from the ancient Middle East to the 21st century.
Leo Tolstoy: War and Peace
A thrilling read. Who'd have thought?
Tobias Churton: The Invisible History of the Rosicrucians: The World's Most Mysterious Secret Society
A fascinating and well-grounded look at the movement within its historical and philosophical context.
Umberto Eco: Foucault's Pendulum
An almost overwhelming novel of secret societies and those who become lost in them.
Karen Armstrong: The Case for God
An incredibly rich survey of conceptions of God in prehistory and history, making the case that the God-as-a-being attacked by the New Atheists has never until recently been the mainstream view.
Gordon Strachan: The Bible's Hidden Cosmology
An entertainingly odd, beautifully printed volume on the quadrivium--arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy--of the Hebrew and Greek Bibles.
Brian Swimme: The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos: Humanity and the New Story
A brief overview of cosmology, with astonishing experiments for the reader--experiments that make our knowledge of the cosmos visceral.
G. R. S. Mead: The Hymns of Hermes
An essay on "hymns" extracted from the larger Hermetica, and on their similarity to Gnostic Christian writings.
Lon Milo DuQuette: The Key to Solomon's Key: Secrets of Magic and Masonry
A romp through Masonic history and myth, with an amusing suggestion of what the real Masonic secret is.
William Fix: Lake of Memory Rising: Return of the Five Ancient Truths at the Heart of Religion
An enumeration and exploration of five beliefs shared by ancient mystery traditions, with odd but intriguing sidetracks into reincarnation and sacred number.
John H. Westerhoff: A People Called Episcopalians: A Brief Introduction to Our Peculiar Way of Life
A good short introduction to the Episcopal Church, with an emphasis on its basis in scripture, tradition, and reason.
Jay Kinney: The Masonic Myth: Unlocking the Truth About the Symbols, the Secret Rites, and the History of Freemasonry
An excellent introductory survey, second only to Chris Hodapp's Freemasons for Dummies, but with greater attention to Freemasonry's esoteric stream.
Dan Brown: The Lost Symbol
The latest--and I think the best--Robert Langdon thriller, much more favorable toward Freemasonry than almost any of my brothers and I expected.
Robert Lanza: Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe
A pair of widely respected scientists take a splendidly cautious and wondrous look at the possibility that that the universe is "created" by living consciousness.
Duane Elgin: The Living Universe: Where Are We? Who Are We? Where Are We Going?
A sweeping and integrative view of humanity's dangers and potentials, based on a set of fresh metaphors.
Rudolfo Anaya: Bless Me, Ultima
An earthy and mystical coming-of-age novel, the now-distinguished New Mexican writer's first book.
George Johnson: Fire in the Mind: Science, Faith, and the Search for Order
A mind-expanding survey of the nature of order and of many cultures' and disciplines' quest for it--all set in northern New Mexico
Bill Bryson: Shakespeare: The World as Stage
A short, engaging biography by a fellow native Iowan. I recommend it highly.
Homer: The Odyssey
Although I've been teaching Joyce's Ulysses every year, I haven't read Homer's Odyssey since grad school. Fagle's translation is inspired and inspiring.