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.

    Prospero was a Hermeticist, probably modeled on the English magus John Dee. As the anonymous author of Meditations on the Tarot wrote, Hermeticists quest for "the communal soul of religion, science and art."

    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 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 Judeo-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

Archives

Add me to your TypePad People list

Your email address:


Powered by FeedBlitz

« Without top-down leadership . . . | Main | Perhaps the essential part »

06 February 2013

Sabbatical over

I'm back from an unannounced sabbatical from Prospero's Books. Thanks to all of you who have checked back in. I hope to post several times a week.

I'm working on a paper on Freemasonry and the Sacred Feminine for the April festive board of my mother lodge, Lodge Vitruvian, in Indianapolis, and I'm taking an online course, Introduction to Complexity, from the Santa Fe Institute. So those subjects may dominate this blog for the next few months.

I need to update the list of recommended websites in the left column, so please send me any corrections or suggestions.

Posted by |

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8345259d069e2017d40d48f0f970c

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Sabbatical over:

Comments

Jay Simser

Bout time you came back! I'm going to recommend three books to you. 1. The Origins of Freemasonry: Scotland's Century ... by Donald Stevenson. Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham and 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann

Posted by: Jay Simser | 06 February 2013 at 17:36

Kenneth W. Davis

Damn, Jay, that was quick! Thanks, and thanks for the suggestions. I've read Stevenson and learned a lot from it. I'll check into the other two.

Posted by: Kenneth W. Davis | 06 February 2013 at 17:59

Verify your Comment

Previewing your Comment

Posted by:  | 

This is only a preview. Your comment has not yet been posted.

Working...
Your comment could not be posted. Error type:
Your comment has been saved. Comments are moderated and will not appear until approved by the author. Post another comment

The letters and numbers you entered did not match the image. Please try again.

As a final step before posting your comment, enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below. This prevents automated programs from posting comments.

Having trouble reading this image? View an alternate.

Working...

Post a comment

Comments are moderated, and will not appear until the author has approved them.

Search Prospero's Books


  • WWW
    www.prosperosbooks.net

Categories

What I've been reading