Tag Archives: David Madsen

A Box of Dreams

Hermetic Library fellow T Polyphilus reviews A Box of Dreams by David Madsen from Dedalus:

David Madsen's A Box of Dreams from Dedalus

 

Madsen writes a looping dream in which famous psychoanalysts, confessional perverts, ubiquitous anxieties, persistent hungers, and erotic longings weave together convincingly for the reader and the nameless narrator.

Choice quote: “Inside the packed cathedral all was sweet odors, cool shadows, the glint and glimmer of gold, the shy presence of the numinous amid the interplay of darkness and light; polychrome saints looked down from their lofty niches: St Parthexus with his gilded phallus, St Romo and the blind lion, St Averina carrying her lacerated breasts on a silver platter; votive candles winked before gaudy shrines; above the High Altar was suspended a huge icon of the Keys-in-Triplicate, wreathed in the smoke of ambergris, rosemary, cedarwood and myrtle. Great shafts of air bisected the tenebrous interior, their passage and dispersal echoing the whispered supplications of a thousand worshippers. Ranks of gorgeously-robed acolytes were already assembled on the marble sanctuary, which was inlaid with lozenges of onyx and porphyry.” [via]

 

 

The Hermetic Library Reading Room is an imaginary and speculative future reification of the library in the physical world, a place to experience a cabinet of curiosities offering a confabulation of curation, context and community that engages, archives and encourages a living Western Esoteric Tradition. If you would like to contribute to the Hermetic Library Reading Room, consider supporting the library or contact the librarian.

Memoirs of a Gnostic Dwarf

Hermetic Library fellow T Polyphilus reviews Memoirs of a Gnostic Dwarf by the pseudonymous David Madsen, from Daedalus Limited:

David Madsen's Memoirs of a Gnostic Dwarf from Daedalus Limited

 

Surprisingly and delightfully, this novel is exactly what the title promises. Set in the early 16th century e.v., it consists of the memoirs of a dwarf serving as a chamberlain in the court of Leo X, the Medici pope. The book recounts his rescue from his impoverished origins by a post-Catharist Gnostic underground, and his subsequent involvement in various intrigues. The rituals of the Gnostic Brotherhood are beautifully rendered and worthwhile reading in their own right. Everything in the text, including vivid episodes of carnality, spirituality, and atrocity, seems calculated to illustrate the philosophical premises of the Gnostic creed embraced by the narrator.

E.G.C. members will find that the historical aspects of the story provide a context for our Gnostic saints Alexander VI and Ulrich von Hutten—both of whom are the subjects of incidental and unflattering references.

The publisher notes that “Madsen” is the nom de plume of a religious scholar who specializes in studies of Gnosticism. The author has clearly taken on the literary mode in order to give play to his most detailed speculations about Gnostic continuation, and has in the process created a marvelous piece of art. [via]

 

 

The Hermetic Library Reading Room is an imaginary and speculative future reification of the library in the physical world, a place to experience a cabinet of curiosities offering a confabulation of curation, context and community that engages, archives and encourages a living Western Esoteric Tradition. If you would like to contribute to the Hermetic Library Reading Room, consider supporting the library or contact the librarian.