Product Description
David Chaim Smith has been known to students of kabbalah for more than a decade, but a recent return to art as a vocational practice has brought his work to a wider audience. His first book with us, The Sacrificial Universe, draws upon his experience to present us with a devotional approach to ecstatic visionary mysticism. Ranging from intellectual treatises on sacred geometry, biomorphism and the symbol of the serpent in kabbalistic theory and practise, to a poetic twilight language of ecstatic devotion, The Sacrificial Universe is unlike any other book we have offered to date.
Produced as a lavish small folio with generous margins and a classic typographic style, The Sacrificial Universe presents David’s key artworks of the last four years as full-page images, with the triptychs and quadriptych offered as folding plates. The complex and evocative iconographic symbolism is also explored through commentaries. And yet The Sacrificial Universe is more than a homage to those seventeenth century books of hermetic mysticism. Structured according to the classic kabbalistic text Sefer Yetzirah, The Sacrificial Universe may be approached on three levels (world, year, and soul) to offer the reader a view of gnostic surrender within a vision of the self-consuming nature of phenomena.
lh23 (verified owner) – :
I ordered this book last week and it arrived in four days (two after the conformation email). The small pictures on the website do not do the sheer quality of the printing of the pictures justice. These drawings are in pencil and you can see literally (and yes i am using it correctly) every individual pencil stroke that makes up these art works. To describe this as a “standard edition” is self effacing to the point of insulting to the author and the people who worked so hard to produce and print this book which is a piece of ART in itself. As i’ve only had it for a few days i can’t go into much detail on the written content, suffice to say that the first chapter chimes with my personal research of the the past 26 years but has already given me much food for thought.
Included with my book(my first order) were three postcards printed by Fulgur and a little booklet on the history of Fulgur. Thanks very much for these freebies. I have recommended this publisher to my friends.
ajl – :
The Sacrificial Universe elucidates a world foreign to most people. Like Blake’s Job, Freher’s Boheme, or the more interesting 17th century alchemical manuscripts, the images invite us to interact with them and immerse ourselves within. David’s Kabbalah is centered around the concept of radical unity. Esoteric symbols function like pregnant living currency through which spiritual development becomes possible. These are esoteric schematics that outline different aspects of gnostic aspiration and realization. They also contain snippets of ecstatic poetry as well as detailing innumerable symbolic relationships, associations, and attributions, all distilled through the incredible mind of this unique and gifted inspirational teacher and artist. The book makes clear that realization is possible, but there’s a price. The production of the book is itself, like all Fulgur’s books, a work of art, in it’s own right. This is the largest book they have produced to date. I could not recommend it more highly, whatever tradition you’re working in.