GOD - I. DEATH

by Brendan Graham Dempsey

With growing ecological, economic, and political instability, one wonders how long things can continue as they are. Don't we seem overdue for some fundamental restructuring of our systems? Our society? Ourselves? What other worlds are possible? In his project, the Icon , Brendan Graham Dempsey is imagining a future civilization through its canon of sacred scriptures. This multi-media work-incorporating writing (in various genres), illustration and music-will offer a glimpse into an imagined culture, an entire tradition of myths, rituals, songs and ceremonies, philosophy, criticism and commentary. And just as every civilization has its epic literature, so GOD , a 500-page pentameter poem written by a mysterious figure named Julian, is theirs. DEATH is the first installment in the GOD trilogy. It takes as its subject the last myth with any real currency in secular The Death of God . What the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche had ominously alluded to, Julian's first poem chronicles in dramatic detail, enlarging the haunting philosophical myth to 125 pages of industrial war in Heaven. We hear it all from Joel, a former angel who sided with the insurrectionists after Heaven failed him. Singing on his mandolin by the grave of God, Joel offers his account of God's death in memory of a final song to eulogize Spirit. From the ancient origins of religion, then, to the modern disenchantment of the world, Joel narrates the West's epochal transformation, overseen and led by an iconoclastic intellectual named John Faust. The fallout from this existential war, and the personal quest it sets in motion for the speaker, will be taken up in the poem's sequels, DESCENT and RESURRECTION . GOD is presented in the form of a critical edition by this culture's future scholars. In addition to Julian's poem, then, are over 150 pages of supplementary material. This

294 pages, Hardcover

Published January 3, 2019

About the author

Brendan Graham Dempsey is a writer whose work focuses on the meaning crisis and the nature of spirituality in metamodernity.

He earned his BA in Religious Studies from the University of Vermont and his MA in Religion and the Arts from Yale University. ​

He lives in Wolcott, Vermont.