Joscelyn Godwin's Articles and Minor Writings
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This site contains summaries, commentaries, and links to Godwin's minor writings from 1970 to the present. For the books that he has authored, coauthored, edited, and translated, see his website:
41. “A Behemist Circle in Victorian England.”
The Hermetic Journal 1992: 48-71.
This is another extended investigation of material summarized in The Theosophical Enlightenment. It introduces James Pierrepont Greaves and the Penny and Attwood families, all enthusiastic students of the works of Jacob Boehme, some of whom tried to reconcile theosophic and alchemical doctrines with the practice of animal magnetism or Mesmerism. It was partly based on materials in Dr. Williams’ Library, London, to whose existence Adam McLean had alerted me.
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This was the last issue of the Hermetic Journal, which he founded and edited. For Adam McLean’s many activities, see his website:
42. “Speculative Music: the Numbers behind the Notes.”
In A Compendium of Contemporary Musical Thought, vol. 1, ed. John Paynter et al. (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 246-61.
My first contribution to a musicological publication in ten years, during which I had published five books devoted to “speculative music.” Invited by the editor, this article tries to explain the meaning and importance of that term. It explains the two principal theories for the basis of harmony and the musical system, and some of the esoteric background to them. The contributors to this large-scale enterprise included several of my teachers and contemporaries from Cambridge, including my tutor at Magdalene College, Professor John E. Stevens.
In Voices on the Threshold of Tomorrow, ed. George and Trisha Feuerstein (Wheaton: Quest Books, 1993), 34-36.
This book is a collection of “145 Views on the New Millennium” by supposed authorities, mostly with New Age attitudes. I argue that not everyone is experiencing the same phase of the cosmic cycle, but that some are living as though in the Golden Age of peace and plenty, while others are suffering the worst of the Iron Age or Kali Yuga. Consequently the future prospect is not the same for all. For a different approach, see “When Does the Kali Yuga End?” (no. 89).
One of many testimonies to my friendship with Antoine Faivre and his patronage of my work. His study of the myth of the Argonauts and its cross-cultural and transhistorical repercussions appeared in what was then the only series in an academic press devoted to Western Esoteric Traditions, edited by David Appelbaum. Much of my Foreword is taken up by recounting the myth of Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece, with which the text (too generously) assumes that all readers are familiar.
45. “Mentalism and the Cosmological Fallacy.”
Alexandria 2 (1994): 195-204.
A first attempt to present what I had learnt from the “mentalist” (as opposed to materialist) philosophy of Paul Brunton, especially as expounded in his The Wisdom of the Overself. Addressing a semi-esoteric audience, I argued the futility of taking any cosmological system as objective truth, because the universe can only be known to us as a projection of the human mind. This was also a reflection on the fascinating cosmological systems, from Pythagoras to Blavatsky, that I had spent many years studying and explaining, while maintaining a respectful distance from any of them.
Alexandria: The Journal of the Western Cosmological Tradition, which ran for five annual numbers, was edited by David Fideler as an adjunct to his Phanes Press. As a venue for serious writing on esotericism it complemented Gnosis Magazine and made up somewhat for the loss of the Hermetic Journal.
Paul Johnson’s identification of the Theosophical Masters with historical people, while not convincing in every respect, was the first new idea about them in decades. It put a cat among the Theosophical pigeons that I was glad to support, by writing this foreword to his first academic publication. As always, I believe that wisdom is only obtained by considering many sides of a question, and that even then it may take the form of agnosticism: the Socratic principle of “not pretending to know what one does not know.”
47. “Annals of the Invisible College.”
Lapis, various issues as listed below.
These articles were commissioned by Ralph White for the journal of the New York Open Center, which in some ways replaced Gnosis magazine as a vehicle for semi-popular writing on esoteric subjects. There were to be fifteen articles, but the last one, “Wise Men from the East,” did not appear because publication ceased after the events of September 11, 2001; a revised version appeared to complete the series in The Golden Thread.
The “Invisible College,” a concept dating from the seventeenth century, describes the real or imagined community of sages who guard the perennial wisdom. Each essay describes one of them, or one movement, and includes some idea of my own, intended to relate the topic to present-day readers.
The whole collection was also published in separate numbers of the Spanish-language journal of esotericism, Federico González’s Symbolos, and in the German-language journal, Thomas Hakl’s Gnostika. Later Michael Moynihan encouraged me to revise it, adding notes and commentaries and retitling it The Golden Thread. His Dominion Press issued a limited hardcover edition simultaneously with the trade paperback published by Quest Books, a Theosophical publishing house.
1. “The Hermetic Tradition.” Lapis 1 (1995): 39-41.
2. “Zoroaster.” Lapis 2 (1996): 37-39.
3. “Orpheus.” Lapis 3 (1996): 29-31.
4. “Pythagoras.” Lapis 4 (1997): 41-43.
5. “The Platonic Tradition.” Lapis 5 (1997): 31-33.
6. “Roman Mysteries.” Lapis 6 (1998): 41-43.
7. “Gnosis and Gnosticism.” Lapis 7 (1998): 39-41.
8. “The Negative Theology.” Lapis 8 (1999): 59-61.
9. “The Cathedrals.” Lapis 9 (1999): 51-53.
10. “The Arts of the Imagination.” Lapis 10 (1999): 71-74.
11. “New Gods.” Lapis 11 (2000): 63-65.
12. "The Philosopher's Dilemma." Lapis 12 (2000): 47-50.
13. "The Inward Way." Lapis 13 (2000): 55-58.
14. "The Religion of Art." Lapis 14 (2001): 65-68.
[15. "Wise Men from the East." Not published.]
In L’Ascolto del Tempo. Musiche inudibili e ambiente ritmico, ed. A. Mayr, A. Colimberti, G. Montagano (Florence: MP x2 Editore, 1995): 49-58.
I met the composer Albert Mayr when he gave a concert at Colgate University. My contribution to his collection on “Listening to Time. Inaudible Musics and Rhythmic Environment” attempted to trace an archetypal pattern through various levels of musical time and perception. He translated my English version, lost and now reconstructed, amplified, and published 22 years later as no. 48A.
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For a webpage on Albert Mayr, see:
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/albert-mayr-mn0001950864
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48A. “Time Turned into Space.”
Journal of Musicological Research 38/1 (2018): 105-115.
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In German Baroque Writers, 1580-1660 (Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 164), ed. James Hardin (Detroit: Bruccoli Clark Layman, 1996), 185-94.
A standard-style article for an academic reference work, setting out the facts of Kircher’s life, writings, and influence, as far as they were known preceding the flood of publications that followed in the new millennium.
50. “The Case Against Reincarnation.”
Gnosis 42 (1997): 39-42.
This article for the popular esoteric magazine explains the position taken by René Guénon, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Julius Evola, and their more doctrinaire Traditionalist followers, who maintain zealously that no being can incarnate more than once as a human. I did not attempt to present contrary views, such as are ubiquitous outside the monotheist religions, but through provocation to raise the level of debate above the naïve and degraded versions of the doctrine common in New Age circles and in the exoteric religions of the East.
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50A. “Licked by the Mother Tongue.”
Co-authored with Mike Jay.
Fortean Times 97 (April, 1997): 29-32.
On Saint-Yves d’Alveydre and the language and alphabet of Vattanian that he claimed to have received from his Sanskrit teacher, a Hindu living in Paris. Supposedly the primordial script of humanity, it became one of the foundations of Saint-Yves’ universal system, the “Archéomètre” (see nos. 24, 27). Fortean Times is a journal inspired by Charles Fort’s collecting of anomalous phenomena. Despite the amusing title and illustrations, our article is quite serious. When Mike Jay and I met through friends in the esoteric and Fortean world, we were surprised to discover that we were both Magdalene men, though from different eras and very different experiences. His website:
This article bears no relation to no. 50. The numbering (50A) is due to having been inserted after the main sequence was established.