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51. “Taste, Snobbery, and Spiritual Discernment.”

 Contemporary Music Review 14/3-4 (1997): 47-53.

 

A musical autobiography written for a special issue on “Music and Mysticism” edited by Maxwell Steer. It sifts the three elements, named in the title, that may influence one’s musical preferences, objectively using my early experiences and ambitions as a test case, and encourages readers to similar introspection.

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52. “Music and the Hermetic Tradition.”

In Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times, ed. Roelof van den Broeck and Wouter J. Hanegraaff (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 183-96.

 

This and the next item were given as papers at a conference organized by the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica in Amsterdam. The library’s founder, Joseph Ritman, and his librarian Frans Janssen had attended the “esoteric quest” in Prague the previous year, and several of the same participants were present. Here, after surveying musical works with Hermetic implications and Hermetic philosophers active in music, I conclude with some regret that Hermeticism and music are each a complete path in itself, hence unlikely to make a successful synthesis.

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53. “Stockhausen’s Donnerstag aus Licht and Gnosticism.”

In Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times, ed. Roelof van den Broeck and Wouter J. Hanegraaff (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 347-58.

 

A second paper given at the Amsterdam conference (see no. 52). Stockhausen’s seven-opera cycle Licht had begun to appear with Donnerstag (Thursday), which renewed my interest in a composer who had been important to me in the 1960s. I discovered to my surprise that the plot was largely based on an early 20th century channeled text, the Urantia Book, as the composer later admitted.

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54. “Sonnensymbolik und Polarsymbolik.”

In Vorträge der 29. Arbeitstagung vom 24. Mai-28. Mai 1995 in Horn-Bad Meinberg (Lemgo: Arbeits- und Forschungskreis Walther Machalett, n.d.), 34-41.

 

In 1995, at the suggestion of John Michell, I attended the annual conference of the “Walther Machalett Working and Research Circle for Prehistory and Early History” (Arbeits- und Forschungskreis für Vor- und Frühgeschichte Walther Machalett). The group had contacted John because of a shared interest in prehistoric monuments and earth mysteries, but he was unable to attend. The conference was held in the small town of Horn in northwest Germany, near the giant rock formation called the Externsteine, about which Machalett and some of his followers had developed the kind of earnest but improbable theories that appealed to John and myself. My contribution grew out of the study of polar symbolism that I had done for Arktos.

 

For an English translation, see no. 54A.

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54A. “Polar and Solar Symbolism.” 

Rûna 3 (1998): 8-13.

 

An English translation from my original German (no. 54), made for a new journal edited by Ian Read and subtitled “Exploring Northern European Myth, Folklore and Magic.”

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55. "Airs and Angels."

 In Promenade Concerts Programme, 1998 (London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1998), 7-10.

 

One of the year’s themes for the Proms was music’s role in ritual, sorcery, and the supernatural. I was commissioned to write brief program notes on the twelve relevant compositions, some of which I knew, like Berlioz’ Damnation of Faust, others which I could only imagine, like John Harle’s opera Angel Magic, with its libretto by my fellow Radleian Sir David Pountney.

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56. "L'esoterismo evoliano visto dagli Stati Uniti." 

Studi Evoliani 1998 (1999): 19-25.

 

Julius Evola’s birth centenary in 1998 was celebrated widely by his admirers in Europe. I attended conferences in Vienna and in Milan, the latter held under the auspices of the regional cultural authority, where I gave this paper in Italian (helped in its composition by my colleague Malva Ferlito). It is a survey of how Evola had hitherto been received in the USA, and contrasts his virtual absence from academic discourse with the interest evidenced by his many books published in English by Inner Traditions.

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57. “The Deepest of the Rosicrucians. Michael Maier (1569-1622).”

In The Rosicrucian Enlightenment Revisited, ed. Ralph White (Hudson: Lindisfarne Books, 1999), 101-23.

 

In 1995 the New York Open Center held its first “esoteric quest” in ÄŒesky Krumlov, and two years later its second, in Prague. Ralph White, the organizer compiled this collection of essays arising from the two events, which were attended by many influential scholars and students of the Western Esoteric Traditions. My contribution to the Prague conference was an overview of the life and writings of Michael Maier, responding to a hint from the late Frances Yates, who wondered whether Maier “may have been the deepest of the ‘Rosicrucians’.“ (The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, p. 83). This article, based on research in the Bodleian Library and in the Czech National Library, is a much expanded version of that paper.

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58. “Out of Arctica? Herman Wirth’s Theory of Human Origins.” 

Rûna 5 (1999): 2-7.

 

After John A. Davidson’s article in a previous issue, “Out of Africa?” had presented some of the competing scientific theories of human origins, I summarized the arguments for a north polar origin as put forth by Wirth in his major work, Der Aufgang der Menschheit (1928). Writing as usual as an agnostic researcher and collector of non-mainstream theories, I noted the agreement of Wirth’s theory with some of the myths treated in my book Arktos concerning a prehistoric Hyperborea or Thule. This seemed appropriate for a journal devoted to “Exploring Northern European Myth, Mystery & Magic.”

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59. "Lady Caithness and Her Connection with Theosophy." 

Theosophical History VIII/4 (2000): 127-47.

 

Similarly to my article on Hargrave Jennings (no. 36), this was the first attempt at a complete survey of the activities, writings, convictions, and influence of Marie, Countess of Caithness (formerly Duchess of Pomar). As in many of my writings I intended, by breaking new ground, to encourage and facilitate deeper research by other scholars. Lady Caithness (1830-1895) was one of the many brilliant and powerful women active in esoteric circles at the end of the nineteenth century. She was a good friend of Madame Blavatsky, but also a strong and independent figure in her own right, with her own philosophy of spiritualism.

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60. "The Survival of the Personality, according to Modern Esoteric Teachings."

In Ésotérisme, gnoses & imaginaire symbolique. Mélanges offerts à Antoine Faivre, ed. Richard Caron, Joscelyn Godwin, Wouter J. Hanegraaff, and Jean-Louis Vieillard-Baron (Leuven: Peeters, 2001): 403-13.

 

To celebrate (or perhaps to console) Antoine Faivre on his retirement from his professorial chair, a volume was secretly prepared with 62 contributors, writing variously in French, German, and English. I edited the English-language articles. The book was presented to Professor Faivre at a ceremony at the Sorbonne. It remained the largest collection of essays on Western Esotericism, the field for which Antoine had done so much in all three languages, until Thomas Hakl’s four-volume Octagon (see comments at no. 92).

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My contribution is a provocative study of the many esoteric teachers who deny that everyone’s personality survives bodily death. It extends my short article on Guénon’s denial of reincarnation (no. 50) and includes other Traditionalists and occultists such as Gurdjieff and Kremmerz.

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German translation in Gnostika 22 (2002): 26-38.

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