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61. "Evola, preistoria e teosofia."

In Julius Evola, un pensiero per la fine del millennio, ed. Gianfranco De Turris (Rome: Fondazione Julius Evola, 2001), 37-49.

 

A second article in Italian, stemming from my friendship with Dr. De Turris that began with the Evola centenary conferences in 1998. This documents Evola’s agreement, surprising given his criticism of Theosophy, with H. P. Blavatsky’s outline in her Secret Doctrine of prehistoric evolution and the Hyperborean, Lemurian, and Atlantean root races. My original English text is no. 61A.

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61A. “Traditionalist Prehistory and its Theosophical Roots.”

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This is the original English text on which no. 61 (“Evola, preistoria, teosofia”) was based. It is somewhat more comprehensive and correct than the Italian version, and unpublished as such.

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61A

62. Foreword to Julius Evola, Men Among the Ruins, tr. Guido Stucco (Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 2002), vii-ix.

 

My small contribution to the English translation of Evola’s pessimistic survey of European civilization after World War II was followed by a hundred-page Introduction by H. T. Hansen, pseudonym of Dr. Hans Thomas Hakl, Evola’s German translator, founder of the journal Gnostika, and owner of the Octagon library in Graz, Austria (see no. 92).

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63.  “From the Diary of a Poliphilic Tourist.”

In The Waters of Hermes/Le Acque di Ermes II, ed. Massimo Maggiari (La Spezia: Agorà Edizioni, 2003), 15-19.

 

In 2002 I attended a “Festival of Italian Poetry and Esoteric Studies” organized by Massimo Maggiari at the College of Charleston, and gave a presentation on the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. For the publication of the festival’s papers I wrote a semi-veridical account of a day in northern Italy, in which I had visited the Sacred Wood (or Wood of the Monsters) in Bomarzo and the gardens of Villa Lante in Bagnaia, gathering impressions for The Pagan Dream of the Renaissance. I imagined myself as a modern Poliphilo wandering round the ruins of antiquity.

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64. "Western Esoteric Tradition."

In Religions of the World, ed. J. Gordon Melton and Martin Baumann, vol. 4 (Santa Barbara: ABC Clio, 2002), 1414-18.

 

This contribution to an encyclopedic set was invited by Professor J. Gordon Melton, a primary mover of the academic study of New Religions whom I had met at the American Academy of Religion and other conferences. At a time when there was much debate among the growing community of European scholars about what Western Esotericism is and isn’t, I ignored all the competing theories and, considering this particular venue, emphasized the complementarity of esoteric with exoteric religions.

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65. "Julius Evola: A Philosopher for the Age of the Titans." 

Tyr 1 (2002): 127-42.

 

For the first number of a new periodical devoted to myth, culture, and tradition, I made a further effort to promote the study and comprehension, but not necessarily the adoption, of Evola’s philosophy.

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The article was revised and reissued as "Who Was Julius Evola, Really?" New Dawn 162 (May-June 2017): 60-68. See no. 97.

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Hans Thomas Hakl asked to publish a German translation of this article in Gnostika, the most important if not the only German-language publication in the field of serious esoteric studies. It appeared in no. 62 (May 2018): 90-109.

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66. "Herman Wirth on Folksong." 

Tyr 2 (2004): 263-83.

 

For the second number of this occasional publication devoted to myth, culture, and tradition from a largely pagan viewpoint, I made a study of Herman Wirth’s little known career as a musicologist and early music pioneer, before his venture into speculative prehistory and his association with the Ahnenerbe that brought him trouble both during and after the National Socialist period (see no. 58). This article focuses on his doctoral dissertation for the University of Basel, submitted in 1910 and published the following year in The Hague, in which he attributed the crucial developments of Western music, especially polyphony, not to church music but to folk music: a rare specimen of völkisch musicology. I compare his activity as a promoter of early music with that of his contemporary Arnold Dolmetsch.

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67. Foreword to Felice Vinci, The Baltic Origins of Homer’s Epic Tales (Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 2005), ix-xiii.

 

Vinci, a nuclear engineer by training and profession, argues that the Iliad and Odyssey are translations of voyages that originally happened in the Baltic, and that climatic changes forced the people in question to migrate south. After settling in the Aegean, they adapted their heroic legends to the new region. Vinci’s main evidence is the extraordinarily close correspondences of place names in the Baltic and the Aegean. Whether true or false, I liked the idea so much that I was happy when asked to help promote it.

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Felice Vinci speaks about his life and work here:

https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/vinci-felice-1946

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68. “Esotericism without Religion: Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials.” 

Tyr 3 (2006): 155-71. 

Also published in Esotericism, Art, and Imagination, ed. Arthur Versluis, Lee Irwin, John Phillips, Melinda Weinstein (East Lansing: Michigan State University, 2008), 185-201.

 

This originated as a paper for the Association for the Study of Esotericism’s conference in 2004. As a passionate lover of Pullman’s trilogy, I could see that it was full of echoes of esoteric doctrines, especially Gnostic, whether intentional or not. This rare venture into literary criticism complemented my early essay on Tolkien’s trilogy (no. 16). It appeared in two places because publication of the conference’s papers was only decided upon after I had promised the article to Tyr.

            I discovered His Dark Materials in a roundabout way, while directing a study group in Venice in the fall of 2001. On the long train journey for a weekend trip to Ljubljana, I noticed that nearly all of the students were reading one or other of the Harry Potter books. In order to find out what the attraction was, but not waste my time in the process, I bought the three or four books then available in Italian translation. In one of them was an advertisement for Pullman’s trilogy. Eager for more, I read La bussola d’oro, then La lama sottile. No bookshop in Venice had Il cannocchiale d’ambra, but I found it in Treviso. On my return to the U.S. I re-read them all in English.

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69.  Introduction to Michael Maier, La fuga de Atalanta, tr. María Tabuyo and Agustín López (Girona: Ediciones Atalanta, 2007): 11-62.

 

A long introduction to the Spanish translation of Maier’s work, with illustrations and musical examples, amplifying and improving on my early article (no. 22) and the introduction in my edition of Atalanta Fugiens. This is my unpublished English text. The illustrations and musical examples are in a separate folder.

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For the published Spanish text, see the book itself:

https://www.edicionesatalanta.com/catalogo/la-fuga-de-atalanta/

 

The Atalanta edition of 2007 included a compact disc recording of the 50 fugues by Michael Noone and the Ensemble Plus Ultra. The second Spanish edition (2016) included instead the recording I had produced in 1984 with four singers: Rachel Platt, Emily Van Evera, Rufus Müller, and Richard Wistreich. This has the advantage of delivering Maier’s entire text (all three verses of each fugue) without the addition of instruments or other compromises with modern taste.

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70. "Kepler e Kircher sull'Armonia delle Sfere."

In Forme e correnti dell'esoterismo occidentale, ed. Alessandro Grossato (Venice: Fondazione Giorgio Cini, 2008), 145-64.

 

In October 2007 a conference was held at the Cini Foundation in Venice on “Forms and Currents of Western Esotericism.” Among the participants and contributors to this volume, Jean-Pierre Brach, Antoine Faivre, Hans Thomas Hakl, Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Marco Pasi, and myself were among the original members of the “Palladian Academy” which first met in 1997 at the Villa Saraceno near Vicenza, and Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Jean-Pierre Laurant, and Kocku von Stuckrad joined the group shortly after. It was at these meetings that the ESSWE (European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism) was planned, which held its first conference in Tübingen earlier in 2007. My contribution to that conference was also on Kircher (see no. 82), on whom I was currently preparing Athanasius Kircher’s Theatre of the World.

 

My paper for the Venice conference explains Johann Kepler’s and Athanasius Kircher’s theories of the harmony of the spheres. Despite the imaginative brilliance and complexity of Kepler’s theory, I conclude that Kircher’s more simplistic theory, which does not seek quantitative proof, is closer to scientific reality. My text was translated into Italian by Paolo Magagnin. For the original English version, see no. 70A.

 

The Cini Foundation, among its many other treasures, holds Alain Daniélou’s library, with its many rare items of ethnomusicological interest. My admiration for Daniélou would later yield an introduction and an article (see nos. * and 100).

For a description of the Cini Foundation’s activities in English, see:

https://www.cini.it/en

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