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:
Art & Antiques (2008): 60-70.
Written for the journal edited by John Dorfman, this is a richly illustrated presentation of the Renaissance ideal of the Kunstkammer or collection of “marvels of art and nature,” based on my study in The Pagan Dream of the Renaissance, and largely focused on the collection of Archduke Ferdinand II of the Tyrol at Schloss Ambras.
72. “Agarttha: Taking the Lid off the Underground Kingdom.”
New Dawn 109 (2008): 59-61.
A promotional article ahead of Inner Traditions’ publication of The Kingdom of Agarttha, an English translation by my Inner Traditions editor Jon Graham of Saint-Yves d’Alveydre’s Mission de l’Inde, on which I had first written in the 1980s (see nos. 24.1-2) For my introduction and more about this edition, see no. 77.
New Dawn Special Issue no. 5 (2008): 67-70.
This promotional article summarizes The Golden Thread, the book that amplifies and annotates the essays written for Lapis, whose original texts are found here as no. 47.
In Maestro della Tradizione. Dialoghi su Julius Evola, ed. Marco Iacona (Naples: Controcorrente, 2008): 73-80.
In question and answer format, this is one of 42 contributions to a collective volume, published ten years after the Evola centenary (see no. 56) and reflecting the surge of interest in Evola and the more dispassionate approach to him that had appeared since then. My answers concern Evola’s debt to the Theosophical Society and his differences from them. The original English version is found on Hermetic.com and here, as no. 74A.
75. “Athanasius Kircher’s Theatre of Marvels.”
New Dawn Special Issue no. 9 (2009): 9-14.
David Jones, editor of this Australian magazine, kindly published this promotional article for my second book on Athanasius Kircher: Athanasius Kircher’s Theatre of the World.
76. “Curious Coincidences: The Parallel Lives of Fabre d’Olivet and J. F. H. von Dalberg.”
Published online, 2009, in Stanford University’s Super-Enlightenment Project:http://stanford.edu/dept/SUL/collections/curious-coincidences.pdf
A side-by-side comparision of many features of these characters, on both of whom I have written before, pointing out the remarkable way in which their lives, interests, talents, and creative work correspond to one another. In both format and intention I deliberately avoided current academic trends, such as postmodernist theorizing and the display of erudition, by simply presenting the facts for the reader’s wonderment. I regarded it as a Fortean exercise, following the principle: “Behold the phenomenon; withhold the explanation.” I was honored to have my effort included in this collection, thanks to my fellow Kircherian Daniel Stolzenberg. For these reasons and because of my affection for both characters, this is one of my favorite articles.
Saint-Yves’ extraordinary book Mission de l’Inde en Europe; Mission de l’Europe en Asie was published in Paris in 1886 and immediately withdrawn, leaving only a handful of copies from which editions were made after the author’s death. This long introduction is a final statement of my findings and views on the mythical kingdom invented or imagined by Saint-Yves, which began in 1985 with my investigation of his archives and notebooks in the library of the Sorbonne. To my knowledge, no one else has looked at them since then, while nonsense about Agharttha continues to spread in print and on the Internet. Some people have even taken this book seriously, due to its subtitle suggesting revelations about the Hollow Earth, instead of enjoying it as a delicious example of self-deceptive psychic voyeurism.
An Italian edition by my friend Gianfranco De Turris, Il regno di Agarttha (Rome: Edizioni Arkeios, 2009) included a translation of this introduction.
78. "John Michell (1933-2009)."
Temenos Academy Review, 12 (2009): 250-53.
Reprinted as "Recipient of Revelation" in Michellany: A John Michell Reader, ed. Jonangus Mackay (London: Michellany Editions, 2010), 91-94.
An obituary tribute to the friend both of Kathleen Raine (the founder and editor; see no. 18) and of myself, partly based on the introduction to my selection of his essays for The Oldie magazine, Confessions of a Radical Traditionalist (Waterbury Center, Vt: Dominion, 2005), ix-xxi. Here I emphasize the prophetic revelation (as he believed it to be) of the New Jerusalem diagram, which inspired all his geometrical and historical work.
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Website for the Michellany:
79. "Western New York's Theosophical Enlightener."
In Claude Bragdon and the Beautiful Necessity, ed. Eugenia Victoria Ellis and Andrea Reithmayr (Rochester, NY: Cary Graphic Arts Press/Rochester Institute of Technology, 2010), 21-24.
Written for a volume of essays accompanying an exhibition of Claude Bragdon’s work at the University of Rochester Library and a symposium at the Memorial Art Gallery. On Claude Bragdon’s relation to esotericism, especially Theosophy, situating him as one of the many spiritual leaders and innovators who appeared in Upstate New York from the late 18th- early 20th century. The title alludes to my book The Theosophical Enlightenment.
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The volume is obtainable from the publisher here:
https://www.rit.edu/press/claude-bragdon-and-beautiful-necessity
80. "Is There a Keynote of Nature?"
In Esotericism, Religion, and Nature, ed. Arthur Versluis, Claire Fanger, Lee Irwin, Melinda Phillips (East Lansing: Association for the Study of Esotericism, distributed by Michigan State University Press, 2010), 53-71.
H. P. Blavatsky and others have contended that there is a “keynote” or “tone” of nature, and they usually specify it as the note F. Given such high authority, this notion has enjoyed mindless consent in Theosophical and New Age circles, and attracts credulity through the Internet—though there is some argument that F-sharp is the correct tone. I have traced this theory to its origin in a popular music textbook from which Blavatsky quoted, and after due consideration and analysis of several proponents of it, I conclude that it is groundless. This is a technical article, difficult for non-musicians to understand except in its negative conclusion.
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For details of the collection, see: