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:
81. “The Harmony of the Spheres.”
In program book for Agostino Steffani's Niobe, Regina di Tebe (London: Royal Opera House, 2010), 29-33.
This baroque opera, performed on the Royal Opera House’s 2010 series, features the myth of Amphion, who built the walls of Troy with music, and allusions to the planetary spheres. I was invited to write a short piece to contribute to the program book, which was beautifully illustrated from old engravings.
82. “Athanasius Kircher’s Invention of the Hieroglyphic Tradition.”
In Constructing Tradition: Means and Myths of Transmission in Western Esotericism, ed. Andreas B. Kilcher, (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 427-47.
The European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE) held the first of its biennial conferences at the University of Tübingen, Germany, in 2005. This was a crucial event for esoteric studies within the academic world, inaugurating a new era as the sessions at the American Academy of Religion had done twenty years earlier (see no. 23).
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My paper is a critical examination of how Kircher came to believe that he could decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics, explaining his sources and how he was misled into constructing a global theory of the origin of writing. It is one of many studies I have made of people who believe that they have discovered some universal key, feeling affection for them while not sharing their delusions.
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For the book’s description on the publisher’s website, see:
83. Foreword to Gerhard Hallstadt, Blutleuchte (Jacksonville, Or.: Ajna, 2010), i-v.
The Austrian composer and creator of the “industrial” band and record label Allerseelen originally wrote under the name of Kadmon, then as Gerhard Petak. After meeting him in Vienna in 1995, I read the 29 bilingual booklets that he self-published in two series, Aorta (1990-1995) and Ahnstern (1995-1997). Intrigued by his encompassing such a variety of subjects, some of them virtually unknown, I agreed to write a foreword to the collected edition. It was reprinted in the French edition, Blutleuchte: Mysticismes anciens & contemporains, tr. Nadège Gayon-Debonnet (n.p.: Camion Noir, 2015), 11-18.
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For the author’s biography and other works, see:
84. The Spirit House in Georgetown, New York: A Short History. Hamilton: The Upstate Institute at Colgate University, 2011.
During the several years when the Spirit House in Georgetown was on the market, my friend Madis Senner was attempting to raise the money to restore and establish it as a spiritual center for the region. I obtained access to the house from the realtor and photographed it inside and out, while the architectural restoration expert Carl Stearns was making his report. Meanwhile I researched its history in the Madison County archives, on the “Old Fulton Postcards” website of old newspapers, and in the papers to which Milton Chapin gave me access. Colgate University’s Upstate Institute, which exists to further the university’s relations with its wider environment, published my findings as a 48-page illustrated monograph, in an edition of 350 copies. Most of them were given away to historical societies, libraries, and those interested. Shortly after publication, the house was bought by a private individual.
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My history is available for purchase by application to The Upstate Institute at Colgate University, 13 Oak Drive, Hamilton, NY 13346, or from the Madison County Historical Society:
https://shop.cnyhistory.org/product/the-spirit-house-or-brown-s-free-hall-in-georgetown-new-york/80
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John E. Fletcher (1940-1992), the Australian academic who had organized the Kircher workshop in Wolfenbüttel in 1980 (see no. 32), was probably the only person to have read all Kircher’s correspondence, held in Rome by the former Collegio Romano. For some reason, his 900-page thesis only earned him a Master’s degree. It is now one of the essential pillars of Kircher scholarship. After John’s comparatively early death, his widow Elizabeth Fletcher brought it into publishable form with help from Professor Garry Trompf and others, and the work was eventually consecrated by its publication by Brill.
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On John Fletcher’s life and work, see:
Commissioned by Jacobo Siruela, the publisher of the Spanish edition of La fantasie des dieux et l’aventure humaine (1985), this gave me the opportunity to introduce Daniélou, in all his charming and brilliant variety, to a wider public. The book contains his apocalyptic thoughts and predictions of the end of the Kali Yuga, together with that of present humanity. For my original English, see no. 86A.
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For the publisher’s website, see:
https://www.edicionesatalanta.com/
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87. “Politica Romana pro and contra Julius Evola.”
In Esotericism and Politics, ed. Arthur Versluis, Clare Fanger, Lee Irwin, Melinda Phillips (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2012), 41-58.
This was the third collective volume of papers from conferences of the Association for the Study of Esotericism (ASE), founded in 2004 by Arthur Versluis. Politica Romana, an esoteric journal founded by Piero Fenili, carried many studies of Evola and his work, admiring his insights into esoteric philosophies of East and West while criticizing his political stance. As elsewhere, I wanted to point to a middle way between the usual extreme reactions that Evola arouses.
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For information on the collection, see https://www.amazon.com/Esotericism-Religion-Politics-Studies/dp/1596500131
88. “Blavatsky and the First Generation of Theosophy.”
In Handbook of the Theosophical Current, ed. Olav Hammer & Mikael Rothstein (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2013), 15-31.
The compilation of this book by Brill was a landmark in the movement begun by Leslie Price with the launching of Theosophical History in 1986. This journal fostered a non-partisan and academically responsible approach to a subject of considerable historical, cultural, and philosophical importance, hitherto plagued on the one hand by “true believers” (often at war with one another) and on the other by ignorant and bigoted critics who took every opportunity to denigrate Blavatsky and her movement, and to minimize its influence. I was honored to be invited by the editors to write this account of the beginnings of the Theosophical Society, up to Blavatsky’s death in 1891.
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For the publisher’s website, see:
89. "When Does the Kali Yuga End?"
New Dawn 138 (May-June 2013): 63-68.
Occultists, traditionalists, and esotericists have proposed a number of dates for the end of the Kali Yuga, which many expect to be imminent. This article, for a general readership, is distilled from my longer study of the subject in Atlantis and the Cycles of Time. It explains the arguments behind each dating, giving the reader the basis for evaluating them. In particular, it discredits Sri Yukteswar’s system of reversing yugas, promoted in his book The Holy Science and popularly taken to be traditional, revealing its modernist bias and political motivation in colonial India.
90. "George Barton Cutten and American Coin Silver."
Silver Studies 31 (2014): 84-98.
Cutten was President of Colgate University, 1922-42. After retirement he turned to the study and collection of American table silver of the antebellum period, on which he became the foremost authority and wrote the standard texts. I had come across these through a shared interest in antique silver. With the university archives to hand as an essential resource, I investigated his biography and his many writings on religion, parapsychology, eugenics, and education, as well as his contribution to the study of material culture. One of my motives was to do justice to a figure who in the current academic climate is seen only as an embarrassment, to the extent of having had his name removed from Colgate’s “Cutten Complex” of student housing. No notice of his other achievements was ever taken by those urging and accepting this erasure of history.
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Silver Studies is the annual publication of the Silver Society, based in London. See its website:
http://www.thesilversociety.org/