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:
91. "Understanding the Traditionalists."
New Dawn 147 (Nov.-Dec. 2014): 63-69.
A revised version of my 1988 article in Gnosis, “Facing the Traditionalists” (no. 28), again written for a popular rather than a professional audience. The intervening years had seen the humiliation of Frithjof Schuon, the publication of Guénon’s major works in English, an increased visibility of Julius Evola, and the movement’s first academic presentation in Mark Sedgwick’s Against the Modern World. I now felt no need to “face” it but to encourage understanding of it. The new article included later figures such as Alexander Dugin, Jean Robin, and Jean Parvulesco.
92. "A Walk through the Speculative Music Section."
In Octagon: The Quest for Wholeness, ed. Hans Thomas Hakl (Gaggenau: Scientia Nova, 2016), 113-18.
A contribution to the four-volume collection of essays, one each in German, English, French, and Italian, inspired by Thomas Hakl’s esoteric library in Graz, Austria and edited by him. Although the library does not specialize in music, its encyclopedic range embraces many of the main contributors to the speculative current, including Fludd, Maier, Kepler, Saint-Martin, Fabre d’Olivet, Dalberg, von Thimus, Saint-Yves d’Alveydre, Steiner, Kayser, Haase, and Schneider. As the title suggests, my short article is informal rather than documentary, and conveys my delight in exploring the library.
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For an interview with Dr. Hakl, see:
https://www.hthakl-octagon.com/interview/interview-englisch/
93. “Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism.”
In The Cambridge Handbook of Mysticism and Western Esotericism, ed. Glenn Alexander Magee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 13-25.
An article invited by the editor for a landmark in the academic acceptance of esoteric studies, issued after some six years’ delay by the press of my alma mater. I took the opportunity to amplify a historical presentation by mentioning some contemporary contributors to the Pythagorean tradition, such as my friends David Fideler and John Michell, and neglected figures including Thomas Taylor, Fabre d’Olivet, René Guénon, Albert von Thimus and his successor Hans Kayser, and the Roman Pythagoreans around Arturo Reghini.
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The publisher’s website for the book:
94. "Esoteric Theories of Color."
In Lux in Tenebris: The Visual and the Symbolic in Western Esotericism, ed. Peter J. Forshaw (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 447-76.
This was originally given as a paper accompanied by a PowerPoint (projected images) at the ESSWE conference in 2011 at the University of Szeged, Hungary. Previous research into systems of musical correspondences had repeatedly raised the subject of color, and I had much material to hand, especially in Music and the Occult, as well as experiments with Rudolf Steiner’s and Saint-Yves d’Alveydre’s systems.
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The five sections cover the Doctrine of Correspondences, Polarities, Newton’s Rainbow, Complementaries, and colors seen by clairvoyants. Because it was not possible to include the many colored illustrations in the printed collection, I relied on the reader’s visual imagination, giving verbal indications of how the main theories work. Here is a final page-proof of the article. A separate file (“Eso Color ills”) contains fourteen representative illustrations—about one-third of the original presentation.
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Brill’s website for the book:
95. "Astral Ascent in the Occult Revival."
In Culture and Cosmos: Special Double Issue on Celestial Magic 19/1-2 (2015): 189-206.
This was given as a paper at the Sophia Centre’s conference in Bath, 2013, organized by Dr. Nicholas Campion, the historian of cosmology and astrology. The collective volume actually appeared in 2017. My contribution surveyed the historical continuity of the Hermetic idea that the soul ascends through the planetary spheres, as it has adapted to the times. Among the many later authorities mentioned are Swedenborg, Mormonism, Andrew Jackson Davis, Blavatsky, the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, Steiner, Crowley, the Mithraic Ritual according to Evola, and, with particular emphasis, Cyrus “Koresh” Teed’s doctrine of the earth as a concave sphere.
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For the Sophia Center’s website, see:
96. "Antarctica in Myth, Fantasy & Reality."
New Dawn, Special Issue 11/1 (2017): 45-55.
Rumors of strange activities in the Antarctic continent, including the unexplained visits by celebrities and photographs on the Internet of enigmatic formations, prompted me to repurpose a chapter from Arktos, in order to temper the sensational with a mythological and historical approach. I amplified it with a translation from Miguel Serrano’s autobiography, describing his mystical encounter with the Führer during his Antarctic expedition. As always, New Dawn enhanced the article with many illustrations, both genuine and fanciful.
97. "Who Was Julius Evola, Really?"
New Dawn 162 (May-June 2017): 61-67.
A revision and expansion of my article for Tyr (no. 55) introducing Evola, as he still needs to be introduced to an Anglophone public ignorant of the scope of his achievements and the value of his esoteric writings. New Dawn provided many illustrations, including an atmospheric frontispiece and my photograph of the twin dragon doorknockers on his former dwelling in Rome. In order to explain the expression “radical traditionalist,” I included a page about John Michell, who popularized the term.
Journal of the Chenango County Historical Society 7 (Summer 2018): 43-50.
In 2008 I bought a 63-acre woodlot in South Lebanon, NY, near the border of Madison with Chenango County. Some years later I discovered the foundations of a small house there and began to excavate it, clearing the interior and building up the walls. After several summers’ work, the result was a “ruin” some 20 feet square. I photographed it at various stages and recorded the few metal artifacts that emerged. This article describes the process and principles of my amateur archaeology. The next article continues the story.
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For the society’s website, see:
99. "Unmasking the Beaver Meadow Gang."
Journal of the Chenango County Historical Society 7 (Summer 2018): 51-59.
While excavating the “ruin” (see previous article), I researched its history through old maps, on which it was marked as the property of “B. B. Wynn.” The archives of Madison, Chenango, and Oneida Counties, old newspapers, and a descendant in England allowed me to reconstruct Bryant Wynn’s history. It included two sentences served in Auburn Prison, the second as a member of an organized gang based in nearby Beaver Meadow. The research was fascinating, and gave insight into the way of life and legal practice in this rural region in the latter nineteenth century.
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For the content of this journal of regional history and other information, see:
http://exploring-chenango-county-ny.blogspot.com/2018/11/journal-of-chenangocounty-historical.html
100. "Alain Daniélou and the Gods in the Age of Conflict."
Tyr 5 (2018): 54-88.
After writing an introduction to the Spanish edition of Daniélou’s While the Gods Play (see nos. 86 and 86A), I thought that this multi-talented, artistic, independently-minded orientalist, musicologist, and polytheist would appeal to the readers of Tyr, and that they would be untroubled by his defiance of bien-pensant mores and his libertarian approach to sexuality. As when introducing Julius Evola and Herman Wirth (see nos. 65 and 66), familiarity with sources in their native languages enabled a richer presentation than had hitherto appeared in English, and in Daniélou’s case, also the ability to understand his musical theorizings.
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For this volume of the occasional publication, see:
https://www.amazon.com/TYR-Myth-Culture-Tradition-5/dp/0999724525