Godwin, Arktos

[Dave Monroe]

>From Joscelyn Godwin, Arktos: The Polar Myth in
Science, Symbolism, and Nazi Survival (Grand rapids,
MI: Phanes Press, 1993), Chapter One, "The Golden
Age," pp. 13-18 ..

As one can see from the simplest globe, the earth does
not sit erect in its orbit around the sun, but tilt at
an awkward angle about 23 1/2 degrees from the
perpendicular.  Yet there is an oft-repeated story
that our planet's situation was once far different;
that it was a catastrophe that brought about its
present state, and that some day it will be reinstated
in the geometrical perfection of it origin.  Whether
literally or only symbolically true, this aspect of
the polar archetype constellates the mythology of fall
an redemption, Lost Eden and new Jerusalem.  Its
branches link with the ideas of cyclical development,
evolutionary change, and every other effort to make
sense of the course of history and prehistory.  (13)

Under these circumstancs, there would be no eason of
summer or inter, pring or fall; all days would be
alike.  Near the eqautor, the climat would alwys be
hot; near the poles, always cold.  (13)

Plants would sprout, blossom, seed, and die in
obedience only to their innate rhythms.  The
charateristic vegetation of every land would always be
present, in every state of it life-cycle ... (13)

... the lengths of night and day would invaraibly be
equal.  For that reason, one might well call this a
time of perpetual spring ... (14)

Time itself would have little meaning in this
primordial Paradise.  (15)

... a Platonic Ideal of how the earthn "ought" to be
... (16)

The memory or imagination of a Golden Age seems to be
a particularity of the cultures that cover the area
from India to Northern Europe.  (16)

Although not universal in the classical world, there
was a predominant idea of time as proceeding in one or
more cycles of decline ... (17)

... after which follows Chapter Two, "The Imperishable
Sacred Land," on Madame Blavatsky's Manvatara and Rene
Guenon's Hyperborea.  Chapter Three, "The Arctic
Homeland," covers Jean-Sylvain Bailly, William F.
Warren (Paradise Found [q.v.]) and Bal Gangadhar
Tilak.  Of all of whom I know little to nothing save
what's in the book here, though I do believe Madame
Blavatsky might have been of some influence in
literary modernism, e.g., T.S. Eliot.  Kai?  But the
key idea here so far is, I think, that this notion of
inhabited lands at the poles is often tied to myths of
a capital-F Fall of some sort.  And then there's
Chapter Four, "The Aryan Myth" ...

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