Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke

Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (15 January 195329 August 2012) was a British historian and professor of Western esotericism at the University of Exeter, best known for his authorship of several scholarly books on the history of Germany between the World Wars and Western esotericism.

Early life and education

Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke was born in Lincoln, England, on 15 January 1953, and was an Open Exhibitioner at Lancing College. He studied German, politics, and philosophy at the University of Bristol, and gained a Bachelor of Arts with distinction. Moving to St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, Goodrick-Clarke obtained a D.Phil. with a dissertation on the modern occult revival and Theosophy at the end of the twentieth century.

Career

Goodrick-Clarke's Ph.D. dissertation was the basis for his most celebrated work, '' The Occult Roots of Nazism''. This book has been continually in print since its first publication in 1985, and has been translated into twelve languages. Later notable works include his well-regarded ''Paracelsus: Essential Readings'', published in 1990, and ''Black Sun'', published in 2002.

In his varied career, Goodrick-Clarke worked as a schoolmaster, banker, and a successful fundraiser for The Campaign for Oxford. In 2002, he was appointed a Research Fellow in Western Esotericism at the University of Lampeter, and then in 2005 he was appointed to a personal chair in the Department of History at Exeter University. As Professor of Western Esotericism and Director of the Exeter Centre for the Study of Esotericism (EXESESO), he developed a successful distance-learning M.A. in Western Esotericism and successfully supervised a number of doctoral students. While at Exeter he wrote ''The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction'', published in 2008.

In 1983, Goodrick-Clarke was one of the founder members of "The Society", an informal London-based association of professional and amateur scholars of esotericism, including Ellic Howe, the publisher Michael Cox, John Hamill, and the scholar of Rosicrucianism, Christopher McIntosh. He was a founding member of both the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism and the Association for the Study of Esotericism (ASE), in America. He was a faculty member of the New York Open Center from 1995.

Later life and death

Goodrick-Clarke was the Director of the Centre for the Study of Esotericism (EXESESO) within the College of Humanities at Exeter until his death. He died on 29 August 2012, of pancreatic cancer. He married his wife Clare in 1985.

Bibliography

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Contributed

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* '' Handbook of the Theosophical Current'', 2013
* ''Constructing Tradition: Means and Myths of Transmission in Western Esotericism'', 2010
* ''Emanuel Swedenborg: Visionary Savant in the Age of Reason'' by Ernst Benz, translated and introduced by Goodrick-Clarke – .
* ''Paracelsus: Essential Readings'', edited by Goodrick-Clarke – .
* ''Swedenborg and New Paradigm Science'' by Ursula Groll, translated by Goodrick-Clarke – .
* ''The Rosicrucian Enlightenment Revisited'', 1999 –
* ''Decadence and Innovation: Austro-Hungarian Life and Art at the Turn of the Century'', 1989
* ''Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International'' by Kevin Coogan, foreword by Goodrick-Clarke, Autonomedia, Brooklyn, NY 1998 – .
* ''Rudolf Steiner'' by Rudolf Steiner (Author), Richard Seddon (Editor), Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (Preface) Publisher: North Atlantic Books

See also

* Academic study of Western esotericism

References

External links

EXESESO (Exeter Centre for the Study of Esotericism)
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas
1953 births
2012 deaths
Academics of the University of Exeter
Alumni of St Edmund Hall, Oxford
Alumni of the University of Bristol
British historians
Helena Blavatsky biographers
Historians of Nazism
People educated at Lancing College
People from Lincoln, England
Western esotericism scholars