James Webb (historian)

James Charles Napier Webb ( born January 13, 1946 in Edinburgh, † May 8, 1980 at Durisdeer, District Dumfries and Galloway, Southern Scotland ) was a British historian and cultural theorist. He pioneered the historical perspective of the occult and its context in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Life

Webb's father was stationed as a soldier in Germany and took for unknown reasons, two weeks before the birth of the son's life. His mother married a short time later. From this second marriage were born two stepsisters.

He attended Harrow School in London. During his school years he learned German, Russian and French. Before beginning his studies at Cambridge, he spent half a year at a Viennese family, to perfect his knowledge of German. During this time he was opera lovers.

He studied history and modern languages ​​at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a brilliant student and won several awards. In 1967 he completed his studies.

In 1965 he met Mary Thomas, the daughter of a surgeon from Yorkshire,, whom he married in Camden on April 27, 1974. His wife worked as a magazine photographer.

In 1967, he worked as a ghostwriter and became a school teacher at his old Harrow School in London and a trainee in British television. His whole passion was the study of the occult. From the funds of his inheritance, he built a rapidly growing private library.

For Richard Cavendish 12bändiges Collective Work Man, Myth & Magic: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Mythology, Religion and the Unknown. He wrote numerous articles. In 1971 his first book was published with the title The Flight from Reason. Volume 1 of The Age of the Irrational, as the later revision in the U.S. under the title The Occult Underground: . The 19th Flight from Reason (La Salle Illinois 1974) was reprinted. In 1973, appeared as a continuation of his second book, The Occult Liberation, which was reprinted in the U.S. under the title The Occult Establishment. In 1976, he completed work on his third and most important work, The Harmonious Circle. The Lives and Work of GI Gurdjieff and PD Ouspensky and Their Followers from that in 1980 appeared in the New York Putnam Publishing. It paints a detailed picture of the Russia -born spiritual teacher Georges I. Gurdjieff and PD Ouspensky and the history of their Eneagramm concept, which was received later spread among other things, in the pastoral care of the Jesuit Order.

In the late 1970s he was working on a fourth book, in which it came to the history of Scotland as disastrous Battle of Flodden Field in Northumberland on September 9, 1513 and their impact on the Scottish Renaissance culture. For a fifth book, a study of Rudolf Steiner, he had already signed a contract. However, these last two book projects could not be realized.

Since about 1969, he regarded himself as a book author, but was not in itself constitute a living. In the following years he was widely active as an editor. So in New York, he gave as an advisor for the series " Arno Press " out 33 volumes of facsimiles of classic texts on the history of occultism. ( Has influenced the interpretation of alchemy CG Jung) including books by MA Arwood, James Bonwick, Reuben Briggs Davenport, Carl du Prel, CH Hinton, Ethan Allen Hitchcock, Carl Kiesewetter, William Stainton Moses, Allan Kardec, AP Sinnett, Vsevolod Sergeevitch Solovyoff and Karl Friedrich Zöllner. Also for " Arno Press," the 34 volumes of the series were Perspectives in Psychical Research (1976 ) supervised by him. Among these classic texts of parapsychological research by authors such as Hereward Carrington, John Edgar Cover T. Fukurai, Hans Driesch, Frederic Myers, Frank Podmore, Harry Price, Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick, Albert of Schrenck Notzing well as the history of Spiritualism by Arthur Conan Doyle were and many others. He also worried as the publisher about 65 volumes of historical and anthological publications in the fields of occultism, spiritualism, theosophy and parapsychology.

In 1976, the Webbs of London moved back to Scotland, where it acquired a former chapel at Durrisdeer and redesigned to the house. After he had left his many friends in the south of England, he flew into Scotland in a social isolation in which were opening up any new job prospects for him. After a postdoctoral fellowship and his legacy were depleted and his books brought in no money, his life took a tragic turn. Although his books received good reviews, it was not an academic job. Finally, at the urging of his wife, he took a job at an advertising agency. In this last phase of life he lost the hope of being able to raise enough funds and time for his research and his book projects. He got serious mental problems with signs of schizophrenia and shot himself on May 8, 1980 at the age of 34.

Reception

Webb was one of the first researchers to scientifically dealt with the occultism of the 19th century, knowing that even the scientifically distanced employment with this shunned by historians topic could mean the end of his scientific career.

Webb continued the research of the historian George Mosse, who examined the connections between esoteric currents and policies of the last two centuries.

The first two complementary books Webbs were repeatedly reissued, praised in relevant professional circles, but reached via a small circle, only a specific audience. Colin Wilson stated that Webb formally dropped by his contemporaries between the chairs, because on the one hand, the academic audience, in particular the historical profession, was not receptive to his subjects, and on the other hand, the Okkultszene, even if he did not have the focus this as readership, by his skeptical attitude on distance remained, which is why he became the " tip". His third book, The Harmonious Circle. The Lives and Work of GI Gurdjieff and although PD Ouspensky and Their Followers treated the supporters of the Russian occultist, but was for this " okkultgläubige " target group in its preparation to critically and in its presentation to academic, which is why this work initially only a small circle of readers reached, which included Colin Wilson, Ellic Howe and Francis King.

Webb is now regarded as a pioneer of the study of the occult and adjacent areas of esotericism, and his two major works The Occult Underground and The Occult Establishment were translated into German. The English religious scholar Nicholas Goodrick -Clarke examined in his published dissertation in 1982 ariosophy and the Occult Roots of Nazism, which he particularly relied on Webb's work that some aspects were dedicated.

Writings

• The Flight from Reason ( = The Age of the Irrational. Vol. 1). Macdonald & Co., London 1971, ISBN 0-356-03634-0. Reprint as: The Occult Underground. Open Court, La Salle IL 1974, ISBN 0-912050-46-2.
• German: The flight from reason. Politics, culture and occultism in the 19th century. Marix, Wiesbaden 2009, ISBN 978-3-86539-213-8

• German: The age of the irrational. Politics, culture and occultism in the 20th century. Marix, Wiesbaden 2008, ISBN 978-3-86539-152-0.