GOGMAGOG

Tom C. Lethbridge (1957): Gogmagog: The Buried Gods

Routledge Kegan and Paul, London.

New Books: to be reviewed

Ivan D. Illich (1971) Deschooling Society. Caldar and Boyars, London, 116 pages.

T.C. Lethbridge (1961) Ghost and Ghoul. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 153 pages.

Two books from the shelves, linked only by the trajectory of development away from mainstream academia by two authors who become progressively less able to accept the received wisdom of their respective disciplines as they develop their thought. The topics and methods they chose are widely different, but the process by which they question what seems common sense, provides the interest to me.

Tom Lethbridge critiques the accepted wisdom of scientific methods and Ivan Illich urges a radical re-examination of social myths and the institutions which increasingly govern our lives. Illich writes Deschooling Society in 1971, Lethbridge Ghost and Ghoul in 1961. I have already tinkered about at the edge of Tom Lethbridge via references in Tom Graves and from themes brought up in T.J. Hudson's Phychic Phenomena of 1893.  Illich is more serious, and more pertinent.  With the A Level and GCSE results just out, the newspapers full of inflationary grade accusations, and fears that 99% of everyone might not get to university irrespective of talent cost or interest, it seems timely to go back to the late 1960s to read from Illich WHY WE MUST ABOLISH SCHOOLING (I quote from the dustjacket). I will read and comment on both books over the next couple of weeks. 

Please do join me if you have access to either of these.

T.C. Lethbridge (1980): "The Essential T.C. Lethbridge". T. Graves & J. Hoult (eds.)

I came to this volume via one of its editors, Tom Graves, who wrote a short book, Pendulum Dowsing (1989) which references the work of Lethbridge.  Lethbridge was a Cambridge University archaeologist who worked for many years within the accepted tradition of his discipline. Gradually, from his archaeological work on "the confused and difficult subject of the ancient Gods in Britain", to a personal investigation which takes a turn from the conventional as Lethbridge takes up pendulum dowsing.

This produced the same feeling of genuine scholarship applied to a less conventional area of study as reading, say T. J. Hudson's (1893) Psychic Phenomenon, which I picked up randomly for its attractive binding out of a cardboard box many years ago for £1- in a student union book sale. I remember enjoying Hudson at the time, and then recommending it and lending it to another student who disappeared from the scene never to be seen again.  These were the times before Amazon or AbeBooks.co.uk, so it was not until much later that Psychic Phenomenon could be tracked down again, it not being terribly or outrageously well read these days.  I always remember the books I lend, and to whom, and if I have received them back again.  Likewise I know which on my shelves aren't mine, but borrowed and a sense of obligation to return them lingers almost palpably about the shelf on which they sit.  Hudson went into that category of Lost Books, a file in my mind which is not so full now as it used to be, of those lent volumes which are irredeemably lent to the irredeemable.  From a more recent re-read of his Victorian works, I came to Graves, then Lethbridge and other minor madnesses such as Rupert Sheldrake and The Sense of Being Stared At (2003) or 1782 French grimoire, Le Petit Albert - this latter which it would be wrong to commend in any way at all.

Lethbridge reminds us of the interconnectedness of things:

I have enjoyed one great advantage over many of my contemporaries. It has never been necessary for me to stick closely to one line of study, and thus work it to death.  There has always been time enough to gain at least a passing acquaintance with subjects other than archaeology... Although this may well have led to my becoming a "jack of all trades and master of none", it has nevertheless provided me with a great store of experience, with some of which I at times bore my friends.

(p. xviii)

This broad-based interest in inter-connectedness of areas of intellectual endeavour very much represents what this Blog is trying to achieve with regard to winding the personal serendipitous highways and by-ways of books, old and new. The conceptual leads taking us from one book to another, and helping to explain the unconventional homes of certain books next to others on the shelves of the home library.