Unancestral Voice

by Owen Barfield

Unancestral Voice is the story of a modern-day spiritual quest. Step by step, Barfield explores the power of the creative imagination to meet the great challenges of our time. This book has a remarkable unity; it is a well-sustained defence of a very consistent theme - that of the 'evolution of consciousness' - Frontier The voice of each one's mind speaking from the depths within himself - Owen Barfield A clear, powerful thinker, and a subtle one. Saul Bellow Owen Barfield is one of the twentieth century's most significant writers and philosophers. Widely renowned for his insight and literary artistry, Barfield addresses key concerns of the sciences, humanities, social sciences, and arts in our time. His fellow Inklings, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, are among the leading figures influenced by Barfield's work.

Genres: Philosophy

168 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Arthur Owen Barfield was a British philosopher, author, poet, and critic.

Barfield was born in London. He was educated at Highgate School and Wadham College, Oxford and in 1920 received a first class degree in English language and literature. After finishing his B. Litt., which became his third book Poetic Diction, he was a dedicated poet and author for over ten years. After 1934 his profession was as a solicitor in London, from which he retired in 1959 aged 60. Thereafter he had many guest appointments as Visiting Professor in North America. Barfield published numerous essays, books, and articles. His primary focus was on what he called the "evolution of consciousness," which is an idea which occurs frequently in his writings. He is best known as a founding father of Anthroposophy in the English speaking world.

Barfield has been known as "the first and last Inkling". He had a profound influence on C. S. Lewis, and through his books The Silver Trumpet and Poetic Diction (dedicated to C.S. Lewis), an appreciable effect on J. R. R. Tolkien. Lewis was a good friend of Barfield since 1919, and termed Barfield "the best and wisest of my unofficial teachers". That Barfield did not consider philosophy merely intellectually is illustrated by a well-known interchange that took place between Lewis and Barfield. Lewis one day made the mistake of referring to philosophy as "a subject." "It wasn't a subject to Plato," said Barfield, "It was a way." Lewis refers to Barfield as the "Second Friend" in Surprised by Joy:

But the Second Friend is the man who disagrees with you about everything. He is not so much the alter ego as the antiself. Of course he shares your interests; otherwise he would not become your friend at all. But he has approached them all at a different angle. He has read all the right books but has got the wrong thing out of every one. It is as if he spoke your language but mispronounced it. How can he be so nearly right and yet, invariably, just not right?

Barfield and C. S. Lewis met in 1919 and were close friends for 44 years. Barfield was instrumental in converting Lewis to theism during the early period of their friendship which they affectionately called 'The Great War'. Maud also guided Lewis. As well as being friend and teacher to Lewis, Barfield was his legal adviser and trustee. Lewis dedicated his 1936 book Allegory of Love to Barfield. Lewis wrote his 1949 book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for Lucy Barfield and he dedicated The Voyage of the Dawn Treader to Geoffrey in 1952.

Reviews

[Phillip · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the third volume of Barfield's Burgeon trilogy. It is quite a book, loaded with ideas and imagination, and references to the work of Rudolf Steiner.

The first volume: This Ever Diverse Pair introduces Burgeon, the principle character of the books. He is the silent partner of a law firm. He is imaginative and poetic. He presents the narrative of an incident that occurred between himself and his law partner. The partner, named Burden, represents rationalism and carries out the majority of the work. Burden decides he can do without Burgeon. There is a struggle for survival between the polar opposites.

The second volume: Worlds Apart occurs a few years after the previous book. Burgeon invites seven men from very different educational backgrounds and work disciplines to have a three day conference in which they discuss reality and knowledge as they understand it. He believes disciplines exist in compartments and wants to do what we now call thinking outside of the box. It is a wide-ranging and pleasant book. The book is supposed to be a transcription of a tape recording taken throughout the conference. I think it is the best of the three books.

The third volume: Unancestral Voice occurs twenty years after the conflict of the first book. Burgeon is instructed by a spirit of wisdom called the Meggid. The book opens by reproducing conversations with Burgeon's law colleagues and conversations between himself and the Meggid. It moves on to conversations he has with three educated men that he meets on an Ocean liner, the Meggid joins in the conversation using Burgeon as a mouth-piece. In the book Burgeon continues away from the other passengers to talk with the Meggid. At the end Burgeon attends a meeting to listen to a paper presented by a microbiologist named Flume. They have been friends for several months. There is much discussion about the nature of science and knowlege. The book ends with a discussion with the Meggid about who the spirit is, his purpose and why he selected Burgeon.

It is a solid piece of writing. It is worth reading for Inklings aficionados who are interested in Barfield as another piece of the puzzle of that literary group. I would warn off readers who will be bothered by Christian heresies. I recommend the book for readers interested in different outlooks and who enjoy critiques of the fundamental assumptions of contemporary thought.

[Anne Hamilton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Barfield is one of those writers so different and so thought-provoking, it almost goes without saying that there'll be something he says that I'll disagree with - deeply and profoundly.

That said, there are also deep and profound ideas to celebrate. The novel starts with thoughts on the obscenity trial of DH Lawrence and ends with thoughts into the nature of quantum physics, proceeding by way of some kabbalistic insight. I'm not sure I always understood Barfield's common thread.

It was fortunate I'd recently read Souls on Fire because it gave me an entirely different feel for 'the Meggid' than I would otherwise have had. Sure, Barfield admitted to basing the Meggid at least partially on the Maggid of kabbalistic thought (a sense of which I was totally unaware until he mentioned it) but having met the Maggid of Elie Wiesel's account of Hassidic masters, it made a significant difference to my inroads into the book.

What did I appreciate about this book? Too much to enumerate but if I have to pick out two points:

One trivial point: the word gas is derived from chaos.

One interesting point: Barfield is the first person I've ever found to agree with my belief that Lucifer and Satan are two separate entities. Opposed to each other, they nonetheless effectively cooperate against mankind. Barfield (probably wisely) calls Satan by the name Ahriman throughout, since to most people's minds, it and Lucifer are conflated and inseparable and use of the name could only cause confusion.

[Stephen Coulon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Barfield was an Oxfordian and Inkling, friend to Tolkien, Lewis, Sayers, Williams, et al., a prolific literary critic and philosopher specializing in the intersection between philosophy and literature. (He was also a successful solicitor, a career he reluctantly practiced in order to earn a living.) He’s not widely known outside of literary and philosophical circles, yet nearly every writer working with fantasy and myth since the early 20th century has been directly or indirectly influenced by his work. He’s one of those “singular minds” who managed to craft a truly unique worldview that doesn’t really fit into any existing categorization or clique. His treatise on verse, 𝘗𝘰𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘤 𝘋𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, is considered sacred text for many contemporary poets, but his best work is represented in one of my favorite books, 𝘚𝘢𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘈𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘴, in which he traces his eccentric but convincing theory of the evolution of human consciousness where “objective” reality adjusts to human perception instead of the other way around. This work is an essential text in the study of semiotics and symbolism in literature. He also drank from the Pierian springs of theosophy, anthroposophy, Gnosticism, Goetheism, etc., and exhibits the general weirdness of those schools of thought too. All this to say that 𝘜𝘯𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘝𝘰𝘪𝘤𝘦 is a strange book, and likely unintelligible to people not already familiar with Barfield’s more accessible texts. Written near the end of his career, it’s set up as a series of platonic dialogues that ultimately attempt to explain how Barfield came to develop some of his signature beliefs. Read it if you want to be a Barfield completionist, otherwise start with 𝘚𝘢𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘈𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘴 or 𝘗𝘰𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘤 𝘋𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯.