Why “Rogue Inkling”?

“Inkling” refers to a group of artists and intellectuals—most famously J. R. R. Tolkien (Lord of the Rings) and C. S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia)—known as “The Inklings,” who held regular meetings in Oxford during the 1930s and 1940s. My interest in the group concerns a lesser known member of the circle, Sir Owen Barfield, whom C. S. Lewis once called the “wisest and best of my unofficial teachers.” (Lewis dedicated The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to Barfield’s daughter, Lucy). Barfield is the author of Saving the Appearances, and Poetic Diction among others, and his esteem among established intelligentsia is perhaps best summed up by Nobel Laureate Saul Below who said, “We are well supplied with interesting writers, but Owen Barfield is not content to be merely interesting. His ambition is to set us free from the prison we have made for ourselves by our ways of knowing, our limited and false habits of thought, our ‘common sense.’”

I am compelled by Barfield’s ideas in part because he, in turn, was mentored by Rudolf Steiner, who is perhaps the most under-appreciated giant of esoteric wisdom, and of useful knowledge about humanity in general, in recent history. Steiner is the founder of the Waldorf School movement, among other things (and yes, my son attends a Waldorf school. I will talk about this a lot in the blog. Watch this 3-minute video if you’re interested). He was an astonishingly prolific human being, who presented over 6,000 lectures, wrote hundreds of essays, and authored over two dozen books in his 64 years on earth (1861–1925). His book, How to Know Higher Worlds, would be required reading #1 in my “How to Survive and Possibly Even Graduate from Planet Earth Academy” (right after watching the Matrix, which is, as I hope you’ll agree, a foundational documentary, wrapped in some of the best Hollywood has to offer, elevated to timeless status by the genuine soul that is Keanu Reeves). My point? The Inkling perspective, and what the group tried to do through art and literature, comes closest to what I personally believe humanity needs more of today. It is my genuine hope and aspiration that the viewpoint I bring to issues and topics discussed in this blog will manage to approximate, dare I say express, some of the values and qualities of consciousness instantiated by the original Inklings.