Arktos (book)
book by Joscelyn Godwin
Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism, and Nazi Survival is a 1993 book by historian of occultism Joscelyn Godwin. The book is a history of mythic and occultist interest in the polar regions of Earth, the Arctic and Antarctic, particularly in the context of and their influence on the mythology of occultism in Nazism. The book was first published in 1993 by Phanes Press in the United States and by Thames & Hudson in the United Kingdom.
It covers the presence of polar myths in many traditions from the ancient to the modern day, and its manifestations in Theosophy, Hollow Earth theories, and Nazi occultism. Godwin also discusses the legendary hidden realms of Agartha, Shambhala and Hyperborea. The book received largely positive reviews and academic assessments, with praise for its scholarly coverage of a fringe and confusing topic.
Background and publication history
Joscelyn Godwin is a historian of occultism and Western esotericism. At the time of the book's publication, he taught at the music department of Colgate University.
Arktos was first published in 1993 by Phanes Press in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and in paperback by Thames & Hudson in London in the same year. Both editions are 260 pages long.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q136676673. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1993.
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This entry incorporates text from “Arktos (book)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.