Upcoming Event, London, 9 November: join authors Mark Vernon and Jeffrey Hipolito together with poets Sir Ben Okri and Hilary Davies for a lively mix of talks, poetry readings and conversations exploring Barfield’s lasting influence, the nature of the imagination and man's eternal quest for meaning.

How poetry can save us. William Blake and Owen Barfield on the chariots of fire. A new essay at my Substack, A Golden String.
open.substack.com/pub/markvern...

Paul Wilkinson, a musician and teacher, writes very nicely about the essential nature of music, about the meaning of the decline in musical education, and how these are reflected in Barfield's fairy-tale, The Silver Trumpet.

owenbarfield.org/the-music-th...

A good, positive and informed review of The Silver Trumpet by Connor Salter, on the occasion of the publication of a new edition.

fellowdustmag.com/2025/06/12/b...

“[Owen] Barfield believed that as we look back into the history of language, we see that it becomes more figurative, more metaphorical, more, in a sense, alive and poetic; our own age is, as the literary philosopher Erich Heller said, much more one of prose.”

~ Gary Lachman.

Maria Shaskolskaia has written a blog of colour and interest about the Owen Barfield in Russian Club:

www.owenbarfield.org/the-owen-bar...

"The 'original metaphors' of the Incarnate Word [...] are the exemplary reality, from which all meaning derives, and in which it participates to differing degrees."

This insight and more from Jakob Ziguras' blog on the Owen Barfield website: www.owenbarfield.org/reflections-...

"Thus, without any particular exertion or theorising on my part I had had two things strongly impressed on me, firstly that the poetic or imaginative use of words enhances their meanings and secondly that those enhanced meanings may reveal hitherto unapprehended parts of reality." - Owen Barfield.

C.S. Lewis appeals to conservative evangelicals (when he never quotes scripture), romantic nationalists (when he said the old magic is dead), liberals (when he's a clearly a God-botherer). Why? His great friend, Owen Barfield, is suggestive. Full chat here www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLfl...

New on the blog: “Barfield’s understanding of language was one I had never encountered before”: an interview with Spencer Klavan

www.owenbarfield.org/barfields-un...

Sounds fascinating, Will!

Find out about Lucy Barfield, the inspiration for C.S. Lewis's Lucy Pevensie in the Chronicles of #Narnia, on our website: www.owenbarfield.org/research/luc...

Owen Barfield died on December 14, 1997. To mark the anniversary, we reprinted an article by Barfield's biographer, Simon Blaxland-de Lange.

"Owen Barfield, Harbinger of the 21st Century" www.owenbarfield.org/owen-barfiel...

#Barfield’s impact on #Tolkien is wide ranging, including how they conceived of romance and the Romantic. Barfield’s writings on the #Romantic movement, Rudolf #Steiner, and #Romanticism are more consonant with Tolkien than meets the eye.

Many use the writings of C.S. Lewis to help make sense of J.R.R. Tolkien's beliefs. But in many ways it is the anthroposophist Owen Barfield, whose movement the Catholic Church condemned as heresy, and his writings on myth which hold the key to grasping how Tolkien understood his sub-creation.

Introduction 🧵Owen Barfield (1898–1997) was one of the twentieth century’s most insightful writers and philosophers. His ideas informed the thinking and writing of influential authors such as C. S. #Lewis and J. R. R. #Tolkien who were fellow members of the #Inklings, an Oxford group of thinkers. /1

Look out for an exciting new edition of The Silver Trumpet, coming next year!

www.owenbarfield.org/new-barfield...

“The obvious is the hardest thing of all to point out to anyone who has genuinely lost sight of it.”

~ Owen Barfield, Worlds Apart.

Image: The Art of Stating the Blindingly Obvious 1129253 [with added border] / David Lally / Wikimedia Commons (orig. Geograph) / CC BY-SA 2.0.