| Neville Lancelot Goddard | |
| Birth Place: | Saint Michael, Barbados, British West Indies |
| Resting Place: | Saint Michael, Barbados |
| Birth Date: | February 19, 1905 |
| Subject: | Self-help, Bible exegesis |
| Death Place: | West Hollywood, California, US |
Neville Goddard (February 19, 1905 – October 1, 1972), was a Bajan writer, speaker and mystic. He grew up in Barbados and moved to the United States as a young adult. He taught various self-help methods for testing his own claim that the human imagination is omnificent, therefore God. He achieved popularity by reinterpreting the Bible and the poetry of William Blake.
Neville Lancelot Goddard was born in Fontabelle, Saint Michael, Barbados, on February 19, 1905, to Joseph Nathaniel Goddard, a merchant, and Wilhelmina Goddard (née Hinkson). Neville was the fourth of ten children. He was also the older brother to cricketer and businessman John Goddard.[1] At age 17, Goddard emigrated to New York City in 1922 to study drama and began his theatrical career as a dancer at the Hippodrome in New York City in 1925.[2] [3]
Between 1929 and 1936, he was mentored by an Ethiopian rabbi named Abdullah in New York. During this time, Abdullah introduced him to Kabbalah and taught him Hebrew. New Thought author Joseph Murphy also acknowledged Abdullah as his teacher.[4]
In 1942, at the age of 37, he was drafted into the army and stationed at Camp Polk, Louisiana, in the 11th Armored Division. After serving just 9 months he was granted an honorable discharge from his Battalion Commanding Officer Colonel Theodore Bilbough Jr. It was after this brief stint in the Army that he was naturalized as a United States citizen, having been a British citizen up to this point.
Goddard's earliest known career was as a professional dancer. While touring with his dance company in England, he developed an interest in metaphysics after he met Scotsman, Arthur Begbie who introduced him to the world of psychical research, giving Neville his first taste of the spiritualistic seance. When he returned to New York he became associated with a Rosicrucian body. In February 1938, he began lecturing in Old Actor's Church in New York.
After traveling extensively throughout the United States, Neville eventually made his home in Los Angeles in 1952. In the early 1950s, Goddard lectured at The Town Hall on religious topics.[5] In his 1931 lecture "Imagination plus Faith", he spoke of his brief career in television, “I did just what I am doing now, they gave me a lectern, I simply sat at a desk and spoke”. It was during the mid-1950's that he began his short stint on television. Broadcast in L.A. on channel 11 he had 26 half-hour shows which went on air between 2 pm and 2:30 pm every Sunday. The shows were simple in production, consisting of Goddard speaking extemporaneously to the television audience on biblical esotericism. The program averaged viewing audiences in excess of 300,000 on a weekly basis. The show was eventually cancelled when Channel 11 Studios were unable to secure advertisers suitable to the audience. In 1954, Goddard was reportedly planning a "metaphysical telefilm show", though it is unclear if the project came to fruition.[6] In the 1960s and early 1970s, he confined most of his lectures to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Miami.
Jonathan L. Walton has contended that Frederick Eikerenkoetter, best known as Reverend Ike, in particular adopted theories and teachings rooted in Goddard's ideas.[7] Rhonda Byrne and Wayne Dyer have noted that Goddard shaped their views.[8] Margaret Runyan Castaneda, ex-wife and later biographer of Carlos Castaneda, was interested in Goddard's work and introduced Castaneda to Goddard's ideas.[9]
Goddard married Mildrid Mary Hughes in 1923. Hughes was born on March 29, 1901, in Lancaster and Blackburn, England, and passed away on November 9, 1979, in New York City. The couple had one child, Joseph Neville Goddard, born on May 19, 1924, in New York City, who later died on March 01, 1986, in the same city. In 1942, Goddard married Catherine Willa Van Schmus. Van Schmus was born on February 2, 1907, in New Jersey, and died on January 1, 1975, in Los Angeles, California. They had a daughter, Victoria Goddard, born on June 28, 1942.[10]
Goddard died on October 1, 1972, aged 67, from an esophageal rupture. In 2022, historian Mitch Horowitz corrected the record of Neville's death, previously misattributed to a heart attack;[11] the author's death certificate cites the esophageal rupture. [12] He had been a resident of Los Angeles for roughly 20 years.[13]