Ep199: Path of the Polyglot - Dr Alexander Arguelles
Dr Alexander Arguelles is a linguist, world-renowned polyglot, and scholar of comparative religion.
Available on Youtube, iTunes, SoundCloud & Spotify – search ‘Guru Viking Podcast’.
Jn this episode, Dr Arguelles recounts his unusual upbringing in counter-culture America, traces his academic career through institutions such as the Universities of Columbia and Chicago, and details his remarkable life as a scholar and teacher.
Dr Arguelles illuminates the inner world of the polyglot, listing his dozens of ancient and modern languages and revealing his methods of study, his surprising daily routine, and how deep immersion in language families such as Germanic or Romantic, can unlock all related languages without the need for extensive study.
Dr Arguelles also reflects on his own spiritual life, including his mystical conversion to Catholicism, the unravelling of his vocation as a Benedictine monk, his time in Buddhist meditation retreat, and the ways in which a life of study and language learning can be a profound spiritual path of meditation.
00:00 - Intro
01:14 - How Steve met Dr Arguelles
02:40 - Inspiration behind the Academy
05:06 - The power of peers
07:54 - Dr Arguelles’ unusual upbringing
11:49 - Discouraged from language learning by polyglot father
14:41 - Areligious family context
16:19 - Dr Arguelles’ brother’s catastrophic brain disease
17:45 - Encountering Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas at Columbia University
19:24 - Drawn to the Mystery and conversion to Catholicism
21:53 - The unravelling of his vocation as a Benedictine monk
24:03 - Obtaining a PhD at the University of Chicago about dreams in the Old
24:56 - Norse sagas
25:30 - Reflecting on his conversion experience
28:18 - Dr Arguelles’ current spiritual position
31:10 - Thomas Merton and the Mystery
32:37 - Born to be a monk
34:08 - Dr Arguelles’ language learning journey
35:29 - Learning French, German, Spanish, Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit at Columbia University
36:58 - Old Norse, Old High German, Middle High German, Old English, Medieval French at the University of Chicago
38:34 - The murder of Ioan Petru Culianu
40:03 - Postdoctoral work on 1890s neo-paganism at the Berlin Centre for Advanced
European Studies
41:09 - Immersing in the Germanic and Romance language branches
44:23 - Seeking a greater challenge
45:30 - Unlocking the entire language branch
46:59 - Different personalities in different languages?
47:55 - Awakening languages rather than learning them
51:09 - How many languages does Dr Arguelles speak?
54:04 - Dr Arguelles’ regret
54:44 - The advantage of reading texts in their original languages
58:21 - Monastic phase in South Korea and intense learning
01:03:42 - Learning more languages and immersing in self-study
01:07:08 - Dr Arguelles’ daily routine, beginning at 2am
01:08:46 - Emerging from the monastic phase and getting married
01:09:32 - Immersion in Sanskrit and pruning his languages
01:11:55 - Immersion in Arabic in Lebanon
01:13:05 - Attending Buddhist retreats at Haeinsa in South Korea
01:16:47 - Committing faux pas on retreat
01:18:11 - Meeting and marrying Park Hyun-Kyung
01:20:44 - Dr Arguelles’ language meditation techniques and learning as a spiritual path
01:22:14 - Languages offered at the Academy
01:24:27 - Learning Sanskrit
01:25:37 - Comparative religions and the Great Books
To find our more about Dr Alexander Arguelles and his Academy, visit:
Music ‘Deva Dasi’ by Steve James