John Goodchild

Who was John Goodchild?

John Arthur Goodchild was a physician, and later author of several works of poetry and mysticism, most famously Light of the West.

According to Benham Goodchild had a private medical practice in Bordighera, Italy, serving mainly expatriate Britons. From 1873 until the early 1900s he stayed in Italy during summers and returned to the UK in winters.

Goodchild was an antiquarian influenced by British Israelite ideas and the Golden Dawn esoteric group. He was friends with William Sharp, who dedicated his final literary work The Winged Destiny: Studies in the Spiritual History of the Gael to Goodchild.

He saw Glastonbury, Iona and Devenish Island as being a triune of holy sites in the British Isles.