About the Document Archive
The bulk of the document archive consists of transcripts of classes that Damiani taught, primarily at Wisdom’s Goldenrod, in Hector, NY, but also in Ithaca, NY; Columbus, OH; and Sweden. He taught almost six nights per week for fourteen years. Moreover, on weekends there would be classes in both the morning and evening, and after he retired, he sometimes conducted small seminars in the afternoons as well. Records show that he taught over 2,000 classes.
In addition to these, there are another 300 documents in the archive that comprise partial class transcripts for which we no longer have audio, student notes of classes, and some of Damiani’s papers and notes.
At his death, Damiani left behind several boxes of loose papers. These boxes contained drafts of chapters and essays that he was considering for inclusion in the ms. of Astronoesis, as well as his abridgments of various books and articles, sometimes with his own annotations and additions interwoven throughout, scans of articles and typed-out extracts from books, original papers, partial transcripts, and diagrams. Many of these draft chapters and papers were presented in classes, and transcripts of these classes are included in the archive. There are about 1,341 pages of material, and about one-third of that is in digital format and included in the archive.
Audio and Transcripts of Classes
We have audio for about 900 classes; as of July 2026, 354 of the classes with audio have been transcribed and are included in the archive. More will be added as they become available. We have included the audio files for transcripts when they exist. Audio files that haven’t been listened to and transcribed are not included in the archive since without listening to them we don’t know whether the files have been correctly labeled or if their audio quality is so poor that it’s pointless to offer them. As transcripts become available, we will add them and the audio files to the archive.
For more on the structure of the online documents and listening to the audio of classes, please see Transcript structure.
To learn more about the way Damiani conducted these classes and to provide some context for reading transcripts and listening to the audio of classes, please see Damiani, dialogue, and dialectic.
For help with searching the document archive, please see Searching the document archive.
Diagrams Associated with Transcripts
When Damiani was teaching, he constantly drew diagrams on a blackboard to portray his ideas visually and symbolically. When we were able to identify a diagram being used in a class, we have either scanned the diagram or created a digital reproduction and associated it with the class transcript. You will be able to view these diagrams as you read the transcript. To learn more about how we determined which diagrams to associate with a transcript, please see Choosing diagrams.