Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien and Charles Williams-- wrote fantasy, as well as theology and philosophy. Mysticism also means penetrating below the surface of things to the deeper mystery. I’ve always admired your posts. Perhaps unfairly, it seemed at the time as if the mainstream churches were irretrievably lost in the Secular City. Through Underwood, Williams gained a familiarity with the Western mystical tradition and the Christian Neo-Platonism of Pico Della Mirandola. Magic is transmogrified by the Eucharist, because a cosmos in which bread and wine can become the Body and Blood of Christ is a cosmos in which anything, literally, can happen. Actually Williams was never of the Golden Dawn as such but rather a member of A.E. In Esotericism and Narrative: The Occult Fiction of Charles Williams, Aren Roukema looks through the portal of Charles Williams’s fantastic fiction, analyzing the author’s narrative translations of ritual experiences with modern magic, kabbalah and spiritual alchemy. Satan is after all in our Lord’s words the “father of lies” and “a liar and murderer from the beginning.” Mr. Williams mere flirtation with the occult, if that was all it amounted to, is like flirting with a black widow spider. I also have seen first hand the consequences of true occult participation upon a human soul who became possessed. Auden himself said he owed his Christian conversion in part to contact with Williams. He has made many discoveries about Williams’s early life, and in the pre-1940 chapters we learn much about the English literary and publishing world of that era. William’s dad Charles is a 33rd degree mason, which provides the highest level of occult opportunity. The occult connections of his ‘royal family’ have been extensively documented. I struggle with CW’s occultism myself. Charles Williams was also a member of the ‘Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn’. Stephen’s thinking in this area. Is he a writer on the occult? Lindop himself is a poet, whose original interest in Williams came from his admiration for the two collections Taliessin through Logres and The Region of the Summer Stars. Cheers/Morgan Thomsen, Sweden. Beyond giving Williams all due credit for his own contributions, this definitive biography is immensely informative about many other figures, including the Inklings circle itself. Williams was a member for 10 years and went through most of the various initiatory Grades. There seems to be a great deal of slight of hand going on here. As a fantasist, theologian, and literary critic Williams had a signifi- cant influence on the work of Lewis,1 while his occult poetry and fiction ranks with that of Algernon Blackwood and Arthur Machen in quality and impact, though its influence has not been as marked as that of another of Williams’s acquaintances—W.B. It may be apocryphal. Robert Galbreath. I know he’s using it as a tool, but I know I’d have a hard time (as an Evangelical Christian) using, say, crystal balls or levitation as a plot element in a novel without showing that they are either evil or frauds. It occurs in the third book of his science fiction trilogy. Fifty years later, C.S. But it seems very hard to do. Your remarks on Williams’ involvement with the occult are spot-on. Interestingly, the Tarot cards used in the FRC were quite different from any published (and different from Waites published deck) but were, and still are, secret. Lewis spoke very highly of Charles Williams and his books, so I read all of his books. In the end, however, both efforts seem failures. For many of us, at least in Britain, Christianity was nowhere near being a serious option. Charles Williams, A.E. Perhaps one of the things that makes Charles Williams’s fiction so compelling is that he knew what he was writing about. He was at once theologian, mystic, poet, novelist, editor, playwright, and critic, not to mention being an esteemed spiritual mentor and (possibly) a living Anglican saint. S. Lewis called Charles Williams, a man whose mind was steeped in occult rituals and demonic forces, "his dearest friend." Nov 19, 2019 - Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Charles Williams - War In Heaven - Sphere Paperback - 1976 Occult Paperbacks at the best online prices at … In Williams’ The Greater Trumps (novel), supernatural, occult powers are released by way of tarot cards. Like them, he had no hesitation about drawing on any aspect of secular or even esoteric learning and absorbing those ideas fully into his own enthralling Christian synthesis. In The Greater Trumps, the hero is a saintly woman who saves the day by doing magic with Tarot cards. If only because of his influence on multiple figures in modern literature and religious thought, Williams’s significance is beyond doubt, although his role often seems paradoxical. Yet amid failure and defeat, he finds a triumphant new hope from two aged Jewish kabbalists, who teach him the mystical ascent to heaven through the interlinked paths of the Sefirotic Tree: “About me a scintillation of points / Points of the eagle’s plumes, plumes that are paths / Paths and plumes swoop to the unbelieved symbol.” At his death, Palomides is saved through the affirmation, “The Lord created all things by means of his Blessing.” Ultimately, the poem is a glorious hymn of victory. His perceptions may exceed his talent — sort of Blake in reverse, perhaps. Tolkien sometimes found less than met the eye in Williams’s vaunted intellect and poetic aspirations and wondered if he might be a charlatan. He was at once theologian, mystic, poet, novelist, editor, playwright, and critic, not to mention being an esteemed spiritual mentor and (possibly) a living Anglican saint. At the very end you will find a list and description of the Trumps as modified by Williams. If those interactions never extended to harassment or abuse, he often resembled a Svengali figure, with a taste for mild sadomasochism. [1] Tolkien even referred to Williams as the “witch doctor.”[2] Additionally, Tolkien never appreciated Williams’s intrusion into Tolkien’s and Lewis’s friendship. Nor was the communion of saints. Lewis was deeply influenced by him to the point that the figure of Aslan in the Narnia Chronicles was borrowed intact from the angelic archetypal figure of Williams’s novel The Place of the Lion. A rising tide lifted all Inklings. It was Arthurian research that brought Williams into contact with Golden Dawn veteran A. E. Waite, and through him that Williams was initiated into the occult sects. (Charles Williams, p. 31) This is a view echoed by many other Williams scholars. His work is hard to classify since it will not fit any category of modern criticism. The Grail is also the focus of Williams’s best-known novel, War in Heaven. Synopsis : Esotericism and Narrative The Occult Fiction of Charles Williams written by Aren Roukema, published by BRILL which was released on 07 June 2018. Even JRR Tolkien lamented Williams’ influence over Lewis, and referred to him as “that witch-doctor”, although he admitted that Williams appeared to operate under an unusual degree of [Divine] protection, given the intellectual precincts he frequented. His work is hard to classify since it will not fit any category of modern criticism. The introduction to Thomas Howard’s The Novels of Charles Williams (1983), for example, can confidently proclaim, “Charles Williams was not interested in the occult at all except during a brief period in his early life. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. Quite chilling in parts. It fundamentally acts as a guide for a person and alerts them about any present or future happenings. [CDATA[// >. That Oxford residence permitted him to join the group that we remember as the Inklings. His Arthurian poetry can stretch beyond the memorable — I recall Taliessin’s Song of the Unicorn, together with his poem about the King’s images, across the span of many years. He thought Williams had ruined That Hideous Strength. Charles Williams is a strange figure among twentieth-century writers. The Tarot in this tradition is not for fortunetelling. Modern biographers have been still more troubled by Williams’s curious (to say the least) relationship with many young women. Mysticism also means penetrating below the surface of things to the deeper mystery. The impulse to pull together a system of “positive theology” goes back through the Celtic Church and, of course, well before that. Wow! Crucial to understanding Williams is that he was a working-class boy from a London background that verged on penury, so that he could not aspire to graduate from any university, let alone frequent the exalted halls of Oxford or Cambridge. Contrary to myth, Williams was never a member of the legendary Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the ultimate source of most modern-day occult thought and experimentation. As an artist, I am so thankful to have some pictures, and not just words, to remind me of the fundamental issues that I will face from time to time in a life of faith. The occultists discount his thoroughgoing Nicean Anglicanism, and place undue importance on occult ideas that make their way into his writings. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn, 2003. The proliferation of Inklings books is often prompted by Christian triumphalism. War in Heaven is an occult thriller. Both collections are written in the intricate, allusive, and highly unfashionable manner of high modernism, and some individual poems seem almost willfully recondite and user-unfriendly. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. I am an Anglican Chaplain who has loved Lewis work since college and know a bit of the influence of Williams. Some of us would quibble about relegating Williams to the rank of merely third among Inklings. Williams was as much a mixture as his books were. ALAMY Charles Williams (1886 – 1945) Another tendency that grew alongside this subterranean culture of Anglican occultism was the Anglican turn towards deliverance ministry. Anyway, I would just like to say fear not, just check some of this out for yourself and decide for yourself based on what you hear in this varied tradition’s own voices. Primary Texts: Charles Williams, All Hallow’s Eve, Chapters I-III “The New Life,” “The Beetles,” “Clerk Simon” Secondary Texts: Paul Fiddes, “Charles Williams and the Problem of Evil,” in C. S. Lewis and His Circle: Essays and Memoirs from the Oxford C.S. I stand in awe of the documentary materials that Lindop has unearthed, not to mention the breadth of the interviews and personal contacts. 6:2) led to many sermons, and his concept of substitutionary love became fundamental to my concept of how a Christian should love. Conservative Christians consider him off-limits. The fact is that there was no occultism, gnosticism, or hidden way in Jesus. I will end with one more title for your consideration. They downplay his association with the Order Of The Golden Dawn, saying that his interest was desultory or superficial, a youthful enthusiasm that he later outgrew. Evelyn Underhill, the renowned writer on Christian mysticism joined Waite’s ‘Holy Order of the Golden Dawn’, a precursor to Waite’s FRC. Williams was both an influential Anglican theologian and deeply involved in the occult – a member of a secret Rosicrucian fraternity, The Fellowship of the Rosy Cross, and in contact with magicians of the Stella Matutina, an occult group descended from the more famous Order of the Golden Dawn. It’s a pity too, because I personally love Williams’s writing, and have found his fiction in the short time that I’ve known it to be more inspired than either Tolkien’s or Lewis’s.
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