Another barrier that exists between the average Christian and the works of Charles Williams is the indisputible influence that occult thinking had upon him. Both Christians and occultists seem to want to lay claim to him. The occultists discount his thoroughgoing Nicean Anglicanism, and place undue importance on occult ideas that make their way into his writings. A lot of Christians, on the other hand, wander onto Williams’ turf having heard that CS Lewis thought a great deal of him, and are baffled by the theological landscape they find defined in Williams’ works. 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.
His membership in the Order Of The Golden Dawn lasted from 1917 to around 1938, and Williams never had a dilettantish interest in anything in his life. His interest in the occult was real and lively. Because of Williams’ interest in the occult and his use of occult themes in his work, many Conservative Christians consider him off-limits. 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.
But Williams had other, more salutatory, influences as well. He was a friend of Evelyn Underhill, an Anglican spiritual writer who had a Roman Catholic mystic as a spiritual guide. I don’t know whether to call Mrs. Underhill a mystic or more of a travel-writer of the mystical experience. Through Underwood, Williams gained a familiarity with the Western mystical tradition and the Christian Neo-Platonism of Pico Della Mirandola. Also, through his lifelong association with emigres Nicolas and Militza Zernov, he had more than a nodding acquiantance with the Eastern tradition.
I think the most important idea that Williams garnered from his occult involvement was the very ancient idea of man-as-microcosm, although this idea is found in Maximos the Confessor as much as in Hermes Trimegistus or the astrological tract Almagest of Ptolemy. The ancient idea of the Zodiac signs ruling over certain parts of the body fascinated him from a poetic point of view, and worked its way into the poem Taliessin’s Vision Of The Empire. All of this would be just counter-pieces in an academic game of chess if Williams’ thought on The Index Of The Body hadn’t preceded and foreshadowed Pope John Paul II’s Theology Of The Body:
Secondly, there is the human body, and the movements of the human body. Even know, when as a general rule, the human body is not supposed to mean anything, there are moments when it seems, even in spite of ourselves, packed with significance.
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. Thus, the dark transformations of occultism (and all of Williams’ villians are in some way occultists) make way for, and bend before, the miraculous emergence of the New Man in the center of the Web of Exchange.
NB: JRR Tolkien doesn’t seem to have resented Charles Williams’ influence over CS Lewis as much as I infer. That Tolkien called Williams a “witch doctor” I gleaned from Humphrey Carpenter’s excellent book on the Inklings, somewhere around pages 121-127. Tolkien’s view of the extraordinary level of divine protection Charles Williams enjoyed I believe came from Dick Plotz’ interview of Tolkien in 1967[?] that I vaguely remember hearing on the radio when I was in the first flush of Tolkien fanboy-dom. It may be apocryphal.
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June 12, 2007 at 7:56 pm
St. Worm
Wow, Mule! Didn’t know til now you had a blog. This is great. I’ve always admired your posts. Thank you for investing your talent into this blog.
Your brother in Christ.
St. Worm
July 8, 2007 at 6:36 pm
Admonit
Yes, you are right. I struggle with CW’s occultism myself. 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.
You said that he was in the Order Of The Golden Dawn from 1917 to around 1938? Where did you find that fact? I’ve just finished reading Hadfield’s bio of CW, and she says he was in it for about 5 years. I wouldn’t be surprised if she were on of the downplayers….
July 17, 2007 at 2:30 pm
Chip.
Your remarks on Williams’ involvement with the occult are spot-on. His book Witchcraft was stunning, as it is obviously knew the topic intimately and took it with considerable seriousness.
It may just be that Williams was a greater thinker than he was an artist. 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. But his novels seem to float in a sea of larger ideas. His prose does not give body to the mystical environment. His perceptions may exceed his talent — sort of Blake in reverse, perhaps.
I also appreciate your comparison of Williams to John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. The Pope’s project did not seem complete; Williams’ was full but was not accessible. Perhaps Williams should not be thought of as a forerunner to JPII at all but on a different project altogether. In the end, however, both efforts seem failures.
The impulse to pull together a system of “positive theology” goes back through the Celtic Church and, of course, well before that. But it seems very hard to do. Perhaps we have to have “ascetis” as a pre-condition for spiritual enjoyment. I would love to hear Fr. Stephen’s thinking in this area.
August 20, 2007 at 5:47 am
Yvonne
Seems to me that “occult” is another of those words, like “magic” that gets Christians all riled up, when it simply means “hidden things”.
As St Paul said, “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.” 1 Corinthians 13:11
The occult, to someone like Charles Williams or Evelyn Underhill, and indeed the majority of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, simply means looking beyond the obvious and surface interpretation to the inner meaning. Mysticism also means penetrating below the surface of things to the deeper mystery. Of course the mystic must not thereby assume that they are cleverer than others because more has been revealed to them – that is the sin of spiritual pride (of which many contemporary occultists are well aware).
Yes, there are occultists and magicians who behave like Uncle Andrew in “The Magician’s Nephew”, but it doesn’t mean all of them are like that. The three Magi in the Bible used a form of astrology to find out that Christ was to be born in Bethlehem, and whilst it caused a lot of trouble because it drew Herod’s attention to the event and encouraged him to massacre the Holy Innocents (actually a similar tale was told about the birth of Krishna, so the story may be a later insertion), the Bible does NOT say “And it was very bad of the Magi to use astrology to predict Christ’s birth”.
Always go back to the etymology!
September 2, 2007 at 7:17 am
Anthony Fleming
Actually Williams was never of the Golden Dawn as such but rather a member of A.E. Waite’s more mystical Order of the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross in which he attained a high’Grade’. However, regarding the Golden Dawn (or rather a version known as the Stella Matutina) what is somewhat less well known is the fact that between 1907 and 1935 significant numbers of Anglo-Catholic clergy (including 4 Bishops) joined this magical Order. These included ‘Fathers’ from the Community of the Resurrection’.Dean Bennett of Chester Cathedral was also a member. Evelyn Underhill, the renowned writer on Christian mysticism joined Waite’s ‘Holy Order of the Golden Dawn’, a precursor to Waite’s FRC. Williams, of course, provided the introduction to a volume of her letters.
October 4, 2007 at 10:10 am
Steve Hayes
Perhaps one of the things that makes Charles Williams’s fiction so compelling is that he knew what he was writing about.
And that also makes his Witchcraft useful and informative, even though it lacks source citations etc for the most part.
October 21, 2007 at 9:29 pm
Nance
If Williams were so popular as Lewis, I could see the aversion to his writing amongst Evangelicals as similar to the aversion to Harry Potter, even with Rowling now declaring(as seemed apparent before, I think) that they are indeed ‘Christian’ stories. He certainly shows in his fiction that Truth will conquer all of these other powers, but for lack of the phrase “Jesus Christ”, but instead the unfamiliars–the Grace, the Mercy, even “Messias”–the conservative Evangelical reader may be left uncomfortable. 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.
I just discovered this blog, by the way, and I absolutely love it. I really hope to see more posts forth-coming!
November 4, 2007 at 4:42 pm
Anthony Fleming
Regarding Admonit’s query the evidence for William’s membership of the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross (which was a sort of mystical Christian version of the Golden Dawn) can be found in R.A. Gilbert’s “A.E. Waite- Magician of Many Parts” (Wellingborough: Cricible, 1987) pp.148-149. Williams was a member for 10 years and went through most of the various initiatory Grades. His final ‘advancement’, on 29 June 1927 “was to be a participant in ‘The Ceremony of Consecration on the Threshold of Sacred Mystery’. The FRC did not teach ritual or ceremonial ‘magic’ but embraced Christian Kabbalistic symbolism. Similarly, the Tarot images were used in ceremonies as symbolism but not for any divining purpose. 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.
May 15, 2010 at 1:49 pm
Morgan Thomsen
I’m trying to a write a small piece on the relation between Williams and Tolkien on the web page of Tolkien Gateway. I would be grateful for the source(s) for Tolkien’s statements on Williams that were used in this blog post. Cheers/Morgan Thomsen, Sweden
August 8, 2013 at 7:40 pm
David Orth
Let me ditto Yvonne’s remarks. The Hermetic Christian influences of Williams are not only benign, but deeply insightful. It is important to become familiar with this venerable, though underground, tradition before dismissing it or being fearful of it. It is not a unified group, but is more akin to the Jewish tradition of debate and exploration. We will hear more from this strain of ignored Christianity in the next decade. The beauty, universality, and earthy spirituality of Tolkien’s and Lewis’ Christian visions owe much to this more hidden, experiential Christianity. Two helpful books come to mind. Just published is Cynthia Bourgeault’s The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three. Christianity should blow your mind. Bourgeault throughout her writing life is working on that. Also, see Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Hermetic Christianity by Anonymous – though now it is known who wrote this 800 page book of great faith and insight. The Tarot in this tradition is not for fortunetelling. The 20 major arcana are pictures of archetypal Christian ideas and experiences. You can verify them in your own journey – but that is so different than trying to predict your journey. 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.
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. I will end with one more title for your consideration.
Jacob Needleman, Lost Christianity.
May 11, 2014 at 8:30 pm
Nathan E. Brooks
There seems to be a great deal of slight of hand going on here. The fact is that there was no occultism, gnosticism, or hidden way in Jesus. I am an Anglican Chaplain who has loved Lewis work since college and know a bit of the influence of Williams. I also have seen first hand the consequences of true occult participation upon a human soul who became possessed. Once one sees that he becomes somewhat like a combat veteran and counsels the wise to stay far far away from it in any form. 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. Fr. Nathan Brooks+
May 29, 2015 at 5:54 pm
David Orth
Fr. Brooks, I am an Anglican/Episcopalian hospital chaplain – and have seen a few things myself. Danger and safety are not so easy to define – sadly.
January 18, 2017 at 9:25 am
Ken
No truth comes from lies. This notion is from the father of lies and the author of confusion.