Charles Williams

Alchemy and Integration

Gavin Ashenden

• Publisher: The Kent State University Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781612778846
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism in Science Fiction
• Index: Literature

An examination of the tumultuous inner life of this poet and writer

He was a close friend of T. S. Eliot, deeply admired by C. S. Lewis, inspirational for W. H. Auden in his journey to faith, and a literary sparring partner for J. R. R. Tolkien. Yet half a century after his death, much of Charles Williams's life and work remains an enigma. The questions that arose from his immersion in Rosicrucian and hermetic culture and ideology—central to understanding Williams's thought and art remain provocatively unexplored.

For a decade of his early adulthood, Williams was a member of the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross, a form of neo-Rosicrucianism. There is widespread confusion about its nature, which is to be expected given that this was a semisecret society. Though Williams left his formal association with it behind, it enriched and informed his imaginative world with a hermetic myth that expressed itself in an underlying ideology and metaphysics.

In Charles Williams: Alchemy and Integration, Gavin Ashenden explores both the history behind the myths and metaphysics Williams was to make his own and the hermetic culture that influenced him. He examines and interprets its expressions in Williams's novels, poetry, and the development of his ideas and relates these elements to Williams's unpublished letters to his platonic lover, Celia, written toward the end of his life. Since one of the foremost ideas in Williams's work is the interdependence or co-inherence of both our humanity and the creation, understanding the extent to which he lived and achieved this in his own life is important. Williams's private correspondence with Celia is of particular interest both for its own sake, since it was previously unknown, and for the insight it offers into his personality and muse.

CHAPTER ONE

The Encounter between Poet and Magus

A Revised History

Reactions to Charles Williams’s rootedness in Rosicrucianism have ranged from the mildly suspicious to outright hostility. The Fellowship of the Rosy Cross was a secret society, and secret societies always provoke anxiety among the religious or academic orthodox, so such reactions are entirely reasonable. Nevertheless one of the main tasks for interpreters of his work is to clarify what this involvement really consisted of and what effect it had on his life and work. R. A. Gilbert, the biographer of the founder of the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross, A. E. Waite, commented that,

Among students of Charles Williams, it has been fashionable—and indeed it still is—to play down the influence of Waite and the role of the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross in Williams’ life. Such an attitude stems partly from a feeling that membership of the “Order of the Golden Dawn”—with which critics invariably confuse the “Fellowship of the Rosy Cross”—somehow brings discredit upon Williams, and partly a belief that Waite’s writings are of little worth and ought not to have exercised any significant influence on the literary figure they seek to lionise. In maintaining such an attitude they perpetuate not only their own prejudices, but also errors of fact in the biography of Charles Williams.¹

Inevitably the term “occult” covers so much ground and is used so imprecisely that its very introduction into an area of study causes as much confusion as elucidation. The study of any “occultism” generates an area of taboo that often disenfranchises any author suspected of it in the eyes of many critics. There is anxiety among people with only the most casual knowledge of the esoteric that Williams might have been some kind of occultist, and his locus standi as a Christian artist and writer is thereby reduced. He is, therefore, inevitably subject to a certain amount of suspicion. Commentators have, on the whole, not managed to grasp the issues that underlay Williams’s experience of esoteric culture. My purpose is to explore its central significance, and also correct the consistent misleading error that Williams was a member of the Order of the Golden Dawn.

Alice Mary Hadfield, in what remains the fullest biographical work on Williams, lays down the false trail so many have followed since when she asks, “In the end what did Waite’s Golden Dawn mean to him? Surely his outlook and philosophy were not generated, or indeed much affected by it? He was thirty-one when he joined and his mind was already well based, developed and directed. His following three works—Divorce, Windows of Night, and Outlines of Romantic Theology—scatter the shadows of such a suggestion.”² This confuses a number of different issues. He was never a member of the Order of the Golden Dawn, but of the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross, which was created as an alternative to it; and the question of how much that esoteric culture influenced his mind is both fascinating and important. The answer to this question has wide-ranging implications for assessing Charles Williams’s thought. There is a good deal in Williams’s theology that addresses a number of important issues from a fresh angle. These include the difficulties that arise from trying to hold the relative values of matter and spirit in tension, as well as the problems of arriving at a more creative view of both marriage and sex. Other implications entail such current issues as our concerns for ecology in the face of the despoiling of our material environment, a crisis that has provoked too little criticism from the orthodox guardians of our “spiritual” traditions. From the earliest centuries of our intellectual tradition, matter—the earth—has been seen essentially as a source of resources for us to take dominion over and exploit to our benefit. This contributed to the unwillingness to acknowledge the critical degree of interdependence.

As Hadfield noted, it is certainly true that the influence of myth and ritual also have their roots in his childhood. Williams’s immediate family was steeped in an atmosphere that was appreciative of romance, religion, and myth. His maternal uncle James Charles Wall was an authority on British saints and produced a celebrated work of reference, Shrines of British Saints.³ His introduction to the work describes the age of the saints as “days of mystic loveliness and poetical beauty.”⁴ Williams was also going to be drawn to myth, legend, and romance. The nephew shared this same interest in mysticism and religiosity as his uncle. Anne Ridler describes (more accurately than Hadfield) exactly how Williams’s mind was set in those early days.

Charles Williams sometimes spoke of a fantasy which he had made with a friend in his boyhood, a world which they entered each day when they travelled to London together from St. Albans, and which remained in being for them during some years. “Hardly fantasy,” Mr Robinson wrote when I asked him if he remembered it: “it was too objective for that.” … [O]f this Gondal country nothing seems to have been recorded in writing, but the habit of fantasy making this habit remained with him.⁵

In fact, this cast of mind would find a home in Waite’s order and its neo-Rosicrucianism would give it a more potent articulation and provide a milieu for its development.

To defuse the concern that association with Waite might damage Williams’s reputation, one needs to establish clearly what both Waite and, through him, Williams were exploring. But first it is necessary to correct some errors in the chronology of their relationship and in the nature of the organization that Waite founded and Williams joined.

For example, in the second of her two biographies⁶ Hadfield writes, “Charles’s contacts with A. E. Waite had led to their meeting and thus to an invitation for Charles to join his order of the ‘Order of the Golden Dawn.’ … [O]n the 6th September 1917, Waite wrote to Charles arranging for his reception into the neophyte (lowest) Grade of the Society at the autumnal equinox (17th of September).”⁷ Hadfield is correct with the date but wrong about the organization. The false trail is taken up by others. She is followed by Glen Cavaliero when he writes in his chapter “The Life,” “In 1917 Williams joined for a while the hermetic order of the ‘Order of the Golden Dawn.’”⁸

Surprisingly, Roma A. King Jr., who had been in direct contact with R. A. Gilbert, Waite’s biographer, repeats this error by mistakenly attributing to Williams membership in the Order of the Golden Dawn in his book The Pattern in the Web.⁹ Dennis L. Weeks makes the same mistake in Steps toward Salvation in 1991,¹⁰ as does Andrea Freud-Loewenstein in Loathsome Jews and Engulfing Women.¹¹ The only two publications that accurately reflect the historical position of Williams are Huw Mordecai’s chapter “Charles Williams and the Occult” in Charles Williams: A Celebration¹² and a chapter by Thomas Willard, entitled “Acts of the Companions: A. E. Waite’s Fellowship of the Rosy Cross and the Novels of Charles Williams,” in Secret Texts: The Literature of Secret Societies.¹³ Neither traces the full implications that flow from this necessary correction.¹⁴

There were not only important historical distinctions between the two organizations but considerably different approaches to the central concern of the role and status of Christianity. Because the Order of the Golden Dawn had distinctive goetic (that is, involving magic that is rather more “black” than “white”) elements and was involved in serious public scandal, it is essential that the two groups are distinguished from each other.¹⁵ The Order of the Golden Dawn itself had its own schisms over the relationship between mysticism and magic, notably involving W. B. Yeats on the one hand, and Aleister Crowley on the other. But the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross came into being precisely for the reason that A. E. Waite believed a separate organization was needed in order to exclude the pursuit of the magical (black or white) and promote the experience and knowledge of mysticism.

Part of this confusion is paradoxically due to Williams himself. Anne Ridler in her introduction to “The Image of the City” writes, “He much admired the writings of A. E. Waite,¹⁶ and Mr Williams tells me that it was through a letter concerning one of Waite’s books that Charles made his acquaintance, and was introduced by him to the Order of the Golden Dawn.”¹⁷ Ridler is less concerned than Hadfield to distance Williams from Waite and documents the fact that Waite was influential. She does at least point out that Williams must have belonged to a “later unnamed order” that Waite referred to in his autobiography,¹⁸ but she is not clear what it was. The matter is confused by Williams himself, as she rightly points out, writing, “Yet he always spoke of himself as having belonged to the Golden Dawn.”¹⁹

The source of this confusion may be the fact that the Order of the Golden Dawn had attracted literary figures of the stature of W. B. Yeats and Evelyn Underhill. This may partly explain why Williams had a certain amount of anxiety about his social standing in an aesthetic culture that was only too alert to the issue of social class. The Oxford University Press, where he worked, and the literary figures with whom he rubbed shoulders as an aspiring poet were from a different social ethos. Williams seems to have been using the connection with the Order of the Golden Dawn to improve his social standing in literary circles. Hadfield is further mistaken when she writes, “His active membership was no more than four or five years. It may be that after his son was born in 1922 he had difficulty in finding a free evening besides his regular lectures and the time he needed for writing. Or he may simply have had enough.”²⁰ In fact his active membership lasted ten years, until June 29, 1927—as significant as the error of fact is the dismissive tone of Hadfield’s commentary. It is clear that in her estimation this episode in Williams’s life needs to be played down. In fact, these elements play a central role in the formation of Williams’s ideas.

Poet Meets Magus—Williams and Waite from 1915 to 1931

Earlier contacts led to Williams joining Waite’s order in 1917. After reading The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal,²¹ Williams sent Waite a copy of his own volume of poetry, The Silver Stair (1912). Although it was undated we know that the book was sent in the summer of 1915, for Waite replied on August 24 and Williams then visited him in south Ealing on September 4, signing his name in Sibyl Waite’s autograph book. Waite kept the book of poetry until the occasion of their next meeting on April 22, 1916.²² The connection between the two men was made easier by the fact that they had friends in common.

Williams had become aware of Waite’s poetry by this time, since he was proofreading The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse, which contained six poems by Waite. They were included because the editors, the Reverend A. H. E. Lee and D. H. S. Nicholson,²³ were friends of Waite, admired his work, and had also been members of the Independent and Rectified Rite (though neither of them continued into the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross).²⁴ Gilbert makes the obvious connection, “It is possible that they told Williams something of the nature of the order and they may, consciously or not, have encouraged him to seek admission into the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross.”²⁵ Williams married Florence Conway on April 12, 1917, at St. Albans Abbey, and afterward moved to 18 Parkhill Road, London, NW3. From there he petitioned for membership in the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross.²⁶ In mid-1917 Williams asked for a form of profession, and signed it on July 18. He was received into the Portal Grade of the Rosy Cross under the sacramental name of Frater Qui Sitit Veniat.²⁷ On September 6, 1917, Waite wrote,²⁸

Sept. 6 1917.

As intimated when I wrote on July 27th, it will be more convenient for the Fellowship to arrange for your reception at the Autumnal Equinox, which will be celebrated on Friday, Sep. 21st, beginning at 5 or 6 P.M. The temple will be opened then in the Neophyte Grade and as at subsequent meetings there is a call for other Grades, it is desirable not to have the first one for some time to come subsequently. If this is possible, you will remember that a visit to Spencer²⁹ is necessary, and they ought to be seen promptly, as the habit takes a little time.³⁰

Williams’s initiation took place on Friday, September 21 at 5:50 P.M. in hired rooms at the Imperial Hotel in Russell Square. The autumn equinox celebrations followed. He moved rapidly through the lower grades, and on August 26, 1919, he was Raised on the Cross of Tiphereth, and entered the grade of Adeptus Minor. Gilbert informs us from Waite’s records of the fellowship, that from this point his progress was somewhat slower. On July 10, 1924, he attained the grade of 7=4, Adeptus Exemptus.³¹ On July 27, 1925, he reached the Portal of the Fourth Order when he was integrated by dispensation on the part of the Headship into the Blessed Company. It appears that after a decade his active involvement with the organization was near an end. His last advancement was on July 29, 1927, when he was a participant in the Ceremony of Consecration on the Threshold of the Sacred Mystery, which was to be the first ritual of Waite’s more exalted order, The Hidden Life of the Rosy Cross. It was Williams’s last ceremony. He took part in no further rituals, but he remained an inactive member of the order. He kept in regular contact with Waite, who visited him at Amen House in September 1928, and wrote to him periodically until 1931. He retained the costume of the order until the end of his life.³² He took his vows seriously.

Although attracted to Waite by a common preoccupation with the Holy Grail, Williams became equally interested in Waite’s Q’abalistic doctrines as set out in The Secret Doctrine in Israel. This book informed his attempts to formulate a theology of marriage and provided a basis for his ideas about the symbolism of the body. Anne Ridler comments, “It was the Secret Doctrine in Israel (1913) which interested him most—and he continued to admire it, for he recommended me to read it, when I knew him in the thirties. It is a study of Jewish mystical work, the Zohar.… [I]n this book, I believe are the foundations of Williams’ thought about the symbolism of the body, and of his lifelong attempt to develop an adequate theology of marriage.”³³ The wider scope of Waite’s influence will be explored in later chapters. It is found particularly in the material and ideology within his novels, within his play The Chaste Wanton, and in his Taliessin cycle, where he was to use Sephirotic imagery on a number of occasions, as well as in private correspondence to Phyllis Jones.³⁴

The Nature of the Organization

An understanding of how Waite’s fellowship differed from the Order of the Golden Dawn may b...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter One: The Encounter between Poet and Magus
• Chapter Two: Modern Hermeticism
• Chapter Three: The Q’abalah, The Secret Doctrine in Israel, and the Influence of A. E. Waite
• Chapter Four: The “Two Ways” and the “Theology of Romantic Love”
• Chapter Five: Alchemy as Metanarrative
• Chapter Six: The Goetic, Theurgic, and Wisdom Traditions
• Chapter Seven: The Integration of the Natural and Supernatural in Charles Williams
• Chapter Eight: The Second Phase of Maturation
• Chapter Nine: Vocabulary and Imagery
• Chapter Ten: The Quest for Integration: “A Century” and Correspondence from the Later Years
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index