The Notion Club as a Magical Society - implications for Tolkien's attitudes to magic in the modern world

In the years since I first encountered The Notion Club Papers (NCPs) I have read much about some of the groupings that constituted White (Christian) Magic in England - and the various societies in a tradition that goes back to the Golden Dawn at the turn of the 19th-20th century, through Dion Fortune in the early-mid 20th century, and to Gareth Knight in the late 20th century and his death only a few years ago.   

Gareth Knight is especially significant, since he authored "The Magical World of the Inklings" (1990) which was endorsed by a foreword from Owen Barfield; and constitutes a frequently insightful overview of the work (and, to some extent, lives) of CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, Charles Williams and Owen Barfield. 

But Knight does not consider the NCPs - which were only published after the first edition of GK's Inklings book, and had not been accorded the specific and defining consideration of Verlyn Flieger's A Question of Time (2001). 

The Notion Club, as depicted by Tolkien, is a magical society; albeit not of the earlier and formal kind (of which Charles Williams was an active and advanced participant) that was characterized by graded initiations, sworn secrecy, and costumed and scripted rituals. 

Instead; the Notion Club (written in 1945-6) more resembled that informal, fluid, late 20th/ early 21st century magical practice - sometimes solitary, dyadic, or among small-groupings of friends or colleagues - which Gareth Knight describes in his autobiography (I Called it Magic, 2011). 

The Notion Club are described as deploying a variety of spiritual/ magical techniques in pursuit of their goals. 

1. There is a "Jungian" focus on dream journaling and analysis, as routes to self-understanding but also to developing explicit awareness concerning unconscious knowledge of spiritual, remote and historical reality. 

2. Several instances of what later became termed "channelling", are described or implied - such as when Lowdham and Jeremy speak with the voices of people from the mythical past; or when Frankley unconsciously composes the relevant mystical poem of St Brendan's voyages after sleep, as if "given" to him by another consciousness.

3. Clairvoyance and clairaudience (referencing sight and hearing) are evident when Ramer and Jeremy experience visions of the mythic-past and remote places; and when Lowdam hears phrases in strange languages (he also clairvoyantly sees them written). 

There are also mentions that Dolbear has been "training" Ramer, and later Lowdham and Jeremy, in (what sounds like) some kind of method of "lucid" dream awareness, with hints of "exercises" for training and strengthening the imagination. 

Dolbear himself often enters a suspended and partial sleep state (hypnagogic/ hypnopompic) in which he remains both aware of the club and of other-place/time visions. 

The above list is not exhaustive. There are many indications that - even if not self-consciously so - the Notion Club, which seems to have begun as a literary club, has come to function, more and more, as a Magical Society - as its members develop methods for attaining the altered states of consciousness by which they become aware of, and influenced by, the society and events of a remote and indeed mythical past. 

Furthermore; the Notion Club is a "contacted" magical group; in that particular NC members derive knowledge from particular "spirit guides" who might (since they exist simultaneously in the mythic past and the contemporary setting of the NCPs) be regarded as closely analogous to the benign "inner plane guides" that stand-behind, teach and advise the closed and formal (later more open and improvised) magical societies of Dion Fortune (Society of the Inner Light) and the Gareth Knight Group.

I find it very striking to notice the extent to which the Notion Club functions as a real but unconscious Magical Society; in the sense of deliberately developing a methodology of using the trained imagination, altered states of consciousness and inner contact with persons/ beings in other times and places. 

This extends to describing members' experiences encountering non-human beings (Ramer's other planets), non-physical planes (discussions of the reality and nature of ghosts), and (what sound like) demonic attacks happening during dreaming.  

In sum: although the Notion Club were initially loosely-modelled on the mundane Inklings group, with its focus on literary composition and critique; as the story developed, so did distinctly magical behaviours and aims. 

Since the magical techniques are described from a distinctly positive perspective, and in pursuit of aims of which Tolkien approved; it seems that Tolkien was implicitly (although he tended publicly to deny this) far more positive concerning the nature and possibilities of "magic" in the modern world, than might otherwise have been suspected.