Charles Williams's Time Loop and other temporal paradoxes in Many Dimensions

I am currently reading Charles Williams's 1931 novel, in which there is a very early discussion of the notion of "temporal paradoxes" - in particular a "time loop": 

Supposing you willed to return a year, and to be again in those exact conditions, interior and exterior, in which you had been a year ago—why then, either you would have the Stone with you or you would not. If you had, you were not the same: if you had not, then how did you return, short of living through the intervening period all over again? Lord Arglay shuddered at the possibility. It would be delightful, he thought, to know again the thrill which had gone through him when he had heard of his appointment to the office he held. But to have to go again through all those years of painful appeals, difficult judgements, distressing decisions, which so often meant unhappiness to the innocent—no. Besides—supposing you did. When you reached again this moment you would again return by virtue of the Stone—and so for ever. An infinite series of repetitions of those same few years, a being compelled to grow no older, a consciousness forbidden to expand or to die.

In his biography of Charles Williams, Grevel Lindop suggests that this was the first clear discussion of temporal  paradoxes/ a time loop in any fiction - and before the much better known examples from classic SciFi authors - since the subject was first broached by HG Wells in The Time Machine (1895). 

If correct, this is indeed remarkable; in the sense that Charles Williams is very far from being the kind of author that I would have expected to consider and write-about such matters!

The most likely reason is that - like so many creative writers of that and later eras, including some of his later friends among The Inkling - CW had read and pondered the non-fictional work of JW Dunne; whose An Experiment with Time was published in 1927.  

As someone brought up on Doctor Who, I have certainly had plenty of enjoyment from the fictional possibilities of imagining temporal paradoxes. But my understanding of the apparent fact that these paradoxes were not noticed or discussed until less than 150 years ago, is evidence that they are an artefact of particular modern scientific models of time - especially the idea that time is a "dimension" (as in the title of Williams's novel) that can be separated from space and mapped like a vector. 

By my metaphysical understanding, this is just a model, not reality; and time cannot in principle be separated out in this fashion - without causing paradoxes, i.e. incoherence, i.e. self-contradictions. In other words, the contradictions and incoherence are reductio ad absurdum evidence that our assumptions are wrong. 

My understanding is that the fundamental description of reality is of Beings, which are alive, purposive, conscious, self-sustaining etc; and that "time" is just a way of conceptualizing the linear continuity of Beings - that Beings exist dynamically. 

So, I enjoy the mental exercise of temporal paradoxes, and these have often provided good plots for stories (albeit with a great deal of "hand-waving" in their explanations) - but these do not trouble me; any more than I am troubled by trying to predict what happens when an irresistible force meets an immoveable object. Or by such verbal tricks as: "suppose that I am not really me! 

Such paradox is a product of abstract and artificially-discrete inbuilt assumptions, and these assumptions are arbitrary, abstract, and untrue. 

The prospect of An infinite series of repetitions of those same few years, a being compelled to grow no older, a consciousness forbidden to expand or to die; is superficially spooky. But we are frightening ourselves with our own false conceptualizations. 

It may be fun, but it isn't serious. 

Re-reading The Place of the Lion, by Charles Williams - the domination of abstraction over the personal

I have read Charles' Williams's The Place of the Lion many times over a span of several decades; and almost accidentally found myself doing so again last week (actually, re-listening to the audiobook version). 

I thoroughly recommend trying PlotL; if you are at all interested in grappling with Charles Williams; or if you want to understand the mature and best fictions of JRR Tolkien or CS Lewis - it really is time well spent. 

 

The book strikes me differently almost every time I read it. It has some great aspects that have proved lastingly memorable, and also dull and/or irritating parts - but these are not necessarily the same on each time of reading!

This time; I found the first half of the book (the set-up, the basic idea) much the best - indeed even better than I remembered. And the later parts less interesting and satisfying. 

What I continually found myself pushing against was an aspect of Charles Williams's basic metaphysical assumptions, and indeed those of a very large majority of intellectual Christians throughout history! - which is that he regards the abstract as the ultimate reality; and the personal as secondary - merely and expression of such abstractions as principles, ideas, archetypes, energies, pattern, hierarchy and functional subdivision. 

In short: Williams's conceptualisation of ultimate reality is in terms of physics, mathematics, geometry. 

I have come to regard this as a besetting sin of theologians and philosophers; and in the context of this book it leads to a fundamental incoherence in the plot, that makes the main action seem arbitrary and indeed wilful. 

The set-up is that the Platonic ideas or ultimate archetypes are invading and absorbing the modern mundane world; and reducing individual animals, persons, objects to their dominating principle. Among those who realize what is happening, some welcome this as a restoration of primal reality. 

Some of these welcomers try to use the archetypes to gratify their immediate personal desires; but others surrender to their archetype and die in an apparent state of bliss - as their personalities are reabsorbed into the relevant part of the primal pattern of reality - which pattern is (apparently) later to be reabsorbed into a state of undifferentiated and perfect oneness. 

The plot concerns Anthony, who opposes this reabsorption - but on what seem the feeblest, most short termist and superficial grounds! 

Such as; that a takeover of earth by the Platonic Archetypes will interfere with the completion and award of his girlfriend's doctoral thesis! This is stated; along with other similarly unconvincing and almost silly reasons for preserving individuality of human and other beings. 

Anthony prevails, by a process of connecting-with and "channeling" the archetype of Adam; and thereby Naming, hence re-differentiating, the key specific principles of this world, in the forms of their animal images.

What I perceive here is that Charles Williams's metaphysical assumptions contradict his intuitions. I sense that CW's intuitions are clear and strong that it is good that the world has many people of many kinds, and distinct animals, plants and artefacts; and that these many deserve to exist. 

He believes that the many deserve to be - and ought not to have their individuality dissolved away into categories (or into unity). 

Such is Williams's intuition, and that is why the climax of the book is the defeat of the Archetypes and restoration of multiplicity. 

But Williams cannot properly explain this intuition, and the argument in favour of Anthony is reduced to rather silly explanations: seemingly arbitrary explanations, that appear simply to reflect... whatever happens currently to please Anthony (such as his love of, or initially his one-sided obsession-with, his girlfriend*). 

This seems like a very poor reason for one man taking it upon himself to reshape the universe!

*Much would, I feel, be explained here; if we assume that girlfriend Damaris is very good looking!

Charles Williams Did influence JRR Tolkien's writing - The Place of the Lion and The Notion Club Papers

For the past fifty years it has been normal to assume that JRR Tolkien disliked (probably because he was jealous of) Charles Williams; and that Williams did not influence Tolkien's writing.

Despite that Tolkien personally claimed such things in writing; none of these are strictly correct. 

Tolkien was good friends with Williams, during Williams's life - it was only some years after Williams died, when Tolkien became aware of some aspects of CW's biography, that Tolkien turned against Williams and began to make misleading statements to play-down their friendship. 

The denial of Williams's influence on Tolkien is more complex. As a generalization, it is true to say that the two men had different minds, aims, and literary styles - and there is no striking influence of Williams noticeable in the works Tolkien published during his lifetime - especially not The Lord of the Rings. 

But more can be said. 

One major influence of Williams is not in The Lord of the Rings, but in the fact that it was attempted at all, and soon became a more ambitious book than The Hobbit, and directed at adults. 

This was - I believe - a consequence of the powerful effect - on CS Lewis as well as JRR Tolkien - of encountering Williams's novel The Place of the Lion in 1936. This led Lewis and Tolkien making a "deal" to embark on attempting to write "adult" fantasy or science fiction novels of a kind they especially liked reading. 

Lewis produced the Space Trilogy, and Tolkien produced two unpublished (in his lifetime) attempts at a time travel story: The Lost Road (attempted immediately), and The Notion Club Papers (attempted about a decade after Tolkien and Lewis's deal). 

And it is in an un-published  (and un-finished) work by Tolkien, The Notion Club Papers, that the influence of Charles Williams can be seen. 

Therefore, Williams did influence Tolkien's writing - and in a direct fashion - but the piece of writing Williams influenced was neither completed nor published by Tolkien.

Indeed, edited drafts of the Notion Club Papers did not appear in print until 1992, embedded in the Middle of the Sauron Defeated volume of Christopher Tolkien's The History of Middle Earth - nearly fifty years after Williams's death, and nearly twenty years since JRR Tolkien's death.   

In the event; Williams's influence was invisibly absorbed-into The Lord of the Rings, but only via the secondary effects of the NCPs, which were mainly on Numenor and its use as a "backstory" for the Dunedain; and the Numenorean language of Adunaic (which evolved into the Common Speech of Middle Earth). 

It seems to me very likely that Tolkien's writing of The Notion Club Papers was a direct consequence of the death of Charles Williams. 

The Williams derivation is seen firstly in the origins of the NCPs as a playful "alter-ego" discussion group, explicitly referencing The Inklings, read to The Inklings as work-in-progress in instalments, and with characters loosely-based on the post-Williams membership. 

In this respect I regard it as significant that there is no Notion Club member who is described as based-on the just-deceased Charles. It is as if the NCPs was a tribute to Charles's memory, and as such to include CW among the somewhat facetious caricatures the NCP membership would have been disrespectful and altogether inappropriate. 

Yet, if I am right, The Notion Club Papers were developed as a creative celebration of Tolkien's friend and fellow Inkling Charles Williams, conceived in remembrance of the catalytic and transformative effects of The Place of the Lion, back in 1936. 

According to Christopher Tolkien's dating; The Notion Club Papers was written during a period from late 1944, a few months before the death of Charles Williams up to the summer of 1946 after which work on The Lord of the Rings was re-commenced, and the NCPs were set aside finally and irrevocably. 

These dates set a bound to work on the Notion Club Papers - they were written between late 1944 and mid 1946; but there is (I think) no reference to the NCPs until August 1946 (in Warren Lewis's diary), and my prediction would be that the Notion Club Papers was begun in mid 1945, some time after Charles Williams's death on 15th May.   

During this period when work of LotR was suspended; it is likely that the Notion Club Papers was Tolkien's major writing project - alongside preparing his essay On Fairy Stories for publication in a memorial Festschrift volume for Charles Williams. It seems that Tolkien's thoughts, and those of the Inklings as a group, were almost certain to be much occupied with Williams.  

Among Charles William's novels, The Place of the Lion is the only one that we know for sure was highly-rated and valued by Tolkien. 

And, among CW's novels, The Place of the Lion is distinctive in its structure. A group of modern people have formed a kind of spiritual research society, and these inadvertently open-up a "channel" to the ancient and primal world of Platonic Ideas or Archetypes. This channel to another world operates through the minds of group members.

The various Platonic Archetypes then flood-through the minds of particular people; enter into the modern world, and begin to wreak havoc. 

In broad terms; this is an exact analogy to the basic plot of the Notion Club Papers. A group of writers become deeply interested in viewing other times and places, making various attempts to attune their minds with the past and remote parts of the universe; and thereby the NC inadvertently establish a channel of contact with the persons and era of the downfall and drowning of Numenor.  

Once this channel has been opened among NC members, then the winds and tidal waves that had destroyed Numenor flood-through into the modern world, and wreak havoc. 

Therefore, in a general sense, The Place of the Lion offered Tolkien a model for building a relationship between the modern everyday world, and some other world with more profound and transcendent aspects; a model that involved the deliberate attunement of minds happening among members of a particular group. 

Or, to put it differently (and as explicitly stated within the NCP), The Place of the Lion provided for Tolkien a way of linking mundane history to mythic reality, on the assumption that the remote past was actually mythic in its reality. 

On such a basis; at one point, Tolkien considered using The Notion Club Papers as the framing for the Hobbit/ Lord of the Rings/ Silmarillion; as a way of explaining how knowledge of Numenor/ Middle Earth/ Arda, came to be transmitted to modern times.

In the end, Tolkien framed his stories with the fiction that ancient manuscripts (such as The Red Book of Westmarch) had survived through the millennia, and somehow come into his hands as their "editor"; but while writing the NCPs, he was exploring the idea that there was a direct, mind-to-mind, transmission of such knowledge via the Notion Club.   

In sum; a specific focus on The Place of the Lion among all of Charles William's work, and a consideration of the chronology and form of Tolkien's writing, and the inclusion of Tolkien's unpublished and unfinished works; leads to a recognition of a strong, and indeed decisive, influence of Charles Williams on JRR Tolkien.  

**

Note: As can be seen in the links above, I (as well as others) have fairly often commented that The Notion Club Papers was Tolkien's "Charles Williams novel" - in a general sense, and in an "atmospheric" way. 

I am now saying more than this, and in a much more specific sense: that the NCPs was not just "a" Charles Williams novel, but related to one particular novel: The Place of the Lion. 

And furthermore that this was purposively so: that Tolkien wrote The Notion Club Papers with Charles Williams and The Place of the Lion in-mind.  

Charles Williams and Magic

From Charles Williams's point of view; the most relevant aspect of magical societies (in the Golden Dawn tradition*) was that training (initiation) was a matter of inner visualization and concentration. For instance, in meditation, holding attention on imagined scenes, leading onto imagined journeys. 

These scenarios were then populated with symbolism, and the meaning of this symbolism had previously been assimilated by meditation. 

Golden Dawn symbolism was rooted in the Qabalah (variously spelled), which was regarded as a complete categorization of reality, and its inner relations. 

This inner work of imagination was linked with everyday reality - so that what happened in imagination, and via the symbolism, had effects on the inner plane, which necessarily affected material life. 

To put it differently; members of the GD who were conducting a magical ritual or ceremony, would do so with the conviction that what was happening in the minds of the participants here and now in their temple, would be having general effects (effects for the good, beneficial effects - or so they intended) on other people elsewhere, and the world at large. So this kind of white magical society was a serious and high-minded business, much like a church; or more accurately a monastery consisting of priests and acolytes.   

The Golden Dawn ceremonies and rituals were really just a way of enhancing the above inner processes. 

There was also the matter of "energizing" the above processes, infusing psychic energy, generating (or tapping) the power to make these work. This was the sex magic aspect ("polarity") analogous to Hindu Tantric sex stuff, "raising the Kundalini" - or generating sexual desire, but re-directing it to energize the above processes. 

There seems to have been disputes and schisms about this aspect. Alistair Crowley, for example, was one extreme - using polarity, and drugs, to fuel manipulative power and attain pleasure. (I have not studied Crowley, however, just picked up bits and pieces). 

Dion Fortune is another (on the good, white magical, side) extreme; in which the process was celibate and the energies directed to Christian and altruistic goals. 

All this magical method/ technique/ process was regarded as value neutral, a means to an end; and could be used for evil and selfish goals, as well as for good. 

This was the reason for oaths of secrecy and the screening process of Golden Dawn members (through multiple levels of initiation) - the leaders were trying to prevent this power from falling into the hands of evil-motivated people (black magicians - like Crowley  - who pursued the left-hand path; and intended to use the power for gratification or domination). 

The white magic GD societies used these powers for "good" - rather variously defined. 

Early on this was Christian ideas of good (albeit, variously understood Christianity), but after the schisms other ideas splintered-off; sometimes more secular and utilitarian ideas of promoting the general well-being of the nation, or the world - sometimes with a socio-political focus. 

However, these white magical societies were intense and controlling, very constraining - and it is not surprising that CW left them after he had learned all he could - which seems to have been a lot. 

Williams was apparently what would be called an "adept" of the Greater Mysteries, rather than a mere initiate of the Lesser Mysteries - self-sufficient, and a potential leader, in terms of his magical stature. 

Adepts often went on to found their own magical societies; as did Willaims; because that was the nature of the Companions of the Co-Inherence. 

Alice Mary Hadfield was (she has said) unhappy that the Companions were Not Christian primarily; e.g. she noticed that "substitution" was being regarded by CW as a pure technique or technology - rather than a high level spiritual activity requiring the support of the Holy Ghost. 

This is confirmed by the descriptions of of substitution was administered/ imposed top-down by CW on the other Companions (instructing one Companion to substitute for another in specific respects). The magical society quality of the Companions also fits with the "homework" (e.g. memorization of passages of writing) that Williams demanded of (especially female) disciples - and the sanctions and punishments (including physical) he imposed upon them for their errors in such tasks. 

 All of which makes me think that the Companions of the Co-Inherence were primarily (in effect, and by CW's intention - if not explicitly) a magical society. 

(I tend to think CW's secrecy about the magical societies was not so much a matter of honouring the oaths, as simply wanting to conceal the nature as sources of his remarkable mental powers - which so many people remarked when they met him. These powers were exactly what the Golden Dawn system was intended to train.) 

With respect to CW; it seems to me that - as an adept - he had highly developed his powers of concentration (focusing attention) and inner visualization, and all the other magical methods; such as being able to perform ritual movements and speeches with a high degree of physical control and continuous self- and other-awareness - practised and repeated until they became spontaneous and habitual. 

My inference is that it was these habitual abilities of Williams - magically trained to a high level - that contributed significantly to the charismatic personal magnetism that so many found impressive, or even overwhelming.  

But Williams seems to have used (or desired to use) these magically-derived powers to generate his creative writing, especially poetry; rather than for the usual purposes of magical societies - whether white or black.  

It seems that to use magic for writing was not the intent of the white magic side of the Golden Dawn, and would not have been regarded as a valid purpose - except insofar as such writings were dedicated to "good" ends, perhaps. 

(This was probably another factor in CW leaving the official GD societies). 

I think CW also somewhat deviously abused the powers and methods of GD magic in order to manipulate others; attempting to make them go along with and do things they would otherwise not have done. 

I think he justified this to himself as necessary (or at least permissible) for the generation and energizing of poetry, which he justified as a positive contribution to God's work. 

But I personally don't find these self-justifications convincing - I think there was a great deal of ego and hedonism mixed in with CW's motivations! 

In plain words; I think that Charles Williams was sometimes (but recurrently) guilty of using his Golden Dawn training for black magical purposes, on the left-hand path. 

At least, that is what comes through in the utilitarian and pragmatic ways Williams talked about his work - writing for money was a recurrent theme; even something his insisted upon as right and proper. If CW's poetry and writing had been the kind of sacred practice that would have justified the use of magical methods, then I do not think he could have taken this materialistic attitude in public utterances (and in some of his writings). 

Also the self-justification of magical usage is contradicted by CW's long-term concern for attaining greater personal status and recognition - for fame and fortune! 

While such conceits are normal and understandable - when it comes to justifying manipulating and exploiting others by magical techniques - this was surely to abuse his occult powers is on the dark side, on the left-hand path. 

And then there are the ways that CW dissipated his time, energy and opportunities - all those pot-boilers, all that writing for money instead of working on poems (money which he mostly spent on unnecessary rather selfish frivolity, and buttering-up women!).

All those pointless lectures to all and sundry, all that socializing with strangers - when he claimed to lack time and energy for his core creative work! 

What, for me, contradicts Williams's self-excuse for using Golden Dawn techniques on fascinating and influencing younger women, for deploying polarity/ sex magic, and for forming a magical society that he ruled in a controlling fashion; are things that Williams did instead of doing the best poetic work of which he was capable in a disinterested spirit. 

The Golden Dawn white magicians intended their magical system to be used for the general good of Mankind; especially with a Christian understanding of good.

Instead, Williams claimed that he used the abilities developed by his Golden Dawn magical training to energize, shape and enhance his own writings - specifically poetry of the spiritually highest kind. This was supposed to be the real and only justification for CW's deployment of magic.  

And this he did, but only to a limited extent; and he did much else besides - including activities which would seem intended to benefit CW himself; in terms of personal gratification, domination of others, and status.  

 

*The original Golden Dawn magical society had ceased before the time of Charles Williams, and schism-ed into various strands, in a complex and interactive way (which seems not to be fully understood); several groups persisted for various periods - some groups continue to this day. 

Note: H/T - The above was generated by a query from, and letter to, Sorina Higgins on this subject. It represents my current level of understanding of the Golden Dawn tradition and is drawn from the past several years of reading widely but unsystematically in the field; especially Dion Fortune, Gareth Knight and writings of those who influenced and interacted with them - these two are explicitly Christian magicians, but many of their descendants are not Christian. Therefore I have been engaged in some dipping into material from those in contrast or opposition to that tradition - neo-pagans (some of whom I rather like), anything-but-Christians, magical leftists, and those who use magic as de facto psychotherapy. I have also sampled from some of those I would regard as Black Magicians on the left-hand path - whether they acknowledge it or not; most of whom have been and are linked to the Crowley tradition in schism from Golden Dawn... Those using magical techniques aiming to get sex, money, attention/ fame, domination; or subversively to attain personal or societal destruction etc. In sum: magic used against The Good. There is a great deal of this on-line, including YouTube.  

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 Lowdham 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. 

 

Charles Williams's false ideal of the mathematical impersonality of love

Mrs. Anstruther opened her eyes and met Pauline's. She smiled. "My dear," she said, "I've been meaning to ask you something for the last day or two." Pauline thought it might be the hot afternoon that gave the voice that effect of distance; it was clear, but small and from afar. The words, the tone, were affectionate with an impersonal love. Pauline thought: "She might be talking to Phoebe"—Phoebe being the maid—and at the same time realized that Mrs. Anstruther did so talk to Phoebe, and to everyone. Her good will diffused itself in all directions. Her granddaughter lay in its way, with all things besides, and it mingled with the warm sun in a general benediction.

**

As if in a last communion with the natural terrors of man, Margaret Anstruther endured a recurrent shock of fear. She recalled herself. To tolerate such knowledge with a joyous welcome was meant, as the holy Doctors had taught her, to be the best privilege of man, and so remained. The best maxim towards that knowledge was yet not the Know thyself of the Greek so much as the Know Love of the Christian, though both in the end were one. It was not possible for man to know himself and the world, except first after some mode of knowledge, some art of discovery. The most perfect, since the most intimate and intelligent, art was pure love. The approach by love was the approach to fact; to love anything but fact was not love. Love was even more mathematical than poetry; it was the pure mathematics of the spirit. It was applied also and active; it was the means as it was the end. The end lived everlastingly in the means; the means eternally in the end.

From Descent into Hell, by Charles Williams, 1937.  

Love is regarded as the primary value of Christianity; yet that statement leaves it unclear what is meant by love, and indeed by Christianity. 

Speaking from my personal understanding; I regard it as a profound error when Christians strive to assert of love that it is ideally impersonal, universal, unconditional, impartial... I mean the error that love is best to be understood by abstract metaphors drawn from mathematics, physics, astronomy, and the like. 

Charles Williams was certainly very prone to asserting this perspective - as illustrated above by descriptions relating to Mrs Margaret Anstruther; a character in the novel Descent into Hell, who is pretty-clearly intended to represent Williams's idea of a modern saint: a genuinely wise and good person. 

In this novel and elsewhere; Williams frequently referred to his ideal situation as mathematical, a geometric pattern; characterized alike by precision and abstraction. But in this respect, except for his emphatic and stark rhetoric, Williams was not at all unusual among the main-stream of theologians from very early in Christian history. 

Indeed; Williams's attitude seems to me the normal and mainstream Christian theologian's view that ideal love - i.e. the love of God for all of creation - is necessarily impersonal. 

This due to the assumption that God as Creator is of an utterly different nature and quality than any created thing; and because of God's attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, and God's unchanging/ unemotional character (immutable and impassible); therefore it is supposed that love (like God) is best to be understood using impersonal metaphors such as mathematics, geometry, physics etc.

As I say; in contrast I regard love as necessarily personal; including ideal love, and God's love. 

I believe that such notions as universal, unconditional, impartial love are false importations from outwith Christianity - whether the pre-Christian Greek (e.g. Pythagorean, Platonic, Aristotelian) and Roman (e.g. Neo-Platonic, Stoic) philosophy (in the case of ancient Christian theologians); or from oneness-belief/ aspirations of (Western understandings of) Hinduism and Buddhism in the case of theologians of the past century plus. 

I believe abstract ideas of love are harmful to Christianity here and now. However; I do not think that such false theology did much harm in the past, in the pre-modern era. 

The reason is to do with the development of human consciousness; and the rather gradual but progressive loss of what Barfield terms Original Participation. I mean, that Mankind began having a natural and spontaneous, and largely unconscious, immersion-in the world of the divine and of spirits. But that Men have gradually (over centuries, and millennia) become more self-conscious, and more separated from this divine-spirit world; until now the separation is very nearly complete (except in early childhood). 

(This modern separation from the spiritual and divine - and from participation in The World - is sometimes called alienation.)  

This separation is also a development of the potential for freedom. But separation means that Men now need to make a conscious and active choice of beliefs, and we cannot (do not) unconsciously benefit from an implicit knowledge of God and Creation (and God's Will). 

In different words; Men used to find-themselves automatically aligned with divine creation and God (to a significant degree); whereas now Men find themselves alienated from creation to the point of denying the reality of creation and God.

What this meant was that in the past Men could hold all kinds of false beliefs, including the falsehoods of mainstream Christian theology; without coming to significant harm - whereas nowadays, because our theology is actively and consciously chosen - false theology is harmful; and indeed nearly always leads out of Christianity. 

As for Charles Williams; he was regarded by several influential intellectual Christians (especially adult re-convert authors such as CS Lewis, TS Eliot, Dorothy L Sayers, WH Auden; but also a significant following of "disciples") as an exemplary and inspiring Christian writer - and indeed person.  

IMO: For all William's many flaws; this informed positive evaluation of CW as Christian and theologian deserves considerable weight.  

On the other side; a knowledge of CW's biography (including autobiographical writings) suggests that he found his own religious understanding to be deeply unsatisfactory - indeed tragic to a degree only a hairsbreadth away from despair (and apostasy)... Yet, a hairsbreadth away (i.e. CW remained Christian, and continued to hope).

 

William's religion was rigorously derived from his theological assumptions - far more rigorously so than for most theologians. 

Yet, even among the mass of not-rigorous Christians, assumptions have consequences; and I believe that the assumption that Christian love ought to be impersonal, mathematical, has taken a terrible toll on the faith of individual people... Causing variously disbelief, confusion, disgusted rejection, and opening the door to assimilation of "Christianity" with the abstractions of Satanic totalitarianism.   

Therefore, what was (only just) possible for Charles Williams - i.e. to have a false understanding of love and yet be Christian - is probably not possible for those born several generations later and in our grossly-corrupted civilization. 

We (here and now) must be clear and explicit that love is personal and inter-personal - and that God is a person, and of the same kind as ourselves - else we will (sooner or later, whether acknowledged or denied) not be Christians. 

 

Free, high quality e-books of Charles Williams and CS Lewis - downloadable from fadedpage.com

I have recently discovered the excellent Fadedpage web site; which is done by volunteers, and provides free, high quality, downloadable e-books from a variety of authors in the public domain of Canada (which, sensibly, has 50 year copyright laws). 

I stumbled across it in search of Biggles books; but have since discovered a remarkably rich seam of Charles Williams's works (some them very difficult, or expensive, to get in hard copy); plus a large number of CS Lewis texts - also including some rarities! 

Even if you already have these books on paper, Fadedpage could provide handy portable versions to take on holiday or journeys.   

Charles Williams, the City of God, and this mortal life as palimpsest of the eternal

I first came across Charles Williams in Humphrey Carpenter's The Inklings (1979) which I read in 1987, while living a somewhat Inklings-like life; researching English, and a Don in Durham Castle, University College, Durham. 

Carpenter does an excellent job of portraying Williams as an interesting and unusual person; so that the reader is drawn to investigate further - which I did. 

I have been thinking lately about that way of living (or something aimed-at in living) that I associate with the work and practice of Charles Williams - by which the mundane world is understood as (what I have termed) a palimpsest - as when a new medieval text is written on a secondhand parchment, and the pre-existing manuscript can sometimes be seen shining-through. 

The idea is that we are at first aware only of the mundane 'natural' and surface level of meanings; but underneath these, there is a super-natural reality, of eternal and archetypal forms.  

Thus; for Williams the City of London (or any city) represents the City of God; and its mercantile exchanges of goods and money, represent the Christian spiritual "exchange" between "co-inherent" Men. In his novels and poems, and also apparently in his own life and that of his 'disciples', this seems to have been the daily practice of Charles Williams - anything in the passing show, might be experienced as a symbol of some-thing archetypal and eternal.  

From long before I counted myself a Christian, this had a strong initial appeal to me; as an attitude that seemed to lend depth and meaning to a mundane, everyday world that so-often, so-badly lacked depth and meaning (consisting of dull bureaucracy, transient distractions, the pursuit of low motivations and rejection of high). 

It came naturally too: I suspected, sometimes detected, much going-on beneath the surface; including good things of which people seemed often unconscious, and good influences that were unnoticed, unintended, unsuspected... 

In other words; the reality was largely negative and implicit in in its effects; and my idea was that to make it positive ought to enhance its power to enhance life. 

"Power" was indeed a part of the concept - including Will Power. I was sympathetic to the idea that there could be a collective focusing of will power for Good; and that this kind of activity might do good in ways that were again unnoticed and unconscious. 

(Indeed, such ideas were prevalent a few decades ago, and people would often organize mass activities of 'will power' - such as prayer, meditation, and many varieties of ceremonial activity; with the expressed aim of doing some-Good to the world... In a sense, the underlying idea was that Good could be done-to masses of people - "whether they liked it or not"! 

So there were ideas of a realler-reality beneath the surface; and ideas of the Good-stuff being present and operative without awareness, working-away in all kinds of positive ways, but unknown and unsuspected. And maybe "some way" of tapping into this underlying world by those (relatively  few) who recognized the nature-of-things; and thereby influencing things-in-general for the better - although they probably would never know it. 

And so I continued for many a year. 

And I gained satisfactions by it: both an immediate satisfaction of seeing beyond or below, and the motivation of doing more so. 

Yet, of course, there was no purpose to it. Ultimately, it was hedonic in its intent - a way of making life more enjoyable, but without making life qualitatively different. 

And there were disadvantages - because regarding actuality as a palimpsest devalues it relative to the deep past and the hoped-for future. Indeed, the surface seems ever-thinner, as the mind penetrates to 'eternal verities' beneath; and this life itself - mortal life, full of ephemeral objects and ideas - seems futile. It is going nowhere - but to change, corruption, death; so why do we linger in this vale of mere shadows when there is a bright and pure and flawless world awaiting us on the other side? 

Indeed, why did we ever come here at all - when there exists a world so much better; and a world which we will (apparently) experience as wholly satisfying? 

What is the point, if temporarily incarnating into such a mixed and messy world of temporary stuff; if/when there is an archetypal and timeless reality to which we might in principle have dwelt-within? 

And when we try to abolish time and sequence, and start believing that what is now is always, what was is also now, and what is to come has already-happened - then various terrible implications begin to sink-in. 

We have bought meaningfulness as a terrible cost; the cost of abolishing purpose hence choice - leading to paralysis as we contemplate an essentially tragic state of being. 

So, in the end I found - as, I believe, did Charles Williams - that despite the immediate allure and benefits of regarding this mortal life as a palimpsest written over an eternal and ideal world that can be accessed by the determined adept; when taken seriously and over the long term, such an attitude detracts-from and devalues (rather than enhances and validates) the mundane life.  

What more can we do with The Inklings (and Notion Club Papers)? Scholarship, Criticism, Philosophy, Fanfiction?

There is always, eventually, a finite amount given us of what we most like and find most important. 

For example, it seems as if not much more will be discovered about The Inklings; and The Notion Club Papers is incomplete, inconsistent and tantalizingly brief. 

So, apart from re-reading the same material; what can we do?

The classic answer within academic English Literature is some combination of scholarship and criticism. 

Scholarship such as 'editorial' activities - especially examining the primary source material (the actual manuscript evidence). For example, there is (so he tells us) more material from the Notion Club Papers that Christopher Tolkien did not include in his published version. Maybe we, or someone else, will find and publish this extra stuff, sooner or later.

This is what happened with The Lord of the Rings; when - after JRR Tolkien died - his son Christopher made available earlier drafts and much excluded and additional material. This has provided, for some people including myself, a way of extending the experience of reading LotR and inhabiting its world, beyond the core text itself.   

But probably there is now not much extra material, and what is unpublished is almost certainly not as good as what has been published; and anyway the material may be inaccessible to us. 

Similarly, the accounts of Inklings meetings - in journals, letters and other references - have probably nearly all been discovered and published - and what is yet to come is likely to be of lesser significance and less enjoyable. 

We could therefore move on to literary criticism, in its broadest sense; and while this is in theory without limit  in practice, there are only so many valid and interesting critical things to say that capture the spirit of the original - and that is surely what we crave.

We want more of that which attracted us in the first place. We don't just want to read 'about' it - but to explore deeper and further the same spirit. 

The most obvious (and satisfying) is literary biography - and that was the way in which The Inklings first became known; via books and essays about the group itself; and by (more or less detailed) references to the group in biographies of CS Lewis, Charles Williams and JRR Tolkien. 

Such biographical investigation can be extended to accounts of other Inklings - and their works. I have explored Owen Barfield, Warnie Lewis and Neville Coghill - in this spirit; and done some research into Robert 'Humphrey' Havard. 

This blog takes a further approach: which is philosophical. 

I am trying to understand and extract the philosophy of The Inklings and Notion Club; and then to explore and extend that philosophy in an open-ended fashion... In whatever manner and direction that I find to be valuable in my life. 

This philosophical approach is open-ended and - when done in the proper spirit and with proper motivations (and for those who enjoy and appreciate philosophical thinking) - its reward is exactly of the kind craved; which is to say that it is 'more of the same kind of thing' - it feels like part of the same 'world', and it engages me because I have participated in its creation and it arises from some need of other personal impulse. 

And philosophy can be done by private thinking, through writing - whether or not published; and by discussion - whether face-to-face, or through some kind of correspondence. 

 

But not many people enjoy and appreciate philosophy, and therefore they cannot appreciate 'the spirit' in a philosophical sense. And there may is another possibility which could be called Fanfiction. Which is to use 'the world' of The Inklings of Notion Club as the basis for some kind of fiction.

This could, in principle, be in any fictional form: novel, short story, drama - on the TV, movies, theatre or a small group. Or by the newer form of actual Fanfiction websites. 

Fanfiction is probably the form most directly addressed to the problem of providing 'more of the same kind-of-thing' - and then it is a question of how well this is done, and the depth at which it is achieved. 

Perhaps the most famous Inklings Fanfiction was the chapter 'Thursday Evenings' in Humphrey Carpenter's influential group-biography The Inklings. In this, Carpenter brilliantly synthesizes an ideal or 'representative' meeting of JRR Tolkien, the Lewis brothers, Havard, and Charles Williams during the early Second World War; using material from journals, letters and published articles - as well as his own invention. 

There exists at least one good quality Notion Club Papers fanfiction - a very brief story by "Shakespearianfish". More could, in principle, continue to fill-in or extend the original texts. 

I have myself attempted (in 2011) a summary and speculative 'Treatment' (as if for a movie) of how Tolkien might, eventually, have completed the NCPs - which was also posted as part of a Companion to the NCPs, first published in 2012. Although I cannot write fiction; preparing this essay provided me with exactly the kind of experience of 'inhabiting' the spiritual world of the Notion Club Papers that I have been describing. 

Of course; some (maybe most) Fanfiction is very superficial (eg focusing on romantic relationship - so called "shipping", which may extend into pornography); some is satirical or in other ways subversive of the primary work. 

Therefore - whether deliberately, or in its actual effect - Fanfiction can damage the primary experience of the primary material; and may tend to cloud or poison its spirit. But the same applies to literary biography, criticism, and even scholarship (by tendentious reasoning or merely through narrow or dull pedantry).  

Scholarship and Criticism, Philosophy and Fanfiction, are all potential responses to that yearning we may get for some phenomenon that engages us powerfully, and which evokes a spirit that we wish to sustain at least - and perhaps to explore and learn-from. 

Charles Williams - his disbelief in the devil, and his convergence with 'oneness spirituality'

I am surprised that so many self-identified Christians disbelieve in the devil; not only because there are so many biblical references, but also because a devil makes strong sense both metaphysically (in terms of an explanation for the world as a whole) and empirically (as an coherent way of explaining and predicting the specific occurrences of this world). 

I commented some time ago that a Christian who was as scholarly, influential and respected as Charles Williams; nonetheless didn't believe that the devil was real. 

I found this confirmed in my current re-read of his novel The Greater Trumps, where the character Sybil (who is clearly intended to be the depiction of a very-near Saint - although not convincingly to my mind) says this in her internal monologue:

She did not, in the ordinary sense, "pray for" Nancy; she did not presume to suggest to the Omniscience that it would be a thoroughly good thing if It did; she merely held her own thought of Nancy stable in the midst of Omniscience. She hoped Nancy wouldn't mind, if she knew it. If, she thought as, the prayer over, she put on her other shoe - if she had believed in a Devil, it would have been awkward to know whether or not it would have been permissible to offer the Devil to Love in that way. Because the Devil might dislike it very much, and then...* However, she didn't believe in the Devil...   

Elsewhere in the novel in several places, it is clear that Williams regards the most evil thing to be the Ego, the Self; because the characters who are depicted as doing Good are expunging their sense of self of agency, of separateness. 

This is a common trope, indeed, among many self-identified Christians through the past 2000 years - I mean that being a "Good Christian" entails a destruction of any recognition of oneself as a separate being from God - the goal is to merge with God, or at least allow God and Goodness to flow through oneself. The self is ideally to become transparent, immaterial - the self standing aside and - eventually - being discarded. 

In other words; I am suggesting that among those who regard themselves as Christian but who do not believe in the devil; it seems usual to believe that - in effect - The Ego is the devil. 

Sometimes this is even stated explicitly; but even when unstated it seems to be implicit in analysis and discussions of evil; because the attribution of evil tend to converge upon the separate and strong ego of a person - often the separated selfhood of the Christian himself is regarded as the primary evil in the world.  

This substitution of the devil by the ego in a context of the primary desire for oneness is, I think, one path by which someone who regards himself as Christian can come to deny the reality of the devil.

This fits with a metaphysical theology that all Good comes from God, and (therefore) for Men to become Good, requires that they cease to offer any obstacle to the shining forth of God's Goodness. 

When God is regarded as omniscient and omnipotent, it seems logical that Men can add - from themselves - nothing to Goodness; which is (by definition) already complete and perfect. 

Since Men can add nothing to Goodness but only obstruct Goodness by their innate evil; Men should, therefore, ideally become empty, become like conduits for the expression of divine Goodness.  

What I am getting-at here is that this is another version of my old bugbear "oneness spirituality" - the only officially- and totalitarian-approved modern spirituality - once again confusing people and masquerading as Christianity. 

I tend to think that oneness spirituality is a point of convergence both of Christians who really-believe in in a mono-omni-God with whom the Christian ought to assimilate; and those adherents of 'Eastern religions' (Hinduism, Buddhism) who believe in a more pantheistic and abstract non-personal deity - that is 'everything'. 

The conceptual gap is bridged by the soaring abstractions and infinitudes of 'Classical' Christian theology (i.e. using concepts from pre-Christian Greek and Roman philosophy - especially Platonism and Neo-Platonism). In other words; abstractions and infinites applied to God conceptually-merge the person of God into a de facto impersonal deity.   

I mean the "mainstream Christian" theology that has, as fundamental, assertions of the Oneness of The Trinity; God's supposed attributes of omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence etc.; and an infinite gulf posited between creator and created.   

What I am saying is that someone who takes seriously, and rigorously pursues the implications of, Classical Christian theology; will find that - one the one hand - he is converging towards a oneness spirituality (and the stance of 'perennial philosophy'); and on the other hand will disbelieve in the devil specifically and the operations of purposive spiritual evil more generally - and will regard Man's self/ego as the biggest spiritual problem in the world. 

Both of these are harmful in the context of the spiritual challenges for Christians in 2023. 

Firstly, because the Western Christian churches have been corrupted and enlisted on the side of evil; this implies that such a fact will be invisible to one who disbelieves that there is a 'side of evil'.

Furthermore, when the churches are corrupt, the individual Christian must operate from that which is Good in his own self/ ego - as the basis for discernment and seeking spiritual guidance. Unless there is the possibility of recognizing and committing to the Good within us, we cannot discern God's guidance from without-our-selves. 

If, instead, we are trying to dissolve our selves into the Omni-God, or into the divine-which-is-everything (it makes little practical difference which); then we are trying to destroy the only thing that might save us in an institutionally-evil world. 

 

*Note: This is a quite extraordinary sentiment for CW to put into the thoughts of a supposedly sanctified woman! To express concern that the Devil "might dislike" something we did, and that this should be considered as a reason for Not doing it! 

This suggests either that the devil is not really evil, and so ought not to be made miserable. Or else it confirms that he is being regarded by CW as so certainly unreal; that one may indulge idle fancies about his preferences, and how it might be desirable to 'keep in the Devil's good books...' The "and then..." seems to indicate that unspecified or implied bad things might happen to us, if the Devil regarded us as his enemy.

My interpretation is that Williams may here be hinting (esoterically, to his inner circle - albeit so vaguely as to be deniable) that the Devil does not exist; but that there are personal powers who get called demonic (by many Christians) who can be helpful, of treated with due respect. I would guess that this had something to do with Williams's ritual magical practices. 

Of course I cannot be sure; but we do know (e.g. from surviving letters and records of conversations) that this kind of subtle, deniable, esoteric hinting in his published writing was exactly the way he operated. 

Some 75 years after the Notion Club Papers, the romanticism of faery is no longer enough to make a difference to our civilization

My best guess as to the central theme and destination of The Notion Club Papers (NCPs) is that it was to be about the Club re-establishing a spiritual connection between Elves and modern Men - perhaps via the intermediate civilization of Numenor. 

And I understand this to be a version of Romanticism - the Romantic Project, dating back to the middle 1700s, from which time a strand within Western civilization began to explore and advocate such things as are explored and advocated (implicitly) within the NCPs.

For example the interest in myth and 'the primitive'; 'folklore' and nation; the imagination and intuition as ways of knowing; poetry, drama, novels and music as instruments of self-discovery and development; dreams, visions, epiphanies and suchlike regarded as spiritually valuable. 

At the time the Notion Club Papers was last worked-on by Tolkien (1946) the civilization of The West, in particular its representation at Oxford University, was very different from what it has since become. Despite several generations of secularization; there was still a Christian basis underpinning much of English life (including many laws and other regulations); and Christianity had significantly revived during the Second World War. 

For instance; CS Lewis and Charles Williams were both at the cutting edge of an intellectual revival of the Church of England, and other important figures in this movement were TS Eliot and Dorothy L Sayers - who were both friends and admirers of Charles Williams. As a Roman Catholic; Tolkien could point to the tremendous influence of (not long dead) GK Chesterton and (until recently active) Hilaire Belloc; and such prestigious literary converts as Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene. 

It would therefore have seemed reasonable to assume that the future of Christianity in England was at least secure and perhaps optimistic. At any rate, Tolkien apparently did not feel a need to emphasize, defend, or much mention Christianity in the NCPs - my impression is that it is taken-for-granted that the Club members were Christians. 

In sum, therefore, the NCPs could be understood as about transforming Christian culture, especially in its creative and scholarly aspects (because the NCP members are creative writers, scholars and researchers of various types) by its becoming more Romantic; in particular (but not exclusively) by means of the 'enchantment' of Faery. 

What actually happened was that from 1946; both Anglican and Catholic Christianity in England (and, even more so, in Oxford) was just entering a rapid and progressive decline that rendered it quantitatively and qualitatively insignificant to public life and discourse before the millennium; and by now has led to the de facto assimilation of most Christians to the hegemonic (encompassing the entirety of the mainstream, of all 'parties) totalitarian-materialist-leftist ideology.

This makes a crucial difference to the likely effect of a restoration of Romanticism such as the NCPs envisaged. 

We know, from the revival of secular and non-Christian (especially Buddhist) Romanticism in the West, from the middle 1950s into the 1970s, that Romanticism without Christianity has failed to have a significant impact on the increasing materialism and bureaucracy of The West.    

This has also - mostly - been the fate of Tolkien's own colossal cultural impact. 

On the one hand, The Lord of the Rings is perhaps the most widely read and beloved book of the past seventy-something years - on the other hand, most of its readers and scholars are every bit as materialist, leftist, totalitarian-affiliated and modernity-assimilated as those who hate Tolkien. 

Without Christianity to work-upon, Tolkien's Romanticism - despite its apparently vast influence - has not been able to stop or reverse the adverse trends in The West; not culturally, nor (with few exceptions) personally.  

This suggests that the premise of the NCPs - that an actual re-connection between 'ancient' and Elvish influences and the modern world - would be A Good Thing; is not actually true in a society such as ours, from which Christianity (and indeed all effectively-motivated religion and transformative spirituality) has been deleted.  

So on the one hand, Christianity without Romanticism did-not survive... And perhaps (I would say) could-not survive. 

On the other hand, Romanticism without Christianity also makes little discernible difference; and operates as no more than a therapeutic or hedonic lifestyle-option within secular totalitarianism.  

In reading the Notion Club Papers, to understand its intended implication; I think we need either to project ourselves backwards into the time it was written and the assumptions of that era; or else imaginatively to inhabit an alternative present or potential future; in which we can discover in our-selves that Christianity is still a living option. 

The Place of the Lion audiobook; my favourite of Charles's Williams's novels now available in a reading by David Pickering

The Place of the Lion by Charles Williams is one of my favourite novels, which I have read multiple times over a span of some thirty-five years. 

It is also - I believe - the work which, when they encountered it in 1936, triggered both CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien to write fantasy for adults - Lewis's Space Trilogy, and Tolkien's Lost Road/ Notion Club Papers which fed into the increasingly-adult Lord of the Rings. 

Of these; PotL most-resembles That Hideous Strength and The Notion Club Papers; as being about the breaking-into mundane life of profound and threatening spiritual realities. Place of the Lion has an appealing 'mundane setting', with several pleasant and likeable characters, and a high spirited overall feeling - as well as plenty of both physical and spiritual peril. To me - PotL is by far the most wholesome of Charles William's novels.  

Therefore, for most people, if you are intrigued by what you know about Charles Williams, and you want to try something by him; Place of the Lion is probably the best place to start. 

And for those who, like me, appreciate hearing literature read aloud - there is now an audio-version of Place of the Lion which includes an informative introduction by CW's biographer Grevel Lindop, and is narrated by actor David Pickering. 

Pickering's particular contribution is that he is able to make clear and comprehensible those parts of the text where the reader is most likely to lose the thread - as the reader's eye skips too quickly and lightly over important points. 

For example, when I first read this book, I found the critical first scene - when The Lion  makes his appearance - difficult to grasp; because there Williams makes a distinction (that turns out to be vital) between a Lion (implicitly here meaning a male lion) and a Lioness. But by vocal-acting (i.e. careful emphasis and intonation) Pickering is able to distinguish and keep separate these creatures, and to bring-out CW's intended significance.  

As with any good reader; the audio version brings-out interesting and surprising aspects of the story that I hadn't previously noticed. No matter how many times you have already read Place of the Lion, I think you will find that listening will probably add to your appreciation. 

Note: Apocryphile Press have also produced several other audiobooks of CW's novels, and a wide range of his written works.   

True Romanticism in the Notion Club Papers

There is a truly Romantic spirit which I value supremely when I find it; which is seldom, including very rare instances in myself. 

We are, apparently, trapped by deep habits, fears and a kind of sheer incompetence; and therefore find it extremely (sometimes impossibly) difficult to be what we most desire to be; to express what we most desire to express. 

The true Romanticism can be found only seldom - for example in some of William Blake's aphorisms and short lyrics, but not in his long poems or most of the rest of his oeuvre. 

By the strictest standards; I cannot find Romanticism realized anywhere in Coleridge, although Coleridge knew it, understood it, and sought it; and much the same applies to Rudolf Steiner, Owen Barfield and CS Lewis. All wrote about it, with great insight and value; but did not themselves embody it in their writings. 

But writing about Romanticism - including that 'writing about' which is the use of allegory (as with Blake's prophetic works, or some of Barfield's and CSL's stories) - is not the thing itself. 

What is meant is being referred-to, but the actuality is not embodied in the writing.

What I am saying is that nearly all writers, in their writing, keep a distance from actual Romanticism: the distance of scholarship, allegory, facetiousness or irony. 

Yet True Romanticism can be found in writings; sometimes in obscure authors like William Arkle; but supremely in JRR Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings - which is, I think, why this work holds its unique and elevated position. 

Tolkien, here and there - but more often than anybody I know - gives expression to the fullest and truest Romanticism; and in a way that is highly accessible, and easier to appreciate than any other. 

This was only possible because Tolkien was himself a Romantic, but then again so were CS Lewis, Owen Barfield and Charles Williams - yet none of these managed to get past the barriers to its expression in the way that Tolkien did. 

What I mean by Romanticism, and how it is nearly always blocked, can be seen in The Notion Club Papers (NCPs). In broad terms, this incomplete and posthumously published novel represents an Inklings-based group that is able to break through the crust of convention and constraint to achieve a fully expressed Romanticism.

The NCPs begins with superficial and facetious interaction between its members; a jokey and cynical conversational style of a kind familiar to any English person of the professional classes. This is one type of defensiveness, and it absolutely blocks Romanticism. 

Another defensiveness is of conventional values - such as 'scholarship' or 'science' when these are regarded in a consensus fashion. Such conversation serves to suppress individual discernment and creation by a kind of implicit threat related to pointing out its transgression from the group norms; norms that provide coherence and power. 

The idea is that group members should fear going beyond the group-approved forms and content, and the fear is of being singled out, stripped of status, and scapegoated, ridiculed, demonized. Such external control may be done with a light touch, ambiguously and deniably; but the message is transmitted nonetheless - and there are few who resist it and none who are unaware of the implications. 

So fear is one reason; but also people just don't know how. 

Some people are drawn to Romanticism, and are aware that indirect references to the Romantic are not enough - but instead only succeed in emoting. Instead of Romanticism there are just strong and merely-subjective feelings.

The truly Romantic must be transcendent, must embody the divinely creative - directly apprehended; whereas emotions and feelings as-such are merely animal responses to the environment or to inner body states. To rant and rave - to free associate or let-rip - is not of any transcendental value. 

Thus the literature of the Beats, Hippies, Sixties Counterculture and New Age is almost wholly worthless from a truly Romantic perspective of written-expression. It may be based upon an accurate diagnosis of the problem, but is profoundly wrong in assuming that liberating the id or collective unconscious is a solution. 

To try and suppress human consciousness, delete the self or ego; and assimilate to the un-conscious or 'liberate' the 'instinctive' is not to solve the problem of alienation of Men. It is merely to crave oblivion - to aspire to cease being a Man - to regress Man towards the animal.   

It is easy to say what Not to do, to describe the pitfalls in various direction; but there is no formula for what to do instead - which is why it is so rarely achieved. 

Nonetheless, the matter can be illustrated, and it has been illustrated in the Notion Club Papers. What happens at times through the accounts of the Notion Club; is that the conversation is able to escape from facetious joking, or mere description, and attain a truly Romantic level that transcends all the pitfalls. We are actually shown what this would be like. 

The NCPs begin with the club responding to a story by Ramer - and for some pages the response is merely superficial - full of 'joshing' - mostly good natured, sometimes rather pointed. Some characters (such as Lowdham) adopt a cynical attitude, repeatedly trying to bring the conversation 'down to earth' in an irritating fashion.

It later emerges that this is a defensive posture by Lowdham who is (fearfully) attempting to hold-back an almost-overwhelmingly powerful Romanticism in himself; but at first he is the worst representative among an unserious tendency in the group. 

At the other extreme is Jeremy, who is always earnest and never even tries to be witty; indeed he seems to be regarded as something of the butt of group (to be 'shot at' with barbed quips; as being younger, and seemingly more naively enthusiastic). Yet he is in reality the conscience of the Notion Club. 

Jeremy goes on to say some of the most profound and important things in the NCPs; and (surprisingly) joins-up with the rambunctious Lowdham to make a complementary team; who whole-heartedly seek to experience the fullest possible Romantic contact with providence and the divine.  

It takes several pages of merely scholarly and jocular talk; but the NCP discussion becomes more serious rather suddenly when Guildford says the word 'Incarnation' as his suggested 'method' for space (and indeed time) travel. 

Although the intended meaning of the word incarnation is never given a wholly satisfactory explanation in the NCPs, it can be inferred from usage and context that what it partly means is a kind of reincarnation involving mind-to-mind connection - whereby a modern person has (or develops) the ability to experience events in the past that were experienced by his hereditary ancestors*. 

Hereditary - but not by a genetic mechanism, but really more a matter of spiritual ancestry: the sharing of a spiritual orientation across (perhaps) very-many generations. 

Specific heredity emerges later in the NCPs when Lowdham and Jeremy become - for a while - 'possessed' by former identities of men in Numenor during the lead-up-to and events of that lands cataclysmic (literally world changing) drowning. 

They become able to speak the Numenorean languages, and re-enact some of the ancient events - and in doing so they apparently create a 'cannel' by which the actual Numenorean storm breaks-through into modern England to wreak considerable havoc. 

This carefully-prepared direct mind-to-mind human connection - which has an implicitly general and providential aspect, never explained in the surviving fragments of the NCPs - is an actual expression of Romanticism in the text.  

But in this early stage of the NCPs the main Romantic protagonist is Ramer; who has - it gradually emerges - succeeded in travelling both in space and time; but without any reference to either incarnation or reincarnation. Instead Ramer seems to have developed a way of attuning his mind to non-organic 'things' - such as a meteorite. 

Ramer was eventually able to re-experience the 'life' of this meteorite from its remote origins buried in some remote celestial object, through its journey through space and the eventual burning entry through earth's atmosphere. 

It seems that by Incarnation, Tolkien may intend also to include this implicit 'animism'; a living universe whereby there are no 'things' but only 'beings' - and whereby 'inorganic'/ mineral entities are possessed of memory and consciousness of a type.

This is an aspect of Romanticism that recalls the consciousness of ancient tribal Man and the early childhood of every Man; and it recurs whenever the perspective reaches its strongest expression. 

Thus Ramer can commune-with (and participate-in the consciousness of) a rock; much as Lowdham is able to do with his remote Numenorean ancestor -- and also his more recent Anglo-Saxon ancestors of Mercia; which 'inheritance' is the posited mechanism by which he spontaneously knew this language. 

(It seems, from multiple comments in his letters and private conversation, that this spontaneously knowledge of Mercian Old English also applied to Tolkien himself.) 

(Note: There are many other examples of such 'animism' - communing with living, conscious realities in non-human animals, plants and minerals - all-through The Lord of the Rings.) 

It is by this means of fiction - but fiction-presented-as-real - that JRR Tolkien was able to express True Romanticism. How he did this is ultimately a matter of genius - coming from the divine creativity innate in all Men to some degree; and Tolkien in this particular fashion. 

If Tolkien had not himself regarded his fictions as really-real, and been writing from the heart; then there would have been nothing real for him to communicate. 

But Tolkien also achieved this rare literary feat by his careful and rigorous techniques of framing the fictions in a quasi historical fashion (for the NCPs by means of the Foreword; in LotR by the Prologue and Appendices), of creating a fictive-sense of depth by reference to untold stories and hinted back-histories; and in the Notion Club Papers by a gradual ascent from the mundane chit-chat at the beginning to the fullness of sincere, unguarded, heart-felt Romantic interaction among club members in later passages. 

*Note added: This may be implied by footnote 15 to part one, of the first draft, which provides a partial explanation with Guildford saying: "try reincarnation, or transcarnation without loss of memory." Transcarnation may imply that that the consciousness of one person can 'move' to another body - which would be functionally equivalent to a direct contact between two consciousnesses in different places. 

Circling back to Charles Williams

Durham Castle (University College) is the silhouette on the right (Cathedral to the left) and my rooms were located just to the right of the keep, looking out on this view

I have recently been re-reading some of my favourite Charles Williams bits and pieces - including what began my interest in this writer: Humphrey Carpenter's biographical account in The Inklings (1978). I would recommend this to anyone who thinks they might be interested, because Carpenter highlights Williams's most appealing and exciting aspects. 

I recall first reading about 'CW' in my dark rooms located in Durham Castle one autumn morning; and being so energized and gripped that I dashed off to the university library to borrow some of his books. The included the Place of the Lion novel, Image of the City collection of essays and the Taliessin through Logres and Region of the Summer Stars poems.   

Yet I have never appreciated the actual work of Williams as much as I did the biography, the idea of what he was trying to do; the fact that he lived this strange life in which the natural and supernatural were not divided - and in which the eternal and perfect forms of reality were perceptible behind the everyday and mundane. 

For this reason - one of my favourite Williams books is the early (long since out of print) An Introduction to Charles Williams, by his friend Alice Mary Hadfield - since this gives the deepest and most vivid account of the best aspects of William's point of view on life.  

However, after periods of immersion and when I attempted to live my spiritual life in a way modelled on that of Williams; I have ended in a very different place indeed. And I am much now more aware of the fact that Williams's ideas failed in Williams's own life: that he was always a deeply unhappy (even desperate) man, who consistently made (and doubled-down on) wrong choices. 

Because (again and again) that which he most wanted at a surface level, and which he adopted as life-assumptions; was also exactly what hurt him the most profoundly. And as a consequence, made his own life worse than it needed to be.

This tragic situation (which lay behind the surface of success, charisma, and apparent spirituality) was mostly a consequence of CW's deepest metaphysics and most rigorously followed-through philosophical convictions. 

So, you can see why Charles Williams continues to fascinate over such a time span, and draws me back recurrently to engage with his life and work. 

Who was the best poet of The Inklings?

Several of the Inklings were poets; and all the Big Four - CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, Charles Williams and Owen Barfield - began their literary careers intending primarily to become poets; only Williams ended his life regarding himself a poet. 

Williams was the only successful poet among them; being regarded as one of the leading British poets of his generation; albeit mostly for the poetry that was published before Taliessin Through Logres and The Region of the Summer Stars - which Williams himself regarded as his best and only significant work. 

At the other extreme, it has been said that Tolkien is, because of the songs and verses in The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, the most often read of twentieth Century poets (this is assuming that the verse is not just skipped by readers - as has been suggested). 

Tolkien wrote a great deal of unpublished poetry in his early years (including unfinished long poems), published quite a few shorter and comic or lyrical works, including translations and modern-language development of ancient works, mostly in small magazines.   

Lewis's first two books were poetry - and it was only the critical and sales failure of Dymer (when he was aged about 28) that he decided not to continue on that line; although he published many more verses in magazines through the rest of his life. 

Barfield wrote considerably more poetry than he published; but he did publish in small magazines - mostly later in life. 

But which was the best poet? Williams seems like the obvious candidate; but I do not regard Williams as a real poet. And to my inner-ear; Lewis and Barfield were also 'contrived' versifiers; whose work lacked that something unique to real poetry.  

So there is no doubt in my mind that JRR Tolkien was the best Inklings poet - indeed the only real poet among the Inklings if judged by the standard of English lyrical poetry (i.e. song-like verse, plus something more) that defines for me what is 'poetic' about poetry. 

If I was asked to define what makes real poetry - as contrasted with verse - I could only do so indirectly; for example by pointing out that Palgrave's Golden Treasury (1861) displays the nature of this tradition in a very pure and concentrated form. 

Most of Tolkien's output would best be characterized as verse; and it varies pretty widely in quality (as does the work of most real poets) - but Tolkien at his best was a real poet; whereas the other Inklings were writers of verse, and not true poets. 

My selection of Tolkien's poetry at its best would include these five poems; The Sea Bell; Imran; and Aotrou and Itroun - and also some others, including a few of the earliest poems posthumously published in Lost Tales. 

Review of Tolkien's Modern Reading, by Holly Ordway (2021)

Holly Ordway. Tolkien's modern reading: Middle-earth beyond the Middle Ages. Word on Fire: Park Ridge, Illinois, USA. pp ix, 382. (39 illustrative plates and two full page portrait photos of JRRT.)  

Tolkien's Modern Reading by Holly Ordway is a book which changed the way I think about Tolkien - and in several respects. Which I regard as quite an achievement! - given how much I have read and brooded-on Tolkien over nearly fifty years. 

Ordway solidly proves her core argument; which is that Tolkien read a great deal of 'modern' fiction (defined as post 1850 - but including works right up to the end of his life); that he enjoyed much of it; and took some works seriously enough to affect his own writing: often fundamentally. 

Tolkien's Modern Reading operates at various levels, and its interest for me increased the deeper it went. 

At a surface level, Ordway documents the specific works of modern literature that Tolkien is known to have read, including the evidence that he did indeed know and read each particular book. This sets-out the scope of TMR. 

Then there are specific incidents and details which are known to have influenced particular aspects of (especially) The Hobbit and/or Lord of the Rings. For instance Tolkien once stated that the fight with Wargs in The Hobbit was based on a scene in a book by SR Crockett - Ordway tracks-down and quotes the specific passage, and its vivid illustration is reproduced. 

In my experience (e.g. my 1988 analysis of the Scottish novelist Alasdair Gray), this is how fiction writers generally work - that is, they select and modify elements of their own experience and reading to generate elements in their fiction. 

But more interesting to me is the next layer of depth, which is conceptual. An example I found striking is Ordway's insight into Tolkien's comment that his goblins were influenced by those in George MacDonald's Princess and the Goblin fantasy. 

Ordway clarifies that Princess and the Goblin was the first popular work to depict goblins as essentially underground, tunnel-dwellers - and always malicious by nature. But before MacD's time goblins and hobgoblins were regarded as above-ground, household fairies - some were benign and helpful. 

This is of considerable cultural significance, given the vast proliferation of evil, underground goblins in modern fiction and Dungeons and Dragons-type games; and we can now see that this idea came originally from George MacDonald but crucially via his influence on Tolkien's Hobbit.

(Before The Hobbit was published, but known only to Tolkien's family; nasty, underground, tunneling goblins feature in The Father Christmas Letters).  

Perhaps a deeper form of influence is also illustrated by MacD - which is negative influence. Ordway's idea of negative influence is when, for example, Tolkien regarded a fantasy author or book with some mixture of approval and disapproval, such that he determined to avoid what he regarded as a particular fault. 

The MacDonald example is The Golden Key. Tolkien was writing an introduction to the book which he had loved early in his life; but when he re-read Tolkien found there was much he disliked. The negative influence was that Tolkien then wrote Smith of Wootton Major to do right what he regarded MacD as having done wrong. 

Another example of negative influence suggested by Ordway relates to Charles Williams and CS Lewis's overt usage of Christian material in their work. This seems to have led to Tolkien adopting the opposite strategy of removing nearly all explicit references to Christianity, or any religion; and yet making the work as a whole engage with Christian issues by the nature of its plot, characters, events etc. 

The concept of negative influence is one that I believe will turn-out to have exceptional applicability in understanding Tolkien. I can think of many instances in which an aversion for some aspect of another writer's work, or even Tolkien's own earlier work, served as a structuring lesson in what to avoid from now, and a stimulus to do better in the future.   

Tolkien's early anthologized poem Goblin Feet (with its tiny, delicate, precious, 'Victorian' fairies) is one of the first known examples; the 'silly' Rivendell elves of The Hobbit another - these leading up to the tall, noble, wise, powerful (and not at all 'silly'!) elves of The Lord of the Rings. 

A further instance of Tolkien being negatively influenced by himself, was the avuncular narrator of The Hobbit who occasionally indulges in asides to the adult reader, above the children's head. He later regretted this; and ensured that The Lord of the Rings was absolutely free from any such condescension or 'archness'. 

The importance of Tolkien's modern reading should have been obvious to everyone, all along - but was not. To the extent that many authors have, with greater or lesser degrees of exaggeration, made vast and sweeping, negative and derogatory assertions regarding Tolkien's ignorance and loathing of such fiction, and denying any significant influence from it. 

And, for this, the main fault lies with Humphrey Carpenter and his authorized 1977 Tolkien biography, the selected letters (1981), and The Inklings group-biography of 1978. 

It was Carpenter who so deeply-planted the idea that Tolkien had read very little modern literature and liked even less. And this has (by a kind of 'Chinese whispers') grown over the years among writers on Tolkien to wild assertions that he had read very little since Chaucer - or even since the Norman Conquest!  

Based on Carpenter's excessively simplified and distorted accounts; this further led onto other false assertions such as that Tolkien tried to impose (or did - somehow - impose) his irrational personal preferences and limitations onto the Oxford English syllabus. 

Carpenter - with the status of being (even now!) the only author granted access to a mass of personal and private diary and letter material and allowed to quote from it; and writing with the (apparent) endorsement of the Tolkien Estate - created a set of initial false assumptions that have ever since distorted Tolkien scholarship. 

Explicating and clarifying the malign influences of Carpenter is a recurrent topic throughout Tolkien's Modern Reading; and, although a side-theme, may prove to be Ordway's major achievement - given the many and extreme distortions of understanding for which Carpenter was responsible.  

Indeed, one of the most significant aspects of this book is the long-overdue discrediting of several basic evaluations of Humphrey Carpenter - a necessary process of adjustment which readers of this blog have known that I have been advocating for several years.   

Ordway documents something I had long-since inferred from internal evidence; that Carpenter (by his own account, on public record) did not like Tolkien or his work - nor indeed did he like any of the Inklings; and that his original motivation with the biography was to write a subversive account of Tolkien. 

The significant negative distortions which have been the legacy of Carpenter's Tolkien and Inklings* biographies cannot, therefore, be regarded as an accident, but resulted from a combination of unsympathetic attitudes and egregious intentions. 

(In addition, so HC also said; he was settling some scores with the Christian Oxford of Carpenter's childhood - his father Harry had been Bishop of Oxford and Warden of Keble College - an Anglo-Catholic Anglican foundation. Humphrey rebelled and reacted-against this conservative and religious upbringing; to adopt a mainstream-media-type leftist and counter-cultural ideology and lifestyle.) 

Carpenter's biography was written quickly, leading to significant factual errors (documented by Hammond and Scull, in The JRR Tolkien Companion and Guide and elsewhere); although Tolkien (1977) was, and remains, a very deft and readable book, and is a highly-skilled work of compression of a great deal of factual material into a modest length. And, of course, it is mostly accurate!

Yet the biography's first draft was regarded as completely unacceptable by the Tolkien family. It was 'torn to pieces' in detail by Christopher, according to publisher Rayner Unwin. And the version we know was (again hastily - in just a week or two) revised, and the worst passages excised, before being passed for publication. 

Yet, and this is the take-home-message; the basic animus with which Carpenter approached Tolkien of course remained; and in may ways has been perpetuated to this day**. 

It was also Carpenter who seeded the idea that Tolkien had a violent dislike of the Narnia books by CS Lewis. This effect was achieved by picking-up, distorting and exaggerating some much milder comments by Roger Lancelyn Green. This was linked to the - now widespread - idea that this extreme aversion to Narnia was responsible for a cooling in the Lewis-Tolkien friendship. 

What Ordway describes is a much milder dislike, which Tolkien recognised as due to his limited range of sympathy; plus a few specific sharper criticisms of the early draft chapters of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. These include the inconsistency at the inclusion of Father Christmas (Christ-mas), and an apparent queasiness at Lewis's use of a mythologically-lecherous faun to befriend Lucy and take her home. 

Yet Tolkien also described the Narnia Chronicles as "deservedly popular" to a correspondent. One decisive fact is that Tolkien handed his granddaughter Joanna the Narnia Chronicles from his own bookshelf, for her to read. 

I was perhaps particularly struck by this re-analysis of Tolkien and Narnia because I had myself absorbed and accepted the idea of Tolkien's extreme hostility to the point of using it as key evidence in understanding the 'cooling' of Tolkien and Lewis's friendship.

Reflecting on the way I came to this idea; I wonder how many other falsely exaggerated and distorted - and negative - assumptions I still hold; which were perhaps insidiously implanted by Carpenter or other authors who had a hidden and hostile agenda towards Tolkien and the Inklings more generally?

It is hard to exaggerate how powerfully assumptions can come to dictate interpretation of evidence; and when these assumptions are based on selection and distortion with a negative intent; the resulting negative attitudes can be surprisingly difficult to detect and to eradicate. So the assumption of Tolkien's ignorance-of and hostility-towards modern literature has become a cherished prejudice that has, so far, survived a vast mass of contradictory evidence.  

At any rate, I am grateful to Holly Ordway's Tolkien's Modern Reading for setting me right on several important aspects of Tolkien - who is someone with great personal significance in my life. 

Those who value Tolkien the man - as I do - will certainly want to read this book. 

Notes:

*The major negatively-influential (oft-repeated) distortion of Carpenter's Inklings biography of 1978 was that the Inklings were nothing more than a convivial group of Jack Lewis's friends who had negligible influence on each other's writing. 

This idea was very thoroughly addressed and decisively refuted by Diana Pavlac Glyer in The Company They Keep (2006). Indeed Tolkien's Modern Reading resembles TCTK in terms of being structured by an overall contra-Carpenter thesis, pursued by exhaustive scholarly documentation.  

**In considering the malign influences of Carpenter; I think the Tolkien Estate must take significant blame. Not only for choosing, or at least allowing, Carpenter to kick-start his career as a professional writer with what was intended to be something of a 'hatchet job' biography. 

(Indeed, HC wrote several of these throughout his career. Colin Wilson - a delightful man, by all accounts, describes HC posing as a well-disposed ally, and accepting Wilson's generous hospitality as a house guest. Then Carpenter comprehensively mocked and rubbished Wilson in his hostile and dismissive 2002 group-biography The Angry Young Men.) 

After providing the 'authorized' imprimatur for Carpenter to publish misleading quotations, and launch several denigrating distortions; the Tolkien Estate then failed to issue specific explicit corrections. They also failed to do something which would have been better - to break Carpenter's 'monopoly' by allowing later (more sympathetic and honest) biographers to have the same publishing-access to private papers as enjoyed by the careerist and subversive Carpenter. 

So long as Carpenter remains the only person who has been allowed to publish restricted material from journals, letters etc; for so long will the distortions of the 1977/8 biographies be sustained. 

After 43 years it is past-time for more authorized biographies, and further (less distortedly-selected and -quoted) publications. 

Writers with a track record of scholarly excellence, readability and empathy - such as Holly Ordway, Diana Pavlac Glyer and John Garth - would be much more suitable official biographers; and begin to redress the subtle, chronically-poisoning effects of Humphrey Carpenter.