Gavin Ashenden, Charles Williams: Alchemy and
Integration (Kent State University Press, 2008)
"He was a close friend of T. S. Eliot, deeply admired by C. S. Lewis, inspirational for W. H. Auden in his journey to faith, and a literary sparring partner for J. R. R. Tolkien. Yet half a century after his death, Charles Williams's life and work remain an enigma for many."
Thus begins Gavin Ashenden's complex and fascinating work on Charles Williams, poet, novelist, theologian, and member of The Inklings, the literary group whose famous members included C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. While Alchemy and Integration serves as a Rosetta stone for interpreting the metaphysical and theological complexities of Charles Williams's work, it also provides historical background to some of the threads woven through the literary and magical traditions of the early part of the twentieth century.
Poet, novelist, editor at the Oxford University Press, and lecturer at Oxford, Williams's work, like that of his fellow Inklings, is wide-ranging and complex and, as this text attempts to document Williams's intellectual, emotional, and creative growth, it also attempts to explain some of the terms and scholarly thought with which Williams and his fellow Inklings were concerned. The first of these terms is "occult", as it was applied by T. S. Eliot when he referred to Williams as an "occult writer." While the term occult has come to be associated with magical practices in general and black magic in particular, etymologically it comes from the Latin word meaning "to conceal" or "to hide" and thus its most general meaning is applied to secret magical and philosophical teachings. By the seventeenth century, the occult was associated with the esoteric teachings of alchemy and magic, but by the late nineteenth century, a number of traditions referred to as "occult" were, like the twenty-first century subjects referred to as "New Age," often a blend of numerous Eastern and Western traditions, including elements of Buddhism, Rosicrucianism, the Kabbalah, and Christian theology. The nature of these esoteric traditions is complicated in itself and often became further muddled by infighting and various splits over creed and interpretation amongst the hermetic orders. For instance, one of the tangled threads which Ashenden attempts to unsnarl is the mistaken idea that Williams was a member of The Order of the Golden Dawn, a group dedicated to ceremonial magic; when in fact, Williams was a member of The Fellowship of the Rosy Cross, a group which focused on Rosicrucianism, a mystic Christian tradition.
Ashenden spends the first few chapters of his book explaining the relationship between the Golden Dawn and the Fellowship as a context for Williams's spiritual development and his relationships with other creative artists, such as A. E. Waite and W. B. Yeats, who were involved in these groups.
After explaining the background of these hermetic traditions and Williams's initiation into the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross, Ashenden moves on to how these specific mystical traditions shaped Williams's complicated thoughts regarding what he called the "theology of romantic love," which is more of a system of thought for relating God, the world, and creativity as manifested in a physical embodiment of the Muse. Williams's ideas regarding romantic love were further developed when he met a woman with whom he had a romantic but platonic relationship; indeed, much of the book is occupied with the connections between Williams's creative development of this theology of romantic love and his relationship with his platonic lover, Celia. Ashenden spends a significant part of the text examining Williams's emotional and intellectual life through the previously unpublished letters to "Celia."
Romanticism for Williams comprised essentially the value of vision. He was romantic about theology, but theological about romantic vision. He believed that seeing clearly was the means by which one made progress on the human journey. The way in which one looks at other people is often controlled by superficial prejudice, desire, or fear. But when one fell in love with another human being, looking or seeing could become
a visionary experience. It was as one fell in love that a moment of visionary lucidity took place.
It was not only that one saw the beloved in the light of radiant insight. Williams went further than that. He saw beyond the beloved a pattern that gave the beholder in question an insight into the macrocosmic reality. With these ideas, he drew on both Waitean culture and his own experiences...to provide a synthesis that would become his "Theology of Romantic Love." pp. 62-63
The complex theological and metaphysical language of Ashenden's text includes frequent use of such terms as immanence, transmutation, correspondences, Manichaeanism, the unifying principle, co-inherent transformation, etc.;although the author includes a vocabulary section, the language remains daunting for the general reader. Aside from the difficulty of the language, however, the robust documentation and extensive notes and bibliography contained within Alchemy and Integration make it a must-read text for the Charles Williams scholar, while also providing much useful material for those interested in the Inklings, the traditions of magic and alchemy in literature, and the history of magic and mystic practices in the twentieth century.
A Charles Williams page is here.
