Aren Roukema

Situates the life and fiction of Inkling Charles Williams in the network of modern occultism, with special focus on his initiatory experiences in A.E. Waite’s Fellowship of the Rosy Cross. Roukema evaluates fictional projections of magic, kabbalah, alchemy and ritual experience in Williams’s seven novels of supernatural fantasy. From this specific analysis, he develops more broadly applicable approaches to the serious expression of religious experience in fiction. Roukema shows that esoteric knowledge has frequently been blurred into fiction because of its inherent narrativity and adaptability, particularly by authors already attracted to the syncretism, multivalence and lived fantasy of the modern occult experience.

This chapter examines a late-nineteenth century fictional trope of “mind invasion,” in which the white male unconscious is controlled by the very subaltern mind that Western science branded as “primitive” and associated with lower levels of mental and cultural evolution. The psychical automatism of mind invasion sometimes reproduces the power dynamics of colonialism, but the chapter examines countervailing examples in which the colonizer unconscious is dominated by the mental powers and occult knowledge of the colonized. It also explores incidents of extra-terrestrial or future-human mind invasion, which redraw the racialized hierarchies of mind constructed by Western scientists. Reiterations of the mind invasion trope satirized the claim of educated white male minds to rationality, detached objectivity, and the ability to resist automatist mental states. The chapter analyzes the multivalent aims of this reversal, including anti-materialism, a defence of paranormal experience, and a decolonizing attack on the very concept of racial hierarchy.

Pre-print of a chapter on speculative fiction and esotericism for The Dictionary of Contemporary Esotericism, edited by Egil Asprem (Brill)

(https://contern.org/cresarch/cresarch-repository/dictionary-of-contemporary-esotericism-cresarch/)

This article analyses an “occult empiricism” which challenged materialist research paradigms in late-nineteenth century mental science. This research methodology, pursued within occultism and psychical research, proposed alternative approaches for studying the mind and for using it as a research instrument. In both cases, occult empiricism was reliant on testimony to subjective, interior experience. I analyse the way in which this emphasis on testimony mediated mental scientific concepts and approaches between institutional/professional science, esotericism, psychical research, and fiction. To illustrate this mediative function, I explore the particularly indicative example of _Karma: A Novel_, Alfred Percy Sinnett’s 1885 defence of psychical powers and experiences, specifically those Sinnett himself encountered with Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and other mediums in the early 1880s. The central platform of this defence is Karma’s representation of an occult empirical methodology for testing and substantiating paranormal and psychical phenomena. This paper situates this methodology in the context of the competing empiricisms represented in the diverse scientific spaces of materialist mental physiology, fiction, and alternative religion.

After ten years as Editor of _Correspondences: Journal for the Study of Esotericism_, I, along with my excellent colleague Justine Bakker, take stock of the journal's place, purpose, and mission in relation to esotericism studies. As part of this reflection, we ask whether and why we need esotericism studies at all, running through some of the problems with the field but ultimately advocating its unique perspectives and contributions.

H.G. Wells is sometimes credited with a stylistic rupture that separated science fiction from other fantastic genres, eschewing magical elements in favour of empiricist and rationalist knowledge. While there is merit to this narrative, this article argues for a more complex genre heritage by evaluating the fiction of Edward Bulwer-Lytton as an indicative example of a competing nineteenth-century strand of occult science fiction. This form, quite popular in the period, drew on methods of scientific legitimation used by esoteric traditions like Theosophy and Spiritualism, as well as theories of the mind such as clairvoyance and telepathy, producing fiction that dialogued with scientific currents of the day but without a rejection of magic. Indeed, noting that Wells consciously exploited the narrative value of esoteric science in a number of his early short stories, the article argues that the fiction of authors like Bulwer-Lytton is distinguished from the form championed by Wells not by an exorcism of magic but by a productive occlusion of it. The article concludes by outlining the methods and continuing influence of this occlusion, arguing that esoteric sciences have continued to influence and generate the tropes, novums, and stylistics of science fiction.

Modern occultism and Christianity have frequently been defined in opposition to each other. Christians, reflecting longstanding polemics against esoteric knowledge, have continued to view a range of magical traditions as heretical. Conversely, leading occultists have reversed this polarisation, presenting their ideas and practices as a dramatic rebuke of Christian orthodoxy. Scholarly attempts to demarcate modern occultism from pre-nineteenth-century forms of esoteric practice and belief have often focused on this perceived opposition, to the detriment of research subjects who unproblematically merge Christian and esoteric concepts and practices. This chapter argues against overemphasis on the Christian/occult binary, relying on the illustrative example of English poet, playwright, novelist, and theologian Charles Williams (1886–1945). Though Williams was a dedicated Anglican and prioritised Christian doctrine, his preference for pluralism and syncretism also led him to engage with occultism, most notably through his ten-year involvement with Arthur Edward Waite’s occult Rosicrucian order, the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross. In contradistinction to most Williams scholarship, this chapter presents Williams’ heterodox theology as an indicative example of a large number of late modern belief systems which have emphasised syncretism and pluralism over doctrinal loyalty, thus eroding the dynamics of heresy.

The editors of Correspondences: Journal for the Study of Esotericism, explain their reasons for dropping the term "Western" from the journal title, basing these reasons in an overall argument for dropping the term as a guiding indicator for research foci and methodologies in the study of esoteric phenomena.

Relatively little critical attention has been paid to Charles Williams’s ten year involvement in the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross (F.R.C.), despite the possibilities for interpretation and understanding of the often obscure imagery derived from this experience and applied to his novels and poetry. This paper reviews the F.R.C.’s rituals and meeting minutes in order to gauge the level of Williams’s involvement with the FR.C. and the mystical concepts communicated by its founder, Arthur Edward Waite. It also explores the order’s organizational, symbolic and philosophical roots, particularly the links shared with its parent order, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Having identified the historical and experiential contexts of Williams’s F.R.C. participation, the paper offers examples of the possibilities for interpretation created by greater awareness of the order’s ideas and practices. A number of Williams’s novels are explored in light of several occult concepts important to the F.R.C.—the ‘middle pillar’, the ‘higher self’, and the ‘end of desire’. This analysis indicates that comprehensive interpretation of Williams’s fiction and poetry is impossible without a thorough understanding of the ideas and symbols that he encountered in his ritual experiences. This analysis also demonstrates the importance of the modern occult context to Williams’s life and work.

Many critics of 'Phantastes', George MacDonald’s seminal work of fantasy, have seen the novel as primarily symbolic, with little to no central narrative structure. However, an analysis of previously unidentified alchemical symbolism makes it clear that the novel has a cohesive narrative based on the alchemical journey of Anodos, the central character, toward spiritual unification with the immanent God. This paper places MacDonald's use of alchemical symbolism in  the historical context of medieval and early modern alchemy in order to illustrate the nature and purpose of the novel's alchemical structure.

2017 issue of Correspondences, featuring articles from Wouter J. Hanegraaff, James F. Lawrence and Julie Chajes, a review article from Ethan Doyle White, and book reviews from František Novotný, Stanislav Panin, Justine Bakker, Jay Johnston, and Julian Strube.