Review of Aren Roukema, Esotericism and Narrative: The Occult Fiction of Charles Williams

Religion ISSN: 0048-721X (Print) 1096-1151 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rrel20 Esotericism and Narrative: The Occult Fiction of Charles Williams by Aren Roukema, Leiden, Brill, 2018, xii + 318 pp., €190 (hardback), ISBN: 978 9 0043 6903 0 Carole M. Cusack To cite this article: Carole M. Cusack (2019) Esotericism and Narrative: The Occult Fiction of Charles Williams, Religion, 49:3, 511-513, DOI: 10.1080/0048721X.2019.1623611 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2019.1623611 Published online: 06 Jun 2019. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 25 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rrel20 RELIGION 511 From beginning to end, Brian Wilson’s book is a true biographical tour-de-force wherein he skillfully blends Fetzer’s public business and private spiritual lives, presenting, in interesting detail, the brief histories of the alternative ideas and movements that dotted the religious landscape of 19th- and 20th-Century America. As a true exemplar of the age of anxiety and of religious uncertainty, there seemed to be no spiritual terrain that John E. Fetzer’s restless soul would not traverse. Jon R. Stone California State University, Long Beach, CA, USA Jon.Stone@csulb.edu © 2019 Jon R. Stone https://doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2019.1613132 Esotericism and Narrative: The Occult Fiction of Charles Williams, by Aren Roukema, Leiden, Brill, 2018, xii + 318 pp., €190 (hardback), ISBN: 978 9 0043 6903 0 Charles Walter Stansby Williams (1886–1945), poet, novelist, theologian and literary critic, was for a time a member of the Inklings, the literary group that included J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, and wrote occult novels and poetry that are now little-read, but merit scholarly attention. Aren Roukema’s study of his seven novels that were published between 1930 and 1943 is welcome; it is the first to approach Williams through the lens of occultism, and to emphasise ‘the ancient wisdom tradition, the applied arts of practical magic, and the means of achieving mystical illumination’ (10). Roukema notes that previous studies of Williams employ various strategies to downplay his interest in the occult and deny any active participation on his part. Drawing on Actor-Network Theory (ANT), Roukema situates Williams ‘as an actor in the occult network’ (21), Chapter 1 considers Williams’ biography, his involvement in A. E. Waite’s order, the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross (F.R.C.), his interest in Christian occultism, and the unconsummated and sadomasochistic relationships he had with various women during his unhappy marriage. C. S. Lewis read The Place of the Lion in 1936 and wrote to invite Williams to Oxford to meet with the Inklings, where Lewis was ‘bowled over’ by him, and Tolkien formed a less admiring friendship with him (35). The three elements of Williams’ philosophy are explained: the way of affirmation, Romantic theology and coinherence, which formed a unitive cosmology united by correspondences. Attention is paid to Williams’ friendship with Waite, and the chapter concludes with an analysis of the cordon sanitaire erected around Williams, that emphasises mysticism and Christianity over the occult, and denies the possibility that individuals like Williams and Waite were Christian occultists with a complex, blended worldview. Chapter 2 explores Williams’ ten-year membership in the F.R.C., which started with his Neophyte initiation on 21 September 1917. He rose rapidly through the Orders and became Master of the Temple four years later on 26 September 2021. He served as Master for three terms and entered the Fourth Order in 1925 but ceased his Rosicrucian activity in June 1927. Roukema analyses the relationship between F.R.C. rituals and structures and those of the Golden Dawn by comparing the Adeptus Minor rite in both; the ‘process of transformation is extensively represented in both rituals by the life, death and rebirth of Jesus Christ’ (98). Another common factor is a focus on the story of Christian Rosenkreutz, with the discovery of his tomb being linked to Christ’s resurrection, both of which being representative ‘of 512 BOOK REVIEWS mystical rebirth’ (101). Chapter 3, ‘Fiction and Experience’, shifts attention to the novels, the first five of which contain motifs that Williams would have been familiar with from the F.R.C. Williams thought of his poetry as his ‘serious’ literary output; he seems to have started writing novels to educate readers about the occult worldview, which had artistic and narrative aspects. Shadows of Ecstasy, the fifth novel published but first written, has an occultist, Nigel Considine, as the central character, with a cast representing other views (African, Christian, rational skepticism, Romantic theology and so on). Roukema argues that the ‘sense of supernatural intrusion is not so palpable as in [the] later novels’ (119), despite the presence of magical phenomena and the possibility of resurrection that remains at the novel’s close. T. S. Eliot called Williams’ novels ‘supernatural thrillers’, and War in Heaven (1930) has a murder plot, though the real action involves the discovery of the Holy Grail by Julian Davenant, an archdeacon who leads a modern band of Grail knights determined to preserve the Grail from three magicians who seek either to destroy it or to use its power for evil. In Many Dimensions (1931), the quest is for the ‘stone of Suleiman’, which has been stolen from its Sufi custodians. Again, a cabal of evildoers seek to use the power of the stone, but Chloe Burnett and her employer Lord Arglay tune into the stone’s powers and eventually return it to the divine realm. Chloe, like Julian Davenant in War in Heaven, leaves the earthly realm at the same time as the holy object. In The Greater Trumps (1932) the magical object is the original set of Tarot cards, from which all others derive. The Place of the Lion (1931) features a grimoire, but as Roukema notes it is the action of uttering the spell that sets off the action, rather than the grimoire itself, and there is ‘a reduction in occult imagery’ (125). Descent into Hell (1937) has a plot ‘in which the world of the dead is seeping into the living lands of Battle Hill’ near London (126) and the protagonist Pauline employs coinherence to save an ancestor in the supernatural world. The final novel is All Hallows’ Eve (1945) in which a black magician Simon Leclerc uses his daughter Betty in magical acts aimed at the control of the realm of the dead. The last two novels have a Gothic sensibility, and Roukema identifies some possible influences on Williams’ ‘more ghoulish’ occult elements, including Evelyn Underhill’s A Column of Dust (1909) and R. H. Benson’s The Necromancers (1909). The rest of the chapter covers the F.R.C. connection between the discovery of the higher self and ‘the end of desire’ (139). This reader owns and has read all of Williams’ novels, a precondition that makes understanding the arguments of this book easier. Chapter 4, ‘Kabbalah: Charles Williams and the Middle Pillar’, covers A. E. Waite’s use of Kabbalah, which unlike that of the Golden Dawn was not linked directly to magical practices, and the value that Williams accorded to kabbalistic concepts long after he left the F.R.C. Thus, Waite’s ideas about the Shekinah and the ‘middle pillar’ are relevant to the character of Chloe Burnett in Many Dimensions, and Sybil in The Greater Trumps explicitly references these concepts. Roukema ends the chapter with a discussion of kabbalistic eros and the Romantic theology of Williams. Chapter 5, ‘The High-Priestess: Charles Williams and Modern Magic’, opens with the statement, Charles Williams has rarely, if ever, been described as a magician. Yet he kept a sword in his office which he deployed as an object of power in his ritualistic sublimation of libido, taught his young devotees the Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram and sought to elevate his consciousness in the F.R.C. through practices that displayed central characteristics of ceremonial magic. (182) Having thrown that gauntlet down, Roukema analyses some of Williams’ non-fiction writings, such as Witchcraft (1941) and considers Golden Dawn and F.R.C. activities from the point of view of personal transmutation and the tendency of occultism to be psychologised in the 20th RELIGION 513 century. Chapter 6, ‘A Magical Life in Fiction’ discusses characters in Williams’ novels from the viewpoint of coinherence praxis, which is dependent on active imagination and active will. Williams contrasts selfless and self-centred magic, and Roukema opens up the spaces in his own life where it is clear that he thought magically about some or other practice; for example, giving up masturbation in order to aid the healing process when in 1930 Phyllis Jones was ‘in hospital with a broken leg’ (219). The relationships Williams had with Joan Wallis (who regarded him as good) and Lois Lang-Sims (whose ill-health she believed was the result of her submissive relationship with him) are clearly not sex magic per se, as they are about sublimation not expression, but they have a certain magical aura or tinge. Roukema concludes that Williams did not wish to gain control over spirit beings or powers but nevertheless is recognisably a ‘godly magus’ (237). The final chapter, ‘The Transmutation of Charles Williams: Spiritual and Literary Alchemy’, gives a short history of alchemy and identifies influences on Williams’ work, and considers the place of the ‘Great Work’ (transmutation) in his fiction. The book concludes with a short ‘Epilogue: The Coagulation of Belief’, in which Williams is compared to some of his fictional characters. Esotericism and Narrative: The Occult Fiction of Charles Williams is both entertaining and learned, and may win for Williams a whole new generation of readers. It is a major contribution to the study of occult fiction, and an interesting insight into the identity of a certain group of people who regarded themselves as devout Christians but sought inspiration in esoteric currents that were seemingly in opposition to their faith commitment. I recommend it highly. Carole M. Cusack University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia carole.cusack@sydney.edu.au © 2019 Carole M. Cusack https://doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2019.1623611 Voice of the Buddha: Buddhaghosa on the Immeasurable Words, by Maria Heim, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2018, xi + 274 pp., US$99.00 (hardback), ISBN 978 0 1909 0665 8 Maria Heim’s Voice of the Buddha presents the reader with a philosophical exploration of the textual practices of the fifth-century Buddhist commentator Buddhaghosa. She describes in considerable detail the various commitments, values, and approaches that this renowned monastic author employed in his analyses of the Buddha’s teachings that are spread across numerous Pali language commentaries and the Visuddhimagga treatise. The work extends upon her previous book that examined Theravāda conceptions of intentionality and agency in the work of Buddhaghosa (Heim 2014). In this newer work she focuses on Buddhaghosa’s general conception of the Buddha’s word (buddhavacana) and the methods he prescribed for understanding these teachings as fully as possible. Heim’s discussion of Buddhaghosa’s ideas is founded on an exhaustive review of his written works, particularly the introductory sections to the Samantapāsādikā, or the commentary to the Vinaya texts on monastic discipline, the Suman galavilāsanī, or the commentary to the Dīgha Nikāya or ‘Collection of Long Discourses,’ and the Atthasālanī, which offers an introduction to the Abhidhamma section of the Pali Canon of Buddhist scriptures. Although much of her analysis of Buddhaghosa’s thought is grounded in