Tuesday, December 07, 2004
A TOUCHSTONE MAGAZINE ARTICLE
"Touchstone", Dec. 2004 arrived yesterday. This morning while I was waiting for something to finish, I leafed through it to a story on Charles Williams written by Thomas Howard, and titled "What About Charles Williams?: The Secret of the Enigmatic Inkling Revealed."
Howard is a former teacher at the Archdiocese of Boston St. John's Seminary College. In the article he indicates that he did a doctoral thesis on Charles Williams. With that background, I find it utterly incredible that he does not actually reveal the "secret" of Charles Williams, despite the headline. He does not even hint at it.
Though he makes it clear that readers often say of Williams' writings "I couldn't make head or tail of it all," and that "the testimony becomes a wail of despair when Williams's poetry is attempted." Even Williams' essays, according to Howard, "set one to tugging one's beard", and he admits that, "...I cannot pick up a single one of his books without at some point muttering to myself, 'Yo! Williams, old boy--how on earth do you expect anyone to have the faintest clue as to what you are on about here?' "
Well they might be confused! Charles Williams was a member of an offshoot of the magical fraternity the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, named "The Fellowship of the Rosy Cross," founded by A. E. Waite according to a Taylor University article.
By way of confirmation of that information check here and here.
If you want more confirmation, simply Google Charles Williams with Golden Dawn. There are numerous websites providing this information.
How can it be, then, that Thomas Howard did not unearth this information when doing doctoral research on Charles Williams?
There is an inset in the article, "Life & Legacy", in which Howard describes his encounter with Williams followers:
There are some ironies about Williams's legacy. His followers--they might almost be called worshipers, both men and women, and I have met some of them--fell into the most vicious fighting over his manuscripts after his death. But these were the people who were supposed to have been tutored in the Way of Substitution and Exchange, in the Law of The City. What went wrong? I do not know.
I found myself caught in the middle of some of the fighting and had to make my escape (literally) on an airplane back to the United States, holding a huge canvas zipper-bag full of manuscripts that one Raymond Hunt had received from Williams, and that he (Hunt) wanted to give to Wheaton College. For all I know, I might have had my throat cut by some of Williams's other votaries who detested Hunt, and who felt that he had made off with the material. But all of the personae in that drama are dead now...
He didn't know???? He did a doctoral thesis on Williams and didn't know about the occult world that Williams inhabited? The occult world is riddled with this kind of backbiting. It's standard operating fare. How could a man who reserched Williams not know? There is even a picture of Williams standing beside William Butler Yeats, another well-known member of The Golden Dawn, included in the article.
Rosicrucian Christianity is most easily defined by its practice of channeling. There is no doctrinal conformity because each practitioner invents his own. Or I should say that he allows his "spirit guide" to invent his own. Most likely some or even all of Williams writings were channeled. No wonder readers have a problem understanding it. It is purposely obscure, blending truth with fantasy, and even nonsense. That is the nature of occultism.
Incredibly enough, Howard adds this little tidbit to his article:
He (Williams) wrote many essays, and two whole books...on "theology." I put the word in quotes since no theologian I know of, except Hans Urs von Balthasar, has ever registered much interest in Williams as a theologian.
And I mention von Balthasar only because he sought me out, not because of any eminence of mine, but because he heard that I had studied Williams, and he wanted to talk about him. (He - von B., that is - in the course of the evening gave me a snapshot of himself with Mickey Mouse at Disneyland. He said it was his favorite photo of himself, if that throws any light on anything.)
This would be the same von Balthasar who wrote the Afterword to MEDITATIONS ON THE TAROT, I presume.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
UPDATE
The Touchstone article is online here.
