S9E26 – Charles Williams Month – “Weird Williams”, After Hours with Dr. Sørina Higgins

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Today we wrap up Charles Williams Month by exploring the weirder parts of his life with returning guest, Dr. Sørina Higgins.

Click here to download audio for S9E26: “Weird Williams”

Show Notes

Quote-of-the-Week

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world…

1 John 4:1

…test everything; hold fast what is good, abstain from every form of evil.

1 Thessalonians 5:21-22

Introduction

Welcome friends to Pints With Jack! Today we wrap up Charles Williams Month… and it’s going to be a bit of a doozy!

Here on Pints With Jack we will be stepping into an area where more timid souls fear to tread, namely into the weirder and creepier parts of the life of Charles Williams: secret societies, magic, women, and the occult… 

This is why the opening quotation was a mash-up of New Testament epistles – St. John’s first epistle telling us to test every spirit, as well as St. Paul’s initial letter to the Thessalonians, telling them to test everything and hold fast to the good…

And, of course, there was only one possible scholar who could help us navigate this sort of territory…Dr. Sørina Higgins. She’s been on the show a few times already and she was here just a couple of episodes ago talking about the novels written by Charles Williams, but in case you forgot…

Biography

Dr. Sørina Higgins is a Consulting Editor, author, English teacher, and award-winning scholar of British modernist literature. Her academic work focuses on the Inklings, modernism, and magic. 

She’s a Consulting Editor and Writing Coach through Wyrdhoard and you can hire her to help with your own writing! She is also the host of a podcast called WORDS DO THINGS, which you can find on YouTube or wherever fine podcasts are streamed.

She previously edited an academic essay collection entitled “The Inklings and King Arthur“ and is currently writing “The Oddest Inkling: An Introduction to Charles Williams”, due out from Apocryphile Press hopefully sometime this year.

Chit Chat

Q. Before we get into it, I wanted to ask you about an email you sent about a year ago about Inklings projects. What was that about?

  • As she’s worked with scholars and read more literature, Dr. Higgins has realized that there’s many projects that need to be completed, such as unpublished manuscripts or biographies about the authors that don’t have any.
  • Dr. Higgins put these ideas and more in a document called “Future Inklings Projects”, and sent an email blast inviting all interested parties (from an academic POV) to contribute. The document exploded with new ideas!
  • The goal is for scholars and teachers to choose from the document when picking new projects. Anyone can contribute ideas in moderated comments.

Toast

  • Given that we’re talking about the occult today, David settled on a Voodoo Ranger IPA.
  • Dr. Higgins had a glass of red kombucha.
  • In this episode we’re toasting Patreon supporter John Greaves. John, as the Scripture says, may you always test everything and hold on to the good. Cheers!

Discussion

01. “Secret Societies”

Q. Something that listeners might not know is that Charles Williams was a member of secret societies. What secret societies was he involved in, to what degree, and for how long? 

  • We know for certain that Williams was a deeply-involved member of the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross. Below is a brief history of how the organization came to be:
    • In the late 19th century, Freemasons founded a secret society called “The Order of the Golden Dawn.” It was (and remains) the most influential secret society in England, and it has since spread around the world. During a leadership crisis in the 1900s, it split into three branches.
      • William Butler Yeats went down the “white magic” path.
      • The infamous Alistair Crowley took the route of “dark magic”.
      • Arthur Edward Waite followed a Christian mystical route.
    • Waite went on to eventually found the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross, with the intention of avoiding the occultism and magic of the other sects. However, the way he defined “occultism” and “magic” are very loosely defined, and there is a great deal of overlap.
      • Waite believed that at the Last Supper, Jesus gave the apostles a liturgy of the Eucharist that had never been written down, and instead was passed down orally. He spend much of his life attempting to find this “true liturgy”, and believed he would one day be “the most initiated man in Europe”. To do this, he studied texts and myths like the legend of King Arthur, believing the Holy Grail was symbolic of this true Eucharist. He also believed that such texts permitted the practice of alchemy.
    • The Rosy Cross is similar to Freemasonry in how one ascends the hierarchy, filled with grades, examinations, and initiation ceremonies.
  • Charles Williams joined the Fellowship in 1917, and was an active participant in the group for about decade of his life. So active was he that he ascended all the way to the top, and they had to invent new grades and rituals just in time for him to be initiated into them!
  • Eventually, Williams became a “Master of the Temple” (or “high priest”) in the society for 3 different 6-month periods, leading the rituals and teaching newcomers in the ways of the Rosy Cross. Williams had most of the rituals and teaching materials memorized, so familiar was he with their traditions and texts.
  • The other group that Williams was allegedly involved met every other Sunday night at the vicarage of A. H. Lee and D. H. Nicholson to study Rosicrucian secret documents. For 20 years, the gentlemen in this group congregated to read these documents and discuss esotericism and occultism, among other things.
    • Nicholson and Lee had been high-ranking members in an offshoot of the Order of the Golden Dawn, and had documents in their possession from the days before the split occurred.
    • Some of the material in Williams’s writings could only have come from the Golden Dawn, not the Rosy Cross.
    • It’s unclear whether an initiation into this group was performed for Williams.
  • Eventually, Williams left these groups. We suspect it’s for two reasons:
    • He finished everything he could in the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross, and there was nothing new to learn.
    • Charles left the other group because he moved away to Oxford.

Q. What did those groups teach and practice, as far as we know? 

  • In its most simplified form, occultism is about discovering and unveiling the divine self within. These groups believed that everything in the spiritual world was mirrored in the material one, as well as within each individual person. This means that practitioners spend a great deal of time meditating and performing mental exercises to change their consciousness.
  • Unlike what one might expect, in the majority of meetings, there was no flashy magic being performed. Rather, they used objects like tarot cards, practiced astrology, studied supposed secret geometrical languages in “enochian magic”, and practiced clairvoyance and divination to focus their minds and enter into a trance-like state. The point of this was to elevate their consciousness to a higher level on the “astral plane” to see hidden spiritual realities and patterns, and become enlightened to your own divinity.

Q. What was the origin of these groups? From what I’ve seen, they seem wildly synchronistic and very poorly rooted in history…

  • While these groups and secret societies claim to have ancient origins in the far East, Germany, and Ancient Egypt, in reality, they’re a mishmash of several different pre-existing religions and practices. The Rosy Cross preached that everything was one thing (monism), so therefore, all religions and philosophies are really the same. This combining is what’s known as “programatic syncretism”, and practitioners intentionally applied the tenants and objects of different faiths and customs into their own system of thought.
    • The Egyptian roots claim comes from hermeticism and a book called the “Corpus Hermeticum”. However, these texts were almost certainly forgeries made in the Middle Ages.
    • Eastern mysticism probably worked its way in due to travelers venturing into parts of the region, picking up a smattering of the faith and customs, and bringing it back home with them.
    • The final Germain strain finds its origin in the Renaissance, through the insights of a “wise seer” named Christian Rosenkreuz, who became the founder of the Rosicrucian Order. He wrote a book of his own, which was also almost certainly a later forgery.
    • The earlier-mentioned Freemasons took all of these sources in 1888, and built from it the Fellowship of the Golden Dawn.

Q. I get the impression that these sorts of societies and these sorts of spiritual practices were all the rage from the mid 19th Century to early 20th Century. Is that correct? If so, what gave rise to this? 

  • Yes, these ideas were very popular around this time. In 1848, the Fox sisters became central figures in modern Spiritualism, after supposedly hearing “tapping” on walls and furniture that they gleaned to be communication from undead spirits. It rapidly spread, and became very popular across the pod. Mesmerism, a form of pseudoscience, eventually converged with Spiritualism, and adherents would enter into mesmerized trances where they would allegedly contact the dead.
    • Dr. Higgins suspects that the popularity of these movements was a reaction to the Industrial Revolution; it was a search for something beyond the material, in a time when materialism was beginning to encompass everything.
  • Coming into the 20th century, both movements had been mostly debunked. However, as humanity entered into WWI, the institutional churches failed to adequately respond to the death and atrocities. With death touching many families, widows and children were desperate for comfort, and for them, that came in the form of communicating with their dead husbands, fathers, and brothers. Thus, Spiritualism was revived, and secret societies experienced a surge in memberships.
    • Spiritualism also appealed to those who were undereducated or marginalized. For example, women who weren’t allowed to obtain degrees found that they could finally have a leadership ladder to climb, and receive an education to boot. They could also become priestesses in these orders.

Q. How did the Anglican Church respond to these movements?

  • Surprisingly, many clergy members were themselves involved in these groups.
  • For his part, Charles Williams saw no contradiction between his Christian faith and the teachings of these secret societies.

Q. Did Charles Williams agree with the teachings of these different groups? 

  • Dr. Higgins gets the impression that Williams accepted it all, and then after ascending the ranks and finally leaving the groups, he created his own system later on that was a refined version of what he had learned. That system is “co-inherence”. He believed that the programatic syncretism of Rosicrucianism was all pointing to the Christian faith.
  • Secret societies such as these believed that you needed both the information and the experience. So “secrets” wasn’t just about keeping information hidden. They thought that even if they revealed the information, it would be of little use without the embodied portion.

Q. How much of his involvement was known by other people? Charles’ wife, his friends, and particularly the Inklings?

  • It appears that almost nothing of his involvement in these groups was known by those close to him, even his wife. Somehow, he was able to hide his very frequent attendance at these meetings from her. What little she did know, she dismissed as a quirk of his, believing it wasn’t a big deal.
  • C. S. Lewis knew that Williams was involved in some spiritualist practices, but it seems he knew very little about the teachings and practices at these meetings.
  • Knowledge of his dabbling varied among his other friends; after all, he became great friends with other occultists, and apprenticed many young disciples. One such friend was tasked with burying his regalia and magic sword in the aftermath of his untimely death.

02. “Esotericism and Co-Inherence”

Q. Can you please define (if we haven’t already) terms like occult, hermeticism and magic and esoterism? Would they have described their activities as “performing magic?”

  • There’s a lot of debate on this, but here’s Dr. Higgins’s point of view. If you want to listen to some more talks she’s given, check out Occult, Magic, and the Inklings – with Sorina Higgins and Charles Williams: Hermetic Foundations.
  • The word “occult” simply means “hidden”, and could apply to anything where there’s a vow of secrecy involved, even non-religious occultism.
  • Hermeticism is a train of thought from the “Corpus Hermeticum” that supposedly comes from an Ancient Egyptian figure, either a wise man or the god Hermes. It says that everything on earth and within the human body mirrors the happenings of the spiritual world.
  • The broadest term is Esotericism, which refers to alternative religious practices outside the mainstream. It’s a kind of catch-all for things like astrology and magic.
  • Magic is also a grey term, with differing definitions depending on the practitioner. Alastair Crowley said “magic is the art and science of causing change to occur in conformity with the will.” Another word for it would be “manifesting”.
    • Dr. Higgins would add “via the imagination” to Crowley’s definition. A practitioner becomes proficient in an art/science, then imagines something they wish would occur and focuses their visual imagination and willpower on it until a change happens. Usually the change is to their interior perception.
  • Dr. Higgins’s own definition of magic is a mechanistic practice that actively attempts to cause change through certain formulaic behaviors. The “active” part is what separates it from mysticism, which is more receptive and passive.
  • It’s similar to how science is treated today, the difference being the replicability of the experiments. Dr. Higgins and Joseph Weigel will soon be releasing a book that discusses this called “Planet Thulcandra”.

Q. We’ve spoken about co-inherence this month, particularly last week with Dr. Paul Fiddes. Would you just recap what that is and talk about how it’s related to these esoteric concepts Williams studied? 

  • Co-inherence is the idea that everything is interconnected. Charles Williams founded his theory on the Perichoresis, or the mutual indwelling/divine dance of the three Persons of the Holy Trinity. The idea is that if these three persons co-inhere in this way yet are one, there must be an analogous relationship between humans on earth.
    • Therefore, everything we do affects everyone else, and we are highly dependent on others.
  • The core tenant of this philosophy is the belief that it’s possible to carry the heavy burdens of others. For example, if someone is dealing with a horrible medical diagnosis, their friend could willingly shoulder that for them.
    • Co-inherence is not the doctrine of substitution, but rather what the exchange was founded on.
  • Williams believed that whether you believed in the Christian belief of sharing in the sufferings of others or not was irrelevant; it simply was.
  • True to his Rosicrucian roots, he believed that there were 3 grades of initiation into the Companions of the Co-inherence, the order that he founded. He lays it out in his poem “The Founding of the Company”, found in his collection “The Region of the Summer Stars”. These grades were:
    1. Believing co-inherence was a reality of the world
    2. This is a Christian principle, founded on the Perichoresis and Christ’s substitution on the cross
    3. Learning to control one’s own co-inherence in a fuller, more adept way

Q. Where does the Esotericism come in?

  • Co-inherence only works if correspondence (as above, so below) is true.
  • It’s also mechanistic, requiring a verbal contract/oath to carry the burdens of others. This appears to make it more of a magical practice rather than a Christian one.

03. “Romantic Theology”

Q. Williams is associated with the term “Romantic Theology”, but its meaning isn’t immediately obvious. What did it mean to Williams?

  • Romantic theology is Christian teachings on sex, romance, and falling in love. Williams believed that these teachings were rungs on the ladder to reach God, and that the beloved was an epiphany (Dante’s Biatrician Way).
  • There are two traditional doctrines on how one reaches God:
    • Via formativa: the Creator puts something of his personality into his creation, and we can come to know God by loving the things he made. You should be an active participant in creation and spread beauty.
      • Ex: Christian art and music
    • Via negativa: God is so above and distinct from his creation that to focus on any created thing is to commit the sin of idolatry. You must detach yourself from creation.
      • Ex: vows of celibacy, poverty, isolation
  • Williams was torn between the two, feeling a slightly greater tug toward the negative way. Perhaps this is why his engagement lasted 9 years, while he simultaneously wrote his fiancee a series of sonnets about relinquishing love! But eventually, he chose the affirmative way, pursing it radically.
  • The problem inherent in via formativa is the tendency to mistake the creation for the Creator and have inordinate affections for the wrong things. In Williams’s case, this had to do with women, our next thorny subject…

04. “Women”

Q. Well, it’s now time to get a little more uncomfortable. Williams had “odd” relationships with several young female disciples. What was the nature of these relationships and what practices did he pursue with them?

  • The majority of these relationships started as teacher-student. Williams taught literature at several evening classes, akin to adult community college courses. His charisma while lecturing was intoxicating, and his extensive memorized knowledge was extremely impressive. On top of this, he was also highly invested in the personal lives and issues of his students, caring deeply for them. As a result, many attached themselves to Williams as disciples, especially young women.
  • Williams learned from his study group at the vicarage to practice “transmutation/transference of energies”, or channeling emotions, desires, and passions towards a more useful purpose (ie: devotion to a deity or artistic creation).
  • Here’s where it gets awkward and bizarre. Williams took this practice and tried it out on his young disciples. Sometimes it was hugging and holding them longer than proper. Other times, it was minor forms of punishment, like hitting them on the hand with a ruler. This sexual tension would bring him to some form of sexual arousal, which he would then channel into writing poetry.
    • None of these relationships resulted in sex. These women were seen as a muse, or a catalyst of energy.
    • Surprisingly, most of the women were okay with his actions. One woman expressed her displeasure at this practice, and he defended himself by claiming it was “necessary for the poem”.
  • Williams had an ongoing relationship with a disciple named Lois Lane-Sims. This relationship with Williams was incredibly damaging for her. Charles Williams was emotionally and spiritually vampiric and demanding to such a degree that Lane-Sims experienced a mental, emotional, and physical breakdown that left her bedridden for weeks.

Q. Can you tell us about Phillis Jones?

  • While most women were merely muses to Williams, there was one woman that he appears to have fallen in love with, and that was Phillis Jones. A librarian at the Oxford University Press, she quickly connected with Williams and for several years the two engaged in an intense emotionally adulterous affair. There was certainly a sexual aspect to it (he wrote her endless love letters), but once again, there is no evidence of consummation.
  • Eventually, things came to an end when Jones stopped reciprocating Williams’s love, and went on to have a physical affair with another colleague. This left Williams completely devastated. He had fallen in love with an archetypal false image of who she really was. This relationship and its fallout worked its way into his literature for the remainder of his life.
  • Grevil Lindoff said in his interview that Williams never consummated the relationship because of his (however flawed) belief in the sanctity of marriage. But it’s also reasonable to assume that it could have been rejection from Jones that kept them from turning the emotional affair into a physical one.
  • Hear more about this in this interview with the Prancing Pony Podcast.

05. “Is Baptism Possible?”

We’ve touched on this somewhat as we’ve discussed these different beliefs held by Williams, but as we near the end, I wanted to ask this broad question…

Q. How much of all we’ve talked about today is consistent with Christianity? Or, how much of it can be tweaked and thereby reconciled with Christianity? Can any of these doctrines be baptized and retained, or must they be washed away and purged in the sacramental waters?

  • Rather than baptizing these doctrines for Christ, Dr. Higgins believes that these teachings and practices are perversions of pre-existent Christian truths. We should turn to these truths rather than these distorted views.
    • Don’t try to channel and transfer your sexual energy – just get married and work hard at it!

Q. What is it in the ideology of co-inherence that people saw as attractive, and how is it being improperly communicated in the Church?

  • We need to communicate the elements of Christianity more clearly, as St. Paul does when talking about how men and women should treat one another in a marriage, comparing it to Christ and his Church.

Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the Church, because we are members of his body. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the Church; however, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Ephesians 5:28-33
  • The full and correct view of rightly ordered sexual relations can be found in Pope St. John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body”. In it, he digs into the right relationship between our bodies and souls, and what it ultimately says about God.

Q. What is the final verdict on Charles Williams?

  • He was brave for tackling the subjects that he did, though they were distortions of the truth. Where he especially erred though was attempting to justify or sanctify his sin, and draw others into it.
  • We can enjoy the works of Charles Williams, appreciate their beauty, and glean some truth from his writings, so long as we stay aware of these flaws.

Wrap Up

More Information

Q. Dr. Higgins, thank you so much for joining us today to wrap up Charles Williams Month! Where can listeners go to find out more about you and your work with Charles Williams?

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Posted in After Hours Episode, Charles Williams, David, Podcast Episode, Season 9 and tagged , .

David

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After working as a Software Engineer in England for several years, David moved to the United States in 2008, where he settled in San Diego. Then, in 2020 he married his wife, Marie, and moved to La Crosse, Wisconsin. Together they have a son, Alexander, who is adamant that Narnia should be read publication order.

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