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Volume 21 Number 2 Article 52

Winter 10-15-1996

Hermetic Imagination: The Effect of The Golden Dawn on Literature

Charles A. Coulombe

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Recommended Citation Coulombe, Charles A. (1996) "Hermetic Imagination: The Effect of The Golden Dawn on ," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 21 : No. 2 , Article 52. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol21/iss2/52

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: A VIRTUAL “HALFLING” MYTHCON July 31 - August 1, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-51.htm

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Abstract The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was an English expression of the Nineteenth-Century revival in Europe. Dedicated to such practices as ceremonial and divination, it valued these more as gateways to true understanding of reality than for their intrinsic merit. The Golden Dawn’s essentially Neoplatonic world-view is reflected in the writings of such some-time members as .B.W Yeats, and Charles Williams.

Additional Keywords Golden Dawn; ; Arthur Machen; Magic; Charles Williams; W.B. Yeats

This article is available in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol21/iss2/52 Hermetic Imagination: The Effect of The Golden Dawn on Fantasy Literature

Charles A. Coulombe

Abstract: The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was an English expression of the Nineteenth- Century occult revival in Europe. Dedicated to such practices as and divination, it valued these more as gateways to true understanding of reality than for their intrinsic merit. The Golden Dawn’s essentially Neoplatonic world-view is reflected in the writings of such some-time members as W.B. Yeats, Arthur Machen and Charles Williams.

Keywords: Golden Dawn, Hermeticism, Arthur Machen, Magic, Charles Williams, W.B. Yeats

Beyond these fields and this borderland there lies the and Charles Williams, as well as that of the Hermetic Order legendary wonder-world of , so called, of Magic of the golden Dawn to which they all belonged, we must first and Sorcery, a world of fascination or terror, as the pick up a little of its history. mind which regards it is tempered, but in any case the While the Magical world-view may not be popular among antithesis of admitted possibility. There all paradoxes us today, it is an integral part of practically all pre-industrial seem to obtain actually, contradictions coexist societies. In Europe, the country-folk from time immemorial logically, the effect is greater than the cause and the to this century (and in some out-of-the-way places even yet) shadow more than the substance. Therein the visible saw this everyday life of ours as interpenetrated with beings melts into the unseen, the invisible is manifested and actions from other worlds co-existent with this one: openly, motion from place to place is accomplished Often they are described as distant realms, but almost without traversing the intervening distance, matter as frequently they are imagined to lie so close alongside passes through matter. There two straight lines may normal space that transition from one to the other is enclose a space; space has a fourth dimension, and only too easy, in both directions. Certain places and untrodden fields beyond it; without metaphor and times facilitate the transition. powers without evasion, the circle is mathematically squared. break through into the normal (or can be summoned to There life is prolonged, youth renewed, physical it) at turning points of time: midnight, midday, New immortality secured. There earth becomes , and Year’s Eve, Halloween, May Eve, Midsummer Night. gold earth. There words and wishes possess creative Similarly with space; it is at boundaries, thresholds, power, thoughts are things, desire realises its object. crossroads, fords, bridges, and where verticality There, also, the dead live and the hierarchies of extra- intersects the horizontal, as on top of mounds, down mundane intelligence are within easy communication, wells, under trees, that Otherworlds are accessible . . . and become ministers or tormentors, guides or One key is ambiguity, the concept both/and and destroyers of man. There the Law of Continuity is neither/nor. If a man stands exactly on the boundary suspended by the interference of the higher Law of where three parishes meet, at the stroke of midnight, in Fantasia. which parish is he, and what date is it? He has cut loose (Waite, 1961, pp. 3-4) from normal space and time. He has also reversed This rather lengthy quotation serves well as an introduction normal conduct by going outside at night, the to the Hermetic or Magical world-view. It is in complete time when supernatural beings are active, but contradiction, needless to say, to the more or less should be asleep. In such circumstances, he places materialistic perspective our education and upbringing have himself in contact with “the other”; he can reach, or be bestowed on us modem Europeans, North Americans, and reached by, fairies, , or . Australasians. Since at least the Enlightenment, educated (Simpson, 1985, p. 34) opinion has insisted on what we call the scientific method. While the same views may be found in all ’s Relying on the purely measurable, it has provided us with the folklore and mythology (as, for example, the Australian technology necessary to provide us with all the conveniences aboriginal “dream-time”, so often invoked today), in Europe we possess — surely a telling argument in any case. But to the influence of Christian doctrine made a great impact. understand the world-view of W.B. Yeats, Arthur Machen, Even as Faerie was conceived in terms like those just quoted, 346 J. R. R. TOLKIEN CENTENARY CONFERENCE so too were , , and Purgatory, which realms also by the of its more educated neophytes. From erupted into our own in various ways. Churches were seen as this encounter emerged many of the ideas of the Church outposts of the celestial, brought down at the of the Fathers: St. Dionysius the Areopagite, St. the Martyr, Mass and other Sacraments. Purgatory, through the medium St. Clement of Alexandria, , and St. Augustine are of ghosts (a la Hamlet’s father) played its part. Hell too, prime examples of this process. Similarly, the emerging through its demons, those of Faerie who were evil (the traditional liturgies of East and West were much affected by “unseelie court”, as the Scots put it), Werewolves, , commonplaces in contemporary theurgy and to and so on, made its presence felt. Human beings too could higher spirits. To the sceptic, this interconnexion would align with the infernal in return for supernatural power; these doubtless relativise even further the value of Christian were of course the Witches of song and story. (To those who doctrine and practise; to the believer, it would simply be a would claim that this sort of witchery was the invention of demonstration of his encompassing within itself all Church officials, it should be pointed out that to this day, truths, revealed or otherwise. From ’s maxim that supposed witches are burned, tortured, and hung in non- “the is naturally Christian”, such a believer would draw Christian places like China, Africa, and remoter Australia; it the Hermetic analogy that so too is reality as a whole. Thus is this writer’s contention that the origins of today’s “” the demons, angels, and so on spoken of in Neoplatonic or neo- lie elsewhere.) theurgy would not be mere pagan engraftings onto At any rate, the village wise-folk who trafficked with the , but simply pre-Christian acknowledgements of unseen, the Anne Jeffries sorts of people who stumbled into actual beings. it, and the generality of villagers who treasured up tales, The dualism implicit in , which provided its charms, and beliefs of these kinds were for the most part main distinction from Hermeticism, was lacking in the merely reacting in a half-instinctual manner to the realities Christian Neoplatonism of the Church Fathers. For them, as they perceived around them. There was perhaps little of a for later Christian philosophers, the Universals did not exist developed theory behind all of this (although this assertion independently, but in the mind of . This concept gave may not be readily defensible — oral cultures can be richer philosophical comprehensibility to various difficult and more complex than we modems suspect). doctrines. The , for instance, could be seen in Unlike today, however, the learned of earlier days held terms of the falling of the whole Universal “Man”, in the much the same world-view, albeit in a more reasoned and persons of its then only two extant concrete representatives - articulated manner. The Pre-Socratic philosophers “did not Adam and Eve. This point of view, which saw the Universals oppose matter to mind, soul to body, or subject to object, but as real and as the pattern from whence come all perceived had a tendency to approach nature with a nondualistic, physical things, is called “Ultra-Realism”. Under its noncategorical attitude. In such a view, all being is influence were composed the Catholic and Orthodox concrete.” (Faivre, 1987a) liturgies, most pre-13th Century theological works, and the Socrates’ pupil, , developed the idea of the types or writings of Mystics of the same period. It is a mark of Ultra- universals — such as “Man”, “Horse”, “King”, and so on — of Realism, in fact, that (with its concomitant which their concrete representations which we experience physical phenomena, , the , etc.,) and (and we ourselves) are mere shadows. These realities reside — that is, the practise and the study of unity with in some supernatural realm from whence they cast their God — were then considered inseparable. By the same token, shadows upon the Earth. While this theory could lend itself (with the proviso that “the impel, they do not to a real dualism, its effect on philosophers whose compel”), , the Jewish Qabbalah, and the like were psychology was influenced by Pre-Socratic attitudes often taken seriously by devout writers like John Scotus Eriugena, led such to consider reality as an interconnecting web of Pope Sylvester II, Bl. Raymond Lully, , St. coherences and correspondences, the seen operating upon the Hildegarde of Bingen, St. , and so on. The unseen, and vice versa. Obviously, such an intellectual acceptance of the reality of the spiritual, and the possibility context lent itself to any number of religious and mystical of exploring it by analogy from the natural, were accepted by beliefs; the obscurest maxims of the Hellenistic Mystery all early Medieval Christian thinkers: Schools could be considered expressions of wisdom by the In that which concerns speculative or most rigorous thinkers of antiquity. metaphysics, the same role is reserved there for Into this philosophico-religious mix entered, in the first analogy. All conclusions of a metaphysical nature are few centuries AD, the Alexandrian writings attributed to based only on the analogy of man, Nature, and the Trismegistus. Codifying the whole system of intelligible or metaphysical world. Thus the two analogies which had grown up by the phrase “as above, so principal authorities of the most methodical and most below”, Hermeticism gave to philosophers and thinkers a disciplined philosophy — medieval Scholastic model of dealing with the unseen. Neoplatonic Universals philosophy - St. Thomas Aquinas and St. came in time to meet Hermetic Analogy. Thus was born the (of whom one represents Aristotelianism and the other approach to reality our opening quote epitomises; thus was Platonism in ) not only make use given to age-old magical practise a philosophical basis. of analogy but also assign it a very important Just as Christianity affected and was in turn affected by the theoretical role in their doctrines themselves. St. folk-beliefs of its humbler converts, so too did it and was it Thomas advances the doctrine of analogia entis, the HERMETIC IMAGINATION 347 analogy of being, which is the principle key to his encompassed many allied themes. To the philosophy. St. Bonaventure, in his doctrine of signatura Materialist assumption of the all-importance of the body and rerum, interprets the entire visible world as the symbol the group, it opposed the individual. To the mechanistic view of the invisible world. For him, the visible world is only of nature it replied with a Naturphilosophie which again saw another Holy Scripture, another alongside nature as at once veiling and representing spiritual realities. that which is contained in Holy Scripture . . . To the cult of progress, the Romantics also opposed a love of (Tonberg, 1991, p. 17) the Medieval past and the Peasant or Exotic present. Perhaps Given this sort of world-view, it is not too surprising that the greatest of the Romantic philosophers was the during the sympathetic magic, based upon incomparable Franz von Baader, who later inspired Vladimir natural correspondences, and theurgy, based upon Soloviev. of angels and elementals, flourished (so too, alas, did goetia, From the outpouring of all of this throughout the 19th with its invocation of demons, and , with its Century, interest arose in much of the literate European consultation of the dead. Needless to say, the latter two were public in fantasy literature, , and the occult: particularly discouraged by the Church). But SS. Thomas The industrial revolution naturally gave rise to an Aquinas and Bonaventure, in their own lives and careers, increasingly marked interest in the “” of foreshadow the rise of modem philosophy. science. It promoted the invasion of daily life by St. Bonaventure was a traditional Ultra-Realist. St. utilitarian and socioeconomic preoccupations of all Thomas, on the other hand, picked up the Aristotelian view kinds. Along with the smoking factory chimneys came that the Universals derive their reality from the sum total of both the literature of the fantastic and the new their concrete expressions: that is, that rather than Men phenomenon of spiritualism. These two possess a deriving their Mannishness from the Universal Man, said common characteristic: each takes the real world in its Universal is only identifiable from the shared Mannishness most concrete form as its point of departure, and then of individual Men. This may sound an arcane distinction, but postulates the existence of another, supernatural world, it was in reality the first chink through which a tide of separated from the first by a more or less impermeable Aristotelian materialism would in the end divorce theology partition. Fantasy literature then plays upon the effect and the supernatural entirely from philosophy and the of surprise that is provided by the irruption of the physical. “The Platonist sees things in God; the Aristotelian supernatural into the daily life which it describes in a sees God at the summit of things” (Bettoni, 1964, p. 20). As realistic fashion . . . It is interesting that occultism in St. Bonaventure was a disciple of St. Francis, first of the 400 its modern form — that of the nineteenth century — attested stigmatics to have been marked down to our own appeared at the same time as fantastic literature and day, it is no suprise that he should have been a Platonist. spiritualism. The French term occultisme was perhaps Indeed, for those who believe in it, the Stigmata might be first used by (1810-1875), whose work is seen as a concrete proof of Ultra-Realism. sometimes somewhat misleadingly identified with the However that may be, Moderate Realism produced over beginnings of occultism itself . . . Like the fantastic the course of the Middle ages Conceptualism, which saw the and the quasi of spiritualism, nineteenth Universals as being only human concepts, and Nominalism, century occultism showed a marked interest in which saw them as mere names having no reality at all. It supernatural phenomena, that is to say, in the diverse would not be unfair to say that most Modem Philosophy is modes of passage from one world to the other. Nominalism on a spree. (Faivre, “Occultism”, 1987b). What these philosophical developments meant concretely Not too surprisingly the Occult revival in France which was the progressive separation of from featured men like Levi, Papus, Peladan, Grillot de Givry, and Philosophy. There was, it is true, during the Humanist many others, was parallelled by a similar movement in movement of the something of a recapturing of French literature featuring such names as Barbey Neoplatonism and Hermeticism. This produced such figures d’Aurevilly, Villiers de l’lsle Adam, and Huysmans. While as Cardinal Bessarion, Nicholas of Cusa, Pico Della many of these considered themselves loyal Catholics, the Mirandola, Reuchlin, and Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pope standard theologians of the time, much under Neo-Thomist Pius II). All of these and their ideological kin were also influence, regarded them suspiciously. intensely interested in Qabbalah, Alchemy, etc. — in a strictly This phenomenon was not restricted to the continent. In Christian and Catholic context. 1875, founded the in The Reformation, spearheaded by the Nominalist Martin New York, which soon spread throughout the English- Luther, put an end to all such developments. While the next speaking world. Originally very Western in emphasis, few centuries would produce a few figures like Jakob Bohme studying such topics as alchemy and the writings of and Claude de St. Martin, for the most part materialism and , the Society took on a strongly Oriental tone after “modem” scientific method grew in their monopoly of Mme. Blavatsky took a voyage to India, and claimed to have Europe’s intellectual life. The Enlightenment was the made contact with various Tibetan “Ascended Masters”. A fruition of this process. Then came the French and Industrial number of members took issue with this (among whom was Revolutions, which idolised the materialistic. Almost , who eventually founded his own inevitably, there came a reaction - Romanticism. Anthroposophical Society in Germany). A further objection 348 J. R. R. TOLKIEN CENTENARY CONFERENCE to the course of the Theosophical Society was that its viewpoint (themselves manifestations of Hermeticism and membership were encouraged only to study occult doctrine, Neo-Platonism) the Golden Dawn also reflected in its not to practise it — that is, not to practise Magic. But an the Christian emphasis earlier referred to. While subsequent organisation formed in 1888 soon attracted many authorities (notably Regardie) have sought to minimise this Theosophists who wished either a more Western teaching or in accordance with their own biases, it is still evident from an Magical practise, or both: The Hermetic Order of the Golden examination of the material. Indeed, it is alleged that many Dawn. of the first members of the Anglican Community of the Resurrection (the Mirfield Fathers) were members, although The Golden Dawn this would be hard to substantiate. Still, there can be no This society was formed as a result of the discovery in a doubt that many Golden Dawn Fratres and Sorores achieved bookstall of a cypher MS by one Rev. A.F.A. Woodford. in their own devotional lives the same synthesis between Supposedly, this manuscript was written by a German Hermeticism/Neoplatonism and Sacramental Christianity Rosicrucian lady, and invited anyone interested in setting up that characterised Medieval Ultra-Realists, Renaissance a similar organisation to contact her. In concert with Humanists, and (in a much less conscious way) European Macgregor Mathers, a Scottish student of the Occult, and Dr. folk-culture members. In a word, their Christianity, while W. Wynn Westcott, the Golden Dawn was accordingly tied to the dogmas of Revelation, saw the world as both a organised. symbol and concealment of higher realities, contact with From the very beginning, its membership fell roughly into which was obtainable both through magic and divination, two categories: those who were of a Western-Theosophical and, on a purer and greater level, through the Sacraments. bent (many of whom, as just noted, had left the Theosophical Most representative of these was perhaps the Catholic A.E. Society for that particular reason), and those of a more Waite, who formed a separate, more explicitly Christian explicitly Christian orientation. This uneasy mix would erupt Mysticism-oriented Golden Dawn group in 1903. later into open conflict; but at the very beginning both camps Commenting on Claude de St. Martin’s works, Waite wrote: were united in declaring that “to establish closer and more “It is difficult to agree that a system which includes personal relations with the , the Master of institutions of such efficacy [the Sacraments], and apparently Masters, is and ever must be the ultimate object of all the of divine origin, can at the same time transmit nothing. It teachings of our order.” Unexceptional as this goal was, the becomes more apparent. . . that the failure in transmission Order’s means of reaching it were quite unusual. is not in the Church, but in the ministers. The Church assists The Golden Dawn aspired to be not merely a complete us towards regeneration by operating divers effects at divers academy of occult knowledge (as indeed the Theosophical seasons” (1970, p. 331). He goes on to say “. . . I think the Society had claimed to be) but also a forum for Mystico- Church Catholic is preferable to the most exotic plant of Magical practise — which Magic was seen as being like that Lutheranism . . .” (1970, p. 333). A good understanding of of Eliphas Levi. In the words of Stephan Hoeller, Magic in Waite’s position is important, because Yeats, Machen, and this sense is “an umbrella term for the growth or expansion Williams all elected to follow him, and his view of matters of by way of symbolic modalities.” To impart esoteric is the strand of Golden Dawn tradition which both knowledge and practise, an elaborate system of grades informs their work. He wrote of the Golden Dawn itself: “It was established; as the student ascended these grades, he or is not in competition with the external Christian Churches, she learned ever more esoteric skills. and yet it is a Church of the Elect, a Hidden and Holy These latter included knowledge of Qabbalah (which Assembly . . . It is a House of the Holy Graal in the Hebrew system’s model of all reality — the “Tree of Life” — sanctity of a High Symbolism, where the sacred intent of the provided the Golden Dawn with its basic ideational Order is sealed upon Bread and Wine” (quoted in Carpenter, framework); ; ; Astrology; Alchemy; and 1979, p. 82). ritual Magic. The workings of the last-named included Odd though Waite’s views may appear to many today, they making of and talismans, communing with Elementals, were not unechoed on either side of the channel. In her 1963 of Demons, and invocation of Angels. As well, the foreword to Waite’s similarly-viewed French contemporary Golden Dawn initiate was taught “skrying”, which included Grillot de Givry’s Sorcery, Magic, and Alchemy, Cynthia both and astral travel. Magriel informs us that: From its beginning, the Golden Dawn attracted a highly De Givry lived in a moment in history and in France literary membership. In addition to the three whom we shall when his views, though strange to most Catholics, consider, , , Sax Rohmer, could be tolerated. They were shared in part by a actress Florence Farr, , E. Nesbit, and Evelyn number of Catholics who were considered no worse Underhill were all members at one time or another, either of than eccentrics. the Golden Dawn itself or of one of the splinter groups which Thus the Baron de Sarachaga, a Basque and a survived the Order’s disruption in 1900. With the publication nephew of St. Teresa [of Avila], for forty years headed of the Order’s rituals by , we are now in a the Institut des Fastes; this school was approved by better position to gauge the ideology of the Golden Dawn Popes Pius IX and Leo XIII. Pierre Dujois, a learned than were earlier writers on the topic. hermetist, wrote of this school in 1912: “There exists in Concurrent with its Western-Theosophic and Qabbalistic Paray-le-Monial [the centre of devotion to the Sacred HERMETIC IMAGINATION 349 Heart of Jesus] a mysterious Cabalic centre, sincerely everything he wrote, the world-view enunciated in the Catholic it seems, and where the bizarre orthodoxy is opening quote was evident. Whether he was dealing with nevertheless accepted and even encouraged by the fairy-lore or mystic visions, the conviction that this world Church . . both symbolises and conceals greater realities was ever (P- 5) obvious in his work. In 1915, he wrote a poem for So the mixture of orthodoxy and magic we encounter in the into the highest grade of the Golden Dawn’s outer order: writings of our three authors, deriving from the Golden FOR INITIATION OF 7 = 4 Dawn and particularly from Waite, was not without We are weighed down by the blood & the heavy weight contemporary as well as past parallels. This is an important of the bones point, because for varying reasons Christian and non- We are bound by flowers, & our feet are entangled in Christian writers alike have attempted to up a dichotomy the green between the Christian and occult elements in the three’s And there is deceit in the singing of birds. work where there is in fact a synthesis — a synthesis which in It is time to be done with it all these particular cases is the direct result of their membership The stars call & all the planets in the Golden Dawn. Let us look now at each of them. And the purging fire of the And yonder is the cold silence of cleansing night William Butler Yeats May the dawn break, & gates of day be set wide open. Of the three, Yeats’ connection with the Golden Dawn is the It were useless to belabour the point much further. But best known and documented. In his Autobiography, pp. 341- what is not so well-known is the degree to which Waite 342, he discusses his involvement with the Golden Dawn and (whom Yeats followed in the 1903 split) must have its history, calling it “the Hermetic Students”, but giving influenced Yeats’ views of Christianity in general and Mathers and Westcott their proper names. His Memoirs, Catholicism in particular. There can be no doubt of Yeats’ published posthumously, are full of bits of gossip about the disenchantment with both the of his youth, and Golden Dawn and its members. Of the Order, he says with the Irish Catholic hierarchy. He complained in 1907 of therein, “I . . . value a ritual full of the symbolism of the the “ingratiating manner . . . of certain well-educated Middle Ages and the Renaissance . . .” (p. 27). He had Catholic priests, a manner one does not think compatible come to the Golden Dawn after having been expelled from with deep spiritual experience” (Yeats, 1953, p. 282). Two the Theosophical Society by Madame Blavatsky for actually years later he wrote in his diary: “Catholic secondary practising Magic. Yet even before his entrance into the education destroys, I think, much that the Catholic religion Theosophical Society, he and a number of other Dublin gives. Provincialism destroys the nobility of the Middle Anglo-Irish youths had formed a “Dublin Hermetic Society” Ages” (Yeats, 1953, p. 304). for the study of European Magic and Mysticism, and to a Certainly, at first glance, such anti-clericalism, read in the degree of Eastern religion. Why? “All were parched by the light of his comment in Rosa Alchemica that “. . . I knew a desiccated religion which the Church of Ireland and the Christian’s ecstasy without his slavery to custom”, would Presbyterian Church, now purged of their old , imply a Mysticism completely unChristian. But this would provided.” (Richard Ellmann, 1964, p. 41). Certainly Yeats’ be a superficial reading indeed. In fact, it would appear that exposure to the folk and fairy lore of the Irish played its part his view of the central Christian dogma of the Incarnation, also. while reminiscent of orthodoxy, was given the esoteric Yeats entered into the Golden Dawn with great gusto in emphasis familiar to readers of Waite’s work: 1890. He followed its practises, and claimed to have Western civilisation, religion, and magic insist on particularly benefited from clairvoyance. For Yeats Magic power and therefore on body, and hence these three and Poetry were near synonymous. When in 1892 a friend doctrines — efficient rule — the Incarnation — wrote to him questioning the “healthiness” of his Golden thaumaturgy. Eastern thoughts answer to these with Dawn activity, he wrote back: indifference to rule, scorn of the flesh, of Now as to Magic. It is surely absurd to hold me “weak” the formless. Western minds who follow the Eastern or otherwise because I chose to persist in a study which way become weak and vapoury, because unfit for the I decided deliberately four or five years ago to make, work forced upon them by Western life. Every symbol next to my Poetry, the most important pursuit of my is an invocation which produces its equivalent life. Whether it be, or be not, bad for my health can expression in all worlds, the Incarnation invoked only be decided by one who knows what Magic is and modern science and modern efficiency, and not at all by any amateur. If I had not made Magic my individualised emotion. It produced a solidification of constant study I could not have written a single word of all those things that grow from individual will. my Blake book, nor would The Countess Kathleen have (Yeats, 1953, pp. 292-293) ever come to exist. The Mystical life is the centre of all In one sweep, we see that the causes for Yeats’ break with that I do and all that I think and all that I write. the Theosophical Society (Mme. Blavatsky’s eastern (Yeats in Wade 1954, p. 210). interests and her dislike of practical magic experimentation) In 1897, Yeats published Rosa Alchemica, an allegory of he believed to be linked directly to the Incarnation. his studies with the Golden Dawn. But in practically There are other examples of Yeats’ specifically Christian 3 5 0 J. R. R. TOLKIEN CENTENARY CONFERENCE esotericism, derived from the Golden Dawn and Waite. One We proclaim that we can forgive the sinner, but must suffice, however. In his essay “Ceremonial Union” (in abhor the atheist, and that we count among atheists bad Waite, 1987, pp. 189-194), Waite describes the unity existing writers and Bishops of all denominations. “The Holy between Order members, a unity which permits them to is an intellectual fountain”, and did the Bishops share, via their ritual connextion, each other’s pains and believe that, the Holy Spirit would show itself in difficulties, and so lessen them. Compare Yeats: decoration and architecture, in daily manners and A French -working priest once said to Maud written style. What devout man can read the Pastorals Gonne and myself and to an English Catholic who had of our Hierarchy without horror at a style rancid, coarse come with us, that a certain holy woman had been the and vague, like that of the daily papers? We condemn “victim” for his village, and that another holy woman the art and literature of modem Europe. No man can who had been “victim” for all France, had given him create, as did Shakespeare, Homer, Sophocles, who her Crucifix, because he, too, was doomed to become a does not believe, with all his blood and nerve, that “victim”. man’s soul is immortal, for the evidence lies plain to all French psychical research has offered evidence to men that where that has declined, men have support the historical proofs that such as turned from creation to photography. We condemn, Lydwine of Schiedam, whose life suggested to Paul though not without sympathy, those who would escape Claudel his L'Annonce faite a Marie, did really cure from banal mechanism through technical investigation disease by taking it upon themselves. As disease was and experiment. We proclaim that these bring no considered the consequence of , to take it upon escape, for new form comes from new subject matter, themselves was to copy Christ. and new subject matter must flow from the human soul (Yeats, 1953, p. 199) restored to all its courage, to all its audacity. We Thus it was that a few years later, in 1917, he would write dismiss all demagogues and call back the soul to its comparing the contemporary French Poets like Jammes and ancient sovereignty, and declare that it can do whatever Peguy to those of his youth like Mallarme: it please, being made, as antiquity affirmed, from the Nothing remained the same but the preoccupation with imperishable substance of the stars. religion, for these poets submitted everything to the (Ellmann, 1964, pp. 246-247) Pope, and all, even Claudel, a proud oratorical man, We are close here to Grillot de Givry’s desire to build at affirmed that they saw the world with the eyes of vine­ Lourdes “a gothic jewel”, which would “teach the a dressers and charcoal-burners, it was no longer the lesson in architecture which they need”, and Waite’s gleeful soul, self-moving and self-teaching — the magical soul repetition of St. Martin’s maxim “The Church should be the - but Mother France and Mother Church. Priest, but the Priest seeks to be the Church.” It is just such Have not my thoughts run a like , though I surface anti-clericalism, concealing a desire to reintegrate have not found my tradition in the , the Christian Mysteries into Man’s Art and conception of which was not the Church of my childhood, but where reality — whence they had been sundered by the the tradition is, as I believe, more universal and more Enlightenment and the Industrial and French Revolutions — ancient? which constituted the quest of that segment of the Golden (1980, pp.368-369) Dawn with which Yeats, Machen, and Williams had It would appear that as Yeats grew older, he did, at least affiliated. with one part of his complex psyche, ever more closely This writer has seen in one source an indication that Yeats’ synthesise esotericism and mystical Christianity. But he first burial at Roquebrune in 1939 was conducted with would never be a conventional parishioner — nor did he ever Catholic rites. Should this be true, it would mean that he settle publicly into any denomination. He would, until his must have been received into that Church on his deathbed; , remain critical of clerics of every denomination. Yet it such a reconciliation would not have been with the clergy he may well be that his final word on the matter might be regarded as being in the main rationalist, but with the summed up in an editorial he -wrote for the short-lived Sacramental and Mystical system they represented. It would artistic journal To-Morrow in 1924: mean that he had achieved at his death the Hermetic TO ALL ARTISTS AND WRITERS conjunction he at times approached in his work. We are Catholics, but of the school of Pope Julius the Second and of the Medician Popes, who ordered Arthur Machen -Angelo and Raphael to paint upon the walls of Where Yeats’ attachment to Christianity is tenuous, there is the Vatican, and upon the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, no such ambiguity with Arthur Machen. As Ireland did for the doctrine of the Platonic Academy of Florence, the Yeats, so Wales cast its glamour over Machen. H.P. reconciliation of Galilee and Parnassus. We proclaim Lovecraft wrote of him that: “He has absorbed the mediaeval Michaelangelo the most orthodox of men, because he mystery of dark woods and ancient customs, and is a set upon the tomb of the Medici “Dawn” and “Night”, champion of the Middle Ages in all things — including the vast forms shadowing the of antediluvian Catholic faith” (1973, p. 88). Unlike Yeats, Machen was Patriarchs and the lust of the goat, the whole handiwork never estranged from the faith of his youth. But the lore of of God, even the abounding hom. the neighbourhood of Caerleon upon Usk, one of Arthur’s HERMETIC IMAGINATION 351 cities, so it was said, worked powerfully upon his the shape of things, as we have seen. There is in part an imagination. From this early experience he evolved the credo almost Manichean quality to his description of reality — as that “Man is made of mystery and exists for mysteries and well as a certain tentativeness. But the post-Golden Dawn visions.” This view of life turned him early to writing of the material is at once more strictly in line with Christian dogma, fantastic. In “The Novel of the White Powder”, he wrote: and more authoritative. So he commences “The White “The whole , my friend, is a tremendous sacrament; People” with “Sorcery and sanctity . . . these are the only a mystic, ineffable force and energy, veiled by an outward realities. Each is an ecstasy, a withdrawal from the common form of matter; and man, and the , and the other stars, and life” (Machen, 1964, p. 116). After declaring that real sin is the flower of the grass, and the crystal in the test tube, are an obscene alteration of reality, he writes, “Holiness requires each and every one as spiritual, as material, and subject to an as great, or almost as great, an effort; but holiness works on inner working” (1964, p. 57). On his own, with just his lines that were natural once; it is an effort to regain the admittedly mystical religion and his Celtic imagination, he ecstasy that was before the Fall. But sin is an effort to gain had arrived at the same conclusions as the Hermeticists, the ecstasy and the knowledge that pertain alone to angels, Neoplatonists, and Ultra-Realists. He expressed much of the and in making this effort man becomes a ” (p. 119). same viewpoint in “The Great God Pan”: Similarly, a character in “The Red Hand” remarks “There Look about you, Clarke. You see the mountain, and are Sacraments of evil as well as good about us, and we live hill following after hill, as wave on wave, you see the and move to my belief in an unknown world, a place where woods and orchards, the fields of ripe com, and the there are caves and shadows and dwellers in twilight” meadows reaching to the reed beds by the river. You (Machen, 1961, pp. 170-171). see me standing here beside you, and hear my voice; As for Waite, so too for Machen, the Holy Grail was an but I tell you that all these things — yes, from the important theme. Symbolising at once the Eucharist, the that has just shone out in the sky to the solid ground Crucifixion, and the ecstasy Machen believed was the heart beneath our feet — I say that all these are but dreams of Christianity, he returned to it again and again. In “The and shadows: the shadows that hide the real world from Great Return”, he described the Grail’s coming to a remote our eyes. There is a real world, but it is beyond this Welsh village during World War I, and the veil it removes glamour and this , beyond these “chases in Arras, during its short stay from the world around us: dreams in a career”, beyond them all as beyond a veil. . . . if there be paradise in meat and in drink, so much (1964, p. 62) the more is there paradise in the scent of the green These two stories were written in 1895 and 1896. At the leaves at evening and in the appearance of the sea and time that Machen wrote them, while he was perhaps in the redness of the sky; and there came to me a temperamentally oriented in the direction of such beliefs, he certain vision of a real world about us all the while, of a was not inclined to give them much credence in the language that was only secret because we would not workaday world — in any case they were hazy, being based take the trouble to listen to it and to discern it. upon general impressions of life rather than experience of (Machen, 1964, p. 222) Magic. This changed with his entrance into the Golden Dawn The presence of the Grail causes not only miracles but clarity in 1898. There he gained practical knowledge of what he had of vision: guessed. In an 1899 letter written to French novelist Paul- Old men felt young again, eyes that had been growing Jean Touletin, he declared: dim now saw clearly, and saw a world that was like When I was writing Pan and The White Powder, I paradise, the same world, it is true, but a world rectified did not believe that such strange things had ever and glowing, as if an inner flame shone in all things, happened in real life, or could ever have happened. and behind all things. Since then, and quite recently, I have had certain And the difficulty in recording this state is this, that experiences in my own life which have entirely it is so rare an experience that no set language to changed my point of view in these matters. express it is in existence. A shadow of its raptures and Henceforward I am quite convinced that nothing is ecstasies is found in the highest poetry; there are impossible on this Earth. I need scarcely add, I suppose, phrases in ancient books telling of the Celtic saints that that none of the experiences I have had has any dimly hint at it; some of the old Italian masters of connexion whatever with such impostures as painting had known it, for the light of it shines in their spiritualism or . But I believe we are living in skies and about the battlements of their cities that are a world of the greatest mystery full of unsuspected and founded on magic hills. But these are but broken hints. quite astonishing things. (Machen, 1964, p. 237) (Pauwels and Bergier, 1964, pp. 212-213) This union of the Catholic with the Hermetic, of the In the 1903 split, Machen also followed Waite, whose Christian with the Esoteric, would, it must be again repeated, more Christianised esotericism he apparently found have made perfect sense to the Ultra-Realist, the Humanist, congenial. Three years later, a new collection of his fiction or the peasant. For Arthur Machen, it required whatever appeared. While it included both of his older pieces, new experiences he gained in the Golden Dawn to transmute the material was included, in which obtains a certain shift of iron of impression into the gold of conviction. What began as tone. In the first two works, he had been very vague about instinct on his part was, through the medium of his time in 3 5 2 J. R. R. TOLKIEN CENTENARY CONFERENCE the Golden Dawn, made into experience. This in turn gives well-based, developed and directed. His three following his later works the feeling of one who knows whereof he works, Divorce, Windows of Night, and Outlines of speaks. Yet it also presents those of us comfortable with neat Romantic Theology, scatter the shadows of such a compartments marked “religion”, “magic”, and “literature”, suggestion. Referring long afterwards to the making of with tremendous problems of classification. a magical circle against the dangers of the Dark, he So it is that Gunnar Urang in Shadows of Heaven is quite wrote that he still felt the darkness, though it is “known perplexed by Machen’s definitions of literature in his to be merely untrue.” Hieroglyphics, which he quotes on p. 150: (1983, p. 30) If we, being wondrous, journey through a wonderful This is a view echoed by many other Williams scholars. world, if all our joys are from above, from the other The distinguished critic Thomas Howard declares: world where the Shadowy Companion walks, then no Williams was not interested in the occult at all mere making of the likeness of the external shape will except during a brief period in his early life. One might be our art, no veracious document will be our truth; but be pardoned for forming the impression from his novels to us, initiated, the Symbol will be offered, and we shall that he was quite caught up in the occult, but this would take the Sign and adore, beneath the outward and be a mistake. His imagination was aroused by certain perhaps unlovely accidents, the very Presence and ideas that crop up in occult lore, but he remained a eternal indwelling of God. plain Anglican churchman all his life. He accepted the “But”, Urang grumbles in reply, “he proposes another, taboos that rule out forays into the occult. quite different test: ‘literature is the expression, through the (1983, p. 9) artistic medium of words, of the dogmas of the Catholic While both of these statements reflect a very commonly Church, and that which in any way is out of harmony with held view, emphasising separation between the esoteric and these dogmas is not literature;’ for ‘Catholic dogma is Christianity, it is in this case based upon a false merely the witness, under a special symbolism of the understanding of what the Golden Dawn was all about. The enduring facts of human nature and the universe.’” activities of its best known non-primarily-literary member, For Machen, however, as for Yeats (at least, for Yeats , have served to bring upon the Order when he was in the mood in which he wrote the earlier enormous discredit, despite the fact of his early expulsion referred-to To-Morrow editorial), these two tests are not therefrom. As has been observed the whole point of the different; rather they are the same. This synthesis between Order was, in essence, to reveal experientially to its members Christianity and ecstasy and the Hermetic would have been the subtler realities of the . Assuming Christianity to well recognised by Bl. Raymond Lully or Pico della be literally true, such experimentation could only reveal this. Mirandola. That it is not to us tells us much about the We are very far here from the kind of opportunistic avenues in which religious and literary thought have flowed evocation castigated by Williams in Many Dimensions, The since then. But Machen was able to see the synthesis — Greater Trumps, and All Hallow’s Eve. precisely because of his experience with the Golden Dawn. It is doubtless true that Williams came to the Golden Dawn with a fully formed world-view; so too did Machen and Charles Williams Yeats, for only such would be interested in joining this kind Charles Williams stands out among the three both because of of a group anyway. What the Golden Dawn offered to these his overtly theological oeuvre, and because of his close men and their colleagues was (a) a coherent philosophy of connexion with C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. He joined the the esoteric; and (b) some type of actual experience which Golden Dawn in 1917, and was active for at least five years they, at any rate, accepted as objective factual confirmation thereafter. He too was attached to Waite’s group, and, as we of this philosophy (obviously, the exact nature of such shall see, some major themes in his work may be derived confirmation is open to question). from that source. Carpenter admits that “Waite himself discouraged the There can be no doubt that Williams’ novels owed their Order of the Golden Dawn from practising ‘Magia’, the themes to areas studied by the Golden Dawn. Shadows of Renaissance term for , and certainly he was Ecstasy pulsates with the Hermetic dictum, “as above, so opposed to any meddling in ‘Goetia’ or ” (1979, below”. War in Heaven concerns the Grail, Many Dimensions p. 82). Neither Williams, Yeats, nor Machen appear to have the Philosopher’s Stone, and The Place of the Lion the done much vis-a-vis evocation of demons, in keeping with Platonic archetypes. We are confronted with the Tarot deck Waite’s strictures. Presumably the ritual, , in The Greater Trumps, necromancy in All Hallow’s Eve, and clairvoyance, and divination that was practised was sufficient ghosts, , and damnation in Descent into Hell. to confirm the Order’s teachings to them. The result has been Despite this, it is usual to downplay Williams’ membership described by Urang: in the Golden Dawn as a factor in his artistic vision. His Charles Williams, in short, is a thoroughgoing close friend, Alice Hadfield, remarks: supematuralist. He predicates modes of existence other In the end, what did Waite’s Golden Dawn mean to than those perceived by the senses and known by him? Surely his outlook and philosophy were not reason and takes for granted that the natural order generated, or indeed much affected, by it. He was proceeds from and is dependent upon a reality which is thirty-one when he joined and his mind was already invisible and which operates by laws transcending those HERMETIC IMAGINATION 353 discoverable in the physical world. He is eager to insist, loosely organised “Order of the Companions of the Co­ however, that the supernatural is not divorced from the inherence”. To its membership were given seven guidelines. natural; one is not to escape from sensory illusion into One of these advocated the study “of the Co-inherence of the spiritual reality. It is rather the true form of the natural, Holy and Blessed , of the Two Natures in the Single so that one knows the supernatural through images Person, of the Mother and Son, of the communicated within the natural. Shakespeare, says Williams, Eucharist, and of the whole Catholic Church” (Hadfield, conceived the whole supernatural life in terms of the 1983, p. 174). Another set down the Order’s four feasts: the natural, and his work should stand as a rebuke to Annunciation, Trinity Sunday, the Transfiguration, and All “arrogant supematuralists”. (Hadfield, 1983, p. 174). All of this is extremely (1971, p. 56) reminiscent of Waite’s version of the Golden Dawn. It is This is as true of Machen and Yeats as it is of Williams; it interesting to note that the Golden Dawn observed five is an outlook directly traceable to the influence of the Golden feasts; these were the four solstices and equinoxes, and their Dawn. high festival, the feast of Corpus Christi. There are many specific instances one could cite of All of these concepts, applied to Christianity, may seem particular traces of the Golden Dawn in Williams’ work. For peculiar — particularly as expressed in Williams’ fiction. Dr. example, his conception in Taliessin through Logres of the Howard tells us, . . his religious vision was not Map of Europe corresponding to the human body is idiosyncratic. It was a matter of traditional Christian obviously connected with the sephiroth of the Qabalistic tree orthodoxy. But his way of picturing it all was emphatically of life. But it is Williams’ central doctrines of co-inherence, idiosyncratic” (1983, p. 17). But it is only idiosyncratic if exchange, and substitution which figure in and inform all his one is referring to Aristotelian and/or post-Reformation prose fiction which most point up his Hermetic legacy. Alice forms of Christianity. Urang (p. 156) tells us that, for Hadfield defines them thusly: Williams, “Particularity must submit to the Idea, individual Co-inherence. Christ gave his life for us, and his risen experience to dogma.” Further, “the unity he celebrates is life is in each one if we will to accept it. Simply as men one attained by including the natural within the supernatural. and women, without being self-conscious or portentous, He focuses upon the structures of the natural and derives an we can share in this life within the divine co-inherence ‘ontology of love’; but he locates and interprets these of the Trinity, and in so doing live as members one of structures by means of the insights available in the another. In our degrees of power, intelligence, love, or supematuralist frame of reference.” The Double Truth (the suffering, we are not divided from God or each other, idea that what is true in theology may be false in philosophy) for Christ’s nature is not divided. which has undergirded much of for a Exchange. The whole natural and social life of the long time is indeed alien to all of this. But the Fathers, the world works as a process of living by and with each Ultra-Realists, the Classical Humanists, and the orthodox other, for good or bad. We cannot be bom without Romantics would all have recognised this concept. However physical exchange, nor can we live without it. But we Williams initially arrived at it, there can be no doubt that he can each day choose or grudge it, in personal contacts, saw it codified and demonstrated while a member of the in neighbourhood, and in our society under the law. To Golden Dawn. practise this approach to co-inherence we can find strength in the risen power of Christ linking all men. Conclusion Substitution. Another way of approach to co-inherence One may legitimately wonder what influence the Golden is by compact to bear another’s burden. One can take Dawn had on Lewis and Tolkien via Williams. Certainly by love the worry of another, or hold a terror, as one That Hideous Strength is universally acknowledged to have member of Christ’s life helping, through that life, been greatly affected by Lewis’ acquaintance with Williams. another member in trouble. Its description of the Company of St. Anne’s is certainly Williams saw these three principles as operating not evocative of Williams’ Companions of the Co-inherence; only between the living in space and time, but also from afar off it carries therefore also the mark of the Golden between the living and the dead - or the unborn. Dawn. (Hadfield, 1983, p. 32) Ithell Colquhoun, a relative of Golden Dawn co-founder Here we see a proposal strikingly like Waite’s in MacGregor Mathers, opines that “ has “Ceremonial Union”, and reminiscent of Yeats’ observations a tinge of the Golden Dawn though this may be filtered regarding “victims”. This is deeply esoteric matter here. Yet through E.R. Eddison rather than Williams, since passages it is also profoundly Christian, being a restatement of the near the beginning of The Worm (1922) are so idea of the “Mystical Body of Christ”, exemplified by St. pervaded by the Golden Dawn atmosphere as to make one Paul: “We being many are one bread, one body; for we all speculate on its author’s esoteric background” (Colquhoun, partake of the one bread” (I Cor., x, 17). Here we see at once 1975, p. 234). But the well-known suspicion J.R.R. Tolkien the identification of the Church with her founder, with the had for Williams’ ideas in this area leads one to suspect a Sacraments, particularly the Eucharist, binding all together. rather different source for the “tinge” Colquhoun detects. In time, Williams felt the need to give some kind of Tolkien was a cultural Catholic, deeply read in both folk-lore structure to like-minded friends. He founded in 1939 a and in pre-Reformation literature. These were themselves 3 5 4 J. R. R. TOLKIEN CENTENARY CONFERENCE suffused, albeit more or less unconsciously, with the magical eyes of those assembled there. When Josephus had or Hermetic world-view, of which, after all, the Golden stood for some while holding his burden up to view, he Dawn was only one exponent. replaced it in the Holy Vessel. Through it, however, and more particularly through the In a real sense, the whole conundrum regarding an influence of Yeats, Machen, and Williams (to say nothing of authentic understanding of the Golden Dawn’s teaching may Blackwood, Nesbit, etc.), the Hermetic/Neoplatonic world­ be symbolised by the in the Tarot Deck. view has come to be commonplace throughout fantasy Considered merely as a fortune telling device, it can mean literature. Exiled from mainstream Christian theology, plans or latent thoughts, ready to be put into action but whose academic philosophy, and the sciences, it has nevertheless meaning is still hidden. On a higher level it is said to mean subsisted, and even thrived — at least among readers of such psychic protection and knowledge. literature. But its appearance suggests a world of meaning. For it But developments in such areas as Depth Psychology and shows a chalice held by a hand descending from a cloud. The the New Physics suggest that it may indeed have a validity Dove of the Holy Ghost conveys directly into it a wafer beyond the pages of fiction. The popularity of the bearing a cross, and out from the chalice pour into the sea might notify Christianity of a hunger unfed by either social streams of pure and living water. We have at once a activism or doctrinal rationalism. representation of the Sacramental system (the Eucharist and The Christian Hermeticism encompassed by the Golden Baptism), and of the Holy Grail. Two mysteries, one Dawn, like all such Hermeticism, might well be symbolised attainable only at the end of a long quest, and the other so by a scene in the Medieval Quest of the Holy Grail near as to be taken for granted. Yet they are in fact one. (Matarasso, 1986, p. 275), wherein Joseph of Arimathea This is deepest Christian Hermeticism indeed. It is to the took from the Vessel a host made in the likeness of honour of the Golden Dawn that the Order both developed an bread. As he raised it aloft there descended from above authentic strand of such Hermeticism, and attracted members a figure like to a child, whose countenance glowed and of the calibre necessary to convey such to a world not blazed as bright as fire; and he entered into the bread, without need of it. which quite distinctly took on human form before the

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