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Hermetic Imagination: the Effect of the Golden Dawn on Fantasy Literature

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Hermetic Imagination: the Effect of the Golden Dawn on Fantasy Literature Volume 21 Number 2 Article 52 Winter 10-15-1996 Hermetic Imagination: The Effect of The Golden Dawn on Fantasy Literature Charles A. Coulombe Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Coulombe, Charles A. (1996) "Hermetic Imagination: The Effect of The Golden Dawn on Fantasy Literature," 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 Mythcon 52: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico; July 29 - August 1, 2022 http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-52.htm 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 ceremonial magic 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, Arthur Machen and Charles Williams. Additional Keywords Golden Dawn; Hermeticism; 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 ceremonial magic 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 theurgy, 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. Supernatural 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 gold, 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 human 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 humans 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, ghosts, or demons. 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 the world’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 Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory, which realms also by the philosophies 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 Sacrifice of the Fathers: St. Dionysius the Areopagite, St. Justin the Martyr, Mass and other Sacraments. Purgatory, through the medium St. Clement of Alexandria, Origen, 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, Vampires, ritual commonplaces in contemporary theurgy and prayers 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 Faith encompassing within itself all Church officials, it should be pointed out that to this day, truths, revealed or otherwise. From Tertullian’s maxim that supposed witches are burned, tortured, and hung in non- “the soul 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 “Wicca” the demons, angels, and so on spoken of in Neoplatonic or neo-Paganism lie elsewhere.) theurgy would not be mere pagan engraftings onto At any rate, the village wise-folk who trafficked with the Christianity, 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 Neoplatonism, 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 God. 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 Fall of Man, 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”.
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