I remember my first week at Trinity School for Ministry. The wounds of being ejected from my previous seminary were still fresh. I was in a state of listlessness, of restlessness. I had moved to a new town and a new denomination. I had two new contact points for my discernment for the ministry, Dr. Eric Riesen and Dr. David Yeago. I also had three new housemates, all of them from a different continent. And I was going through orientation with a group of first years—even though I only had one year left of my Master of Divinity. I was also around a completely different denomination—Anglicans!—and I didn’t quite know where to start with all that. My first really ecumenical experience. And I was a little paralyzed.
In retrospect, I can say Anglicans aren’t all that bad. In fact, they are some of the most accepting Christians I’ve met so far. And this was true from the get-go. In my first week, I reached out to Dr. Joel Scandrett to discuss the possibility of doing an STM at trinity. I chose him because he was in systematics, and I had a feeling that might be the place I wanted to work in. Over the course of the conversation, I let him know about my previous studies at my previous institution, how I had been studying esoterica and how to evangelize to the ‘spiritual but not religious’. And Dr. Scandrett told me I should read someone I had never heard about before: Charles Williams.
Charles Williams was an Inkling. Odds are, you’ve heard of the Inklings. The Inklings were a group of post-war scholars gathered in Oxford around C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. My wife and I actually visited the American hub of Inklings studies this last May, the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College (website here). During their gatherings, the Inklings discussed and practiced literary and romantic Ecumenical Christianity. They read their works to one another—you know, things like the first drafts of The Hobbit and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
But even if you have heard of the Inklings, there’s a chance that you still haven’t heard of Charles Williams, or read any of his writings. Charles Williams and Owen Barfield are usually included on the list of Inklings, but they are usually quite overshadowed by their better-known colleagues. Talking Lions and Rings of Power tend to crowd out Metaphysical Thrillers and Anthroposophical Speculations, for some reason. The former (Metaphysical Thrillers) is exactly what Charles Williams tended to write: compact, thrilling tales of the supernatural breaking into contemporary England. I’m only on my second Williams novel, so I am by no means an expert. But I do want to write a little bit about the novel I did read, Williams’ War in Heaven, because I found it really interesting and intriguing. And I think Williams in general should be better known.
I should say before I forget. A lot of the thoughts in what follows are explored in greater detail by the wonderful and insightful Sørina Higgins at her WordPress blog, The Oddest Inkling. I would encourage anyone interested in learning more to follow up there! Without further ado, I’ll do my best to briefly summarize the novel, and point to some things that I found particularly intriguing about Williams’ bizarre world.
Note: Throughout this summary, I retain Williams’ spelling of the Holy “Graal.” Williams uses this spelling consistently because it is more ancient than the more modern “Grail.”
1
Williams’ world is penetrated fundamentally by conflict and dualism. That is, Williams seems to view the world as the site of struggle and conflict. But as we’ll see, the struggle for Williams is not a struggle between equally powerful sides. Dark and light contest to both secure the Holy Graal of Arthurian Legend. But what they do with the Graal, and how they experience the Graal, differs monumentally.
These two sides are represented explicitly by two characters. The first is Gregory Persimmons, an occultist and collector of arcane objects. Gregory Persimmons owns a bookshop, which is being managed by his son, Stephen, who has steadily grown the shop’s inventory from obscure, occult volumes to popular modern novels (much to his father’s ire). The other side is represented by Rev. Julian Davenant, the Archdeacon of Gregory’s village of Fardles (called throughout the novel “the Archdeacon”). Both of these characters have various colleagues who are drawn into the battle between light and dark: on the side of darkness are shady and nebulous characters, such as Sir Giles Tumulty, Dimitri Lavrodopoulos the Greek and Manasseh the Jew; on the side of light are more English characters, such as the Duke of North Ridings (or, in the words of the Duke himself, “Aubrey Duncan Peregrine, Mary de Lisle D’Estrange, Duke of the North Ridings, Marquis of Craigmullen and Plessing, Earl and Visicount, Count of the Holy Roman Empire, Knight of the Sword and Cape, and several other ridiculous fantasies”) and Kenneth Mornington (who works for the publishing company and is a personal friend of the Archdeacon). Stephen Persimmons also sides with the light; and Lionel, Barbara, and Adrian Rackstraw, who also work at the publishing company, become the victims of Gregory Persimmons’ nefarious plotting.
Interestingly enough, the novel opens as a murder mystery. A dead man is found under the desk at this common English publishing house! What ensues is much confusion—but Stephen, Lionel, and Kenneth eventually go for the police, and an investigation begins. All three men go home and process the murder in their own way—Lionel feels demonically oppressed; Kenneth decides to go see the Archdeacon; and Stephen is harassed by his father Gregory, who confesses to the murder (!), but in such a way that Stephen is unsure whether or not he is serious. While confiding in the Archdeacon, Kenneth invites him to come by the shop at his convenience, because they have a manuscript that might interest him.
The Archdeacon does end up visiting the publishing company, where he is shown the unpublished manuscript of a Sir Giles Tumulty, the notable specialist in occult and religious objects. In the manuscript, Sir Giles claims to have ascertained the location of the Holy Graal. And its location is in the Archdeacon’s own parish! The Archdeacon returns home and finds the Graal in his parish, just as Sir Giles Tumulty predicted. Only, as he attempts to take it somewhere safe, he is attacked and robbed. Gregory Persimmons and Sir Giles Tumulty seize the Graal, and Persimmons takes the Archdeacon back to his parish house, informing the authorities that there has been an attack.
2
Gregory desecrates the Graal with a ceremony of black magic, using an ointment he procures from Manasseh the Jew. Williams records some of Gregory’s ceremony, and it is absolutely grotesque. Ultimately, Gregory uses the Graal to come into contact with something more powerful than him, which he desires both to master and be mastered by. He begins by initiating his contact through his own intention; but he ends up being ruled by that desire. Williams describes it like this:
And now he was descending; lower and lower, into a darker and more heavy atmosphere. His intention checked his flight, and it declined almost into stillness; night was about him, and more than night, a heaviness which was like that felt in a crowd, a pressure and intent expectation of relief. As to the mind of a man in prayer might come sudden reminders of great sanctities in other places and other periods, so now to him came the consciousness, not in detail, but as achievements, of far-off masteries of things, multitudinous dedications consummating themselves in That which was already on its way. But that his body was held in a trance by the effect of the ointment, the smell of which had long since become part of his apprehension, he would have turned his head one way or the other to see or speak to those unseen companions.
Suddenly, as in an excited crowd a man may one minute be speaking, and shouting to those near him, and the next, part of the general movement directed and controlled by that to which he contributes, there rose within him the sense of a vast and rapid flow, of which he was part, rushing and palpitating with desire. He desired—the heat about his heart grew stronger—to give himself out, to be one with something that should submit to him and from which he should yet draw nourishment; but something beyond imagination, stupendous. He was hungry—not for food; he was thirsty—but not for drink; he was filled with passion—but not for flesh. He expanded in the rush of an ancient desire; he longed to be married to the whole universe for a bride. His father appeared before him, senile and shivering; his wife, bewildered and broken; his son, harassed and distressed. These were his marriages, these his bridals. The bridal dance was beginning; they and he and innumerable others were moving to the wild rhythm of that aboriginal longing. Beneath all the little cares and whims of mankind the tides of that ocean swung, and those who had harnessed them and those who had been destroyed by them were mingled in one victorious catastrophe. His spirit was dancing with his peers, and yet still something in his being held back and was not melted.
But Gregory finds the complete union he seeks to be elusive. “There was something—from his depths he cried to his mortal mind to recall it and pass on the message—some final thing that was needed still; some offering by which he might pierce beyond this black drunkenness and achieve a higher reward.” Gregory’s vision soon becomes a sort of hell for him:
Heat as from an immense pyre beat upon him, beat upon him with a demand for something more; he absorbed it, and yet, his ignorance striking him with fear, shrunk from its ardent passions. It was not heat only, it was sound also, a rising tumult, acclamation of shrieking voices, thunder of terrible approach. It came, it came, ecstasy of perfect mastery, marriage in hell, he who was Satan wedded to that beside which was Satan. And yet one little thing was needed and he had it not—he was an outcast for want of that one thing.
Gregory then remembers the purity of Lionel Rackstraw’s child, Adrian. The power demands that Gregory convert Adrian as a “neophyte” to the darkness. Innocence must be destroyed, as all things immortal must be.
For the last experience was upon the accepted devotee; there passed through him a wave of intense cold, and in every chose spot where the ointment had been twice applied the cold concentrated and increased. Nailed, as it were, through feet and hands and head and genitals, he passed utterly into a pang that was an ecstasy beyond his dreams. He was divorced now from the universe; he was one with a rejection of all courteous and lovely things; by the oblation of the child he was made one with that which is beyond childhood and age and time—the reflection and negation of the eternity of God. He existed supernaturally, and in Hell…
In this experience we meet the first of the warring powers, the “reflection and negation of the eternity of God.” The Holy Graal, desecrated, has greatly enhanced Gregory’s union with darkness, and has set the stage for the main conflict of the rest of the novel.
3
The Archdeacon tells the Duke and Kenneth what has happened. The Holy Graal has been stolen. And Julian suspects Gregory of the crime. Because of this, the police desire to make inquiries at Gregory Persimmon’s residency, and, upon seeing the Graal out in the open, Julian makes a grab for it. He, the Duke, and Kenneth, successfully steal the Graal back from Persimmons, and take refuge at one of the Duke’s residencies. All night they keep vigil over the Graal, in order to pray and protect it from the dark magic Gregory Persimmons and his cohort attempt to inflict upon it. And this turns out to be necessary. They spend all night in prayer, feeling the terrifying influence of the darkness as it attempts to destroy the Graal. And they, too, have mystical experiences. So enters the other side of the “war in heaven”, the force of light.
Williams describes the Duke’s experience like this:
He was aware of a sense of the adoration of kings—the great tradition of his house stirred within him. The memories of proscribed and martyred priests awoke; masses said swiftly and in the midst of the fearful breathing of a small group of the faithful; the ninth Duke who had served the Roman Pontiff at his private mass; the Roman Order he himself wore; the fidelity of his family to the Faith under the anger of Henry and the cold suspicion of Elizabeth; the duels fought in Richmond Park by the thirteenth Duke in defense of the honour of our Lady, when he met and killed three antagonists consecutively—all these things, not so formulated but certainly there, drew his mind into a vivid consciousness of all the royal and sacerdotal figures of the world adoring before this consecrated shrine. “Jhesu, Rex et Sacerdos,” he prayed…
The Duke’s experience of royalty is matched by Kenneth’s experience of chivalry.
“This, then, was the thing from which the awful romances sprang, and the symbolism of a thousand tales. He saw the chivalry of England riding on its quest—but not a historical chivalry; and, though it was this they sought, it was some less material vision that they found. But this had rested in dreadful and holy hands; the Prince Immanuel had so held it, and the Apostolic Chivalry had banded themselves about him. Half in dream, half in vision, he saw a grave young God communicating to a rapt companionship the mysterious symbol of unity. They took oaths beyond human consciousness; they accepted vows plighted for them at the beginning of time. Liturgical and romantic names melted into one cycle—Lancelot, Peter, Joseph, Percivale, Judas, Mordred, Arthur, John Bar-Zebedee, Galahad—and into these were caught up the names of their makers—Hawker and Tennyson, John, Malory and the mediævals. They rose, they gleamed and flamed about the Divine hero, and their readers too—he also, least of all these. He was caught in the dream of Tennyson; together they rose on the throbbing verse.:
And down the long beam stole the Holy Graal,
Rose-red with beatings in it.
He heard Malory’s words—“the history of the Sangreal, the whiche is a story conycled for one of the truest and the holyest that is in thys world”—“the deadly flesh began to behold the spiritual things”—“fair lord, commend me to Sir Lancelot my father.” The single tidings came to him across romantic hills; he answered with the devotion of a romantic and abandoned heart.”
But it is the Archdeacon’s experience that reaches a certain summit of the group. Williams writes,
The Archdeacon found no such help in the remembrances of kings or poets. He looked at the rapt faces of the young men; he looked at the vessel before him. “Neither is this Thou,” he breathed; and answered, “Yet this also is Though.” He considered, in this, the chalice offered at every altar, and was aware again of a general movement of all things towards a narrow channel. Of all material things still discoverable in the world the Graal had been nearest to the Divine and Universal Heart. Sky and sea and land were moving, not toward that vessel, but towards all it symbolized and had held. The consecration at the Mysteries was for him no miraculous changel he had never dreamed of the heavenly courts attending Christ upon the altar. But in accord with the desire of the Church expressed in the rutual of the Church the Sacred Elements seemed to him to open upon the Divine Nature, upon Bethlehem and Calvary and Olivet, as that itself opened upon the Centre of all. And through that gate, upon those tides of retirement, creation moved. Never so clearly as now had he felt that movement proceeding, but his mind nevertheless knew no other vision than that of a thousand dutifully celebrated Mysteries in his priestly life; so and not otherwise all things return to God.
But this is not the last thing the Graal reveals. The Duke, Kenneth, and the Archdeacon feel the dissolving power, by means of which the agents of darkness wish to destroy (and not master!) the graal and everything it symbolizes. And so they pray “against nothing”: that “in all things there may be delight in the justice of [God’s] Will.” They pray earnestly for the protection of the graal, and two revelations come to the Archdeacon. First, he perceives that it is the spirit of Gregory Persimmons that wishes to destroy the graal. And second, the Archdeacon feels even more deeply that the Graal is the center of reality—“yet no longer the Graal, but a greater than the Graal. Silence and knowledge were communicated to him as if from an invisible celebrant; he held the Cup no longer as a priest, but as if he set his hands on that which was itself at once the Mystery and the Master of the Mystery.” It is as if his first mystical experience were being taken to its completion: for a moment, the sign and the thing signified coinhere to such an extent that the presence of the Graal is the presence of the one whom the Graal represents. All things flow into one through the narrow channel of the Eucharistic cup—and their prayers cease. “The Graal will guard itself tonight,” the Archdeacon concludes.
4
The rest of the book happens rather fast. Gregory meets with Manasseh and Dimitri, and they induct him even deeper into the satanic principle. We find out that Gregory is actually a bit of a novice on his dark path; he still thinks that the satanic life is about desire, whereas the elder practitioners know that it is really about annihilation. Possession and Destruction are intimately connected. One cannot have one without the other.
Having procured more ointments, Gregory proceeds to go back home. He finds that his driver has had a row with the detective investigating the murder of the man found in his publishing house; only, when asked about it, the driver says that he had a row with “the other man” who was with him. Gregory has an encounter with this other man when he arrives home—and he introduces himself enigmatically as “John.” When asked to elaborate, this strange John says, “Seventy kings have eaten at my table. You say very well, for I myself am king and priest and sib to all priests and kings.” And then he leaves. Gregory is confused, but pushes the episode from his mind; he has other fish to fry.
We find that Gregory has invited the Rackstraws to vacation at his house, so that he would be closer to Adrian. And Gregory uses this fact to his advantage. He ends up using the mystical ointments to poison Lionel Rackstraw’s wife, Barbara; and he tells the cohort at the Duke’s residence that he will only cure her once he has the Graal back in his possession. Not willing to risk anyone’s life for a symbol, the Archdeacon decides that they must give Persimmons back the Graal. Only, before Manasseh the Jew, dressed up as a doctor, can heal her, Barbara’s symptoms leave on their own! By being in proximity to the Graal, which is a sign in which the thing signified coinheres, the miraculous happens.
5
However, nobody seems to notice this. Lionel is a shell of a man, unsure how he will support his son now that his wife is in such a terrible condition. Gregory offers to keep Adrian, taking care of him as if he were his own son. Lionel agrees—and so, in a few days time, it is said that Adrian will be collected and become a part of Gregory’s household.
Gregory, the Greek, and the Jew meet again. And this is the most important meeting of them all. For here, the old and the new come to an understanding. Gregory wishes to use the graal; Manasseh wishes for annihilation. They come to the conclusion that the two goals are not mutually exclusive. Rather, they will “destroy through it.” Manasseh says, “They talk talk of their Masses, you talk of your Black mass, but there may be such a Mass of Death said with this as shall blast the world for ever. But—” he remarks reluctantly—“you and I are not great enough for that.”
Gregory asks the Greek for his input. Dimitri opines:
“All things are indivisible and one. You cannot wholly destroy and you cannot wholly live, but you can change mightily and for ever as any of our reckoning goes. Even I cannot see down infinity. Make it agreeable to your lusts while the power is yours, for there are secret ways down which it may pass even now and you shall not hold it.”
But what to do with the Graal, then? If they cannot bring about ultimate destruction, perhaps they can still use it to humiliate their enemies. And this is what they decide to do. Once the child is in their possession at their London shop, they will leave England for good. But first, they shall use the Graal as part of a dark ceremony in which they will marry the soul of a dead man to the Archdeacon. That will serve him for interfering with occult purposes.
Meanwhile, the investigator speaks with the staff at the Archdeacon’s church in Fardles and follows a trail that leads him to the identity of the man who was murdered in the beginning of the text. His name is James Pattison, a man who was, up until recently, in the employ of Gregory Persimmons, until he was converted to Christianity in a Wesleyan Revival. Gregory killed him for disloyalty, and left his body in the publishing company’s office building.
6
The duke cannot get over the loss of the Graal. And so, he sets out to find where Gregory, the Jew, and the Greek are hiding, in an attempt to get the Graal back. However, they overpower him with dark magic, the Greek having written mystical symbols on the floor. They decide to force him to write a note to the Archdeacon, saying that he has found the Graal and that the Archdeacon should come to the shop in London as soon as he can. Gregory Persimmons delivers the note himself to the Archdeacon. The Archdeacon and Kenneth quickly go to the shop, where they confront the occult workers of evil. Kenneth succumbs to dark magic performed by the Greek and is killed. The Archdeacon is bound and is subjected to the ritual that attempts to wed his soul with the soul of James Pattison. But at the last moment, Prester John, the legendary priest-king and keeper of the Graal, appears. He overthrows all the black magic in the shop and completely overcomes the Archdeacon’s assailants. The Graal and the Thing which the Graal signifies are unconquerable. The novel closes with the Prester John celebrating a Christian Mass with the Archdeacon, the Duke, and the Rickstraws, affirming that the center of black magic’s obsession with annihilation will always open up to the annihilation which is God, and that the message of the Graal is God’s ever gift of himself. The Eucharistic liturgy mingles with the proclamation of Genesis 1:26-27, and Adrian is shown to be a symbol of indestructible purity. And then the Graal, and Prester John, vanish.
7
I wish I could describe the mystical experiences at the end of the book in more detail, I really do. It is a liturgy, but it is also a revelation; it is a sign, but it is also the thing that is signified; it is creaturely, but it is also divine; it is the centre of everything, the mystery of creation, redemption, and recapitulation. I know that I’ve walked you through the book thus far, but for the sake of this last chapter, I encourage you to read it.
Charles Williams is the master of describing perichoresis, or coinherence. That is, Williams believes that the final truth about reality is enchantment, that all things to some extent do and, later, that all things will, come to participate in God. The Graal here is an object of liminality—because of its use by the Son of God, it has been in some way consecrated to participate more fully in the supernatural than the objects around it. Though it symbolizes a greater reality, it is not an empty sign; rather, the Graal contains that which it symbolizes, it gives that in which it participates. And in so doing, it licenses all other eucharistic celebrations.
There is also an alchemical motif going on here. As one can see by the contrasting mystical experiences of Gregory and the Archdeacon, the Graal becomes a sort of tincture for the spiritual life. By encountering it and focusing one’s attention toward it, that which is in the magus is heightened, whether towards dissolution (black) or towards ultimate unity (white). Both of these features are indeed reminiscent of Jacob Boehme’s spiritual alchemy, about which more can be found here.
Ultimately, I think that Charles Williams is a sophiological thinker. That is, it would seem that the secret of the Graal is exactly what Bulgakov finds in his analysis of the Grail Myth: the Graal points to the ultimate mystery, the regeneration of everything. This is what Michael Martin has argued in regard to
Christian Romanticism, drawing on Boehme, the Metaphysical Poets, the German Romantics, Steiner, Tomberg, and others. I would encourage anyone who’s interested in learning more about this style of theology to check out the article below and Michael’s sophiology anthology here.
Thank you so much for sticking with this article to the end. It came out a little longer than I wanted it to, but Charles Williams is really cool. Remember, if you want to learn more, visit Sørina’s blog (and look for her upcoming book under that same title!). She’s also interview on an illuminating episode of Pints with Jack, a Lewis podcast that my wife and I really enjoy. And, of course, be sure to check out the lovely Wade Center at Wheaton College, where I was finally able to see all the English scholarship on Charles Williams in one place.