This is a true record of the encounter between an aspiring philosopher, P, and the novel written by a Mr Charles Williams, a novel called “The Place of the Lion”. It occurred one winter, as the aspiring philosopher was confined to her house due to surgery and illness. Her wise teacher gave her a couple of novels, in order to stimulate her mind, fire her imagination and refine her thinking in this time of physical recuperation.P began reading with relish. She looked forward to some light entertainment, a certain amount of amusement. But itwas not long before she began to feel discomforted. The pages of the book turned in her hands. Her eyes scanned words jostling for attention. Her imagination painted visions beyond her understanding. And suddenly, the aspiring philosopher became aware of a strange sensation.
She was not reading this book. The Book was reading her.
The Book introduces Damaris Tighe, an earnest philosopher, writing a most interesting PhD thesis on the Pythagorean Influences on Abelard. P likes her immediately. She recognises a kindred spirit and admires the determined student, completely focussed on her doctorate. Intellectual, scholarly and capable. She may also be impatient, driven and determined but P is sympathetic. Doesn’t the dedication to truth demand a certain sacrifice of relationships, a withdrawal from the distracting influences of the exterior world? She admires the focus of the girl, the single determination to achieve her final end.
Damaris has a cousin, Anthony Durrant, sub-editor of the literary weekly – “The Two Camps.” Anthony tells Damaris the title signifies the division in the contributors between those who like it “living and intelligent” and those who prefer “dying and scholarly”, represented by himself and Damaris. The latter is a dig at Damaris, whose real subject says Anthony, is not “Platonic Tradition at the Court of Charlemagne” but “Damaristic Tradition at the Court of Damaris.” Anthony loves Damaris and makes no secret of that fact. But she frustrates him to distraction. He recognises in her learning, her articles and her doctorate a childlike infatuation that hides an absurd, tender, uncertain little thing – “she so often seemed like a child with its face against the window-pane, looking for the rain to stop so that the desired satisfaction might arrive…bless her for a self-absorbed little table-maker.” For her part, Damaris is uncomfortable with his talk of a personal relationship. She prefers scholarship and abstract principles. She ignores his declarations of love; she is determined to see Anthony only as a useful source in publishing her work. She treats “her father’s hobby and her lover’s heart with equal firmness, and made her profit out of both of them.”
Anthony suggests his love for her may be her salvation. Damaris scorns it, she has read about salvation “in all those tiresome texts of one sort and another.” What has salvation to do with Damaris Tighe? Hers is a world of appendixes, tables, charts, and graphs of ideas. She likes notes, papers and rational explanation. Philosophy is a subject, her subject and firmly under her control. What have questions of salvation or morality to do with her subject? Why must Anthony plague her so? Why must people interrupt, intrude, irritate and keep her from her goal and occupation in life? Damaris is the one unchangeable fact “attacked and besieged by a troublesome world.” P nods a vigorous assent. “I hear you sister!” She mumbles as she closes her ears to the distracting noises of her family. And so P meets Damaris Tighe, and she smiles as she imagines a quiet space where the two aspiring philosophers might work against the intrusion and distraction of a needy world.
But there are other strange events taking place in this book. Strange happenings distract and confuse Petra, events of which Damaris lives in blissful ignorance.
One day, while in a state of deep meditation, a Mr Berringer collides with a lioness escaped from a local fair. In this collision, the Lion is brought forth into this world. The Lion enters the world in the moment of a natural kin ship between the material image and the immaterial idea. The invisible powers of another realm become visible in their images in this realm.
Images from the Medieval Bestiary
The Lion is power –
“majestic, awful, complete, gazing directly in front of it, with august eyes…a mythical, an archetypal lion…It was moving like a walled city, like the siege-towers raised against Nineveh or Jerusalem; each terrible paw, as it set it down, sank into the firm ground as if into mud, but was plucked forth without effort; the movement of its mane, whenever it mightily turned its head, sent reverberations of energy through the air, which was shaken into wind by that tossed hair.”
The roar of the Lion is the thunder in the summer sky. The thin veil between two realities is torn as the Lion enters the world. The Platonic world echoes through the distance of time, the world of the eidolon and the Eidos, the image and the Form. The archetypal Lion, the Idea of Strength, from which all strength in the world is an emanation. Behind this world, lies the world of principles from which all matter is created.
“We call them by cold names; wisdom and courage and beauty and strength and so on, but actually they are very great and mighty Powers. It may be they are the angels and archangels of which the Christian Church talks…And when That which is behind them intends to put a new soul into matter it disposes them as it will, and by a peculiar mingling of them a child is born; and this is their concern with us, but what is their concern and business among themselves we cannot know. And by this gentle introduction of them, every time in a new and just proportion, mankind is maintained. In the animals they are less mingled, for there each is shown to us in his own becoming shape; those Powers are the archetypes of the beasts, and very much more, but we need not talk of that. Now this world in which they exist is truly a real world, and to see it is a very difficult and dangerous thing, but our master held that it could be done, and that the man was very wise who would consecrate himself to this end as part--and the chief part--of his duty on earth. He did this, and I, as much as I can, have done it."
And thus, Mr Berringer has brought the principle of Power into the world. But this is not just a Platonic philosophical theory or a creation myth, P’s areas of learning. In this strange story of personification, there appear to be nine Principles, corresponding to the nine orders of Angels. These are purely revealed in animals, but in humans, they are combined and united in various ways. They are grouped as four, the Lion, the Serpent, the Horse and the Butterfly, One – the Eagle is balance or the measure of truth. Then there are four mysterious powers, the Lamb, or Innocence, the Phoenix, or the life of Truth extinguished and reborn, the Unicorn, the speed of return from the images to the Unimaged. What i s P to make of this strange story? She is tempted to agree with Damaris that personification is a “snare to the unadept mind”. The scholar recognises people need a long intellectual training to understand Plato and the Good, lest they confuse the Good with God – “like a less educated monk of the Dark Ages.” Damaris seems confident she will not become entangled in these notions. But as P continues reading, it seems to her she cannot ignore one fact. Charles Williams is not writing a “supernatural thriller”. He gives words to visions and experiences, both his own and those who came before him. His is not an “unadept mind”; she cannot read him for entertainment value only. To do so would do an injustice to the author, and to her own integrity. It would make Charles Williams eccentric at best, a fool at worst.
Early in the book, Damaris Thige writes a paper called “The Eidola and the Angeli.” It is an intellectual piece of pure scholarship - “The main thesis of a correspondence between the development of the formative Ideas of Hellenic philosophy and the hierarchic angelicals of Christian mythology.” She writes confidently of “superstitious slavery”, “emotional opportunism”, “and priestly oppression”. She wields her words as a confident sword, cutting through the snares of unadept minds. But as P continues reading, it seems to her that Charles Williams does exactly what Damaris Thige refuses to do. He rents the veil between the eidola, or the images, and the Angeli, the Celestials from which the earthly images spring forth. He creates a bridge between the personal and the abstract. Personification is not a snare, but a central part of being human in this world. From her privileged vantage point, P suspect Damaris’ claim to truth may be a creation of truth after her own image, her own eidolon. Damaris scorns personification and runs from the personal. And for now Damaris may be able to deny Anthony’s personal affections in favour of a strictly professional interest. But is time running out? Is Damaris blind to events unfolding around her? Damaris, in childish ignorance, childish arrogance, and childish selfishness perceives nothing.
“She would go on thoughtfully playing with the dead pictures of ideas, with names and philosophies...not knowing that the living existences to which seers and saints had looked were already in movement to avenge themselves on her...It wasn’t her fault; it was the fault of her time, her culture, her education – the pseudo-knowledge that affected all the learned, the pseudo-scepticism that infected all the unlearned, in an age of pretence, and she was only pretending as everybody else did in this lost and imbecile century.”
Anthony and his friend, Quentin, are the first to see the Lion enter the world through Mr Berringer. As Mr Berringer is violently overcome, he slips away into a coma. At first, Anthony and Quentin grapple with the truth of their vision and experience. But as the story unfolds, each individual encounter with the Lion has profoundly different effects. Mr Berringer’s disciple, Mr Foster, has lived his whole life desiring power. His encounter with the Strength of the Lion intensifies that desire; he begins to pursue the Lion. He gives himself wholly to that power, gives himself to the Lion, to a strength that will finally destroy him. Anthony’s friend, Quentin, has lived his whole life in fear. His encounter with the Strength of the Lion intensifies his fear; he begins to be pursued by his fear until his fear prevents rational thought, until fear overcomes him.
“Quentin had snatched the revolver from him and was firing madly at the lion, screaming, "There! there! there!" as he did so, screaming in a weakness that seemed to lay him appallingly open to the advance of that great god--for it looked no less--whenever it should choose to crush him. The noise sounded as futile as the bullets obviously proved, and the futility of the outrage awoke in Anthony a quick protest.”
Anthony refuses the unlimited power of Mr Foster and the irrational fear of Quentin. Anthony follows the way of Adam, the first man who was given authority over all creation – to be lord of his own nature and to exercise authority over the giants and gods threatening this world.
"Don't!" he cried out, "you're giving in. That's not the way to rule; that's not within you." To keep himself steady, to know somehow within himself what was happening, to find the capacity of his manhood even here--some desire of such an obscure nature stirred-in him as he spoke. He felt as if he were riding against some terrific wind; he was balancing upon the instinctive powers of his spirit; he did not fight this awful opposition but poised himself within and above it. He heard vaguely the sound of running feet and knew that Quentin had fled, but he himself could not move. It was impossible now to help others; the overbearing pressure was seizing and stifling his breath; and still as the striving force caught him he refused to fall and strove again to overpass it by rising into the balance of adjusted movement. "If this is in me I reach beyond it," he cried to himself again, and felt a new-come freedom answer his cry…he was somehow lying on the ground, drawing deep breaths of mingled terror and gratitude and salvation at last. In a recovered peace he moved, and found that he was actually stretched at the side of the road; he moved again and sat up. There was no sign of the lion, or of Quentin. He got to his feet; all the countryside lay still and empty, only high above him a winged something still disported itself in the full blaze of the sun.”
Anthony recognizes the strength of the Lion within him and rises above it to master the primal strength within. He overcomes his fear, he rises above instinct. He balances upon the instinctive powers of his spirit. And now he rides on the wings of the Eagle, the Principle of Balance, the measure of truth. Finally, with deep breaths of terror, gratitude and salvation, he finds a new freedom. He is no longer ruled by the gods, neither the primal strength of the Lion, nor the ancient subtlety of the Snake, will overcome him. He has authority over himself, and therefore, dominion over all.
It gradually become clear to P that Damaris treats Anthony very badly indeed. He is either an amusement, or an irritation, but she doesn’t recognise him as he is. It seems to P that Anthony is also a philosopher, though not as defined by the Dictionary of Damaris. For Anthony, philosophy points to something greater and more important than itself. He exists unhappily between two states of knowledge, a world where people happily discuss ideas and a world where ideas destroy minds, wreck lives, create havoc and destruction. He battles his fear. He does not want to be overcome, nor carried by the Powers, but to rise above. He is not passive being, but a willing being, one who acts and chooses. Anthony chooses the way of the Eagle, of Balance and measured Truth. As he is confronted with Truth, he does not retreat from himself.
“As the piercing gaze of the Eagle confronts him, Anthony sees himself, sees “the passionate desire for intellectual and spiritual truth and honesty, saw it often blinded and thwarted, often denied and outraged, but always it rose again and soared in his spirit, itself like an eagle, and always he followed in it the way that it and he had gone together. The sight of his denials burned through him: his whole being grew one fiery shame, and while he endured to know even this because things were so and not otherwise, because to refuse to know himself as he was would have been a final outrage, a last attempt at flight from the Power that challenged him and in consequence an entire destruction by it…”
Though he burns with shame, Anthony does not refuse to know himself as he is. He catches a glimpse of the Divine Ones, but he returns to this world because he knows his service on earth is incomplete.
But he returns attuned to the wisdom of the Eagle, and he no longer fears the Powers set loose in this world. Anthony has dominion over all. Over all, except the woman he loves. And here he experiences his only fear. What power within will she encounter? He wants to help her, to make her understand - "O you sweet blasphemer! Anthony moaned, "can't you wake?" But it would seem Damaris is asleep, she lives in her dream-world of images, a fantasy of her own creation which will turn on her. Truth is found in the waking life. Dreaming is “simply the confusion between a resemblance and the reality which it resembles, whether the dreamer be asleep or awake” says Socrates in Plato’s Republic (476c). Anthony fears that Damaris may not wake from her dream world. And once she is trapped, her dream world will become a nightmare, in which she will sleep forever. He tries to warn her, but she will not listen. Finally, he knows he must leave her to her own awakening.
She is in her room, restlessly working.
“It was five minutes to eight. She thought abruptly, as she very often did, "O I must get it." Doctor of Philosophy--how hard she had worked for it!
The...O the smell! In full strength it took her, so violently that she stepped backward and made an involuntary gesture outward. The horror of it nearly made her faint… As she moved the sunlight that was over her papers, except for the light shadow that she herself cast, was totally obscured. A heavy blackness obliterated it in an instant; the papers, the table, all that part of the room lay in gloom. The change was so immediate that even Damaris's attention was caught, and, still wrinkling her nose at the appalling smell, she glanced half round to see what dark cloud had suddenly filled the sky. And then she did come much nearer to fainting than ever before in her life.
Outside the window something was...was. That was the only certainty her startled senses conveyed. There was a terrific beak protruding through the open window into the room, there was the most appalling body she had ever conceived possible; there were two huge flapping wings; there were two horrible red eyes. And there was the smell. Damaris stood stock still, gasping at it, thinking desperately, "I'm dreaming." The beastly apparition remained. It seemed to be perched there, on the window-sill or the pear-tree or something. Its eyes held her; its wings moved, as if uncertainly opening; its whole repulsive body shook and stirred; its beak--not three yards distant--jerked at her, as if the thing were stabbing; then it opened. She had a vision of great teeth; incapable of thought, she stumbled backward against the table, and remained fixed. Something in her said, "It can't be"; something else said, "It is."…She couldn't in the foetid darkness which was spreading round her see which was room and which was horror, but she flung herself wildly back, scrambling and scrabbling somehow across her table. Her papers went flying before her, her books, her pen—everything fell from it as Damaris Tighe, unconscious of her work for the first time for years, got herself on the table, and pushed herself somehow across it. The thing stayed still watching her; only the wings furled and unfurled themselves slowly, as if there were no hurry--no hurry at all, but what it had to do. She was half on her feet again, crouching, sliding, getting sideways towards the door, feeling for the handle, praying wildly to Anthony, to her father, to Abelard and Pythagoras, to Anthony again. If only Anthony were here! She got hold of the handle; of course that beak, those eyes, that smell--O that sickening and stupendous _smell_!--were all dreams. She was asleep; in a minute she would be outside the door, then she would wake up. In a few seconds. The little eyes gleamed greed at her. She was outside; she banged the door.”
Damaris Tighe is finally awake. And what did she awaken to? What power was within her but the power of the Pterodactyl, the corruption of truth? The horror grips her, as it grips P. Her life’s work, the carefully collected papers are swept across the floor as Damaris scrambles for freedom. But the Pterodactyl follows her. Ever its obedient servant, she has sacrificed all at its altar. She toiled in her dream world, creating altars to her own mind. Man must use his mind, Anthony tells her later – “But you’ve done more than use it, you’ve loved it for your own. You’ve loved it and you’ve lost it. And pray God you’ve lost it before it was too late, before it decayed in you and sent up that stink which you smelt, or before the knowledge of life turned to the knowledge of death.”
Damaris is in the midst of her waking nightmare. Her images of life have become images of death. When she sees Peter Abelard walk towards her, chanting a hymn, radiating joy, she tries to call out. She looks for hope, for release from this nightmare. But the shadow of the Pterodactyl, the corruption of truth passes over Abelard and he becomes what she has created, what she has worshipped – a vile corpse, uttering meaningless words – her words. And with it her last vestiges of hope are extinguished. The hideous and vile corruption of Abelard overcomes her and she tries one final time to call out to Anthony.
With the augustitude of the Eagle, Anthony saves her. Damaris gasps clean air and feels herself free. P unclenches her fists and takes a deep breath. She looks out the bedroom window. The wet grass shimmers in the winter light, Sam the Beagle basks in the pale warmth of the sun. She hears the birds and is drawn back to the reality of her own world. She shakes her head and softly mumbles – “it’s a story, it’s only a story…”
But Damaris is changed. She has come into the presence of the Eagle, the measure of Truth. The vile Pterodactyl, the untruth in her life has fled. But the self-knowledge that comes with truth is painful – “It is half a chain and half a caress”. Damaris suddenly recognises her failure to love. She treated Anthony badly, she hated her bumbling father, but more shamefully still… she had treated the mad Quentin with contempt. Only a few days ago, Anthony’s crazed friend had tried to pull her in a ditch, to pull her to safety as he hid from that which hunted him. She had become impatient with the babbling fool, angry, until she finally kicked him. She had justified her actions with philosophical grandeur, claiming she was above helping mad people who cower in ditches. She had quoted the Phaedrus to herself in order to appease her conscience - "the soul of the philosopher alone has wings." Now she realised her wings had been that of the Pterodactyl and had nearly proved her undoing! She had no knowledge of the soul, let alone her soul.
Now her soul feels painfully tender. A new way opens up before her. She, who had always regarded herself as an unchangeable fact in a troublesome world, could just as easily be “a changeable fact, beautifully concerned with a troublesome world.” And with this new path before her, she knows what she ought to do. Her first impulse now is to look for Anthony’s friend, to find the mad Quentin.
P puts the book down. She becomes agitated. It’s a nice story, a moving tale but what of Damaris’ thesis? Had it ceased to be important in this new world? That’s not very realistic, is it? P reads a little more…
“She still wanted to get on with her work – if she could, if she could approach it with this new sense that her subjects were less important than her subjects’ subjects, that her arrangements were very tentative presentations of the experiences of great minds and souls…Abelard, St. Bernard, St. Thomas – no, they were not merely the highest form in a school of which she was the district inspector. No, intellect might make patterns, but itself it was a burning passion…to learn.”
Her thesis as a tentative presentation of the experiences of great minds and souls. P smiles at the thought. For some time now she has struggled with her project. It looms above her, larger than life. A thing with its own being that shadows her days, and haunts her nights. P shudders as the image of a Pterodactyl briefly flits through her mind. She shakes her head and dismisses it. But the shadow of dark wings lurks in the recesses of her mind. What is it that she is trying to achieve? What do her appendixes, graphs, charts and tables of ideas signify? Has she lost the love of learning, the passion for truth and replaced it a lesser version of, a corruption of truth? Has she confused the eidolon with the Eidos? Is she creating a truth after her own image?
P stops to think. Earlier, she had the strangest sensation of being read by this book. But what if it applied to all of learning, and all of life? She, who so confidently probed, investigated, interpreted, studied and handled ideas. Her reading, her interpretation, her writing, and her organisation of ideas are her life’s task. But what if this task proved an illusion? Who am I to interrogate ideas? P thinks with a sudden shock. Why should the Ideas not interrogate me? And who am I to offer “interpretations” of the work of those who have come before me? Did Plato interrogate and interpret? Is that truly the task of the philosopher?
Or is there another way of doing philosophy? In his book, Charles Williams says interpretations and reasoned meanings are personal, limited and finite – “Interpretation of infinity by the finite was pretty certain to be wrong.” Only the act is personal but infinite. Philosophy is then an act – the love of wisdom. This seems to fit in with what P has learned from Anthony, whose being consisted in choice, and more importantly – “ in making an inevitable choice, and all that was left was to know the choice, yet even then was the chosen thing the same as the nature that chose...” P ponders this a while. Perhaps in the act, the choice, the finite will is united with the infinite nature of the thing that is chosen. Anthony chose the Eagle, the being of balance, the measure of truth. But this was not a random or accidental choice. The search for balance and truth was Anthony’s task long before his encounter with the Eagle.
P shakes her head in a small gesture of confusion. This world of Charles Williams is a mystery to her. She would now very much like to close the book and return to her safe and secure world. But she refuses to dash back to herself a la Damaris Tighe! She lifts her chin, braces herself and turns the page...
Vincit Qui Se Vincit
