"I walked away from him, wordless in a word-full sea.I stared along the shelves, overwhelmed by a new hunger that came from a famine I did not even know I had endured. I ran my fingers along the shelves, not knowing which book to open, overwhelmed by a desire to feast on every one simultaneously. I wanted to gorge myself on syntax, lick words curling form the page into my mouth, nibble daintily on alphabets as if they were sweets...
I looked up, feeling giddy. The shelves seemed to go upward for ever and I felt them leaning over me as if ready to topple. I saw books flying off the shelves, their pages spread open like birds' wings, and rushing towards me in dark cawing flocks. Words tumbled from the pages and shower over me like sparks from an explosion. I shut my eyes and felt myself disappearing into a blast of fragments of script, which were forcing themselves into my mouth like feathers. Disembodied words that I could not read glowed red with heat and attached themselves to my skin as if branding me. I wast turning into a book I could not read. The story was intelligible and I did not know how it would end. Somehow I knew that I was not the story-teller, I was the story."
Friday
From the carte de jour that is my reading list, I recently selected Jim Garrison's The Darkness of God - Theology after Hiroshima (SCM Press, 1982). This book was written at the height of the Cold War stand-off when nuclear annihilation loomed over the imagination of everyday citizens. It is an attempt to reconcile the mysterious workings of God in the new age of Plutonium, the diabolical element that can unleash all the furies of hell on this earth by the hand of man (it is no accident this element was officially named after the ancient Greek God of hell).
Garrison's description of Plutonium is spine-chilling. A single particle of Plutonium-239, weighing less than one millionth of a gram is 20,000 times deadlier than a pellet of potassium cyanide one of the most potent carcinogens known. He doesn't specify how much a pellet weighs, but a browse of the world wide web (not available to Garrison in the dark ages of the early 1980s) revealed the oral lethal dose of cyanide for an average size man is 0.2 grams (see http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_fast_can_potassium_cyanide_kill_you for other tips on killing yourself most effectively)
Potassium Cyanide, which gained its notoriety from the gas chambers of Nazi Germany, was still used for capital punishment in Arizona as late as 1999. But potassium cyanide, and its associations with Nazi Germany, seems almost innocuous compared to the properties of plutonium-239, and its use in the atomic bomb. To describe the power of Pluto, the god of hell, Garrison quotes a passage from Frank Chinnock -Nagasaki: The Forgotten Bomb -
"For some 1,000 yards, or three-fifths of a mile, in all directions from the epicentre...it was as if a malevolent god has suddenly focused a gigantic blowtorch on a small section of our planet. Within that perimeter, nearly all unprotected living organisms - birds, insects, horses, cats, chickens - perished instantly. Flowers, trees, grass, plants, all shrivelled and died. Wood burst into flames. Metal beams and galvanized iron roofs began to bubble, and the soft gooey masses twisted into grotesque shapes. Stones were pulverized, and for a second every last bit of air was burned away. The people exposed within that doomed section neither knew nor felt anything, and their blackend unrecognisable forms dropped silently where they stood." (1982, p67)
Reading his chapter on the historical events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and his analysis of the modern Plutonium culture is a deeply troubling experience. There is no doubt for Garrison that the so-called peaceful development of nuclear reactors is a misnomer - "Nuclear reactors are merely the extension of the nuclear weapons programme into the civil sector" (1982, p77). Garrison spends a chapter citing evidence from numerous studies on biological effects of low levels of radiation, and explaining the grim reality of disposing of radioactive waste and decommisioning nuclear reactors. We are children playing with dynamite. Nuclear technology and its relationship with the technotronic society has resulted in a "crisis of of sanity".
"We are living in a world gripped by a plutonium culture polluting the planet with radioactive wastes; by a technotronic society which dehumanizes our dignity by forcing us to interlock with technologies over which we have less and less control; by a permanent war economy that employs 40% of the world's scientists and consumes vast amounts of material and human resources; and by the cries of those who are poor, who are hungry, who are illiterate, and who are diseased. The tragedy is that this is not a world that has been forced on us; it is a world we have built up of our own accord" (1982, p90)
With Hiroshima, says Garrison, the apocalyptic power of God has fallen in the hands of men. More than that, men have grasped this power and have become willing agents for the destruction of the world and the end of human history. We find ourselves in a unique position, capable of destroying the source of life that sustains us; capable of undoing thousands of millions of years of evolution. We have taken upon ourselves the determination of apocalyptic judgment.
Most of this book is an explicitly theological argument, a form of theodicy that seeks to justify the nature of God following the magnitude of suffering experienced from the atomic bomb. Garrison argues God is at work even in the atom bomb, calling us to a transformation of consciousness and understanding. Hiroshima can be a saving event in history, but we must recognise ourselves as partners in this. God is still working in the world, even if modern man has become the agent of the apocalypse.
In a chapter called The Confessional Heritage: Apocalyptic and the Wrath of God, Garrison enters a hermeneutic engagment with the historical event of Hiroshima, now understood as a "mighty act of God", or "the wrath of God". The apocalypts (from the narrative of both the Deutero-Isaiah prophecies and Revelations) asserted God do be in control of history with all things under his dominion, despite the overwhelming presence of evil in the world, an evil that is the result of the human heart and the cosmic battle between demonic and angelic forces. The saving wrath of God that ushers in a new age functions as an integral part of the personhood of God, and similar to the forces of evil in its appearance, disregards conventional morality to affect both the good and evil alike. Despite this experience of God’s wrath, the apocalypts believed in its functional role in an over-all plan of election. God could use the left hand of darkness and the right of light to integrate all aspects of life into an organic whole which demonstrated the final purpose in divine love.
The left hand of God, the hand of darkness, gives Garrison's book its title. It is an important image, both theologically and philosophically, as it bears on both the nature of God and that of good and evil.
For Garrison, the nuclear annihilation that looms over us has declared the god of theism is dead, and with it the classic notions of evil (Summum Bonum - that God is the highest good, and privatio boni, that evil is the privation of good). But a new ontology, that of process panentheism, can be salvaged form the rubble to help us understand the apocalyptic power we now possess and enables us to become co-creators in history. Utilising the process philosophy of Whitehead and Hartshorne's dipolar theory of the godhead, this new ontology understands God as a dual transcendence, recognises God and the world as integral to one another, sees God and humanity as joined in a co-creative relationship that impinges upon and changes both, and believes God and humanity possess both light and dark dimensions.
The classic doctrines of evil are deficient in their refusal to acknowledge the genuine reality of evil, and both deny the shadow dimension to God.
"My use of the term 'evil' is based on the affirmation that evil is objectively and intrinsically real. Taking seriously the profound and startling assertion of Isaiah 45.7 that God creates evil, as a strand of thought that runs through scripture but is not easily assimilated into traditional theological concepts, I hold that evil, like good, comes from God and therefore is an objectively real phenomenon."
This evil has three strands - divine evil, the moral evil of human sin and the creative intention of God that are inextricably interwoves into a single whole. Wisdom, through the Holy Spirit, teaches us the painful process of discerning between these strands. The painful process of discerning is explored by Garrison through Jungian depth psychology, particularly the process of Individuation, through which the co-creation of God and humanity can be actualized. It is an engagement between consciousness and unconscious where both poles must be maintained, so that consciousness will not become one-sided.
Translating the process of Individuation into the development of historical Christianity, we can see that in the person of Christ, God’s light side became incarnate and traditional Christianity responded by focussing on God’s goodness with the doctrines of the Summum Bonum and the privatio boni. God’s wrath, foreshadowed in Revelations, must now be integrated into the human psyche to return a balance to the one-sided polarity of traditional Christianity. We must integrate the shadow side, and this can only be done with the help of the Holy Spirit, the continuing indwelling of God which reveals to us the other side of God - the Antichrist.
This is how Garrison somewhat startlingly integrates the historic events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki into a theodicy, or a justification of God. Between discussions of Whitehead, process panentheism, Jungian depth psychology, the problem of God in the modern age, and deficiencies in classical notions of evil, Garrison concludes that when God "slipped us the atom bomb", the Holy Spirit was at work. The apocalyptic darkness of God has been actualized in Hiroshima.
“In co-creation, God joins with the human and humanity joins with the divine in the exercise of power, thus blurring the normal distinctions between sacred and profane, infinite and finite. It is a dynamic that transforms, links and empowers both, intermingling God and humanity together for a brief moment in time…Christ came from above, issuing forth from the Godhead; Antichrist comes from the bowels of the bottomless pit, spewing plutonium the world over.” (1982, p212)
And so.... this.....
this...
this...
and this...
is our "co-creation with God"?
To be fair, Garrison is not offering an explanation for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but rather looks for a way to integrate these horrific events into a modern theology that deals adequately with the new reality of the nuclear age. But to suggest a nuclear holocaust may be the necessary shadow of God, the Antichrist revealing itself in the world seems a fantastic leap that negates the sheer madness of the atomic bomb. I am not surprised at his conclusion, which is somehow a blending of Jungian depth pscychology with theology to create a cosmic map of the human psyche and experience. But I cannot reconcile myself to his idea that an apocalypse by the hands of men can somehow become an act of co-creation with the divine. How does this hold those accountable who dream up such weaponry and put it to use? And on a wider scale, how do we deal with other acts of injustice or suffering? If Garrison's "evil" has three strands tightly bound, how do we make judgments over which evil is the result of human immorality, and which is God's "creative intention"? Surely the test of a theodicy is how it gives words to the experiences of the ones whose suffering has rendered speechless. While much of the book is sensetive and puts suffering in the centre, I'm not sure his final rationalization does justice to the historical events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
But how do we make sense of of the sufferings of the 20th, this most murderous century? By rationalizing suffering, do we give it "meaning" that restores the humanity of victims, or do we negate the experiences of the victim, for whom suffering constitutes a complete loss of meaning, a loss which cannot be simply glued back together? I don't know. But I do suspect that those who have experienced the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who have directly encountered the god of hell, may speak more truthfully than the armchair philosopher or theologian. Speak truthfully without words.
All artwork in this post was done by the atomic bomb survivors. For essays and other pictures, follow link below.
The last picture above was found among survivor's paintings a the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, without any explanation. It is an amateur painting of the floating lanterns, with Hiroshima's famous, unreconstructed city-hall dome visible against the evening sky. The brief caption that came with this read "The lanterns floated and prayers lifted up for the peaceful repose of the A-bomb dead and for peace."The artist was a young woman born 11 years after the end of the war. She was 18 when, in 1974, she responded to the invitation to draw personal memories of the bomb.
Sunday
"Katie had the same hardships as Johnny and was nineteen, two years younger. It might be said that she, too, was doomed. Her life, too, was over before it began. But there the similarity ended. Johnnyknew he was doomed and accepted it. Katie wouldn't accept it. She started a new life where her old one left off. She exchanged her tenderness for capability. She gave up her dreams and took over hard realities in their place. Katie had a fierce desire for survival which made her a fighter. Johnny had a hankering after immortality which made him a useless dreamer. And that was the great difficulty between these two who loved each other so well."
"imagine a place... ...where your mind opens wider than any walls around you."
It is done now. Amidst half-unpacked boxes and piles of clothes I have a chance to stop and gather my thoughts, if not my scattered belongings. I have moved house and I have done it well. A person can become used to almost anything, endure transformations and frequent changes without becoming hopelessly lost. The transformation from house to home is an art, a skill learned with constant practice.
And I am well practiced - this is the 22nd house I will call home. Each change brings loss and gain. This time, I have exchanged wide vistas for white gates, the balcony for an enclosed courtyard, freedom for security. Or so such things appear in moments of doubt, of uncertainty.
"Stepping Stones" by Rob Gonsalves
"imagine a place... ...where you bend and sway, leap and land, right where a storybegins"
The change from house to home takes time. It cannot be rushed - this seems true of all the valuable things worth pursuing in life. For a time I wander restlessly between cold walls, listening to foreign echoes, questioning even myself and my place in life. Then, unexpectedly, one day I find myself at home. One quiet night the walls embrace, the resonance sustains and my weary spirit finds rest.
"Making Waves" by Rob Gonsalves
"imagine a place... ...where the sigh of surf and the whisper of waves spill from your suitcase and drift in your dreams."
But there are no cheats or short-cuts, despite my superior skills. I will have to be patient in the transition, try to be present and attentive to this new place, this strange space. So tonight I soaked in a bath and let the salt and bubbles work their magic on my aching muscles. I listened to the sounds of family life going on around me, conversations and dinner preparations in this new place which I thankfully share with those I love.
Here is a sort-of-poem-thing which hopefully captures something of the place I'm in at the moment. I am tired, slightly disoriented and my head feels woolly, but I think I will come good. It just takes a little time.
I composed this post and the poem last night. Today my five year old accompanied me to my "office". We had a coffee in the bistro, borrowed books from the library, surfed the internet, she joined the Deakin Philosophical Society meeting and happily declared "uni is so fun!" I needed the reminder. Five year olds are excellent guides to the Wonders of the World. I highly recommend finding one of your own. We found this little treasure in the university library.
"imagine a place... ...where your ship holds all you once knew and the horizon offers all you ever need"
Some of the illustrations on tonight's post came from this book, also some of the quotes. Other paintings also by the same artist. Fantastic. My ship shall set sail once again.
Feeling a little reflective tonight as I am packing to move house in the next week or so. Moving house is difficult enough if there is just one person, but with a family of five...the task cannot be imagined! This moving is not just a logistical nightmare. It is a testament to the relentless passage of time. A time when years of memories are heartlessly boxed up in order to be stored in a dusty cupboard or displayed in a new abode in a desperate effort to stay connected to the past. There is something about moving house – the curious mingling of hope and optimism for a bright future of possibility and the loss of the home, the very place that nurtured and shaped this family that now embraces a new place with countless new possibilities. This house will be the home of another and remain ours in memory only.
I needed a break from this harrowing ordeal, and watched a “Compass” episode online. The ABC program is running a series asking the question – “What is a good life?” In a recent episode, writer and former restaurateur Gay Bilson answers that question. I watched with delight, as this woman echoes so many of my own sentiments, particularly in my role as wife, mother and Phd candidate.Click below to watch the episode.
Portrait by Peter Fisher, hangs in the National Portait Gallery, Canberra.
Gay is also the author of a 2004 book, “Plenty: Digressions on Food”.
Gay Bilson ran a successful Sydney restaurant for two decades. She now lives in the McClaren Vale South Australia, where she lives in solitude and where she has found the recipe for a good life. She is a very interesting person, and the introspective Gay Bilson being interviewed seems a different person altogether from Gay Bilson, chef and restaurateur, smiling and convivial in archive footage. It is hard to imagine that a person who craves solitude should put herself into public light in that way. Her restaurant was open to the public only three days a week to accommodate her need for privacy. But after nearly two decades, she said even that was too much. She wanted solitude seven days a week.
As I began to think about writing a blog entry tonight, I discovered the word “restaurant” is French. It means food that restores and it comes from the Latin – restaurare – to repair, rebuild, renew. So to eat good food in company of friends is to restore or rebuild oneself in a very deep way. It doesn’t seems so strange now that a thoughtful, introspective person longing for human connections might choose to open a restaurant. And the idea of food as a restorative deeply appeals to me.
But then the image of the “modern” restaurant rears its ugly head. The so-called “Family Restaurants” that serve “fast food” or an “all you can eat” menu. Food is not the restoration of the human being but a utilitarian refuelling. I am as guilty of refuelling as any other inhabitant of this gruelling existence of ours. But watching Gay knead bread in her kitchen, or gather herbs from her garden, I sense a good life is not characterised by “refuelling”, or by any of the “conveniences” at our fingertips.
‘We make bread so that it shall be possible to have more than bread.’
Gay quotes a 70s author, John Stewart Collis, and shares her disappointment that even the current obsession with food, with celebrity chefs and cooking shows, do not look beyond the food. The food as it is written about and reported on is seen as an end in itself. For Gay there is something beyond food. Good food leads to an appreciation of life in music, in conversation, in all sorts of areas that make life “good”. It would seem “good” food can never be purely a reflection of the food itself, but also what it leads to, what is beyond it.
Restaurants – places that restore – are not simply refuelling stations that address an immediate physical hunger. Our eating places must restore the whole human being. And it seems that any good eating place, especially the home, must be a place that restores. How tragic if our homes should come to resemble “family restaurants” – refuelling stations as we rush through life “outside”. Again, I am as guilty of treating home in this way as anyone else. But I am also happy that “restoration” can come in the most unexpected ways – eating pizza around the kitchen counter sharing the day’s events with those you love, and listening to their adventures, whether great or small. If modern restaurants miss their primary function, it is still to be found in homes scattered across towns and cities.
From her private castle, Gay cooks for and shares with those who live within her community. I love the tension this presents to her, a tension I am so familiar with. She describes herself in “Plenty” as “ever utopian, but disconnected and immobilised by a solitary nature.” She says in the interview -
“I’ve always much preferred small gatherings than large. So I’ve never liked parties, they scare me. I don’t know how to approach a group or leave a group. I don’t know how to trust whether I’m going to have a good time or not. Whether I might be stuck in a corner with someone boring or meet someone scintillating. But at a table I feel some sort of energy which is easy.”
Gay hosts small gatherings and reminds herself to be hospitable. She serves food and sometimes others cook for her. But she particularly likes the washing up after guests have left, as a way to regain privacy. I smiled as I heard this. I am convinced the best part of any gathering is closing the door behind the last guest and returning to myself in my own space.
So that concludes tonight’s post. The ideas grew in the writing, and it is now after midnight and I need to find my bed for some “restorative” sleep. I am at least feeling a little more optimistic about the upcoming house move.
While tackling a mountain of paperwork, I listened online to Encounter, a program on Radio National which broadcast a lecture to a Brisbane audience by the Oxford-based Dominican friar, Timothy Radcliffe. Here are some excerpts I rather liked on the Christian understanding of love, beauty and conversation. When speaking on the apparent tension between the need for “dialogue” and “conversion” – ie. As Christians, should we engaged in dialogue with Muslims, or are we required to try to convert them? – Radcliffe tells us the word for 'homily' comes from a Greek word which means 'to converse', 'to talk', to listen as well as to speak. And the word 'conversation' is actually linked to the word 'conversion'. In a true conversation, everybody is converted in some way, a way that we leave open to God’s grace. I have posted some other sections I liked below, they are ordered in sequence according to my own preference and taste.
Click on the link below to read the full transcript or listen online.
“I think the revitalisation of Christianity has nearly always gone with a new sense of beauty. In the Middle Ages you have the invention of Gregorian chant, Gothic architecture, that goes with the whole revival of Christianity - new vigour. After the Reformation you get the baroque, incredibly vital, actually I can't abide it but there we are. Then in the 19th century faced with the Industrial Revolution, urban waste, you get Methodism and its new hymns, new songs for a new time. And I think if we're going to revive Christianity and its going to flourish, we need a new beauty. People are nervous of doctrines because they think wrongly its doctrinaire. They're nervous of morality because they think its moralistic, but beauty touches everybody. Why is this? Why particularly, I think ,music? Why does music oxygenate the tree, the leaves? Because music is the most wordless and the most bodily. Music reaches beyond our words, for what has St Paul said 'The heart has not conceived, nor is the eye seen.' In music you touch what is beyond any conception. A ballet dancer once danced a beautiful dance and somebody said to her, 'That's lovely, tell me what it meant.' And she said, 'If I could tell you I wouldn't have bothered to dance it.'
…You see, traditionally from St Paul to Thomas Aquinas, to the end of the Middle Ages, morality was not about what you are allowed to do or forbidden to do, morality was about who you become, virtue ethics - which are making a big return at the moment - virtue ethics were about becoming someone, someone whose happiness and freedom was in God. When I left the country, we were still in the full scandal of the MPs' expenses, and one MP after another was saying, 'I didn't do anything wrong, I didn't break the rules.' My friends, what an infantile view of morality - 'I didn't break the rules.'
… In the Christian vision becoming a moral person is growing in the virtues, so that you become someone who is courageous, who is just, who's temperate, who's prudent, who does what is right because it springs from who you are, as someone who is honourable. We've lost any conception that people - that it is an inherent part of our dignity to be honourable regardless of whether anybody ever catches us out. Of course we do need rules but only to form us to be free, only to form us to be mature and adult. The Chief Rabbi said to me recently, I checked this out with him, very interesting, he said, 'You know that in the Hebrew Bible' - their Torah, our Old Testament, 'there is in Hebrew no word which means to obey? The word simply doesn't exist in our sense of an external constraint. There are words which mean 'to listen', 'to respond'. The Ten Commandments is a very recent description, the Ten Commandments in the Hebrew its the ten words which God addresses to us in friendship.'
…The virtues of Aquinas offer a pilgrimage, a way to become somebody whose delight, whose happiness, and whose freedom is in God. They prepare us for the journey, the pilgrimage, and it doesn't matter what you've done, it doesn't matter who you are, it doesn't matter what mess you have got into because any of us can get into messes, wherever you are the virtues can strengthen you for the journey, the journey home.”
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.
“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. Andthen 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...
