Volu m e II - Purdue University Calumet

sympathies seem to fall anywhere that he can borrow a sense of mystic oneness with something greater than
himself. Like a moth to a flame, Williams is drawn to sacrifice, total surrender, ceremonial rites, and
magical incantations in both his fiction and his personal life. For him the true myth is an inseparable part of
coinherence. He would have called it ―simultaneity‖ and he attempts to ―impress us with the possibility that
existence itself may be Christian, that whenever there is an act of true humanity there is Christ, that every
act of forgiveness is the cross, and that we can confront the nothingness in life because in doing so we
encounter the Christ who has gone before us into the darkness‖ (Urang, 92). His fictional re-enactments of
Christian myth show a ‗oneness‘ across people, cultures, and time:
The Place of the Lion is a parable of creative—and miscreative—knowing, a fictional embodiment of
Williams‘ interpretation of the myth set forth in the first three chapters of Genesis. The same tendency is
seen in the last novels. The images and allusions in Descent Into Hell associate the action on Battle Hill now
with Eden, now with Gomorrah, now with Golgotha, and finally with Zion; the parallels and parodies of All
Hallow’s Eve include Simon as a ―trinity‖ and as ―he that should come,‖ Lester on a ―cross,‖ Betty performing
miraculous cures as ―virtue‖ goes out from her. (Urang, 73)
It is through this mystic, ritual-loving lens that Charles Williams sees and presents his own interpretation of
the true myth and what that means in the lives of not only his characters, but also those who followed him
as an esoteric teacher.
When it came to what they thought they were writing, Tolkien and Williams were adamant that
they hadn‘t written allegories – they were mistaken. All three utilized Christian mythology, but when it
came to the distinction between allegory and mythoepia, the authors themselves seemed to remain unclear.
Lewis, direct as always, made no claim to have avoided allegory, although Gunnar Urang, in his book
Shadows of Heaven, argues that Lewis was actually attempting to write mythoepia and failed: ―…in any case
Lewis is depending not so much on satire and its allegorical bent as on mythopoeic power. . . fantasy that
fails to rise into myth falls back toward allegory‖ (Urang, 27). When it comes to Williams, he is not just
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