‎Contents

‎Acknowledgements

‎Abbreviations

‎Introduction. Through the Portal

‎Williams and the Occult: Some Discursive Complications

‎Encountering the Occult in Williams’s Fiction: A Literary/Historical Method

‎Chapter 1. Life and Times: Christian Occultism in Modern England

‎A Life in Myth

‎“But about This Reality of Yours …”

‎The “Dead Master”

‎Arthur Edward Waite

‎Occult Imagination and the Secret Tradition

‎Constructing a Cordon Sanitaire

‎Part I: Occultism vs. Mysticism

‎Part II: Occultism vs. Christianity

‎Christian Occultism

‎Chapter 2. The Fellowship of the Rosy Cross: A Modern Occult Experience

‎Masonic Rosicrucianism

‎The Paths of the Tree of Life

‎The F.R.C. and the Golden Dawn: The Adeptus Minor Rituals

‎Chapter 3. Fiction and Experience

‎The Unbearable Lightness of Fiction

‎Fantastic Narratology: The Liminality of Esoteric Knowledge

‎The Novels--Intrusions of the Supernatural

‎The Gothic Occult

‎In the Network of Occult Fiction

‎The Novels of an Adeptus Exaltatus

‎“The End of Desire”--The Discovery of the Higher Self

‎Occult Fiction, Occult Life

‎Chapter 4. Kabbalah: Charles Williams and the Middle Pillar

‎A.E. Waite and Modern Occult Kabbalah

‎Becoming Shekinah: Charles Williams and the Middle Pillar

‎The Greater Trumps

‎Kabbalistic Eros and Romantic Theology

‎Chapter 5. The High-Priestess: Charles Williams and Modern Magic

‎Magic in the West

‎The “High-Priestess of Heaven”

‎Ritual Semiotics and the Magical Imagination

‎Chapter 6. A Magical Life in Fiction

‎Active Imagination

‎Active Will

‎The Way of P’o-lu

‎Art Magic: Sex, Poetry, Consciousness

‎Reanimation: Enchantment and Empowerment

‎Interpretive Drift: The Development of a Modern Christian Magic

‎Chapter 7. The Transmutation of Charles Williams: Spiritual and Literary Alchemy

‎From Metallurgy to Particle Physics: A Brief History of Alchemy

‎Influences: Lee, Waite, Atwood

‎Rosicrucian Alchemy

‎The Great Work in Fiction

‎A Literary Alchemist

‎Epilogue. The Coagulation of Belief

‎Bibliography

‎Index