The
Inklings:
Lewis, Tolkien, Williams and Barfield explore Theosophy and Reincarnation
Excerpts from various sources:
Source from http://www.crossroad.to/Quotes/spirituality/tolkien-lewis.htm
Philosopher
Owen Barfield : Of all the Inklings, the group of Oxford scholars that
met regularly to discuss Christianity and mythology in the early 1900's,
one of the least often memorialized on the Net is
Owen Barfield. The other central three -- C.S. Lewis,
J. R. R. Tolkien and Charles Williams
-- wrote fantasy, as well as theology and philosophy.
by Dale Nelson1
1. Dale Nelson: "Associate Professor of English at Mayville (ND) State University. His "The Uncertain Legacy of Owen Barfield" appeared in Touchstone 11.3 (May-June 1998), 36-38. Barfield himself contributed to his "'But This Time It's True': C. S. Lewis and William Law" (CSL: The Bulletin of the New York C. S. Lewis Society 22:1 [1990]: 1-10)."
"Many people who look into the writings of Owen Barfield.... are C. S. Lewis admirers who are curious about this man who was Lewis's close friend throughout his adult life, from 1919 till Lewis's death in 1963. Barfield was Lewis's legal and financial advisor, and became an executor of his estate. Lewis dedicated his first scholarly book, The Allegory of Love (1936) to this 'wisest and best of my unofficial teachers,' stating in its preface that he asked no more than to disseminate Barfield's literary theory and practice, and dedicated the first Narnian chronicle to his friend's adopted daughter Lucy.
"In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, Lewis portrayed... Barfield as the Second Friend, the one who never fails to challenge one and prod one to new understanding. ...
"Another sign of Barfield's thought in Lewis appears in the third lecture of The Abolition of Man (1947), where Lewis suggests that 'Dr. Steiner'* meaning Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Anthroposophy [and of the occult Waldorf Schools], which Barfield embraced as a young man* may have found the way to a redeemed scientific method that does not omit the qualities of the observed object. ... [Notice that this was 16 years after Lewis' supposed conversion in 1931]
"Barfield, raised in an agnostic family, was baptized and became a member of the Church of England only in late middle age. ....However, he retained the Anthroposophic beliefs [his personal twist on Theosophy] he had begun to learn while a young man. Rudolf Steiner's 'occult science' seems to be a modern Gnosticism, complete with reincarnation, Christ and Jesus as two separate beings, a 'Fall' engineered by 'Luciferian' beings to promote man's ascent to his destiny of spiritual freedom...."
But God's Word says, "...it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment...." Hebrews 9:27-28
"In keeping with the teaching of Anthroposophy,
Barfield
espouses his belief in reincarnation on several occasions.
Indeed, reincarnation is essential to his understanding of the evolution
of consciousness. In Unancestral Voice, the Meggid [a "spirit
being" in Barfield's book] elucidates reincarnation for Burgeon...
'It is only through repeated earth-lives,' he explains,
'that mind could gradually, and as an historical process, become more and
more individualized, that is to say, could gradually emerge from the spirit
which gave birth to it....
"But 'the
Western understanding of man's repeated earth-lives' the Meggid foresees
is not to be confused with that of the Orient, for 'when at last it does
awaken. . . , it will be virtually opposite to, the Oriental doctrine of
'reincarnation.' For it will not, as the East has done, lay the whole emphasis
on the period of life on earth, but will understand that the opposite
pole, the period purgatorial and celestial between death and birth,
is of at least equal significance for the present predicament of the human
soul; and it will seek to investigate that, too. . . . And secondly, it
will, though with a sober realization of the cost of suffering,
see rebirth as a thing to be sought rather than one to be avoided."
Owen Barfield (1898 -1980) "...after reading English
at Wadham College, Oxford, he worked as a freelance writer for seven years.
During that time he was influenced by Rudolf Steiner and joined
the Anthroposophical Society....
"Apart from his brother, Warnie Lewis, C.S. Lewis' best friend
was Owen Barfield and from 1927 they went on three or four day
walking tours together in the spring. His great contribution was to persuade
C. S. LEWIS, and through him TOLKIEN,
that myth and metaphor has always had a central place in our language and
literature. When he was working in London (1931) he occasionally joined
the INKLINGS when he came to Oxford. Barfield wrote...
a volume of essays, Romanticism Comes of Age (1945). Though he joined the
Church of England (about 1946), he continued to believe in reincarnation
(which C.S. Lewis said no Christian could possibly believe in) and he later
wrote several books on Anthroposophy (1957-1971).
http://www.brow.on.ca/Books/Thoughts/WordsB.htm
Evolution
of Consciousness: Studies in Polarity: "Owen Barfield’s thought
ranges over many disciplines, reflecting his belief in the unity of knowledge—its
'all in every part' character. ... There is no 'early' or 'late"' Barfield
(to accord with current fashion), he tells us emphatically in the interview
with him that follows, 'just the same Barfield all along.'"
War in Heaven: "In War in Heaven, [Charles] Williams gives a contemporary
setting to the traditional story of the Search for ht Holy Grail. Examining
the distinction between magic and religion, their eerily disturbing book
graphically portrays a metaphysical journey through he shadowy crevices
of the human mind.
Lilith
by George MacDonald: (Foreword by C. S. Lewis): "It must be more
than thirty years ago that I bought... Phantastes. A few hours later I knew
that I had crossed a great frontier. I had already been waist deep in Romanticism,
and likely enough, at any moment, to founder into its darker and more evil
forms, slithering down the steep descent that leads from eh love of strangeness
to that of eccentricity and thence to that of perversity. ... What it actually
did to me was to convert, even to baptize (that was where the Death came
in) my imagination. It did nothing to my intellect nor (at that time) to
my conscience....
"...the quality which had enchanted me in his imaginative works turned
out to be the quality of the real universe, the divine, magical, terrifying
and ecstatic reality in which we all live." (xi-xii )
Book Review: A Question of Time - J. R. R. Tolkien's Road to Faërie
by
Professor Ralph C. Wood2
2. Dr. Ralph Wood: "Professor of English at Baylor University, is a
Tolkien expert and has studied Christian literary classics and the Inklings
(the close group of Oxford literary masters including C.S. Lewis, Charles
Williams and Tolkien). He taught for 26 years at Wake Forest University,
where he won awards for distinguished teaching. His publications include
"Traveling the One Road: The Lord of the Rings as a 'Pre-Christian'
Classic," Christian Century 110, 6 (February 24, 1993): 208-11."
"Tolkien was caught on the cusp that joins two worlds: the traditional Christian world of angels and demons and dream-visions wherein the natural and the supernatural were inextricably interwoven, and the modern world where space and time have been radically relativized by scientific discovery, psychological exploration, and imaginative invention. ...
"What comes as a genuine shock is the news that Tolkien's mind and work were marked by the fictional dream-journeys of George Du Maurier, by the psychic experiences of Charlotte Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain, by the time-travel fantasies of H. G. Wells, and especially by the notion of J. W. Dunne that all temporal events are simultaneous. Dunne held that time is no less constant than space, and that by certain habits of mind we can move backward and forward over time as we traverse space, even experiencing events that have not yet happened....
"In both books Flieger has shown us a darker, less cheering Tolkien than many of his Christian apologists have acknowledged. Here again she is right: Tolkien was a man whose faith was shadowed and doubt-filled, and whose fiction thus counsels a sad joyfulness as the most that we can hope for this side of eternity.... Flieger gives us a Tolkien who is much closer to the heterodoxy of Owen Barfield and Charles Williams than to the orthodoxy of C. S. Lewis....
"Yeats and Steiner, Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, Madame Blavatsky and Annie Besant, the theosophists and anthroposophists and seancers all practiced a gnostic neo-Platonism which sought to overcome the mortal limits of time-bound flesh by human imagination alone. ....
"Flieger
is right to contend that Tolkien shared their neo-gnostic critique of our
century's decadent and violent materialism. Yet she fails to see that Tolkien
also resists what is spurious in the attempt to have God without incarnation
or cross or resurrection."
We disagree with the last sentence. Tolkien adapted many of the theosophical
notions to his mythical world. For example, Gandalf and Saruman match the
theosophical-occult view of "ascended masters" "devas"
or evolved angelic beings sent back into the world to guide receptive humans.
As Tolkien himself wrote,
"Gandalf is not, of course, a human being (Man or Hobbit). There are
naturally no precise modern terms to say what he was. I would venture to
say that he was an incarnate 'angel'.... with the other
Istari, wizards, 'those who know', an emissary from the Lords of the West,
sent to Middle-earth as the great crisis of Sauron loomed on the horizon.
By 'incarnate' I meant they were embodied in physical bodies capable of
pain and weariness...."[3]
"Why they should take such a form is bound up with the 'mythology'
of the 'angelic' Powers of the world of this fable. At this point
in the fabulous history the purpose was precisely to limit and hinder their
exhibition of 'power' on the physical plane, so that they would
do what they were primarily sent for: train, advise, instruct, arouse the
hearts and minds of those threatened by Sauron...."[3]
3.The Letters of J. R. R Tolkien, Humphrey Carpenter, editor (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Company, 1981), page 202.
"Gandalf really 'died' and was changed.... 'I am Gandalf the White,
who has returned from death'."[4]
4. The Letters, page 201.
In a book titled The Lord of the Rings, a "visual companion" to
the first segment of the three-part movie, describes the Istari:
"The Word 'Istari' is an Elvish term denoting an order or brotherhood of wizards. Such wizards are Maiar -- spirits older than Middle Earth itself--who have been sent by the Valar, the oldest and greatest beings of all -- out of the Undying Lands into the mortal world to guide the Free Peoples of Middle-Earth.... They have come secretly....
"As one of the Istari, Gandalf is able to wield potent magic..."[5]
5.
Jude Fisher, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Visual Companion
(Boston: New York, 2001), page 55, 57.
http://members.aol.com/theloego/inklings.html
Some Bibliographical Notes on The Inklings & Mystical Christian Thought:
The
writings of The Inklings (JRR
Tolkien, CS Lewis, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, Dorothy Sayers,
et al.) are well known, especially in Christian circles. Here are a few
references on Tolkien and Williams, which may be of interest to students
of many spiritual paths.
(1) J.R.R. Tolkien: "Tolkien wrote a personally revealing essay On
Fairy Stories embodying his theology/philosophy of Faerie and Sub-Creation
(as he called it). In addition to his magna opera The
Lord of the Rings, The
Silmarillion and his many story notebooks which his son Christopher
has been editing and publishing over the last decades, he has two short
stories which succinctly illustrate some of the aspects of his feelings
about Faerie: Smith of Wootton Major and Leaf by Niggle.
"...the
best commentaries on Tolkien’s work emphasizing his mystical and spiritual
thought are by Verlyn Flieger of the University of Maryland: Flieger, Verlyn.
A
Question of Time: J.R.R. Tolkien's Road to Faerie, Splintered Light:
Logos and Language in Tolkien's World."
(2) Charles Williams: "One of the unfortunately lesser known Inklings,
Williams wrote Arthurian mystical poetry and seven supernatural mystery
novels."
