Regarding Williams: It is quite plausible that he would have talked with Tolkien & Lewis of his interest in the occult; and I don't doubt it would have kindled Lewis's interest - but not Tolkien's. Consider Tolkien's later comments on Williams:
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I knew Charles Williams well in his last few years . . . But I do not think we influenced one another at all! Too 'set', and too different. We both listened (in C.S.L.'s rooms) to large and largely unintelligible fragments of one another's works read aloud; because C.S.L. (marvellous man) seemed able to enjoy us both. But I think we both found the other's mind (or rather mode of expression, and climate) as impenetrable when cast into 'literature', as we found the other's presence and convseration delightful. (Letter 159)
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Later, he went as far as to name Williams as one of the causes of his drifting apart from Lewis (Letter 252); admitting that he (Tolkien) was 'a man of limited sympathies', he said that 'Williams lies almost completely outside them' and that he 'actively disliked his Arthurian-Byzantine mythology' and thought 'it spoiled the trilogy of C.S.L. (a very impressionable, too impressionable, man)' (Letter 259); and he claimed that, though they enjoyed jesting talk, they 'had nothing to say to one another at deeper (or higher) levels' (Letter 276).
I would be very, very surprised if Tolkien was ever influenced by any of Williams's (or anyone else's) interest in the occult. Beyond the quotes above, it just doesn't seem to me that such things would be compatible with Tolkien's basic (literary) outlook.
12-15-2007, 02:23 PM
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