A Strange Kind of Glory

Charles Williams - War in Heaven

T.S. Eliot once remarked that if he ever had to stay in a haunted house with just one companion allowed, he would choose the poet, theologian, novelist and playwright, Charles Williams (1886-1945). Williams’s novel, War in Heaven (1930), shows us why, the author displaying a grasp of spiritual symbolism remarkable in its perspicacity and depth. For Williams, the supernatural is wholly natural, though always beyond the reach of crass materialistic explanations.

The plot revolves around the discovery of the Holy Grail in an English parish church. A tense and gripping contest between rival powers of good and evil ensues, until the arrival of Prester John, the semi-mythical Guardian of the Grail, takes the story onto a different level.

War in Heaven is not, at bottom, concerned with who 'wins' and 'loses' in the narrative tussle between light and darkness. Instead, a radical self-awareness and a recognition of our deepest, often hidden, motives and desires lies at its core. The Grail (or Graal, as Williams calls it) does nothing to us. It neither propels us into Heaven nor casts us into Hell. On the contrary, it actually gives us what we want. It reveals to us who we are. It unveils our deepest essence:

‘I am John,’ a voice sounded, ‘and I am the prophecy of the things that are to be and are. You who have sought the centre of the Graal, behold through me that which you seek, receive from me that which you are. He that is righteous, let him be righteous still; he that is filthy. let him be filthy still.’

In Andrei Takovsky's film Stalker (1979), the protagonists travel to a mysterious destination known as the 'Room', at the heart of an equally enigmatic 'Zone', where one's most longed-for desire is said to come true. As their journey progresses, however, the characters perceive that a strange kind of glory - probing, unsettling, compelling - has descended on them. The Grail Quest holds a mirror up to their souls and ours. The Grail is a mirror. But rather than plying us with answers and resolutions, it flings back a flurry of further questions. Who are we? What are we doing here? Where are we going? What are we all about?

‘Here we are at the threshold’, they are told. ‘This is the most important moment of your lives. You have to know that here your most cherished wish will come true. The most sincere one. The one reached through suffering.’

In the Arthurian mythos, there is one key question the seeker needs to ask. Whom does the Grail serve? If he forgets to do this, confused perhaps by the blurry standards of this world, then the Grail Castle will vanish and the Wasteland remain barren. But if he can reach deep down within and recall what is truly real and essential, then the Wounded King will be healed and the Grail unshackled - freed now from our projections and fantasies, free to perform its time-honoured role of restoration and regeneration:

Lionel shook his head firmly. ‘I do seem to have seen you before,’ he said to the stranger, ‘but I haven't the ghost of a notion where.’

‘It really doesn't matter,’ the other said. ‘To be remembered is the chief thing.’

The War in Heaven is over. For the time being at least.