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Aspects of Power #2
Many Dimensions
An ancient stone possessing awesome and terrifying powers wreaks havoc in this intelligent and provocative literary excursion into the supernatural. A remarkable object has fallen into the hands of the abominable scientist Sir Giles Tumulty. Once positioned at the center of the crown of King Solomon, it is a stone of astonishing and terrifying power, capable of good and evil alike. Anyone who touches it can move through time and space, perform miracles, and heal or kill. The stone can replicate itself, and does so during the course of Sir Giles’s inhuman experiments, subsequently falling into numerous unworthy hands throughout England. There are those who will attempt to use the stone for personal gain, only to discover that it is they themselves being used by a power beyond their comprehension; some will find themselves trapped in eternally repeating nightmares from which there is no escape; still others will be freed from their earthly burdens. And so begins the battle between the forces of darkness and light for control of the most dangerous object in existence. A gripping metaphysical thriller by Charles Williams.
221 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1931
61 people are currently reading
849 people want to read
About the author
Charles Williams
84 books383 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Please see: Charles Williams
Charles Walter Stansby Williams is probably best known, to those who have heard of him, as a leading member (albeit for a short time) of the Oxford literary group, the "Inklings", whose chief figures were C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. He was, however, a figure of enormous interest in his own right: a prolific author of plays, fantasy novels (strikingly different in kind from those of his friends), poetry, theology, biography and criticism. — the Charles Williams Society website
Please see: Charles Williams
Charles Walter Stansby Williams is probably best known, to those who have heard of him, as a leading member (albeit for a short time) of the Oxford literary group, the "Inklings", whose chief figures were C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. He was, however, a figure of enormous interest in his own right: a prolific author of plays, fantasy novels (strikingly different in kind from those of his friends), poetry, theology, biography and criticism. — the Charles Williams Society website
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 101 reviews
May 19, 2015
"Many Dimensions" was published shortly after "War In Heaven" and while it is quite different it is equally fine.
The major difference would be that "War In Heaven" is a Christian religious fantasy centring on The Holy Grail. "Many Dimensions" is a spiritual fantasy using as its focus a strange stone with other-worldly powers originally possessed by Suleiman the Magnificent. Further the cast of characters involves Hajji, an Islamic Persian ambassador, who plays a not insignificant part in the plot.
The plot ranges over a much wider field than in the earlier novel. Events involve not only the major players but extend to Labour union relations, the government and even the international scene.
The characters are somewhat better drawn in this novel. One meets Sir Gerald Tumulty once again and he is, if anything, more obnoxious than before. Against him are set the trio of Lord Christopher Arglay the Chief Justice, Chloe Bernett, the latter’s secretary and the previously mentioned Ambassador Hajji.
Apparently Chloe is the most vulnerable of this group but in the end she is the most significant figure and can be regarded as the main character in the novel. The fact that Arglay constantly calls her “child” {she is 25, he’s in his fifties} grates on a modern reader but one should bear in mind that the book was written in the early thirties. Chloe has far more agency, individuality, and depth of character than any of the women in Tolkien.
The stone itself has a number of unique powers. It allows its possessor to travel in space and time and it will cure disease. But perhaps its most potent power is that it is the source of tremendous visions. The great visionary sequences which occur in this novel are absolutely mind-blowing. They are unique to Williams and there is nothing comparable in the works of Tolkien or Lewis, his fellow Inklings.
One final point worth noting is that while it is at its core a spiritual fantasy, "Many Dimensions" has features that remind one of science-fiction. The stone itself is an artefact which can be analysed and {to a limited extent} manipulated. Time-travel, time-loops, and alternate realities are all major ideas in the story.
This is a remarkable, rewarding and quite original novel.
The major difference would be that "War In Heaven" is a Christian religious fantasy centring on The Holy Grail. "Many Dimensions" is a spiritual fantasy using as its focus a strange stone with other-worldly powers originally possessed by Suleiman the Magnificent. Further the cast of characters involves Hajji, an Islamic Persian ambassador, who plays a not insignificant part in the plot.
The plot ranges over a much wider field than in the earlier novel. Events involve not only the major players but extend to Labour union relations, the government and even the international scene.
The characters are somewhat better drawn in this novel. One meets Sir Gerald Tumulty once again and he is, if anything, more obnoxious than before. Against him are set the trio of Lord Christopher Arglay the Chief Justice, Chloe Bernett, the latter’s secretary and the previously mentioned Ambassador Hajji.
Apparently Chloe is the most vulnerable of this group but in the end she is the most significant figure and can be regarded as the main character in the novel. The fact that Arglay constantly calls her “child” {she is 25, he’s in his fifties} grates on a modern reader but one should bear in mind that the book was written in the early thirties. Chloe has far more agency, individuality, and depth of character than any of the women in Tolkien.
The stone itself has a number of unique powers. It allows its possessor to travel in space and time and it will cure disease. But perhaps its most potent power is that it is the source of tremendous visions. The great visionary sequences which occur in this novel are absolutely mind-blowing. They are unique to Williams and there is nothing comparable in the works of Tolkien or Lewis, his fellow Inklings.
One final point worth noting is that while it is at its core a spiritual fantasy, "Many Dimensions" has features that remind one of science-fiction. The stone itself is an artefact which can be analysed and {to a limited extent} manipulated. Time-travel, time-loops, and alternate realities are all major ideas in the story.
This is a remarkable, rewarding and quite original novel.
October 16, 2013
Many Dimensions, is my second William’s novel; Descent Into Hell was first. It wouldn’t be fair for me to compare the two as reading Williams has been an education for me. Although a member of the Inklings—that 1940’s group of British Christian writers including: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Roger Lancelyn Green, Owen Barfield, and others—Williams has his own way of writing and friendship with those other well-known authors doesn’t mean he thought, believed or wrote like they did. His style was all his own.
Williams began his writing career as a poet. Ultimately, however his vision was influenced by a sense of indebtedness to his fellow countrymen who fought, suffered and/or died in the Great War—as it was then known—World War I as we now call it. Physically disqualified for military service, Williams attributed the peace and well-being enjoyed in England to the sacrifices made by those young men in the trenches in France.
Many Dimensions is about an all-powerful Stone which falls into the wrong hands. It can do many things but not always when you want or how you want because the Stone is not only the source of tremendous power but also somehow represents “the End of Desire”. This can be taken to mean the realization of our desire or the surrendering to the good of which the Stone is somehow the repository. It becomes not so much a matter of possessing the Stone as being possessed by it.
Along the way we are introduced to a cast of characters, including the Persian keepers of the Stone, the Hajji; those who initially seized the Stone and looked for ways to profit by it, Sir Giles, his nephew, Reginald Montague; and the most well-developed characters, Lord Arglay, the Lord Chief Justice of England and his clerk, Chloe Burnett. There were a host of other minor characters, but Williams isn’t interested in his characters except insofar as they advance his story. If anything, the Stone, Transcendence Itself, is the most mysterious Character of all. It is certainly not a thing and It is always capitalized!
Many Dimensions is a thought-provoking reading. The ending is unexpected, yet fitting. I will ponder it for days to come and probably come back to it. Williams intrigues me. I don’t understand him, but I have the greatest respect for the principles he espouses.
According to Williams, we all owe our lives to others—and not just during wartime. In other words, there is no life which does not owe itself to the life and labor of someone else and usually many others. For Williams, hell is the place where such a denial leads eventually and the City of God is where we see co-inheritance brought to blissful fruition.
Williams began his writing career as a poet. Ultimately, however his vision was influenced by a sense of indebtedness to his fellow countrymen who fought, suffered and/or died in the Great War—as it was then known—World War I as we now call it. Physically disqualified for military service, Williams attributed the peace and well-being enjoyed in England to the sacrifices made by those young men in the trenches in France.
Many Dimensions is about an all-powerful Stone which falls into the wrong hands. It can do many things but not always when you want or how you want because the Stone is not only the source of tremendous power but also somehow represents “the End of Desire”. This can be taken to mean the realization of our desire or the surrendering to the good of which the Stone is somehow the repository. It becomes not so much a matter of possessing the Stone as being possessed by it.
Along the way we are introduced to a cast of characters, including the Persian keepers of the Stone, the Hajji; those who initially seized the Stone and looked for ways to profit by it, Sir Giles, his nephew, Reginald Montague; and the most well-developed characters, Lord Arglay, the Lord Chief Justice of England and his clerk, Chloe Burnett. There were a host of other minor characters, but Williams isn’t interested in his characters except insofar as they advance his story. If anything, the Stone, Transcendence Itself, is the most mysterious Character of all. It is certainly not a thing and It is always capitalized!
Many Dimensions is a thought-provoking reading. The ending is unexpected, yet fitting. I will ponder it for days to come and probably come back to it. Williams intrigues me. I don’t understand him, but I have the greatest respect for the principles he espouses.
According to Williams, we all owe our lives to others—and not just during wartime. In other words, there is no life which does not owe itself to the life and labor of someone else and usually many others. For Williams, hell is the place where such a denial leads eventually and the City of God is where we see co-inheritance brought to blissful fruition.
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June 1, 2019Another Charles Williams occult thriller. These are an acquired taste ie chocker with mystical visionary religious gibbering, while also managing good characters, some proper horror, and excellent ideas. Williams has a particular knack for really nasty villains--nasty in petty malice as well as great world-destroying schemes--and for the kind of weakness/selfishness that turn people into villains without them ever really intending or thinking about it. And when I say people I mostly mean men: he's very good on portrayals of toxic masculinity in various forms.
This is of course partly because he majors in women who become saintly spiritual self-abnegators, and this book has an amazing case of that as the heroine resigns her will to the Higher Powers in a frankly quite creepy way if that isn't your idea of religious exaltation. It feels like a death cult to me.
What is great is the McGuffin--the villain gets hold of the Stone of Solomon from its Muslim guardians. There's some incisive and funny stuff about the chaos it would cause if someone really was marketing a magical stone that can heal and teleport; there's also a major Muslim secondary character who's a key and respected part of the team that tries to retrieve the Stone, and there is a delightful absence of Christian triumphalism or denigrating of other religions. Absence of horrible bigotry is a pretty damn low threshold, I grant you, but it's still one most authors of occult thrillers fail to reach, so.
This is of course partly because he majors in women who become saintly spiritual self-abnegators, and this book has an amazing case of that as the heroine resigns her will to the Higher Powers in a frankly quite creepy way if that isn't your idea of religious exaltation. It feels like a death cult to me.
What is great is the McGuffin--the villain gets hold of the Stone of Solomon from its Muslim guardians. There's some incisive and funny stuff about the chaos it would cause if someone really was marketing a magical stone that can heal and teleport; there's also a major Muslim secondary character who's a key and respected part of the team that tries to retrieve the Stone, and there is a delightful absence of Christian triumphalism or denigrating of other religions. Absence of horrible bigotry is a pretty damn low threshold, I grant you, but it's still one most authors of occult thrillers fail to reach, so.
April 14, 2021
Beware of buying cheap new paperback editions of old books on Amazon & elsewhere. Check the publisher; is it a name you recognize or can easily research? Lots of out-of-copyright texts are being scanned, automatically typeset, and sloppily reissued via print-on-demand services. I've come across a few of these now; they're replete with uncorrected automatic text recognition errors, missing punctuation and line breaks, weird margins, etc. Someone (more likely many someones) are trying to automate republishing, doing it badly, and hoping to make profit on volume.
The edition of Many Dimensions I just finished is one of these; one of the better ones, fortunately, no worse than reading a Gutenberg .html file printed out. And the story is one of Williams' lighter, faster-paced novels: not so action-packed as War in Heaven, nor yet so ideologically dense as Descent Into Hell. Still, it has that characteristic Williams quality of a thought-experiment masquerading as a novel: a fictionalized meditation on the supernatural, and I expect that like his other novels it goes on growing more enjoyable in the mind and memory after the reading's over. Many Dimensions is not his best, but it's very likeable all the same.
The edition of Many Dimensions I just finished is one of these; one of the better ones, fortunately, no worse than reading a Gutenberg .html file printed out. And the story is one of Williams' lighter, faster-paced novels: not so action-packed as War in Heaven, nor yet so ideologically dense as Descent Into Hell. Still, it has that characteristic Williams quality of a thought-experiment masquerading as a novel: a fictionalized meditation on the supernatural, and I expect that like his other novels it goes on growing more enjoyable in the mind and memory after the reading's over. Many Dimensions is not his best, but it's very likeable all the same.
June 28, 2019
ENGLISH: Interesting spiritual thriller around the mystical stone in the crown of King Solomon.
In this novel, Williams provides an interpretation of travelling to our own past that cannot give rise to paradoxes, and I had never seen in other authors. Pity it does not apply to every travel into the past.
ESPAÑOL: Interesante thriller espiritual sobre la piedra mística de la corona del rey Salomón.
En esta novela, Williams ofrece una interpretación de los viajes a nuestro propio pasado que no puede dar lugar a paradojas, que nunca había visto en otros autores. Lástima que no se aplique a todos los viajes hacia el pasado.
In this novel, Williams provides an interpretation of travelling to our own past that cannot give rise to paradoxes, and I had never seen in other authors. Pity it does not apply to every travel into the past.
ESPAÑOL: Interesante thriller espiritual sobre la piedra mística de la corona del rey Salomón.
En esta novela, Williams ofrece una interpretación de los viajes a nuestro propio pasado que no puede dar lugar a paradojas, que nunca había visto en otros autores. Lástima que no se aplique a todos los viajes hacia el pasado.
April 13, 2012
There really isn't anything like this novel. Christianity permeates the writing without intruding--the most Christian character is an
agnostic, followed by a Muslim. The goal is to submit to God as He presents Himself to you, in this case, as a fragment of the First Matter from which the cosmos was made. How Williams turns such a theological, abstract concept into a page-turner is beyond me, but I couldn't put it down.
agnostic, followed by a Muslim. The goal is to submit to God as He presents Himself to you, in this case, as a fragment of the First Matter from which the cosmos was made. How Williams turns such a theological, abstract concept into a page-turner is beyond me, but I couldn't put it down.
June 18, 2024
2.5 stars
I’ve tried, unsuccessfully, to read this book several times. I think this was primarily due to the fact that, in some ways at least, Charles Williams may be the most difficult Inkling. That’s saying something given that it includes Owen Barfield whose own thoughts and writings can also stray into what I think can validly be described as the esoteric. Williams is, however, on a whole other level of weird. I’ve read his Arthurian poetry, which is perhaps even more esoteric and difficult to parse, but despite this I came away from them with the impression that they were not only quite excellent, but also powerful new iterations of the Arthurian mythos. Williams’ ‘spiritual thrillers’, of which this is one, never seemed to have the same appeal to me, despite my interest in the esoteric.
I think my ambivalence towards them can be tied to two very distinct features that I found ran through the book. First of all, this book is very…British. I don’t mean this to be as disparaging as it sounds, but I suppose the Anglophilia of my youth has somewhat waned with time and I felt very much on the outside of many of the accepted conventions of the characters in the story and the almost blasé nature in which the various characters (who are not ‘Persian’) treat the strange powers that intrude into their world in this story seems to be almost stereotypically British in attitude. It also seems to me to be very much of its time. The relationships between the sexes, as depicted in the way that Chloe Burnett (in some ways the ‘main character’ of the story, and in others some strange amalgam of pseudo-love interest/maguffin/plot-accelerator) relates to pretty much all of the men (i. e. everyone else) in the story, is also perhaps best encapsulated by that most favoured of post-modern words: problematic (which I really don’t like using if I can help it, though I seem to be using it more and more these days). Given what little I know of Williams’ apparent theories of the theology of co-inherence and the relationship of the sexes from his own life and beliefs, however, I’m not sure if this is really a case of it reflecting the attitudes of the time as much as it does the very idiosyncratic beliefs of Williams himself.
The basics of the plot can be summed up as: A stone from the crown of the fabled King Solomon finds its way into the hands on an unscrupulous British scientist (perhaps the most interesting character in the story who could have perhaps done with a bit more screen time and development) who plans to learn all he can and use its eldritch powers for his own selfish ends. Standing against him are the stalwart Chief Lord Justice of England, Lord Arglay (the scientist’s brother-in-law), and his even more stalwart young secretary, Chloe Burnett. Hijinks ensue. The stone can not only allows the user to travel instantly in time and space and fulfill the desires they voice when holding the stone, but can also be duplicated infinitely (a plot point that leads to perhaps the main tension in the novel, but which ends up being resolved a bit too patly). This ultimately becomes something of a monkey’s paw story: be careful what you wish for, and dabble not in forces you do not understand, with a strong leaning towards the need to sacrifice one’s will for that which is higher on the metaphysical plane.
The metaphysical implications of the use of the stone, especially as regards time travel, led to some rather intriguing ideas about that nature of time and various paradoxes (not the run of the mill ones trotted out most often) that I must admit I didn’t fully grok, but that were still satisfyingly thought-provoking. I also saw the obvious influence that Williams had on Lewis’ ‘That Hideous Strength’ which has many of the same story elements and character types: the strange and esoteric breaking into the mundane world; the paternalistic and wise, though somewhat priggish, hero; the devoted younger female whose ultimate devotion to traditional values proves to be a saving grace; and the selfish pseudo-scientist willing to break the tenets of wisdom in the name of progress and selfish advancement.
Interesting, but at the same time a little off-putting, I still have to admit that it was interesting enough to make me think I may attempt another of these ‘spiritual thrillers’ just to see what kind of mileage Williams got out of them and whether he managed to tread any newer ground with them.
I’ve tried, unsuccessfully, to read this book several times. I think this was primarily due to the fact that, in some ways at least, Charles Williams may be the most difficult Inkling. That’s saying something given that it includes Owen Barfield whose own thoughts and writings can also stray into what I think can validly be described as the esoteric. Williams is, however, on a whole other level of weird. I’ve read his Arthurian poetry, which is perhaps even more esoteric and difficult to parse, but despite this I came away from them with the impression that they were not only quite excellent, but also powerful new iterations of the Arthurian mythos. Williams’ ‘spiritual thrillers’, of which this is one, never seemed to have the same appeal to me, despite my interest in the esoteric.
I think my ambivalence towards them can be tied to two very distinct features that I found ran through the book. First of all, this book is very…British. I don’t mean this to be as disparaging as it sounds, but I suppose the Anglophilia of my youth has somewhat waned with time and I felt very much on the outside of many of the accepted conventions of the characters in the story and the almost blasé nature in which the various characters (who are not ‘Persian’) treat the strange powers that intrude into their world in this story seems to be almost stereotypically British in attitude. It also seems to me to be very much of its time. The relationships between the sexes, as depicted in the way that Chloe Burnett (in some ways the ‘main character’ of the story, and in others some strange amalgam of pseudo-love interest/maguffin/plot-accelerator) relates to pretty much all of the men (i. e. everyone else) in the story, is also perhaps best encapsulated by that most favoured of post-modern words: problematic (which I really don’t like using if I can help it, though I seem to be using it more and more these days). Given what little I know of Williams’ apparent theories of the theology of co-inherence and the relationship of the sexes from his own life and beliefs, however, I’m not sure if this is really a case of it reflecting the attitudes of the time as much as it does the very idiosyncratic beliefs of Williams himself.
The basics of the plot can be summed up as: A stone from the crown of the fabled King Solomon finds its way into the hands on an unscrupulous British scientist (perhaps the most interesting character in the story who could have perhaps done with a bit more screen time and development) who plans to learn all he can and use its eldritch powers for his own selfish ends. Standing against him are the stalwart Chief Lord Justice of England, Lord Arglay (the scientist’s brother-in-law), and his even more stalwart young secretary, Chloe Burnett. Hijinks ensue. The stone can not only allows the user to travel instantly in time and space and fulfill the desires they voice when holding the stone, but can also be duplicated infinitely (a plot point that leads to perhaps the main tension in the novel, but which ends up being resolved a bit too patly). This ultimately becomes something of a monkey’s paw story: be careful what you wish for, and dabble not in forces you do not understand, with a strong leaning towards the need to sacrifice one’s will for that which is higher on the metaphysical plane.
The metaphysical implications of the use of the stone, especially as regards time travel, led to some rather intriguing ideas about that nature of time and various paradoxes (not the run of the mill ones trotted out most often) that I must admit I didn’t fully grok, but that were still satisfyingly thought-provoking. I also saw the obvious influence that Williams had on Lewis’ ‘That Hideous Strength’ which has many of the same story elements and character types: the strange and esoteric breaking into the mundane world; the paternalistic and wise, though somewhat priggish, hero; the devoted younger female whose ultimate devotion to traditional values proves to be a saving grace; and the selfish pseudo-scientist willing to break the tenets of wisdom in the name of progress and selfish advancement.
Interesting, but at the same time a little off-putting, I still have to admit that it was interesting enough to make me think I may attempt another of these ‘spiritual thrillers’ just to see what kind of mileage Williams got out of them and whether he managed to tread any newer ground with them.
September 2, 2012
Lovely Charles Williams doesn't sacrifice any of his characters for mere plot. Poor peripheral Pondon may be lost in yesterday, but Williams is not Tumulty and so Pondon doesn't just vanish from the story. The vast shelves of my favorite used bookstore are crammed with fantasies and thrillers of people knowing what is right, knowing what to do, reclaiming a sacred object, fulfilling some task, restoring justice... but this is the one I cried out when I saw who wrote it. The story, for Williams, is in the people, not the Stone. It is what they do that is of importance, what they relinquish, how they respond and what they become.
Also, it's rather wonderful that the heroes the quite Christian Williams chose are an agnostic lawyer, a Muslim, and an agnostic secretary. Oh, and for people who like this sort of thing (LIKE ME): Lord Arglay is fucking hot. Williams didn't say it, he didn't need to; but Arglay's a babe. What a character.
Also, it's rather wonderful that the heroes the quite Christian Williams chose are an agnostic lawyer, a Muslim, and an agnostic secretary. Oh, and for people who like this sort of thing (LIKE ME): Lord Arglay is fucking hot. Williams didn't say it, he didn't need to; but Arglay's a babe. What a character.
March 8, 2017
This is am amazing novel! It is much more lively and engaging than some of CW's other, more obscure, works. Please check out my post about it, here: http://theoddestinkling.mymiddleearth....
June 16, 2009
Most people will tell you that this book is “different,” and I agree, but that is leaving out brilliant, imaginative, powerful, incisive, witty, and—at times—frightening. This story about a mysterious stone possessing mysterious powers will remind modern readers of Tolkien’s One Ring masterpiece, although its author Charles Williams (like Tolkien, a member of the Inklings) actually published his work six years before Gandalf knocked on Bilbo’s green door. Steeped in Scripture, fantasy, and science, Williams spins a tale that is something like Indiana Jones (the original three, not the sorry tag-along) set against 20th century England. Characters, scenes, and pacing are all excellent. Williams has mastered the art of revealing his cast almost exclusively through dialogue, himself rarely passing judgment on the characters or their actions, and simply allowing them to speak for themselves. Above all, Many Dimensions is a complex portrayal of good and evil. Williams fascinatingly shows how evil does not reside in any particular thing, but in what we do with those things. The dense interweaving of religious, historical and literary themes throughout the book only begs for a second reading, and I shall probably give in very soon.
June 10, 2022
Definitely requires you to focus to follow what is going on. I loved the big ideas and enjoyed the intensity of the themes but the characters and some of their interactions felt very outdated, like reading a script for a black-and-white movie.
April 28, 2012
Sir Giles, that cheerful Diabolic scientist from War in Heaven, has found a Stone. This stone can let people time travel, teleport through space, heal the sick, and kill people dead with lightning. It also can self-replicate, and as the copies are given to people, they each have to deal with what the mystery it contains is.
This book annoyed me to no end. This is the second book of his I've read, after War in Heaven, and I'm already seeing a pattern:
1. Powerful artifact that is essentially neutral is discovered by an evil man.
2. Good people know about it, and endlessly jaw about the spiritual aspects of it without doing much of anything to actually deal with said object. They may deflect a minor attack or two on themselves or give some minor aid to suffering third party.
3. There's always a sub plot where neutral people deal with the neutral aspects of the device or struggle over it. In War In Heaven, it was the inspector and the murder. In here, it's Oliver and the subplot about whether or not the stone should be used to heal everyone.
4. The artifact itself just tends to kill people, both good and evil.
5. There's a lot of esoteric gas about said artifact which really has little to do with Christianity, and a lot to do with quasi-pagan belief systems. No seriously, the Stone in this book has nothing to do with Christianity. It is said to have its own will, yet can easily be forced to do things by anyone, and is considered primeval matter.
2,4,and 5 are killing me here. The evil guys get 2: Giles has no qualms about trying to attack those in his way, namely Chloe for some reason. But Lord Arglay just stands around gassing and chatting for the entire book it feels like. He hates Giles, and knows he is no good, but he never does anything. Neither does Chloe, who just seems to react to things.
4 makes me wonder. For an artifact of God, the stone sure causes a lot of death, pain, and suffering for the small circle involved. It's able to be used to do evil very easily. There's also absolutely no good purpose for the Stone. It's supposed to be kept hidden and the whole plot is not to do good with it, but to contain it again.
5 is the final killer. I know this is fiction, but submission to God's will is not the same as submission to the possibly existing will of a piece of Divine protomatter which contans the possibilities of everything. And it also doesn't mean the character that does the submitting always needs to die. Twice in two books so far.
I know Williams has said to have been part of the Inklings and an influence on C.S. Lewis. But there seems to be more esoteric non-Christian thought than Christian thought in the book. Maybe it's the inexact and often windy language he uses, or maybe it's the theological borrowing of Islam in this novel and the Big Concepts like Unity, Path, End of Desire, and What Have You he keeps throwing about. But I'm getting a lot of esoteric past master vibes in this and almost kabbalistic knowledge.
So one star from me. It's dull to read, too. It starts out quicker and better than War in Heaven but has no real conflict. The enjoyable parts have nothing to do with the spiritual gas Williams keeps trying to fill the novel with-it's Oliver hilariously ranking on the american millionaire, and Chloe's suitor asking for the Stone so he can use it to cheat on his medical exam. If this were done in a pulp novel style, it would have been excellent: as a genteel theological novel it's dull and boring.
This book annoyed me to no end. This is the second book of his I've read, after War in Heaven, and I'm already seeing a pattern:
1. Powerful artifact that is essentially neutral is discovered by an evil man.
2. Good people know about it, and endlessly jaw about the spiritual aspects of it without doing much of anything to actually deal with said object. They may deflect a minor attack or two on themselves or give some minor aid to suffering third party.
3. There's always a sub plot where neutral people deal with the neutral aspects of the device or struggle over it. In War In Heaven, it was the inspector and the murder. In here, it's Oliver and the subplot about whether or not the stone should be used to heal everyone.
4. The artifact itself just tends to kill people, both good and evil.
5. There's a lot of esoteric gas about said artifact which really has little to do with Christianity, and a lot to do with quasi-pagan belief systems. No seriously, the Stone in this book has nothing to do with Christianity. It is said to have its own will, yet can easily be forced to do things by anyone, and is considered primeval matter.
2,4,and 5 are killing me here. The evil guys get 2: Giles has no qualms about trying to attack those in his way, namely Chloe for some reason. But Lord Arglay just stands around gassing and chatting for the entire book it feels like. He hates Giles, and knows he is no good, but he never does anything. Neither does Chloe, who just seems to react to things.
4 makes me wonder. For an artifact of God, the stone sure causes a lot of death, pain, and suffering for the small circle involved. It's able to be used to do evil very easily. There's also absolutely no good purpose for the Stone. It's supposed to be kept hidden and the whole plot is not to do good with it, but to contain it again.
5 is the final killer. I know this is fiction, but submission to God's will is not the same as submission to the possibly existing will of a piece of Divine protomatter which contans the possibilities of everything. And it also doesn't mean the character that does the submitting always needs to die. Twice in two books so far.
I know Williams has said to have been part of the Inklings and an influence on C.S. Lewis. But there seems to be more esoteric non-Christian thought than Christian thought in the book. Maybe it's the inexact and often windy language he uses, or maybe it's the theological borrowing of Islam in this novel and the Big Concepts like Unity, Path, End of Desire, and What Have You he keeps throwing about. But I'm getting a lot of esoteric past master vibes in this and almost kabbalistic knowledge.
So one star from me. It's dull to read, too. It starts out quicker and better than War in Heaven but has no real conflict. The enjoyable parts have nothing to do with the spiritual gas Williams keeps trying to fill the novel with-it's Oliver hilariously ranking on the american millionaire, and Chloe's suitor asking for the Stone so he can use it to cheat on his medical exam. If this were done in a pulp novel style, it would have been excellent: as a genteel theological novel it's dull and boring.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 2, 2016
Charles Williams is in a special category. He was friends with C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, W.B. Yeats, possibly a member of The Order Of The Golden Dawn. He wrote a series of novels that are about supernatural events and objects. His language at times becomes elegiac; it soars with a glowing passion. Each novel touches on an archetypal subject: The Holy Grail, The Tarot Cards, The Stone From King Solomon's Crown (The Tetragramatton). In fact, the latter is the subject of "Many Dimensions". The Stone conveys very great power to one who possesses it. It can transport through time and space. It is also infinitely subdividable, i.e. if you knock a chip off it, the entire stone will be replicated with all powers intact. This book was published in 1937. The language does not seem dated but the characters are suffused with the charm and mannerisms of that earlier epoch. Naturally enough, the stone becomes an object of contention. It is wanted by greedy scumbags, and it is sought by mystics who claim to be its rightful owners. There's much jockeying back and forth and trouble brought on by power's misuse. Charles Williams was a mystic, an inquirer into the invisible worlds. He was deeply involved with Christianity but it never comes out in his fiction in any overt fashion. Rather, the subject of Love is the focal point of Williams' writings. Love and its opposite, Damnation. A character makes this simple quote and it represents much of Williams' world view: "Love or be in Hell". Williams writings explain aspects of Love in ways that I had never considered. There is Love As Sacrifice, Love as Joy, Love as Beauty, Love as Obsession, all the ways that love can be examined are turned over and over like a jeweler handling a precious stone with a fine tweezer. Many Dimensions isn't the greatest of Williams' novels. I consider "All Hallows Eve" to be his masterpiece. Much of the latter book describes the life of a ghost. The states after death are included in the plot, and the ghost (or ghosts) move back and forth between worlds as if little separates life from death but a misapprehension of the nature of reality. I read Charles Williams every few years. I love his work because it refreshes my spirit. If I've been exposed to something tawdry, ugly or brutal, I turn to Williams' lyrical meditations as to an elixir of healing. His books are uneven, but they are essential. There's a character in each novel who is apparently ordinary but is actually saintly. This character always sorts things out because he or she sees clearly what others cannot discern. Every one of Williams' saints is distinctly different yet they project a loving tranquility that I can't help but believe represented Williams himself.
January 18, 2022
2022 Jan. Again, after reading CSL's brief essay "The Novels of Charles Williams." Finished, original opinion confirmed: good not great, but remarkably unusual and suggestive of better things. I'd read several more of his books. Several observations:
* The book is uneven in tone and characterization. But I don't think he's aiming at a consistent style. In any case it doesn't feel like a defect, just a feature.
* It was a keen idea to use ah his sage a Muslim ("the Hajji"), rather than a Jew or a Christian. Allows for the appearance of critical distance, the avoidance of easy accusations of special pleading.
* The "action" passages are presented in some of the book's densest prose. Again, this is not a defect: it demands a slow pace in reading, but doesn't actually cause frustration.
* I was disappointed in the sudden shift in the minor character Oliver Doncaster. I wonder if Williams changed his mind about him while composing? He's introduced with such wonderful humor, then translates into a feckless love interest.
2010 Sep. First time.
* The book is uneven in tone and characterization. But I don't think he's aiming at a consistent style. In any case it doesn't feel like a defect, just a feature.
* It was a keen idea to use ah his sage a Muslim ("the Hajji"), rather than a Jew or a Christian. Allows for the appearance of critical distance, the avoidance of easy accusations of special pleading.
* The "action" passages are presented in some of the book's densest prose. Again, this is not a defect: it demands a slow pace in reading, but doesn't actually cause frustration.
* I was disappointed in the sudden shift in the minor character Oliver Doncaster. I wonder if Williams changed his mind about him while composing? He's introduced with such wonderful humor, then translates into a feckless love interest.
2010 Sep. First time.
December 27, 2016
Charles Williams' books were amongst the few I kept aside when I disposed of most of the roughly 6000 hard-copy book library prior to moving just over a year ago. My copy of Many Dimensions bears my name and the year I bought it - 1968. It paid re-reading.
I found the language less dense than that in my rereading of The Place of the Lion - or perhaps the density was more fitting and acceptable in the context of the philosophy and theology of this narrative. I am attracted to the metaphysical underpinning of this narrative, the sense of the universal power and rightness, obscured by greed, self-seeking and personal ambition.
In this book Williams manages, for me, to maintain the balance between the tension of a crime narrative and the mystery of science fiction through his own form of metaphysical fantasy.
Again, glad I kept this volume to reread nearly 50 years after purchasing it.
I found the language less dense than that in my rereading of The Place of the Lion - or perhaps the density was more fitting and acceptable in the context of the philosophy and theology of this narrative. I am attracted to the metaphysical underpinning of this narrative, the sense of the universal power and rightness, obscured by greed, self-seeking and personal ambition.
In this book Williams manages, for me, to maintain the balance between the tension of a crime narrative and the mystery of science fiction through his own form of metaphysical fantasy.
Again, glad I kept this volume to reread nearly 50 years after purchasing it.
July 17, 2010
It's been a while since I've read this book, but there are two lingering impressions that remain: 1. Lord Arglay is maybe one of my favorite literary characters of all time; 2. the tantalizing beauty of submission to something larger than oneself, even if one doesn't fully understand it.
As always, Williams surprises, delights, terrifies, and ultimately leaves the reader with something they didn't realize they were missing. A beautiful book.
As always, Williams surprises, delights, terrifies, and ultimately leaves the reader with something they didn't realize they were missing. A beautiful book.
December 3, 2010
Charles Williams rocks my world. Every time I re-read this book I am inspired to think beyond my temporal surroundings.
March 6, 2015
Charles Williams is not an approachable author. His books are difficult and weird. They generally become clear only on multiple re-reads. I think, though, that they are very much worth the time.
July 6, 2023
Every day, I told my husband, "You have to read this." Enthralling Affirmation of the Way of Rejection. Perhaps only second to Descent into Hell for me, in terms of Charles Williams favorites. It all begins with a Stone set in King Solomon’s crown. If that isn’t enough for you, then don’t read the book. Or, probably, this post.
https://thatladywhoreadsalot.wordpres...
https://thatladywhoreadsalot.wordpres...
Read
January 3, 2025Started off pretty interesting, but the ending got convoluted and most of the allusions to religion went over my head.
September 13, 2025
3.5 stars- the plot wasn’t super compelling although the thought experiment was interesting, and the ending is beautiful. Williams seems to be best at showing theological principles in… story-poems? For lack of a better term. They’re lovely poems, they just don’t quite make up for a whole book of slow plot.
May 28, 2011
This is, I think a lesser work of Williams'. In a sense it is more like War in Heaven than his later works, in that though it involves the intrusion of the supramundane into the mundane world, it is much more about the machinations of various people in the way they respond to this than it is about the supramundane itself. So, whereas, say The Place of the Lion confronts us with the ultimate reality and forces a complete revaluation in its face, and Descent into Hell shows us the total disintegration that follows from giving way to selfishness, here, rather than being central, the supramundane thing is more of a mcguffin.
Now, that's not to say that is a bad thing. The problem is, though, that while War in Heaven had a very clear plot, and benefited from the fact that we all know what the Holy Grail is, here the plot is more a series of sketches, showing human cupidity in response to the sudden promise offered by the Stone of Solomon,and in addition, the Stone itself is never very clearly defined. And so the climax, where one character achieves the end of desire that the Stone promises, is not as stunning as it could be, partially because of this lack of clarity, but also partially because for reasons that are not entirely clear, Williams chose to represent it from outside, so we have, and never have, any idea what it was that actually happened.
So, I see this novel as transitional for Williams, shifting from the theological thrillers of his earlier work to the deeper philosophical novels of his later work. We begin to feel the touch of the numinous, and there are some very successful scenes, for example, Sir Giles Tumulty's final confrontation with the Stone, where he does pull off his later trick of making all of us experience, however much at a remove, something of transcendence, but too much space that could be taken up with philosophical exploration is filled with (albeit rather good) satire at the expense of politicians and trade unionists.
One final thing: Williams suggests a fascinating and, I think, unique theory of time travel in this book. It's unlike any other I've read in that it removes entirely the possibility of paradox, but it has a rather startling consequence that I will not reveal for fear of spoiling the joy of discovering what is, in spite of all I've said, a very fine book. It may not be Williams at his best, but it is still far, far better than Lewis and other religiously-inspired writers could ever hope to achieve. Williams' great achievement is to make the supramundane seem real and inevitable.
Now, that's not to say that is a bad thing. The problem is, though, that while War in Heaven had a very clear plot, and benefited from the fact that we all know what the Holy Grail is, here the plot is more a series of sketches, showing human cupidity in response to the sudden promise offered by the Stone of Solomon,and in addition, the Stone itself is never very clearly defined. And so the climax, where one character achieves the end of desire that the Stone promises, is not as stunning as it could be, partially because of this lack of clarity, but also partially because for reasons that are not entirely clear, Williams chose to represent it from outside, so we have, and never have, any idea what it was that actually happened.
So, I see this novel as transitional for Williams, shifting from the theological thrillers of his earlier work to the deeper philosophical novels of his later work. We begin to feel the touch of the numinous, and there are some very successful scenes, for example, Sir Giles Tumulty's final confrontation with the Stone, where he does pull off his later trick of making all of us experience, however much at a remove, something of transcendence, but too much space that could be taken up with philosophical exploration is filled with (albeit rather good) satire at the expense of politicians and trade unionists.
One final thing: Williams suggests a fascinating and, I think, unique theory of time travel in this book. It's unlike any other I've read in that it removes entirely the possibility of paradox, but it has a rather startling consequence that I will not reveal for fear of spoiling the joy of discovering what is, in spite of all I've said, a very fine book. It may not be Williams at his best, but it is still far, far better than Lewis and other religiously-inspired writers could ever hope to achieve. Williams' great achievement is to make the supramundane seem real and inevitable.
October 20, 2024
This is my first Charles Williams novel; I intend to read more.
Williams was a member of the Inklings, the Christian writers group which included CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. Religiosity permeates this novel, but Williams doesn't bash you over the head with it or preach. He was the weirdest and most unorthodox member of the Inklings; the most 'Christian' characters in this novel are either agnostic or Muslim.
The story concerns a magic stone with various powers, including the ability to duplicate itself indefinitely, ending up in the wrong hands - people who want to put it to nefarious use - and the actions of various agents trying to figure out what needs to be done. It is set in Williams' present day: early 20th century England.
Williams' writing sometimes gets hard to follow. He describes quite a few mystical experiences and visions with trippy imagery. He does an incredibly admirable job of conveying the profundities of emotion and symbolism in such experiences, given how hard it is to put such things into words. A quote from George Steiner springs to mind, quoted by Karen Armstrong in The Case for God:
The mystical experience, the ekstasis, which throughout history has been interpreted as a connection to God or the gods, Nirvana, Dao, etc, is impossible to adequately describe, but Williams' does he damned best to anyway. He was clearly a deeply religious man, who had such experiences many, many times.
I also got the impression that Williams was a really, really nice guy who I'd want to be friends with. According to CS Lewis, everyone who met Williams loved him.
I'm digressing.
While aspects of the novel didn't work for me (I was a bit dissatisfied with the final quarter), overall I very much enjoyed this unconventional fantasy novel. The characters are believable and sympathetically drawn. The story moves along at a decent pace. Recommended.
Williams was a member of the Inklings, the Christian writers group which included CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. Religiosity permeates this novel, but Williams doesn't bash you over the head with it or preach. He was the weirdest and most unorthodox member of the Inklings; the most 'Christian' characters in this novel are either agnostic or Muslim.
The story concerns a magic stone with various powers, including the ability to duplicate itself indefinitely, ending up in the wrong hands - people who want to put it to nefarious use - and the actions of various agents trying to figure out what needs to be done. It is set in Williams' present day: early 20th century England.
Williams' writing sometimes gets hard to follow. He describes quite a few mystical experiences and visions with trippy imagery. He does an incredibly admirable job of conveying the profundities of emotion and symbolism in such experiences, given how hard it is to put such things into words. A quote from George Steiner springs to mind, quoted by Karen Armstrong in The Case for God:
"It is decisively the fact that language does have frontiers, that gives proof of a transcendent presence in the fabric of the world. It is just because we can go further, because speech so marvelously fails us, that we experience the certitude of a divine meaning surpassing and enfolding ours."
The mystical experience, the ekstasis, which throughout history has been interpreted as a connection to God or the gods, Nirvana, Dao, etc, is impossible to adequately describe, but Williams' does he damned best to anyway. He was clearly a deeply religious man, who had such experiences many, many times.
I also got the impression that Williams was a really, really nice guy who I'd want to be friends with. According to CS Lewis, everyone who met Williams loved him.
I'm digressing.
While aspects of the novel didn't work for me (I was a bit dissatisfied with the final quarter), overall I very much enjoyed this unconventional fantasy novel. The characters are believable and sympathetically drawn. The story moves along at a decent pace. Recommended.
March 19, 2020
Sometimes we are so confident that our human understanding has captured the essence of God, who is Mystery. The brilliance of books like this is in the use of metaphor and allegory to make some attempt to bring a new light of understanding to the God who has become all too familiar to us.
Here we have the Stone (always capitalized whenever it appears) that represents the power of the universe, to be used for either ill or good. On the surface, this might appear to be just another fantasy novel that seeks to penetrate the world of magic. But at its depths, it pursues a mystical search for the Power that holds the universe together.
A core theme that is developed through this book is how Evil always seeks power in separation while Good pursues power in union. I recently came across a rather astute observation by Richard Rohr. He observed that the only two days of creation which God did not look back on his creation as good was day one when he separated light and darkness and day two when he separated the earth and the heavens. He claims that the rest of the work of the Bible is about putting these two seeming opposites of darkness and light, heavens and earth, flesh and spirit, back together as one.
So in this book, the primary “sin” was to divide the Stone to expand the capacity of its power for selfish ambition; the primary aim by our hero and heroine was to reunite the separate fragmented entities of the Stone into One Union.
The Christian mystical thread which traces its way through Charles Williams’ novels requires a certain amount of perseverance and tenacity to access. Sometimes his writing is awkward and tangential. But the reward is always worth the patience, in this second novel as well as in the first. Most satisfying in the end!
Here we have the Stone (always capitalized whenever it appears) that represents the power of the universe, to be used for either ill or good. On the surface, this might appear to be just another fantasy novel that seeks to penetrate the world of magic. But at its depths, it pursues a mystical search for the Power that holds the universe together.
A core theme that is developed through this book is how Evil always seeks power in separation while Good pursues power in union. I recently came across a rather astute observation by Richard Rohr. He observed that the only two days of creation which God did not look back on his creation as good was day one when he separated light and darkness and day two when he separated the earth and the heavens. He claims that the rest of the work of the Bible is about putting these two seeming opposites of darkness and light, heavens and earth, flesh and spirit, back together as one.
So in this book, the primary “sin” was to divide the Stone to expand the capacity of its power for selfish ambition; the primary aim by our hero and heroine was to reunite the separate fragmented entities of the Stone into One Union.
The Christian mystical thread which traces its way through Charles Williams’ novels requires a certain amount of perseverance and tenacity to access. Sometimes his writing is awkward and tangential. But the reward is always worth the patience, in this second novel as well as in the first. Most satisfying in the end!
March 3, 2022
The fantasy novels of Charles Williams are probably some of the least known Christian imaginative apologetics from the early part of 20th century England. We can cite the works of Tolkien, Macdonald, Sayers, and Lewis quite readily, but we largely miss out on the fantasy-science-fiction (I don’t think they were intended to be the latter, but Many Dimensions has a multi-verse concept and invokes scientific introspection at various points.) such as All Hallow’s Eve, War in Heaven, and The Greater Trumps that I’ve previously enjoyed and The Place of the Lion and Descent into Hell which I have not yet consumed. In a number of ways, Many Dimensions seems the most modern of those I’ve experienced, even though it was written in 1931. The governmental reaction to “technology” as encountered in the novel seems just as apropos to social media, cryptocurrencies, and cyberwarfare for today as to the magical [remember the science-fiction adage that any sufficiently advanced technology will seem like magic to those who don’t understand it] discovery of an ancient artifact that enables one to break, apparently, the boundaries of time and space (and has healing qualities, to boot). “’But, because I can only be sequentially conscious,’ he argued, ‘must I hold that what is not communicated to consciousness does not exist? I think in a line-but there is the potentiality of the plane.’” (p. 54)
In Many Dimensions, Williams imagines a crown purported to belong to Israel’s King Solomon (though he insisted on using a pseudo-Arabic spelling of Suleiman ben-Daood even though one would have expected either the more Aramaic Suleiman bar-Daood or Aramaic Suleiman ibn-Daood) which contains a stone which enables one to move instantaneously through time-space, as well as other less-expected powers. In a near-Trinitarian symbolism, one discovers that the stone can be divided into a limitless number of Types (what we would call “Instances”) without diluting its powers (though the villain in the piece wants to keep attempting to “divide the Indivisible” for his own purposes, p. 57). As a result, the stone is sometimes referred to as “The End of Desire” (p. 43) and sometimes as “the Transcendence” (p. 59). Or, as one supporting character suggests later in the book: “It may be that the path and the Stone and the End are shown you that they may be one.” (p. 232)
As with Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey, the protagonist of Many Dimensions, Lord Arglay, is an agnostic. Both Sayers and Williams are unabashedly Christian but they refused to impose their beliefs on their creations (a model for the free-will argument if ever I heard one). As a result, Lord Arglay is faced with multiple conundrums in terms of dealing with the Unity expressed by the stone. For example, though the stone is known as the “End of Desire,” we read: “’I have no desire left at all,’ Lord Arglay said, ‘but I think that other is the better ending of desire. And though I cannot tell how you should seek for it, I think it waits for everyone who will have it. Also I think that perhaps the Stone chooses more than we know; and yet that is a fantasy is it not?’” (p. 102).
That the Stone exerts a will is revealed at various points, but human rebellion is demonstrated when one scientist wants to use the Stone to defeat the past. Asked why he wants to do that, he insists it is to be free. Asked why he wants to be free, we hear the argument of materialistic existentialism we have heard on multiple occasions: “’If a man can defeat the result of all the past,‘ the Professor said, ‘if he can know what is to be and cause that it shall not be…’” (pp. 88-89).
So, there is that age-old desire to “be” God. Yet, while multiple contingents want to use the Stone to play “God,” one character refuses to use the Stone, even to protect the Stone. After trying to rationalize using the Stone for what it “could not” do for itself, we read: “Not being a student of religious history Chloe was ignorant of what things have been done in the strength of that plea, or with what passionate anxiety men have struggled to prevent the subordination of the Omnipotent” (p. 217) Now there’s irony for you, the vulnerable trying to protect the All-Powerful! Yet, Williams is quite correct, humanity does so in trying to ensure that their beliefs are not disrupted.
There is even a counterpart where government bureaucrats try to diffuse the potential disruption of society by the Stone’s will by presenting a “false flag” stone to attempt to get people to disbelieve. Disbelief, they reason, would destroy its power. “People must not be allowed to believe in it.” (p. 236) Of course, they didn’t talk about “false flag” operations in 1931, the bureaucrats in Williams’ story call their fake stone a “focus.” (p. 237) Another counterpart is the judgment on an incredibly selfish character whose “…life was ruined. Ah, very justly, it actually was - first, by the discontent which she perpetually nursed, and secondly, by the drastic financial rearrangements which followed her husband’s suicide.” (p. 263)
I often tell those in my congregation that the secret to effective life is finding the purpose of God and getting in on it. Many Dimensions is a more subtle way of presenting the same point. It isn’t as overt as my sermons (fortunately), but it underscores the same message in a delightful and fascinating story. Oh, there are some classic divine interventions such as we “wish” would happen to vile specimens of humanity (at one point, a would-be villain is struck by lightning in a classic trope), but all-in-all, the novel is a subtle apologetic that rarely spells out its orthodoxy (though there is a scene in a near-heavenly dimension with definite echoes of the Book of Revelation on pp. 168-169).
It is inevitable, however, that a work of literature is an artifact of its own era. For all of its conceptual imagination that fits the modern world and eternal references which fit the spiritual world, Many Dimensions offers a rather patronizing view of its female protagonist. As vital as Chloe is to the plot, there is a sense of her needing protection from the males in the cast and one point at which she is told, “Try to be masculine and rational.” (p. 127) Many Dimensions is a delightful work despite its anachronistic sentiments and it bears a profundity beyond its petty gender discrimination (though even that is mitigated in the importance of Chloe’s character). 21st century readers may lose patience with the slow, perhaps plodding, pace, but those who bear with the style of its day will be rewarded with a fascinating experience,
In Many Dimensions, Williams imagines a crown purported to belong to Israel’s King Solomon (though he insisted on using a pseudo-Arabic spelling of Suleiman ben-Daood even though one would have expected either the more Aramaic Suleiman bar-Daood or Aramaic Suleiman ibn-Daood) which contains a stone which enables one to move instantaneously through time-space, as well as other less-expected powers. In a near-Trinitarian symbolism, one discovers that the stone can be divided into a limitless number of Types (what we would call “Instances”) without diluting its powers (though the villain in the piece wants to keep attempting to “divide the Indivisible” for his own purposes, p. 57). As a result, the stone is sometimes referred to as “The End of Desire” (p. 43) and sometimes as “the Transcendence” (p. 59). Or, as one supporting character suggests later in the book: “It may be that the path and the Stone and the End are shown you that they may be one.” (p. 232)
As with Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey, the protagonist of Many Dimensions, Lord Arglay, is an agnostic. Both Sayers and Williams are unabashedly Christian but they refused to impose their beliefs on their creations (a model for the free-will argument if ever I heard one). As a result, Lord Arglay is faced with multiple conundrums in terms of dealing with the Unity expressed by the stone. For example, though the stone is known as the “End of Desire,” we read: “’I have no desire left at all,’ Lord Arglay said, ‘but I think that other is the better ending of desire. And though I cannot tell how you should seek for it, I think it waits for everyone who will have it. Also I think that perhaps the Stone chooses more than we know; and yet that is a fantasy is it not?’” (p. 102).
That the Stone exerts a will is revealed at various points, but human rebellion is demonstrated when one scientist wants to use the Stone to defeat the past. Asked why he wants to do that, he insists it is to be free. Asked why he wants to be free, we hear the argument of materialistic existentialism we have heard on multiple occasions: “’If a man can defeat the result of all the past,‘ the Professor said, ‘if he can know what is to be and cause that it shall not be…’” (pp. 88-89).
So, there is that age-old desire to “be” God. Yet, while multiple contingents want to use the Stone to play “God,” one character refuses to use the Stone, even to protect the Stone. After trying to rationalize using the Stone for what it “could not” do for itself, we read: “Not being a student of religious history Chloe was ignorant of what things have been done in the strength of that plea, or with what passionate anxiety men have struggled to prevent the subordination of the Omnipotent” (p. 217) Now there’s irony for you, the vulnerable trying to protect the All-Powerful! Yet, Williams is quite correct, humanity does so in trying to ensure that their beliefs are not disrupted.
There is even a counterpart where government bureaucrats try to diffuse the potential disruption of society by the Stone’s will by presenting a “false flag” stone to attempt to get people to disbelieve. Disbelief, they reason, would destroy its power. “People must not be allowed to believe in it.” (p. 236) Of course, they didn’t talk about “false flag” operations in 1931, the bureaucrats in Williams’ story call their fake stone a “focus.” (p. 237) Another counterpart is the judgment on an incredibly selfish character whose “…life was ruined. Ah, very justly, it actually was - first, by the discontent which she perpetually nursed, and secondly, by the drastic financial rearrangements which followed her husband’s suicide.” (p. 263)
I often tell those in my congregation that the secret to effective life is finding the purpose of God and getting in on it. Many Dimensions is a more subtle way of presenting the same point. It isn’t as overt as my sermons (fortunately), but it underscores the same message in a delightful and fascinating story. Oh, there are some classic divine interventions such as we “wish” would happen to vile specimens of humanity (at one point, a would-be villain is struck by lightning in a classic trope), but all-in-all, the novel is a subtle apologetic that rarely spells out its orthodoxy (though there is a scene in a near-heavenly dimension with definite echoes of the Book of Revelation on pp. 168-169).
It is inevitable, however, that a work of literature is an artifact of its own era. For all of its conceptual imagination that fits the modern world and eternal references which fit the spiritual world, Many Dimensions offers a rather patronizing view of its female protagonist. As vital as Chloe is to the plot, there is a sense of her needing protection from the males in the cast and one point at which she is told, “Try to be masculine and rational.” (p. 127) Many Dimensions is a delightful work despite its anachronistic sentiments and it bears a profundity beyond its petty gender discrimination (though even that is mitigated in the importance of Chloe’s character). 21st century readers may lose patience with the slow, perhaps plodding, pace, but those who bear with the style of its day will be rewarded with a fascinating experience,
February 11, 2013
What a treasure I have found in Charles Williams! Though, did I expect anything less from a guy who regularly shared story ideas, philosophy, and theology with JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis? This is as deep as deep gets and funny enough to have me laughing out loud a few times.
Does it read like anything from his famous contemporaries? It's certainly no Tolkien but it does bare some similarities to CS Lewis' stranger stuff such as Till We Have Faces, The Dark Tower, and That Hiddeous Strength.
This story is steeped in Arabic mythology about Sulemain Ben Daood (King Solomon) but with a Christian message - if you can fathom it. It is about a Stone that does not exist in time but rather, all of time exists within it. Many people lay their hands on it and use it with many different motives. One guys gets stuck in a circle of time, forever repeating the same 10 minutes. One guy finds immortality with it as he is being hung. His neck breaks and he is forever paralyzed and never able to die. Crazy crazy stuff! But really what it is about is, "what would we do if we had access to the Greatest Power?" And, "If God is the Greatest Power, and if we have access to Him, do we use Him, protect Him, or be used by Him?"
Does it read like anything from his famous contemporaries? It's certainly no Tolkien but it does bare some similarities to CS Lewis' stranger stuff such as Till We Have Faces, The Dark Tower, and That Hiddeous Strength.
This story is steeped in Arabic mythology about Sulemain Ben Daood (King Solomon) but with a Christian message - if you can fathom it. It is about a Stone that does not exist in time but rather, all of time exists within it. Many people lay their hands on it and use it with many different motives. One guys gets stuck in a circle of time, forever repeating the same 10 minutes. One guy finds immortality with it as he is being hung. His neck breaks and he is forever paralyzed and never able to die. Crazy crazy stuff! But really what it is about is, "what would we do if we had access to the Greatest Power?" And, "If God is the Greatest Power, and if we have access to Him, do we use Him, protect Him, or be used by Him?"
September 24, 2007
Williams is the least known of the Inklings, the group of writers who met weekly in a pub in Oxford. (The others are C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Dorothy Sayers.)
Like Lewis, he was a devout Christian, and all his novels, adult fantasies, are written to teach something. His background is complex, though. He was active in several esoteric groups for years before committing to Christianity and I find the influence those teachings as dominant as the Christian themes in his books.
Many Dimensions is about the alchemical concept of the Prima Materia, the stuff out of which reality is created.
I think all of Williams' novels are worth reading as curiosities, as introductions to esoteric ideas, or as very original understandings of Christian thought.
They're pretty compelling as novels, too, but they're dated.
Like Lewis, he was a devout Christian, and all his novels, adult fantasies, are written to teach something. His background is complex, though. He was active in several esoteric groups for years before committing to Christianity and I find the influence those teachings as dominant as the Christian themes in his books.
Many Dimensions is about the alchemical concept of the Prima Materia, the stuff out of which reality is created.
I think all of Williams' novels are worth reading as curiosities, as introductions to esoteric ideas, or as very original understandings of Christian thought.
They're pretty compelling as novels, too, but they're dated.
March 18, 2019
I am honestly not positive how I feel about this book. It was not bad but it was not amazing. The concept was interesting as it is about a Stone that essentially has the properties of God. The stone is also named the end of desires, which is appropriately named since it causes havoc in the world. The odd part about this book is that the marvelous is invading the ordinary. This is not a new idea, but it is so pronounced in this book it can be off-putting. Such as the characters trying to explain the magic of the stone in logical terms that work for our own laws of the world. These explanations can grow confusing and I honestly do not understand all of it even now. I don't even really understand what happened in the end. The ending was super unsatisfying and it felt very anti-climatic.
Like I said it is not a bad read but personally I can't wholeheartedly recommend.
Like I said it is not a bad read but personally I can't wholeheartedly recommend.
January 1, 2014
As with other Williams novels I've read its very tough going - hopefully at the end it will have been worth the effort! I'll probably have to read the explanation of Thomas Howard to figure out what I read and missed! I'm almost done and haven't "gotten it" much yet. Am I that dense or was Williams a bad writer? I think I got more in the course of reading from "The Place of the Lion" and "Descent into Hell" than from this one - maybe they were better written. I'd like to see the movie versions of all of them!
January 25, 2013
Really quite an interesting book with elements I had not expected. Interesting also in that in some ways it has some precursors to the Lord of the Rings. There is a magic ring involved, but mainly a stone from the crown of Solomon. Unlike the ring of power in the LOTR these items are not evil of themselves and yet still there is the temptation in the use by others to use them in selfish ways. These themes are much more fully developed in Tolkien's works, but Charles Williams efforts here are also worthwhile.
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