Giants and Gin: C.S. Lewis' Narnia and Paganism
| So, recently I have been reading The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe when I have a few spare moments and have just come to the part where Beaver is telling the 4 (well, I would have to check but I think it is just the 3 by that point) that Jadis, the white witch, is not human at all but rather half Jinn and half giantess (I just looked up "Jinn" in the encyclopedia I got Nathan's kids, or rather his son Josh told me he had looked it up, and it is apparently some form of a genie). Those who have read the whole series will remember that in The Magician's Nephew Jadis came from a third world called Charn, that was dying and burnt out. So in Lewis' Narnia there are basically 3 "worlds": Charn, Narnia and Earth. I think that if you take "Earth" as the elemental rather than the "planet" you find the name actually very fitting for this world because it is the earth element, the muggleness of mundane material details ... IE everyday life. I believe that the other two worlds stand on either side of our muggle world as the Christian Mythopoeic (Narnia and Aslan) and the Pagan Idolatry (Charn and Jadis). In this sense "myth" is sort of "neutral" in much the same way that in That Hideous Strength Lewis has Dimble tell his wife that Merlin's form of magic comes from a time when magic was more "neutral." But there is a huge difference between the two directions in which the truth of myth can be taken: The Judeo-Christian progression of fulfillment in Christ and the pagan idolatry. |
Comments on "Giants and Gin: C.S. Lewis' Narnia and Paganism"
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Merlin said ... (December 27, 2005 12:20 AM)
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Anonymous said ... (January 01, 2006 11:37 PM)
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Merlin said ... (January 02, 2006 10:24 AM)
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Merlin said ... (January 03, 2006 8:41 PM)
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Merlin said ... (January 03, 2006 8:52 PM)
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Merlin said ... (January 03, 2006 8:57 PM)
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Pauli said ... (January 03, 2006 9:20 PM)
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Merlin said ... (January 04, 2006 11:23 PM)
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Merlin said ... (January 04, 2006 11:33 PM)
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Anonymous said ... (January 05, 2006 2:32 AM)
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Merlin said ... (January 05, 2006 6:13 AM)
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Merlin said ... (January 05, 2006 6:26 AM)
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Anonymous said ... (January 05, 2006 6:43 AM)
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post a commentNote,
I made some mention in my post defending discussion of Pirates of the Caribbean of the fact that I see Rum in that movie as symbolic of pagan cultic myth, and I should mention here that the title of this post is an adaptation of that theme ... IE it refers to Jadis' being half Jinn, but I spelled it as the alchoholic beverage.
I realize there might be some confusion and questions of "where exactly do you get this from or how do you defend that connection." (And for the record, the pun was completely my own and I ascribe to it no place as any type of support of my theory). My reply consists basically of one word: Bachus, the Greek god of wine and revelry.
(This came to mind when reading The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe recently when Tumnus says that when the fauns would dance with the dryads in summer, singing and playing music, sometimes Bachus himself would even come to join them).
hi there. that's an interesting thought.
the only thing i can't fit there, is that in the story where they go to the 'between place' with the pools, there were many pools. so there were more than 2 other worlds.
how would you expand your idea to include that?
jkr (in australia)
JKR,
I have a response coming and a good one. I had thoughts on that when I wrote it but was in too much of a hurry to include them so I'm glad you asked.
Currently though, I have been tooling around Queens and Manhattan on New Year's holiday and the friend with whom I am staying has breakfast waiting and I'm famished.
but just wanted to let you knw to check back 'cause I will be writing a response.
So, anyway.
JKR, here is my response on the "wood of the worlds" in Magician's Nephew.
It's a really good observation and one I am glad you brought up since, like I said, it occurred to me but I didn't have time to put it in. - I think it is a real part of Lewis' genius.
It is like the other genders mentioned in his Perelandra. The two main genders related are male and female/mars and venus/Malacandra and Perelandra (I capitalize only the last pair as a tip of the hat to Lewis because I think the to be much more complete persons in his one book than the gods are in all of the mythologies). He mentions, however, taht there are more ... and we sort of see a hint of the "other gender dimensions" in the other Eldils in That Hideous Strength, but really it is still the case that the only two we really know as what we call "genders" are male and female - that is to say that they are the only two that really apply to HUMANS. It is a stroke of humble genius for Lewis to find a narratological way to express the truth that other genders are possible theoretically.
In the end, however, all that can really be done is to note that the infiniteness of God demands their possibility. It is ananolgous to a 5th dimension, we humans can't conceive of it (Time is the 4th dimension - I'm borrowing from somebody but I forget who, but I've heard it in a number of classes, about a 3 dimensional hand penetrating a 2 dimensional world - all the inhabitants of such a world would perceive is five circles if the penetration point was the fingers separately, or 1 big circle if the penetration point was the wrist etc etc - the inhabitants could never conceive of a 3rd dimension until they experienced it, any more than a person born blind could conceive of color)
Anyway, it is the same with the genders and the worlds. From the standpoint of our experience of gender, we cannot conscive of a 3rd or more (meaning a positively defined 3rd, not the neuter "gender" of Latin and Greek, which is really simply "ungenedered"). Nor, from the standpoint of human history, can we conceive of another "world" other than the 3 Lewis actually shows in the Narnia books. But his depiction of many pools in the wood and his discussion of 7 genders in Perelandra are a really neat tip of his hat to the infinity of God.
In the end, we can only really concern ourselves with what touches our real existence, but it is a good thing to realize how limitless God is.
By the By, here is another point that is really important, on my response I just gave. Speaking philosophically God could NOT make as many Genders as he wished. He could not arbitrarily pick a number. Actually it would be more accurate to say He WOULD not ("would" being a subjunctive form of "will" - ie His will). They must be based in His nature.
The heresy of saying He could is called "Nominalism" and the biggest propent was William of Ockham in the 14th century. Now, of course, one could ask, "couldn't He do it if He wanted?" But this is sort of akin to asking the question, "could God sin if he wanted too?" - a rhetorical trick: If he could he would be evil and not God, and if He could not he would not be omnipotent - and thus not God. The usual example is "could God make a square circle?" and that one sort of reveals the absurdity of the matter.
If God were to create something that did not find its ultimate ground in his nature it would be a naturally existing thing and thus good, but not based in God and thus God's nature would not be the grounding of all goodness in the world, and He would thus not be God.
Ockham's classicals statement of his nominalism, if I remember correctly, was that God oculd have created the world such that murder was meritorious and martyrdom was a mortal sin.
If you want to think of it this way it is like "super-natural" and "contra-natural". When we get to heaven we may discover physical dimensions we never dreamed of, ones that transcend our 3/4 dimensions, but unless God is a very cruel God we will not find any that contradict our dimensions.
Great comment; as far as religions go, Islam and a great deal of the fundamentalist varieties of Preotestantism are shot through with this type of nominalist thinking. This reminds me of a statement you made once, Merlin, in a discussion when someone said "The world is the way it is because that's how God's wanted it" and you said "The world is the way it is because that's how God is. That, to me, is a great example of why Christianity is so compatible with alchemy. The Emerald Tablet says "As above so below, as below so above" and that corresponds with "on earth as it is in Heaven" and "My ways are higher than your ways" (Isaiah, I think?) Supernatual: super meaning "above", "higher", but not going against.
Actually I said, "the world is the way it is because God is the way He is," and he said "but that's the Protestant position;" and I thought "no, the P position is that the world is the way it is because God declares/decides to make it such" ... but I was not able to get a word in edgewise after that.
At one point in beginning my MA a lot of this dawned on me and I was having a conversation with a friend and and fellow grad-student and I half joked that if you're gonna be famous as a theologian (with a small t - with a big T is when you truly enter into dialogue with God, not just about Him) you have to have a catch-phrase, and I knew what mine would be but couldn't decide which way round it should be: "immanent transcendance" or " transcendant immanence." I have since decided on the first since it is the transcendance that is the basis of the immanence ... but I found out that night that it did not matter, since my friend told me, "um ... Karl Rahner already coined it, dude," and I thought, "shucks, back to the drawing board." LOL
I just thought of something in regards to my original response on the "wood of the worlds." The question arises of non-Christain religinos such as Budhism or Shintoism. And that's a touchy subject. I would utlimately have to agree with the thought of one like Chesterton in Orthodoxy, that they are in error (meaning their system as a whole, not that some of the elements therein might not be actually good and right, and also I should clarify that I am speaking on the objective level of, say, a distinction such as "correct vs incorrect" and not going near judging subjective culpability of individuals) but it's a subject (for precisely the second consideration in the last parenthetical).
And I would have to agree with Chesterton that the Incarnation really changed the whole ball-game and made it at least GREATLY difficult to be a "noble pagan" (from the standpoint of Christian Theology and doctrine etc)
ooh. just found these comments...
ummm ok.
i guess i'm a protestant and i have always learned/ assumed (?) that the power of god's word (john 1 etc) and his incarnation is intricately woven in with the fact that it is always consistant with his being. not just his determining. or even that he can't determine differently to what he inherently is.
re gender.
i have this kind of image in my head of gender being more of a continuum than two separate poles. god being the whole (being greater than the sum of it's parts and all that). so he created man and woman and thereby express the different sides of that, but it's from a point of wholeness so within both of the genders we recognise there are incredible variations and nuances.
so far as how that extends to the religious beliefs represented in this discussion, i still have no idea how to fit it all together in my head.
by stating who he *is* there is a suggestion for what he *is not*. again, this wouldn't just be something he nominated (is that the term?) but by his very nature unavoidable....
i don't 'get' this yet. i really don't know how to fit it together....
(btw. even in anne of green gables ;-) a minister is asked whether god could make a rock so big he couldn't lift it. lol )
cheers,
jkr (in australia)
oh, how do i check up on all the comments? do i have to plough through or is there a way of finding out if a comment has been commented on?
Pauli, before I get to responding to JKR ... you know more about how she can find out about new comments than I do. I know somehwere along the line in my travles on the web over the years I saw something about "notify me when this page is updated" ... I don't know if that would work into the template to have an option like that for each post or something ... it's out of my realm of knowledge but if something like that is possible it might be nice for people like JKR, like some sort of email update when a comment is posted on a post the person has "subscribed" to, an email with a link directly to the post and comments.
Just an idea
JKR,
I should apologize for our comments possibly sounding "anti-Protestant." We are both converts to Catholicism and forget charity sometimes. While the whole thing of "justification" being the main tenet of salvation and justification being a primarily juridical/nominal/arbitrary thing (God declaring you to be righteous, without that necessarily entailing Him bringing you to actually become righteous) was a primary tenet for Martin Luther (Luther reporedly said, "I am nothing if not an Ockhamist," Ockham being kind of the "father" of "nominalism") and still is a formal point for many in the "Reformed" tradition in which Pauli and I grew up (often refered to as "Calvinists" or "hyper-Calvinists) - it is not fair to go around spouting off about "protestants." I personally have really enjoyed your comments and questions and I think (from what I can tell here online) that you're very insightful and have a good grasp on some fo these things and a healthy attitude toward the fact that smoe of them really are mysteries, in the sublime sense of the word.
I think you'll have great conversations with your kids when they get a little older because I can tell from on here that you have a genuine thirst for truth and understanding and you're very interesting to comment with (and I'm willing to bet good money taht you are a very beatiful mother, like our Lord's) ... one of the most amazing expereinces is watch my nephews (Pauli's and my sister's kids) grow as well as our friend Nathan's kids, to whom we are honorary uncles ... they bust my chops hard sometimes but I wouldn't trade their love for the world.
*blushes and runs off to make a cup of tea*
jkr