The Silver Chair

Faith & Science Conversation
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After a quick “re-enjoyment” of the Silver Chair I now see at least one reference to the “nine names of Aslan” though it is only as a teaser and without actually listing any of them. At the end of the story as Pole and Eustace are privileged to ride the centaurs back toward the harbor, we get this description of their conversation:

The Centaurs were very polite in a grave, gracious, grown-up kind of way, and as they cantered through the Narnian woods, they spoke … of herbs and roots, the influences of the planets, the nine names of Aslan with their meanings, and things of that sort.

Are those “nine names” actually given in any of the other books? I suspect this was just a teaser reference, but knowing Lewis (as now further revealed by Ward, he probably did actually have such names squirreled away.)

[Also noticed the theme of “lunacy” more now, reading this with the planets in mind. That label even gets explicit mention at the end when referring to the headmaster at the English school. And on a related note, has it struck anybody else how much cultural movement we’ve experienced within our own lifetimes on issues of racism and gender? Stuff that didn’t even spark a notice in me when I read these decades ago, now bothers me as being inexcusably sexist now - the way Lewis makes it a point to highlight that the headmaster was a woman; as well as other sorts of condescension that now pokes through in such stark contrast to where we are today. Of course none of that is any surprise - we know Lewis and his time. But it saddens me that these sorts of taints may keep some sensitive young parents today from wanting their kids to be exposed to the more important and enduring ideas. And what a loss that would be for them.]

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Yes, I wonder how you and others address that sort of thing. We sometimes run into this while reading books to our kids in the evening. Sometimes, I skip over things that are overtly unkind (this happens even in wars), disrespectful, or un Christlike–and that slips into misogyny and racism as being strong “no no’s.” I hesitate to drop some authors entirely–but I do often wait on them till my kids are older, so that they can understand things better. G K Chesterton’s “Father Brown” series is another example that struck me again. I enjoy the mysteries and some spiritual aspects, but he had some xenophobic, racist attitudes as significant blind spots. It’s ironic that I can see it even more easily as some of his ire is directed to Protestants, and coming from a Protestant background, I feel the jabs more keenly–which in turn alerts me to the duty of looking out for prejudice in other directions. I still get a lot out of Chesterton. It’s interesting that his debating style was reportedly usually good humored, and he wound up being friends with his opponents, as I recall reading. I wonder how many of my own current attitudes will be criticized by my grandchildren.

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Yes, that is unfortunate. I remember it most in The Last Battle, which for a while was my favorite of the series, but may not be so once I read it again. That will be interesting to consider how to address that when reading it to kids…

I wouldn’t be surprised – that would be a good thing to keep a lookout for during a re-read of the entire series. I wonder what the significance of the number 9 would be…

I remember after reading Ward for the first time, how I began to understand why some people accused Lewis of mixing Christianity with pagan myth, and why that might have bothered them. I always assumed that had to do with the presence of witches and fauns and things of that sort, but I realize it goes a lot deeper. Not that it bothers me now, but it was interesting to get an idea for how deep his knowledge of myths was.

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I haven’t much … yet. I.e. My kids are young adults now, so it was probably ~20 years ago when I read these to them - and I don’t remember feeling any need to sanitize them then - maybe I did and have forgotten. But in any case, the approach you mention of just waiting till kids are older so that you can discuss such things with them is probably wise. My first impulse might be to sanitize, but on further reflection - I would hate to have children get excited about a story … later talk it up with friends; but then discover for themselves any ugly bits their parent left out. That might leave a much more rotten taste in their mouth (not to mention then, the wondering of what else mom or dad saw fit to ‘protect’ them from…) than if we just let the author show forth, gems, warts, and all; and use the warts as a good platform for discussion. That strikes me as the more healthy approach to take - even with (especially with) young kids.

We can also charitably think what sort of person Lewis might be like if he were among us today. While I can’t imagine him having much patience with the present cultural obsessions of either left or right, I nonetheless think he would not be entirely unsympathetic with modern movements either - and certainly not oblivious to them.

Our family really loved the TV show representation of that series! I haven’t read all those books, so I’m suspecting that the xenophobic bits you are remembering must have been sanitized out of that for its recent TV rendering. In any case, the show struck me as a bit anachronistically modern in its cultural sensibilities - because the character Father Brown seemed suspiciously progressive to me. In any case, I love how his approach to criminals was to reach out and even cultivate relationships with them. Such a breath of fresh air compared to typical crime dramas.

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yeah … and did you notice the little “influences of the planets” phrase thrown in there?! Now that we’ve got this planet idea in our heads, it seems to be poking out everywhere … as if Lewis wasn’t trying all that hard to hide anything. I wonder if he spent most of his years since writing these with an eager ear out to see if anybody would “find his Easter egg”?

I think Lewis can serve as such a valuable bridge precisely because of his willingness to see the world in ways that would resonate with conservatives (his unapologetic Christo-centric views) and yet also resonate in so many ways with the left (his refusal to see any enmity between science (real science) and faith - and to be unafraid of ‘pagan’ influences, etc.). And yet with our situation now where left and right seem hell-bent on running farther apart from each other, the widening chasm spanned by this ‘Lewisian bridge’ may be stretching it beyond the bounds of its elasticity. If people on the left find the sexism too intolerable and won’t read Lewis as a result … the people on the right, I suspect were finding him intolerable for entirely different reasons. And then he is lost to both. Which I maintain is a tragedy - and an unfortunate loss for the partisans of both sides.

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I have not yet purchased “Planet Narnia”, @Laura, and so may be treading on territory that Ward has likely well-traversed there. But I feel like I’m on a “pre-discovery” adventure of my own with my ‘fortuitous’ reading of Lewis’ “Discarded Image” which was his last completed work, published posthumously in 1964. So it should be (was, I’m sure) fertile ground for Ward’s Thesis. Indeed, as hard a slog as it is for me to read, I’m still seeing definite themes emerging. Look over the extended quote below …don’t let obscure (to me) architectural details slow you down … just look for the theme - and especially the last paragraph.

The planets look down from the capitals in the Doge’s palace, each surrounded by his ‘children’, by the mortals who exhibit his influence. At Florence they meet us again, strangely disguised by the influence of Saracenic iconography, in Santa Maria del Fiore; and again in Santa Maria Novella, paired off, after the manner of the Convivio, with the Seven Liberal Arts. The Salone (Palazzo della Ragione) at Padua is, in a different art, a close parallel to Spenser’s Mutability cantos. We have the planets, their children, the Zodiacal signs, the Apostles, and the labours of men all arranged under their appropriate months. And just as the planets are not merely present in the Testament of Cresseid but woven into the plot, so in the buildings the cosmological material is sometimes woven into what we may call the plot of a building. One might at first suppose that the constellations depicted on the cupola above the altar in the old sacristy of San Lorenzo at Florence were mere decoration; but they are in the right positions for 9 July 1422 when the altar was consecrated. In the Farnesina Palace they are arranged to suit the birth-day of Chigi for whom the work was done. And the Salone at Padua is apparently designed so that at each sunrise the beams will fall on the Sign in which Sol would then ride.
The lost art of Pageant loved to re-state similar themes. And it has lately been shown that many Renaissance pictures which were once thought purely fanciful are loaded, and almost overloaded, with philosophy.

Lewis, C. S… The Discarded Image (pp. 149-150). HarperOne. Kindle Edition.

Lewis is here admiring among medieval works, what he himself apparently did with his own published Narnian Chronicles - loaded his apparently ‘fanciful’ stories with philosophical themes - even (and especially) to the point of following the cosmological model!

Lewis goes on to write in that chapter (Ch. 8), about how the medieval author was not trying to “be original” in the sense that modern authors strive to be. To them, the highest striving of an author was not to produce a story of one’s own (why would one be so desperate to resort to one’s own paltry offerings when reality itself has such grand themes on offer that are so much higher and better!) - no they were in the mindset of rehearsing the great cosmic model of reality already on display.

Lewis at one point states that they aspired to do this in ways that none of their successors ever would for a long time after. I’m wondering if Lewis, penning those words, was not himself one of those so aspiring.

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Thanks for that suggestion. I talked about it with my wife tonight, and we agree with it that it’s wise.
I guess it is a bit case-specific. For example, we both choose to avoid violent films (we don’t watch them on our own, either). We both love the Tolkien books, “Lord of the Rings,” but feel the films glorified violence a bit more (I know, that’s not the case for many here!). However, we told our 12 year old he could watch the Peter Jackson films with us, as long as he read the books first (we feel he’ll get more out of them that way) He’s just finished “Fellowship of the Ring,” and watched the movie with my wife today. They reviewed the violent portions verbally, but my wife skipped some of them. Now, my wife actually does better with violence and movies than I do (I can’t even sit through Anne of Green Gables at a stretch any more; I took care of our 2 younger children this afternoon to free them up for the showing). Maybe we will wind up sitting through the entire movie with each of our kids, as time goes on. However, I agree that we don’t want to suppress something without a good explanation. I’m still not entirely sure where to go with this–but that’s a very good point.

My wife has watched many of the most recent series of Father Brown (and I’ve seen some). Yes, they are quite a bit more progressive than GK Chesterton was–but he laid some groundwork in his books that I think would have been helpful to his eventual expansion there, too. What is it with Catholic priests and mysteries, by the way? Father Dowling, and another of our favorite detectives, Don Matteo, an Italian priest–all of them are pretty good stories. In Don Matteo, by the way, he’s amazingly empathetic. You usually end up understanding where the culprit comes from emotionaly, even if you don’t agree with him–and through wisdom and love, Don Matteo always gets the bad guy to confess and repent by the end!

Thanks for your insight.

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I can’t help but wonder if Lewis would counter by claiming this as an example of what he called “chronological snobbery”… the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited. You must find why it went out of date. Was it ever refuted (and if so by whom, where, and how conclusively) or did it merely die away as fashions do? If the latter, this tells us nothing about its truth or falsehood. From seeing this, one passes to the realisation that our own age is also ‘a period’, and certainly has, like all periods, its own characteristic illusions. They are likeliest to lurk in those widespread assumptions which are so ingrained in the age that no one dares to attack or feels it necessary to defend them.

:open_mouth:

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Or maybe not even be aware of their existence … the very cultural air we breath. It takes a foreigner visiting to ask us what that smell is in our air. What smell?

“He who marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next.”
-William Inge

To which I might now give reply … yes, but one must either be dead or a marooned hermit if they have no notion of where all those spirits are currently congregating, and at least take some critical stock of the situation.

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Fair enough, but I would point out that those current spirit of the age of radical gender egalitarianism certainly fits the description of an cultural assumption “that no one dares to attack or feels it necessary to defend”

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Back to The Silver Chair, I’ve always loved this quote. It’s from right after Puddleglum heroically resists the witch’s spell & stomps out the fire into which she had thrown the magic potion. It’s perhaps the most stinging rebuke of scientism/philosophical naturalism that I’ve read anywhere:

“One word, Ma’am,” he said, coming back from the fire; limping, because of the pain. “One
word. All you’ve been saying is quite right, I shouldn’t wonder. I’m a chap who always liked to
know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won’t deny any of what you said. But
there’s one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things — trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we’re leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that’s a small loss if the world’s as dull a place as you say.”

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Thanks again for getting me started on this, Laura. Thanks to watching the Socrates in the City interview of Ward, I also then went on to watch all three hour long episodes where Eric Metaxas interviews Walter Hooper, and come away from that wondering why he isn’t a more well known treasure.

I now feel like I know so much more about both Lewis and Tolkien.

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You’re quite welcome – that’s one book I feel like I still haven’t recommended often enough, because I think most Narnia fans would enjoy it quite a lot.

Those other interviews sound interesting too, though I still need to make time to watch the documentary that BeagleLady recommended in this post: The Fantasy Makers: Short film about the Christian roots of the fantasy genre

[I try to get my husband to watch documentaries with me, but at the end of the day, with all the stuff going on in the world, he/we usually just want something comedic or fantasy-based instead :wink: ]

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Recently I listened to the Narnia books on Audible, it being some time since I last read them (allegedly, the family legend goes) in one night.

I found the magicians nephew to be my favourite, due to my love for ancient cosmology and creation myths (the same is true for Tolkien’s ainulindale).

I also enjoyed the VotDT. The only one which I didn’t like was the last battle, I understand, after reading it, why many see messages of religious intolerance in the Narnia books. Its fairly obvious to me that Tash is meant to be the Muslim god.

But none of this takes away the good in my favourite stories of my childhood.

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Since you (and I) alluded to Lewis’ use of ancient/medieval cosmology, has anyone here read the Discarded Image? I thought it was a great scholarly book on Ancient Cosmology, which we frequently talk about here.

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I just finished it yesterday! (first time). Much of the scholarly detail in it was lost on me since I have little-to-no direct exposure to the great authors that were Lewis’ stock and trade … except by second hand consumption (not insignificant, given the impacts those ancient authors, from Virgil to Dante to Aquinas to Milton have had on our modern cultural foundations … so I at least was treated to some further insight into that cultural air I’ve been breathing). But even for all that went over my head, I felt that I still caught a wealth just from the bits - (large chunks some of them felt like!) that did help me make new connections!

One of the main points toward the end that was new to me, was the contrast Lewis pointed out between the medievals who were always in the presence of a transcendent model - a larger, perfect narrative that they always hoped to tap into; something outside and beyond themselves. So in that sense they would not have understood today’s authorial quest for “originality”. One of the things many today might find somewhat insulting (not always) is the charge of being “derivative”. “Oh - you’re just aping so-and-so who had that idea before you.” Okay - yes we do sometimes still do that deliberately when we really admire a great innovator and so want to carry their style forward, and feel honored if we are able to do so (hence my caveat). But by and large, we seem to reserve our greatest admiration for pioneers or innovators producing something we imagine to be truly new. That apparently was not the quest of the medieval authors who would have been crestfallen, after attempting to plug in to that highest of all narratives, to hear the criticism that the only thing they succeeded in doing was to regurgitate something that came only from inside themselves.

So in that sense there was an intense medieval humility that has today been exchanged for an equally intense inward-turned arrogance. [That would be the cynical criticism at any rate … perhaps the modern would spin it as: we have relocated our search for the transcendent from “out there” to “inside ourselves” - and the modern might fancy that this was progress. Which leads me to some thoughts from Lewis’ ‘Abolition of Man’ - but will save that for another post.] There were other surprises in the book too, but that was from the latter chapters and is the one fresh on my mind.

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Reading it I was amazed at the beauty of ancient cosmology (as I was when I first discovered scholarship of Genesis 1), a world full of wonder and life, and mournful of what we have lost. Or have we necessarily lost it at all? As Lewis said, a star is not a ball of gas, that’s only what it is made of.

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I thought I would drop by to leave a comment that may be of passing interest or relevance to this fascinating discussion. :slight_smile:

The number 9 is significant in Norse mythology. Probably the most obvious example of this significance would be that there are 9 worlds in Norse mythology, but the recurrences of the number 9 do not stop there. Anyway, that may be some food for thought (or further research), especially given Lewis’s expertise in the area of mythology…

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To hear Walter Hooper tell it, Lewis thought Norse and Greek mythologies were actually much more exciting and fun than the Christian one as he was growing up. Then Tolkien, in their famous chat, apparently reminded Lewis that while Norse and Greek mythologies did indeed have much to commend them … the Christian mythology had the advantage of actually being true! And that left quite the impression on Lewis as we now know.

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