Volume 7 Number 3 Article 10

10-15-1980

The Host of Heaven: Astrological and Other Images of Divinity in the Fantasies of C.S. Lewis (Part 1)

Nancy-Lou Patterson

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Recommended Citation Patterson, Nancy-Lou (1980) "The Host of Heaven: Astrological and Other Images of Divinity in the Fantasies of C.S. Lewis (Part 1)," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 7 : No. 3 , Article 10. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol7/iss3/10

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: A VIRTUAL “HALFLING” MYTHCON July 31 - August 1, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-51.htm

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Abstract Study of the astrological symbolism present in Lewis’s fantasies. Part 1 covers the Space Trilogy.

Additional Keywords Lewis, C.S. Space Trilogy—Astrological symbolism; Lewis, C.S. Space Trilogy—Symbolism of divinity; Nancy-Lou Patterson

This article is available in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol7/iss3/10 THE HOST OF HEAVENASTROLOGICAL AND OTHER IMAGESOF DIVINITY IN THE FANTASIESOF C.S. LEWISPART I NANCY-LOU PATTERSON

"I wouldn't have felt very safe with is a huge ball of flaming g a s ." Bacchus and all his wild girls if we'd met "Even in your world, my son, that is them without Aslan." not what a star is but what it is made of."2 "I should think not," said Lucy. In the Medieval world there were only five plan­ C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian ets, as we define planets, but with the sun and moon they made seven: Moon-Mercury-Venus-Sun-Mars- The sources from which C.S. Lewis took the Jupiter-Satum . Each rolled m ajestically about m otifs of his fantasies included Mesopotamian, the central Earth on transparent globes revolving Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology, as they are one within the other. Outside of these was the filtered through Medieval Christian culture. He Stellatum3 where the fixed stars dwelt, and out­ has thus used the Western past as a deep well side of that was the Primum Mobile. Of the exact from which to draw m otifs as he needs them, position of earth in this model, Lewis says, "the dipping from level to level as he chooses. earth is really the centre, really the lowest place; movement to it from whatever direction is The fantasies of C.S. Lewis can be divided a downward movement.:4 In his pithiest expres­ into three parts. First is the interplanetary sion of this model he says, "The Medieval Model trilogy: Out of the Silent Planet (1938), w h ic h is vertiginous."5 takes place on Mars; Perelandra (1943), w h ic h takes place on Venus; and That Hideous Strength. The life attributed to the stars by Med­ (1945) which takes place on Earth. Second are ieval thinkers came from their origins: "planets the Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, . . . had, after all, been the hardiest of the and the Wardrobe (1950); Prince Caspian (195lT; pagan gods," as Lewis says,6 but "They were The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952); The planets as well as gods."7 As planets, they exer­ Silver Chair (1953); The Horse and His Boy (1954); cised an effect, called technically an "influ-' The M agician's Nephew (1955); and The Last ence," upon the earth and its inhabitants. This Battle (1956). Third and last is the novel, Till effect is precisely the subject matter of astro­ We Have Faces (1956), which takes place in the logy. Lewis explains, "Astrology is not speci­ kingdom of Glome. Narnia is an alternative fically medieval. The Middle Ages inherited it world to Earth, but Earth is part of its story; from 'antiquity and bequeathed it to the Renais­ Glome is a barbaric, kingdom not too distant from sance."8 Its basic principle was not in doubt. ancient Greece. "Orthodox theologians could accept the theory that the planets had an effect on events and on I have not included The Screwtape Letters psychology, and, much more, on plants and ani­ and The Great Divorce, . which deal with infernal mals."9 The problem lay elsewhere: what the and supernal themes, because they are not quite church fought against was: 1) the "practice of of the same genre, though they do contain a nar­ astrologically grounded predictions;" 2)"astro­ rative element. The eleven works listed above logical determinism. The doctrine of influences are clearly stories, and all of them draw upon carried so far as to exclude free w ill;"10 and 3) the wellsprings of Western mythology. They do "the'w orship of planets."11 this, as I have said, in the Medieval manner, fitting the pre-Christian mythologies of northern The origin of these proscriptions is of. and southern Europe and the Near East into the course the Bible, where again and again God's rand structure of Christianity as sculptural people were called to account for having "wor­ getails are fitted into a Gothic cathedral. shipped all the host of heaven." (II Kings 17:16 and 21:3) Jeremiah had complained of his people: I. The Fields of Arbol "they have burned incense unto all the host of heaven, and have poured out drink offerings unto "Medieval thinkers," Lewis wrote in The Dis­ other gods." (Jeremiah 19:13) in Deuteronomy God carded Image (1964), "attributed life and even explains His ways to Moses: "Ye saw no manner of intelligence to one privileged class of objects sim ilitude on the day that the LORD spake unto (the stars) which we hold to be inorganic."1 This you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire.” (Deut­ attitude may be contrasted with the one most in eronomy 4:15) He has not shown Himself in v isi­ favour today, expressed in the following conversa­ ble form, God says, "lest thou lift thine eyes tion from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even a ll the host of heaven, "In our world," said Eustace, "a star shouldst be driven to worship them, and serve them." (Deuteronomy 4:19) 19 lonians to pass from "empirical observations, VENUS intended chiefly to indicate omens"17 to some- thing more nearly'approaching " scientifijgastron- omy." They knew "seven principal stars"18 of which five were distinguished by them as planets: the Moon, the Sun, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Mer­ cury, Mars (the sarte group recognized by Medieval writers). This list has an heirarchical rather that an astronomical order: "Jupiter, or Marduk, is put at the head of the five planets, because Marduk is the principal god. of Babylon."19 It is, as Cumont puts it, "the peculiar distinction of the Chaldeans that they made religion profit by these new conceptions."20

Paleolithic people had been able to keep accurate records of lunar phases by carving tally marks in bone;21 the builders of Stonehenge had constructed an observatory capable of pre­ dicting both lunar and solar movements, some authorities believe.22 With their long history of astronomical observations and their lunisolar calendar, the Chaldeans could predict a wide range of celestial phenomena, and since these elegant patterns traced on the pristine sky were to them the doings of high divinities, it became possible to predict the ways of the gods to men. Jupiter was the foremost god, Marduk. Venus was Ishtar, that lady whose very name means "Star." Saturn was Ninib, Mercury was Nebo, and Mars was Nergal, the god of war. "This astral relig­ ion," as Cumont calls it, had become established in the sixth century BC during the second Baby­ lonian Empire , and one of its primary features The. most attractive members of the heavenly was the concept of Necessity, for the divine host besides the Sun and Moon were those whose stars demonstrably repeated themselves in an graceful dance assumed so elaborate a patterns endless and fixated dance. The god An (Anu) the planets. Franz Cumont in his classic work whose name means "Above" was represented picto- Astrology and Religion Among the Greeks and graphically by a star.23 Upon this basis, the Romans (1912) gives the history of planetary names of all divinities came to include in the association most succinctly by saying that "the cuneiform versions an element derived from this names of the planets which we employ to-day, are star sign. Phyllis Ackerman derives the god An an English translation of a Latin translation of himself from the Polar Star. a Greek translation of a Babylonian nomenclature." Lewis added to this sequence, their names in Old This "sidereal cult" as Cumont calls it, was Solar: I am referring to his wonderful inventions foreign to Greeks and to Romans: Aristophanes re­ in the interplanetary trilogy, especially as they marked that the barbarians sacrificed to Sun and make th eir appearance in That Hideous Strength: Moon while Greeks addressed personal divini-' V iritrilb ia (Mercury); Perelandra (Venus); Mala- ties.24 Nevertheless, "the common people" regard­ candra (Mars); Thulcandra (Earth); Glund (Saturn); ed the stars as living beings. It was thus "a Lurga (Jupiter); Arbol (the Sun); and Sulva (the shock to popular belief" when Anaxagorus (like Eu­ Moon). His descriptions of these powerful beings stace) declared the stars to be "merely bodies in are superb evocations of traditional imagery com­ a state of incandescence." Plato called him an bined with his own visionary genius. I will atheist for this rash statement25 and declared the trace the history of the system he has used and stars to be "visible gods which He ["the supreme then give his descriptive passages together with Being"] animates with his own life." In all this the traditions upon which he has drawn, to dem­ there is demonstrated an "indisputable" borrowing onstrate the splendours he has distilled. from "Sem itic [Mesopotamian] sources," Cumont says. Cumont is writing with reference to the problems raised by Alfred Jerem ias, whose excesses O riginally the Greeks called Venus "Herald regarding the role of the solar zodiac in the an­ of the Dawn,"Mercury "the Twinkling Star," Mars the Fiery Star," Jupiter the "Luminous Star," cient world had cast, and according to Phyllis Ackerman, s till casts, a shadow upon "the Babylon­ and Saturn the "B rilliant Star," according to ian doctrine" as a source for astromythology. Cumont. But after the fourth century, "the planets became the stars of Hermes, Aphrodite, The Greeks "owed to the observations of Meso­ Ares, Zeus, Kronos," because "in Babylonia these potamia . . . the ecliptic, the signs of the zodi­ same planets were dedicated respectively to Nebo, ac, and the majority of the planets," and "to Ishtar, Nergal, Marduk, and Ninub."12 Astrology, this first influx of positive knowledge corres­ however, was not imported along with these desig­ ponds a first introduction into the Greek system nations, Cumont says.13 He quotes Eudoxus of of the mystic ideas which the O rientals attached Cnidos’s dictum: "No credence should be given to to them," Cumont says.26 This occurred during the the Chaldeans, who predict and mark out the life O rientalizing Period when "the commercial cities of eygry man according to the day of his nativi­ of Iona opened their gates to A siatic influences” ty ."14 M atters changed,, however; "after the con­ 27and brought in addition a great influx of motifs quests of Alexander." 15 It was politics, Cumont into art including the winged beings, the various says, that "drew Hellenism-towards star-wor­ metamorphs including the gryphon and the dragon, ship."16 They had come into contact with the and the vegetal palmette. The end result of ancient tradition, that of Persia and ultim ately these trends was that "this sidereal theology, Mesopotamia. founded on ancient beliefs of Chaldean astrolo­ gers, transformed in the H ellenistic age . . . It was the establishment of an accurate [was] promoted, after becoming a pantheistic Sun chronology in 747 BC that had enabled the Baby­ worship, to the rank of official religion of the 20 Roman empire."28 At its best, Cumont says, "the Let thine own light to others shine; common creed of a ll pagans came to be a scientific Reflect all heaven's propitious rays pantheism, in which the infinite power of the di­ In ardent love and cheerful praise. vinity that pervaded the universe was revealed by In this verse, astrological elements revealed in all the elements of nature." I daresay this the words "influence" and "propitious" serve as a faith is held by many of the religious people of metaphor for God’s direct and divine role in our own day, whatever name they give th eir human affairs. b e l i e f s . Two factors in tw entieth century thought have Such was the hardiness of th is world view, most assisted modern astrologists in adapting . that it has managed to m aintain itse lf even into themselves to th eir era: one is the newly devel­ the present day. Jean Seznec, in his great mono­ oping science of periodicity in the physical graph T he Survival of the Pagan G ods(1953) made world: the case is cogently (and w ittily) argued it his general argument that "the ancient gods by J.A . West and J.G . Toonder in The Case for survive during the Middle Ages by virtue of inter­ A strology.39 The other is Jung's sym pathetic pretations of th eir origins and nature propounded treatm ent-of astrological insights in his psy­ by antiquity itse lf."29 These interpretations in­ chology.40 I have thus chosen Jeff Mayo, whose cluded numerous categories; the one which concerns w ritings particularly take account of Jungian this paper he calls "The Physical T radition," . interpretation, as a resource for contemporary which declared, as he flatly states, that "The astrological thought. I base this choice on the heavenly bodies are gods."30 His description of suggestion of Stephanie K. W alker, B.A., B .L.S., this apprehension in "the last centuries of pagan­ D .F.A strol.S., who has been Mayo's student and my ism" accords w ell with the role they play in consultant in astrological m atters regarding the Lewis's fantasies: "The stars are alive: they have present essay. In his Astrology (1964) Mayo calls a recognized appearance, a sex, a character, which the Planets "L ife-Principles"41 and says they their names alone suffice to evoke."31 It was this symbolize "basic human functions"42 and are fin al identification of planets with gods, Seznec. "focal points of unconscious energies."43 He says, that assured the gods of survival. He calls discusses the planets (ten, including the sun this a piece of good luck for the Olympians, a and moon and the planets unknown to the ancients), "providential shelter"32 which arranged m atters so through a series of brief formulae: those germane that "though . . . dethroned on earth, they are to this paper are as follows: still masters of the celestial spheres." It was Sun: Principle of self-integration. in this role that they passed into C hristianity Moon: Principle of rhythms, through in stin ct- despite in itia l hostility. Seznec refers to St. assim ilation, reflections. Paul, who reproached the G alatians for observing Mercury: Communicative principle through men­ "days and months and times and years" (G alatians tal and nervous co-ordination, trans­ 4: 9-10). Among the survivals were the names of m i s s i o n . the days of the week and the adoption-of the Venus: U niting principle through sympathy, sun's birthday as C hrist's n ativity.33 The physi­ evolution, feeling. cal world of the early church was that of Hellen­ Mars: Principle of activity through enter­ ism; this world continued to exist into the prise, self-assertion, energetic under­ Renaissance. s t a n d i n g . Saturn: Formative principle through restric­ Seznec outlines the evolution of astrology tion, discipline, rigidity. ^ in the Middle Ages: until the tw elfth century the focus was Byzantine. The Crusades brought Europe Mayo is at pains, in his The Planets and Human Be- "the Greek texts with their Arab commentaries, in haviour, to disavow the "personification of the Latin translations for the most part made by planets."45 pointing out that "to the uninformed Jews."34 This eclectic melange resulted in "an extraordinary increase in the prestige of astro­ logy." An adjunct of this development was the increase in the practice of magic: the Ghaya (in Arabic) which became the P icatrix (in Latin) was frankly "a treatise on the practice of magic,"35 and included prayers like the follow ing evocation LURGA of Saturn, which w ill be fam iliar to readers of That Hideous Strength (to be discussed below): "0 M aster Saturn; Thou, the Cold, the S terile, the M ournful, the Pernicious . . . the Sage and Solitary . . . the old and cunning. ”36 This work shows "the accent and even the very term s of a Greek astrological prayer to Kronos." One of the major elements in the physical tradition was the association of planets with aspects of human life : both physiology and psy­ chology. Seznec states that "the Renaissance saw no contradiction between astrology and science; rather the dominion of the heavenly bodies over all earthly things was viewed as the natural law par excellence, the law which assures the regu­ larity of phenomena."37 Even in the sixteenth century, he says, "astrology continued to keep alive the veneration for the gods which it had served as shelter since classical tim es."38 In­ deed, some astrological elem ents may be seen in the words of a hymn by Bishop Thomas Ken, w ritten in 1692, and sung at an Anglican church service during the period when the present paper was being w r i t t e n :

By influence of the light divine 21 or skeptics th is method of interpretation only Cumont has said "The starry heaven is the continues to depict astrology as . . . full of principal seat of the divine energy and-light mysticism and black magic.". He states-flatly, which are spread throughout the world."50 He "The planets are not the prime creators of the calls this "an astrological notion" and finds it human form and psyche. The origins of the human expressed in the opening lines of Il Paradiso, in race are . . . deeply rooted in the origins of which Dante wrote, the planet Earth." La gloria di colue che tutto muove Having traced the historical development of Per l'universo penetra e risplende. these ideas, I propose to give Lewis's two treat­ ments of planetary symbolism—from his expository Dorothy L. Sayers (or Barbara Reynolds) translates study, The Discarded Image, and from his inter­ t h i s : planetary trilogy--side by side, along with an outline of- the mythological motifs and divine The glory of.Him who moves all things sc e'er personalities with which they are associated. I Impenetrates the universe, and bright shall begin with the Sun. Lewis says of it (or The splendour bums . . . 51 him) in The Discarded Image. "Sol . . . produces the noblest metal, gold, and is the eye and mind It is this light which bathes the Fields of Arbol, of the whole universe. He makes men wise and as Lewis well knew. For the medieval mind, he liberal and his sphere is the Heaven of theolo­ w rites, "The Sun illum inates the whole-universe."52 gians and philosophers . . . Sol produces fortun­ He explains: "they had no notion that earth's air ate events." This is the medieval model. But magnifies and diffuses light; for them night was listen to Lewis's description of the Sun's light, only the cone of earth's shadow." Lewis could as viewed from outer space in Out of the Silent not be aware when he wrote this or any of the P l a n e t : above passages on the light of sun or moon, that The light was paler than any light of com­ modem poets' fears of the darkness of space, parable intensity that he had ever seen: fegainst which, perhaps, he wrote) were also to be it was not pure white but the palest of all disproved when real space-travellers showed i t to imaginable golds, and it cast shadows as be, precisely as he described it, bathed in light. sharp as a floodlight. The heat, utterly free from moisture . . . produced no ten- In contrast with this benignant solar dency to drow siness; rather, intense alac-rity.47 imagery, the Moon of the Ransom cycle fares less well. In That Hideous Strength, Ransom answers Ransom comments upon th is new apprehension: M erlin's testing question as to "the usages of S u lv a ," "I always thought space was dark and cold," he remarked vaguely. S u lv a i s sh e whom m o r t a l s c a l l th e Moon. "Forgotten t he sun?" said Weston She walks in the lowest sphere . . . Half of contem ptuously.48 her orb is turned toward us and shares our curse. Her other half looks to Deep Heaven: They are travelling through the Fields of Arbol, happy would be he who could cross that fronts as the solar system is called in the primordial ier and see the fields on her farther side.54 tongue,Old Solar, which is spoken by the unfallen inhabitants of-its planets as well as by their But there, among the lunar (or Sulvan) inhabi­ uardians, the planetary eldils known as. Oyérsu t a n t s , "T he womb i s b a r r e n . . . th e m a r r ia g e s g(singular: Oyarsa): Lewis explains, "Even the cold . . . real flesh w ill not please them . . . Oyérsu aren't exactly angels in the same sense as children they fabricate by vile arts.: our guardian angels are. Technically they are Intelligences."49 In The Discarded Image, Lewis describes the moon in medieval thought: "At Luna we cross in our descent the great frontier . . . from aether to air, from 'heaven' to 'nature,' from the realm of gods (or angels) to that of daemons, from the realm of necessity to that of contingence, from the incorruptible to the corruptible."55 He says, "Her metal is silver. In men she produces wandering," either as "travellers" or as "'wandering of the w its'." I cannot help but recall Lewis's autobiographical reference to the moon in the light of this malignant portrait: in Surprised by Joy, he wrote of his terrible child­ hood school which he nicknamed Belsen: "I feared for my soul; especially on certain blazing,raoon- lit nights in that curtainless dormitory."56

Having viewed this pair of entities, we can look at their antecedents in mythology. In Meso­ potamia, Shamash/Sun. was adm itted to the world each morning by a pair of scorpion-men. He was in particular the god of justice, but like Apollo (below) he also ruled over divination.57 It was he who rose "with healing in his wings" after each night's journey through the under­ world.58 A seal shows the sun god gleaming radiantly upon the eastern horizon between two lion-surmounted posts.59 For the Greeks, Apollo was the god of the sun, but the sun was, in itself, a divinity, Helios, who drove the solar chariot across the sky.60 Apollo's epithets, "brilliant," "fair," and "of the golden locks," emphasize his solar association. He shot his arrows of light and was at the same time healer and lord of divination as well as of music. He 22 passed whole into the Roman pantheon without losing his name, when in the third century BC that pantheon was transformed by the introduction of Greek influence, a process complete by the second century.

For Mesopotamia, Sin/Moon was chief of the astral trio of divinities:61 Ishtar and Shamash/ Sun were his children. He was conceived as an old man with a heard of lapis-lazuli who rode m ajestically across the night in the barque of the crescent moon. Lapis-lazuli is a blue stone., so the concept of the "blue moon" was already known. In another conception the moon was his silvery crown: Mesopotamian crowns were surmount­ ed with horns. In contrast to this masculine moon (which, like our moon, has a "man" in it), for the Greeks Selen/Moon was the sister of Helios/Sun, and she illuminated the night with her golden crown.62 Her most famous love was for Endymion, a youth of extraordinary beauty who had been granted eternal youth and life by Zeus on condition that he remain forever asleep. Selene watched over him through the eternal round of nights, unable to consummate her love. This virginal motif is expanded in the Greek associa­ tion of the moon with Artemis, who was the god­ dess of the chase and of forests: she is symbol­ ized by the she-bear. Her close association with Apollo (she was his sister) made her also a light goddess. Thus she wears the crescent on her brow and bears a lance. It is the militant virginity of Artemis, the huntress, associated sometimes with the Amazons, that has perhaps been chosen by Lewis, who makes the moon not the and stoats, thumping progressions of frogs, the model of triumphant chastity but of malignant small shock of falling hazel nuts, creaking of sterility. The moon was not a benign entity to branches, runnels trickling, the very growing of him: witness his childhood memory in Surprised by grass." The magician has begun to conjure with Joy. To the Romans, Artemis was associated with Earth: Ransom smells "that sweet heaviness, like Diana, an Italic deity who was a goddess of the smell of hawthorn." He abjures the magus: light, mountains, and woods.63 It was she whose "Whatever of spirit may still linger in the tem ple on Lake Nemi was to spark the w r itin g o f earth . . .You shall not speak a word to it. the pioneer work on mythology, Frazer's The You shall not lift your little finger to call it Golden Bough. up . . .It is in this age utterly unlawful."68 Before turning to the planets proper, I w ill The position of Earth in Western mythology give Lewis's images of Earth: she is called Thul- shares the curious ambivalence of this jewel-like candra by the Oyarsa of Malacandra (Mars). That planet ruled by a fallen archon: for the Babylon­ b ein g t e l l s Ransom, the voyager who has come out ians, the great gods divided the Universe in a of the silent planet, Earth, "We know nothing manner resembling the demythologized world of since the day when the Bent One sank out of heaven Genesis 1:6-10. Three related deities were Anu into the air of your world, wounded in the very (Sky), Enlil (Earth), and Ea (Waters). Enlil light of his light."64 In Perelandra earth's (Earth)had been "Lord of the Air" in Sumer and planetary ruler is described as "that supreme and Nippur.69 Earthly rulers were his vicars. His original evil whom in Mars they call The Bent early consort was Ninhursag, "Lady Mountain," who One."65 The Bent One is, of course, Satan, whose was the earth itself. Enlil ruled earth as "the f a l l from heaven i s d e t a ile d in The D ivine Comedy executive of Anu."70 Anu was "the aloof heavens, and Paradise Lost. Jesus says, in St. Luke 10:18. personifying the majesty of Kingship," while "I beheld Satan as lightning fa ll from heaven." Enlil, "the violent storm-wind [personified] its Despite its evil reputation and the interplanet^- ex ecu tiv e p o w e r . "71For the Mesopotamians, ary silence to which it has been submitted, Earth accordingg’to one text, "Kingship descended from is portrayed with aching- tenderness as Ransom h eaven ." 72 remembers his native planet in Out of the Silent This orderly arrangement is in total con­ Planet: "Wild, animal thirst for life, mixed with tradiction to the creation story in Hesiod's poem, homesick longing for the free airs and the sights the Theogony, which recounts Greek mythology in a and smells of earth—for grass and meat and beer systematic form, while reflecting the popular be­ or tea and the human voice awoke in him."66 liefs of the eighth century before Christ. In the Describing Ransom's return, Lewis builds Image on beginning, Gaea (Earth) emerged from Chaos, fol­ image: "’Oh God,' he sobbed. 'Oh God! It's. - lowed by Eros through whom a ll things were made. rain. ' He was on earth." The returnee paused, Among many other births was that of Uranus, the " d rin k in g g re a t draughts o f a ir ," and when he starry sky; a mating between sister Earth (Gaea) "slipped in mud, blessed the smell of it." Even and brother Sky (Uranus) produced the twelve in the "pitch-black night under torrential rains," Titans. The story progresses bloodily; its he welcomed "the smell of the field about him—a details belong under the section on Cronos/Saturn patch of his native planet where grass grew, below. Gaea's role in Greek mythology was minor; where cows moved, where presently he would come Earth to the Romans was Tellus Mater (hence the to hedges and a gate." term "Tellurian" for earthly things): she was a goddess of fecundity, and both marriages and fer­ T h is same sense o f b u c o lic in tim acy and t i l i t y came under her sway. nostalgia recurs in That Hideous Strength when Merlin, newly awakened, speaks of his relation­ In contrast to the Theogony, the Babylonian ship with "the fields and I, this wood and I ," a creation story, which is entitled the Enuma place of mould, gravel, wet leaves, weedy Elish from its opening words, "When above," is water,"67 where are sensed the "rustling of mice 23 concerned with the doings of- the creator, Marduk in both That Hideous Strength and The Discarded (Jupiter) , who was the high god of Babylon. The Image: I am leaving till last the deities Mala- Enuma Blish was discovered in the form of frag­ candra/Mars and Perelandra/Venus for reasons I mentary tablets in the ruins of the library of hope w ill become apparent later. Lewis's treat­ Ashurbanipal, 668-C.63O BC. In this creation ment of Saturn is perhaps the most evocative por­ epic, Marduk triumphs over Tiamat, the female tion of the sequence "The Descent of the Gods" Sea, and.organizes the universe from her slain which forms Chapter 15 of That Hideous Strength. body, both heaven and earth .73 The Enuma Elish The nearer planets (to be discussed below) have calls Marduk "the wisest of [the godsj" [Tablet already arrived. Now, "These would be m ightier III, line 113) and says, "his countenance shone energies: ancient eldils, steersmen of giant exceedingly, [lik]e the day."(Tablet VI, line 56) worlds which have never from the beginning been 74 Tablet V states: subdued to the sweet humiliations of organic life."81 There is an impression of "stiff grass, He created stations for the great gods; hen-roosts, dark places in. the middle of woods, The stars their likeness(es) . . .he set up. graves," of "the earth gripped, suffocated, in airless cold, the black sky" full of the'"utter Thus, he himself "Installed the stars" which and final blackness of nonentity from which were the images of the gods, and regulated their Nature knows no return." This is "Saturn, whose c o u r s e s . name in the heavens is Lurga." Lewis says "His sp irit lay upon the house, or even on the whole This divinity, M arduk/Jupiter, appears in earth, with a cold pressure such as might flatten That Hideous Strength when the planetary gods the very orb of Tellus to a wafer." His is the descend to earth: I have put him first because "lead-like burden" of "a mountain of centuries," the Babylonians did so, but he appears in his characterized by "unendurable cold." medieval position (the same one we give him) in the novel: "It seemed to each that the room was When I first read this passage (I knew noth­ filled with kings and queens, that the wildness ing at the time of astrology) I was particularly of their dance expressed heroic energy."575 At struck by the reference to stiff grass and hen­ his approach, "Kingship and power and festal roosts; the passage begins with these fam iliar pomp and courtesy shot from him as sparks fly but chilling images, which echo John K eats's from an anvil." The company sensed "bells . . . poem The Eve of St. Agnes: trumpets . . . banners," for "This was great Glund-Oyarsa, King of Kings, through whom the Ah, bitter chill it was! joy of creation principally blows across these The owl, for all his feathers was a-cold; fields7gf Arbol, known to men in old times as The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen J o v e . " 78 g r a s s

Zeus, as the Greeks called this divinity, and proceeds to evocations of intolerable empti­ is named for the sky and the light of day.77 ness, pressure, and sterility. In The Discarded Indeed, his name appears throughout the Indo- Image Lewis expands the medieval view of Saturn: European speaking world, as Theos, as Deus, as Deva, in a word, as God. He is repre­ In the earth his influence produces lead; sented in classical art as a mature man of grave in men, the melancholy complexion; in h is­ demeanour with scythe and thunderbolt in hand tory, disastrous events. He is connected (the latter bearing a notable resemblance to the with sickness and old age. Our traditional Tibetan dorje) , his head crowned with oak-leaves picture of Father Time with the scythe is (the oak is related mythologically to thunder­ derived from pictures of Saturn.82 storms) and an eagle at his feet.78 In his Roman form he is called Jupiter, a name derived from the same root as Zeus; the Indo-European In Babylon, Ninib/Saturn was worshipped at di or div, "celestial light,"79 from which we Lagash as Ninhursag or Ninurta, and was a god of have our word "divine." He was the god of all fields and canals as well as hunter and w arrior.83 celestial phenomena: light, thunder, rain, and His baleful emblem was a lioness-headed eagle. finally, of the Roman Empire itself. Lewis’s Saturn was also an agricultural god to the Ro­ term "Jove" is a reminder that the character of mans; his season, which begins December 17, was this celestial creator god chimes for Christians a cycle of rural festivals lasting until December (in this role only, needless to say) with 23: the Saturnalia. He was represented with a Jehovah or Yahweh, that is, with God the Father sickle in his hand as well as a spray of wheat. Himself. But, of course, all these beings repre­ S tiff grass and hen-roosts are explained here, sent aspects of God’s activity; they are agents, but what of the intolerable pressures? servants, made, like us, in His image. In the Theogony we come to the source: to Lewis wrote of Jupiter in The Discarded the Greeks, Saturn was Cronus. He was one of the Im a g e : twelve Titans born to Gaea (Earth) by her brother Uranus (Sky). In this Aweful story Cronus con- Jupiter, the King, produces in the earth, spired with his mother to use her attribute (re­ rather disappointingly, tin; . . . the presenting the harvest of earth's bounty)--the character he produces in men . . . [is] sickle—to castrate his father. The parental very im perfectly expressed by the word genitals, thrown into the sea, raised a foam "jovial," . . . the jovial character is from which Aphrodite was born. The Titans were cheerful, festive, yet temperate, tranquil, a divine race and by this ultimate Freudian act, magnanimous. When this planet dominates we Cronus became their chief; in his turn he be­ may expect halcyon days and prosperity.80 came a terrible father who devoured his own chil­ dren. His attribute has become the scythe, for This benignant deity of medieval thought is far he is, as Lewis says, the counterpart of Father removed from the gleaming Creator of Babylon, and Time. Only'when Zeus was bom did one of Cronus' even farther from that God who answers by fire, children escape, for Zeus's mother hid him (at who showed Himself to Moses in the burning bush, Uranus and Gaea's advice) in a cavern on Crete, taking care, understandably as we now see, not to where his grandmother (Gaea) gave him to the care to show any "manner of sim ilitude." of the nymphs of Mount Ida. Zeus grew up to over­ throw Cronus in his turn, as well as the other As I have mentioned Jupiter, I w ill complete Titans, aided by the other young gods of the the m aterials associated with H esiod's Theogony, Olympian pantheon: Cronus was imprisoned beneath and discuss Lewis's Saturn, who precedes Jupiter the earth.84 24 This combination of m otifs;appears in Lewis' height. Among his benevolent acts was the rescue Namian Chronicles in The Silver Chair, the child­ of Dionysus when his mother, Semele, was des­ ren have found their way into the Nrnm ian Under­ troyed by the fire in which the fecundating Zeus w o rld : had visited her. We shall hear more of Dionysus below. Mercury to the pEactical-minded Romans . . . here, filling almost the whole length was related to merchandise and trade: Plautus of [a smaller cave] , lay an enormous man, in the Amphytrion refers in particular to his fast asleep. He was far bigger than any of role as messenger.92 the giants, but noble and beautiful. His breast rose and fell gently under the snowy Lewis makes Ransom explain a ll these matters beard that covered him to the waist.85 to Jane as follows:

When Puddleglum enquires about this figure, the There is no Oyarsa in Heaven who has not^got Warden of Underworld replies, "'That is old Father his representative on Earth. And there is no Time, who once was a King in Overland . . . they world where you could not meet a little un­ say he w ill wake at the end of the world." And fallen partner of our own black Archon, a indeed, in The Last B attle, Aslan summons Father kind of other self. That is why there was Time and "the great giant raised a horn to his an Italian Saturn as well as a heavenly one, mouth . . . they heard the sound of the horn, and a Cretan Jove as well as an Olympian._ high and terrible, yet of a strange deadly It was these earthly wraiths of the high in­ beauty." The immediate result of this act is telligences that men met in old times when that "The sky became fu ll of shooting stars" (see they reported that they had seen the gods.93 below). Finally, at Aslan's word, "The giant threw his horn into the sea. Then he stretched The "black Archon . . . other self" suggests the out one arm—across the sky till his hand reached Jungian Shadow, that primal Adversary with which th e Sun . . . and instantly there was total dark­ one must agree in order to gain entrance to the ness.86 This is that "utter and final blackness world of the psyche. of nonentity" which Lewis first evoked in That Hideous Strength. We come now to the great d ivinities who es­ cort the earth; they are respectively, male (Mars) Before turning to the god and goddess (Mars and female (Venus) and they appear with vivid an d V e n u s) o f whom L ew is h a s m o st to s a y , I w i l l clarity in the sky because they are so near. give his description of the first of the planets, Lewis gives them by far the most attention, for V iritrilbia/M ercury, who appropriately heralds Out of the Silent Planet is set on Mars, and Pere- the arrival of the gods in That Hideous Strength: landra on Venus. Perhaps that is why he treats them so briefly in The Discarded Image, where he Now of a sudden' they a ll began talking says, "Mars makes iron. He gives men the martial loudly at once, each, not contentiously but temperament . . . He causes w a r s . His sphere, in delightedly, interrupting the others. A D a n te , i s th e H eav en o f m a r ty r s " 94 a n d " I n b e n e ­ stranger coming into the kitchen would have ficence Venus stands second only to Jupiter . . . thought they were drunk . . .87 Her metal is copper . . ..In mortals she pro­ duces beauty and amorousness; in history, for­ tunate events."95 Thus the medieval model: the The allusion to Pentecost is no accident:"These mythological sources are mixed in the importance men are fu ll of new wine" (Acts 2:13 was the they grant to these beings. For the Mesopotam­ response of some hearers when the S pirit-filled ians Nergal/Mars was the god of destruction and apostles began to "speak with other tongues" war, and he became the husband of Ereshkigal, (A c ts 2 : 4 ) so "that every man heard them speak Queen of the Underworld, thus becoming lord of in his own language"(Acts 2:6). The doom of the dead as well. Ishtar/Venus, "goddess of the Belbury is to be the confusion of tongues, and Mom and goddess of the Evening"—clearly the this enspiriting freedom of speech in St. Anne’s morning and evening star, for her very name is -on-the-H ill is the first note of the coming "Star"—was both a war goddess and a goddess of triumph of the planetary rulers over the macrobes love. It was she who descended into the under­ who have been infesting the earth. world and escaped again, divesting and investing herself of her splendid attire in the process. There are "plays upon thoughts, paradoxes, I cannot help but think of her (as well as of Our fancies, anecdotes, theories laughingly advanced," Lady) in association with the passage in The Song while upstairs, "a rod of coloured light, whose of Solomon 6:10: "Who is she that looketh forth colour no man can name or picture, darted between as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the them."88 At the approach of V iritrilbia, "needle- sun, and terrible as an army with banners?" pointed desires, brisk merriments, lynx-eyed The greek Ishtar/A starte was a fe rtility goddess, thoughts" dart among them, "For the lord of Mean­ Aphrodite. Traditionally, her son was her pri­ ing him self, the herald, the messenger, the meval precursor, Eros, who was also the youngest slayer of Argus, was with them: the angel that of the gods. He was the husband of Psyche spins nearest the sun, V iritrilbia, who men call ("soul") and it is her myth, taken from The Mercury and Thoth."89 Lewis described this deity Golden Ass of Apuleius, that Lewis te lls in T ill in The Discarded Image: ‘"Mercury, produces quick­ We Have Faces. This aspect of the goddess w ill silver, Dante gives his sphere to beneficent men be discussed below in the context of that novel. of action . . . he is the patron of profit . . . The Roman Venus was a goddess of spring, very the man from under Mercury w ill be 'studious' and minor in her original form. Mars, "the most Ro­ 'in writinge curious', 'skilled eagerness' or man of all the Gods,"97 was the father of Romulus 'bright alacrity' is the best I can do."90 and Remus, founders of Rome, and a god both of agriculture and of war. These elements are found in Mercury from his first appearance in Babylon, when as Nergal or Together these deities play for Lewis the Nabu, he was the son of Marduk, and it was his roles of archetypal male and female; he had been task to engrave his father's decrees upon sacred deeply moved by Coventry Patmore's w ritings on tablets. Intellectual activity was thus under love, marriage, and the religious dimensions of his protection. His attribute was the serpent­ human sexuality. In Aurea Dicta X III, Patmore headed dragon.91 As Hermes, he was psychopompus, writes: "Lovers put out the candles and draw the the shepherd of souls, to the Greeks, as well as curtains,when they wish to see the god and the the messenger of Zeus. With his winged heels and goddess."98 That Lewis wrote with a knowledge of hat (the petasus) and his caduceus, the winged this passage is suggested by Jane's visionary staff entwined with serpents, he traversed the perception of a young married couple: "as if the universe from end to end and from depth to god and goddess in them burned through their 26 bodies and through their clothes and shone before When Malacandra/Mars approaches the upper her in a young double-natured nakedness of rose- chamber in That Hideous Strength. "Merlin saw in red spirit that overcame her." I would suggest, memory the wintry grass on Badon H ill, the long in the last sim ile, a touch of Charles Williams’s banner of the Virgin fluttering above the heavy sensibility. He too wrote extensively of the British-Romay ataphracts, the yellow-haired sensual element in divine love. The particular barbarians."104 There are impressions of "fires theme of Patmore’s that moved Lewis most deeply . . . blood . . . eagles . . .sky." Then, I shall refer to below in my discussion of Lewis' "They felt themselves taking their places in the Venus, but as he begins with M ars--in Out of the ordered rhythm of the universe, side by.side Silent Planet—I shall discuss him (one cannot with the punctual seasons and patterned atoms say "it") first. and obeying Seraphim." Thus "Ransom knew, as a man knows when he touches iron, the clear, taut That novel's highest moment occurs when the splendour of that celestial spirit that now Oyarsa of Malacandra arrives in person: we share flashed between them; vigilant Malacandra, Ransom's perception of him: captain of a cold orb, whom men call Mars and Mavors, and Tyr who put his hand in the wolf- Every visible creature in the gorge had ris­ m o u th ." 10 5 en to its feet and was standing, more hushed than even, with its head bowed: and Ransom But to know the male is not to know the com­ saw (if it could be called seeing) that pleteness of the divine. In the great epiphany Oyarsa was coming up between long lines of at the end of Perelandra, the god and goddess sculptured stones. Partly he knew it from attempt to show themselves. Their usual appear­ the faces of the Malacandrians as their lord ance is "The very faint light—the almost imper­ passed them; partly he saw—he could not de­ ceptible alteration in the visual field—which ny that he saw—Oyarsa him self. He never betokens an eldil."106 They appear as p illars, could say what it was like. The merest whis­ flames, "talons and beaks," snow, cubes, hepta­ per of light, no, less than that, the smal­ gons, wheels (as in Ezekiel)—and at last: lest diminution of shadow—was travelling along the uneven surface of the ground-weed: . . . suddenly two human forms stood or rather some difference in the look of the before him on the opposite side of the lake. ground, too slight to be named in the lang­ They were taller than the Sorns, the uage of the five senses, moved slowly g i a n t s whom h e h a d m et i n M ars. T h ey w e re towards him. Like a silence spreading over perhaps thirty feet high. They were burning a room full of people, like an infinitesim al white like w hite-hot iron.107 coolness on a sultry day, like a passing mem­ ory of some long-forgotten sound or scent, Lewis says of the divine pair: "their long and like all that is stillest and smallest and sparkling hair stood out straight behind them as most hard to seize in nature, Oyarsa passed if in a great wind,"108 and adds, "the flush of between his subjects and drew near and came diverse colours began at about the shoulders and to rest, not ten yards away from Ransom in streamed up the necks and flickered over face and the centre of Meldilom. Ransom felt a. head and stood out around the head like plumage tingling of his blood and a prieking in his or a halo." This image perhaps owes some thing, to fingers as if lightening were near him; and David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus, which Lewis his heartland body seemed to him to be made much admired; Lindsay wrote of the woman on the of water.99 planet Tormance, Joiwind: Her skin was not of a dead, opaque colour, Here the mysterium tremendum appears with the like that of an earth beauty, but was opal­ slightest of sensory signals, as in I Kings 19:11- escent; its hue was continually changing, 12, when "the LORD was not in the wind . .• . not with every thought and emotion, but none of in the earthquake; . . . not in the fire," but these tints was vivid—all were delicate, rather, in "a still small voice.” Rudolf Otto half-toned, and poetic.109 discusses one of the Upanishads which "aims at making perceptible. . . that before which 'all As with Maskull’s inability to describe the words turn back'"100 that, as he says, "in whose_ special colours—jale and u lfire—shed upon Tor­ presence we must exclaim 'aaah!'"101 The Sanskrit mance by its double suns, Ransom "could in a phrase of wonderment he translates, "'What sense remember these colours-- . . . but . . . un-thing . . . is this?’ in the sense [of] a he cannot by any effort call up a visual image of thing of which no one can say what it is or them nor give them any name."110 whence it comes, and in whose presence we have the feeling of the uncanny." In Lewis's scene, Before Ransom's amazed vision, "The Oyarsa •he who approaches is "the Oyarsa of Malacandra, of Mars shone with cold and morning colours, a the great archon of Mars," "the Lord of Malacand­ little metallic—pure, hard, and bracing. The ra," or sometimes, simply, "Malacandra." Oyarsa of Venus glowed with a warm splendour, fu ll of the suggestion of teeming vegetable life." It was natural for Lewis (perhaps for most The faces "were as 'prim itive,' as unnatural . . . Christians) to depict the first divinity encount­ as those of archaic statues from Aegina," bearing ered by Ransom as male. "What is above and an expression of absolute "Charity"--"Pure, beyond all things is so masculine that we are all spiritual, intellectual love shot from their, feminine in relation to it," he w rites in That faces like barbed lightning."111 Although their Hideous Strength.102 This deity can be, despite naked bodies "were free from any sexual charac­ his first appearance, importunate, jealous, teristics, either primary or secondary." they present indeed in wind, earthquake, and fire (as were clearly "Masculine and Feminine."112 on Sinai): "the masculine itself; the loud, irruptive, possessive thing--the gold lion, the Since "there i s a terrestial as well as a bearded bull--w hich breaks through hedges and celestial Venus--"113 the feminine deity of That scatters the little kingdom of your primness"103 Hideous Strength brings us the earthly goddess of —thus Aslan ("the gold lion") behaves in the love in two forms, just as Jung says "the Mother last scene of The Silver Chair, when J ill and Archetype"will be, both "the loving and the te rri­ Eustace (who began the book crouching for cover ble mother."114 Jane encounters her in a bedroom behind a laurel hedge) return to triumph over at St. Anne's House: their tormenters after Aslan knocks down the wall of Experiment House. Thus Jesus, ridding the A flame-coloured robe, in which her Temple of "thieves" with a whip of cords. hands were hidden, covered this person from 27 the feet to where it rose behind her neck in P riest's] chair, their meaningless eyes looking a kind of high rufflike collar, hut in front always straight ahead out of the mask of their it was so low or open it exposed her large painting. The smell of old age, and the smell of breasts. Her skin was darkish and Southern the oils and essences they put on those girls, and glowing, almost the colour of honey. and the Ungit smell ffilled the room. It Some such dress Jane had seen worn by a became very holy."120 Ungit is holy because her Minoan priestess on a vase from old Cnossos. divine son is Eros—love—D ante's Lord of The head, poised motionless on the muscular Terrible Aspect, to whose part in T ill We Have pillar of her neck, stared straight at Jane. Faces we shall return at the end of the present It was a red-cheeked, wet-lipped face, with e s s a y . black eyes—almost the eyes of a cow—and an enigmatic expression. 115 When Jane appeals to Ransom to explain the presence of "that Huge Woman,"121 he tells her The cow image is from the Egyptian goddess Hathor "I have long known that this house is deeply who was, in a sense, a divine cow. Even the "pil­ under her influence. There is even copper in the lar of her neck" is appropriate, since the Minoan soil. Also--the earth-Venus w ill be specially goddess was represented by a pillar in some of active here at present. For it is to-night Jhat her shrines. Jane sees that "there was an almost her heavenly archetype w ill really descend." ogreish glee in the face"116 --like the glee of That sublime event., of which I have already given the Hindu goddess Kali in her necklace of skulls, all the other parts, brings Venus into the pre­ or the Mesopotamian Anath hip-deep in the blood sence of the watchers, as with the others, by a of battle. And she is not alone: "fat dwarfs in gradually increasing crescendo of imagery. "How red caps with tassels on them, chubby, gnome-like warm it was . . . to-night the smell of logs little men, quite insufferably fam iliar, frivo- . seemed more than ordinarily sw eet.”123 There was lous, and irrepressible," make a shambles of the "the smell of burning cedar or of incense," of bed as Jane watches helplessly. These phallic "nard and cassia's balmy smell and all Arabia (red-capped) earth-spirits are the attendants of breathing from a box."124 It is the same odour, the goddess in her earthy form. perhaps, as that which wafted from Ungit's girls. Ransom senses a presence "like ripe fields in The strange woman had a torch in her hand. August, serene and golden with the tranquility It burned with a terrible, blinding bright­ of fulfilled desire."125 The descending ness., crackling, and sent up a cloud of goddess has her masculine attendants: "not the dense black smoke, and filled the bedroom gross and ridiculous dwarfs . . . but grave and with a sticky, resinous smell.117 ardent spirits, bright winged, their boyish. shapes smooth and slender like ivory rods."126 In Proverbs, "a strange woman" (6:24) is, frankly, The phallic element is not absent from this pas­ "a whorish womgn" ( 6 : 2 6 ; see also 2:16): the sage. The olfactory motif continues: there is Solomonic speaker admonished his "son" in verses a "ponderous fragrance of night-scented flowers, 5:35, "the lips of a strange woman drop as a sticky gums, groves that drop odours, and with honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than o il: cool savour of midnight fru it."127 Finally, the But het end is b itter as wormwood, sharp as a goddess herself, in her most ultim ate form--as two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her "the consuming fire"--is present: steps take hold on h ell.” The words of these pas­ sages may not be describing an ordinary woman of It was fiery, sharp, bright, and ruthless, the streets, but a temple prostitute, whose pro­ ready to kill, ready to die, outspeeding fession was thus, to the w riter, doubly abomin­ light: it was Charity . . . the trans- able: temple prostitutes were women temple lunarary virtue, fallen upon them direct attendants in Mesopotamian culture who engaged from the Third Heaven . . . They were in sexual intercourse with male worshippers in blinded, scorched, deafened. They thought order that they might, indeed, encounter the it would burn their bones . . . So Pere- goddess.. The lady so worshipped had, pre­ landra, triumphant among p lanets, whom men cisely, gone down to death, for it was Ishtar call Venus, came . . .128 who had walked in hell and returned according to Mesopotamian myth. The motif recurs in Revela­ This lady is that goddess who, with the god, tion. when for the early Church, Rome was per­ is seen by lovers who "put out the candles and ceived as the Whore of Babylon. Lewis gives a draw the curtains." What is more, to continue compassionate portrait of this cult in T ill We the passage from Coventry Patmore: "in the higher Have Faces where the goddess in her chthonic Communion, the night of thought is the light of form is called Ungit. "In the furthest recess of perception." It is this light which shines in her house where she sits it is so dark that you this lady's hand, for she is the Holy Wisdom of cannot see her w ell, but in summer enough light Proverbs and, in the Apocrypha, Wisdom, Sophia, may come down from the smoke-holes in the roof to God's own feminine self. Patmore wrote: "The show her a little . She is a black stone without external man and woman are each the projected head or hands or a face, and a very strong god­ simulacrum of the latent half of the other,"129 dess.1 1 8 The motif of the goddess's handlessness and, more specifically, "The woman is the man's —"her hands were hidden," Lewis w rites of the 'glory,' and she naturally delights in the earthly Venus, above—reminds one of the Venus praises which are assurances that she is ful­ of W illendorf and other Paleolithic sculptures fillin g her function."130 Patmore explained, "You which are indeed handless, and even faceless. may see the disc of Divinity quite clearly Ungit has her servitors; Orual says, through the smoked glass of humanity, but no otherw ise.” Lewis had learned well from Patmore: I had seen their kind before, but only by he makes Jane find the following passage in a torchlight in the house of Ungit. They book at St. Anne’s House: looked strange under the sun, w ith'their g ilt paps and their huge flaxen wigs and The beauty of the female is the root of joy their faces painted till they looked like to the female as well as to the male, and it wooden masks.119 is no accident that the goddess of Love is older and stronger than the god.131 The torchlight of U ngit's house w ill have burned with the light and smoke of the torch in the When I wrote about this passage in "Anti-Babels: strange woman's hand. Orual continues: Images of the Divine Centre in That Hideous "The girls stood stiffly at each side of [the Strength,"132 was unable, as was Walter Hooper 28 to whom I appealed for help, to find the source Strength it is a ll the inhabitants of High Heaven of this passage as. an exact quote. Joe R. C hrist­ who are called down by M erlin and Ransom upon the opher, however, suggested Coventry Patmore as the heads of their enemies. In his abbreviated source of its idea, reminding me that lew is had version of the la tte r novel, Lewis excised a num­ w ritten the follow ing letter to Owen B arfield on ber of mythological m otifs, but this pivotal 1 10 June, 1930, about one of Patm ore's books: chapter he left substantially intact, for it I have just finished The Angel in the presents the fu ll mythological structure of the t r i l o g y . House. Amazing poet! . . . what particular­ ly impressed me was his taking . . . the L ilithian desire to be admired, and making The stupendous sequence of.im ages in That it his chief point: the lover is prim arily Hideous Strength is, in total, an invocation of the mechanism by which the woman's beauty the planetary intelligences as aspects of the human personality when humanity is considered to apprehends itself . . . Venus is a female deity, not "because men invented the myth­ have been made in the image of the God who ology," but because she is . created them. It is one of Lewis's most breath­ taking and audacious achievements, and these Her fem ininity is thus as necessary to her divin­ richly sensual images adorn the structure of his ity as M ars/M alacandra's is to him. narrative with a splendour worthy of th eir medieval prototypes; indeed, of the divinities Each of the three interplanetary novels cul­ the pre-C hristian world bequeathed to us. Lewis has treated this tradition with respect: we too minates in an epiphany: Out of the Silent Planet can do so with assurance, for he has shown us with the coming of Oyarsa who is M alacandra/M ars; Perelandra w ith a m anifestation of M alacandra/ t h e w ay. Mars and Perelandra/Venus; and in That Hideous To Be Continued

E. Articles that deal with subjects that over-lap different realms (e. g. "The Harp in History and Fantasy"). PAST AND FUTURE If you have not sent in your response to the Questionnaire We all owe Gracia Fay Ellwood a debt of gratitude for in the last issue, please do so. Additional recommendations all she has done as Editor for Mythlore and the Society. to myself are most welcome. Onward! She has devoted much time and concern in these last eight issues. When someone takes on a job such a this it is not for "fame or fortune." The reward is deeper and more personal. If there is any recompense, it is the satisfaction of knowing one has been of service to things especially im­ portant to them, and that one has striven to do as well as they have the power to do. If we appreciate what Gracia has done, then we should all encourage her to continue to contribute her individual talents to the fullest extent possible. MYTHOPOEI It is a sad characteristic of human nature to remain silent when we are pleased or when we approve, but to become quite vocal when the opposite is true. It would be a courtesy to let Gracia know your appreciation of her work. Editors CCORE do appreciate kind words at times, since they are usually dealing with procedure and problems. READING Much has happened, arisen, and changed since T he Mythopoeic Society began 13 years ago.'' The Inklings are known and appreciated to a much greater degree, on many levels and facets, than they were when the Society was LIST formed. We have the continuing challenge to study, analyze, discuss, review, comment on, and share the new ideas and Mythlore frequently publishes articles that presuppose things that seem to appear with near dizzying frequency. the reader is already familiar with the works they discuss. This is natural, given the special nature of Mythlore. In I see the readers of Mythlore as a community of persons order to assist some readers, the following is what might who share exciting and involving interests with each other. be considered a "core" mythopoeic reading list, containing Most of us are geographically distant from each other, and the most well known and discussed works. Due to the many therefore find Mythlore an appreciated vehicle for communi­ editions printed, only the title and original date of publica­ cation, opinion, and information. Intellectually, this is the tion are given. Good reading! finest community I know and am excited to be involved in the advancing of its shared interests. J. R. R. TOLKIEN The Hobbit (1937); "Leaf by Niggle" (1945): "On Fairy- I am an "evolutionary" rather than a "revolutionary" in Stories" (1945); The Lord of the Rings : Vol. I, The Fellow- disposition. Change to adapt to altering circumstances is ship of the Ring (1954); Vol. II, The Two Towers (1954); often needed, but too rapid a change can cause feelings of Vol. Ill, The Return of the King (1955); The Silmarillion unpleasant dislocation, and the community's long-term (1977); Unfinished Tales (1980).~ interests may not be best served. With this in mind, I would like to see Mythlore become a somewhat more C. S. LEWIS "well-rounded" publication by combining the best features Out of the Silent Planet (1938); Perelandra (1943); That of a literary journal along with those of a magazine. To Hideous Strength (19457; The Lion, the Witch and the War­ bring this about, I would like to solicit: drobe (1950); Prince Caspian (1951); The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952); The Silver Chair (1953); The Horse and His Boy (1954); The Magician's Nephew (1955); The A. Articles of literary analysis and discussion on the works Last Battle~(1956); Tilt We Have Faces TTP56). of Tolkien, Lewis, and Williams. B. Articles that give a broader appreciation of TLW, such CHARLES WILLIAMS as reminiscences, historical or biographical aspects, War in Heaven (1930);- Many Dimensions (1931); The Place not usually known information, etc. of the Lion (1931); The Greater Trumps (1932); Shadows of C. Other authors and genres of literature that influenced Ecstacy (1933); Descent into Hell (193TTP All Hallow's Eve TLW (e. g. MacDonald, Norse and Celtic mythology, etc.) (1945); Taliessin through Logres (1938) and The Region of D. Articles that deal with the general nature of myth, the Summer Stars (1944) (printed together in 1954). fantasy, and imagination. 29