Volume 11 Number 3 Article 3 Winter 2-15-1985 The Wonder of Passage, The Making of Gold: Alchemy and Initiation in Out of the Silent Planet John Hollwitz Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Hollwitz, John (1985) "The Wonder of Passage, The Making of Gold: Alchemy and Initiation in Out of the Silent Planet," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 11 : No. 3 , Article 3. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol11/iss3/3 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 Mythcon 52: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico; July 29 - August 1, 2022 http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-52.htm Abstract Sees Out of the Silent Planet as a narrative of Ransom’s spiritual development, using the imagery of shamanic initiation, alchemy, and medieval hermeticism. In Out of the Silent Planet, though not in later books in the series, Ransom’s initiation and function are almost exclusively masculine. Additional Keywords Alchemical symbolism in Out of the Silent Planet; Initiation in Out of the Silent Planet; Jungian analysis of Out of the Silent Planet; Lewis, C.S.—Characters—Ransom; Lewis, C.S. Out of the Silent Planet; Lewis, C.S. Out of the Silent Planet—Symbolism; Shamanic initiation in Out of the Silent Planet 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/vol11/iss3/3 MYTHLORE 41: Winter-Spring 1985 Page 17 The Wonder of Tassage, The Making of (fold A lchem y and Initiation in O ut of the Silenl Planet John Hollwitz Like circles of artists today, gnostics considered clothes— they are not much more than a telephone" original creative invention to be the mark of anyone ("Introduction" t o MacDonald, p. 10). who becomes spiritually alive. Each one, like students of a painter or writer, expected to express his own Critics have examined Lewis' mythopoeic fiction perceptions by revising and transforming what he was taught. Whoever merely repeated his teacher's words from various literary, theological, and philosophical was considered immature. Bishop Iraneus [c. 180 A.D.] perspectives. His mythopoeic opus has been called complains that. "they boast that they are the allegorical, apologetic, eschatological, moral, discoverers inventors of this kind of imaginary didactic, ideological, fantastic. But relatively fiction," and accuses them of creating new forms of little of the criticism focuses upon the challenge mythological poetry. On this basis, like that Lewis himself raised for readers of such artists, they express their own insight— their own literature: what kind of criticism is appropriate to a gnosis— by creating new myths, poems, rituals, narrative genre which does not conform to customary dialogues' with Christ, revelations, and accounts of t h e i r visions. literary standards? Can we access mythopoeic thinking in criticism, without losing soul? Is there a methodology which sidesteps the ideational or stylistic hardware of this fiction— the "net," as Lewis called it— and offers another path of entry to the numinous experience at the care of such narrative? One cannot dismiss all the alchemists as insane. It seems to m e m ore advisable to examine the m otives that led a cleric, of all people, to postulate a divine The Swiss psychologist C. G. Jung suggested a revelation outside his credo. If the lapis were critical heuristic which might provide such entry. nothing but gold the alchemists would have been Jung was not primarily concerned with literary wealthy folk; if it were the panacea they would have analysis, but he was sensitive to the spiritual had a remedy for all sickness; if it were the elixir they could have lived a thousand years or more. But aspects of narrative, and he devised a method of all this would not oblige them to make religious cross-cultural study which served his purposes outside statements about it. the practice of psychotherapy. Like Lewis, Jung claimed that stories emerge from deep within the C. G. Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis psyche, from an intrapersonal core of insight. In an essay on fairy tales he explicitly identified this source as a center of spiritual experience. Like Besides his work as a prominent Christian Lewis, he believed that this spiritual source was apologist, C. S. Lewis helped define a style of disposed to unique narrative expressions; like Lewis, narrative which combined imagination and religion. too, Jung was unconcerned with whether such narratives Following George MacDonald and the anonymous tellers conformed to accepted literary standards. of fairy tales, and in the company of Charles Williams and J. R. R. Tolkien, Lewis explored the genre that Jung borrowed the technique of amplification from MacDonald had called 'the fantastic imagination. linguistic analysis to follow images and to gain L e w i s t e r m e d t h i s g e n r e th e my t h o p o e i c art, a n d he access to their numinous meaning. Amplification is made an interesting claim about its aesthetics. He not psychodiagnosis. It is a logical technique of insisted that mythopoeisis was immune to customary synthesis, a comparison between a set of symbolic standards of literary excellence. products and their analogues in religious, artistic, or personal history. Dreams, stories, myths, even In his introduction to MacDonald's Phantastes and iconography can be studied by multiplying such Lilith, Lewis distinguished between a fiction which is comparisons. Jung used amplification as an alternative 'merely' literary and one which partakes of myth. The to reductive explanations in which an artistic product distinction involves a sense of wonder, for the or a dream might be causally explained: he objected to peculiar imagination of mythopoeia differs, somehow, "the purely personalistic attitude of medical from the customary mentation of daily consciousness. psychology" on the grounds that it narrowed symbols to Lewis further distinguished between the formalities of a specific meaning when, in fact, their impact is one conventional narrative and the unique aesthetic of of broadening and enriching. He found such reductions mythopoeia: "To be understood at all, [a story] must one-sided, limiting, inaccurate, and, perhaps, a be a series of events: but it must be understood that little boring. Amplification avoids reducing a symbol this series— the plot, as we call it— is only really a to a meaning. It is rather a device for deepening the net whereby to catch something else. The real theme impact of a symbol, for expanding our sensitivities to ma y be, and perhaps usually is, something that has no its numinous origins. He gave an example of how his sequence in it, something other than a process and method might work: much more like a state or quality."3 The "state" to which Lewis referred was numinosity, transcendence— What I do is this. I adopt the method of the what he explicitly called 'soul': "In poetry the words philologist, which is far from being free are the body and the 'theme' or 'content' is the soul. association, and apply a logical principle which is But in myth the imagined events are the body and called amplification. It is simply that of seeking something inexpressible is the soul: the words, or the parallels. For instance, in the case of a very mime, or film, or pictorial series are not even rare word which you have never oome across before. MYTHLORE 41: Winter-Spring 1985 you try to find parallel text passages, parallel one or more preparatory visions, sometimes accompanied applications perhaps, where that word also occurs, by physical illness; the journey itself, imaged as a and then you try to put the formula you have literal movement; and a period of instruction in the established from the knowledge of other texts into • ways of the spirits, which completes the t h e n e w text. If y o u m a k e t h e n e w tex t a re a d a b l e transformation and qualifies the candidate as a healer whole, you say, 'Now we can read it. and ambassador to the spirits. 0 T h e s a m e t e c h n i q u e w i l l w o r k in th e stu d y o f vi s u a l Ransom's experience in Out of the Silent Planet images, rituals, and narrative symbols. contains each of these features. The novel divides into three unequal movements which correspond to the When the technique is applied to Lewis space stages of initiation. The first includes his abduction trilogy, the novels resonate with mythological motifs and prescient vision; the second describes the space which are varied but surprisingly consistent, both flight itself; the third covers his experiences on the within the narratives themselves and within his other planet itself, where he discovers a new identity, writings.