The Inklings and Paganism
Before he became a Christian, C.S. Lewis was deeply inspired by ancient Pagan mythology, and he continued to value it as mythopoeia after his conversion, and seems to have sought to reconcile the Christian worldview with the ancient Pagan one (for example in That Hideous Strength). Lewis was also fascinated by the symbolism of astrology: a practice and worldview which started in Pagan antiquity and continued well into the Christian era. Lewis’ book, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature, deals in part with astrological symbolism as part of the medieval worldview. Michael Ward has also suggested that Lewis intended the seven Narnia books to be an extended allegory of planetary symbolism. Whether or not he set out to make each book correspond to the themes of a particular planet is not settled; it is however possible to interpret them in that way.
His friend JRR Tolkien also valued ancient Pagan mythology, especially Norse mythology. The earliest inspiration for Tolkien’s invented language and world was the Kalevala, the epic of Finnish mythology; and the Valar, the gods or angels (depending on your perspective) who dwelt in Valinor, were inspired by the gods of Asgard in Norse mythology. The culture and language of the Rohirrim is pure Anglo-Saxon antiquity, with their great mead-hall and burial mounds and love of horses. And the Elder Futhark of the Runes is included in the endpapers of The Hobbit, whence I decoded it at the age of 11 or 12.
The “third Inkling”, Charles Williams, whilst profoundly committed to Christianity, was also steeped in the occult; he was initiated into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and came up with two linked occult principles of his own devising, coinherence and substitution, which formed the basis of his own occult order, the Companions of the Coinherence. There was a flourishing subculture of esoteric Christianity from the early 1900s to the mid-1930s, so it is not terribly surprising that at least one of the Inklings was involved in it.
The ‘first and last Inkling’, Owen Barfield, was an Anthroposophist and a friend of Lewis for over 40 years; his ideas influenced both Tolkien and Lewis.
The Inklings frequently discussed the concept of mythopoeia. Lewis initially believed that mythology had no value, referring to mythology as ‘lies breathed through silver’; Tolkien disagreed, pointing out that mythology contains spiritual truths. To Tolkien, myth-making was the art of the sub-creator; just as humans were made in the image of God, so we inherit our sub-creative power from God.
Ideas of Paganism in Lewis’s writing
Any reader of the Chronicles of Narnia can see that it has a number of esoteric and Pagan-inspired ideas woven through it, together with a well-worked-out philosophy and ethics of magic. As a child, when I read the Narnia books, the Christian themes were obvious because I was immersed in Christianity at the time, so it was the Pagan themes that were new and exciting and different: the fauns dancing in the woods; the talking trees; the naiads, dryads, and hamadryads; the river god who asks Aslan to free him from the Bridge at Beruna; the Maenads; ettins (an Anglo-Saxon term for Jötunn, the giants of Norse mythology) and wooses (probably derived from woodwose); even the god Silvanus puts in an appearance. These are not merely decorative flourishes in the margins of the main narrative; what Lewis seems to be saying is that the Pagan world has not been banished by Christianity; rather it is part of the Christian order.
However, this seems to me (and to other Pagan writers) a bit of a fudge, an excuse to carry on writing about the Pagan themes that he loved, despite his conversion to Christianity. The loving and lavish detail with which the Pagan-inspired characters are described, and the evocation of Nature – woods and streams and wilderness – seems deeply Pagan to me. Like many Pagans, one of my earliest encounters with Paganism was with the Pagan aspects of Narnia and of Tolkien’s legendarium, followed not long after by Rudyard Kipling’s Puck of Pook’s Hill (though it was Kipling’s book that made me realize that my worldview and religion is Paganism).
As a teenager, Lewis saw an illustration by Arthur Rackham for Wagner’s Götterdämmerung and experienced a feeling that he described in his autobiography as ‘pure “Northernness”’. Perhaps this feeling was the inspiration for some of the grittier parts of Narnia, such as the dwarves, the Eastern Marshes, and the Ettinmoors. There are two types of dwarves, the red and the black, which may be a reference to the svartálfar, dökkálfar and ljósálfar (“black elves”, “dark elves”, and “light elves” of Norse mythology, which Tolkien also explicitly referenced).
In the third volume of his ‘space trilogy’, That Hideous Strength (which seems to have been heavily influenced by Charles Williams), and to a lesser extent in the first two volumes, Lewis attempts to reconcile the Pagan and astrological worldview with that of Christianity, using a modified form of Dispensation theology, in which Paganism belongs to the old dispensation, and Christianity to the new. He does this in part through the waking of Merlin and the revelation of the current incarnation of the Pendragon, and in part through the appearance of the tutelary beings of the planets (gods or angels, depending on your perspective). The planetary beings are described as majestic, powerful, and larger-than-life; their descent to Earth causes magical changes in the world.
Lewis on magic
There are two types of magic in Lewis’ scheme of things. The first is natural magic, which Aslan wields, and which can only be asked for by other beings, and occurs in accordance with Aslan’s will. The other kind is unlawful magic, such as that wielded by Uncle Andrew and Jadis (in The Magician’s Nephew), which tends to represent an abuse of power.
The difference is illustrated in several key incidents in the books. The first incident is Uncle Andrew’s abuse of the power of the magic rings, where he sends Polly to the Wood Between the Worlds without her consent, and with no idea of what he is sending her to. The next to be described is the terrible utterance of the Deplorable Word by Jadis, which caused the destruction of the world of Charn. Later in the same book, the beneficial power of Aslan’s magic is illustrated by the gift of the apple from Aslan’s garden. If Digory had stolen an extra apple (as Jadis tried to tempt him to do), the apple would have poisoned him, but because he restricted himself to plucking only the one apple that Aslan had gifted him for his mother, that apple had a beneficial effect, curing her of her illness.
Similarly, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the deep magic from the dawn of time is what gives Jadis the power to sacrifice Aslan; but it is the even deeper magic from before the dawn of time that causes his resurrection.
In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Lucy finds a book of spells and is tempted to use them, but no good comes of the spell she tries; she only hears a girl whom she thought was a friend being bitchy about her.
At the beginning of The Silver Chair, Jill and Eustace are trying to get into Narnia to escape from the bullies at their school. Jill asks if they have to do some sort of magic to get there; Eustace replies that he feels that Aslan wouldn’t approve of such things, so they ask to be let in to Narnia. In contrast to this, the Lady of the Green Kirtle uses base enchantment to ensnare Prince Rilian, and tries to use similar means to enchant Jill, Eustace, and Puddleglum into believing that Narnia doesn’t exist. It is such a relief when they burst out from the mine workings into the middle of the Narnian woods.
The ancient Pagan worldview contained a similarly dual view of magic (except for the Egyptians): magic that was aligned with the will of the gods, and magic that went against the will of the gods. Christianity largely inherited this dual worldview, though it has always had an uneasy relationship with magic workers – even miracle-working saints were tested for orthodoxy before being accepted.
The Pagan revival
At the time that the Inklings began writing, the Pagan revival was gathering pace. Around the turn of the century, Rupert Brooke, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, and Edward Carpenter had written favourably of Nature-worship and Greek culture; GK Chesterton had inveighed against Dickinson in a collection of essays (Heretics, 1905). The Great God Pan was very much awakening, and had made an appearance in both The Wind in the Willows (1908) and BB’s Little Grey Men (1942). During the 1940s, Ross Nichols reintroduced Celtic mythology into Druidry, and Gerald Gardner began developing Wicca into the religion we know today. There was widespread interest in folklore, folk dancing, Celtic and Norse mythology, and several other factors which fed into the Pagan revival. It is hardly surprising, then, that Lewis and Tolkien were interested in ancient Paganism and mythology; it was part of the zeitgeist. A couple of Pagan writers have suggested that they might have become Pagans if they had been born fifty years later; but if they had been born fifty years later, both they and their books would have been very different. They and their books are a product of their era and the things they experienced, particularly the shattering experience of the First World War.
The Pagan revival has a lot to thank Lewis and Tolkien for; many Pagans received our first introduction to Pagan themes and ideas through their work, including river gods, retired stars, fauns, naiads, dryads, hamadryads, talking beasts, dwarves, elves, gnomes, salamanders, barrow-wights, wizards, and a deep appreciation of trees, flowers, and landscape.
Bibliography & Further Reading
- Patrick Benham (2015), The Avalonians. Glastonbury; Gothic Image Publications.
- Stratford Caldecott (2003), Secret Fire: The Spiritual Vision of J.R.R.Tolkien. London: Darton, Longman & Todd Ltd.
- John Garth (2011), Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth. HarperCollins.
- Sørina Higgins (2013), Introduction. The Oddest Inkling.
https://theoddestinkling.wordpress.com/2013/06/05/intro/ - Ronald Hutton (2001), The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Ronald Hutton (2003), Witches, Druids and King Arthur. London: Hambledon & London.
- Gareth Knight (1990), The Magical World of the Inklings. Shaftesbury: Element Books.
- CS Lewis (1964), The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Grevel Lindop (2015), Charles Williams: The Third Inkling. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Michael Ward (2010). Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Jonathan Woolley (2015), Reclaiming Narnia: Walking Trees, Talking Beasts, Divine Waters. Gods & Radicals. https://godsandradicals.org/2015/05/28/reclaiming-narnia-walking-trees-talking-beasts-divine-waters/
Yvonne Aburrow has been a Pagan since 1985 and
a Wiccan since 1991. She has written several books on inclusive Wicca and co-edited an anthology on Pagan Consent Culture. She has an MA in Contemporary Religions and Spiritualities from Bath Spa University, UK. She recently moved from Oxford, UK, to Cambridge, Ontario, Canada to escape Brexit and the “hostile environment for migrants” in the UK. She blogs at https://dowsingfordivinity.com and her books can be obtained via www.yvonneaburrow.com.
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Thanks for adding all the lovely artwork, especially the Arthur Rackham illustration that inspired Lewis’ love of Northernness. And thanks for having me as a guest blogger 🙂
Thanks for writing, Yvonne! It was not a piece I could have informed well, myself.
I can see that. I think it has to be written by someone with an insider perspective on both Paganism and Christianity, who has sat on the fence between them.
Brenton, working with pagans and witches might be your “business” but having them on your blog? We part ways on that.
Adios…
Well, I appreciate your readership and your own reviews. This is the 886th posting on A Pilgrim in Narnia. I have never hid my own faith perspective and the way that it is shaped by Lewis–and the way I think Lewis could have grown. But I have not made that a test of fellowship for guest posts when I have appreciated their content, including students, peers, and scholars. Yvonne has hear been able to speak to something I know little about, which is this recovery of paganism that my students are often quite puzzled about.
Beyond that, to love mythology, with the exception of Hebrew myth, is to love the deep religious realities of pagans. It’s worth talking about, as the Inklings did, but I am sorry it is a line too far for you.
Cheers,
Brenton
I figured I at least owed you a slight explanation instead of just disappearing.
Cheers in return…
The “It’s worth talking about, as the Inklings did” … is true in itself, but this post seems to be an advocacy of pagan believes, through the misunderstanding and misinterpretation of their writings and beliefs.
I don’t see it that way, Hannah, as Yvonne has not presented a central argument about her beliefs as I would when offering an invitation to Christianity. But I would never want a post about something people believe in unless it captured a bit of the beauty of that belief. When I teach on Islam, which I have rejected, I try to get to what people find compelling about it. To me, that’s honesty. Then I can also speak to the problems I see. I’m sure there could be good anti-pagan posts, but I wouldn’t host one because I think this post shows the problem that we as readers of Inklings have just a fuzzy thought about: How did the Inklings hold together paganism and Christian thought in their worldview and their writings? Unless we see things from this angle, we won’t find the answer to that question either.
Pagans are not interested in converting anyone to our religion. Either Paganism wells up from within as a response to Nature, or not.
I think it would have been dishonest if I didn’t talk about why I find the Pagan imagery in Lewis and Tolkien attractive and compelling, which is because I am a Pagan.
I am disappointed that you feel that way.
The goal of interfaith dialogue is mutual understanding, and I contributed this post in that spirit.
Also, contemporary Pagans capitalize the name of our traditions: Paganism, Wicca, Druidry, etc., and the title of practitioners: Pagan, Druid, Wiccan, etc.
Brenton, thank you for this unusual angle of view into Lewis’ incorporation of mythologies into his Christian science fiction and fantasy works. He crosses the line often and challenges the reader to “think again” about some subjects.
Thanks, I appreciate the note!
Reblogged this on Bardic Lore.
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I have just written a similar piece on Tolkien’s relationship with Pagan mythology and ideas.
If Alan Jacobs is right
https://blog.ayjay.org/a-legal-clarification/
in 15 years Pagans will be able to publish editions of the Narnian books rewritten to remove the Christianity. I would expect them to do so ethically, in the sense of explicitly identifying the new versions as altered texts, although, if Paganism has caught on so much by then as to be a big market, perhaps opportunistic publishers will not take such pains.
In Canada, Narnia has been out of copyright for a while. I would feel more worried of Christians grabbing Narnia and cleaning it up than any other group, frankly. But I would feel the same in either case as I would about a Christianization of Woolf or Wordsworth of either Shelley: To censor a text and change it to meet a contemporary point of view may sanitize the reader’s experience, but it fails to honour the poet or to do what Lewis said texts do in Experiment in Criticism, which is to give us the encounter with the other.
What Jacobs is addressing actually quite separate and kind of interesting. I don’t quite understand the world of fan fiction, so I am curious what others end up having to say about it.
I personally would regard such an edit as a complete betrayal of everything Lewis stood for. He wanted to show how Paganism could co-exist with Christianity, if I read him aright.
And we are perfectly capable of writing our own fantasy novels – no need to do a bad edit of someone else’s.
I suppose if you are like feminist, environmental, and Christian writers, you are also capable of creating very bad works as well as good ones!
I’m not sure I know of anyone who has ever thought such a sanitizing a good thing. Does the argument exist out there? It does happen in adaptation frequently.
I’ve never seen any Pagans arguing for such a thing.
There are feminist adaptations of fairy tales, which are rather fun, but intended as a commentary on the story, not a replacement.
There’s also an ongoing discussion among Unitarians about whether one should use the original version of a hymn (and sing the bits one disagrees with in inverted commas, as it were), or a version that fits one’s own theological perspective.
It’s also worth noting that Lewis and Tolkien were fine with people creating fan fiction in their respective universes.
But writing adaptations of their original books in the way that Dale suggests … eeeuuwww nope.
These differences between views on archetypal worlds by Lewis and Northrop Frye (& Carl G. Jung) might clarify Lewis’s view of that relationship between Christianity and paganism (from pp 155-157 of “Literature through the eyes of faith” by Susan V. Gallagher & Roger Lundin)
Frye (& Jung): archetypes arise from the universal human desire for identity and order …..authors have no choice but to write using archetypes – unconsciously tapping into the (subconscious) archetypal world – hence Frye sees literary works as involuntary expressions …
– Jung & Fry believe that the story of Christ is only one of a number of similar stories that all reflect the same archetype
– Fry’s approach is very deterministic (undermining authors’ self-expressions or actions) and downplays the relationship between the real (historical) and the archetypal worlds
Lewis does not believe all literature is based on archetypes, but identifies commonly recurring plots and characters stemming from ancient myths and often employs such formulas in his own work … powerful because those mythic patterns are based on God’s absolute truth. When a story contains an archetype, its author is not drawing on the universal unconscious or monomyth, but rather on God’s truth
– for him the Bible provides the original archetypes, even for those myths that predate its history, which foreshadow the Christian reality: e.g. all dying god motifs – the Fisher King of ancient fertility rituals – come from and reflect Christ’s death
– and archetypes originate out of common human experiences and so reflect God’s structuring hand in history; they are ways human beings respond to God’s world …..
Thanks for the suggestion of this book. I am always on the look-out for texts I could use if I get to teach an undergraduate course in literature and theology. I like their outline.
I am very curious about this quotation, though. I know Northrop Frye pretty well. He is Canadian (one of our few great minds) and I am using him in my thesis. I’m puzzled first because I don’t find him deterministic in this way. Second, he was a Christian, and even spent some time training for ministry. I don’t think he thought “that the story of Christ is only one of a number of similar stories that all reflect the same archetype,” but in his work in literature and theology he did not distinguish between the historical and archetypal in any great way. I would have to see Gallagher & Lundin’s evidence. Do they just say that about these guys or work it through?
On the Lewis bit, I’m not sure that they quite have it when they say, “the Bible provides the original archetypes.” I don’t know Gallagher & Lundin, but I would presume by the way they put this that they are American (or possibly Canadian). I think they are right on the other things, but for Lewis it is more complex. In The Problem of Pain, Lewis uses this phrase: “we touch a rhythm not only of all creation but of all being.” His topic here is what I am studying in my PhD thesis and not essential. But Lewis thinks that all reality is a reflection of divine reality in its essential movements, and archetypes are subliminal cultural images that emerge that reflect that reality. Hence the corn gods rising and dying. These gods historically prefigure Christ, but they also echo Christ for Christ is in eternal submission to God, thus eternally in the posture of death and resurrection. The cross, then, is not merely an historical accident (the instrument is, but not the sacrifice). The death and resurrection of Christ is the mytho-historic moment, where all archetypes emerge consciously as myth becomes history.
So they mostly have it, but their Bible comment is not one that someone could have said in WWII in the UK, but one that comes out of American evangelical renewal in the Baby Boomer generation. I could be wrong, of course. I often am.
Thanks for this, Hannah. I’m very curious about using archetypal criticism for Lewis and will do so ultimately (so perhaps I shouldn’t have shared my thesis here, but I’m sure we can keep it secret!). I took a break from hiding from my blog to dialogue a bit and hope to work this out later.
Thanks for your reply! I was rereading these bits because of what Marius Buning was saying about Frye’s ‘sliding scale of allegorical explicitness’ in his chapter in “Word and Story”: “Perelandra in the Light of Modern Allegorical Theory” and thought them fitting to this post (and couldn’t leave your blog like Bookstooge).
A friend, who studied English literature at Wheaton College, recommended that book and I found it thorough (Lundin is professor at Wheaton and Gallagher at Seattle Pacific Univ.). It is only 178 smallish pages, for you an easy read.
I quoted those sentences quite verbatim but rearranged them a bit and left some out, so might not entirely have caught their drift.
In other parts of the book they also comment on Frye’s work, having “enormous influence on Christian thinking about literature … seen as the imaginative creation of a special world …. where the disorder – troubling realities of ordinary life – can be left behind …” (pp. xxii, 58).
– Ad your ‘first’: “Frye thinks that literature forms a communal dream world: “In ordinary life we fall into a private and separate subconscious every night where we reshape the world according to a private and separate imagination. Underneath literature there’s another kind of subconscious …..”(Frye’s “Educated …” p103).
“Jung and Frye agree that authors have no choice but to write using archetypes. Unconsciously, all authors will tap into the archetypal world, so literary works are not so much the production of the particular author as involuntary expressions …” (p155)
“His belief that the author is primarily an unconscious transmitter, does not allow for as much self-expression or intentional action on the part of the author as we might wish …. “(p157)
– Ad your ‘second’: They first mention Jung there … Great if Frye does not “see the ‘story of Christ as only one of a number of similar stories …’!
Thanks for the follow-up. I’ll dig a bit more into the book. I think I am offering a response that is pretty picky, and as I said, I’m interested in that kind of book.
Frye is pretty hot right now.
“Happiness” ?
“Lewis does not believe all literature is based on archetypes, but identifies commonly recurring plots and characters stemming from ancient myths and often employs such formulas in his own work … powerful because those mythic patterns are based on God’s absolute truth. When a story contains an archetype, its author is not drawing on the universal unconscious or monomyth, but rather on God’s truth”
Yes, I don’t think that Lewis had a vision of the “coexistence” of Christianity and paganism. Rather, as he wrote elsewhere, he believed that there is a Tao of the created order, which can be perceived and valued by all human beings, and which is expressed in myth, and so it finds expression in both Christian and pagan myths.
The Inklings expressed this in various ways in their writings but so have many others. One example is
And the author of the above quotation has also written a book on the topic Christ the Eternal Tao.
Exactly! His Tao in “The Abolition of Man” ….
Another example might be the account by young Emeth, the Calormene of his encounter with Aslan, to Peter and the others in Narnia’s “The Last Battle”
Hi Steve
I meant that Lewis saw Paganism as being superseded by Christianity but didn’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
So for example the appearance of Merlin and the planetary rulers / angels / Oyarse / gods in “That Hideous Strength” shows that the Pagan deities exist but are “really” angels, in Lewis’ view.
Angels or intelligences, or something else. I’m not all that clear of the categories in THS.
From the point of view of the beings referred to in the Space Trilogy as Oyarse, I expect all our human names for them fall short of the reality. Whether we call them gods, angels, intelligences, Oyarse, Valar, or anything else tells the listener a lot about the theological perspective of the speaker, but doesn’t reveal much about the nature of the beings we are talking about.
Yes, I agree that he was striking beyond words–a reality too deep for words he says in Perelandra. But I’m not sure he ever resolved that Pagan-Christian tension fully. I think intelligent people could break it open and explain it coherently. I couldn’t at this stage, though.
He probably didn’t resolve it fully. I don’t think Tolkien did either. And maybe it was a source of creativity for them.
A couple of my source texts explore this creative tension: Ronald Hutton and Gareth Knight.
I guess it’s only resolvable by adopting a Pagan perspective on Christianity, or a Christian perspective on Paganism.
(Notwithstanding the existence of ChristoPagans, many of whom have created their own unique syncretisms.)
Yvonne, what a marvelous post! Thank you so much for alerting me to it, it’s just spectacular. I love seeing Narnia through a pagan lens and I absolutely love the distinctions between lawful magic and unlawful magic. I’ve often connected some of Gerald Gardner’s work to Lewis’ love paganism; especially considering the pagan revival in the 1950’s in England. It would be well worth a look to connect the two (and to Charles Williams, whose discordant harmony between paganism and Christianity is endlessly fascinating to me.)
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