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“Critics and readers alike have often felt that there was some hidden key to understanding C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia septology, and in Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis, Michael Ward convincingly and insightfully spells out exactly what this secret key must be: the seven medieval planets. Throughout his scholarly and poetic writings, and even in his Ransom trilogy, Lewis admired the planets, and felt that they had "permanent value as spiritual symbols." This older, pre-Copernican (or "Ptolemaic") envisioning of the universe was not just an astronomical vision, but an astrological one as well, fraught with symbolism and meaning. As Ward points out, this was not a heretical view, or one that clashed with Lewis' Christianity, for the old "gods" of Greco-Roman mythology had been long dead for millennia, and all that survived of them was their symbolic truth. Lewis felt that truth found in other mythologies did not detract from Christian truth, but bolstered it.
In addition to being insightful literary criticism, Planet Narnia introduces a valuable way to look at social change. Whether consciously or otherwise, our society has cast off each of these medieval ideals or influences, seeing in them undesirable things as well as desirable. But, as Lewis believed, the negative aspects of these ideals are not present in the ideals themselves, but in those who receive them. Human nature is unchangeable without Christ, but these symbols served as signposts that we have cast away without understandng them properly.
And so when we shunned the Jovian ideal, we did not turn our backs on empire or bad government, but we did leave behind proper kingliness, good government, peaceful prosperity, and unquenchable laughter. When we demonized the Martial ideal we did not rid ourselves of war, cruelty, or militarism, but we did rid ourselves of knightliness, chivalry, freedom from anxiety, and restraint and modesty as martial ideals. In forgetting the Solar we do not remove will toward power or the love of money, but we do remove correct philosophy and proper view of knowledge. Attacking the Lunar does not conquer fickleness, jealousy, insanity or corruption, but it does conquer certainty, absoluteness, mindfulness, self-denial and self sacrifice. Fleeing the Mercurial does not leave behind theft, obsession with speed and timeliness, or divorce of meaning, but it does leave behind metaphor, unity of meaning, and reunification. Dismissing the Venereal will not defeat lust, temptation, egoism or disease, but it will defeat selfless love, proper enjoyment of beauty and fertility, and rightful enjoyment of the physical. Killing the Saturnine will not eradicate age, death, decay or treachery, but it will eradicate deep contemplation, seriousness, preparation, belief, profundity, and meaning.
All this is merely to say that there is value in symbols and symbolic thinking, and even more value in symbols that have been part of human thinking for centuries into the past. When we strive to leave behind the darkness we see in our past, we really leave behind all that which was illuminated there; for the darkness is in ourselves.
Lewis' ingenious technique in disguising meaning in the Narniad, which could be enjoyed rather than contemplated, succeeded in exploring spiritual reality in a way that his rational and apologetic writings could not. For, as one of his literary idols, Edmund Spencer, said, “Symbols are the natural speech of the soul, a language older and more universal than words.””
Michael wrote this review Wednesday, October 29 2008.
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