Swords, Sorcery, and Socialism - The Chronicles of Narnia: Books 1-3

Episode Date: June 13, 2023

We begin our 4 part series covering the entire Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis. Covered here are The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. We welcome Alex to the podcast to discuss Lewis' particular brand of Christianity, his incorporation of ancient Greece,  and why its very very important that you understand that Aslan IS Jesus.Follow Alex on twitter @humvadev, or shop her book store Sapphic Sweets & Reads at https://shop.sweetreadsict.compatreon.com/swordsandsocialismEmail: [e-mail] The Show: @SwordsNSocPodAsha: @Herbo_AnarchistKetho: @MusicalPuma69

Hello everyone and welcome back to Swords, Sorcery, and Socialism, a podcast about the politics and themes hiding in our genre of fiction. As always, I am Asha and I'm joined by my co-host Kethel. How's it going, Kethel? Daddy. And today we're joined by a special guest, Alexandra. Alex, how's it going? Hi. We are here for part one of our special four-part series on C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia. There's no way to talk about one of them without talking about the rest of them, so we figured, why the hell not? Let's just do all of them. Today, we are covering the first three books, and by first three, I mean in

the order in which they were released, because I thought that would be a more fun way to talk about them. I think they break down better that way that way also i think the further into them you get the more weird lewis gets with it and i so i thought it would be sort of fun to watch this sort of i don't know i don't know if it's a descent but this sort of transformation i think across the series descent into madness might be maybe it is a descent into madness uh across the series. So today we are starting with the first three books, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. These are the three that all feature the original children, Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. All four are in the first book.

All four are in the first book. All four are in the second book. And the third book, you simply have Edmund and Lucy plus Eustace. Plus Eustace. Plus Eustace. But then he does this fun thing throughout the series, but then the next book is, next one's Horse and His Boy, which jumps back in time to when Peter's high king still. The one after that

is eustace and a different girl and then the one after that is the magician's nephew which is genesis and then after that's the last battle where like everyone comes back and you have a big party so we're talking about the first three the um the original trilogy it doesn't just kind of feel like a it is a trilogy trilogy because i mean even though it like a... It is a trilogy. Trilogy. Because, I mean, even though it's a big time skip, again, I think the continuity of the main characters sort of keeps it as a trilogy.

And the fact that like Prince Caspian reappears in both of them, you know, Ripa Cheek and other people like reappear in multiple of them. I mean, like Dawn Treader and Prince Caspian take place like in Narnia, like three years apart, like Narnia time. And in real world time, you know, for the children, it's like a year later. So I do wonder about that.

Uh, sometimes the time flow, the time flow, don't worry about it. No, it's just whoever he feels like it. It literally is though. That's explicitly stated in the series.

That is as exact. It is up to Aslan. How much time passes? And literally the will of god or sorry the emperor over the sea hey yeah it is leading up to the emperor over the sea how much time has passed and it is explicitly convenient to plot in which case for the rest of this four-part series plot can be directly translated into god's will i think it's a very is a very neat way to do it hey man how much time passed you can wave away anything with the will and hand of god uh i will point out something here at the beginning that i have i pointed out in the pre-show chat,

which is where, you know, everyone knows my, you know, particular interest group, Tolkien would beat you to death with a shoe. If you tried to say his work was allegorical, C.S.

Lewis, a friend of his will beat you to death with a shoe with allegory written on the shoe as he kills you. And this, if you don't get the allegory, he will cry. And so, yeah, it is very much clearly, hello, this is the will of God. This is God. This is biblical. Please don't you understand this is biblical, which is why I brought Alex on, because Alex knows all about the Bible, a thing that Ketho and I only understand tangentially, if I may be so bold, Ketho.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And so Alex is here because Alex knows more than all of us. I wouldn't say that much, but. About this, I think that's very true. Yeah, I went to Sunday school at a Presbyterian church when I was five. Oh, Presbyterians. Yeah.

And then by the time I turned six, we weren't at church anymore. I was forced to go all the way through confirmation at 13 as a Methodist. So the most Nilo Wafer brand of Protestant you can possibly be, the most middle of the road boring method of like protestant possible and i spent most of that time learning how to run the soundboard so i could do that instead of sit through church and then as soon as i was confirmed i said no thank you i will no longer be attending uh so let's start with the first one the The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, a story for children by C.S. Lewis. It was first published in October of 1950. That is wild.

I don't know. It's like this was not that long after the Blitz to be setting a book during Blitz at the beginning. I think there was one thing I will admit I forgot going into this, that the frame narrative is that the four main children, you know, Peter, Susan, Edmund,

and Lucy, um, notice it's two pairs. And also of those, the boy is always older of the two pairs. Very important. Um, that the,

the frame narrative is that the blitz is happening. So the four children whose name, last name is something that starts with a P. I don't remember. Pevensey. Pevensey, yeah. Have been sent out to the countryside to go live with this professor. Professor Diggory Kirk.

I think it's Kirk. Kirky? I don't know. There's an E at the end. And I didn't watch the movie, so I don't know how they pronounced it. So, yeah, it's literally like this is the Blitz. The children have been sent at the end. And I didn't watch the movie, so I don't know how they pronounced it. So this, yeah, it's literally like this is the blitz. The children have been sent to the countryside. And it is there that they begin to experience adventure.

This is also the first story I ever read that featured Turkish delight, which I did not know what that was until I was an adult. Hey, I got to try it in Turkey. Was it good enough to sell out your siblings to a witch absolutely fucking not i don't know what you're talking about turkish delight is great i mean it's great it was good i just i'm like selling out your family and friends for for rosewater treats i don't know that's a eustace iace... I mean, not Eustace, sorry. Edmund has a very developed palate for rose water.

E names are bad, okay? Eustace, Edmund. I accidentally used them interchangeably. It's fine. They're basically the same character. Yeah, because they follow the same arc. They go through exactly the same arc, which is I'm shitty and selfish. A bad thing happens to

me, and I realize that I should be a bad... I meet Aslan, and then I should be better. If we're going to be honest, the baptism metaphor is much stronger with Eustace. Oh, yeah, when he has to be detransed from a dragon. The forced detransition of Eustace. The definitely not Jesus baptizing someone scene. The literal come to Jesus meetings that all the characters have throughout the series. Yeah.

I mean, he eventually goes through that same thing as Edmund, where like in the following books, he's just much more level headed. Yeah. Like popping into silver chair. I mean, skipping ahead a bit. You just does the same thing, but it becomes like the normal level headed person by silver chair. But so, I mean,

come on, I don't, do I really have to go back over the main plot of the lion, the witch and the wardrobe for anyone that's has been a child since the year 1950, when this was published, like the kids go into a wardrobe once or twice. They eventually all come.

There's a witch. She's turned Narnia into an ever winter and never Christmas, which is very important that it's always winter and never Christmas. I'm interested to dig into the theological implications of the fact that Narnia animals know the name for Christmas, despite never like mentioning Christ, despite the fact that they have a animals know the name for Christmas, despite never like mentioning Christ, despite the fact that they have a Christ, but whose name is Aslan.

So why is it not Aslan miss? I'm not sure. But eventually like father Christmas is real and you get to see, you get to hang out with him. C.S. Lewis. Christmas is named after his father Christmas. I guess.

Does that mean, does that mean Santaus is in every universe yes um canonically yes and also that like he describes santa claus he describes father christmas kind of the way people talk about biblical angels where it's like it's sort of like a in awe do not be afraid of me kind of. I feel like he's actually a little bit of a, a little bit of a deus ex machina. The plot is deus ex machina. That's true. The plot is literally the will of God. So God, like Aslan shows up, weakens the witch's power and Christmas shows up and goes, here's exactly what you need for the rest of this story.

Thank you. And the next one. And the next one. And the next one. You know, the witch is starting to lose her power. Yeah. You know, Aslan sacrifices himself in Edmund's stead.

He gets resurrected to have a battle. He brings a bunch of people back from stone. Then they have the battle. The witch, I don't know, gets murdered. Question mark. Yeah.

Murdered. She's dead. Uh, and then we get the establishment of the rightful place of the, the, the, the, the sons of Adam and daughters of Eve in dominion over all the beasts of

the land and the creatures of the sea as the Bible intended. Do you, do you think before he went all the way into oh i'm gonna make this a big series because like i don't he might have had ideas but no one makes plans really to do the whole thing i think he did because he literally ends lying the witch in the wardrobe with like a you won't get back to narnia that way but who knows there may be other ways in that's true it's like big wink big wink because i was i was wondering i don't know i was thinking that lion the witch wardrobe is almost like a microcosm of the macro story so it's like

you could see aslan killing the witch as j defeating the devil and sort of yeah yeah it's like there's I think Alex you can't correct me if I'm wrong but I feel like Lion Witch and the Wardrobe is just sort of like what do I call it like a condensed accelerated Bible like it's kind of like up through

up through at least like the ascension of Christ I would give you like accelerated gospel yes okay accelerated gospels because it's like things are bad the humans are here they have a chance there's a betrayal there's a sacrifice there's a resurrection evil is overthrown like that's that's that's what happens and And it's not even subtle. As as we mentioned this earlier, but Aslan comes back after how many hours? Sometime between like midnight and dawn, roughly. So Aslan isn't I mean, this will have to come up eventually.

Aslan is obviously at least in line, which in the wardrobe is presented more as an allegory of a Christlike figure. It isn't until later that it becomes more explicit that it isn't until like, I don't think you get it until Treader that he is literally Jesus when he appears as a lamb. Yeah. I think that the ending of Voyage of the Dawn Treader really seals that, but I find it interesting that he has this direct correlation for for Jesus.

But in the case of Jadis, she's more of like in she's not like a direct like representation of Satan, really, because she's she's like she's more of like I feel like I feel like what I'm saying is, is that Lewis almost kind of understands more the idea of Satan as like a force of temptation. Than like a literal being. Whereas Aslan is almost the exact opposite. It's a literal being. But it just is Jesus incarnate. As opposed to an extant force of some kind um alex what the hell is jadis what what is what is what is the the the witch here the white witch the witch queen the the daughter daughter of lilith as explicitly stated by the animals of narnia so they're being the thing. And this is where Lewis, for whatever he was, was very read up on his theology.

And the easy answer there would be, Jadis is just your typical greater demon as depicted by C.S.s lewis and the man that he was and that's the easy answer is just like oh yeah she's some sort of like greater demon she represents witchcraft which of course the c.s lewis is is a big no-no but like, I kind of take the thought of Jadus is a weird sort of whore of Babylon, is where I go with that. In that, and this is something, like, modern Americans don't get. The concept of eschatology and the concept of the end times and the rapture and like, you know, fucking, what's... I'm blinking on it. What was the 90s

fucking thing? Oh, where everyone gets zapped up in the public. Fucking taken away? No. Yeah, left behind. Left behind, there we go. Yeah yeah left behind left behind there we go yeah left behind so like everyone thinks of the rapture like left behind now because left behind just was such a permanent cultural

influence and but what people have to realize is it's such a fucking evangelical thing and even then it's a very specific evangelical thing this idea of being taken away is a very specific evangelical thing the catholics don't believe in the rapture like that the orthodox don't believe in the rapture like that isn't revelation to them like a thing that happens here on earth and god's kingdom is established here you don't get like zipped away to it right more or less the catholic church has changed its doctrine on this a couple times but point being when we think of the popular media conception of the rapture that's not what that's not the literary framework that c.s lewis working in. And so when we have things like the Antichrist and the Whore of Babylon and the Beast,

these are not things that C.S. Lewis is necessarily reading in an eschatological sense, but more so in just things that exist. And so that's where I feel like he's taking more influence from depicting the White Witch as this sort of Whore of Babylon figure, because she is

doing this weird uniting of the land and trying to keep its rightful rulers away and making these deals and seducing one of its rightful rulers away, and making these deals, and seducing one of the rightful rulers. I'm not going to say it's a one-to-one correlation, but I feel like that's what Lewis is thinking about, more so than just a bog-standard demon. Because reading through Lewis's works,

demonology didn't really interest him that much. Certainly not in the way we would think of it, at least. He's not one of those kind of Catholics. Not as much. Lewis is always very concerned about the human nature and the human spirit, and part of that manifests as the this sort of cosmological you know what is the dealings of angels and demons

and things that are not human or not of this world isn't as important to lewis as maybe it is to like tolkien who obviously writes at great length about his angel allegories except they're not allegories because he would kill you if you said that he was an angel how dare you ma'am how dare you um but you're yeah so like lewis is much more focused on like what the people are doing. Like consider all of Lewis's main characters and supporting casts are people and animals. Like we don't really get like supernatural creatures. Yeah. Except aside from Aslan and the witch kind of.

They're always like even even like so-called supernatural moments, things in like voyage of the Dawn Treader where you have like the dragon, like it's still a reflection of human nature more so than anything else. Absolutely. And I would argue that like Lewis does not view dragons as supernatural creatures. I would argue that he is viewing them as just extinct animals did exist but no longer do because one of my favorite things from dawn treader is the duffers the monopod like the

isopods you know the dudes that hop around on one leg they were like a fairly i don't know if you want to call it well known like creature to medieval people that like talked about that sort of thing like what sort of creatures lurked uh you know around the map like they talk they're they're on the like i don't know like the hereford map or something you know where you can see all the little wee beasties and all like the various countries of the world they have the monopods like hopping around in senegal or something so like he literally just lifted that directly from medieval texts and was like yeah these are real mythological creatures. So, you know what I mean?

Like, so that that to me tracks that dragons to him were like, yeah, it's just a thing. You don't see them anymore. But like they were real because like they used to write about them. So clearly that's a thing that you could be. Ironically, though, he took he did get rid of one of my favorite parts, that was sort of the mythology around the isopod people, the geotopes or whatever the medievalists called them, which was that they were also sort of horny. Because the idea that you would like shade yourself by lying on your back with your one big leg in the air also meant that your ass was also up in the air, sort of like waggling your ass about seductively directly up at the sky. And so it was also sort of horny because they would sit there with their asses out just like wiggling around he manages to avoid that by having them wear pants

just just have them wear pants simple elegant elegant solution pants or is it just a pant since it only has one leg? Wearing Einpant. Einhosen. Einhosen? Sure. Correct me if I'm wrong, Alex. I feel like C.S. Lewis was somebody who got mad about Vatican II. Yes.

This book came out like 15 years before Vatican II, and I guarantee you C.S. Lewis was really mad after Vatican II. Like, it's weird to me that like, I want to call them internet trad cats, like to talk about Tolkien, when I think C.S. Lewis is more their guy. Based on how we actually viewed things, I think C.S. Lewis would be more the guy for these weird anti-Vatican II Catholic reactionaries you find online. But that could also be my prejudice talking towards the author that I like better, so I can't really be sure. But I feel like Lewis would have been opposed to anything that would have been seen to update the church and make anything less literal. So really important clarification here that yes, C.S. Lewis had a lot of opinions about Catholicism, but something I just completely left out of my brain because I think about Tolkien so much and also because I just can't divorce the Anglican church from the Catholic

church in my head is C.S. Lewis was an Anglican, not a Catholic. Really? Yes. What? Yes. Aren't those the same thing? Anglicans are just Catholics

who allow divorce. There's Catholics who changed out the Pope for the King. He was Anglican? It's also worth noting that he died in the middle of vatican too so he had opinions but he did not see him through and he did he died in 63 so he died in the middle of it okay we don't have otherwise i bet he wrote a letter to i bet he wrote a letter

to somebody afterwards saying about his opinions about it um god damn he was anglican yeah fuck i never would have i never would have known that from how strongly catholic he appears to be in all of his works anglicans really this is the thing is that especially for a guy like c.s lewis anglicans are essentially just catholics doing catholic shit like genuinely this is an area where, like, especially for the time, the Anglican Church did not, it was beginning to differ substantially. Or, like, it was still very much a thing of, you basically just have your hand-me-down Catholicism. I was gonna say, I know nothing about the Anglican Church. I say I know nothing about the Anglican Church, but I guess if I'm what I'm gathering from this is that if I know anything about the Catholic Church, it probably applies to the Anglican Church to the most part.

I mean, the Anglicans are just Catholics who fucking decide that they don't want to put up some Catholic bullshit. They just didn't want to pay. They didn't want to pay their fucking tithes anymore. Well, I mean, they wanted to get fucking King Henry wanted to get a divorce. Yeah. I mean, the king was mad horny. Now I'm sort of at C.S. Lewis a little bit more now. I didn't fucking know that.

Good Lord. Honestly, that just makes it weirder to me, like just slightly weirder because like, yeah, I don't really see his like theology as being that much different than like a conservative Catholic at that point in time, but functionally was actually the same. Okay. So what are our main themes? Let's,

let's, let's get, let's get into the first one here, the lion, which in the word, what are our main themes here? We have the four children. I'm going to keep doing this Alex Alex, throughout this discussion. Is it important

that there's four of them and it's two pairs? Does that matter? Or is that just a story structure that he chose because he liked it? Probably just a story structure. I could make a fucking flimsy case about there being four Gospels. But... I mean, to be fair, Peter's

a pretty biblical name. I don't think Edmund is, though. Yeah. I don't think Edmund is, though. Yeah. The gospel according to Edmund. Peter is as biblical a name as you can possibly get to. To be fair, Edmund couldn't have a have a gospel because he is literally temporarily embodies Judas. So he doesn't get to have a gospel gospel of judas yeah but that's not in that's not in cs lewis's bible he probably heard of it though i'm sure he had that's one of the things you weren't allowed to look at because it was witchcraft or something to me it all kind of

reads a little like like a lot of um apocryrypha to me feels like biblical fan fiction. I don't know. These books are biblical fan fiction. Yeah, these are more that. The Chronicles of Narnia are biblical fan fiction. So you come to this world talking. It's like anytime there is a apostle, there's probably a piece of Apocrypha out there written by them in quotation marks i mean fucking all the gospels are written by somebody else so yeah i was about to say yeah written by them in

quotation marks yeah big air quotes um so they make it the two sons of adam and two daughters of eve which they insist on calling them at every turn have to sit on the four thrones uh in which case narnia will be restored to its glory by its true ruler jesus aslan the lion um it is not even subtle it's like literally ingrained from like the moment this book starts that sort of i want to call it like early biblical like genesis thing that humankind that man is was created to be the master to be the lord of all of creation like it's not it's like directly stated by the animals they're like oh yeah you guys are human it's literally the deep magic that you need to be in charge for this land to be set right. And he doesn't even dispense with like vague prophecy.

He just has like the first animal they talk to be like, oh, yeah, we've got a saying here. When you're king, we'll all be chill. Shit. Fuck. I mean, OK, I guess like the beavers just say that directly to the children. Like, oh, yeah, when you guys are on the thrones down there, everything will be cool. I feel like the kids should be like, I don't want to be.

I mean, to be fair, if I was like 11 or whatever the hell Peter was when he went to Narnia, and they're like, you get to be king. I'd be like, yeah, don't. Aslan is like, you guys are kings and queens now, and they're all like, sure. I don't want all this responsibility. Did they do anything? Yeah, they all they they hand out like awards and titles like immediately as soon as they start to grow up they go on like visits of state to all the other countries in narnia that exist that's

right boy and his horse a couple of them show up very briefly yeah king peter and like susan are there or lucy maybe i think susan and lucy are there yeah susan lucy are there, or Lucy maybe are there. I think it's Susan and Lucy are there. Yeah, Susan and Lucy are there. I like that he goes out of his way to mention that basically every king and prince in the world that exists all want to fuck Susan and Lucy. He makes sure to mention that at the wrap-up there, like their time. None of them ever get married, though married though which is interesting choice if you're high king or queen of a country they never like you know get married and cement the line of kingship which is a weird choice but sure why not yeah how long do they rule for they're in

they're like old ass adults by the time they disappear back into the forest they're like i always assumed they were in their like 40s or something they're pretty aged by then they're like 40 or 50 by the time they go back through the forest to the wardrobe so you're telling me these four humans went from age went from like pre-teen to 50 and never once fucked well you know i did read some fan fiction that may explain some of that oh god i don't think i want to know um to be fair i know this is jumping ahead but like one of the inciting incidents in horse and his boy is that the like the king of wherever the hell that is the place that starts with a c like wants to kidnap susan to make to, marry her. That's, like, the inciting incident

in Horace and His Boy, so. Sex does, in fact, exist in Narnia, just not, not for protagonists. Not for protagonists, because, I mean, obviously Prince Caspian was born of a guy who got murdered by his brother. He got, like, hamleted or some shit, I don't know.

I'm getting my Shakespeare wrong, but that's, it's pretty Hamlet. Yeah. Yeah. Like his uncle murders his dad to usurp the throne. Like they get a little darker as soon as you hit Prince Caspian, where they're like,

they've like been conquered by the Normans. And then they like, yeah, there's like Royal assassinations and stuff. There's like usurpations and that, that line at least continues to have children. So they're allowed to have children and allowed to have sex in this world. Yeah.

Just not, you know, our, our, our main protagonists here, which why, why mentioned that all the princes and Kings of the world want to fuck them just to be like,

but they didn't. It proves how pure they are i guess i mean so see see here's the thing is that we can like say c.s lewis is on some purity culture bullshit but genuinely i think c.s lewis like yes everything the man does is an allegory but sometimes he is just being a writer and he understands i think c.s lewis understands as a writer that if he concludes the story with they go back through the wardrobe and they're all fucking teenagers again and they go on with their lives one this is already a horrifying enough concept but also if they had children then now there are children back in narnia that will never

see their parents again and then eventually never see their kids again and then eventually yes that this being the thing too of like this is very much you know set up as a sort of dream state of they're dreaming about the adventures they have you know obviously they're not actually dreaming but it's in a narrative device of they're off having adventures and having fun and one day the adventures stop the dream ends they come back to reality and so even though you know there is the horrifying thought of, oh, these are children who just lived, like, full-ass adult lives with full-ass adult responsibilities, lording over a kingdom. They were, like, literally having visits of state, deciding justice, like, doing administration. Yeah, like, they executed people.

like these kids grew up and it became judge jury and executioner of subjects regents like these are not just regents like these are full-on like divine kings and queens like this is full absolute monarch tier shit because jesus literally put them on the throne himself yeah that's an allegory for him just him it's not no it just that's literally just jesus came down and said you get to be king now and you have power and dominion over these lands and then they go back to being like 11 and so like and to be clear it's also like, unless I'm wildly remembering something, it's pretty explicitly stated later on that they mostly forget about their adventures. Again, going back to the dream thing of it starts to fade and I'm pretty sure there's

a point at which when going further down the line when, or I guess it's not further down the line when or i guess it's not further down the line i'm pretty sure that happens by treader um when susan is banished from narnia for having periods and liking boys is it the treader i don't know i think no because i think after prince caspian peter and susan are just told they're too old to come back. See, so in the movies, it's that they're too old. But I'm pretty sure in the book, it's explicitly that Susan cares too much for boys now. And Peter has lost his faith. Huh.

Interesting. You could be right. Maybe I'm just like, maybe I'm just like blanking over and just been like, ah, they were too old. You can start to look it up there, Kethel, see if you can find it. Cause like, yeah, eventually they all sort of age out of coming back, which is why you have to keep refreshing it with like new protagonists like over time. But like, this reminds me, um, there, this is explicitly also a single episode of adventure time where he goes into like a pillow

fort and ends up an entire world of pillows and like can't get out and lives there and has a pillow family with like a pillow wife and kids and lives an entire life till he's an old man and then dies and then wakes up out of the pillow fort and just goes wow that was crazy and that's like the end of the episode i hate how fucking rick and morty ripped that episode off and where everyone's just like oh look at this cool rick and morty episode it's like fucking half the good ideas of rick and morty came from adventure time yeah because that's that's the uh you're playing the game rick yeah not rick it's uh like it's like Roy. Yeah. Yeah. Like but like it's literally there was just an Adventure Time episode like that, just like, oh, yeah,

we're going to do the pillow for it. We're going to do like the whole live a whole life and then die and like come back. Like, have you found it yet? Heather? No, I was hoping it was going to be right at the end. It's not. Peter talks to the rest of them and is like i can't tell it to you all there were things he wanted to say to sue and me because we're not coming back to narnia um so it's not

right at the end so it's going to be much harder to find than i thought but you're right i suppose the idea of them like fucking is probably a bit much because it fucks with the continuity of the story and like the other things that have to happen and the fact that for like a few for a while there these like them as characters and as like kings or whatever are these weird like mythic figures where they had a reign they like appeared save the kingdom reigned until adulthood vanished without a trace and like 1300 years later they just all reappear like fucking King Arthur, like coming back when the kingdom needs them most. And then they fucking disappear again.

And then two of them come back a third time. Much sooner that time. Much sooner, only like three years later and only to hang out with Prince Caspian on his boat. They literally don't even touch Narnia. They appear in the ocean next to his boat. But like, what the... I'm just looking at this from like an in-world perspective. If you're like a resident touch Narnia. They appear in the ocean next to his boat. But like, what the... I'm just looking at this from an in-world perspective.

If you're like a resident of Narnia, what is it... Do you just have this like mythical human monarchs that just sort of temporally appear just whenever? Sort of like Aslan does? Just like, yeah, whatever they feel like showing up, they do. And they're just in charge at that point. Pretty much.

But also this whole idea that like, you need to have humans on the throne at narnia for like narnia to be set to right when i first read the first book i thought this was like real special because the humans had to like come from our world you know what i mean from like the quote-unquote real world even that's not even true because like the telmarines are technically from our world but they've been in narnia for god knows they've been in like the world of narnia for god knows how long and they just live there and they just come in and conquer it's like there's just other humans that live there there's also that whole southern kingdom we've been talking about that's just the ottoman empire full of humans that just live there so like ruling narnia is not being a human to rule narnia isn't even really that special

because like there's humans kind of all over the place everywhere except narnia there's also the kingdom of action or whatever it is also has humans in it um eventually did i don't think they're there at the time initially uh unless oh but in horse and his boy like they go to the entire empire yeah that empire didn't spring up between when susan peter and lucy took over narnia that empire must have existed already is that why the witch had like informant network set up in case any rogue humans from the southern kingdoms just like showed up presumably question mark i don't know if you thought about it that far ahead point but like that to me informs that narnia was this entire like spy warrant of talking animals and trees because if some like you know like fuck off silk trader

from the southern kingdom just showed up to narnia to be like, hey, someone want to buy this silks I have? He could immediately be reported to the White Witch and turned to stone for like daring enter the kingdom. Or if he's from that southern empire, more likely he was coming to like sell slaves because that seems to be what they're into, which is a troubling thing we'll have to get into once we get to horse and his boy. But well, I mean mean it comes up in don treanor too not the stuff going on in the south but the stuff going on in the islands because the

islands that the lonely islands or the lone islands have apparently geopolitically become under the sway of that southern empire which is not even though they're technically part of narnia which is why there's slavery happening there and they're like immediately try to sell all of the children into slavery like instantly. And they, I mean, they get bought and the guy who buys them is the one that they put in charge later.

Yeah. He buys Caspian. The Caspian's like, by the way, I'm your King. And he's like, Oh, right then.

Cheerio. No hard feelings. And Caspian's like, yeah, no hard feelings. You'reian's like yeah no hard feelings you're the lord here now you're the duke the duke of slave town that's not but he universally abolishes slavery he gets rid of course because he's a good king and lewis has this weird has this like belief in like this sort of inherent human freedom that's anti-slavery i mean is that a weird belief or is that just lewis like

you know being decent well i mean weird in that like not weird that it's good to believe that slavery is bad and all humans are equally free i just think again he just couches it weirdly i think in his anglicanism can we talk for a minute i want to go back can we talk for a minute? I want to go back. Can we talk for a minute about Aslan's self-sacrifice in the first book and the deep magic and the deeper magic? And can someone explain to me what the fuck that means? What is the deep magic that means that anyone who does as a traitor, their life is forfeit to Lilith, but there's even deeper magic where if a person willingly sacrifices themselves in place of a traitor, it abolishes the previously stated magic altogether because it was magic from before the creation of the world in the timeless halls, as you were, if you were Tolkien.

And the witch wasn't there for that. So can of you explain to me what is like is this just world building on lewis's part or again is this some weird christian stuff that i don't quite understand did like satan have some sort of like deal with god where traitors immediately get to go hang out with the whore of baby? Or like, is this just storytelling? Alex, please help me. Like, so, this is something

that gets into... For one, I think a lot of it is just C.S. Lewis is doing some story building here. World building, rather. Storytelling, world building. In that this is not necessarily anything that you can draw a one-to-one thing of. Some sort of Christian theology equals deep magic and deeper magic.

Simultaneously, C.S.is was very much the theologian and was very interested in reading about the bible and did read his fair share of apocrypha and like in before before christianity materialized under the nicene creed birthed Nicene Christianity, which is basically everything we know as Christian today, with the exception of the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses. Before that, you obviously had a lot more different kinds of Christianity. And some of those Christianities were very involved in the esoteric and what we would now consider the occult and this partially stems from the fact like there used to be a lot more emphasis on magic just in general between early christianity and also the many phases of Judaism that came beforehand. Because we have to remember that Christianity is building off of two to three thousand years of Judaism prior.

And as a result, it's important to remember that Christianity is itself a fusion religion of a religion that at that point had fused multiple times with other religions. where this older account you find in Enoch is simultaneously coming from an older era of Judaism but also is part of a Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots, and early Christianity

were the groups at the end of Second Temple Era. Okay, okay. And so in this instance, what we're talking about here is the Ascens, which were a much more mystic sect. Is that where you get ascetic from? I don't actually know if that's the etymology there. They were very much into asceticism, though.

They believed in living very minimally, not engaging in worldly pleasures. Their school of thought obviously eventually died out, but they were very influential for things like the Book of Enoch, which draws its text from older works, but was compiled and saved largely by the Essenes.

And I guarantee I'm butchering that pronunciation probably, but that's how I've heard it pronounced. Anyways, the point I'm making here is by this point, Greece has become a dominant force in the Mediterranean, and of course then is subsumed by Rome. And so part of that is, this is having an influence.

And this is also why so much Christianity is so influenced by Greco-Roman mythology and how we get our notions of, if you've ever wondered why heaven, purgatory, and hell seem to follow the free arc of fucking Elysium, Asphodel and tartarus that's that's basically what it is the christian conception of the afterlife is literally just elysium asphodel and tartarus and for all you zoomers for all the zoomers out there you know that because of the game hades or so of course this only applies if you're catholic and believe in purgatory yeah of course evangelicals do not believe in purgatory they believe so i know speaking of like the greek influence it is interesting that in prince caspian two greek gods show up to help a kind of wild you know beat the telmarines like literally bacchus and selen and silenus show up to help win the battle. If you had asked me which two

Greek deities are going to show up in C.S. Lewis' work, I would not have guessed Bacchus and Silenus. Or whatever the fuck you say that. Again, talking about weird Greek influences on this Christian... Isn't Bacchus the Roman version of

Dionysus? Yes. And Silenacchus the Roman version of Dionysus? Yes. And Salinas is like the companion and tutor of Dionysus. He's like the satyr. The freaking party gods show up. Yeah, the party god and his math tutor show up to help Jesus beat the pirates. The pirate lords.

Yeah, sorry to interrupt, Alex. I was just like, when you talked about the Greek influence on all of this, I was like, wait a second. The Greek gods literally show up, or at least a couple of them. I guess the – I don't know. Maybe it does make sense because those are the ones associated with the other heavily Greek-influenced thing that shows up in Narnia, which are naiads andads. And like fauns.

And centaurs. You get centaurs and fauns and Nyads and Dryads, which are all very Greek. C.S. Lewis definitely enjoyed his Greek influences and I think that is more where he is drawing this idea

of deep magic and deeper magic from. My aside with the Essenes is that they were also very involved in this idea of deep magic and deeper magic from my aside with the essenes is that they were also very involved in this sort of like hellenistic fusion is the wrong word to say here but inspiration influence perhaps and that is where we get you know some of the more batshit things that we associate with like Book of Enoch and why it seems to be telling a very classical mythology tale and also why

after Charlemagne got Christianity installed was like, this shit can't this isn't good, we're not going to do this actually no, I take that back the book of enoch was pushed out from the canon before yeah that was like early on wasn't that like that was

like one of the early that was that was like i believe that was the 200s that was when like that was like around when constantine was making christianity official saying yeah yeah when constantine was making the official christianity of the roman empire he's like he's like look we need christianity that's fine but y'all need to figure out just one version of it for everybody and that's when they started kicking out all the fun books i think yeah all the fun stuff no no lilith well yeah lilith is just you know some fucking weird weird holdover from back when God had a wife

yeah so C.S. Lewis describes Lilith as being Adam's first wife which technically means that like Eve the mother of humankind is like is his second wife so Adam got divorced it wasn't a divorce. God divorced them.

God annulled the marriage, so it wasn't actually a divorce. It wasn't the whole shtick that he created, that God created two people. Yes. And then eventually created Eve out of Adam. Because the women need to be subservient. Yeah. Whereas Lilith was too independent. Yes. And then eventually created Eve out of Adam to make- Well, because the women need to be subservient. Yeah. Whereas Lilith was too independent.

Yes. Yeah, that's why it gets to be always winter and never Aslan-ness. This is making me like Jadis more. But yes, the point being here that deep and deeper magic is something that has some some inspirations from older christianity and consequentially older judaism but also like i do feel very heavily hellenistic in that there is this idea of there are rules even gods cannot deny there are rules even gods cannot deny. There are rules even gods cannot break. Well, he says that directly when he and the witch are talking, and Lucy is just like, hey, can, like, well, can't we just ignore the rule about traitors?

Can't we, like, go around it? And Aslan, like, looks at her like, how fucking dare you suggest that we break the rules laid down by God, my father, the emperor over the sea. So, but here's the thing. And this is the interesting thing. I feel like modern evangelicals don't have a good theological response for it because they kind of just gloss over the issue. But there has consistently been this school of thought in Christianity of how much free will does God have? Is God truly omnipotent in the idea of can God do anything?

And consequentially, can God sin? Is sin this universal constant that even God is subject to? Like he could if he chose to? God is subject to. Like he could if he chose to. But that's the thing, is that, is God's omnipotence,

does God's omnipotence extend to being able to break the rules that God has, you know, supposedly laid out? Or is these the rules that predate even God in the sense of like, they have existed as long as God has existed?

And I think... The rules are co-eternal with god yes that so long as there is a god there are rules that accompany him and so i feel like i mean isn't that kind of that's a really old that's like a really old question of like which can't it's a very like chicken and egg sort of question i feel like that's one of the debates they were having before nicaea probably oh absolutely i mean fucking this predates christianity and arguably predates judaism too yeah as i say like i i first have heard this posed in a socratic just an intro to philosophy course with the whole, are the gods pious? Because like, is a thing pious because the gods say it is? Or is, do the gods say it is because it is pious and always has been? And so I think, you know, to answer the original point of, you know, what's going on with deeper magics

is I do think this is just Tolkien fucking C.S. Lewis getting really deep into this idea of one, there being multiple

foundations, and this is something that I always talk about evangelicals having leaked theology. And one of these things is there's explicitly God creates the angels and then God creates the universe. The angels predates the material universe. And there is a undefined span of time between the creation of the angels and the creation of the material world. Which Tolkien did represent with, you know, the Ainur and the creation of the material world which tolkien did

did represent with you know the eye nur and the timeless halls yes and so i think what c.s lewis is going for here is that there is the deep magic which was set forth at the beginning of the material world and then there is the deeper magic which was set forth at the beginning of the immaterial world. And again... He does say before the dawn of time, as in before time itself started. Exactly.

And I do think this is something that goes into older Christianity of, if you look at something like the Book of Enoch, it explicitly states that angels came and taught humans how to do magic. There were specific

angels that taught specific things, and one angel taught enchantments, and the other taught the resolving of enchantments, which is an interesting distinction that goes into this really interesting,

his antiquity thing about how, like being able to do something and being able to read something was separate in a way that we don't really think about in the modern day. There's a lot of things I can do and a lot of things I can't read. So that's fair. So, and I think this is what that is referring to of the witch being, you know,

a daughter of Lilith has been taught in this passed down magic, but was not there when like the rules are being written. Yeah. She was there when Narnia was created, but not when like all of everything was created. Yes. Yeah. Hence the,

is it I'm so I didn't reread a line, the witch, the wardrobe. Cause I read that so many times as a kid and as a young adult. But I'm, is it, is it just from the movie? The meme?

Yes. Unfortunately, that that line which is good that line is created for the movie the don't sign it to me i was there when it was written that's from the movie in the book it's a little too metal for lewis yeah in the book she's like you know the deep magic and aslan goes let's pretend that I don't explain it to me. And she just gets real mad that he's pretending that he doesn't know the rules. He literally says, let us pretend that I do not know. Explain it to me. And she's like, what do you mean you don't know? Like she gets mad about it. I was also looking at stuff kind of while you were talking.

There's a section on, you know, talking about C.S. Lewis and his idea of universal morality. And Lewis also portrays universal morality in his fiction work. In the Chronicles, he specifically says the universal morality is the deep magic that everyone knows. This universal morality that he believes all humans have, this natural law. He talks about it in his book, Mere Christianity, the idea that people have a standard set of behavior, which they're expected to adhere to. People all over the earth know this law and they know when they break it. And he goes on to claim that there must be something behind such a universal set of principles. And that's sort of like you said, that's also partly

what he's talking about with this natural law. Like you said, it's the deeper thing. It's the constant, which to me goes back to you talking about it being like sort of co-eternal with God, because it's like inherent to the being of all being, not just like a rule that was put down, but it's like you said, it's very confusing theologically, whether it's did they spring to existence simultaneously or did one create the other, ergo giving God room to sin, which – Something tells me Lewis is not in that camp. No, I think Lewis – I would assume that Lewis thinks that the law and God are co-eternal, that they exist together, that God cannot sin. That would be my assumption i don't know if you would disagree alex but that's kind of my assumption where i feel like c.s lewis would

land yeah yeah i don't even i don't even know if in his world if aslan can sin or if aslan can he doesn't i feel like lewis does take the approach of God is a perfect being, sin is imperfection, and therefore God can't sin, not because he is incapable of sin, but because he is perfect, and thus can't be imperfect. It would be against his nature to sin, because it is not what he is. Essentially. That in a way, God has less free will than humans. That God is... And this also comes down to the thing of like, how do you view God?

Is God eternal and unchanging? Or can God change their mind and all right obviously that's a big theological question that i don't really think narnia ever touches on beyond like this was actually the plan all along don't you know yeah we're like again i keep trying to like i i i don't i think i can't help it i keep trying to compare it I think I can't help it. I keep trying to compare it to the way Tolkien handles this sort of thing. Where Tolkien very goes much with like God is all-knowing and all-powerful but chooses to act indirectly so as to eventually make all things work out according to plan. Lewis is like, no, the kids showed up on this day at this time because that's the way God willed it to be.

Aslan is here at this time and this place because that's the way god willed it to be aslan is here at this time in this place because that's the way god willed it to be you know what i mean like like you said earlier kathleen talking about father christmas with the right presence being there that's very much like god willed it and so it was yeah it's much more direct than anything that um tolkien would attempt i mean tolkien's creator deity is effectively absent yeah you don't even know his name until the silmarillion does no one even ever mention the name aru aluvitar in like the lord of the rings i can't even remember now the only person that i could think would even be able to mention that would be like tom bombadil and i don't think he does. Or Gandalf could, but I don't think he does either. He's a very detached

being. The most direct impact Elru has on the Lord of the Rings is by bringing Gandalf back to life. Narnia very much strikes me as the type of Christianity where God has laid out a plan in advance and all things proceed according

to it. And I think you can see in the story that Aslan behaves that way in like, I don't think he knows the plan necessarily, much like Jesus didn't know God's plan. But as soon as like the plan becomes evident to him, he accepts it and rolls with it. Well, the idea just being that he has as like, it and rolls with it well the idea just being that he has as like as a as kind of a perfect example of faith you know it's like aslan has complete and utter faith in the plan whatever the plan might be he doesn't know what the plan is but yeah he but he has total faith in the plan because you know like seeing that peter has a sword and shield and then there's like the horn because the camp's being attacked.

He literally tells the other animals to hold back. And he's like, I'll let Peter earn his wet. The prints are in his way. Just like literally tells everyone else to hold off. So Peter can kill the wolf, can kill Mogren. Like that's like an utter like faith that Peter will do so. Like no chance that it won't happen. When he decides, he realizes that the only way out of the magic

conundrum is to sacrifice himself. Obviously, he's sad about it, and he gets to have his, like, I am sad and lonely, children, why hast thou forsaken me moment, which gets, like, eased up by the two girls, like, petting him. But, like, again, he's immediately just like, well, I guess this is the plan. Gotta roll with it. And so it's very much alike i i would argue as compared to tolkien there isn't actually much free will in narnia if we're gonna go the big question i don't think the world of narnia really has free will or at least some people don't i mean that comes that comes back to i think a bigger question of whether or not something or someone knowing well i guess you're right i don't because there's that argument about um omnipresence and if something or something if like god is truly

omnip like omnipotent omnipresent then there is no free will because everything is known like every action that can that will be taken all actions are predetermined yeah um i don't know if that's so much like oh lewis was being really intentional about that or whether it was like just a byproduct of how i mean this could entirely be theology time kind of works yeah me reading into the story but i don't know alex do you disagree here what i'm reading in here is that there really isn't free will in narnia i don't know how much i take that because and see i don't actually know if lewis was a calvinist or not i don't think lewis was a calvinist i don't think he followed calvin's thinking was that calvinism that was the first one that was like all things are

predetermined there is no free will wasn't the first but it was the popular one of everyone who is going to be saved is saved there is a predetermined set of people who are going to be saved and there's a predetermined set of people who are going to be damned and like yeah this idea that god has already laid out the course of everything because i mean i don't know it's just hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that like everything plays out exactly as was told you know like i think that's more relying on prophecy which like we can then make the argument of if you can prophesy something does that mean there's no free will but like i i think that falls more into the understanding of the the sort of time traveler trap of anything you try to do to change the future will create the future and i think

that's where it's foregoing is not so much that everyone has their choices predetermined but rather that this is a thing that will happen, and no matter how you try to struggle against the tides of history, that will happen. Which, if we are to continue my spiel about Greek influence, is how the fates work. The gods

cannot change how the fates weave. And this is a frequent thing of mortals being like, ah, fate has damned me. I have to change fate. And every time a mortal attempts to do that,

they get horrifically punished for it. Or simply fight their way into the fate. They were trying to avoid yada, yada. Yeah. Oh, you know, Oedipus at all.

Oedipus, the poster child. Yeah. I mean, the poster child of, all. Oedipus, the poster child. Yeah. I mean, the poster child of I shall avoid this fate by and then thereby bring it about. That is like a I mean, it's just a classic storytelling trope. So it could just partially be that. I mean, there's a prophecy. You fulfill the prophecy.

Sure. Maybe I'm just so used to everything else in here being heavily Christian that I'm expecting there to be some like theological backing to most of the stuff. When I think Alex, you said earlier, part of it sometimes is just him trying to tell you a story sometimes. Sometimes. Well, yeah,

cause I mean some of the stuff he came up with when he was really young, like at least the initial ideas, like he talked about having at least the idea for the concept of Narnia, I'm sure at a very, very different form when he was like a teenager. Interesting. I didn't know that. Or at least what would eventually become Narnia, which is then, of course, colored heavily by his much later delvings

into actual deep theology, as opposed to being 17 and thinking fantasy stuff is kind of cool. Yeah, sure. Don't mind, I want to change pace here real quick, because I want to do a. Yeah. Sure. Um, don't mind. I want to change pace here real quick. Cause I want to do a tie back for you and I, Ketho. I want to point out that I was reading something about, I think it was Lion,

Witch and the Wardrobe. They were talking about, or else, no, I was looking at, um, like the names of the, you know,

the different lands or whatever, some of the world building for Narnia. And someone pointed out that, um, those are as far as the Dawn Treader is actually heavily influenced, and some of the world building is heavily influenced by William

Morris. The wood at the end of the world, and the other one, the well at the end. Sorry, it's like... It's the well at the end of the world. There's the well at the end of the world, and there's the one about the wood, which I can't at the end of the world. There's the well at the end of the world, and there's the one about the wood, which I can't remember the name of that one from William Morris.

I guess we really do just have to read this. But where was the article about the different lands? Because I had it up here a minute ago. The well at the world's end. There's the well at the world's end, and I was reading something about the different like lands and one of them like explicitly said that he was influenced by um william morris that said who he respected greatly which i thought was a really interesting influence for lewis concerning morris was a essentially like a socialist or an anarchist who was writing fantasy at the time or like prior to Lewis writing?

And I thought there was a really interesting like influence for C.S. Lewis to have and one that I would not have expected. I mean, I'm sure in the same way that a lot of early fantasy would have had to be. So it's like he's obviously a fan of Morris's stuff, like the well of the world's end and the would be on the world. It's like, it would be on the world. That's what the one I was thinking. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm just looking at the list now. So I think, I think there's a, a definitely a large degree of separating the, the political leanings of an author from his work. Sure. And we, and we haven't i mean we haven't really read the william morris fantasy stuff so i mean coming out of news from nowhere which is essentially just a polemic um like i'm sure that some of his leftist stuff ends up in

the would be on the world in the world's end i'm sure it does um but i'm sure it's also fairly innocuous could be because he was still trying to write from what i know about william morris william morris was trying to write fairy tales in the style of like medieval fiction yeah like in the style of King Arthur and the like, but he didn't want it to be in the real world. Yeah. I think if I'm being specific here, I found the quote, it's that where it really influenced Lewis was what we'll get to when we do

magician's nephew, you know, the wood with the pools that go to all the different work, all the different worlds. The look of it was influenced by the wood beyond the world, but the actual setting its function of having all the wells that you can go into come from the well at world's end but it says explicitly that in a few of the citations here that um lewis yeah greatly admired william morris's

work so i just thought that was an interesting callback to an episode that we did like i almost what over a year ago something like that to talk about william morris oh boy that was a long time ago everyone if you want to listen to talk about william morris and his really just direct polemic disguised as a fictional novel go back listen to our episode of william morris and news from nowhere where he just has a character that's a self-insert that goes on a screen for like a chapter or two yep and is also apparently the the great actual granddaddy of fantasy fiction yeah because c.s lewis read him tolkien read him we talked about that also in our episode on the history of fiction uh which you could go back and listen to where we talked

about how william morris was actually writing this before everyone else. And people just kind of overlook him because of his political views. Well, I know we haven't talked about the actual, like aside from sort of the witch, the witch in the wardrobe and like Dawn tried to live, we haven't really talked about the plots of these books that much. I don't know.

I guess it hasn't felt really necessary because the plots are relatively thin. Was there anything? They're not like attempting to be. Especially Prince Caspian is the most like sort of threadbare plot of all of them, I think, because they just come back and they get together. They win a battle and they retake Narnia. And someone attempts to resummon the White Witch. Yeah, sorry. And let's be specific here.

to re-summon the White Witch. Yeah, sorry. And let's be specific here. The Black Dwarf, as opposed to the Red Dwarves or the other dwarves, and a hag and a werewolf attempt to resurrect the witch and then are slain by the protagonists,

by the heroes, the male heroes, I should be specific, because maybe that's something we haven't touched on yet that we should mention. Lewis occasionally gets pretty, I don't know, what i call classically patriarchal in his work in the very much like you know when women aren't allowed in battle

type thing you know defer to peter he's the oldest brother he's the high king above them all um so among the other things it is a bit you know shall i say conservative you know in that fashion as well at least the world building that he puts together yeah no arguments here no strong thoughts he just really doesn't like women doing boy things no women can comfort women can heal they can empathize but they don't get to fight. That's a boy thing to do. I also find it really interesting that and this is jumping head just a little bit, but at the same time also directly references the stuff in here. It's like Lucy. Lucy has just the most pure faith out of all of them in what Aslan is doing. And hence, she's always able to, like like see him when other people can't see him.

And she's always the first to notice. And she's always the first to get told shit. Aslan just likes her the most. She's got this very like, you know, pure of faith. Yeah. Pure of heart.

Innocence going on. And Aslan seems to just dislike Susan the most. I would agree. Yeah. He just has the least direct interaction with Susan. He's very much like, Peter, you shall be the high king. You are the best of them all. Yeah.

Edmund, you have been forgiven and turned and had your moment of redemption. Lucy, you're my favorite. Lucy, you're my favorite. You are empathy inborn. You are the redemption. Lucy, you're my favorite. Lucy, you're my favorite. You are empathy inborn. You are the best. Susan, you are also here. And I just find it funny that the women get to be the most and least faithful in the end. Yeah, because even though Edmund and Eustace start as the least faithful, they both have

like re-baptisms and get to be faithful then. And in Caspian, Edmund is the first one that believes Lucy when she says she saw Aslan again. Yeah, I mean, Edmund Edmund has a real turnaround. Susan is also the only one that doesn't get to come back for the last battle. Yeah, that's really where I was angling of this, is that you have Lucy, who is easily the most pure of heart, and Edmund, who's born again,

and Peter, who's just in charge, and then Susan, who gets kicked out. Because she was just like, that was childish bullshit. We don't go in for that anymore. And then they're like, well, you don't get to go to the revelation then. She'll wait for the one on earth. Yeah.

Don't worry, Alex, you get to sit the next two out and then you get to come back for the last battle. When we get to talk about revelation and the ape, that's a con artist slash antichrist, which I'm actually just reminded of a, of a quote that really stuck out to me from this, from, I think it was from my witch Witch and the Wardrobe that just felt weird hearing it.

I don't know if there's anything to go into depth on it. It just really felt weird. I wanted to point it out. I point out that anything that looks human, but isn't, or tries to be human, but isn't, or used to be human, but no longer is, are like the most evil things possible. That the two best things to be are either entirely human or entirely animal. Anything that's near human or used to be or nearly was is like inherently the most evil thing to be. I don't, they just felt so specific. It felt weird to me. You know what I mean?

Like it jumped out at me as like a very interesting phrase. No, I totally get that. Or it's like if you look, they say it directly, but if you look in the story, hags, giants, dwarves, all the other things that are human-like but not human are all inherently the most evil. And I don't know what that means, like theologically or philosophically. I don't know what that means like theologically or philosophically i don't know what that means but it feels like a very weird specific line to take is it about like knowing your place that humans should be human and animals should be animal i have no idea i mean i don't think that's necessarily a theological thing for lewis i is he just like werewolves are fucking weird bro i think more of that yeah just like so like this is the thing like lewis is you know a very christian man very

dedicated to the christian cause writes at great lengths but is also constantly engaging with like again these very hellenistic these very greek themes and i'm not totally sure what to make of this idea because like it's easy to be like ah well he's saying you know there's these very pagan ideas of human-animal hybrids, and those are bad. But you can't really take that stance, because, like, he's... Like, satyrs are good. Centaurs are good. Centaurs are good.

And, like, also, if he's taking the stance of these very pagan ideas are bad, then, like, why is his book just steeped with pagan ideas and pagan motifs and pagan creatures? Like, yeah, it just maybe there's nothing to it. Besides, it just was a story idea he took. It just felt so weird for him to have a character literally go out of the way to be like, don't trust anything that looks human, but isn't. Don't trust anything that used to be human't and don't trust anything that used to be human but isn't anymore you're like okay man that's why you get like dwarves that are good and

bad giants that are good and bad you know what i mean you get that like wiggle room with those you know quote unquote races in narnia because they're sort of human ish and ergo have like can be good or bad, where if you're one of the talking animals, I don't know, mostly de facto good, most of them, unless you're a real shifty animal, like a wolf or a, I don't know, a weird-looking bird, in which case you get to be evil.

It just, I don't know, it just felt very weird to me. I think, at the end of the day, I think what he decided to be evil and what he decided to not be was mostly arbitrary i think it was vibes based yeah it's vibes based um he he used what he needed to use for the plot more so than anything else um sure so i i did like to be called out at ethan's specifically as like a monstrous race. Yeah. I don't see anyone use Ettins since I was outside of a D&D game and like ever. I'm sure they have like a long story mythological history and aren't actually the two headed ogre creatures. Maybe I'm not going to look into it.

Just talking. I still am struck by just from just the Bacchus thing. I can't. The Bacchus literally just shows up. We keep bringing up the bridge for them. And it's like the Greek and Roman stuff. And I'm reminded of how, how much Tolkien disliked his crisscrossing of Lewis's crisscrossing of,

of different Tolkien was very much not a fan of the like ah there's some Roman stuff there's some Greek stuff there's some medieval stuff Tolkien was like what is all this why is this all in here together this doesn't belong together

I think it's neat Tolkien was like no he's like my systematic purity of storytelling. And Tolkien is like, I'm going to have a lion and he's Jesus. Well, I think you can tell more so the intended audience being what it is. It's like you can tell that the intended audience for this is younger. It's children. It's like you can tell that the intended audience for this is younger it's children it's like children children yeah and um i'm gonna say the first time i read lion the witch and the wardrobe or had it read to me i suppose was like second grade first or second

grade i was really young yeah i don't know my age but i know i was very young when i read it the first time um and you know what when When you're in first grade, you don't care where these creatures come from. You just think they're kind of cool. Fair point. Peter did get to stab a wolf with a sword. Yeah. It's like at certain points, there are just moments where you have to go, oh, yeah, this is just this is just because it's cool. I'm just too jaded right now.

Which turn people into stone because it's freaky that's why yeah there's no mythological basis for the witch turning people to stone it was just a it was just a cool thing for her to be able to do maybe he was thinking all like medusa cool but at the same time it doesn't matter statues yeah you just pick the cool power to turn to that was scary because as a kid that's terrifying i mean even as an adult the idea of being turned in stone that's that's that's terrifying you know it's funny because aslan runs around turning all the people in her castle back into real creatures and then all the animals at the battle he turns back into real creatures what about that random like christmas party that were just like under a tree that the witch went past

that she turned to stone? Did Aslan go all over Narnia finding all the various random little statues that she did or did those people that were having a Christmas tea party just not get rescued? I think given the fact that Aslan

is literal Jesus probably. Probably went back and did that. But he tells us all the other ones he does. He doesn't tell us he goes out to those random ones out in the woods. That or, hey, Lewis probably just forgot. Which is a totally valid thing to do. One last thing I wanted to talk about. A specific moment from the stories that I felt was sort of important.

Because we haven't touched too much on Voyage of the Dawn Treader, despite it having the best title of all of them. The best title and being the bluntest. Yeah, being the bluntest at the end. Obviously, at the end, the big thing at the end, once they go past the island where everyone's asleep, is they go out into the Sea of Lilies where the water turns sweet instead of salty. The rat tries to fight some merpeople. They make it out. Prince Caspian throws a fit

because he's not allowed to go see the end of the world. And Aslan appears to him in his cabin and is like, don't be a bitch. You don't get to go. You're the fucking king. And so they send like Lucy, Edmund, Eustace, and the rat in a little rowboat to the edge of the world.

Number one, I still don't know why one of them had to go over the edge of the world for the sleepers to wake back up. I don't remember why that was a thing. And number two, what is Rippa Cheek's whole deal with wanting to sail himself over the edge of the world to try and find God's kingdom. I feel like Reepicheep can find God's kingdom. What? Reepicheep better have found God's kingdom.

Otherwise, he just fell off the edge of the fucking world. Like fucking the dude from... Like Rincewind? Yeah, like Rincewind. He just fell off the fucking edge of the world like Rincewind. Because we know there's something off the edge of the world. Because in Silver Chair, that's where Eustace and the other girls start. Is in like an Aslan's land off the edge of the world.

And he like blows them to Narnia on like a wind that he makes with his mouth or something. Then we can just be glad and assume and hope. So Alex, your opinion, did Ripachuk just fall off the edge of the world or did he end up in heaven? God, did he follow?

Did he get to land onkien's straight road that goes to um polaresia like did he get to go to amman or did he just fall off the edge of the fucking world listen it was a noble sacrifice yeah but i don't still don't get number one why someone had to be sacrificed to wake the sleepers up and two what happened tell me i need someone to give me the answer you're the expert so like the bad news i have here is that like the vast majority of christian theology around like going to the afterlife is just very much heaven is up, hell is down. The waterfall is going up

at first, at the edge of the world. The waterfall goes up. Yeah. I think you can make the case that it's taking him to heaven. I don't know. I'm not aware of any theology that says heaven is sideways so it was it was in

middle earth until the sundering of the seas and the world when the world became round it's true in which case you have to follow the straight road off the curve of the earth and into space to make it to a mine to the the Undying Lands. So, heaven used to be flat if you lived in Middle Earth. I don't know if we're working on Middle Earth logic here. I think

I think, I mean, I don't the Voyage of the Dawn Treader to me feels the most. I think it's I might be overstepping what i know here just to say and be like it's it's very much an odyssey um talking about our our classic kind of connections here yeah maybe alex is is don treanor just sort of like just lewis's like odyssey yeah i'll give you that um just go to the island solve the problem go to the next island solve the problem go the like odyssey. Yeah, I'll give you that. Um,

just go to the island, solve the problem, go to the next island, solve the problem, go to the next island, be faced with a dilemma, go to the next time and be faced with the dilemma. Um,

and in the same way, I feel like the, the things that are necessary to be done are mysterious and arbitrary in a lot of sense, uh, because that's the way they are if that makes any sense um so i don't know if there's i don't know if there's a particular significance to someone throwing themselves off the edge other than that's what the lady on the island tells them to do yeah the guy and his daughter or whatever on the island of the sleepers are just like yeah you just have to um those are the rules so i'm trying to think if there was that feels very classical to me

just like what's the solution arbitrary solutions i'm trying to think of like if there were others like a lesson you can string together from like what they have to do on the other islands but i don't think so because like on the first island, they just go, Hey, Biden, the King, by the way, and everyone's like, Oh, the King has returned to no more slavery. The second one is where Eustace becomes a dragon,

which I don't know, I guess is kind of about the power of greed. And also literally just about being like overcoming doubt and becoming baptized. Then you've got death water Island where you just get turned to gold. That's some freaky stuff. That's actually kind of fucked up. I think for a little kid's book, there's just a dead guy at the bottom of the pool who turned to solid gold.

Mm hmm. Yeah, it's really. I remember seeing the the the old live action version of Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and that legitimately scared the shit out of me as a kid. Like it was disturbing. Like, Oh yeah. Hey, look,

there's the body of, of, you know, Lord Restomar down there. He dove in for a swim and turned to solid gold. Guess he died. And you're like, cause like,

again, there's like no lesson there. Beside don't drink the water, the Duffer's Island where you have the, you know, the duffel pods of the isopods is skiopodes whatever you call them they just remove the invisibility spell by just like lucy going to the magician and being like hey want to be besties and be friends and maybe you want to forgive them and he's like all right that's lucy's superpower is yeah empathy yeah it's just being

hyper empathetic and then you have the island where dreams come true, except it's like your nightmares. And Lord Roop has just been stuck there living out his nightmares for like years. Voyage is so metal. And it is the most metal of these three anyway, because they're like, ah, that's the island where you turn into a statue of gold

for drinking water. This is where you get the first hints this is nightmare island of of what'll come with with things like uh silver chair over chair and and uh last battle um yeah honestly honestly i i think his i like those ideas are actually legit like they're they're kind of insane in a cool way um even if he doesn't really explore them very deeply ramadu the ramadu the fallen star who lives on an island with his daughter with the sleeping lords xanadu ass over here and send reep a cheap off the edge yeah, if I look at the page for for for Rob on do it's clearly a

picture from the BBC live action adaption. He is crazy looking yeah, they could hang out with mer people and Ripa cheap tries to fight one. The water is sweet.

The ocean gets shallow. They're in like the shallows at the edge of the world and then Ripa cheap is like I deuces I'm out. It just sails over the edge of the world and then rip a cheap is like all right deuces i'm out it just sails over the edge of the world and they're like all right we have a lamb now the lamb in it is aslan aslan is the lamb aslam is jesus literal literal world and be a good christian i i think as an adult

just because of the sorts of things i personally enjoy out of books, I feel like or just media in general. Now, I've I really enjoyed Voyage. It was like it was a trip. I told you that Voyage was like one of my favorites when I was a kid. Oh, it's so I would I would I would read Lion because it was kind of like the first one. I would skip Prince Caspian a lot because I thought it was kind of boring. Yeah, I think as a kid, I only ever read Prince Caspian once. I would read Dawn Treader a lot.

I skipped Horse and His Boy because I thought it was weird, which I'm really excited to reread that one because I feel like it's probably still weird. I would read Silver Cherix. I really liked that one because it has the man-eating giants in it, and I thought that was cool. And they go to the weird underground place. And then I would read uh magician's nephew and i just wouldn't read the last battle because it was too weird for me i i don't know i think as an adult i'm realizing how weird these books actually

are and it's making them better by the ways like this is the sort of thing i live for is just coming across weird shit and especially knowing that i read this as a kid and it did not really register just how weird it is i mean i still can't get over the fact that father christmas is just a guy that shows up in the army he shows the hell up he's like gosh you kept me out for a long time, but I got in now. You motherfuckers are getting presents. Like, but again, the fact that he's Father Christmas implies that there's a Christ that was named at one point. Or that Father Christmas got his name in the human world and then just went to all the other worlds and told them his name was Father Christmas. And they're all just like, okay, Christmas.

That's an interesting name. I don't know what it means. Like like there's a lot of weird implications if you think about what christmas is supposed to represent the first christmas christmas wouldn't really happen in because aslan isn't born at any point he's literally there at the beginning he breathes existence into he subcreates narnia yeah, no, that's what I'm saying. So father Christmas got his name in the human world. And then when he goes to other rooms, they're like,

who the fuck are you? He's like, I'm father Christmas. Jesus. Jesus loves St. Nick. The beavers were just like, his name's father Christmas. And so he comes on Christmas.

I don't know what Christmas means. I just know that's the day that father Christmas shows up. I think, I think that really the lesson takeaway is that Jesus really loves Saint Nick and just brings him with him everywhere he goes. Hey, look, I mean, if you ask the real Saint Nicholas, he was

very beloved by Jesus and the Lord. But like, he's his favorite saint. I just... You're right. These books are way weirder than I remember in some ways and in other ways again the christian allegory is significantly stronger but like the weird shit is also therefore almost weirder to me because the christian allegory is so strong

then when you hit bacchus showing up you're like the fuck did you come from why are you in charge of the river that's not even your domain. He probably just thought the name was cool. He chose it specifically because they're related to the fauns. Party God shows up. Party God shows up, throw a party, okay?

The Dryads and the Nyads. I read something where the other thing about Prince Caspian was that it was specific. The other allegory he was doing was about like a return to the true faith after deviating from it. That's like,

you know, the children coming back and sort of restating the monarchy the way it's supposed to be. It was like returning to the true faith out of a dark period, like stuff like that. Like, you know, restoration of hope and all that good stuff.

But there's a weird turn, like the first book, there's like a little bit of death. And the second one, you're like, oh yeah, this is Prince Caspian. His uncle murdered his dad.

Now his uncle is going to murder him too. And then when his uncle fails to win the duel, he gets murdered by his like Lords by getting stabbed in the back. Like that's significantly darker. Just like kind of out of nowhere. And the third one, like, yeah,

this is the water that turns you dead. And this is nightmare Island. And this is the edge of the world that we're going to throw a rat off of. I, here's like, uh, I have, I have deep respect for that.

Actually mad respect, which I, you know what? I agree with you, which you said earlier, I have deep respect for that, actually. Mad respect. You know what? I agree with you, which you said earlier, Ketho. This series is a descent into madness across time. It's just, you know, I feel like authors can lean one out of two ways. You can either play it safe after you've gotten approved for more books and give people what they want. Or you go off the rails and do whatever the hell you want, relying on the back of, honestly, your very, very smooth prose to carry you through. I mean, his writing is easy to read.

Yes. I'll just give it back. It's extremely easy to follow. extremely easy to follow. And I don't even mean that in the, in that it's written for children, but I mean, from like an authorial perspective, like his writing does for me anyway,

flows pretty well. Like it doesn't feel choppy. You know, his language is smooth, which is something you don't get from all books for children. I think sometimes authors can kind of write down to children. Oh yeah. No,

he's not in there. You know what I mean? Like they're right down to children in their prose. Like they expect kids can't read big words or something. You can just imagine an older elderly British man reading this to you. I'm sure if they, if I ever listened to the audio books for these, it would just,

it is, it's just British people. Yeah. Elderly British people reading. Well, who, I think I can tell you who, maybe it says who narrated the copies of the

stories I have. I don't know if it tells me who narrated them. It doesn't in this file. But I think each book is narrated by somebody else. This is weird. I learned a lot. You learned he was an Anglican.

It's an important thing to learn about Lewis. It really is. You would have been four episodes in and we would have been at the fucking end and I'd have mentioned Anglicanism and you'd be like what the fuck? Yeah, it would have been one of those times in the podcast where

Ketho or a guest dropped something on me and I'm like, you fucking what now? I've been calling him a Catholic the last three episodes. Why don't you correct me before? It was, it's a plot twist. We're just waiting. It's the drama,

the tension, the release. God, ethos and pathos of this, of me not knowing what he is. Oh God. So I'm glad we did these first because i think what we've done going forward is like a bit of a groundwork for sort of where lewis is coming from and like

what he's dry what like what where he's drawing his ideas from as we go forward into up next is the book where we have to talk about racism because it's horse and his boy and we got to talk about the weird racist way he talks about the people who are basically Ottomans. Then we have the silver chair, which is just good because they get to go

like fight giants and go to the underworld. That used to be my favorite as a kid and I am excited to see what I actually read. Right. I'm excited to talk about the underworld and the under underworld which again talking about some weird and the last return of jadis for a hot minute yeah some weird classics stuff where like there's an underground place but there's even deeper underground place that's actually cool they never mentioned her

name in Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, do they? Jadis? Yeah, they do. They do. Yeah.

I think they say it at least once. They say it a couple of times. Yeah. So that's going to be our next episode. That's just going to be Kethel and I talking about those two. After that, we will be back for the third episode, which is the magician's nephew,

AKA Genesis, which will be joined by perennialennial pod favorite trevor from the history of persia and then we're going to do the last battle featuring alex and trevor because i need as much help as i can get to talk about that it's got me so good yeah oh good god literally a token extravaganza good god not token sorry lewis extravaganza she's further up and further in my friends i read the last battle once as a kid had no idea what the hell i just read and never picked it up again probably a good response thank you everyone um alex before we go uh is there thank you for joining us is there anything you'd like to plug like like your bookstore. Yeah, I have a bookstore

that was banned on PayPal for 12 hours. Hey, we stand a controversial queen in her sapphic books that get banned on PayPal. Yeah, I have a bookstore

card called Sapphic Sweets and Reads ICT, where you can buy queer fiction and nonfiction. I have purchased books from the store. It's true. We review on the podcast. I have two copies and have to send one to Kefo. Which it's I got you into Dreadnought, didn't I? I think it was Dreadnought.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I will include the link for the bookstore in the show notes this episode, so if you want to buy fiction and nonfiction, specifically queer in nature, you should

do that. Or PayPal Bands, their store again. So, I'm excited. Get that sweet, sweet band literature. Band in 15 states. And sometimes the one it's based out of.

Too real. Anything else you want to plug before you go, Alex? Fuck. Something, something. No queer pride, only queer laugh this year. Only queer laugh. Queer laugh, queer rage, maybe. I don't know. This is going to come out right before Pride Month, so it's time.

Yeah, thank you all for listening. I hope you enjoyed this. Oh, God, this thing we just did where we talked about C.S. Lewis. I'm really excited to see how this ends up. Let's just say that. I'm really excited for the conclusion of our four-part investigative series into the mind of computer science Lewis. Maybe it's too late now to bring up his quote about morality

and about how he felt about burning witches maybe we should save that but no let's i'm gonna go out on that quote because i think it's worthwhile um we mentioned earlier i'm gonna have close with this you mentioned earlier about his idea about sort of universal morality um lewis let's, had some strong opinions about the idea of things being relative to the cultures they exist within. And I'm going to, a direct quote here from Lewis to end the episode. I have met people who exaggerate the differences because they have not distinguished between differences of morality and differences of belief about facts. For example, one man said to me, 300 years ago,

people in England were putting witches to death. Was that what you call the rule of human nature or right conduct? But surely the reason we do not execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things. If we did, if we really thought there were people out there going about who had sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return and were using these powers to kill their neighbors and drive them mad or bring about bad weather, surely we would all agree that if anyone deserved the death penalty, then these filthy quizlings did. There is no difference of moral principle here. The difference is simply about matter of fact. It may be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches. There is no moral advance in not executing them when you do not

think they are there. You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set up mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house. So killing witches is fine if you genuinely believe people are witches. Goodbye!