When my new friend Steve M. gifted me two children's books (the first in the seven book Narnia Chronicles series by C.S. Lewis) for my fiftieth birthday, I believe he knew what I'd discover. But Steve was suitably mysterious about it. We met only once about two years ago when I gave him an aquatic bodywork session.
Steve insisted that I read the first book first, The Magician's Nephew. Apparently, this was the most challenging Narnia novel for Lewis to write. The other six books were written quickly between 1948 and 1953 but this one occupied him over six years between 1949 and 1954. It was quite autobiographical.
Steve insisted that I read the first book first, The Magician's Nephew. Apparently, this was the most challenging Narnia novel for Lewis to write. The other six books were written quickly between 1948 and 1953 but this one occupied him over six years between 1949 and 1954. It was quite autobiographical.
C.S. Lewis (known as Jack) died just before he turned 65 on 22 November 1963 - the same day as Aldous Huxley died and John F. Kennedy was assassinated. This constellation of deaths intrigues me - a writer on spirituality, an explorer of altered states, a much-loved leader - all walkers between worlds.
One of the things I appreciate about my long-distance friendship with Steve, is that he brings me back to my English roots. It's something that I've persistently denied in my wanderlust and my soul searching. Steve's gift reminded me of another way in which I sought out those roots.
I attempted it through my own unfinished novel - begun and ceased (50 pages later) in 2002. It is a children's story also, and an autobiographical mythopoetic spiritual journey. It explores altered states, cultural divides, paradise lost, and my own yearning for belonging and for spirit.
The awareness of something more mysterious and even numinous in my life began when I jumped into a warm water pool - rather like C.S. Lewis's children do. I too discovered the 'Wood between the Worlds' and had some troubling adventures of my own. But I knew nothing of such connections until Steve's gift arrived.
Making connections is one of the delights in my life, something that always restores my hope and imagination. The book Steve loves and shared with me has given my own creative dreams a new lease of life. Perhaps I will start writing my story again and letting it take shape in reality as it did before.
Last time though, my personal reality turned into a kind of Charn (see later) when, like Digory I rang the bell that taunted me:
Make your choice, adventurous Stranger;
Strike the bell and bide the danger,
Or wonder, til it drives you mad,
What would have followed if you had.
Strike the bell and bide the danger,
Or wonder, til it drives you mad,
What would have followed if you had.
I believe that I have been lucky enough to land again in the Wood between Worlds. I've had to give up the apple of my eye (some deeply held personal desires) and go on a mission of sorts. There is a lot more for me to explore in C.S. Lewis's book and the others that follow in this series. Steve seems to have divined that.
Thank you Steve.
The following precis of The Magician's Nephew from Wikipedia is as excellent as any I could come up with, so here it is:
The story begins in London around 1900. When the little boy, Dogory, is tricked by his malevolent magician uncle into visiting other worlds by sending his new friend Polly there using a magic yellow ring.
Digory finds himself in a wood among many pools of water, and is reunited with Polly. They discover that jumping into the water while wearing a green ring takes them to a different universe, and Digory convinces Polly to explore further worlds.
After marking the pool leading back to Earth, they enter a pool leading to a crumbling palace among the ruins of the ancient world of Charn. They find a hall lined with statues of former rulers, progressing from the fair and wise to the proud and cruel.
They also find a bell, marked by a sign that dares one to ring the bell while warning against doing so. Digory falls for the taunt and rings the bell against Polly's wishes. Its sound awakens the last of the statues, the evil Queen Jadis.
The Queen describes a final war between herself and her sister. When defeat seemed certain, Jadis spoke the Deplorable Word, destroying all life on Charn and leaving her to become Queen of a dead world. She cast a spell to petrify herself until the bell was rung.
Realising her evil nature, the children flee back through the wood to home, but Jadis follows and is pulled with them to London. They eventually manage to get her back to the wood and Digory leads them into the nearest pool, believing it would lead to Charn.
But they find instead an empty blackness, which Jadis recognises as a world not yet created. They hear singing, which causes stars to appear and the sun to rise. The singer is Aslan, the great Lion. Aslan breathes life into the world, causing animals and plants to emerge from the earth.
Digory finds himself in a wood among many pools of water, and is reunited with Polly. They discover that jumping into the water while wearing a green ring takes them to a different universe, and Digory convinces Polly to explore further worlds.
After marking the pool leading back to Earth, they enter a pool leading to a crumbling palace among the ruins of the ancient world of Charn. They find a hall lined with statues of former rulers, progressing from the fair and wise to the proud and cruel.
They also find a bell, marked by a sign that dares one to ring the bell while warning against doing so. Digory falls for the taunt and rings the bell against Polly's wishes. Its sound awakens the last of the statues, the evil Queen Jadis.
The Queen describes a final war between herself and her sister. When defeat seemed certain, Jadis spoke the Deplorable Word, destroying all life on Charn and leaving her to become Queen of a dead world. She cast a spell to petrify herself until the bell was rung.
Realising her evil nature, the children flee back through the wood to home, but Jadis follows and is pulled with them to London. They eventually manage to get her back to the wood and Digory leads them into the nearest pool, believing it would lead to Charn.
But they find instead an empty blackness, which Jadis recognises as a world not yet created. They hear singing, which causes stars to appear and the sun to rise. The singer is Aslan, the great Lion. Aslan breathes life into the world, causing animals and plants to emerge from the earth.
Lewis believed in the intrinsic value of nature for itself, rather than as a resource to be exploited. The story combined his Christian worldview with his love of nature and myth. Aslan the lion's creation of Narnia is based on a musical harmony that brings landscapes and living things into being - he sings the world to life.
Unlike Genesis, where only human beings created in the image of God are given a soul, in this book animals and also trees and watercourses are given souls and the power of rational thought and speech. Aslan does not create humans - they are brought into Narnia.
Lewis and his friend J.R.R. Tolkien were fascinated with the Atlantis legend - a utopian society, a lost continent under the sea that was destroyed by the forces of evil and arrogance. In The Magician's Nephew, the box containing the dust that was used to create the rings for travel between worlds came from Atlantis.
The two magic rings are a central theme in the book - they shift characters to the Wood between the Worlds, a linking room between parallel universes. The Wood is a place where nothing much happens, unlike the different worlds it connects (where events do occur).
The significant feature of the Wood, other than the trees, is the many pools of water. They appear to be just shallow puddles but when someone jumps into one of the pools while wearing another magic ring, the pool of water transports the wearer to a different world.
The wood is a multiverse of sorts, existing outside the normal physical realities, and while you are there you feel no great desire to do anything other than rest and relax. When a world is destroyed, i.e. all life is removed, as Charn is in The Magician's Nephew, the pool giving access to that world dries up.
Below are two extracts from the book that describe the pools and the Wood between the Worlds. In the second one, right at the end of the book, Aslan is warning humans of the fate that will befall the world if we allow tyrants to rule.
According to C.S. Lewis's story, it's better to follow the guidance of Aslan than to use a magician's powers to enter those other worlds: avoid the Deplorable Word and bury the Magic Rings. I'm off to listen more closely to the trees and the water. And I'll be careful which pool I jump into in future!
The Wood Between the Worlds (Chapter 3)
... The next thing Digory knew was that there was a soft green light coming down on him from above, and darkness below. He didn't seem to be standing on anything, or sitting or lying. Nothing appeared to be touching him. "I believe I'm in water," said Digory. "Or under water." This frightened him for a second, but almost at once he could feel that he was rushing upwards. Then his head suddenly came out into the air and he found himself scrambling ashore, out on to the smooth grassy ground at the edge of the pool.
As he rose to his feet he noticed that he was neither dripping nor panting for breath as anyone would expect after being under water. His clothes were perfectly dry. He was standing by the edge of a small pool - not more than ten feet from side to side - in a wood. The trees grew close together and were so leafy that he could get no glimpse of the sky. All the light was green light that came through the leaves: but there must have been a very strong sun overhead, for this green daylight was bright and warm. It was the quietest wood you could possibly imagine. There were no birds, no insects, no animals, and no wind. You could almost feel the trees growing. The pool he had just got out of was not the only pool. There were dozens of others - a pool every few yards as far as his eyes could reach. You could almost feel the trees drinking the water up with their roots. This wood was very much alive. When he tried to describe it afterwards Digory always said: "It was a rich place: as rich as plumcake."
Last chapter (Chapter 15)
"You need no rings when I am with you," said the voice of Aslan. The children blinked and looked about them. They were once more in the Wood between the Worlds ....
"Come," said Aslan, "it is time that you went back. But there are two things to see to first; a warning, and a command. Look here, children."
They looked and saw a little hollow in the grass, with a grassy bottom, warm and dry.
"When you were last here," said Aslan, "that hollow was a pool, and when you jumped into it you came to the world where the dying sun shone over the ruins of Charn. There is no pool now. That world is ended, as if it had never been. Let the race of Adam and Eve take warning."
"But we're not quite as bad as that world, are we, Aslan?"
"Not yet, Daughter of Eve," he said. "Not yet. But you are growing more like it. It is not certain that some wicked one of your race will not find out a secret as evil as the Deplorable Word and use it to destroy all living things. And soon, very soon, before you are an old man and an old woman, great nations in your world will be ruled by tyrants who care no more for joy and justice and mercy than the Empress Jadis. Let your world beware. That is the warning. Now for the command. As soon as you can, take from this Uncle of yours his magic rings and bury them so that no one can use them again."
It's just over 50 years since this book was published - I wonder what C.S. Lewis would say now?
Finally, a little personal history from my correspondence with Steve:
When I was about 9 and living in Fiji, my siblings and I played Narnia [The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe]. We had no trouble translating the wardrobe into a dense grove of bamboo and the other world into the rice paddies beyond that which ran alongside the river on the research station/farm where we lived.
The main adventure was our vain attempts to rescue tilapia fish stranded on the paddies when the summer heat drained the water away. We carried them home and put them in paddling pools in the garden. Our cats were delighted - a second disaster for the fish.
I also really enjoyed the recent film made of the book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. It brought home to me what my parents went through as young children when they were sent to the country from London in WWII.
The illustrator for both the images above died in August of last year. Pauline Baynes was an English book illustrator, whose work encompassed more than 100 books, notably those by C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien.
