The witch as Satan

The only characters who directly "are" someone else are Aslan, Who is Jesus, and the Emperor-Over-Sea, Who is God the Father. The Holy Spirit seems to go unmentioned...UNLESS we let ourselves imagine that the Third Person of the Trinity somehow IS HIMSELF the "Deeper Magic from before time."

Edmund might be said to be what Judas could have been if Judas had genuinely repented and found grace.
 
Copperfox said:
The only characters who directly "are" someone else are Aslan, Who is Jesus, and the Emperor-Over-Sea, Who is God the Father. The Holy Spirit seems to go unmentioned...UNLESS we let ourselves imagine that the Third Person of the Trinity somehow IS HIMSELF the "Deeper Magic from before time."

Edmund might be said to be what Judas could have been if Judas had genuinely repented and found grace.
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I never thought of the "deeper magic" as the Holy Spirit, but you are right. It could be!
 
While Aslan outright IS Jesus (as shown when Mr. Lewis, at some points, gives Him Deity-capitalization of pronouns), other characters on stage are only analogous, with differing degrees of closeness, to Biblical persons. Jadis did not begin her existence in Heaven in the visible presence of God, as Lucifer did; but she did fall into, and do evil because of, the same delusional excess of self-love as Lucifer did.
 
As we all know Jadis is a symbol of satan, but where can we find exact symbols in the book which we can compare to the bible?

All i can find is Edmund who eats the turkish delight as a symbol of the apple in eden? anything else?
 
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Realize that analogies don't have to be exact point-for-point copies of the thing they're compared to, to be useful. Thus when Jesus called Himself the Good Shepherd, He certainly didn't mean that He intended literally to kill, cook and eat us, though ordinary shepherds do exactly that to at least some of the sheep.

With this understood, you can find plenty of what Mr. Tolkien would call "applicability" in Narnia. For instance, the Beavers who help the children evade the Witch can be compared to the midwives early in the Book of Exodus, who thwarted the Pharaoh's order to kill male Hebrew babies. And Professor Kirke urging Peter and Susan to be open-minded to Lucy's report is a little bit like the priest Eli telling the young Samuel to respond to the voice of God.
 
Narborg said:
Achallly, I would disagree. Tash would be the equvalient of Satan, the which repreaents evil.
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Right but the witch was like Satan too.But Tash doesnt come until the...last book I think.
 
That's just what I was saying: comparisons are allowed to be partial comparisons. Tash is more like Satan than Jadis is, but Jadis still embodies many of the attributes of Satan in an instructive way.
 
Tash=Satan, White Witch=Beelzebub. Tash was Satan, Lewis Makes that precisely clear in the Last Battle. I think that the white witch represents a lesser demon, maybe Beelzebub (the Bible says that he is the Prince of Demons) or even Screwtape.
 
Again, comparisons can be only partial, and yet be relevant. Tumnus choosing to help Lucy escape does address the "Caesar" issue. Some unwise Christians who subscribe to the "Submit no matter what" doctrine of authority (based on a MIS-reading of Romans 13) would, if they followed their doctrine to its logical conclusion, say that Tumnus should have handed Lucy over to Caesar/Jadis. But obviously, what Tumnus did WAS the right thing, because worldly authorities are NOT absolute.
 
You know, just because c.S. Lewis was Christian (supposedly, according to other sources he was a great pretender I guess like my grandmother) it doesn't mean he meant EVERY aspect of the narnia books to be based on the bible. In fact, the MAJORITY of the narnia stories go against everything within the bible or anything Christian. My aunt is Christian and refuses to allow her son to watch the movie or read any of the books, she sites these stories as evil because magick, witches, even half beasts as things not created by god. Of course, I disagree with that. I don't believe in the bible, but that's JMO. I believe in the old religion, the deeper magick if you will.

;)
 
The very phrase "the old religion" is false advertising. The actual God existed before there was anything else; thus, any attempt to rely on a power "independent" from Him could only be a later development, and not an improvement. (There didn't have to be a complete Bible available on bookshelves at the very beginning of the human race for this to be true; the Biblical God Himself was DIRECTLY communicating with humans until they estranged themselves through their self-serving rebellion--like the Dwarfs who were for the Dwarfs.) Occultists themselves waver both ways on this issue: sometimes they say that theirs is the "old" way and Biblical faith is relatively newfangled, while other times they say that Biblical faith is old-fashioned and occultism is the bold new innovation.

As for your aunt, I grant you that many who name the name of Jesus are mentally lazy, not wanting to look into anything unusual or unconventional. Such persons condemned the first Christian rock musicians for being unconventional--just as their ancestors condemned the first Salvation Army bands for using the brass-ensemble music style which was considered "pop music" in that era.

As for Mr. Lewis, he ONLY used those pagan elements in his stories because he believed that God could, if He chose, USE those elements for His good purposes, while not contradicting the gospel of salvation. Look at Bacchus in "Prince Caspian": he does good and only good, BECAUSE he is under Aslan's authority--but the Pevensies know intuitively that he could be evil if Aslan were NOT keeping him on the straight and narrow. Anyone who says Mr. Lewis was a faker must have been listening to certain sour-hearted envious writers who WANT to believe that Mr. Lewis was less than he was.
 
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I'm not saying c.S. Lewis was a faker, I HEARD that he was a pretender. That he was pretending to be Christian because all his friends were and he wanted to fit in. My grandmother did the same thing, only close family knew of what she was. Outside the family, she was catholic. In real life she wasn't. She would have been shunned by friends and society if they knew the truth.

As of the old religion, we believe in god too. Actually, of gods and goddesses who govern over all. Your god may just as well be my god too, though we don't believe that god was human. That's a very egotistic thought, because to say we were made in the form of god only says that we think that we are the most important creatures in existance. I believe far far away in OUR universe there are planets full of creatures that don't look like us but are just as or more civilized. That doesn't even count other universes.

The spirit doesn't have a form, it doesn't have a physical body. It could choose to be any form it wanted to appear as. So why would god be a white man and have a white son? because white men wrote the bible.

not to go into religion wars or anything, but the old religion is not false advertizing because it is older than christianity (which is less than 2,000 years old). I don't believe jesus was the son of god, nobody refered to him as the son of god until right before his death. If he were (and it was known at his birth), wouldn't he be worshipped as a child too? I think it was just a story his mother made up to hide the fact she cheated on her husband and he started to believe it.

And to say lewis used pagan influences because he believed god would, doesn't even make sense. He only used what he had to believe in. You don't hear jewish people reading the bible, stating that their god would read the bible too if he could. That's insane. I personally don't care if he really were Christian, I would still love his books. I just TRUELY believe that he wasn't Christian, there's just too few christian aspects to his narnia books. All Christian symbolisms seem to be far fetched attempts at making blank represent blank. Maybe the witch is just a witch. Why does she have to be satan? and i don't care that he wrote books on christianity, that could've all been part of his closeting. maybe that's what the wordrobe represents, his life in the religion closet. ALOT of people are studying the old ways in secret, they can't be known because people are so close minded to think of them as witches or devil worshippers (when the old religion doesn't even believe in the devil). And if he were Christian, why is Aslan (the son of the emperor of the east) a lion? Christians believe god and jesus were human. Maybe aslan wasn't supposed to be jesus at all, but simply a god himself. We'll never know.

I can't rely on what people (or even lewis himself) say about the meanings of the books. people are usually wrong, and even lewis himself may be lying to the public. We aren't within lewis to know what is truely meant. All I'm saying is that almost EVERY aspect of the books is a believe of the old religion and goes against the bible. There's something to be said about that..
 
Valkyrie said:
just TRUELY believe that he wasn't Christian, there's just too few christian aspects to his narnia books.
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You are aware that he wrote many volumes of Christian theology as well as the Narnia books - which were mostly an old man's fancy (well, old-ish; Jack lived to no very great age) and by no means the hub and focus of his life's work?
 
Yes, I am aware of that. Although, he studied every religion throughout his life. Maybe he just had a cultural interest. I think some of you are extremely desperate for him to be christian, as you couldn't fathom him being anything but. Like I said, I don't believe he was Christian but if he was it wouldn't be the end of the world for me. It sounds like if it ever came out that he wasn't, most of you would burn his books.

:rolleyes:

Remember, I practically lived with a false catholic grandmother. All her friends were extremist catholics (as all of lewis' friends were extreme christians), so she couldn't go on being herself. He only "believed" in jesus after the lord of the rings author talked it into him. Didn't you ever agree with a friend to shut them up? Like a gay man hitting on women in front of his straight friends and pretending to like football, couldn't lewis had pretended too? he really has nobody to know the true him who would be alive, even his step son is an extreme christian who I think has pushed the symbolism much of the way. he never meant for his books to have that symbolism, it was just supposed to be a child's story. I see alot of my grandmother in what I know of Lewis' actions, trying to fit in with his friends and society. I wouldn't be surprised if that truth came out one day.
 
"Truth", hah. You can prove anything you like by ignoring the evidence, appealing to the unlikely interpretations, and hand-waving argument away by saying stuff like "some of you are extremely desperate for him to be christian" - which last point I could turn right back atcha by saying "Really? Seems like you're extremely desperate for him not to be", and we're no further on.

Your argument seems to be something along the lines of "If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I guess it's a chicken trying to fit in with ducks." The man who wrote Mere Christianity was going to some extraordinary lengths to convince his "extreme Christian" friend Tolkien, then - especially when you consider how many Christian books by Tolkien there are about the place (viz: none that I'm aware of).

Here, have a :rolleyes: on me.
 
Jolle said:
As we all know Jadis is a symbol of satan, but where can we find exact symbols in the book which we can compare to the bible?

All i can find is Edmund who eats the turkish delight as a symbol of the apple in eden? anything else?
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There's tons of Christian symbols and parallels in Narnia. I believe there's even a thread about it somewhere in the CHRISTIANITY AND NARNIA section of the forum. How about for starters, Aslan dying for a traitor ( Edmund) and being resurrected ( symbol and representation of Christ?)
 
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