#i want to discuss intellectual things with youu

[authorofemotion]

OK BESTIE IM HERE WITH A THEORY!!!! this is gonna be really long!! sorry! so! to give you a short summary of The Narnia Code (the book i keep bugging you to read), the author (Michael Ward) describes how each of the Chronicles of Narnia correspond to one of the seven pre-Copernican planets!! in case you dont know, the pre-Copernican planets are Jupiter, Mars, the Sun (or Sol), the Moon (or Luna), Mercury, Venus, and Saturn and they are what people believed were the planets when they believed that the universe was Geocentric (planets revolve around Earth). This reasoning, contrary to popular belief, was NOT due to people being selfish and self-absorbed (although that still definitely probably existed). they actually believed so because they believed that outer space was the "seven spheres of Heaven". each planet had its own sphere and outside the last sphere was where people believed that God dwelt. so Earth, being at the center, was actually believed to be there (in part) because it was physically and metaphorically the farthest from God (this concept is also in Lewis' Space Trilogy, so it'll make more sense if/when you read those!). anyways! Ward brings up a particular poem by Lewis called "The Planets" (i have a pdf and can send if you want to read it!). he says how he figured it out was when he was reading it and one of the lines about Jupiter was "Winter passed, and guilt forgiven" (sorry if thats a little off; im saying this all from memory) and Ward was immediately like "wait. ive read about that before in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe?!" SO THEN he goes through each book and how each one correlates to a planet (he also talks about the silent music through the stories, which Lewis touches on a bit in his essay "On Stories" which i just read last night!!) so Jupiter correlates to Lion, Witch, Wardrobe/Mars +Caspian/Sol + Dawn Treader/Luna + Silver Chair/Mercury + Horse and His Boy/Venus + Magician's Nephew/Saturn + Last Battle (at this point i'm very, very glad that tumblr doesnt have a limit to ask length anymore)!! the one that convinced me the most is Luna, so ill summarize that one as best as possible: Luna was associated with madness (that's where we get the word Lunatic) because it was changing constantly. It was also associated with water (for a reason i cant remember right now). if you've read The Silver Chair, you know there's a lot of emphasis put on madness, like when Jill, Eustace, and Puddleglum are put under a spell in a way so that they dont remember that the Sun exists. also the Lady of the Green Kirtle is just kinda crazy. Michael Ward also has a longer book thats the more in-depth version of the Narnia Code (called Planet Narnia) and my teacher said that in that book, he lists every single reference to water/being wet in the Silver Chair and it takes him like two or three pages. theres more stuff that i cant remember atm but ITS CRAZY.

ANYWAYS my theory comes in when Ward was talking about the Seven Heavens and how "the heavens declare the glory of God" (psalm 19 is Lewis' favorite, btw!) and i thought "well the planets aren't the only things in the Heavens. what about stars?" and then i thought of the seven churches in Revelation that correlate to the seven stars that Christ is holding in Revelation and i started going through the letters to each church,,, AND THEY ACTUALLY EACH HAVE PARTS THAT RELATE TO THE BOOKS TOO?!!! so say the Lion, Witch, Wardrobe with Ephesus!! "toil and patient endurance" (Revelation 2:2) is similar to what the inhabitants of Narnia had to go through when waiting for Aslan. to cross-reference, Paul tells the church in Ephesus in Acts 20:29-31 that "fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock" and this correlates to Lion, Witch, Wardrobe both figuratively and literally, as actual wolves are sent after the Pevensies, Peter kills a wolf in his first battle, AND mr. Tumnus is taken away by the Police (which happens to also be wolves)! so a great importance is placed on the evil of Wolves in the book. in the letter to Ephesus, the church is condemned for "abandoning the love you had at first" (Rev. 2:4) and is told to "repent, and do the works you did at first" (Rev. 2:5). both of these correlate to Edmund's development and flaws (i have quotes to support this, i just dont wanna type them out rn). Christ also tells Ephesus "yet this you have: you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate". so i researched a bit on the Nicolaitans and the word means literally "to conquer the people" which is what the White Witch and her followers were doing. i also found a quote somewhere that says that the Nicolaitans claimed "not that they were destroying Christianity, but that they were presenting an improved and modernized version of it" which is what the Witch was doing when she paraded herself as the Queen of Narnia in place of Aslan's rightful place as the King.

anyways im gonna write about this for my thesis in my tolkien/lewis class next semester and IM SO EXCITED WISH ME LUCK

THIS IS THE COOLEST THING IVE EVER READ

IM DOING MY BEST TO GET A COPY OF THE BOOK BUT NOW I REALLY REALLY WANT TO READ YOUR THESIS WHEN YOU WRITE IT

#please rant at me more often you’re so smart #i want to discuss intellectual things with youu #claire gets an ask #bookie!