C.S. Lewis and his experiences with "pagan mythology" - What was he getting at?

[Richbee]

C.S. Lewis was a scholar of Norse mythology and really all mythology, and as we know was very close to J.R.R. Tolkein.

I have, and I am thumbing through, in my formally nicotine stained fingers, his book, Surprised by Joy. (1955) In the chapter: "Light and Shade", he writes of his studies, and I quote:

"...I found Milton, and Yeats, and a book on Celtic mythology, which soon became, if not a rival, yet a humble companion, to Norse. That did me good; to enjoy two mythologies (or three, now that I had begun to love the Greek), fully aware of their differing flavors....

C.S. Lewis writes about his early days of youth, of searching and seeking, when Lewis was an atheist learning about every path or Religion, or Myth. He considered Materialism one week, thought of Jesus as myth another, rejected God, and was even angry at God, because he didn't believe in God. He had many a dark night of his soul, wrestling with his conscience and convictions.

In brief, no one could, or would tell C.S. Lewis what and how to believe, and he did explore and study the many ways or paths. One little known fact is that he considered the Occult, and the old Celtic or Druid pathways, or any number of other myths, and this was well before Gardner and Crowley, or right about that time, they were traveling in and out or around Oxford, England.

Correct, all know the modern genesis of these ideas, as originating in England, and I quote:

In 1998 Philip G. Davis, a professor of religion at the University of Prince Edward Island, published "Goddess Unmasked: The Rise of Neopagan Feminist Spirituality," which argued that Wicca was the creation of an English civil servant and amateur anthropologist named Gerald B. Gardner (1884-1964). Davis wrote that the origins of the Goddess movement lay in an interest among the German and French Romantics--mostly men--in natural forces, especially those linked with women. Gardner admired the Romantics and belonged to a Rosicrucian society called the Fellowship of Crotona --a group that was influenced by several late-nineteenth-century occultist groups, which in turn were influenced by Freemasonry. In the 1950's Gardner introduced a religion he called (and spelled) Wica. Although Gardner claimed to have learned Wiccan lore from a centuries-old coven of witches who also belonged to the Fellowship of Crotona, Davis wrote that no one had been able to locate the coven and that Gardner had invented the rites he trumpeted, borrowing from rituals created early in the twentieth century by the notorious British occultist Aleister Crowley, among others. Wiccans today, by their own admission, have freely adapted and embellished Gardner's rites. [dogma]

Source: Charlotte Allen - The Scholars and the Goddess (www.beliefnet.com/story/63/story_6307.html)



Let us discuss what C.S. Lewis (1898 - 1963), and his experiences, and learning of Mythology and the Occult, or Spiritism. One can quickly see how his life and quest for truth occurred in the same space-time continuum as Gardner and Crowley & Co..

"...I came to meet Magicians, Spiritualists, and the like."

(Surprised by Joy, p 178)

He read, what was then called a "modern source", and no doubt the source for Gardner: The Golden Bough, by Sir James George Fraiser (www.bartleby.com/br/196.html): A monumental study in comparative folklore, magic and religion, The Golden Bough shows parallels between the rites and beliefs, superstitions and taboos of early cultures and those of Christianity. It had a great impact on psychology and literature and remains an early classic anthropological resource.

Now, IMO, this appears to be the source for many of these Myths, like the goddess myths of Diana? (Diana as Adonis to Venus, or Attis to the Mother of the Gods. For Diana, like Artemis, was a goddess of fertility in general, and of childbirth in particular.) Has any one ever questioned these sources? And, the broad conclusions, like showing "parallels between the rites and beliefs...w/Christianity"? (e.g. Mary was the Mother of Jesus and gave birth, so she must "parallel" Diana?! Saint = goddess?)

King David says to:

Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good; Blessed is the man who trusts in Him!

How do these myths taste? Of gods and goddesses? Is this just to entice and excite the imagination, credit Carl Jung? Follow your Bliss, and damn the eternal consequences, and ignore the source(s)?

Was C.S. Lewis a bit harsh in his ultimate conclusion, or was he a learned scholar of unique insight and wisdom on this topic?



“gleams of celestial strength and beauty falling on a jungle of filth and imbecility.”

[technomage]

Was C.S. Lewis a bit harsh in his ultimate conclusion, or was he a learned scholar of unique insight and wisdom on this topic?



“gleams of celestial strength and beauty falling on a jungle of filth and imbecility.”



The question of whether or not Lewis was too harsh, completely accurate, or even too lenient must be rooted in a prior question: what was the purpose of the book, Perelandra, that this quote came from?

Among his many other studies, after his conversion to Christianity Lewis took on the role of an Apologist. Therefore the above quote is not merely to entertain or to inform, but also to persuade.

One can be assured that he was in favor of Christianity ... but would that favor color his preferences to the point of injuring his scholasticism or objectivity? I fear such a question is beyond my ken. Regardless, that was Lewis' opinion: mine differs.

Justin

[Richbee]

The question of whether or not Lewis was too harsh, completely accurate, or even too lenient must be rooted in a prior question: what was the purpose of the book, Perelandra, that this quote came from?

Good question:

C. S. Perelandra. New York: Macmillan (1944) (first published 1943).

I couldn't pin this down in context and to the page. Not enough time.

In his book: Surprised by Joy, he writes of discovering his adoration for Mythology, and he fell in love when he read:

Siegfried and the Twilight of the Gods.

(i.e. Twilight in which the gods lived.)

He gets hooked on Wagnerian music too. Remember this was before WWII.

Any fans of the Norse god: "Balder"? Who doesn't know of the Mistletoe?

Where is Dur? It is fascinating to read about Tree worship, and/or the sacred Oaks, and who doesn't recall J.R.R. Tolkein inserting his "Ents" or Tree Ents into the Fellowship of the Ring.

All these idea have sources, and Sir James Fraiser had to discover original sources for all these myths. Lewis became an authority during the time that Tolkein became an authority on these original languages.

I am buried deep into some additional research:

Quoting: The Golden Bough


Like their kinsmen the Irish kings, they were expected to be a source of fertility to the land and of fecundity to the cattle; and how could they fulfil these expectations better than by acting the part of their kinsman Zeus, the great god of the oak, the thunder, and the rain? They personified him, apparently, just as the Italian kings personified Jupiter.

In ancient Italy every oak was sacred to Jupiter, the Italian counterpart of Zeus; and on the Capitol at Rome the god was worshipped as the deity not merely of the oak, but of the rain and the thunder. Contrasting the piety of the good old times with the scepticism of an age when nobody thought that heaven was heaven, or cared a fig for Jupiter, a Roman writer tells us that in former days noble matrons used to go with bare feet, streaming hair, and pure minds, up the long Capitoline slope, praying to Jupiter for rain. And straightway, he goes on, it rained bucketsful, then or never, and everybody returned dripping like drowned rats. “But nowadays,” says he, “we are no longer religious, so the fields lie baking.”

When we pass from Southern to Central Europe we still meet with the great god of the oak and the thunder among the barbarous Aryans who dwelt in the vast primaeval forests. Thus among the Celts of Gaul the Druids esteemed nothing more sacred than the mistletoe and the oak on which it grew; they chose groves of oaks for the scene of their solemn service, and they performed none of their rites without oak leaves. “The Celts,” says a Greek writer, “worship Zeus, and the Celtic image of Zeus is a tall oak.” The Celtic conquerors, who settled in Asia in the third century before our era, appear to have carried the worship of the oak with them to their new home; for in the heart of Asia Minor the Galatian senate met in a place which bore the pure Celtic name of Drynemetum, “the sacred oak grove” or “the temple of the oak.” Indeed the very name of Druids is believed by good authorities to mean no more than “oak men.”

In the religion of the ancient Germans the veneration for sacred groves seems to have held the foremost place, and according to Grimm the chief of their holy trees was the oak. It appears to have been especially dedicated to the god of thunder, Donar or Thunar, the equivalent of the Norse Thor; for a sacred oak near Geismar, in Hesse, which Boniface cut down in the eighth century, went among the heathen by the name of Jupiter’s oak (robur Jovis), which in old German would be Donares eih, “the oak of Donar.” That the Teutonic thunder god Donar, Thunar, Thor was identified with the Italian thunder god Jupiter appears from our word Thursday, Thunar’s day, which is merely a rendering of the Latin dies Jovis. Thus among the ancient Teutons, as among the Greeks and Italians, the god of the oak was also the god of the thunder. Moreover, he was regarded as the great fertilising power, who sent rain and caused the earth to bear fruit; for Adam of Bremen tells us that

“Thor presides in the air; he it is who rules thunder and lightning, wind and rains, fine weather and crops.”

In these respects, therefore, the Teutonic

http://www.bartleby.com/196/pages/page160.html

[Richbee]

Footnote: And Cross Reference: "Sared Oaks" - Boniface

Boniface

Wynfrith, nicknamed Boniface ("good deeds"), was born around 680 near Crediton in Devonshire, England. When he was five, he listened to some monks who were staying at his father's house. They had returned from a mission to the pagans on the continent, and Boniface was so impressed by them that he resolved to follow their example. Although his father had intended him for a secular career, he gave way to his son's entreaties and sent him at the age of seven to a monastery school. He eventually became director of the school at Nursling, in Winchester, where he wrote the first Latin grammar in England, and gave lectures that were widely copied and circulated.

At thirty, he was ordained and set out to preach in Friesland (overlaps with modern Holland), whence he was soon expelled because of war between its heathen king and Charles Martel of France. Boniface, after a brief withdrawal, went into Hesse and Bavaria, having secured the support of the Pope and of Charles Martel for his work there.

In Hesse, in the presence of a large crowd of pagans, he cut down the Sacred Oak of Geismar, a tree of immense age and girth, sacred to the god Thor. It is said that after only a few blows of his axe, the tree tottered and crashed to the ground, breaking into four pieces and revealing itself to be rotted away within.

It was the beginning of a highly successful missionary effort, and the planting of a vigorous Christian church in Germany, where Boniface was eventually consecrated bishop. He asked the Christian Saxons of England to support his work among their kinsmen on the continent, and they responded with money, books, supplies, and above all, with a steady supply of monks to assist him in teaching and preaching.

Boniface did not confine his attentions to Germany. He worked to establish cooperation between the Pope and others in Italy on the one hand and Charles and his successors in France on the other. He persuaded Carloman and Pepin, the sons of Charles, to call synods for the reform of the church in their territories, where under previous rulers bishoprics had often been sold to the highest bidder. He never forgot his initial failure in Friesland, and in old age resigned his bishopric and returned to work there. Many Frisians had been converted earlier by Willibrord (another Saxon missionary from England--see 7 Nov), but had lapsed after his death. Boniface preached among them with considerable success. On June 5, the eve of Pentecost, 754, he was preparing a group of Frisians for confirmation when they were attacked and killed by heathen warriors.

http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bio/178.html

[Richbee]

Addendum:

This thread serves an additional important purpose, because over on Apologetics we have been discussing truth, knowledge and sources.

Justin has pointed out that the Bible was written by Men.

Well, my guess is, that all the pagan and Neo-pagan myths have been written by Men, and using Words, no less.

Myths and Mysteries?

Sure, we have the scoop here, and Magic too! Sacred Magic and Religion! More to follow!

And, I almost forgot, Poetry! Yeats was into Celtic magic (magik?) and so was the poet Robert Graves.

Who is up for his White Goddess?

[Richbee]

Addendum: Part 2

(I don't have the time to fully research and develop this thought line, but I promise to put in the hard labor of Love and Poetry.)

Now, can we discern sources for knowledge and truth? And, have some of us, no naming names, taken Myth and Mythology too far? Born within just a few years (1895) of C.S. Lewis, here our research continues.....

The Poetry of Robert Graves

Randall Jarrell [wrote] believed that Graves’s poetry, along with the theory of poetry he constructed around it, was a sublimation of his life with Laura Riding. There is little reason to disagree.

At the heart of Graves’s theory is the idea that all “true” poetry is an invocation of the Mother-Goddess who ruled the world up to the thirteenth century B.C.

What Mother-Goddess?

... you might ask. [Who would ask here?]

Well, Graves claimed to have discovered evidence of an ancient matriarchal cult while reading for Hercules, My Shipmate (1945), a retelling of the travels of Jason and the Argonauts.

With clues taken from: The Golden Bough, by Sir James George Frazer (www.bartleby.com/br/196.html):

[This feels like, I mean can you feel it? “It's like déjà vu , all over again.” ~ Yogi Berra ~ ]

....Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough and other anthropological works, Graves concluded that the Mother-Goddess had been ousted by thirteenth-century B.C. invaders of what is now Greece. [One is apt to imagine Baal, or Baals? Ashtar? A fertility goddess?] These invaders installed in her place the Olympian gods. The legacy of this momentous shift in spiritual power is Western civilization as we know it, with its (in Graves’s view) undue emphasis on rationality and order, and distrust of magic and myths — indeed, all forms of “poetic unreason.”

The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth, Graves’s 1948 study of Britain’s own dethroned Goddess and her connection to the Mediterranean one, is without a doubt the author at his crankiest.

In the words of the critic Douglas Day, the book is “a curious blend of fact and fancy, an often impenetrable wilderness of cryptology, obscure learning, and apparently non sequitur reasoning brought to bear on the thesis that has its roots partly in historic fact, partly in generally accepted anthropological hypotheses, and partly in pure poetic intuition.” Suffice to say that Graves’s attempt to prove the existence of this matriarchal religion— which involved him in readings of medieval Welsh poems, analyses of secret Druidic alphabets, musings on ancient tree-worship, and correlations between Greek and Celtic myth—was fervently rejected by anthropologists and literary critics alike.

But this never shook Graves’s confidence, for The White Goddess was in his eyes a document of faith.

And its debunking by “rational” critics—who (Graves would assert) are products of a patriarchal society and therefore on a covert search-and-destroy mission for every contemporary manifestation of the Goddess—only served to intensify his devotion. It was the same kind of devotion he had evinced for Riding, who appears to have been for Graves a rare embodiment of the long-lost Goddess.

[We should note that some would assert any criticism here of the Goddess is my Anti-Feminist Men - brutes from the Christian "patriarchal" tyrants!]

Poetry, an invocation of this beleaguered antique Muse, was, according to Graves, the most meaningful writing a Goddess-worshiper could undertake. As a result, Graves was quite candid about the ancillary role his books of nonfiction and historical fiction played in his life. These volumes, Graves said, were the “show dogs I breed and sell to support the cat.” This does not mean, however; that Graves ever passed up the chance to use these books as a means of correcting the false history propagated by various anti-Goddess forces.

Source: New Criterion (www.newcriterion.com/archive/07/oct88/richman.htm)



Beware, the anti-Goddess forces? Is there a Book of Wiccan with warnings and prophesies of such? (Like the Anti-Christ?)

Enjoy a few lines from Robert Graves, and all our differences will melt away into sublime rhyme...

Never be disenchanted of
That place you sometimes dream yourself into,
Lying at large remove beyond all dream,
Or those you find there, though but seldom
In their company seated—
the untameable, the live, the gentle.
Have you not known them? Whom? They carry
Time looped so river-wise about their house
There’s no way in by history’s road
To name or number them.
In your sleepy eyes I read the journey
Of which disjointedly you tell; which stirs
My loving admiration, that you should travel
Through nightmare to a lost and moated land,
Who are timorous by nature.

[Cu Mhorrigan]

Well of course there are anti goddess forces, they are called Monotheistic Fundementalists :wink: :wink: :wink: :wink: :wink:

[Richbee]

Well of course there are anti goddess forces, they are called Monotheistic Fundementalists :wink: :wink: :wink: :wink: :wink:


Every Man should have a Mother Goddess of Wealth and Love, and marry a sex goddess!

:lmbo:

It was said of Robert Graves, that indeed his wife inspired his belief in: "The White Goddess".

Or, at least he devoted his poems to her. :blush:

[Richbee]

Any thoughts here:

Quote:

The poems collected in The Wild Swans at Coole (1919) trace a fascinating trajectory from before his marriage and after it, particularly in the symbolism of the Moon.

In 1915, Yeats had wondered whether he had permanently lost contact with the lunar principle.

Lines Written in Dejection

When have I last looked on
The round green eyes and the long wavering bodies
Of the dark leopards of the moon?
All the wild witches, those most noble ladies,
For all their broom-sticks and their tears,
Their angry tears, are gone.
The holy centaurs of the hills are vanished;
I have nothing but the embittered sun;
Banished heroic mother moon and vanished,
And now that I have come to fifty years
I must endure the timid sun.

http://www.yeatsvision.com/Phases.html

(Note, this topic almost deserves it's own thread!)

C.S. Lewis read Yeats, but so did most of England.

I would be interested to know, if Yeats can be called "wiccan", and certainly quoted and adored by Wiccans?

A phony Christian? Or, a Celtic Christian Mystic?

[Cu Mhorrigan]

Celtic Christian Mystic, There are soem that mingle celtic beliefs with christianity (Why I have NO idea). but that would be merely a guess since I have never personally Met Mister Yeats so I cannot determine what His religious affiliation was.

[Richbee]

Celtic Christian Mystic, There are soem that mingle celtic beliefs with christianity (Why I have NO idea). but that would be merely a guess since I have never personally Met Mister Yeats so I cannot determine what His religious affiliation was.

Well, there is always going to be some cultural influences, and I have no problem with this.

Now, as I am attempting to post a cumlative number of posts revealing the occultic origins of Wicca.

I should also add, that I'm not out to excommunicate the dead from the Christian Church. Perhaps god forgave Yeats, and he is covered by the forgiveness found in Jesus Christ through his sacrifice on calvery. (Although many will assert that he was an Apostate FROM Christianity.)

I have found a number of common denominators and sources during the forming of these mystical groups or covens, and Magik, or Magical mystery tours!

C.S. Lewis very nearly went down this path, as he explains, he was very excited and thrilled when he discovered his love for Mythology.

But, he never considered the myths as real, and he never sought fulfillment in fantasy.

Where will our discoveries lead next? Shall we consider the Theosophy here? And, the Eastern Religions, and their influence on Wicca? No Sin? No Heaven? No Hell? Reincarnation? Some unknowable Creator or fuzzy meanings attached to a spectulative creator?

No objective truth?

Truth is not relative.

[Cu Mhorrigan]

Well, there is always going to be some cultural influences, and I have no problem with this.

Now, as I am attempting to post a cumlative number of posts revealing the occultic origins of Wicca.

I should also add, that I'm not out to excommunicate the dead from the Christian Church. Perhaps god forgave Yeats, and he is covered by the forgiveness found in Jesus Christ through his sacrifice on calvery. (Although many will assert that he was an Apostate FROM Christianity.)

I have found a number of common denominators and sources during the forming of these mystical groups or covens, and Magik, or Magical mystery tours!

C.S. Lewis very nearly went down this path, as he explains, he was very excited and thrilled when he discovered his love for Mythology.

But, he never considered the myths as real, and he never sought fulfillment in fantasy.

Where will our discoveries lead next? Shall we consider the Theosophy here? And, the Eastern Religions, and their influence on Wicca? No Sin? No Heaven? No Hell? Reincarnation? Some unknowable Creator or fuzzy meanings attached to a spectulative creator?

No objective truth?

Truth is not relative.
richbee, I have no idea how you can take My conclusion about Celtic Christianity and then spin off on an entire rant about the origins and influences of Wicca. (Then again what should I expect :roll: ?)
Many people would consider your christ Myth a fantasy especially since christianity makes several claims that it has been unable to fulfill. An Inability to bring peace, an inability to heal the sick, an inability to answer questions of deep and philosophical nature.
While yes Wica as a whole is an amalgamation fo different religious practices, and Alot of paganism does use the Old stories (What you call Myths) there is still a great deal of truth to it since it is able to meet people where they are at and help them to be reasoning or at least thoughtful beings.
Most religions as a whole encoruage people to be mindful of their actions and the consequences there of.

[lee_merrill]

C.S. Lewis very nearly went down this path, as he explains...

He did, actually, and even contemplated what might happen if the materialist scientists and the magicians got together, in the third book of his science fiction trilogy. It might well happen! The global village, you know...

"If it works, then who cares where it comes from?" (a comment I heard on a talk show).

Blessings,
Lee

[Richbee]

richbee, I have no idea how you can take My conclusion about Celtic Christianity and then spin off on an entire rant about the origins and influences of Wicca. (Then again what should I expect :roll: ?)

:ahem:

Actually, this whole thread will reveal the Men who helped to continue some old ideas as found in Theosophy, Kabbala and Freemasonary, and some new language describing old Greek or Norse, or Celtic mythogies. With some magick. (Note, note stage Magic.)

Many people would consider your christ Myth a fantasy especially since christianity makes several claims that it has been unable to fulfill.

Actually, C.S. Lewis, the subject matter expert on Myths, did write about this. I quote at length, to provide full credit and full context:

Myth became History

Many voices have been heard in the last few centuries speaking of Christianity, if not religion in general, as a psychological crutch.

The idea is that time has moved forward such that we have outgrown the superstition, and along with it, the need to explain life and comfort ourselves with archaic religious myth.

And though by equating religion with "myth" some mean to suggest that religion is fanciful and untrue, the comparison between Christianity and the genre of myth is absolutely fascinating. In fact, it is a comparison C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton found altogether fitting, altogether revealing.

Lewis recognized the great Greek, Roman, and Nordic myths as being a genre of narrative that wrestled as fiercely as the human heart can wrestle with its yearning to know the gods.

In this, he reasoned that what we glean from the myth is not truth but reality, as myths concern themselves with questions of ultimate reality and theological inquiry. One pictures Sisyphus rolling the great stone up the hill, only to find it tumbling down the hill before he reaches the top, and then having to roll it back up again—endlessly. Through myth we ask profoundly, does life have meaning? Do the gods hate us? Do they even care? Is life worth living? As Chesterton comments in Everlasting Man,

"In a word, mythology is a search; it is something that combines a recurrent desire with a recurrent doubt, mixing a most hungry sincerity in the idea of seeking for a place with a most dark and deep and mysterious levity about all the places found."

Indeed, myth has concerned itself with the great and impenetrable questions of life, questions that every worldview must answer.

And yet of the parallels between myth and Christianity, the modern mind argues that Jesus is just one more attempt at explaining what we merely wish were true. And that is partially correct. There are elements in myth that we want to believe: Namely that the gods do reveal themselves to us, that heavenly mysteries can be known on some real level, that life is saturated with purpose and meaning. Indeed, such qualities reach the deepest thirsts and longings of mankind; they are things we want to be true. But Christianity would take this one step further. It would argue that these are actually the stories that we knew on some real level had to be true. In myth, mankind has revealed what is engraved deeply on our hearts.

You see, within the great myths life is lived under that which is beyond us. There is an understanding that there is something to which we must bow, that we are required to answer to someone. There is awareness that our stories are lived alongside and touched by stories of the transcendent, of the ultimate. And we were right. What man has somehow always known has in fact happened.

Or as Lewis remarks, "Myth became Fact."

For the Christian story is exactly that. God did show Himself. He stepped through the unseen and came to dwell within the seen. The Eternal reached into time and touched real and datable history. In our creed it is stated that Jesus, "suffered under Pontius Pilate…" A reminder that what man has longed for most has really happened:

"The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth."

Lewis' words provide a fitting conclusion.

"For this is the marriage of heaven and earth: Perfect Myth and Perfect Fact, claiming not only our love and our obedience, but also our wonder and delight, addressed to the savage, the child, and the poet in each one of us no less than to the moralist, the scholar, and the philosopher."

(See: God in the Dock (Grand Rapids: Eerdman's, 1970) 67.)

May the One who was, and is, and is to come be to you all things this day and always.

Source: Slice of Infinity (www.rzim.org/publications/slicetran.php?sliceid=423)

[Richbee]

While yes Wica as a whole is an amalgamation fo different religious practices, and Alot of paganism does use the Old stories (What you call Myths) there is still a great deal of truth to it since it is able to meet people where they are at and help them to be reasoning or at least thoughtful beings.

Most religions as a whole encoruage people to be mindful of their actions and the consequences there of.

Wonderful, but I find a denial, or a void in regard to eternal life, or our eternal destiny.

It seems to be much of "Eat, Drink and be Merry..", and let our eternal destiny take care of itself. Just food for worms? Recycles souls? Like a candle blowing in the wind? Reincrnation, like Theosophy? (With it's Hindu or Buddhist lessons.)

No Sin? No Soul? No Heaven, no Hell? We know where these ideas came from, and they didn't come from ancient Athens, or Rome. More so India.

[Richbee]

:bump:

Now, we know the stage magick crapola involved here with these Wiccan fantasy seekers.


C.S. Lewis was a scholar of Norse mythology and really all mythology, and as we know was very close to J.R.R. Tolkein.

I have, and I am thumbing through, in my formally nicotine stained fingers, his book, Surprised by Joy. (1955) In the chapter: "Light and Shade", he writes of his studies, and I quote:

"...I found Milton, and Yeats, and a book on Celtic mythology, which soon became, if not a rival, yet a humble companion, to Norse. That did me good; to enjoy two mythologies (or three, now that I had begun to love the Greek), fully aware of their differing flavors....

C.S. Lewis writes about his early days of youth, of searching and seeking, when Lewis was an atheist learning about every path or Religion, or Myth. He considered Materialism one week, thought of Jesus as myth another, rejected God, and was even angry at God, because he didn't believe in God. He had many a dark night of his soul, wrestling with his conscience and convictions.

In brief, no one could, or would tell C.S. Lewis what and how to believe, and he did explore and study the many ways or paths. One little known fact is that he considered the Occult, and the old Celtic or Druid pathways, or any number of other myths, and this was well before Gardner and Crowley, or right about that time, they were traveling in and out or around Oxford, England.

Correct, all know the modern genesis of these ideas, as originating in England, and I quote:

In 1998 Philip G. Davis, a professor of religion at the University of Prince Edward Island, published "Goddess Unmasked: The Rise of Neopagan Feminist Spirituality," which argued that Wicca was the creation of an English civil servant and amateur anthropologist named Gerald B. Gardner (1884-1964). Davis wrote that the origins of the Goddess movement lay in an interest among the German and French Romantics--mostly men--in natural forces, especially those linked with women. Gardner admired the Romantics and belonged to a Rosicrucian society called the Fellowship of Crotona --a group that was influenced by several late-nineteenth-century occultist groups, which in turn were influenced by Freemasonry. In the 1950's Gardner introduced a religion he called (and spelled) Wica. Although Gardner claimed to have learned Wiccan lore from a centuries-old coven of witches who also belonged to the Fellowship of Crotona, Davis wrote that no one had been able to locate the coven and that Gardner had invented the rites he trumpeted, borrowing from rituals created early in the twentieth century by the notorious British occultist Aleister Crowley, among others. Wiccans today, by their own admission, have freely adapted and embellished Gardner's rites. [dogma]

Source: Charlotte Allen - The Scholars and the Goddess (www.beliefnet.com/story/63/story_6307.html)



Let us discuss what C.S. Lewis (1898 - 1963), and his experiences, and learning of Mythology and the Occult, or Spiritism. One can quickly see how his life and quest for truth occurred in the same space-time continuum as Gardner and Crowley & Co..

"...I came to meet Magicians, Spiritualists, and the like."

(Surprised by Joy, p 178)

He read, what was then called a "modern source", and no doubt the source for Gardner: The Golden Bough, by Sir James George Fraiser (www.bartleby.com/br/196.html): A monumental study in comparative folklore, magic and religion, The Golden Bough shows parallels between the rites and beliefs, superstitions and taboos of early cultures and those of Christianity. It had a great impact on psychology and literature and remains an early classic anthropological resource.

Now, IMO, this appears to be the source for many of these Myths, like the goddess myths of Diana? (Diana as Adonis to Venus, or Attis to the Mother of the Gods. For Diana, like Artemis, was a goddess of fertility in general, and of childbirth in particular.) Has any one ever questioned these sources? And, the broad conclusions, like showing "parallels between the rites and beliefs...w/Christianity"? (e.g. Mary was the Mother of Jesus and gave birth, so she must "parallel" Diana?! Saint = goddess?)

King David says to:

Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good; Blessed is the man who trusts in Him!

How do these myths taste? Of gods and goddesses? Is this just to entice and excite the imagination, credit Carl Jung? Follow your Bliss, and damn the eternal consequences, and ignore the source(s)?

Was C.S. Lewis a bit harsh in his ultimate conclusion, or was he a learned scholar of unique insight and wisdom on this topic?



“gleams of celestial strength and beauty falling on a jungle of filth and imbecility.”

[Richbee]

He did, actually, and even contemplated what might happen if the materialist scientists and the magicians got together, in the third book of his science fiction trilogy. It might well happen! The global village, you know...

"If it works, then who cares where it comes from?" (a comment I heard on a talk show).

Blessings,

Lee

This quote alos belongs over here, in regard to C.S. Lweis!

Lee,

I recalled something you mentioned briefly about what C.S. Lewis wrote and I found the complete quote, and we should take note, that what has happened in the occult world in the past decade is just what C. S. Lewis described in The Screwtape Letters and just has you said.

Here is an experienced demon (Screwtape) writing letters of advice to a novice demon (Wormwood):

I have great hopes that we shall learn in due time how to
emotionalize and mythologize their science to such an
extent that what is, in effect, a belief in us, (though
not under that name) will creep in while the human mind
remains closed to belief in the Enemy [i.e., God]. The
"Life Force," the worship of sex, and some aspects of
Psychoanalysis, may here prove useful. If once we can
produce our perfect work -- the Materialist Magician, the
man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he
vaguely calls "Forces" while denying the existence of
"spirits" -- then the end of the war will be in sight.

C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1975), page 33.