The Candlestick
I saw a gold menorah with seven branches, and in the center, the Son of Man.[1]
Revelation 1:12-13
Lewis said that the Chronicles of Narnia are “about Christ.”[2] What I have tried to show in the last ten chapters is how they are about Christ.
When Lewis used the word Christ, he didn’t just mean Jesus of Nazareth, the historical figure who lived in Palestine two thousand years ago. He also meant the Son of God, God the Son, through whom all things were made and in whom all things hold together.
Lewis took the seven heavens that he so loved and used them as symbols of Christ. And because the seven planets symbolize Christ, they also symbolize everything He made. They have to, because there is a connection between Christ and creation. As Lewis said, “[Christ] is the all-pervasive principle of concretion or cohesion whereby the universe holds together.”[3]
So when we read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, we shouldn’t just think, Aslan is like Christ because he dies for Edmund and leave it at that. Of course, it is true and very important that Aslan is like Christ because he dies for Edmund. But there is so much more going on. The books are much more Christian than we’ve realized!
Imagine you’re C. S. Lewis. You want to have a Christ figure in your story. You want to show Christ dying for His people. You want to show the people becoming obedient to Christ. You want to show that the whole world is Christ’s. How do you do this?
Lewis did it by means of Jupiter imagery because Jupiter’s imagery was extensive enough to let him do all these things at once. Aslan is the royal King of the Wood. Aslan’s blood shed for Edmund is like the Great Red Spot “bleeding” on kingly Jupiter. Narnia is freed from the Witch’s winter and becomes able to celebrate the “jollification”[4] of Christmas once again. The children are all crowned as kings or queens at the end of the adventure. And so on and so forth.
The Jovial imagery runs under and through all these aspects of the story, shaping them and binding them together. There is a spirit linking all these different things just as in the real world the Spirit of Christ is to be seen both in the Creator and in His creation.
It was a very skillful and subtle thing that Lewis did. And I think it helps explain why the Narnia Chronicles have become so popular. Although it wasn’t clear before now how he made the stories hold together, I think we have sensed that they do hold together. We have felt it in our bones. We have thought, There’s more going on here than meets the eye.
Let’s quickly review how Lewis uses the seven heavens, those “spiritual symbols” of “permanent value,”[5] as he called them.
In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the children become kings and queens under the royal crown of Jupiter.
In Prince Caspian, they become knights and forest folk under the wooden shield of Mars.
In The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader,” they drink light and slay dragons under the Sun’s golden embrace.
In The Silver Chair, they avoid lunacy and reflect truth beneath the mirroring Moon.
In The Horse and His Boy, they learn true speech under the living and active word of Mercury.
In The Magician’s Nephew, they witness creation, laugh, and learn to love the Morning Star.
And in The Last Battle, under Saturn’s awful and awe-full influence, they learn the final lesson: “Blessed are those who die in the Lord” (Revelation 14:13, NLT).
The children and we, the readers, “look along” these influences. We “enjoy” the heavenly atmosphere in each book—breathing it, smelling it, tasting it, allowing it to fill and inform our whole imaginative experience.
And we do so seven times over.
When I think about the seven Chronicles and how Lewis uses each planet to say something about Christ, I’m reminded of the verse, “I saw a gold menorah with seven branches, and in the center, the Son of Man” (Revelation 1:12-13, THE MESSAGE).
The Son of Man, Christ, is the focal point of this seven-branched candlestick. He is at the heart of all illumination, just as Aslan is “at the back of all the stories,”[6] according to Shasta in The Horse and His Boy.
But why have seven stories rather than just one? Why would Lewis want to repeat himself?
Seven Stars for Seven Stories
When he began writing The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lewis didn’t know there was going to be more than one book. He wanted to write a Jupiter-themed story, I believe, because Jupiter was his favorite planet, the one he jokingly said he himself had been born under, and the one he thought the people needed to know about more than any other. “Of Saturn we know more than enough,” he said, “but who does not need to be reminded of Jove?”[7]
Having written his Jove story, Lewis then started work on his Venus tale (The Magician’s Nephew), but he couldn’t find the right shape for that story, so he set it aside for a while.
In the meantime, he wrote Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader,” and it was around then that he decided he would do all seven. He had actually finished four of the books before he published the first. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was published in 1950, and the other six followed, one each year, until 1956.
He told one of his former students that he had had “an idea” that he wanted to try out, and now, having “tried it out to the full”[8] after seven books, it was time to stop.
In the course of writing the series, Lewis was able to present Christ in seven different ways. Aslan is King, Commander, Light, Mirror, Word, Life, and Mystery. Lewis thought it was important to speak about Christ in many different ways because no one way, on its own, was enough. Why are there four Gospels in the Bible? Each one gives a particular perspective on Jesus’ life and ministry. The same is true of the seven heavens. Each planet provides its own unique way of representing the spiritual life.
Lewis once said that an image of Christ is only “a model or symbol, certain to fail us in the long run and, even while we use it, requiring correction from other models.”[9] These symbols will fail us in the long run because they are only symbols; they are not the thing itself. Only Christ Himself never fails. We have to think about Christ using ideas and images, but if we put our trust in these symbols, rather than in the One they symbolize, we will be making a big mistake.
“You shall not make for yourself a graven image.” So says the second of the Ten Commandments. A graven image needn’t just mean a literal idol made out of wood or stone. It might also mean a mental idol, an image in the mind. We can make our own thoughts into idols and worship our ideas of God as if they were God. But, as Lewis once said, “My idea of God is not a divine idea.”[10]
By using more than one image for God, we remind ourselves that any image we use is only temporary; it must be corrected and relieved by other images. These images serve our minds; they do not save our souls. A fork is not food.
Consider the Heavens
And what is true of our thinking about God is also true of our thinking about the universe. Our models of the cosmos are also temporary. They come and they go.
Until the time of Copernicus, people believed that the Earth was static and central. Following Copernicus, we believe that the sun is the center and the Earth moves round it.
And since the Copernican Revolution, there have been other great changes in the ways we think about the universe. Our map of the cosmos has been altered significantly by the discoveries and theories of Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, to mention just two of the greatest physicists.
In due course, other great astronomers and physicists will come along with new ideas, causing us to rethink our understanding of the universe and our place in it. For that reason, it makes sense to hold our understanding lightly. We shouldn’t cling too tightly to any one model or image. And neither should we throw away any image too emphatically.
This is the point that Lewis was trying to make in The Discarded Image. He was saying, “Don’t completely forget the pre-Copernican cosmos! Don’t discard it too hastily!” The pre-Copernican model is outdated in many ways, but not in every way. It won’t enable you to fly to the moon, but it will help you think about the moon in rich and meaningful ways.
We don’t just want to know how far away the moon is and what it’s made of and how much it weighs. We also want to find the spiritual significance of the moon. The pre-Copernican way of thinking about the planets kept in mind their spiritual purpose and qualities. That old way of thinking may not have always come up with the right answers, but it was asking very good questions. Lewis wonders whether the questions of modern science are the best or only sorts of questions to be asked. In The Discarded Image, he says this:
I hope no one will think that I am recommending a return to the Medieval Model. I am only suggesting considerations that may induce us to regard all Models in the right way, respecting each and idolising none.[11]
And as so often, Lewis is making a quiet joke here. The joke is to be found in his use of the word considerations. Consider comes from two Latin words—con, meaning “with,” and sidus, meaning “star.” To consider something means not just to think about it but to think about it “with the stars.” It was originally a term used in astrology. But how many people are even aware of the origin and meaning of the word? We have forgotten that old way of thinking.
We are, in fact, poorer than our ancestors in this respect because we no longer understand so many of the terms we use—not only consider, but also tingle and commerce and influenza and venerable and lunatic and disaster. We have forgotten why March is called March!
If we don’t understand where we have come from, we won’t really understand where we are or where we’re going. It’s vital to keep alive a knowledge of old ways of thinking in order to keep fully alive our present way of thinking.
And it’s not just in The Discarded Image that Lewis uses the word consider with an awareness of its old meaning. In That Hideous Strength, Mercury descends to Earth and inspires people to make puns and play with words: “paradoxes, fancies, anecdotes, theories laughingly advanced yet (on consideration) well worth taking seriously.”[12] The appearance of the word consideration in this passage is itself a pun!
And Lewis uses it again in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Peter and Susan are worried that Lucy might be going crazy. She has claimed that there is a magic world behind the wardrobe, but they can’t find it when they go looking. So Peter and Susan take their concerns to the professor. He asks them how they know that Lucy’s story isn’t true and Susan replies, “But Edmund said they had only been pretending.”
“That is a point,” the professor says, “which certainly deserves consideration; very careful consideration.”[13]
If we understand Lewis’s love of words and his love of the planets, we will see that the professor means more by this than at first appears. Peter and Susan must give “careful consideration” to what Edmund says. Edmund has been to the magic world but pretends he hasn’t. When Peter and Susan fully consider the situation—when they think and act “with the stars” and, in particular, when they act in a Jovial way—they will discover the truth.
“O-o-oh!” said Susan suddenly. And everyone asked her what was the matter.
“I’m sitting against a tree,” said Susan, “and look! It’s getting light—over there.”
“By Jove, you’re right,” said Peter, “and look there—and there. It’s trees all round. And this wet stuff is snow. Why, I do believe we’ve got into Lucy’s wood after all.”[14]
“By Jove,” says Peter, not realizing the full significance of what he has just said! But it is by Jove (that is, by God symbolized as Jove) that he can see the truth of the world beyond the wardrobe.
To think “with the stars” means to think spiritually, to remember that the material world is more than just matter. Modern science is brilliant at answering questions that begin with “what” or “where” or “how.” What are the stars made of? Where are they located? How do they move? But there are other questions that are worth asking too. Questions that begin with “why” and “who” and “whom.” Why have the stars been made? Who made them? Whom were they made for?
Modern science tends to think only in terms of matter and mechanism and measurements. But pre-Copernican science tended to think also in terms of purposes and points and persons. Lewis thought it was a mistake to allow the two sets of questions to get split apart from each other. To be fully human we need to ask and try to answer both sets of questions, not just one set.
Here it’s worth repeating the brief conversation between Eustace and Ramandu in The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader”:
“In our world,” said Eustace, “a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.”
“Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of.”[15]
When we fully consider what a star is, we will see that it is more than just its material parts—if we have eyes to see. A star is a messenger of divine creativity—if we have ears to hear.
But how can we see something invisible? How can we hear the silent music of the spheres? That leads us to the subject of our final chapter.