Jupiter’s Kingly Crown
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.
Isaiah 62:3
Lewis wrote about the origin of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in private letters and in articles for magazines. Some of his friends and students also recall him speaking about how he came to write his most famous work.
Nowhere in any of these records did Lewis ever mention the planets, let alone Jupiter. So why am I so sure that Jupiter is behind it? Why need anything be behind it?
We need not reexamine all the points made in chapters 1 and 2 about how the Narnia books seem a hodgepodge and yet how unlikely it is that Lewis would have written in a slapdash manner. Nor need we mention again his personal capacity for secretiveness, his interest in the kappa (or cryptic) element in stories, or that numerous other scholars have gone looking for a hidden theme. Still less need we go over his long-standing love of the planets, which dated at least from the age of ten, when, he said, the planets held a “peculiar, heady attraction”[1] for him.
However, it’s worth pointing out two things we haven’t so far considered as we listen to what Lewis said about the origin of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. They both help reinforce the possibility of a secret level of meaning.
The first point is that Lewis himself said, quite openly, “You must not believe all that authors tell you about how they wrote their books.”[2] They do not mean to tell lies, he added, but they don’t always remember the whole process themselves.
And the second point is that, even when authors do remember the whole process, they don’t necessarily want to share it with their readers. A famous description of good art is art that hides itself. This line can be found in the ancient Roman poet Ovid: “If art is concealed it succeeds.”[3]
Lewis knew and admired Ovid’s work, and in many places he himself talked about the importance of indirectness for successful communication. “An influence which cannot evade our consciousness will not go very deep,”[4] he once wrote. And in another place he said that an author works best by “powerfully evoking secret associations.”[5] He also thought that “what the reader is made to do for himself has a particular importance in literature.”[6] A wise writer will not reveal all the cards in his hand, either in the telling of the story or in his comments upon the writing process.
With those things in mind, let’s now take a look at what Lewis said about how he came to write The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
“It All Began with a Picture”
“It all began with a picture.”[7] That was how Lewis described the starting point behind The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The whole process “began with a picture of a Faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood.”[8] This picture had been in his mind’s eye since he was about sixteen years old. One day, many years later, he said to himself, Let’s try to make a story about it.
At first he wasn’t sure how the story would go, and at that early stage, “there wasn’t even anything Christian”[9] about the picture in his head. Other pictures gradually presented themselves to his mind. Lewis said the process was a bit like bird-watching: every now and again a new one would fly into view.
These other pictures included “a queen on a sledge” and “a magnificent lion.”[10] Slowly they sorted themselves into a sequence of events (in other words, a story). The story was still rather formless—like fruit boiling in a saucepan as you make jam. And then, all of a sudden, “Aslan came bounding into it,” and once Aslan arrived, he “pulled the whole story together.”[11]
It was obviously important to Lewis that the different parts of the story should be pulled together. This reminds us of the great value he attached to unity and coherence. He wasn’t a random or careless writer.
But how does Aslan pull the different parts together, and why was Lewis so interested in this picture of a faun in a snowy wood carrying an umbrella and parcels?
“Winter Passed”
Most people who have studied the way Lewis imagined The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe are interested only in the part where he says “Aslan came bounding in.” People are very interested in this Christlike character (and quite rightly, because he is the most important character), but they don’t bother to ask themselves whether anything connects the picture of a magnificent lion with the picture of the snowy wood.
Jupiter provides the link. Jupiter, according to Lewis’s poem “The Planets,” not only makes people “lion-hearted,” he also brings about “winter passed.”[12]
The White Witch has made it “always winter.” Her kingdom of ice and snow is a curse, a tyranny. This is not a winter wonderland, but the perpetual freeze of death. And almost always in Lewis’s works when you come across a mention of winter, you know that Jupiter can’t be far behind. It is not just in “The Planets” that you find Jupiter destroying winter. In Lewis’s book The Allegory of Love, Jupiter brings about “winter overgone.”[13] In his novel That Hideous Strength, Jupiter comes down to Earth and does away with “freezing wastes” and “unendurable cold.”[14] In that same book, the hero, Ransom, who has become a human version of Jupiter himself, defeats enemies with names such as Frost, Wither, Stone, and Winter.
So when Lewis says that he had in his mind a picture of a snowy wood, we ought to be ready for Jupiter to show up and make this wintry landscape summery. Lewis’s imagination almost never treats winter as a good thing. It is nearly always a symbol of evils such as fear, punishment, and sorrow.
And the interesting thing is that the picture in his mind’s eye actually suggested the evil nature of winter even before Lewis began turning it into a story. The faun is carrying an umbrella. He is trying to protect himself from the snow. He is not larking about, throwing snowballs, building snowmen, and letting snowflakes fall on his eyelashes. I thought Walden Media’s movie version of the story presented the snowy landscape far too positively. We should feel that the wintry wood is ominous and threatening. There is hardly anything beautiful about it.
When Lewis began to turn this picture into a story, he drew out these meanings of doom and fear. The unnamed faun in the mental picture became, of course, Mr. Tumnus, who is worried about catching cold; the winter makes him gloomy; he has “a melancholy voice.”[15] He is anxious to hold the umbrella over Lucy to protect her from the winter too. He is sad because it is “always winter and never Christmas.”[16] The parcels that he carries are presumably Christmas parcels—but he won’t be able to open them because the White Witch has banned Christmas. If he complains to the Witch about this, he will be turned to stone.
Still, he hasn’t given up hope. He longs for the old days of “jollification.”[17] Jollification is a very important word because jollity and joviality are associated with Jupiter. Gustav Holst’s great musical work The Planets Suite contains a movement called “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity.” Lewis knew and loved The Planets Suite. He described it as a rich and marvelous work that moved him very greatly.
In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardobe, Jupiter’s influence brings jollity as winter finally passes and summer comes in. January turns to May. Festivity and revelry replace fear and freezing. Aslan, who sums up the Jovial spirit in his own person, is the means by which this influence makes its presence felt:
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.[18]
The King
Aslan is responsible not only for the passing of winter and the coming of jollity. He is also the king. Why? Because Jupiter was the king of the planets, the sovereign of the seven heavens. Kingship, in fact, was Jupiter’s main quality, and therefore kingship is central to the plot of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Is Narnia going to be ruled by Aslan, the King of the wood, or by the Witch, who calls herself empress of Narnia?
Take a look at the first mention of Aslan. First mentions always set the keynote of a story. And at the first mention of Aslan, the children don’t know who he is. Of course not: they’ve never met him! Mr. Beaver tells them “he’s the King.”[19] And a few moments later, in case they haven’t understood, he tells them again that Aslan “is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-beyond-the-Sea. Don’t you know who is the King of Beasts?”[20]
Aslan is “the true king,” who has a “crown” and a “standard” (a royal flag). He is “royal, solemn,”[21] “royal and strong,”[22] with a “great, royal head.”[23] Interestingly, he is never again, in any of the other Narnia books, described as royal. For some reason, Lewis is keen to emphasize that he is a royal personage in this story. Could it be because he wants to immerse us in Jupiter’s symbolism? It would seem possible, given what he wrote in his academic works. In The Discarded Image, Lewis observes that the influence of Jupiter “is Kingly; but we must think of a King at peace, enthroned, taking his leisure, serene.”[24]
And not only is Aslan’s kingship emphasized, so is that of the two boys, Peter and Edmund. The story is really a clash of kingship between these brothers. Who is going to be become king of Narnia? Will it be Peter, under Aslan, or will it be Edmund, under the White Witch?
The Witch has ensnared Edmund with her declaration that she wants a boy who will become king of Narnia when she is gone. Soon after that she promises him, “You are to be the Prince and—later on—the King.”[25] Edmund is convinced this is his destiny; he wants “to be a Prince (and later a King)”;[26] he thinks “about Turkish Delight and about being a King”[27] and resolves “when I’m King of Narnia” to “make some decent roads”; this “set him off thinking about being a King.”[28] Edmund wants to become a king so he can pay Peter back for calling him a beast, but eventually he realizes that “it didn’t look now as if the Witch intended to make him a King,”[29] and out of nowhere, so it seems, Father Christmas appears, shouting, “Long live the true King!”[30]
The true King is Aslan, and he has his own plans for the four children. Aslan shows Peter “the castle where you are to be King” and the four thrones “in one of which you must sit as King. . . . You will be High King over all the rest.”[31] For of course, it turns out that all four children, including Edmund, are crowned at the end of the story, but only after Aslan has demonstrated true kingship in his self-sacrifice for Edmund’s sake.
The Crown of Thorns, the Crown of Life
And this sacrifice is also, intriguingly, yet another feature of Jupiter’s character. How so?
Lewis’s great friend Charles Williams once wrote a poem that mentioned “Jupiter’s red-pierced planet.”[32] He was referring to the Great Red Eye or Great Red Spot that astronomers can see on the surface of Jupiter. It’s a huge storm, wider than the diameter of Earth. Charles Williams had imagined this Great Red Spot as a bleeding wound.
Lewis commented on this poem and pointed out that “Jupiter, the planet of Kingship, thus wounded” becomes a reflection of “the Divine King wounded on Calvary.”[33] Lewis wrote these words the same year that he began seriously to work on The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Thanks to Williams, Lewis had a specific reason to link Jupiter with Christ’s sacrifice on the cross at Calvary. And of course it’s this sacrifice that reappears in the opening Narnia book when Aslan dies on the Stone Table, saving Edmund’s life and making the prophecy about the four thrones come true.
The grand coronation scene at Cair Paravel is the climax of the story and the high point of the kingly theme. Aslan has suffered and died. Like Jesus, who wore a crown of thorns and was hailed as king of the Jews, Aslan shows his true kingly nature in bleeding and dying for Edmund’s sake. As a result, he gains authority even over death and is able to crown all four children and restore true sovereignty to Narnia. When he finally crowns the children, he declares (and the professor later repeats it), “Once a king or queen in Narnia, always a king or queen.”[34]
For this reason, it was a great disappointment to me when the film version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe made such a big deal out of the final battle with the Witch—introducing polar bears and rhinoceroses and all sorts of computer-generated imagery—and dealt with the coronation so briefly. The coronation is what the whole story has been leading to:
In the Great Hall of Cair Paravel—that wonderful hall with the ivory roof and the west wall hung with peacock’s feathers and the eastern door which looks towards the sea, in the presence of all their friends and to the sound of trumpets, Aslan solemnly crowned them and led them to the four thrones amid deafening shouts of “Long Live King Peter! Long Live Queen Susan! Long Live King Edmund! Long Live Queen Lucy!” . . . So the children sat on their thrones and scepters were put into their hands. . . . And that night there was a great feast in Cair Paravel, and revelry and dancing, and gold flashed and wine flowed.[35]
We can see from Lewis’s other works that kingship and jollity and the passing of winter and the sacrifice of Christ on the cross are all linked in his mind through the symbolism of Jupiter. Can we really conclude it’s just a coincidence that all these things should also appear together, and so prominently, in this first Narnia tale?
Father Christmas
If you are still inclined to think it’s a coincidence, think about Father Christmas. As I pointed out in the first chapter, many critics (including my own younger self!) have complained about Father Christmas appearing in this story. How can characters in Narnia know of Christmas when they show no knowledge of a character called Christ? It looks like a mistake.
In his university lectures Lewis described the Jovial character as “cheerful and festive; those born under Jupiter are apt to be loud-voiced and red-faced.” He would then pause and add: “It is obvious under which planet I was born!”[36]—which always produced a laugh.
That’s because Lewis himself was loud-voiced and red-faced. He looked like a butcher or a prosperous farmer. He had a deep voice and a hearty laugh. Lots of people who have written about him have, interestingly, described him as jovial without realizing the significance the term had for him.
If Lewis was indeed writing his first Narnia Chronicle in order to express Jove’s spirit—the Jovial personality—we can see why he was so keen to keep Father Christmas in the story, even though on the face of it Father Christmas doesn’t belong there.
Lewis wrote:
A supreme workman will never break by one note or one syllable or one stroke of the brush the living and inward law of the work he is producing. But he will break without scruple any number of those superficial regularities and orthodoxies which little, unimaginative critics mistake for its laws.[37]
Sometimes a storyteller will do what seems illogical on the surface because he knows of a deeper logic going on underneath. If you haven’t “grasped the real and inward significance of the work as a whole” then this illogical thing will look like “a mere botch or failure of unity,”[38] he said.
Once we see that Jupiter’s imagery is the “inward significance” of this story, we will see that Father Christmas is not a “botch.”
Quite the contrary. Father Christmas, red-faced, loud-voiced, and jolly is the nearest thing we still have to the Jovial personality in our popular modern culture. That’s why Lewis included him in this book. Father Christmas’s gladdeningly red cheeks and his bright red robe (“bright as hollyberries”[39]) are entirely within the spirit of the work.
Hearing the Silent Music of Jupiter
But why would Lewis want to construct The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe out of the imagery connected with Jupiter? What was the point of it all? If he wanted us to hear the music of Jupiter, why did he not make it obvious?
There are five main reasons, I think.
The first is, simply, his sense of fun, his playfulness. One of Lewis’s colleagues and friends, a man named Simon Barrington-Ward, is still alive. I have come to know Simon Barrington-Ward quite well (he’s no relation, despite the similarity of our surnames), and when I told him what I had discovered, he replied, “Oh, that would be just like Jack! That’s exactly the sort of thing I would expect him to do. He must have roared with laughter as he did that!”
The second reason has already been talked about in chapter 2, where I discussed Lewis’s ideas about the kappa (or cryptic) element in a story. A good story needs to have an “atmosphere” or a “flavor,” and the Jovial spirit running throughout this book provides just that kind of taste or feel.
The third reason has to do with what Lewis himself thought about the importance of keeping the Jovial symbol alive in modern stories. Jupiter is central in the literature of the Middle Ages, and yet he has almost disappeared from the modern imagination. Lewis wanted to make a modern-day home for Jupiter so that his readers could get acquainted with Jupiter’s qualities.
The fourth reason is that Lewis wanted to counteract the tendency toward dull and depressing stories. He thought too many of the tales, plays, and poems that people were writing in his day were grim, dark, and meaningless. “Who does not need to be reminded of Jove?” Lewis once asked.[40] We all need to remember the grand, festive, colorful spirit of Jupiter. It is good to tell stories that make people happy!
The fifth and final reason has to do with Lewis’s Christian faith. As I mentioned in chapter 2, he thought that we come to know God more by looking along the beam than by looking at the beam. We need to “breathe the atmosphere” of knowing God. We don’t get to know God simply by studying Him from the outside but by recognizing that He is already inside us, holding us and our lives together—indeed, holding the whole universe together.
The children in the story can look at Aslan, the kingly lion with his great, royal head, who bleeds to bring about Edmund’s rescue. But they need to see that his Jovial spirit is responsible for the rest of the story too. His Jovial spirit does away with the awful winter. His Jovial spirit means there are “royal robes”[41] waiting for them in the Wardrobe. His Jovial spirit allows them to meet Father Christmas. His Jovial spirit enables them to become kings and queens.
Everywhere they look—if only they have eyes to see—they will perceive Aslan’s Jovial spirit. All sorts of apparently incidental details—oak trees, thrones, crashing waves on the beach, the peacock feathers on the wall of the castle—are present because they are Jovial symbols and this is, so to speak, a Jovial world. Aslan’s Jovial spirit runs through it all—the big things, the medium-sized things, and even the tiniest things, such as the red breast of the robin (“you couldn’t have found a robin with a redder chest”[42]). As Lewis commented in one of his academic works, a good writer will pay attention even to “apparent minutiae,”[43] the minutest aspects of the tale.
The Castle and the Crown
And speaking of details, another little detail worth explaining is the name Cair Paravel, which emphasizes again the kingly aspect of Jupiter’s personality. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a tale in which kingliness cascades down from the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea to the King of the wood to the High King Peter, and then to Susan, Edmund, and Lucy. True sovereign authority submits to the commands of the higher king and results in the service of the lower king, who in turn passes down royalty to the rank below, and so on through all creation.
Cair Paravel helps express this because it is a combination of cair, meaning “walled city” or “castle” and paravail, meaning “beneath” or “under.” A “tenant paravail” holds property under another person who is himself a tenant.
So Cair Paravel means something like “castle under castle,” which is what we would expect if kingly Jupiter is indeed the inner meaning of the book. In this Jupiter-drenched story, it is no accident that Cair Paravel shines “like a great star resting on the seashore.”[44] The Jovial character is everywhere—if we have the eyes to see it.
Lewis turns Jupiter imagery to Christian effect in this, his most famous book. He cleverly uses the planetary symbolism that he had studied so closely in his academic work and about which he had written so much in his poetry and in his earlier fiction. He turns this planet into a plot. He turns this spiritual symbol into a story.
Why? Ultimately, and most importantly, because he believed that Jesus Christ is the “King of kings” (1 Timothy 6:15) and that God will give a “crown of life . . . to those who love him” (James 1:12). Those realities were worth celebrating and telling stories about!
And what Lewis does by means of Jupiter in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, he does with the other six planets in the other six Chronicles.
The next planet to visit is Mars. Forward march!