Aslan and Bacchus
In recent weeks there have been new conversations about European Paganism, Christianity, and whether it’s possible that the two are compatible. Platonists like Arvoll believe a fusion is necessary. “I realize the idea that we can have and celebrate both our Pagan and Christian traditions at the same time is offensive to both Pagans and Christians, and that I’m doomed to get hate for promoting it, but it is true and is the view that will ultimately win.” Modern Christians are largely hostile toward Paganism, associating it with leftist Wiccan and Satanic groups. More surprisingly we see Christians getting outraged at European cultural ceremonies such as a prayer to Apollo for 2024 Olympics. Even most boomer Christians would be more open to these kinds of traditions. All of this brings to mind some ideas about the fusion of Paganism and Christianity from two great Christian thinkers- G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis.
In Orthodoxy, Chesterton wrote,
It is said that Paganism is a religion of joy and Christianity of sorrow; it would be just as easy to prove that Paganism is pure sorrow and Christianity pure joy. Such conflicts mean nothing and lead nowhere. Everything human must have in it both joy and sorrow; the only matter of interest is the manner in which the two things are balanced or divided. And the really interesting thing is this, that the pagan was (in the main) happier and happier as he approached the earth, but sadder and sadder as he approached the heavens. The gaiety of the best Paganism, as in the playfulness of Catullus or Theocritus, is, indeed, an eternal gaiety never to be forgotten by a grateful humanity. But it is all a gaiety about the facts of life, not about its origin. To the pagan the small things are as sweet as the small brooks breaking out of the mountain; but the broad things are as bitter as the sea. When the pagan looks at the very core of the cosmos he is struck cold. Behind the gods, who are merely despotic, sit the fates, who are deadly. Nay, the fates are worse than deadly; they are dead. And when rationalists say that the ancient world was more enlightened than the Christian, from their point of view they are right. For when they say “enlightened” they mean darkened with incurable despair. It is profoundly true that the ancient world was more modern than the Christian. The common bond is in the fact that ancients and moderns have both been miserable about existence, about everything, while mediævals were happy about that at least. I freely grant that the pagans, like the moderns, were only miserable about everything—they were quite jolly about everything else. I concede that the Christians of the Middle Ages were only at peace about everything—they were at war about everything else. But if the question turn on the primary pivot of the cosmos, then there was more cosmic contentment in the narrow and bloody streets of Florence than in the theatre of Athens or the open garden of Epicurus. Giotto lived in a gloomier town than Euripides, but he lived in a gayer universe.
Chesterton makes an interesting comparison between the metaphysics of the ancient world and the modern world. A similar sentiment is expressed by Edith Hall-Professor of Classics at King’s College London- when discussing Greek Tragedy and the God Dionysus:
— wpp🎭 (@skycaptaingroyp) January 24, 2024
Is Chesterton right in his pessimistic attitude toward Paganism? In Orthodoxy he also says:
Those countries in Europe which are still influenced by priests, are exactly the countries where there is still singing and dancing and coloured dresses and art in the open-air. Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground. Christianity is the only frame which has preserved the pleasure of Paganism. We might fancy some children playing on the flat grassy top of some tall island in the sea. So long as there was a wall round the cliff’s edge they could fling themselves into every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of nurseries. But the walls were knocked down, leaving the naked peril of the precipice. They did not fall over; but when their friends returned to them they were all huddled in terror in the centre of the island; and their song had ceased.
It’s a haunting image of humanity in a state of nihilism, devoid of any boundaries and thus completely lacking definition. However, it seems like Chesterton contradictions himself here. He sees the Pagan world as a cruel and empty place, but the “pleasure of Paganism” is preserved in Catholicism. This concept truly comes to life in the works of his successor, C.S. Lewis.
C.S. Lewis was greatly influenced by Chesterton’s outlook. His Narnia series is an homage to multiple Pagan traditions as well as Christianity. Narnia is full of talking beasts, centars, fawns, minotaurs, dryads, satyrs, river gods and tree spirits. Each book is usually about a group of English school children who magically travel to Narnia during a time of turmoil. With the help of the great Lion-God, Aslan, the children find courage and moral strength to become Kings and Queens of Narnia and defeat their foes. The Christian metaphysics of this world is very clearly depicted- perhaps more clearly than the bible itself. The central theme of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe was about the redemption of Edmund who betrayed his family and the Narnians for wealth and power. Christ is depicted as a noble but ferocious predator animal- powerful, but righteous.An Apollonian Lion God, but also with the love, forgiveness, and self sacrifice of Christ. Lewis emphasizes the Grace of Christ. The witch demands Edmund’s death as a fulfillment of the law, the “deep magic”, for his sin. Aslan, who “was there when it was written” shatters the “Stone Table” and overcomes the old law through his sinless sacrifice. This situation would look quite different in a world with a Pagan metaphysics- perhaps less of an emphasis on Edmund’s sin and guilt, but rather his development as a warrior. And we do see those elements in these stories. The children come from a stuffy, boring, increasingly secular, increasingly modern world. Lewis wanted a return not just to Christianity, but romanticism, fantasy, heroism, and mythology in general. Narnia is about the English children returning to tradition, becoming warrior kings and queens, and waging war. Like Aslan, they become beasts of prey who can kill their political enemies. Discovering Narnian magic isn’t just about childhood wonder, or about Christian faith. In believing in Aslan these children are awakening a European mythology deep within their psyche.
In the second book of the series Prince Caspian the four children return to Narnia hundreds of years after their reign as kings and queens. The native Narnians are subjugated by the cruel foreign King Miraz who suppresses any conversation about the old world and usurped his Nephew as rightful heir to the throne- Prince Caspian. As they travel to meet the prince the children are frustrated by their journey. It takes time for them to become the kings and queens they once were. Aslan appears to them but they don’t see him at first. After they set aside their fear and begin to have faith the magic begins to return.
One moonlit night Lucy, the youngest in the group, stares out at the constellations in the sky.
And there they were- at least three of the summer constellations could be seen from where she lay: the Ship, the Hammer, and the Leopard. “Dear old Leopard,” she murdered happily to herself.
She walks among the trees in the woods, wishing they were animated by the spirits of the tree gods like they once were.
“Oh, Trees, Trees, Trees,” said Lucy (though she had not been intending to speak at all). “Oh, Trees, wake, wake, wake. Don’t you remember it? Don’t you remember me? Dryads and Hamadryads, come out, come to me.”
Then all the trees began to rustle and for a moment and she thought they were alive again.
The rustling died away…Yet Lucy had a feeling (as you sometimes have when you are trying to remember a name or a date and almost get it, but it vanishes before you really do) that she had just missed something.
Lucy has a deep long lost memory of the tree gods and she possesses the power within herself to summon them.
The children and their dwarf companion finally catch up to Aslan. He prepares to reawaken the magic and rally his Narnian forces. But before the proceedings begin, a very curious figure shows up. It is none other than the great equivocator and tempter himself, the giver of riches, the roaring one, the mad god Dionysus, aka Bacchus. Bacchus is the god of wine and revelry in Greek and Roman mythology. He travels around with Bacchanal and Manades- bands of women who dance and worship the mad god. This could also sometimes involve drunkenness and orgiastic rituals. He is the only named Pagan god in the Narnia universe.
She never saw where certain other people came from who were soon capering about among the trees. One was a youth, dressed only in a fawn-skin, with vine-leaves wreathed in his curly hair. His face would have been almost too pretty for a boy’s, if it had not looked so extremely wild.
You felt, as Edmund said when he saw him a few days later, “There’s a chap who might do anything- absolutely anything.” He seemed to have a great many names- Bromios, Bassareus, and the Ram were three of them. There were a lot of girls with him, as wild as he. There was even, unexpectedly, someone on a donkey. And everybody was laughing: and everybody was shouting out, “Euan, eaun, eu-oi-oi-oi.”
“It is a Romp, Aslan?” cried the youth.
And soon not only leaves but vines. They were climbing up everything. They were running up the legs of the tree people and circling round their necks. Lucy put up her hands to push back her hair and found she was pushing back vine branches. The donkey was a mass of them. His tail was completely entangled and something dark was nodding between his ears. Lucy looked again and it was a bunch of grapes. After that it was mostly grapes- overhead and underfoot and all around. “Refreshments! Refreshments,” roared the old man.
At that moment the sun was just rising and lucy remembered something and whispered to Susan, “I say, Su, I know who they are.”
“Who?”
“The boy with the wild face is Bacchus and the old one on the donkey is Silenus. Don’t you remember Mr Tumnus telling us about them long ago?”
“Yes, of course. But I say, Lu-”
“What?”
“I wouldn’t have felt safe with Bacchus and all his wild girls if we’d met them without Aslan.”
“I should think not,” said Lucy.
When the group first got to Aslan the dwarf “Trumpkin” was most skeptical.
“And now!” said Aslan in a much louder voice with just a hint of roar in it, while his tail lashed his flanks. “And now, where is this little Dwarf, this famous swordsman and archer, who doesn’t believe in lions? Come here, son of Earth, come HERE!”- and the last word was no longer the hint of a roar but almost the real thing.”
Frightened, Trumpkin stumbles toward Aslan and
Aslan pounced. Have you ever seen a very young kitten being carried in the mother cat’s mouth? It was like that. The Dwarf, hunched up in a little, miserable ball, hung from Aslan’s mouth. The lion gave him one shake and all his armor rattled like a tinker’s pack and then- hey- presto- the Dwarf flew up in the air. He was as safe as he had been in bed, though he did not feel so. As he came down the huge velvety paws caught him as gently as a mother’s arms and set him (right way up, too) on the ground. “Son of Earth, shall we be friends?” asked Aslan.
In one of Homer’s hyms to Dionysus, Dionysus/ Bacchus is kidnapped by pirates and tied up on their ship. Strange things begin to happen. Wine began to stream throughout the whole ship. Ivy vines appeared everywhere, wrapping around the sails and blossoming with flowers and berries.
The god changed into a dreadful lion there on the ship, in the bows, and roared loudly: amidships also he showed his wonders and created a shaggy bear which stood up ravening, while on the forepeak was the lion glaring fiercely with scowling brows. And so the sailors fled into the stern and crowded bemused about the right-minded helmsman, until suddenly the lion sprang upon the master and seized him; and when the sailors saw it they leapt out overboard one and all into the bright sea, escaping from a miserable fate, and were changed into dolphins. But on the helmsman Dionysus had mercy and held him back and made him altogether happy, saying to him: ‘Take courage, good…; you have found favour with my heart. I am loud-crying Dionysus whom Cadmus’ daughter Semele bare of union with Zeus.’
In Lewis’ world we see Baccus as himself, but we also see Dionysian traits in the character of Aslan. Walter Otto writes in Dionysus Myth and Cult:
Roman writers, following, of course, the Greek tradition, like to name the lynx as a beast of Dionysus… The panther or leopard, and the lynx (the tiger, too, is added in the references out of Roman literature) have that very thing in common which justifies comparing them in more than one respect with the nature and actions of the maenads. This makes itself felt most in the panther, which was, after all, the most loyal attendant of the god. Of all the cats devoted to Dionysus, it was not only the most graceful and fascinating but also the most savage and blood thirsty. The lighting-fast agility and perfect elegance of its movements, whose purpose is murder, exhibit the same union of beauty and fatal danger found in the mad women who accompany Dionysus.
Right before Baccus appears, Aslan
lifted his head, shook his mane, and roared. The sound, deep and throbbing at first like an organ beginning on a low note, rose and became louder, and then far louder again, till the earth and air were shaking with it. It rose up from the hill and floated across all Narnia… Down below that in the Great River, now at its coldest hour, the heads and shoulders of the nymphes, and the great weedy-bearded head of the river-god, rose from the water. Beyond it, in every field and wood, the alert ears of rabbits rose from their holes, the sleepy heads of birds came out from under wings, owls hooted, vixens barked, hedgehogs grunted, the trees stirred.
Walter Otto writes about Bacchus
He is called “the roarer,” Bromios, a surname which appeared early, all by itself, as the name of the god. “A din filled the forest,” as the god who had just come of age passed through with his female attendants. He is the “loud shouter” He, himself is called Eúios from the echoing shouts of joy….shrill-sounding instruments accompany him… A series of mythic stories and descriptions make us keenly aware of the overpowering spirit of the Dionysiac din which makes its violent entry as it captivates and inspires dread at one and the same time.
Most depictions of Bacchus include a retinue of dancing magical creatures. It’s fascinating to see them come to life in Narnia.
Bacchus myths often depict him coming from across the sea. Aslan is described multiple times as mysteriously arriving from across the sea. Baccus is also known as “the god who appears” or “the god who comes”. Otto writes
The cult forms give us the clearest evidence of the violence with which he forces his way in- a violence which affects the myth so passionately. These forms present him as the god who comes, the god of epiphany, whose appearance is far more urgent, far more compelling than that of any other god. He had disappeared, and now he will suddenly be here again.
Likewise, Aslan appears when he is needed and disappears when his work is done.
The Old Narnians are in a war with a large, foreign, secular army led by King Miraz, however there is still division among the old Narnians. Some want to resurrect the dark magic of the white witch. This reflects three conflicting forces that Lewis was facing in his time. Miraz represents the growing secular liberal state that wished to forget about the old ways. The temptation of the witch magic represents returning to the darker side of the old traditions which involves punishment, revenge, and blood sacrifice. The third path is the restoration of the rightful kings and the noble tradition of the Old Narnians who follow Aslan. They must return to nature and to the volk, but not to barbarism and cruelty.
Toward the end of Prince Caspian, the prince, Edmund, and Peter engage in fierce combat with King Miraz and his troops. Meanwhile,
The whole party moved off- Aslan leading, Bacchus and his Maenads leaping, rushing, and turning somersaults, the beasts frisking round them, and Silenus and his donkey bringing up the rear.
They go to the bridge on the river Beruna where the river god says
“Hail, Lord… Lose my chains.”
“Bacchus,” said Aslan. “Deliver him from his chains.”
Bacchus and his people splashed forward into the shallow water, and a great minute later the most curious things began to happen. Great strong trunks of ivy came curling up all the piers of the bridge, growing as quickly as a fire grows, wrapping the stones round, splitting, breaking, separating them. The walls of the bridge turned into hedges gay with hawthorn for a moment and then disappeared as the whole thing with a rush and a rumble collapsed into the swirling water.
The band traveled throughout the town and came to a girls school.
A girls school, where a lot of Narnian girls, with their hair done very tight and ugly tight collars round their necks and thick tickly stockings on their legs, were having a history lesson. The sort of “History” that was taught in Narnia under Miraz’s rule was duller than the truest history you ever read and less true than the most exciting adventure story. “If you don’t attend, Gwendolen,” said the mistress, “and stop looking out of the window, I shall have to give you an order-mark.”
“But please, Miss Prizzle-” began Gwendolen.
“Did you hear what I said , Gwendolen?” asked Miss Prizzle.
“But please, Miss Prizzle,” said Gwendolen, “There’s a Lion!”
“Take two order-marks for talking nonsense,” said Miss Prizzle. “And now-” A roar interrupted her. Ivy came curling in at the windows of the classroom. The walls became a mass of shimmering green, and leafy branches arched overhead where the ceiling had been. Miss Prizzle found she was standing on grass in a forest glade. She clutched at her desk to steady herself, and found that the desk was a rose-bush. Wild People such as she had never even imagined were crowding round her. Then she saw the Lion, screamed and fled, and with her fled her class who were mostly dumpy, prim little girls with fat legs. Gwendolen hesitated.
“You’ll stay with us, sweetheart?” said Aslan.
“Oh, may I? Thank you, thank you,” said Gwendolen. Instantly she joined hands with two of the Maenads, who whirled her round in a merry dance and and helped her take off some of the unnecessary and uncomfortable clothes that she was wearing.”
Their merry band swept through the town with many joining them.
At every farm animals came out to join them. Sad old donkeys who had never known joy grew suddenly young again; chained dogs broke their chains; horses kicked their carts to pieces and came trotting along with them- clop-clop – kicking up the mud and whinnying. At a well in a yard they met a man who was beating a boy. The stick burst into flower in the man’s hand. He tried to drop it, but it stuck to his hand. His arm became a branch, his body the trunk of a tree, his feet took root. The boy, who had been crying a moment before, burst out laughing and joined them.
They went to another school where a girl was teaching a class of boys who “looked very like pigs”
“Frightened?” said the most pig-like of the boys. “Who’s she talking to out the window? Lets tell the inspector she talks to people out of the window when she ought to be teaching us”
“Let’s go and see who it is,” said another boy, and they all came crowding to the window. But as soon as their mean little faces looked out, Bacchus gave a great cry of Euan, euoi-oi-oi-oi and boys all began howling with fright and trampling one another down to get out of the door and jumping out of the windows. And it was said afterward (whether truly or not) that those particular boys were never seen again, but that there were a lot of very fine little pigs in that part of the country which had never been there before.
Then Aslan went to a woman on her deathbed and spoke to her, restoring her health.
“here you are, mother,” said Bacchus dipping a pitcher in the cottage well and handing it to her. But what was in it now was not water but the richest wine, red as red-currant jelly, smooth as oil, strong as beef, warming as tea, cool as dew.
The book concludes with another party.
Then Bacchus and Silenus and the Maenads began a dance, far wilder than the dance of the trees; not merely a dance for fun and beauty (though it was that too) but a magic dance of plenty, and where their hands touched, and where their feet fell, the feast came into existence.
The best thing of all about this feast was that there was no breaking up or going away, but as the talk grew quieter and slower, one after another would begin to nod and finally drop off to sleep with feet towards the fire and good friends on either side, till at last there was silence all round the circle, and the chattering of the water over stone at the Ford of Beruna could be heard once more. But all night Aslan and the Moon gazed upon each other with joyful and unblinking eyes.
Lewis’ interest in Bacchus is very fascinating and surprising. With Bacchus, Lewis is depicting a kind of Pagan primordial innocence that exists independent of the problem of sin. The world before the fall, and the world that was regained by Christ. The sensuality of Bacchus was never the problem. My favorite passage by Lewis is what he says on sexual morality in Mere Christianity.
The biological purpose of sex is children, just as the biological purpose of eating is to repair the body. Now if we eat whenever we feel inclined and just as much as we want, it is quite true that most of us will eat too much: but not terrifically too much. One man may eat enough for two, but he does not eat enough for ten. The appetite goes a little beyond its biological purpose, but not enormously. But if a healthy young man indulged his sexual appetite whenever he felt inclined, and if each act produced a baby, then in ten years he might easily populate a small village. This appetite is in ludicrous and preposterous excess of its function.
Or take it another way. You can get a large audience together for a strip tease act — that is, to watch a girl undress on the stage. Now suppose you came to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let every one see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food? And would not anyone who had grown up in a different world think there was something equally queer about the State of the sex instinet among us?
For Lewis, sensual animal impulses are not wrong in themselves. A Baccic excess of sexuality isn’t even a bad thing. Sexual sin is often a misdirected and unfulfilling form of indulgence. Joy and pleasure are not the enemy- rather exhaustion and sickliness creates a distortion of life that leads to an obsessive, unhealthy view of sexuality. This gives us a clue into the connection between Bacchus and Christ. Many point out the superficial similarities between the two- born of a mortal woman, turns water into wine, dies and rises again. But the most important connection lies in the character of Jesus on the Sermon of the Mount- his step beyond good and evil. In the act of loving your enemy you no longer see them as “inherently evil”. The seriousness of guilt and punishment is swept aside and instead we find permission to be our natural spontaneous selves- who we are without the corruption of sin and the weight of The Law. Lewis blends these elements together in Aslan. Aslan is Christ, and Dionysus, and Apollo. A figure of redemption, of innocent creative spontaneity, and of the highest power and nobility. But perhaps there’s more to the story and Lewis reveals something about himself by mysteriously bringing Bacchus, all by himself, into this world. Maybe this connection was similar to a connection that someone else made- someone the complete opposite of the Christian Englishman Lewis. Bacchus was the favorite god of the atheist, anti Christian German- Friedrich Nietzsche.
In Twilight of the Idols he writes:
I know of no higher symbolism than this Greek symbolism, this symbolism of the Dionysian phenomenon. In it the profoundest instinct of life, the instinct that guarantees the future of life and life eternal, is understood religiously,—the road to life itself, procreation, is pronounced holy.
The saying of Yea to life, including even its most strange and most terrible problems, the will to life rejoicing over its own inexhaustibleness in the sacrifice of its highest types—this is what I called Dionysian, this is what I divined as the bridge leading to the psychology of the tragic poet. Not in order to escape from terror and pity, not to purify one’s self of a dangerous passion by discharging it with vehemence—this is how Aristotle understood it—but to be far beyond terror and pity and to be the eternal lust of Becoming itself—that lust which also involves the lust of destruction.
There is a holiness in the primitive lust of Bacchus. A lust and a will that is deeper than what fearful moralists and control freaks can ever understand. In The Bacchae, self righteous, hard hearted king Pentheus tries to abolish the worship of Dionysus. Dionysus puts a spell on all the women in the city causing them to travel to the mountains and join his Baccic worshipers.
Dionysus:
Thou knowest not what end thou seekest, nor
What deed thou doest, nor what man thou art!
Pentheus (mocking):
Agâvê’s son, and on the father’s part
Echîon’s, hight Pentheus!
Dionysus:
So let it be,
A name fore-written to calamity!
Pentheus:
Away, and tie him where the steeds are tied;
Aye, let him lie in the manger!—There abide
And stare into the darkness!—And this rout
Of womankind that clusters thee about,
Thy ministers of worship, are my slaves!
It may be I will sell them o’er the waves,
Hither and thither; else they shall be set
To labour at my distaffs, and forget
Their timbrel and their songs of dawning day!
Dionysus:
I go; for that which may not be, I may
Not suffer! Yet for this thy sin, lo, He
Whom thou deniest cometh after thee
For recompense. Yea, in thy wrong to us,
Thou hast cast Him into thy prison-house!
Here Pentheus is seething and is trying to use force and political power to overcome primordial forces of nature. The harder he tries to cling on, the more he shoots himself in the foot. He lacks respect for a deeper order that he can’t control. Lewis seems to be echoing this story in the events of Prince Caspian. Bacchus and his Maenads free the schoolgirl Gwendolen from her hyper moralistic teacher. She takes off her clothes and joins the dance. A very shocking image from a Christian author. But for men like Lewis and Nietzsche, there is nothing dirty about this. It is sexuality being glorified and channeled in the proper direction, without the need for moralizing and law.
Blessed Land of Piërie,
Dionysus loveth thee;
He will come to thee with dancing,
Come with joy and mystery;
With the Maenads at his hest
Winding, winding to the West;
Cross the flood of swiftly glancing
Axios in majesty;
Cross the Lydias, the giver
Of good gifts and waving green;
Cross that Father-Stream of story,
Through a land of steeds and glory
Rolling, bravest, fairest River
E’er of mortals seen!
A God of Heaven is he,
And born in majesty;
Yet hath he mirth In the joy of the Earth,
And he loveth constantly
Her who brings increase,
The Feeder of Children, Peace.
No grudge hath he of the great;
No scorn of the mean estate;
But to all that liveth His wine he giveth,
Griefless, immaculate;
Only on them that spurn
Joy, may his anger burn.
Love thou the Day and the Night;
Be glad of the Dark and the Light;
And avert thine eyes From the lore of the wise,
That have honour in proud men’s sight.
The simple nameless herd of Humanity
Hath deeds and faith that are truth enough for me!
Nietzsche also sees Bacchus as the god of eternal recurrence. Narnia seems to be a land of eternal recurrence. The children return again and again, reliving their lives as kings and queens of Narnia. Eternal Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve. But Narnia had a beginning. Aslan sang Narnia into existence.
In the darkness something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing. It was very far away and Digory found it hard to decide from what direction it was coming. Sometimes it seemed to come from all directions at once. Sometimes he almost thought it was coming out of the earth beneath them. Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were not words. There was hardly even a tune. But it was, beyond comparison, the most beautiful noise he had ever heard. It was so beautiful he could hardly bear it.
The lion was singing still. But now the song had once more changed. It was more like what we should call a tune, but it was also far wilder. It made you want to run and jump and climb. It made you want to shout. It made you want to rush at other people and either hug them or fight them.
All of the animals of creation emerge out of the earth. A formless tone evolves into a complex and energetic song.
In Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzsche talks about the three metamorphoses:
To create new values—that, even the lion cannot yet accomplish: but to create itself freedom for new creating—that can the might of the lion do.
To create itself freedom, and give a holy Nay even unto duty: for that, my brethren, there is need of the lion.
To assume the right to new values—that is the most formidable assumption for a load-bearing and reverent spirit. Verily, unto such a spirit it is preying, and the work of a beast of prey.
As its holiest, it once loved “Thou shalt”: now is it forced to find illusion and arbitrariness even in the holiest things, that it may capture freedom from its love: the lion is needed for this capture.
But tell me, my brethren, what the child can do, which even the lion could not do? Why hath the preying lion still to become a child?
Innocence is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a holy Yea.
Aye, for the game of creating, my brethren, there is needed a holy Yea unto life: ITS OWN will, willeth now the spirit; HIS OWN world winneth the world’s outcast.
In this metaphor, a lion- a beast of prey- is required to create the freedom to create new values. But true creation, innocence, spontaneity, requires a child like “holy yea”. We see this initial creative power in Aslan and Bacchus.
In Orthodoxy, Chesterton says
This is what makes Christendom at once so much more perplexing and so much more interesting than the Pagan empire; just as Amiens Cathedral is not better but more interesting than the Parthenon. If any one wants a modern proof of all this, let him consider the curious fact that, under Christianity, Europe (while remaining a unity) has broken up into individual nations. Patriotism is a perfect example of this deliberate balancing of one emphasis against another emphasis. The instinct of the Pagan empire would have said, “You shall all be Roman citizens, and grow alike; let the German grow less slow and reverent; the Frenchmen less experimental and swift.” But the instinct of Christian Europe says, “Let the German remain slow and reverent, that the Frenchman may the more safely be swift and experimental. We will make an equipoise out of these excesses. The absurdity called Germany shall correct the insanity called France.
Here Chesterton identifies an interesting connection between the originality and development of genius in European countries and “absurdity”/”insanity”. Authoritarian hierarchy stifles their creativity, however, the same can be said about Christian authoritarianism. The variable isn’t the paganism of the Romans. Roman idealism, Platonism, or Christian moralizing are all attempts at improving mankind in clumsy ways. Nietzsche saw this European “genius of the heart” developing from a Dionysian perspective.
The genius of the heart, which imposes silence and attention on everything loud and self-conceited, which smoothes rough souls and makes them taste a new longing—to lie placid as a mirror, that the deep heavens may be reflected in them;—the genius of the heart, which teaches the clumsy and too hasty hand to hesitate, and to grasp more delicately; which scents the hidden and forgotten treasure, the drop of goodness and sweet spirituality under thick dark ice, and is a divining-rod for every grain of gold, long buried and imprisoned in mud and sand…I have also encountered on my path many strange and dangerous spirits; above all, however, and again and again, the one of whom I have just spoken: in fact, no less a personage than the God DIONYSUS.
Lewis proved this to be true. He didn’t need “Patriotism” to create his mad world- he identified a pan-european Baccic creative force.
Europeans have enormous spontaneous creative energy when they step beyond good and evil. Lewis wanted these English children to find that volkish unconscious primordial force inside of them. He allows them to be the Kings and Queens they were born to be. He shattered the world of the stuffy English moralists. He unleashes the power of the vine. Out of the energy of exploding competing egoisms develops the most noble creatures. The evil blonde beast of prey become the noble aristocratic warrior class. Perhaps the vines of Bacchus will grow all over Chesterton’s playground walls until they come crashing down.
