99 - Out of the Silent Planet

and in adjacent circles, and for a good reason. And there's there's so much, so many important things that are happening. Hold on, let me turn down. I'm on a baby sound machine duty here.

to the extent that they have today. And more of that will become evident as we go through this series, and so I'll be well beginning to that. But before we do so, I do want to give us a quick plug for the other Mythic Mind things we have gone on here. Over on the Mythic Mind Movies and

Shows podcast, we're continuing with the Star Wars series. We just recently wrapped up the original trilogy with Return of the Jedi, So head over to the Mythic Mind Movies and Shows podcast to catch upon that and to get ready for the prequels that are coming up. And then over on Mythic Mind Games, we just began a two parter on the Legend of Zelda, and so already you can find our kind of broad level conversation about Zelda.

And then next week, well we'll have the second part of that, which is an interview with an expert on the subject, and that episode is actually already available on Patreon, and so you can check that out right now. Speaking of which, if you like what we do in Mythic Mind and you like to get all episodes of everything that we're do, we delivered into one podcast feed early in ad free, become a patron at any level over

at patreon dot com slash mythic Mind. Of course, higher levels of support will provide you with more benefits, more content, but even just five dollars a month provides you with all Mythic Mind episodes across the three podcast one feed in ad free. And so you can head over to patreon dot com slash Mythic Mind. But for now, let's go ahead and jump to it with Out of the Silent Planet. Hello, and welcome back. As we get ready

for Out of the Silent Planet. Like I said before, my goal in this is not to do a chapter by chapter deep dive analysis. We simply don't have the time to do that. But what I'm just said going to do is I'm going to focus on some key developments in the story to really give you this sense of theme, the sense of mood, to equip you with some tools for getting more out of the story yourself.

And then I'm particularly going to save some of the really deep philosophical conversations in the story for our live meetings, and so I don't think I'm skipping over that entirely. I do have some plans for that. But before we even get to out of the sidelent planet, I want to actually do a little bit more build up. I cut short a little bit previously when I was going over medieval cosmology, kind of the old view of the cosmos, and that's because I didn't want to give you too

much of a map to what Lewis is doing. You know, I didn't want for you to say, oh, the Eldala fit nicely into this medieval category. Oh, Yarsa fits nicely into this category. No, I wanted there to be some mystery there. I wanted for you to explore some things on your own if you are reading this for the first time. But now that you've been through that, I do want to give you some of those categories that we can talk about what these strange beings are and

kind of how they fit within the bigger picture. And so let's return to medieval cosmol and go a little bit deeper there, all right, So, looking again at the medieval view of the cosmos, and I really like this image here. And so we have the Earth here at the center, and then we have the elements, which we'll talk about moving out to fire here this reddish orange circle, because fire, of course is the lightest, most ethereal of

the elements. And so once you move past that, well, now we get the planetary sphere, starting with the moon and then moving outward, and eventually you get to the edge here, which then approaches the realm of God, where we have God ruling and raining, and we have the entire cosmos moving in an ordered spherical motion and imitation of the perfect fully actualized goodness of God. And so we have a very structured, a very orderly view of

the cosmos. We really get this sense when you look at the medieval philosophers, the medieval theologe, that there is this unending goodness, that there is this luminosity in the very fibers of being, that existence is fundamentally good and ordered and purposeful in reflection of the good order and the true purpose, the true end of all things, which

is God. And so what I wouldn't necessarily call optimism, but a philosophy of absolute hope that no matter how chaotic things seem to be well this earth, where things tend to break down, where things do tend toward corruption, where do things do turn to disorder, we have the sense that this is just one small little point in

a much bigger story. And the more that we identify with this grand story, this grand spiral, this great dance, as C. S. Lewis calls it, in mere Christianity and elsewhere, the more that we participate in the joy of the heavens, the more that we find that existence itself is deeply fundamentally and eternally significant and purposeful. And so there is this great joy to be found here. And I think

in particular of Boethius, who I mentioned before. You know, when he is falsely accused, he is imprisoned, he is awaiting what would be his death.

And so maybe you've even experienced this where you go out on a starry night and you look up in the sky and you feel the sense of maybe dread, maybe anxiety, you just feel insignificant. Lewis says that the modern man looks up the vastness of space and he finds a question mark, He finds a lack of certainty. Well, the medieval man looks up at the heavens and he doesn't see a question mark. What he sees is an answer. He sees an answer to the fundamental questions that we're

prone to ask. He finds a place for his mind to rest in the perfect order and joy that exists in the heavens. And so this there are two fundamentally different ways of looking at the cosmos. It's not just a matter of different science. The science Lewis actually brings up is actually secondary to the primary issue. And the primary issue is the questions that we're asking, which are then connected to what we're seeking. And I guess the

question is what is it that we're seeking. Are we seeking order and purpose that actually exists, or are we seeking to project order.

everything is frozen. It's not moving, and that's because we are the furthest away from being itself. We're actually starting to approach non being. But one thing that's very interesting is that in this understanding that God is usually understood as being stable because he's fully actualized. If you're fully actualized, that means there's nothing else that you can actually do,

there's nothing else that you can become. And so God is unmoving, or perhaps we might want to say his actions are eternal, which is another way of saying the same thing. And so one hand you have God has complete stability, but also so does Hell. And that's because the closer you get to evil, the more that you recognize evil is a pale invitation. It's a mockery of the good. And so just as God is stable, well

so as Hell, but for very different reasons. But nonetheless, so you have held the very center, and then you have Earth, which is the heaviest of the elements. On top of the Earth, you have water. So now we're moving toward the lighter, toward the more ethereal and so water is the next sphere of Earth. And then you move out a step further, and now you have air, and then move out further and now you have fire

in something like what we might call our atmosphere. But this is a pure fire, and because it's so pure we don't see it. It's actually transparent. And so this is definitely a very Platonic idea here, and so we can definitely see Plato's influence here that as we move toward the more real, we get less solid, the sense that there is this levity toward reality, and so the more that we move toward what is more real. Things

become lighter, more ethereal, less earth bound. The more that we move away from the perfect order of the heavens, the more more that we move away from the grounded being. Well, the more grounded we become, the heavier we become, the more prone we are to being dragged down rather than rising up toward the heaven. And once we move beyond the last of these earthly spheres, well, now we move into the planetary spheres, which we're believed to be moved

along by divine powers. Now, of course, all of these powers are going to be named after Roman gods. But I mean, of course our medieval Christian philosophers and theologians don't believe in the Roman gods at least in the same way that the Romans did. But even though the names kind of stick, they're really talking about angelic powers, angelic intelligences that are responsible for moving the planets in

their spherical motion. And each of these angelic powers was said to have some particular influence, very often connected to

what the gods stood for in the Roman mythology. Now, Lewis points out that this might raise some questions for us, Right, what are these medieval Christians doing with Roman gods and goddesses in their theology, in their cosmology, and Lewis says that as far as he can tell, that really just wasn't an issue, which seems to indicate that the Medievals believed that, you know, the ancient Pagans had something right, even though obviously they were wrong in a very fundamental sense.

And we'll get more into the intersection of Christian theology and Pagan mythology, especially when we get to Perilandra, and we can certainly talk about that more if you want to now in the Discord chat and in the Life Meeting, but he starts to deal with that more directly in Peralandra, and so that's where we will start to deal with it in these videos. But for now, just know that there seem to be some recognition that the ancient Pagans, even though they were wrong on a fundamental level, they

weren't entirely wrong. That they had these certain desires and these certain thoughts that in some way at least start to approach reality, which are then given proper context within

the Christian theological framework. And so when we talk about Luna, we talk about Mars, we talk about Venus, we're going to get some thematic associations with these pagan gods and goddesses, but really what we're talking about are Christian angelic intelligences, Christian angelic powers that are respond possible for moving the spheres and exert some influence on our life down here

on Earth. However, because the Earth is a fallen planet, because things are tend toward corruption down here, well, a lot of times these influences will be misappropriated. Even though, operating as they are in the perfectly ordered realm of the heavens, they are all good, right. All of the planetary spheres have good influences. However, these influences can have a negative instantiation as they enter into our corrupted atmosphere and are picked up by corrupted.

Narnia and deals a lot with Narnium. A lot of the information that he goes over also does relate to the Ransom series, and so I will be talking about this from time to time, but I'll probably talk about it a bit more of extended fashion when we get to Narnium. But anyways, so in the medieval model, Luna was the planet closest to Earth. In Greek and Roman myth, Luna was associated with a number of different named goddesses, such as Selene, Artemis, and Cynthia, and these goddesses survived

into medieval and Renaissance times. Another of Luna's names was Diana, who was specifically the goddess of hunting because of course, when the moon is bright, well now it's easier to hunt at night. And Luna's whiteness and brightness also made it natural to associate her with the metal silver, and so Luna produces silver in the earth. Now because the moon has effects on the tides, the seas, and the rivers,

she became associated with wateriness. In our related note, she's connected with inconstancy and dealt with movement with transitions above lunisphere. Everything in the heavens was considered perfect and unchanging, but within and beneath lunisphere everything was subject to alteration. And so this is where the order of the heavens starts to break down. And this kind of makes sense when you stop and think about it. You know, the moon

changes its appearance on a regular basis. However, it changes its appearance in an orderly way that we can actually predict. You look up at the moon and you know it has craters, that it has some apparent physical imperfections. The moon has a light side and it has a dark side. And more mythologically speaking, I mean the moon has one face toward Earth and the other is toward the order of the heavens. And so the moon is this transition

point between order and chaos. For this reason, Luna had an influence on wanderers and travelers, those who were given over to movement. And she also has an influence over sanity, which is why people who lose their wits are called lunatics. And in fact, this is also connected to the myths of werewolves.

the silver that she produces in the Earth. And so there are a lot of, you know, stories that are connected with the moon and all this really comes down to some connection with transition toward life on the borders of realities. Luna gets a day of the week, which is of course Monday or Moonday. Her metal is silver, as I mentioned, and she's associated with envy, with wateriness, with confusion, lunacy, boundary between certainty and mutability, and she's

also a sponsor of hunting and wandering. Right next moving out, the second planet closest to Earth in this model is Mercury. Now, Mercury was known to be the fastest moving of the planets. Partly because of this rapidity, Mercury became thought of as a messenger of the gods. He's often depicted with wings on his cap and on his heels. He held a wand with which he directed pious souls to their happy dwellings in the afterlife. And Mercury's lightness and quickness carry

over to the metal with which he was associated. And so if you imagine quicksilver, it's going to roll around a dish, dividing into droplets and then recombining very swiftly and glitteringly. And so this tendency of Mercury to divide into reunite means that he became connected with a variety of different things that split up and then I'm back together. He is the god of boxers, of thieves, and even of crossroads. This again we get this idea of movement

of transition. In Greek mythology, Mercury is of course called Hermes, and as the messenger of the gods, Mercury was also thought to have a particular responsibility for speech. He was linked with scholarship and with learning. Now his day of the week is Wednesday by means of his Norse counterpart Wodin.

His medal is of course quicksilver, and he is associated with swiftness, with heraldry, with skill and speech and learning, ability to divide and to recombine and He also is connected with the idea of twins, which will come up again when we get to the horse and his boy much later on. Now, moving out next, we have Venus. Now, Venus appears brightly in the sky both a dawn and at dusk, and was known as the morning star as

well as the evening star or Hesperus. Now, mythologically, Hesperus was a deity who had a western garden in which his daughter the Hesperites guarded a grove of immortality giving apple trees. Now we're going to see this imagery come up a couple times, obviously in Perlandrum as well as in the Magician's Nephew. Now, although Hesperus was conceived of as a male god, the special beauty of Venus in the sky led it to be thought of chiefly as

a feminine planet. And of course this is connected to Venus, the goddess of amorousness and sexuality, since she presided over such qualities. She was also connected with fertility and creativity, and thence to motherliness. Now, Homer associated Aphrodite or Venus with laughter. She was the goddess of sweetness and love.

Soul or the sun. Now, Soul was the eye in the mind of the whole universe. His fear was the heaven of theologians and philosophers, and he produced the noblest metal, that is gold, and alchemists were always trying to harness his power. Right they were looking for the philosopher's stone that would allow them to turn base metal into gold.

Soul's characteristic influence was to illuminate the human mind, making people wise and liberal, obviously not in like a contemporary political sense, but the sense of being generous, free and opposed to greed and to raw pragmatism or utilitarianism. Soul burns a way base considerations of greed and profit, and so here we have the influence.

able to see the world illuminated by the sun. Well, the more rightly related we are becoming to the influence of soul. The Greek equivalent of soul was Apollo. His position in the middle of the planetary ranks was held to denote a special dignity and honor, like the positioning of the heart in the middle of the body, or like a king dwelling among his subjects, and of course in the Bible, the sun is frequently a metaphor for

the divine image. And so, you know, we tend to say that this old model is geocentric, replacing the Earth of the center. But really, you know, if you look at the way the heavenly spiritual arrange, it actually does have the Sun at the center of the planetary spheres. And so I mean, in a manner of speaking, this could still be described as heliocentric, which just means something

a little bit different than that. And so we have this idea that reason or wisdom is found at the center of the influences, and it is by this reason that we're able to see everything else. Now, Sunday is obviously given the day Sunday. It's connected with the metal gold, as well as with wisdom, liberality, freedom riches, enlightenment, and opposition to greed. Next, we have Mars. Now, Mars is known as in fortuna minor, and that's because it very

often had an unfortunate influence. Not that the influence itself is bad. Remember, all of these heavenly influences are good. However, the influence of Mars is one that is perhaps more likely to be misappropriated. Of course, you all probably know this that Mars is associated with war. He is the martial influence. And this martial influence, taken the wrong way,

makes warriors into cruel and lawless men. However, taken or right, it fortifies noble knights in justifiable conflicts and gives resolved to martyr's suffering persecution, making them as strong as iron. Mars enables hard but necessary task to be accomplished. And I'll say more on this later, but if you've already read that hideous strength, consider one of our main characters, Mark, most certainly named after Mars. Now, Mars brings discipline, order, rhythm,

and freedom from anxiety. In an earlier mythological tradition, Mars was a vegetation deity associated with the burgeoning of trees, woods and forests, and of course, the springtime month of March is named after Mars. In this capacity, he was known as Mars Sylvanas. And so now that you've read Out of the Silent Planet, you know, consider the vegetation, all of the trees and the plant life and whatnot

that we see on the planet of Mars. And this is associated with this older tradition where Mars is associated with springtime realities. Now Mars is given the day Tuesday by means of his Norse equivalent tier. His metal is iron, which kind of makes sense given the coloration. He's associated with vegetative growth in the month of March, particularly with military strength and nightly discipline, as well as with courage

and orderliness. Or misappropriated, he associated with cruelty and lawlessness. All right, moving out, we have Jupiter. Now, Jupiter was known as fortuna major. He was seen as potentially the best influence. He was the sovereign of the seven heavens. His kingliness was that of a king at peace, at leisure. He was enthroned. He was serene the jovial influence, which another name for Jupiter is Jove, and so the jovial influence made people cheerful and festive, yet also tranquil and magnanimous.

Jupiter was thought to be a temperate planet, positioned as he was between the hotness of Mars and the coldness

of Saturn. In tenth century Arabic manual of Astrology mixed Jupiter the ruler of western countries, and for that reason he was seen as the patron of the Christians, and sometimes he was actually associated with Christ himself, which I think this might not be a medieval framework, but I think in light of what we know about Jupiter with the unending storm here, you know, we even have the sense that he has a wounded side, which I think

adds to the chrystological imagery here in the planet of Jupiter. Jupiter represented joy and particularly the pleasure and heart ease which come in late spring and early summer when all the vestiges of winter have finally vanished, and so he is jovial. But this is a joviality that was hard one. Jupiter is connected with Thursday by means of thor, with the metal tin, and the qualities of kingliness, with festivity and festal joy, as well as with tragic splendor and

summertime tranquility. Now, our last planetary influence is Saturn. Saturn was known as in Fortuna major. He was seen as the most unfortunate influence in the way that it's usually received on Earth. He was the planet whose influence could most easily go bad. It was liable to cause sickness, old age, ugliness, disaster, melancholy, and death. To write, however, this influence might bring about godly sorrow, penitential wisdom, and

contemplative insight. The mythological character of Father Time is very much based on the early pictures of Saturn, who was conflated with the Greek titan Chronos, and so Saturn is connected with the tendency of things to wear down and to fall apart. He's associated with the metal lead because of its heaviness and its dull gray color. He is of course connected with the day Saturday, and he's associated with pestilence, treachery, disaster, and death, or with godly sorrow,

penitence and deep penitential contemplation. And as you move beyond the planetary influences, you then moved to the still autum, which is the realm of the fixed, unmoving stars. Go out to the outer rim beyond that, and now we have the prima mobile.

start to fall apart. And you know, in the platonic in the neoplatonic model, this is because there's something inherently corruptible about Earth. But as we move into the Christian medieval model, that idea is not entirely gone altogether. However, what really makes Earth given over to corruption is the fact that we live in a fallen planet, right we unlike the planets out here, we have fallen into sin.

We have turned away from God, we have turned away from that which brings order, and in so doing have fallen into disorder, have fallen into chaos. And this is why we are the silent planet. We do not participate in the music of the spheres, in the music produced by you know, the intelligences out here that move and sing in direction of the glory and goodness of God. And so we are a silent planet. We've left that

angelic choir. Now, next we talk a little bit about angels, and we already have a little bit in that we know that angels are moving the planetary spheres, but the role of angels really played a significant part of the medieval understanding of the cosmos. And so the cosmos is inhabited by ranks of angels, which are outlined by the

Neoplatonic early medieval mystic Pseudo Dionysius. Now Pseudodonysia says that there are three different hierarchies of angels, and each of these hierarchies are inhabited by three different classes of angels. And so first we have the upper hierarchy, the seraphim, the Cherubim, and thrones, and most of this information is

going to come from the discarded image. But we find that the first hierarchy of angels faces God with nothing between, encircling him with their ceaseless dance, and they communicate to each other of the beauty and the glory and the wisdom of God. Each seraphim passes this knowledge to the one next to it, until this transformative knowledge is passed to the next order, and then finally to the next hierarchy.

And so the seraphim are all facing God, but they're all communicating what they see to each other, to other angels, and then the seraphim in turn passed this knowledge on to the Cherubim and the Cherubim in turn passed this

knowledge on to the thrones. And so we see that knowledge begins ultimately with God, and then derivatively it begins with the Seraphim, who then passes to each other, and then that knowledge passes the way down to the thrones, which then passed that knowledge down to the dominations, and then to the powers, then to the virtues. And so as with this first hierarchy, this second hierarchy faces God with back toward us and continues this great dance that

begins with God's glory. Now it should be noted here that we don't see God doing a great deal. And I've already mentioned this, and that's likely connected to Aristotle's notion that God, being fully actualized, is stable, and he moves the cosmos not by performing actions, but as a beloved moves a lover. This model is very much alive

in the Neoplatonic tradition that Pseudodionysius is drawing from. Now, the lowest hierarchy is concerned with the affairs of man, and principalities are the guardians and patrons of nations, and archangels and angels appear to human individuals passing on the knowledge that they receive through the angelic chain that reaches back to the very presence of God, and they invite

humans to participate in this great celestial dance. And now this may get a little bit confusing here, because all of these beings are described as angels, but also angels used in a technical sense for the lowest order of angels. And these are the ones that are most likely to be involved in human affairs, because the others are too busy just contemplating the goodness of God and talking about the goodness of God. And of course what this lowest rank of angels is doing is still good, and they're

fulfilling their purpose. But that purpose is well, it's more earthly, right, it's further away from the inner circle of God. And the Medievals believed that the heavens we're home to countless angels. There's no such thing as empty space in.

to the order word of the heavens. And so while we are tempted to feel alone in the cosmos, if anything, the medieval might feel a little claustrophobic, because everything is inhabited, and so there are countless numbers of angels up in the heavens, doing their gelic things, glorying in God, passing on this knowledge, moving the spheres in imitation of the

goodness and stability of God. However, in the medieval cosmos, angels were not typically the only rational species that exist aside from humans, because also, of course we have the fairies, or, as Lewis refers to them, the longevi. Now what are fairies, Well, these are creatures that really live on the borderline of understanding.

There are a few different theories regarding what angels are that we see played out in the medieval and Renaissance writings, and so one possibility that they are a third rational species, distinct from angels and men. Perhaps these are the daemons of old that the Greeks talked about, these things that

inhabit the air. And maybe we might say that there's something between angels and men in that they might have bodies, if that's the right word, something similar to angels, even though they have minds that perhaps are more like the minds of men, and a lot of times these fairies are associated with nature, and so maybe there are some, you know, spirits of the water, there are spirits of the forest, there are spirits of the earth. That there are these spirits that are at play in the natural.

at all impossible, right. I mean, there are a lot of things that we're simply not told in scripture.

their ultimate condemnation on Doomsday. Or perhaps these are angels that remain neutral during Lucifer's rebellion and maybe they have the possibility of redemption one day. This was a common theory. Or perhaps these are undead spirits of some kind, and a lot of the fairy stories deal with something related

to the undead. And then lastly, we have this view that the fairy, what we call fairies, are really just devils, that they are fallen angels, and this is the view that really picked up, especially in late Renaissance, picked up especially with the Puritans. And Lewis at actually believes that the reason why the idea of fairies as such really

fell out of discourse is because of this view. And so it's not so much that science dispelled the fairies, but he actually believed that their identification with devils is what got rid of the idea of fairies as such. And for what it's worth, Lewis believes that that is not a good thing. Now, why does this medieval model of the cosmois matter because in a certain sense we know that it's not true, at least in the way that we usually use the word truth.

The change arguably more important from a de evolutionary to an evolutionary scheme, from a cosmology in which it is axiomatic that all perfect things precede all imperfect things, to one of which it is axiomatic that the starting point is always lower than that which is developed, and the degree of change can be gauged by the fact that

primitive is now in most context a pejorative term. This revolution was certainly not brought about by the discovery of new facts, and that it goes on a little bit later. But nature gives most of her evidence in answer to the questions that we ask her. Let me repeat that, but nature gives most of her evidence in answer to the questions that we ask her. Hence, as in the courts, the character of the evidence depends on the shape of the examination. And a good cross examiner can do wonders.

He will not indeed illicit falsehoods from an honest witness, but in relation to the total truth in the witness's mind, the structure of the examination is like a sensil. It determines how much of that total truth will appear in what patterns it will suggest. And so, in other words, there are a number of presuppositions that go into the questions that we ask of nature, and the questions that we ask of nature will largely determined the answers that we receive. And so is the medieval view of the

cosmos right or is it wrong? Well, that very much depends on the questions that we're asking, and the questions that the modern man asks tend to be very different than the questions that the medieval man would ask. And so I mean, I don't necessarily suggest that we need to, in a physical sense return to a pre Copernican cosmos. And Lewis is very clear about that as well. He is not suggesting that we scrap our modern astronomy books and go back to a pre Copernican understanding of the

physical cosmos. However, just because we're sort of rearranging the physical layout of the cosmos actually doesn't say anything to the more metaphysical reality at play in the medieval worldview. And this metaphysical reality is, of course what Lewis would have us hold on to. It is this metaphysical view of the cosmos that we see very much playing out in the Ransom trilogy or the Ransom series as well as beyond and arguably in Narnia especially as well. And

we'll talk about that more once we get there. And so there is a big overview of the medieval view of the cosmos. I think that's going to give us some useful concepts and useful themes to work with as we talk about out of the Silent Planet, and as we go beyond that to Parilandra, that head of his strength, and.

talked about. Maybe we can come up with some kind of cosmological significance of that, but regardless, let's go ahead and finally get started on out of the Silent Planet. We're going to start by looking at the introduction, the setup for the story in the first couple of chapters. It's a way of setting the mood and looking at some of the themes that hopefully we'll awaken something in the

reading that you've already done. As we find out from the Fox until we have faces much later on, we see that even the past is not settled, because as we're told, the divine nature can even change the past. And so let's go ahead and see what happens. Right at the very beginning the initial scene, we're told a violent yellow sunset was pouring through a rift in the clouds to westward, but straight ahead over the hills. The

sky was the color of dark slate. Every tree in blade of grass was dripping, and the road shone like a river. Now, one thing I think is worth considering here, even aside from the specific imagery that's coming through in these sentences, is just the vivid, very sensual, very sense experiential language that we get throughout Lewis's writing. His descriptive almost just kind of drips off the pages. It's meant to kind of overwhelm you, or perhaps a better way

of saying that it's meant to beckon you. It's meant to call you into something fluid, something moving, because you yourself are supposed to be moved through the narrative. Who tends to write what in literary language would be called a romance. And I don't mean like a cheesy romantic novel. What I mean by romance is this is something that's supposed to call you forth on a grand existential journey.

That there's a mystical quality here. It's meant to not just be this adventure story where you know, this happens, this happens, and this happens, and you have all these you know, thrilling plot twists, even though yeah, we get that here and there, Fundamentally, what we don't get are thrilling plot twists. Really, what we get are perhaps twists in our understanding of reality, our understanding of the world, more so than simply our understanding of the thrilling narrative.

And so this language here is very central. It's meant to evoke a mood, it's meant to bring us into something. And I think that this really speaks to Lewis's medievalist sympathies, where wisdom is really about orienting yourself towards the good and about consuming the goods, about being consumed by the good. It's about losing yourself in light of what goodness is, what reality most fundamentally is, and it's when we lose ourself to the right thing, in the right way, that

we actually come to find ourselves. And so this is why Lewis is going to use this very almost overwhelming sense language throughout his descriptive prose. There's this poetic nature to everything that he writes. But anyways, to the specific imagery here, Okay, we're told that, Okay, it's cloudy, right, there's this the sky itself is the color of dark slate.

But the sun is piercing through this dark slate ceiling, and so we get the sense that Ransom, that the Earth that Ransom is currently inhabiting, is closed off to the heavens above. Right, it has almost a ceiling to it, and so it is self contained. It is not looking out to the heavens. However, we're told not that his vision went up to the sunset, or we're told that the yellow sunset was pouring through.

is that you're standing. Okay, So Soul is shining its rays through the rift in this terrestrial ceiling, and it's illuminating the grass, it's illuminating the road, it's causing the road itself to shine, perhaps even to shine like gold, gold which is produced by soul in the medieval cosmological framework.

And so he's walking on this path of gold. He's being led upward, back to Soul, back to the place of reason, and ultimately back to the heavens, where we are meant to have fellowship with this angelic reality that happens in the cosmos. And so there's a lot that's contained in this rather mundane initial setup of this scene. Now, also in the introduction, we get a few i think, rather clear, rather intentional connections to Dante. And so let's talk about Dante a little bit, who did have some

special significance for Lewis. Christina Hale says that Dante's poetry encapsulates everything that Lewis loved about the medieval cosmos, the light and life, the bursting vivacity and creativity, and the rich tapestry of ideas and images, emotions and languages that the medieval model presents. And I should say that Dante captured Lewis's imagination a good while before his conversion to Christianity.

See a lot of times people think that Lewis had a Christian message and then fantasy myth provided a good vehicle for conveying that Christian message, and that's why he wrote fantastical stories. And this is especially said of Narnia. However, this is actually not right in many ways, it's the reverse of the reality because mythology stories, both Pagan and Christian, captured Lewis's imagination very early on and stayed with them, became an important formative part of who he was and

how he thought and how he desired. And so Lewis didn't choose this genre to convey Christian truth. It actually is his love of myth that is largely responsible for leading him to Christianity. It was in his conversation with Tolkien when he realized that perhaps there's actually some reality

to the things that he's always loved. And to get more on this, I recommend that you read Lewis's essay Myth Became Fact, and when she talks about the fact that all the things that he loves in Great Pathology, even great Pagan mythology, ultimately speaks to something real to the myth that became fact.

I had wandered off the straight path. And so here do we have a middle aged wanderer, the pilgrim, going through a dark wood, not on the path he originally set off on. Now's look over at out of the silent planet. The last drops of the thundershower had hardly ceased falling when the pedestrian and so no, we're not even giving his name right now, or he'd called the

pedestrian much like Dante's pilgrim. The pedestrian stuffed his map into his pocket, settled his pack more comfortably on his tired shoulders, and stepped out from the shelter of a large chestnut tree into the middle of the road. He was tall, but a little round shouldered, about thirty five to forty years of age. In fact, he was a philologist and a fellow of a Cambridge college. And so Dante gives us a middle aged pilgrim poet. Lewis gives us a middle aged philologist pedestrian. And so I think

that there is some very intentional parallelism happening here. Next another example, Dante says, I raised my head and saw the hilltop shawled in morning rays of light sent from the planet that leads men straight ahead on every road. Now over to Lewis, he had walked thus for a matter of two miles when he became aware of a

light ahead. He was close under the hills by now, and it was nearly dark, so that he still cherished hopes of a substantial farmhouse until he was quite close to the real origin of the light, which proved to be a very small cottage of ugly nineteenth century brick. And so again thematic connection here, some parallelism in language.

We get that just as Dante Lewis sees a light over the hill, now Dante tells us that the light that he saw was the morning rays of light sent from the planet that leads men straight ahead on every road. And so here we get a kind of divine providence shining forth, and that's the light that Dante's following. Now Lewis here, and this is I think really interesting. Lewis's light is actually the light coming from the cottage, and so this is not a heavenly light, at least not

most directly. But I think what Louis is doing here is that he's not just saying, Okay, I'm writing a story that's going to parallel Dante's divine comedy. No, what he's doing is he's kind of riffing off of Dante, and he's doing it and I think it's a really sophisticated way. And so one hand, this seems to be a very mundane light coming from the cottage. However, in light of Dante, what Lewis is telling us is that this mundane light is actually a reflection or something that's

participating in the heavenly light of Providence. And so this is going to be a major theme throughout the Ransom series, the idea that really there is no such thing as the mundane, that even though the earth in some ways is closed off from the heavens, it is still part of the heavens. It is still playing a role in the big story, even if it's not necessarily doing so intentionally.

And so even mundane things participate in supernatural realities. And so Lewis is going to continually break down the barriers that we tend to create between the terrestrial and the celestial, between the natural, the supernatural, the mundane and the spectacular. And this is something he very often does right where Lewis will break down these borders and help us to recognize the glory in what we normally think of as

inglorious common things. And so this is one way that Lewis is going to work to re enchant our vision and help us to recognize the fantastical in everything around us. And so this is one hand. Yeah, it's the light of a small cottage, but it's much more than that. Ultimately, it is the light of Providence piercing the shadows. It is the light of the sun piercing the rift in the clouds, shining into this dark world. And so there are a number of things that are happening at play here.

hideous strength gives us heaven. And I mean, there are some ways to do that, but I just don't think that that naturally works. I don't think that Lewis is trying to give us the Divine Comedy reworked. I think what he's doing is he's using Dante as a thematic backdrop. And so this is a conversation with Dante, or it's an inspiration from Dante. But it's not just a modern take on Dante. Right, So some other literary connections here.

I'm combining a couple ideas together here with this title, Sir Ransom in Wonderland, and so we get some Arthurian themes here. And so we see that a woman gives Ransom a quest to save an innocent and a vulnerable soul, and then with unflinching courage, Ransom accepts the quest and sets off for a dark wood.

you know, where the real quest begins. This is when the brave Knights will encounter something fantastical which sometimes kind of unnerves them, and this is when we get a sense of what that real quest is and they have to do some fantastical feat in order to save the day, to fulfill the quest that they initially set out on.

And I mean in classic tales, the wood almost always stands for chaos, for the unknown, for that which is beyond the border of civilization, for uncharted territory, and so this is where you never know what's going to happen, and this is very much what we see happen with Ransom. This is when he enters into this fantastical reality and he starts to get sent on his real quest. And then just a little side note here, we're told that west and Divine are currently residing in a house previously

occupied by someone named Alice. I can't help but to think that this is intentional, that this is a Wonderland reference, that this is where Ransom is going to find his rabbit hole, where he's going to enter into this fantastical, this strange reality, and where he's going to lose his footing before he gains it again. Next and I don't have a whole lot to say about this, but I think it's worth paying attention to some of this language here.

This is shortly after Ransom has encountered Divine and Weston, and we see the following who are you ball the thick man? My name is Ransom, if that is what you mean, And by Jove said the slender man, not Ransom. He used to be a weddingshaw. We really need to focus on this. By Jove here one hand, yeah, that's a common British expression, but Lewis chooses his words very carefully, and perhaps you may remember that Jove is another name for Jupiter. The king of the planets who orders the heavens.

And so what we see here is, you know, regardless of what was actually meant in the story, we see that ultimately it is by Jove that Ransom is here. It is by Jove that Ransom is being led into danger, ultimately, because this is what's going to bring about the most good for Ransom as well as for the Earth and maybe even the heavens. And so Jove is ultimately responsible despite the fact that Ransom seems to be falling into chaos, and so there is order even when chaos seems to

be raining. And eventually this is something that Ransom will come to appreciate more and to understand more than he does this moment. And so whenever you see an expression like that, like by Jove or you know, if hell is used, even as an obscenity, it's used purposeful. It's used to communicate something, to evoke a mood, to signal

something to the reader. Right, all right, next, let's talk a little bit about Divine and Western First, just looking at their names, we see that they are corruptions.

the undying lands. If you don't know, you're Tolkien. In history. In the First Age of Middle Earth, more Goth, who is really kind of a Satan figure, the big bad of the First Age, he gets defeated as the Valar finally come into play and wage war against more Goth and his forces. And the men who sided with the Valar in their fight against more Goth are rewarded with the island of Numenor, and they're rewarded with long lives

as well well. Eventually, these privileges that they have start to become their downfall, as instead of having gratitude for the gift they've been given for the longevity of their lives, the instead start to lust after what is even better, and that of course is immortality, and so This begins as they start to form really this kind of death cult where they really pour resources, poor focus, poor energy into embalming toward these great tombs as a way of

sort of imitating life through their practices surrounding death. Well, eventually even that is not enough, and so with the encouragement of Sauron, they eventually wage war on the Valor. They seek to take the Undying Lands by force, but that doesn't go well for them. They never actually make it to the shore of the undying land before their fleet and their entire island is sunk to the bottom

of the sea. So in their pursuit of transcendence, they actually end up plummeting downward to the depths of the sea. And so those who most grasp at progress, who most grasp at transcendence, those who worship their reason, ultimately become consumed by it, and so their pursuit of transcendence ultimately leads to their downfall. If you're familiar with Paradise loss, this is ultimately what happened to Satan. He started to worship his own reason, and that's what led to his fall,

both spiritually existentially as well as cosmically. And like I said, I don't think it's at all a stretch to connect Weston to the true West of Numenor, seeing as Numenor itself is actually going to be mentioned later in the series as the true West, and so it's not at

all a stretch to see that play out here. Now, another connection here to the fact that Vine and Weston are trying to reach upward, but in so doing, or actually reaching downward, they say to each other, we ought to have a dog in this place, said Weston to his companion, ignoring Ransom. You mean we should have a dog if you hadn't insist on using Tartar for an experiment, said the man who had not yet spoken.

is that's outside. I'm told that Ransom found it impossible to get down from the wall. He remained sitting, not frightened, but rather uncomfortable because his right leg, which was on the outside, felt so dark and his left leg felt so light. My leg will drop off if it gets much darker, he said. Then he looked down into the darkness and asked.

because dreams very often have these this range. This collection of symbols that all doesn't always make sense as a you know, coherent essay might, and so what we have here are some themes, some pictures that are coming unicating something, but it's not super clear, and so just talk about a little bit about what seems to be happening here. Well, for one thing, we see that Western and ta Vine are trying to get somewhere that they're not invited to.

We get the sense that they're breaking into something or I guess breaking out of something through some unjust means, and that you know, in the end, they're pulled back into the garden where they began, and so they never successfully become engaged with whatever this world is that's beyond. We get the sense that it's closed off to them. Whatever this outside reality is, it is closed off to them.

They are not permitted no matter how much they try to contrive a pathway, they are not permitted to leave. And so I think what it shows us is that even when they successfully make it out to the heavens, when they start to visit this other planet, they're still living as citizens of the silent planet. They never get in large perspectives, and so they are continually closed off from the heavens, from true reality. Ransom, however, he serves

as a bridge. He's not thrown back into the garden, nor is he fully on the outside of the garden. He is a bridge, He is a connection, He is a halfway point. He is the union between the Earth and the heavens. And so he plays this mediator role, he plays this priestly role. And I think this is a theme, an important theme that we're going to see developed throughout the Ransom series. You know, if you've read Perlandra already, think of when he's referred to as piebald, right,

he's half dark and he's half light. I think that's a continuation of the same theme that we see here, the idea that Ransom has a foot in both worlds. He is going to be a bridge, He's going to be a union between heaven and Earth. Well, a short while later, Ransom finds himself finally in space, and he encounters this with absolute terror. As he comes to this realization, he says, you mean we're in space? Ransom uttered the word with difficulty, as a frightened child speaks of ghosts

or a frightened man of cancer. And this is something that Lewis talks about in some of his essays that there are really two kinds of fears. So one hand, you can be afraid of something that poses some obvious danger to you right right that there's a lion in the room next to you, that instills a certain kind

of obvious physical terror. But there's also the kind of terror that comes from not what something would do to you, but simply the fact that something is, that something threatens your existence in a pretty fundamental way, that something serves to just unnerve you. And so that's the kind of terror that we have here. It is the terror of space. And this is such an important passage that I think it's worth me just taking the time to read it and for us to just kind of reflect on it,

to dwell on it. This is one of the most influential passages on me out of the entire story. And so here go but Ransom. As time wore on became aware of another and more spiritual cause for his progressive lightning and exaltation of heart. A nightmare long engendered in the modern mind by the mythology that follows the wake of science, was falling off him. He had read of space at the back of his thinking. For years had lurked the dismal fancy of the black, cold vacuity, the

utter deadness which was supposed to separate the worlds. He had not known how much it affected him till now now that the very name space seemed to blasphemous libel for the impurian ocean of radiance in which they'd swam. He could not call it dead. He felt life pouring into him from it every moment. How indeed, could it be otherwise, Since out of this ocean the worlds, in all their life, had come. He had thought it barren.

He saw now that it was the womb of worlds, whose blazing and innumerable offspring looked down nightly even upon the earth, with so many eyes, and here how many more. No, Space was the wrong name. Older thinkers had been wiser when they named it simply the heavens, the heavens which declared the glory, the happy climes that lie where day never shuts his eye up in the broad fields of

the sky. He quoted Milton's word to himself lovingly at this time, and often Christina Hale reflects on this, saying, to think of the heavens as the great outer darkness, as our modern minds often do, is through a place heaven with hell. Thinking this way restructures the imaginative layout of the cosmos and changes the way we look up

at the night sky. It rejects the view of thousands of years of prophets and poets in favor of listening to science without entertaining the idea that perhaps that our realities that are deeper than the material, that we are not yet real enough to see them. I like this a lot. I think it gets it fundamentally right that we have replaced heaven with hell. Go back to the old world and they talk about the heavens teeming with life, with purpose, with significance, with angelic choirs.

material realities. But material realities don't tell us anything about purpose. It doesn't tell us anything about metaphysical realities. It doesn't tell us anything about teilos, about goals, or about how we should live. It doesn't tell us anything about what to.

very vivid terms. And I think it's worth throwing in here this quote from the Don Tretder And we'll talk about more of this when we actually get there in our study, but let's just look at it now. 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. And here I think we get a pretty strong rebuke of our misunderstanding of what science is

and what science is able to accomplish. All right, next to the crew starts to land on Malachandra, and this process is very unnerving, is very unsettling. We get the sense that they are falling out of Heaven. It says now with a certainty which never after deserted him. He saw the planets the Earth. He called them in his thought as mere holes or gaps in the living heaven, excluded and rejected waste of heavy matter and murky air, formed not by addition to, but by subtraction from the

surrounding brightness. And so this is not a fallen planet like Earth. This is at least mostly a good planet. However, even a good planet is not the heavens. And so we get the sense that even though he's in a place now that's better than Earth, he's still moving away from reality. Remember that within the Platonic scheme, reality is a spectrum where some things are more real than others,

and that which is most real is the good. And so there's a certain sense in which the heavens come before the planets, both historically as well as ontologically, in their nature, in their being, they are in many ways more important. And so as he moves toward the heavens, he gets this levity, He gets the sense that he's moving toward that which is more real. As he moves down to the planet, out of the heavens, he's still somewhere good, but it's the direction of movement that matters.

He's moving away from that which is best. And so that's why this is such a rough landing. And then I love this, he says. And yet he thought, beyond the solar system, the brightness ends. Is that the real void, the real death, unless he groped for the idea, unless visible light is also a hole or gap, a mere diminution of something else, something that is to bright unchanging heaven,

as heaven is to the dark heavy earths. And so he's just reflecting on web talking about the idea that reality is a spectrum, and so he thinks, of, okay, light is more real than darkness, and so perhaps it is beyond this realm of physical light where we finally get what we call space, where we finally get emptiness, that is the real void, the real death. However, then

it dawns out on that. Wait, what if even though at that point we're beyond the realm of physical light, there actually is not nothing, but there's actually something even more of a something, that there's something even more real that as Earth is to the heavens, perhaps the physical heavens are to something else, something more real, something greater right, something that we don't have the means of dealing with.

And remember what I said before about how biblically speaking, sometimes God is portrayed as living in unapproachable light, other times as living in impenetrable darkness. And I think that's something of what he's getting at here, that whatever is most real makes reality as we know it.

what they are. Now, Remember for Lewis and for Plato and the Platonic tradition, the form of something is more real than the particular, and so you can't really know what a just action is unless you first know what justice is, and so you need to understand the form before you can understand the particular. I think that's what we see playing out here.

at a few things here. First of all, we see this Mars Sylvani's theme that Mars, although the martial spirit and the god of war, is also a god of vegetation, and so we get the springtimes, the idea of life, this idea of a upward movement. And I don't actually don't even remember which book I read this end, but there's this discussion in one of the text about how a lot of Ransom's experience on this planet is a range in a very vertical direction. And so we have

plant life is rising up. You've got the inhabitants of the planet occupy three distinct geographical parts of the planet, and so you've got the fifthil Triggy at the bottom, kind of in the caverns in the valley. You've got the Harassa living in the middle, and then you've got the Sorens living on the higher level. And even Rainsom's journey, he begins on the level of the Harassa, then he moves up to where the Sworns live, and then finally he makes his way up to Mildelorn. And so we

get this up and down pattern. And one of the texts you brought to the fact that you know, perhaps there's even some kind of phallic imagery. I don't want to get too weird with this, but I mean, Mars is a masculine planet, and in light of some of the things that Lewis has said elsewhere, I don't think this is beyond the pale.

he first encounters the Harassa. I'm not gonna read all this, but you know, he doesn't really know what this creature is, but he starts to recognize that it's trying to speak with him, that has some kind of intelligible language, and so one hand, he's afraid for his life. He doesn't really know what's going to happen, but at the same time, he's kind of daydreaming about writing a Malacandrian grammar book, which I think is kind of amusing, but also it

speaks to the fact that Ransom is starting to be transformed. Remember, just a short while ago, he saw the idea of space itself as terrifying, but he's overcome that, and now he's overcoming his you know, wellsy and fear of the unknown, intelligent extraterrestrial, and he's starting to treat this as being kind of normal. And so we get the sense that the Malachandrian air is doing something to him, just as the air of Narnia does something to Ennoble and to

transform the children who visit there. So he spend some time with the Rasa. There are some I think significant philosophical conversations that happened there, but we'll talk about that, probably during the live meetings, maybe on the discord. But eventually we get to the Hinakra hunt, which very much speaks to the martial spirit of this planet and of their Oyarsa. So hoy says, I long to kill the Sinakra,

as he also longs to kill me. I hope that my ship will be the first, and I first in my ship with my straight spear when the black jaws snap. And if he kills me, my people will mourn, and my brothers will desire still more to kill him, but they will not wish that we're no HERNAKEI nor do I. And so what we see here is that you know, this is an unfallen planet, yet there is violence. We'll

see is that violence is not necessarily sinful. I mean, I guess, at least on this planet, that there is an ennobled way that co it can take place, and perhaps especially in the pagan past, which I think is largely what we're seeing here on Malachandra. And we'll talk about that a bit more, and we'll get to some of the conversations in Perilandra. I think by the fact that some of the Psalms and elsewhere talks about how God provides for the lions, and of course how does

he do that by giving them prey? And so we get this sense here that not all conflict is bad. We get a bit more in this next section from hoy As. He says, I will tell you a day in my life that has shaped me, such a day as comes only once, like love or serving Oyarsa in Meldlorn. Then I was young, not much more than a cub, when I went far, far up the Andromat, to the land where stars shine at midday and even water is cold,

a great waterfall I climbed. I stood on the shore of Balky, the pool which is the place of most awe in all worlds. The walls of it go up forever and ever, and huge and holy images are cut in them, the work of old times. There is the fall called the Mountain of water. Because I stood there alone malel Den, for even Oyarsa sent me no word. My heart has been higher, my song deeper, all my days. But do you think it would have been so unless I had known that in that Balky Hernaki dwelled. There,

I drink life, because death was in the pool. That was the best of drinks save one. What one ask Ransom death itself in the day, I drink it and go to Maleldo. And so here again we get the sense that there is life to be found even in death, that there's something about this fight. There's something about the reality of death, whether it be that of the Hernaka or of the Horas, that is good if it's embraced

in the right way. And so it's all about channeling the martial spirit to do what is good and what is noble. Then this is a very important lesson that Ransom is going to have to learn, and that's going to come up in very clear term when we get to Perilandra, And if you already read that story, then you know what that might look like. And so what we see is Ransom starting to develop a positive relationship with the martial influence. And then of course we get

to the actual hunt. We're told something long sleeping in the blood awoke in Ransom. It did not seem impossible at this moment that even he might be the Hanakraus layer, that the fame of Haman Hanakraput might be handed down to posterity in this world that knew no other man.

And so again we get this idea that the air of Mars is doing something in Ransom, that it's ennobling him that is causing him to undergo this transformation to become more like the ruler of the planet, just as we see with the children in Narnia as they become ennobled and more asland like through the Air of Narnia.

And then of course, after the hunt, a hooyah shot and dies, and then Ransom finally begins to answer the summons of Malelvil and this is where he encounters Augrey the Soorn, And I'm not going to read through all this right now, but he starts to talk about the Aldeala, about these beings that are just kind of on the edge of Ransom's perception. There are obviously some kind of angelic or at least semi angelic beings that are doing the will of Oyarsum, but Ransom really doesn't have a

firm category for understanding what they are. And Augray starts to describe them as being these agents that kind of appear as light, but in reality there's something more real, and I think this is tied to what Ransom was meditating on before, about something being even more brilliant than light itself. And there's this wonder about Okay, do are the Eldeala around on Earth? And maybe Ransom has just

never perceived them. He's not really sure, but Augrey says it's kind of weird that the Aldeala don't seem to be on Earth, and then Ransom, or thinking this through, says of that, I am not certain. It had dawned on him that the recurrent human tradition of bright, elusive people sometimes appearing on the Earth Albs Davis and the like, might after all have another explanation than the anthropologists had

yet given. True, it would turn the universe rather oddly inside out, but his experiences in the spaceship had prepared him for such operation, and so basically it kind of starts to conclude here that maybe these stories about fairies that we have are actually onto something, maybe they're speaking to something real. However, this wouldn't only turn everything inside out because of some of these meditations he's having on kind of what reality really is and about the kind

of analogies of light and existence and all that. You know, that's kind of mind blowing itself, but also turns things inside out by giving a quasi physical explanation of what we think of as being these fantastical, illusory realities. And so this is a continuation of this breakdown between the

mundane and the fantastical. Now, next, before he leaves Augury's cave, he is able to use this telescope like instrum in order to look on Earth, and Ransom realizes it was all there in that little disk London, Athens, Jerusalem, Shakespeare. There everyone had lived and everything had happened, and there, presumably his pack was still lying in the porch of an empty house near Stirk. Yes, he said, dully to the sworn, that is my world. It was the bleakest

moment in all of his travels. Now, why is this the bleakest moment one hand? I mean, he's looking at home. You think that might be kind of enlivening to him, But it's so bleak in that he begins to recognize that this world that holds all, or I guess at least nearly all of human history, is so small.

ruin and decay. But look for Christ and you will find him and with him everything else thrown in. And so this is a fairly common theme in Lewis's writing, the idea that you have to give yourself away in order to find yourself, that becoming an authentic individual is

about engaging authentically with love. And what love does, what real love does, is it causes us to open ourselves up, to become more expansive, to give ourselves over toward that which is lovely, and in so doing we ourselves become lovely.

kind of angel, some kind of angelic like reality. And this fits in nicely with Lewis's medievalism. Remember I talked about the significance of the angels and how some angels are responsible for moving the planets, and so Oyarsa fits nicely within this medieval model. But ultimately Oyarsa is more of a class or a title, and so he's talking to the Oarsa of Mars. There's also an Oyarsa of Earth, the bent one, one who turned away from the fellowship

that all these oars who have with each other. And that's why we have a silent planet, because the oars of our planet is confined to this location. And so really what Earth is is something like the prison of the bent One, and we tend to take on that influence that is pressed onto us at every turn and then to really drive in what's going on here. Oarsa talks about how maleldl, which surely is Christ, wrestled with

the bent one on earth. But Oyasha doesn't really know much about this, and it is a thing that we desire to look into. And this is pulling straight from scripture. The fact that angels desire to look into the realities of the Gospel and Lewis really gives us a pretty strong indicator of what it is that we're talking about.

They're insecure, they're latching themselves onto moving fortunes instead of grounding themselves in the goodness of reality itself. And so bent creatures are full of fears that are full of anxieties. But now he is here securely, ready to know what it is that Oyarsa wants with him. And Oarsa says that there are two things that I wanted to ask of your race. First, I must know why you come

here so much is my duty to my world. And secondly, I wish to hear a Thochandra and a melodictle strange wars there with the bent one, for that, as I have said, it is a thing we desire to look into. So again we get this biblical language repeated that Oarsa longs to know more about this gospel story that's taken place on earth. And then again, I'm not gonna read this whole passage, but I do just think it's very interesting and kind of amusing. When Western divine are pulled

into the court. At first, Ransom doesn't recognize them. It seems strange. They are like misshapen creatures, And eventually he realizes what they are, and so we really get the sense that he's seeing, as it says, here almost with malacho and eyes. And so he's really become immersed in this world. He's really learned to get outside of his earthly perspective. He's become more expansive in his perspective, more

expansive in his vision. I remember I talked about how real love, that the right kind of love, right, the right kind of philosophy, which is the love of wisdom, causes us to become more expansive, to give ourselves over to greater and greater realities, and then greater realities tend to return the favor, making us more real. I think that's what's happening in this scene. And I love the scene where Ransom's providing a translation of Weston to Oyarsum.

It's a way of really demonstrating the sophistry, the empty rhetoric, the absurdity of Weston's arguments, despite the fact that he uses very grandiose language here. And so you know, Weston says to you, it may seem a vulgar robber, but I bear on my shoulders the destiny of the human race.

Your tribal life, with its stone age weapons and beehive huts, is primitive coracles and elementary social structures, has nothing to compare with our civilization, with our science, medicine and law, our armies, our architecture, our commerce, and our transport system, which is rapidly annihilating space and time. Our right to supersede you is the right of the higher over the lower. And then Ransom translates this by saying, among us, Oyarsa, there's a kind of cano who will take other Hena's

food and things when they are not looking. He says he is not an ordinary one of that kind. In other words, he absolutely is a robber, but I mean not an ordinary one, as if that's somehow ennobling. And then I think the hole back and forth is just worth going over a few times, bothes keep going. So Oyarsa gives this rebuke to Weston. He says, strange said, Oarsa, you do not love any one of your race. You would have let me kill Ransom. You do not love

the mind of your race, nor the body. Any kind of creature will please you if only it is begotten by your kin, as they now are. It seems to me, thick one, that what you really love is no completed creature, but the very seed itself, for that is all that is left. And so Oyarsa recognizes that. Weston talks about how he's serving the advancement of humanity that he has a great love for humanity. Yet we've seen that he actually has no love for any particular humans. He mistreats

people for his scientific experiments. He was more than willing to sacrifice ransom when he thought Oyarsa was going to consume him or something. And so he doesn't actually care for any individual people, any individual humans, despite the fact that he claims to have this great love for humanity. And so Yarsa demonstrates this absurdity that beneath all of

his speech is really this diabolical absurdity. But of course Weston is not willing to engage in this kind of authentic conversation, and so he says tell him, said Weston, when he had been made to understand this, that I don't pretend to be a metaphysician. I have not come here to top logic. If he cannot understand as apparently you can't either anything so fundamental as a man's loyalty

to humanity, I can't make him understand it. And here Lewis is very clearly rebuking the science philosophy complex, where people will make all these claims the name of science, then you start to actually question them on philosophical terms and make them move toward more of a coherent framework. Well, now suddenly that they just back up and refuse to

engage in philosophy. I think if Stephen Hawking saying that philosophy is dead because it's been superseded by science, despite the fact that that itself is a philosophical claim, and as if we were missing the point in the conclusion, when Ransom finally makes it back to Earth, and now we get this PostScript, we're told that we have also evidence increasing almost daily, that Western or the force or forces behind Western, will play a very important part in

the events of the next few centuries, and unless we prevent them a very disastrous one. We do not mean that they're likely to invade Mars. Our cry is not merely hands off Malachandr. The dangers to be feared are not planetary, but cosmic, or at least solar, and they are not temporal but eternal. And so in case we missed it, Lewis comes right out and basically says that

this stuff is real. The threat that Weston poses is a real threat that we have to deal with, that we must deal with, that we will inescapably deal with or at least it will deal with us if nothing else. And of course what this force or forces behind Weston are will become more evident in the next story. Now, in the final bit of the PostScript, Lewis says, now that Weston has shut the door, the way to the

planets lies through the past. If there is to be any more space traveling, will have to be time traveling as well. Now, this is likely connected to the origin story for this series, which I probably should have talked about earlier on. But in any case, Lewis and Tolkien we're talking about how there weren't enough stories that they wanted to read being written, and so they were going to do it themselves, and they decided that they wanted a space travel story and a time travel story, and

so they flipped a coin. Lewis got space, Tolkien got time. Now, as often happened, Tolkien's literary commitment never actually came to fruition. I mean, it eventually became The Lost Road, which was not publishing its own right, but did serve an important role in the formation of Tolkien's Legendarium. But nonetheless, I think that Lewis here is really trying to set up

Tolkien's work that really just never came to be. However, Lewis himself, in his first attempt at a sequel to Out of the Side on the Planet, did indeed write a time travel story, and this is known as The Dark Tower. Now, this is an incomplete manuscript. Likely it was never finished, or perhaps we lost some of it, not really sure entirely, but regardless, we have a good portion of this story and I would recommend picking it up.

You can get the book The Dark Tower and other stories, and so this contains what we have from the Dark Tower, this first attempt at a sequel to Out of the Silent Planet, which really does focus on time travel. It's kind of weird, it's very dark, but I still think it's worth reading. Maybe once you've finished the Ransom series at least one time around, it's worth going back to this. Now it's kind of frustrating, and that it is interesting,

it's fascinating, it's gripping. However, it does cut off pretty abruptly, and so that just kind of is what it is. But nonetheless it's worth reading, as well as the other short stories that we do have in completion that are included in this collection. Here and so it's worth checking out. Maybe we can talk about the Dark Tower a little bit if that's something that you're interested in. But that concludes this current discussion of Out of the Silent Planet.

I hope that this was useful for you. If you have any questions about anything that I discussed or simply did anything in the story or about the story, please let me know. The best way to do that would be to chime in on the discord channel as well as to bring it to our live conversations.

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