Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Mythic Mind, where we pursue wisdom
Speaker 1: on the past between primary secondary worlds. I'm doctor Andrew Snyder,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad that you're here. Hey, they welcome back today.
Speaker 1: The original plan today was to provide you with something
Speaker 1: from Josh's Paradise Lost course, but there are some technical issues,
Speaker 1: so we'll get there soon. Instead, today we're going to
Speaker 1: go ahead and continue on with the philosophy and fiction
Speaker 1: of C. S. Lewis series today, looking at an introduction
Speaker 1: to Perilandro. If you've never read this book before, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously I recommend the entire series. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is just an absolutely beautiful text and I really
Speaker 1: look forward to getting into it with you. In fact,
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and do that. Hello, and welcome back
Speaker 1: as we settle in for Perilandrum. Now, as I've said before,
Speaker 1: these intro videos aren't really gonna get into plot elements.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna keep this rather short. The purpose of this
Speaker 1: is to first introduce you to some relevant secondary reading,
Speaker 1: as well as to provide you with a framework for
Speaker 1: picking up some of the major themes that are going
Speaker 1: to un provide the path that Lewis is laying out
Speaker 1: for us. I remember I talked about before, how for Lewis,
Speaker 1: the driving elements of a story are not the particular
Speaker 1: things that happen. It's not the twists and turns of
Speaker 1: the plot, as interesting as this may be. But for Lewis,
Speaker 1: the driving force of the story is the end, the tayloss,
Speaker 1: the goal. That goal is a state of being rather
Speaker 1: than a state of becoming. And so in this story,
Speaker 1: he's going to lead us from particular instantiations of desire
Speaker 1: and of pleasure up to their ideal toward the fulfillment,
Speaker 1: toward that which makes pleasurable things pleasurable, that which makes
Speaker 1: desirous things desirable by those who are seeing clearly, because
Speaker 1: there are certain things that speak to realities of human
Speaker 1: nature that are desirable when we are oriented correctly, right,
Speaker 1: when we are not corrupted, when we are not bent
Speaker 1: to borrow language from out of the silent planet. And
Speaker 1: so as far as secondary reading goes, obviously the main
Speaker 1: secondary ransom texts that I talked about in last week
Speaker 1: certainly apply here. So that's planets in peril, deeper Heaven,
Speaker 1: and a compass for deep Heaven, and so those text
Speaker 1: deal with the entire Ransdom series, so they certainly apply
Speaker 1: here as well, and as far as specifically looking at
Speaker 1: secondary texts for Perilandrum, I'm going to recommend three Lewis
Speaker 1: essays to you. Two of them come from the collection
Speaker 1: under the title of The Weight of Golfe named for
Speaker 1: the first essay in this collection, and what might be
Speaker 1: the most useful, the most directly applicable essay for Peralandrum,
Speaker 1: and that's because the Weight of Glory he talks a
Speaker 1: lot about desire, about the things that naturally speak to
Speaker 1: natural human desires, when we are working according to nature,
Speaker 1: when we aren't bent, when we aren't corrupted, when we
Speaker 1: don't have these artificial lenses over our souls. In fact,
Speaker 1: connected to that idea of desire, he even uses the
Speaker 1: imagery of the morning Star of Venus in order to
Speaker 1: make his point, and so that provides us with a
Speaker 1: rather direct connection point to where we're going to be
Speaker 1: going in Perilandrum. Also we're gonna see in Peralantro we
Speaker 1: get some more direct relationships being developed here between Lewis's
Speaker 1: Christianity and his appreciation for pagan mythology, and so along
Speaker 1: those lines, another essay from the Weight of Glory that
Speaker 1: I'm going to recommend to you is called is Theology Poetry,
Speaker 1: and he deals with some of those connections between Christian
Speaker 1: thought and pagan methody, and how that we don't actually
Speaker 1: need to discount pagan mythology despite the fact that it
Speaker 1: gets a lot wrong. In fact, he clearly believes that
Speaker 1: pagan mythology gets a lot right, which is exactly what
Speaker 1: we should expect from people who are made in God's image,
Speaker 1: living in God's creation, which testifies to the reality of
Speaker 1: who God is that's unfolding across time and then chiefly
Speaker 1: revealed in the Gospel. And so that is theology of
Speaker 1: poetry from the weight of Glory. And then still on
Speaker 1: that point from God. In the doc I'm going to
Speaker 1: recommend to you myth Became Fact, which is probably one
Speaker 1: of my all time favorite essays, which deals with these
Speaker 1: same themes of the relationship between Christianity, Christian revelation, and
Speaker 1: pagan mythology. And in case you don't have these texts,
Speaker 1: you're not able to pick them up right away. I
Speaker 1: will provide those three essays for you in the modules,
Speaker 1: but I would strongly encourage you to pick up these
Speaker 1: collections and read through them in their entirety. In fact,
Speaker 1: the Way of Glory isn't really that long. I just
Speaker 1: recently read through the Hire Book again in one morning
Speaker 1: and afternoon, and so that's very doable. But do yourself, favorite,
Speaker 1: go ahead and get both these books and read them through.
Speaker 1: But for now, what I want to do is, let's
Speaker 1: walk through a few passages from the Weight of Glory
Speaker 1: that I think are going to set up your orientation
Speaker 1: well for encountering what happens in Perilandra in the third region.
Speaker 1: Venus voyages, but my voice falters, rude, rimemaking, wrongs, her beauty,
Speaker 1: whose breast and brow and her breast sweetness be which
Speaker 1: the world's widespread, the rain of her secret scepter in
Speaker 1: the sea's caverns, in grass growing and grain bursting, flower unfolding,
Speaker 1: and flesh longing, in shower falling sharp in april, the
Speaker 1: metal copper in the mind reddens with muffled brightness, like
Speaker 1: muted gold by her fingers formed. And that is from C. S.
Speaker 1: Lewis's poem The Planets, which I recommend reading in its entirety,
Speaker 1: And in fact, I'll go ahead and put that in
Speaker 1: this week's module now as I said, I want to
Speaker 1: mostly focus on his essay The Weight of Glory, and
Speaker 1: I'm not even going to provide a lot of extended
Speaker 1: commentary here. What I want to do is just point
Speaker 1: your attention to certain passages that get at some ongoing
Speaker 1: themes that are going to develop throughout the story, and
Speaker 1: then in the next video I'll go back and look
Speaker 1: at some of these in reference to the story itself.
Speaker 1: But near the beginning of this essay, Lewis writes, if
Speaker 1: you ask twenty good men today what they thought the
Speaker 1: highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply unselfishness.
Speaker 1: But if you had asked almost any of the great
Speaker 1: Christians of old, he would have replied love. You see
Speaker 1: what has happened. A negative term has been substituted for positive.
Speaker 1: And this is of more than philological importance. And so
Speaker 1: he's pointing out that this change has taken place is
Speaker 1: not just a superficial change in language, but actually a
Speaker 1: change in philosophy. It's a change in theology, so change
Speaker 1: in the way that we see people, the way that
Speaker 1: we see the world. And in fact, if you ask
Speaker 1: twenty people today what the highest virtue is, they might
Speaker 1: say something like tolerance, which is connected to the same
Speaker 1: idea of unselfishness, the idea being that the best that
Speaker 1: I can do is not interfere with your life, right
Speaker 1: because I mean, there is no truth, there is no goodness,
Speaker 1: there is no beauty, there's no reality, there's no inherent
Speaker 1: meaning in life. We're all just sort of fabricating it
Speaker 1: out of nothingness. And so the worst thing that I
Speaker 1: can do is to impede your right to self creation.
Speaker 1: That's a very postmodern idea. That is just a further
Speaker 1: development of what Lewis was dealing with in his own day.
Speaker 1: But you go back, as he said, you asked the
Speaker 1: great Christians of old, and they would have said that
Speaker 1: the chief virtue is love, that we actually very much
Speaker 1: are meant to interfere in other people's lives for the better.
Speaker 1: Aristotle to find love as willing the good of the other.
Speaker 1: And what that means is that we need to have
Speaker 1: some understanding of what the good is, and we need
Speaker 1: to give ourselves over to the good for the sake
Speaker 1: of others, even if that means we might have to
Speaker 1: interfere in their lives. The message of Christianity is not
Speaker 1: that God cares about us so much that he's going
Speaker 1: to leave us alone. That actually wouldn't be caring for
Speaker 1: us at all. Know, the message of Christianity is that
Speaker 1: God actually loves us, and that's precisely why Christ gaves
Speaker 1: himself over for our good. And so too, the Christian
Speaker 1: message is that we are to give ourselves over for
Speaker 1: the good of others. Husbands are supposed to love their
Speaker 1: wives as Christ love the Church and gave himself over
Speaker 1: for her. And then generally, in our relationships with others,
Speaker 1: we are told to love one another as Christ has
Speaker 1: loved us. And so we have a call not just
Speaker 1: to be unselfish, not just to leave people alone, but
Speaker 1: to actually better the lives of those around us, to
Speaker 1: give ourselves over for the good of others. And Lewis
Speaker 1: goes on to say, the New Testament has loss to
Speaker 1: say about self denial, but not about self denial as
Speaker 1: an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves
Speaker 1: and to take up our crosses in order that we
Speaker 1: may follow Christ. And nearly every description of what we
Speaker 1: shall ultimately find if we do contains an appeal to desire.
Speaker 1: And so this is connected the same thing I just
Speaker 1: tak talking about that the chief virtue is not just unselfishness.
Speaker 1: It's not just about not satisfying your own personal desires. No,
Speaker 1: we actually are to satisfy our deepest longings. Our deepest
Speaker 1: desires speak to that which is deeply desirable. Odds are
Speaker 1: everyone here's familiar with the argument from Mere Christianity, whether
Speaker 1: you've actually read Mere Christianity or not, that Lewis talks
Speaker 1: about the fact that you know, we have these deep
Speaker 1: desires for another world, for paradise, and just as our
Speaker 1: desire for food and drink point to the fact that
Speaker 1: there is reality to food and drink, so too, perhaps
Speaker 1: our deep longings for something that we can't find in
Speaker 1: this world are good indicator that there really is something
Speaker 1: beyond this world, something like our home country, that we
Speaker 1: never find in this world around us, but that we
Speaker 1: anticipate with every good and beautiful and true thing. Because
Speaker 1: the chief Christian virtue is love, we are willing and
Speaker 1: we are able to practice the right kind of self denied,
Speaker 1: with the hope that in self denial, in surrendering the world,
Speaker 1: we will actually get it back anew, We'll get it
Speaker 1: back glorified. But there is no Easter without good Friday
Speaker 1: there is no crown without the cross. And keep in
Speaker 1: mind that Parallantra takes place right on the heels of
Speaker 1: out of the side of the planet. Ransom is literally
Speaker 1: commissioned by the Oyarsa of Mars. And keep in mind
Speaker 1: what the Martian influence means, right, this symbolized strength, power, rigidity.
Speaker 1: It's kind of fearsome. Remember when Oyarsa said that if
Speaker 1: it was in his jurisdiction to do so, he would
Speaker 1: have just killed the humans on his planet. And so
Speaker 1: there is a violence here. However, in the true Martian
Speaker 1: spirit it this is a brutal, harsh, violent tendency that
Speaker 1: is submitted toward a greater reality. And so Ayarsa does
Speaker 1: follow the regulations imposed upon him in the natural order
Speaker 1: of the cosmos, and so he doesn't have jurisdiction to
Speaker 1: unbody the humans on his planet, and so he doesn't
Speaker 1: do so. And so he has strength and he has power,
Speaker 1: and he's willing to exercise it when it is within
Speaker 1: his rights to do so. But the true Martian influence
Speaker 1: means not just that you have strength, but you have
Speaker 1: the strength to withhold that strength and submission to a
Speaker 1: greater reality. This is a nightly kind of strength. And
Speaker 1: of course what do knights do and all the great stories,
Speaker 1: they protect and serve and submit themselves to the good
Speaker 1: of damsels, and so too, Ransom is going off on
Speaker 1: a quest to serve and to protect the Lady of
Speaker 1: perilandr But even this is just a particular that's pointing
Speaker 1: us to a grander reality, because really, what's going on here,
Speaker 1: is it? Not just Ransom is serving the Lady of Perolandra. Really,
Speaker 1: what we have here is the martial spirit is serving
Speaker 1: the Venusian spirit. This Martian spirit is using its strength
Speaker 1: in service to the ultimate good and in sacrificial devotion
Speaker 1: to the Venusian Spirit. And so Lewis here is really
Speaker 1: starting to lay out his philosophy and his theology of gender,
Speaker 1: and that is going to come into rather direct terms
Speaker 1: toward the end of Perilandra, and so talk with that
Speaker 1: more in the next video. But I just wanting to
Speaker 1: keep that in mind that in this story that Ransom
Speaker 1: really is a stand in for Mars, just as the
Speaker 1: Queen of Perilandra is a stand in for Venus. And
Speaker 1: we're going to see that dance develop from the particular
Speaker 1: up to the universal. And now I'm not gonna say a
Speaker 1: whole lot about this, but just continuing this theme of
Speaker 1: desire and this movement of desire from the particular in
Speaker 1: the surface level to the reality, or, to use Plato's language,
Speaker 1: this movement from the shadow up to substance. And so
Speaker 1: Lewis writes, Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of
Speaker 1: reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in
Speaker 1: the Gospels, it would seem our Lord finds our desires
Speaker 1: not too strong, but too weak. We are half hearted creatures,
Speaker 1: falling about with drink and sex and ambition. When infinite
Speaker 1: joy is offered us like an ignorant child who wants
Speaker 1: to go on making mud pies in a slum because
Speaker 1: he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of
Speaker 1: a holiday at the sea, we are far too please.
Speaker 1: And so again the problem he's illustrating here is that
Speaker 1: we tend to focus on surface level particulars rather than
Speaker 1: following that chain of being moving closer and closer toward
Speaker 1: the reality of what we most ultimately desire, which I
Speaker 1: mean ultimately we find in the beatific vision in beholding
Speaker 1: the glory of God. And along the same lines he
Speaker 1: writes here, if a trans temporal, trans finite good is
Speaker 1: our real destiny, than any other good on which our
Speaker 1: desire fixes must be in some degree fallacious, must bear
Speaker 1: at best only a symbolic relation to what will truly satisfy.
Speaker 1: So again we get this language as pointing us toward
Speaker 1: shadow reality. Don't focus on the particular, focus on what
Speaker 1: the particular good represents, and ultimately whatever represents is the good.
Speaker 1: And so we want to move upward on the chain
Speaker 1: of being, not downward. And I love this passage here
Speaker 1: and which he's going to explicitly mention the morning star,
Speaker 1: which is another name for Venus. And he writes, and
Speaker 1: this brings me to the other sense of glory. Glory
Speaker 1: is brightness, splendor, luminosity. We are to shine as the sun.
Speaker 1: We are to be given the morning star. And I
Speaker 1: think I'll begin to see what it means in one way.
Speaker 1: Of course, God has given us the morning star already.
Speaker 1: You can go and enjoy the gift on many fine
Speaker 1: mornings if you get up early enough. What more you
Speaker 1: may ask, do we want? Ah? But we want so
Speaker 1: much more something. The books on esthetics take little notice of,
Speaker 1: but the poets and the mythologies know all about it.
Speaker 1: We do not want merely to see beauty, though God
Speaker 1: knows even that is bounty enough. We want something else,
Speaker 1: which can hardly be put into words. To be united
Speaker 1: with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to
Speaker 1: receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become
Speaker 1: part of it. And a couple things worth pointing out here.
Speaker 1: First of all, so he talks about the morning star,
Speaker 1: which is another term for Venus. He talks about the
Speaker 1: fact that it's beautiful, that it is bright, that it
Speaker 1: is splendid, and it is all of these things. But
Speaker 1: it's also worth noting that it's not only Venus who
Speaker 1: gets it's the term morning star, it's also Lucifer. And
Speaker 1: so morning star has this double meaning moving upward in
Speaker 1: the right direction. The morning star is that which is beautiful,
Speaker 1: that which beckons our souls towards that which is true,
Speaker 1: and toward that which is good. This is the positive ideal. However,
Speaker 1: the corrupted ideal that doesn't move upward but actually moves
Speaker 1: us downward is Lucifer. And of course I remember that
Speaker 1: we're told in scripture that the devil appears as an
Speaker 1: angel of light, and this is why it makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense that this story set place on Venus
Speaker 1: is going to be just as horrifying as it is beautiful,
Speaker 1: just as celestial as it is diabolical. And so why
Speaker 1: we're going to see this contest between that which is
Speaker 1: good and noble and worth preserving and that which causes
Speaker 1: things to become ignoble toward that which causes corruption. And
Speaker 1: so unite yourself with the true morning Star, and you
Speaker 1: yourself become beautiful. You become a conduit for beauty. You
Speaker 1: become the one who embraces beauty and is embraced by beauty.
Speaker 1: You take it into yourself sacramentally even But what you
Speaker 1: don't want to do is embrace the counterfeit, that which
Speaker 1: appears beautiful but actually is not. In fact, I think
Speaker 1: good way of getting at this is to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about the muses and the sirens. See it's
Speaker 1: very popular today where if you ask somebody what beauty is,
Speaker 1: they'll say, well, beauty's in the eye of the beholder
Speaker 1: is kind of whatever you want it to be. That
Speaker 1: doesn't hold up for most classical thought, right, you go
Speaker 1: back to the classical work, and you have a firm
Speaker 1: difference between beauty and seduction, symbolized by the muses and
Speaker 1: the sirens. So the muses where the daughters of Zeus
Speaker 1: who would inspire truth, goodness and beauty, and the artisans
Speaker 1: and the poets and whatnot. Beauty being that which directs
Speaker 1: the soul toward what is true, good, and life giving. Now,
Speaker 1: the opposing force to amuse would be the sirens. The
Speaker 1: sirens are these creatures who live on the islands and
Speaker 1: cast their apparently beautiful songs across the waters to unsuspecting
Speaker 1: sailors who hear these songs and get filled with You four,
Speaker 1: you get filled with visions of fantasy and are drawn
Speaker 1: back to the sirens. But then they end up crashing
Speaker 1: their ships on the shore, and then they're consumed by
Speaker 1: these monsters who only had the appearance of beauty. And
Speaker 1: so this symbolizes seduction. It's a counterfeit beauty. It's an
Speaker 1: appearance of beauty that ultimately leads to not what is
Speaker 1: true and good and life giving, but that which is
Speaker 1: false and evil and life consuming. And so this is
Speaker 1: why it's so important that we cultivate the right affections,
Speaker 1: that we cultivate a discerning mind. And so when beauty
Speaker 1: appears to us, we're able to recognize the reality, and
Speaker 1: we're also able to recognize the counterfeit. Okay, and then
Speaker 1: I'm going to go ahead and skip over this passage
Speaker 1: for now, but I'm going to put this PowerPoint on
Speaker 1: the course, and so you can take a look at
Speaker 1: this yourself. But I want to go ahead and move
Speaker 1: forward to this last slide here. And so we just
Speaker 1: talked about how we're supposed to embrace beauty. We're supposed
Speaker 1: to embrace glory. But ultimately, the path to glory is
Speaker 1: the path of Christ, and that is the path of
Speaker 1: the And so meanwhile, the cross comes before the crown,
Speaker 1: and tomorrow is a Monday morning. A cleft has opened
Speaker 1: in the pitiless walls of the world, and we are
Speaker 1: invited to follow our great Captain inside. I'm not even
Speaker 1: going to comment on this other than to say that
Speaker 1: as you approach the end sequence of Perilandra, keep these
Speaker 1: sentences in line, and especially the very specific imagery that's
Speaker 1: brought up in this language. But that's all I'm gonna
Speaker 1: say for now. I will return to that in the
Speaker 1: next video, and that's going to give you some basic
Speaker 1: ideas to think about some ideas to keep in mind
Speaker 1: as you read through Perilandra. But as I said, before
Speaker 1: you even get in on this reading of it or
Speaker 1: this rereading of it, I do recommend that you take
Speaker 1: some time to read the Weight of Glory and just
Speaker 1: to let these ideas really sink into your mind, sink
Speaker 1: into your soul. And I think that's going to set
Speaker 1: you up to get even more out of Perilandra, which
Speaker 1: I will dissect a little bit more next time. And
Speaker 1: until then, godspeed. All right, thank you for listening or
Speaker 1: watching if you're over on YouTube, and you should know
Speaker 1: that that if you do listen to podcast, that you
Speaker 1: can also watch most of these episodes on YouTube. You
Speaker 1: can find that link in the show notes. Now, the
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