Speaker 1: And for Lewis, the key is myth.
Speaker 2: In myth mythic stories, not modern novels that are full
of idiosyncrasies, but mythic stories.
Speaker 1: What we have.
Speaker 2: Is an imaginative experience of universal truths. So myth itself
will bring together our participatory, embodied, ritual, imaginative mode.
Speaker 1: Of reality with all of these truths.
Speaker 2: That reason has discovered, but give us an experience of
them in a way that brings the parts of our
our soul back together.
Speaker 3: What you're saying is really important, and this is the
question someways in symbolic world we've been talking about exactly
what you're saying is that this is inevitable, like this
is in some ways modernity is yielding.
Speaker 4: To something like that.
Speaker 3: The question is is it simply going to happen to
us or will we have some form of participation in
the way it does. Because sometimes these myths, you know,
they break in, and then they break in in ways
that is that can also be extremely destructive. You know,
we've talked about the during COVID, the George Floyd like
situation where all of a sudden, this story like just
falls into culture and like captures everybody and mobilizes everybody
in the world, like not just in America for some reason,
like all over Europe. People are out in the streets,
you know, and and this character gets lifted up, you know,
like a like an almost divine figure. But there are
other types, there are other versions of that happening all
the time, where these stories kind of break in and
you know, it's interesting to think about Till We Have
Faces almost as a story about that.
Speaker 4: This is Jonathan Pegel. Welcome to the Symbolic World.
Speaker 2: Hello everyone, This is Annie Crawford inviting you to join
me this January for a Symbolic World reading of Till
We Have Faces.
Speaker 1: The book C. S.
Speaker 2: Lewis calls far and away the best I've written. Till
We Have Faces is Lewis's modern retelling of the myth
of Cupid and Psyche, a mysterious tale of dark idolatry,
classical enlightenment, and the shocking discovery of true religious vision.
In our four week online course, together, we'll explore what C. S.
Lewis has to show us about the nature of myth,
the dangers of love, the limits of reason, and the
secrets of genuine re enchantment. This is a book an
author and a class you won't want to miss.
Speaker 3: Hello everyone, I am here with Annie Crawford. Those of
you that follow the Simbolch world have seen her around.
She is she's becoming our C. S. Lewis expert, our
CS Lewis teacher. She had gave a class on C. S.
Lewis's Space trilogy, the Cosmic Trilogy, and now we have
a new class until we have Faces, which is kind
of in the air because you know, this kind of
return of the God's moment where people are being aware
of principalities and this neopaganism that's emerging. It feels like
it's definitely the book to talk about. And so I'm
happy to have you on with us.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. It's always a pleasure to talk
with you.
Speaker 3: And so we're a little late on this. The class
has already started. I think we already have two already,
there's already been two classes, and so I apologize everyone watching.
You can catch up. You can still sign up. I've
heard amazing things about it. People are definitely excited to
talk about this important book. And so maybe tell us
a little bit. Why you because you're the one who
proposed this, So why do you think that it's important
to talk about this book at this moment?
Speaker 2: Yes, while I propose it because I think it is
Lewis's best book. And as his friend Owen Barfield said,
you know, everything Lewis thought about everything was gathered together
in what he said about anything.
Speaker 1: So Lewis is a very.
Speaker 2: Systematic thinker who would pull together all the threads of
his thought into each thing that he said and created.
And nowhere is that more true of Till we Have Faces.
Speaker 1: That this book really gathers together in.
Speaker 2: His most mythic form, in his highest level of literature,
everything that Lewis thought about everything. So if people are
going to study one book, I think that Till we
Have Faces is the book to study, not only because
it pulls together all the threads of Lewis's thought in
a really well crafted novel, but also because it is
his most difficult book. And so if you're going to
have a guide, if you're going to and discuss it
with others, this is the book to do.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: Andrew Lazzo, another Lewis scholar, he calls Till We Have
Faces like the Rosetta Stone of C. S.
Speaker 1: Lewis's work.
Speaker 2: So if you can decode the language of this book,
then you can go to all of Lewis's other work,
have the tools you need to read the rest of
his corpus. So that's the main reason I thought, Okay,
we're going to do another class. It's my second favorite
book after Perilandra. We already did the Ransom trilogy. But
then also because everybody's talking about re enchantment, right everyone
is talking about the return of the gods, and this
book is a myth retold and it's told in an
ancient pagan mythical context. And so if we're going to
start talking and thinking about re enchantment and how do
we approach that, this book is right on point for
the theme you know that we see percolating through culture
right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, when I read it, I felt very similar
to what you're saying. You know, it's a it's very
it's a very strange book in some ways, you know,
because I'm used, how can I say this?
Speaker 4: I've had my criticism of C. S.
Speaker 3: Lewis, like in some ways the same criticism that you
know Tolkien had of some of his work, which is
that there's too much of a one to one thing
and it is like a kind of metaphorical language that
is a little too on the nose, like it's you know,
it's like.
Speaker 4: Aslin is Jesus. We all know the critique, you know.
Speaker 3: And I still loved, Yes, I love his theoretical work
to do, of course, and I think he's a he's
really a prophet for the modern for the modern age.
But reading till we have Faces, you don't get that
sense at all. You there's something far more eerie about
the presentation. There's there's a kind of ambiguity about some
of the elements in the story. And you know, there
the meditation, let's say, on our experience of the Numanus,
we could say this is Rodrere's word that he's using.
Is is far more subtle for those who don't know.
It's a it's a take on the myth of hero
in psyche. So maybe you can take us through, you know,
some of the key things that make it relevant to
us right now.
Speaker 1: Well, let's start with.
Speaker 2: Why you feel that a lot of Lewis's work is
a little on the nose or a little overly allegorical,
or as you said, Tolkien had that criticism. So Lewis
himself felt really deeply this bifurcation between his rational side.
Speaker 1: You know, he's a.
Speaker 2: Modern man, educated in the modern world, and then his
mythic side, or his imagination. He was an ulster irishman,
he was. He loved the mystical green hills of Ireland
and the myths and the legends of Ireland, and so
Lewis himself felt he felt very bifurcated. He wrote in
his autobiography that the two hemispheres of my mind were
in sharpest contrast. On the one side, this mini islanded
sea of poetry and myth, and on the other this
glib and shallow rationalism. And he said, for you know,
most of his young adult life, everything he loved he
thought was imaginary or unreal, and everything he thought to
be real or true he thought grim and meaningless. And
so he started adulthood with this really bifurcated experience of reality.
It was Tolkien Barfield first, and then Tolkien and Hugo
Dyson who helped him see that in Christ right, myth
in fact came together, and so that was the turning
point for him. But I think it took him a
long while to actually work out how to integrate those
modes within his own imagination and his own work. Right
so early on, his first work was pure allegory. So
he tries to write his conversion experience in the Pilgrim's Regress,
which is just like Pilgrim's Progress total all, you know,
that one to one correspondence. And then he starts to
write his apologetic work in nonfiction. So he's writing a
nonfiction or analytical mode, and then he'll write, you know,
something imaginative like screwtape Letters or Great Divorce, and you
kind of see him switching back and forth between rational
mode and then mythic mode. And you know, his friend
Owen Barfield would tease him that he had this expository
demon that he would try to write fiction, he would
slip back into the analytical mode and have a digression
on philosophy or theology. And it was another turning point
for him was his debate at the Oxford Debate Club
with the philosopher Elizabeth Anskm. So he was debating his
argument and Miracles with Anskam and he kind of lost
the debate, and that caused him to reevaluate.
Speaker 1: You know, one he always wanted to be a poet,
not a philosopher.
Speaker 2: So was that's really the best way to use his
energy in kind of this analytical, rational mode of argument.
Was that really the best place for him to be,
And so that's when he he kind of set aside
his rational, apologetic work and picked up the Chronicles of Narnia,
picked up fairy tales. And what I think is that
he has this essay called, sometimes a fairy tale may
best say what's to be said, right, maybe you can
relate to fairy tales being the best way to say
what we need to say, and he says it. What
he loved about fairy tales was their severe form, the
way that a fairy tale is. So it must be simple,
it must be pure, and it is intolerant of what
he called gas or. And so what he did, I
think is submit himself to the form of a fairy
tale as a kind of mode of discipline, to purge
himself of that expository demon. And so writing those children's
fairy tales disciplined him as a writer, forced him to
stay within the mode of narrative and not fall into
those rational, analytical digressions. And then I think by the
time he finished his seventh Narnian Chronicle his seventh Fairy Tales,
he kind of trained himself in how to better communicate
what he had to say while staying within the narrative,
within the mythic, and then he was ready for that
mode at the level of an adult novel, right because
an adult novel you pull off the training wheels, you
can start to slip into digression if you want to.
But by that time I think he'd figured it out.
And then unfortunately, you know, he passed away within a
decade after writing till we have Faces, and so we
don't get more of these novels from the mature Lewis,
but at least we got one.
Speaker 4: At least he got one.
Speaker 3: And so the strangest thing about two Wet Face is
that it I mean, some people have said it's his
most Christian work or something like that, but it's also
a pagan story, you know, and the strangeness of the
pagan world and the kind of cruelty of the pagan
world is put at the forefront. You know. The figure
of the father, you know, is this kind of brutal,
this brutal man, you know, and the and the daughters
trying to kind of find their way around that you know,
and it seems to continue. It's interesting because it also
seems to continue the line of Narnia, which Narnia although
it's more Christian in the appearance because of Aslan and
some of the characters are kind of really kind of
Christian allegories. But nonetheless he picked a kind of pagan landscape,
you know, for Narnia as well. And so do you
have insight about that? Like something I've been thinking about
a lot for Token as well. Why why did they
skirt writing within the Christian cosmology? Why did they want
to write within the with these pagan images? And I
have nothing against it, by the way, It's not a critique.
I'm just curious about what it is that prompted that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I do think a lot of people experience
it as confusing. Lewis tells us that again in that essay,
sometimes fairy tales may say what's best to be said,
which is a wonderful and a terrible title all at once.
That you know, what he felt like is when you
when you speak directly to someone, you you rouse their
self defenses, Right, Jonathan.
Speaker 1: You should do this, You should believe that.
Speaker 2: And by nature we say, well should I you know,
we have a natural defensiveness. And so he says that
myth and fairy tale can sneak past the watchful dragons.
It can take an idea that if we encounter it
directly with you know, this is what the law does.
Like Paul tells us that the law actually rouses sin
in us. It's just something true about our human nature.
When you tell me not to think about unicorns, well,
I want to think about unicorns. And so if we
take the truth, the thing we need to know, the
thing we need to see, and we put it, we
tell it slant like that poem poem, tell the truth,
but tell it slant that we put it in the
context of a fantasy world or a mythic world, or
a world over here, then we can sneak past the
watchful dragons. We can we can bring in truths we
need to see about reality in a way that is slant,
in a way that we don't expect, in a way
that strikes at the roots deeper than our conscious, conscious
self defenses. And so that's where I think both Tolkien
and Lewis looked to myth, look to fairy tales, look
to things that didn't feel overtly Christian because they wanted
to reframe these truths about reality that they wanted to
share with people for their own good, right, but in
ways that could sneak past those dragons and help open
people up to them in different ways. But in terms
of you know, till we have faces and it's very
pagan because it does feel dark, doesn't it. We have
human sacrifice. It's a story about human sacrifice. And so
I've been, you know, thinking about this, and I think
what lewis how he created stories is he said that,
you know, he did not have a truth he wanted
to tell, you know that, Oh I want to tell
children about the love of Jesus. How could I do that?
Let me think of a lion that could you know?
He said, That's not the way the imagination works. The
imagination works by perceiving an image or being captured by
some image, and then meditating on the image to perceive
through the imagination the meaning that is there. Right, So
an artist doesn't impose meaning on the world.
Speaker 1: An artist perceives.
Speaker 2: The meaning of the world through the muse of the imagination.
And so the story of Cupid and Psyche caught Lewis's imagination.
Actually when he was a very young man and he
tried to write several poems early on, and they just
they never worked. They never resonated. We talk about this
in the class in the first session. You know why,
I don't think they resonated. But it wasn't until what
thirty five years later, as an older man, that finally
he had the maturity, the religious vision to perceive what
those stories were trying to tell him. And I, you know,
my theory is and this is something I want to
talk to you about because I know, you know Rene
Girard and his his theory of a medic desire. And
what struck me is that, you know, for for Lewis,
when he's coming to myth and he's talking about myth
most of his life, he's seeing.
Speaker 1: Myth as as.
Speaker 2: Anticipation, anticipations of truth, that that myth is our way
of trying to see through the veil and perceive truths
about the divine nature. And so for Lewis he you know,
gleams myths or gleams of light. Okay, but that strikes
me as fairly different from it when a Girard is
saying about myth. Right because Gerard is saying that myths
are actually that as humans, we encounter a good, so
we see someone else desiring a good. So in the
story until we have faces, we see that the beauty
of Psyche, she's beautiful, and we see people desire her beauty.
And when when Rowell sees someone desire the beauty of Psyche,
that rouses an arowell imitative desire. She also wants the
beauty of Psyche, and then that creates the rivalry.
Speaker 1: The archetype of this is Helen.
Speaker 2: Right, This is I think one reason why why do
all stories connect back to true Right, isn't it bizarre?
Everyone's always wanting to be on the side of the losers, right,
we want to identify with the Trojans, Like what's going on?
Part of I think is that Helen is the archetype
of mimetic desire. The most beautiful woman in the world. Well,
what does beauty do? Beauty rouses our desire. Everybody wants
the most beautiful woman in the world. That creates this
memetic competition for a finite good. Well, not everyone can
have a finite good. Therefore there's violence and conflict, and
the whole world burns down. Right, The cities are destroyed,
the Greek armies are destroyed. Mimetic desire destroys the world.
Speaker 1: Right, So what does Gerard say, So, how do we
cope with that?
Speaker 2: Well, you create the scapegoat mechanism, right, so that and
you know, the whole war, the Trojan war, could have
been avoided if they just let Paris be the scapegoat, right, like.
Speaker 3: Just giving up Paris, like things would have would have
been solved something like that.
Speaker 2: Well, you actually find in the iliat that they try,
but the gods won't let them. Irony, right, So so
you come with a scapegoat mechanism. Well, we'll put all
the blame on this one person and then cast out, exile,
or kill the scapegoat so as to resolve the violence,
so as to present the whole world from burning down.
And then, for Gerard, a myth is the story that
we make up to justify that violence, to give that violence,
you know, the the the a divine justification.
Speaker 1: Well, the gods required it. So for Gerard, myths are.
Speaker 2: Lies or deceptions that we create and then participate in
through ritual in order to justify right, the violence against
the victim.
Speaker 1: Wait, so it.
Speaker 2: Struck me that those are two very different approaches to myths,
where for Gerard, myth is deception and for Lewis myth
is gleams of truth.
Speaker 1: Well, which one is it?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I think it's both.
Speaker 3: I think for sure is your ards you as you.
I mean, I'm not an expert on Grard, but you know,
the more that I think about his basic premise, the
more I realize that he's he's fifty percent right and
therefore fifty percent wrong. Like he gets he gets half
of sacrifice, but he doesn't understand the other half, you know,
because there are two aspects of sacrifices. You know, there
is the scapegoat sacrifice. And one of the things that
I think this is the most difficult aspect of this
idea is that if you understand the problem of scapegoat,
the question of scapegoat sacrifice, it's more than just.
Speaker 4: An idea of mimetic desire.
Speaker 3: It is that, but it actually is the way that
identity functions. In order for identity to function, you have
to decide where how can I say this, You have
to eject the things that don't fit from an identity.
That is actually how all identity functions. You have to
be able to expel the things that that aren't conducive
to the cohesion of the identity, whether you do it
conceptually or whether you do.
Speaker 4: It in practice, like in a group.
Speaker 3: You know, you you know, if you if you have
if you have a company and there's someone in the
company that is not a good employee and you eject them, Like,
is that a scapegoat sacrifice? I mean, maybe it's a
scapegoat sacrifice. And sometimes it has a mimetic aspect, which
would uh, which in which you can put more blame
on the person you eject than they deserve in order
to reinforce the cohesion. But it's also it's also a
necessary part of identity to eject things that don't fit. Now,
of course, the extremely ritualized aspect of mimetic sacrifice that appears,
you know, in the ancient world, uh, you know, obviously
has you can kind of understand how it's closer to
what Gerard is saying. But you know, this is I
think that this is where Gerard gets it wrong, is
that mimetic sacrifice is revealing an aspect of how reality works,
and it is revealing an aspect of how identity functions.
It actually works, it actually, it actually and the idea
that Christ is only exposing the false nature of mimetic sacrifice,
I think that that's a wrong take on it.
Speaker 4: I think that what Christ does is that.
Speaker 3: He fuses the two aspects of sacrifice together, which is
the second part of sacrifice, is the one that Gerard
seems at least struggle to understand, which is the idea
of giving up the best, up to up to God,
right the escape goes in the yng keyboard. Sacrifice are
two sacrifices. One is the scapegoad sacrifice and one is
the purification sacrifice. One is cast out of the identity
in order to wander and to kind of become the
crooked aspect of you know, take on the crooked aspect
of our identity the sins, and the other is offered
up to God and its blood comes back down to cover,
you know, the holy things and bind them.
Speaker 4: That's a good way of understanding it.
Speaker 3: And so those are the two aspects of sacrifice in
Christ shows us how oins them together in a very
particular and transcendent way. And so that's why I think that,
and it's you think about it, like the two aspects
of reality in general, which is all representations of reality
are both a representation of reality and not the thing
that is represented. And so all levels of being can
be represented as truth, which manifests God to us, and
as a lie, which is a veil that's hiding truth
from us because God is beyond that reality. And so
that's just how the world functions. If you take the
veil for itself, then it's an idol, Then it's a mistake,
then it's a lie, then it's a then it's a
you know. But if you take the veil as something
that's translucent through which you see the light come through,
and as something that is revealing, you know, imperfectly a
higher truth, then it's a form of truth right at
the level that it's supposed to be, not ultimate truth.
And so I think that that's the that's the way
to understand it, you know. And you know, interestingly enough,
I think that these are themes that are in.
Speaker 4: Till we have face. Yes, yes, no, yes, I mean
you can elaborate.
Speaker 3: On that, because the whole question of veils is very
important in the story.
Speaker 1: Yes, And I think so.
Speaker 2: I think this is part of why the story captured
his imagination, is because the story itself points towards this
polyvalency of symbolism and of sacrifice. And I think Lewis,
as a young man, it's almost like the world is
like a rorsch act test, right, because symbols have that
poly valancy, you know, And as Christ said, to the pure,
all things are pure to those and defiled and believing
nothing is pure, right, So that symbolism has that double
vision to it, right, and so that we can see
what we want to see, or that what we see
is actually a revelation of our own hearts and our
own desires the way that the symbolism is set up.
And so Lewis is a young man looked at this
myth and he saw that the gods were in the wrong,
but he could never make the story make sense from
that perspective, right. And then later, as an older man,
he came to see that the older sister was indeed
and the wrong. And so I think the story captured
him because of its double vision, because of the way
it shows both the demonic side of sacrifice and the
true side of sacrifice. And yeah, it very much is
connected to the imagery of the veil itself, right, which
is I think one of the most clearly polyvalent symbols, right, A.
Speaker 1: Veil both.
Speaker 2: Conceals and reveals, and you see that double symbolism all
throughout the story. And then the main character wrestling with
being you know, this is part of why the story
is so fascinating, because the whole first half is written
from one side of the symbolism, and then she has
an experience that forces her to change and then begin
to rewrite her own history, to rework and see the
other side of the veil throughout her own story, which
she didn't see before. So all of those themes are
in this story. And I think it's what attracted Lewis
to the story, the way that it did pull together
the major themes of his life into one narrative, because you.
Speaker 4: See, like it's interesting.
Speaker 3: There is a sense, like in Parailandra in the Marston series,
you get this sense that the principalities are double, Like
you really do see that that in some ways he
tries to formulate it in a way he's saying, in
some ways, the way that we perceive these principalities has
been twisted, you know, by the evil one, and therefore
the version we have it's kind of an impure version
of the.
Speaker 4: Of the principalities.
Speaker 3: But if you but at the end of the series,
you know, you see this glimmering image of Venus and Mars,
who are ultimately the ancient pagan gods, but like as
they are messengers from the from the High God in
the sense of how they are representations, you know, in
their proper sphere of masculinity and femininity you could say,
of God. And so you know, it's in this book
you have kind of the same idea because this, you know,
for people who don't know, like we're talking about it
and we're not telling people what the story about. Like this,
this woman is given, you know, kind of sacrifice to
this God, and there's a strange you know, in some ways,
she's supposed to die there with the God. And when
you see her from the outside, she becomes this like
ragged princess. You know, she looks like she's almost like
a homeless lady. But in her inner experience of what's happening,
she's actually the bride of of a of a of
a god like she and she's the bride of a god,
but she has to be careful in the way in
which he deals with the God, that she has to
like not look at the God directly. She has to
be patient and kind of wait for the God to
reveal himself to her in the proper circumstance so that
she doesn't you know, let's say, transgress what the relationship
she has with the God and so, and ultimately these
two parts seem to be true, like.
Speaker 4: You could actually read it.
Speaker 3: You can read it from both sides, like she really
is this ragged princess like running around barely almost homeless,
but her inexperience is also described as true in the story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's part of what makes the story
so well crafted, is that the way that Lewis tells
the story, he maintains the tension of a double vision
or a double interpretation.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: One way he does that is the contrast between the priest,
who represents the pagan mythic imagination and the fox who
represents he's a stoic kind of enlightenment philosopher in a sense,
rational enlightenment, and that as the events of the story progress,
you can interpret it from either angle. It makes sense
if you look at it from the priest's angle, who
is referring to the gods, you know, who are demanding
the sacrifice of the a curse to make the fields,
you know, to bring to heal the plague and the famine.
You can also interpret it from the fox's perspective of
that doesn't make sense he's saying things. Let's see how
the fox's perspective might work. Is that, well, of course
the rains came after the sacrifice, because they had to
come sometime.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Of course, when things go badly, you can always invent
a scapegoat to blame. That doesn't mean it was the
scapegoat who caused the famine. And so the way that
Lewis tells the story, the whole time he pulls out
this double vision, he pulls out this polyvalency again, and
so that the story functions as a reflection on the reader,
so that you know, the first time I read it,
I didn't like it.
Speaker 4: And the first time, pardon I didn't like the story.
Speaker 2: I didn't even make it past page ten. You know,
the first time I read it, I was like, what
is going on? Then the second time I read it,
I sided with Oral and the fox, and you know,
kind of my maybe more conservative Christian bias against the
evils of paganism. Right then the third time I read it,
I saw the darkness of oral And so each time
you read it, because he's done such a perfect job
of pulling out that tension, showing the double vision of
that we do experience in reality, makes the story itself
a mirror in which you have to wrestle with your
own desires and what you want to see out of
the world and out of the story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I mean, do you see those two sides,
because the outs that you've presented Lewis as someone who
in himself kind of wrestled with these two aspects, a
more kind of medieval enchanted vision of the world, but
then also this, you know, kind of rationalistic modern man.
I mean, do you see that these this is what's
going on in the story itself with these these two characters.
Speaker 4: Are these two aspects of the story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very much.
Speaker 2: And you can see quotes that orwell speaks that are
paraphrases from Lewis's own autobiography. She She also says, I
felt literally torn into the way that Lewis says that,
So he very much is there's an autobiographical element, but
it need not be about Lewis because it's really about
us as modern people, right at the end of the
modern world, the collapse of modern rationalism, wrestling through how
to find a mode of reintegration, knowing that we can't
go back to.
Speaker 1: Ancient paganism.
Speaker 2: And Lewis is very influenced by his friend Owen Barfield, Right,
And I don't know if you've read Barfield Saving the
Appearances or poetic Diction, and he very much talks about
how for the ancient person, the ancient person would perceive
the world as unities, and he calls the So you'll
see this in a classic example, is the idea of breath, right,
is it breath or.
Speaker 1: Is it spirit?
Speaker 2: Well, for the ancient person, yes, they didn't experience that
as separate things. It was the breath and the spirit
were a unity, and so they would perceive the world
in unities, and that it was, you know, let's say,
beginning with Greek philosophy and then you know, not being
a foretaste of what would come in the modern enlightenment,
where through because think about reason, reason works through through bifurcation.
Speaker 1: Is it a or not a? Is it A or B?
Speaker 2: And so reason works by differentiating. Right, So it's that
fall into duality, which brings a certain kind of knowledge,
but at a certain cost. And so for Barfield, you know,
human consciousness begin through experiencing the world through these unities.
And you talk about this all the time, right where
those distinctions almost don't make sense when you're going back
to look at a biblical or ancient motive being. And
then in the modern world, moving toward the modern world,
more and more and more and more.
Speaker 1: We separate.
Speaker 2: Using the instrument of reason into this or that, you know,
And these are some of those the silliness that happens
over theology.
Speaker 1: Well is it works or faith?
Speaker 2: You know? Well, that makes no sense to an age
the faith that works. What do you mean believing and
not embodying it?
Speaker 1: Right like? That makes no sense. And so modern man, has.
Speaker 2: You really ripped the world apart into body and spirit,
into this or that? And so Lewis we are all,
you know, striving after now as we see, that's not
gonna work. It's led us to nihilism. We're striving after
a mode of reintegration, which Barfield called a final participation.
And in that sense it's it's that the you can
maybe see a kind of providence.
Speaker 3: There.
Speaker 2: So in sports. So for me, I'm a drissage writer.
Is that so like snobby or what? But and in
dressage we'll talk about in training that you're aiming for
a simplicity on the other side of complexity. Okay, so
when you start something, there's a kind of simplicity. We'll
just get on the horse and kick right, yeah, okay,
And then you get into it and you try and
get good, you realize it's not that simple at all.
It's extraordinary complex and you fall into multiplicity because you're
trying to figure out how to control every inch of
your body. But once you move through that complexity on
the other side, you have a reintegrated simplicity where you
then you just ride. And that's the flow that people
are aiming toward in sports, right And for Barfield and
for Lewis, that's what modern man we're trying to reach
toward a simplicity, a reintegration of mind and body that's
on the other side of this multiplicity that we've fallen into.
And for Lewis, the key is myth because he thinks
that in store in myth mythic stories, not modern novels
that are full of idiosyncrasies, but mythic stories, what we
have is an imaginative experience of universal truths. So myth
itself will bring together a participatory, embodied, ritual, imaginative mode
of reality with all of these truths that reason has discovered,
but give us an experience of them in a way
that brings the parts of our our soul back together.
Speaker 3: Sorry, that was maybe I think that this is really
what you're saying is really important, you know. And then
the the question, and this is the question someways in
symbolic world we've been talking about exactly what you're saying
is that this is inevitable, like this is in some
ways modernity is yielding.
Speaker 4: To something like that.
Speaker 3: The question is is it simply going to happen to
us or will we have some form of participation in
the way it does. Because sometimes these myths, you know,
they break in, and then they break in in ways
that can also be extremely destructive. You know, we've talked
about the during COVID, the George Floyd like situation where
all of a sudden, the story like just falls into
culture and like captures everybody and mobilizes everybody in the world,
like not just in America.
Speaker 4: For some reason, Like all over Europe, people are.
Speaker 3: Out in the streets, you know, and this character gets
lifted up, you know, like a like an almost divine figure.
But there are other types, there are other versions of
that happening all the time where these stories kind of
break in, and you know, it's interesting to think about
till we have Faces almost as a story about that,
because the Fox, the Fox, for those who don't know,
the Fox is like a Greek, a slave that is
brought into this pagan world, and he kind of is
a more rational person. He's a you know, he's in
always a representation of the modern mind that's thrown into
a kind of primitive and pagan world that he is
trying to pull the people kind of.
Speaker 4: Out of that world.
Speaker 3: But then what happens to this figure and to everybody
in that world is that.
Speaker 4: The numinous just breaks in.
Speaker 3: Basically, it's like now, what now, how do you deal
with this thing that's happening, this thing that is beyond
what reason can account for? H And in that context,
like you said, in some ways, the character of the
Fox all of a sudden becomes insufficient to be able
to account for everything that's happening in the novel, even
though the character is very sympathetically portrayed, not at all
like I would tend to portray the modern person as
with the kind of frustration of my experience with the
kind of modern reductionists. But but Lewis presents it very,
very sympathetically, and so in some ways, the whole story
is an image of what it is that's happening to
us now, which is as we can as modernity kind
of runs out, and now this newmaness is peeking in,
you know, for those who are I mean, for goodness sake.
Speaker 4: I was watching the Trump's press press released.
Speaker 3: Today with like all the AI people, and they're saying,
we're funding the largest AI thing in the world, five
hundred billion dollars to build into AI infrastructure. We're calling
it Project Stargate, And I'm like, what the hell is happening?
Why are you calling it Project Stargate. It's like, I mean,
this is happening to us, like something is you know,
and everybody's talking about UFOs, and everybody's talking about these
unidentified things, and is it?
Speaker 4: And so we're right there, like we're right at the cusp.
Speaker 3: Of some of these things that we've been peaked that
we've been seeing peak through culture now for the past
decade become absolutely unquestionable, like it's going to be at
some point everybody is going to be thrown into this
perception of something more than what reason can account for.
Speaker 4: And how do we deal with it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure?
Speaker 2: And I think, you know, there's a reason that Lewis
portrays the Fox sympathetically, because reason does play a function
in protecting us from deception, right, And so I think
in the Until We Have Faces, we can look at
the character of Psyche, who is a kind of idealized character.
She's kind of a saint. She we can just think
of her as as what a saint looks like in
her own context and as she So I love how
you're describing. You know, the newmanis the mythic just breaks
in and how do we respond? And and that you know,
the demand of Psyche's sacrifice looks very demonic, looks very scary,
looks very much like a demonic story breaking in to
seize control of the world. Right, So how is it
that Psyche responds to it? And there's this chapter I
think at seven it's a conversation between Oral and Psyche
the night before she's sacrificed, and Orwal's upset and just
and just wanting to weep. And but Psyche is paring
herself as a saint, prepares themselves for martyrdom, right, and
that she's giving us an image of the martyrs. Well,
I'm sure that when the martyrs were being thrown to
the lions that it felt like a demonic myth breaking
in and taking control of their world.
Speaker 1: Right, how do they respond to it?
Speaker 2: And the way that Psyche responds is that she and
this is that poly valant and it very much echoes
Saint my goodness, can't remember his name right now, Please
forgive me, ignacious Saint Ignacius, who who says what I'm
afraid of is that you will you will or will
prevent me from being sacrificed because I desire God, and
by being offered to him is how.
Speaker 1: I participate in his life. It is how I am
joined to my lover.
Speaker 2: It is how I become one with my bridegroom by
becoming the you know, the bread of Christ offered in
an anemnesis an imitation of my Lord. Let me participate
in the story because from the way that you're looking
at again, to the pure, all things are pure, to
the undefiled and believing nothing is pure right. And so
for oral and the people who see the demonic side,
it's terror. But to the saints and those who see
the divine side, it is an opportunity to participate right
in in the life of Christ for the life of
the world. And so I think, you know, that story
is going to break in, but there's always a divine
side to the story that we can see and choose
to participate in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and or well, you know, there's this this scene
which I think it's it's probably one of the most
obviously the most crucial scenes in the story, you know,
when her sister, when she sees her sister after the sacrifice,
you know, for the first time, and she she glimpses
the palace, right, she glimpses the God's palace, and then
that's just a glimpse, and then she refuses the experience,
like she basically says, no, I'm going to stick with
this just the reason part. And that's when you know,
she starts to in some ways embitter herself and become
you know, and that's when she starts to wear she
like literally wears like a veil over her face at
some point, like it's even our to imagine it. The
character in the story, like she's becomes kind of like
the king figure, but she she's hiding herself behind this
this veil, you know. And and I think that again,
like in terms of this moment like that we're going
through it, it is also going to become dangerous for
us to refuse what's happening, you know, and what's happening
right now is very dangerous. Like it's not there's nothing,
there's no I think that's just good about it, Like
there is We're in an extremely dangerous, crucial transformation of society.
But we also cannot simply pretend and think that we
can hold on to the old world because the old
world is going away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And there's where I very much agree with Paul
Kingsnors that you know, the previous world has died, has ended,
and I think that we're there are many points of
participation in the formation of a new world, you know,
personally in terms of as a homeschooler and homeschooling in
the classical renewal, I feel like I've had the opportunity
to participate in the seeds of renewal, right, and the
preservation of the old story, in the preservation of functional
family models. And so I think you're right, like this myth, this, this
the new menus has broken in, It has seized us.
The old world is ending, the new world is being born.
We have to choose what we will participate in. But
there are you know, seeds of there are arcs, there
are there are seeds of renewal, seeds of a new
world being born, arcs, temple arc spaces in which we
can participate in. Right, And so this is what Lewis
shows us. I think at the end of that hideous
strength is okay, Well, when the world collapses, Uh, you
know what do the faithful Christians do? Well, they gather
around the table, They grow vegetables, they take care of
their dogs, they have babies. Right, you do the same
thing you've always done, which was faithfully participate in in
in the thing that we've been called you know what
is human. We faithfully participate what it means to be human.
And you know, one other polyvalency that I want to
point out since I brought up that hideous strength, is
that it's really interesting at the end of that hideous strength.
Speaker 1: It's the end of a world.
Speaker 2: Right, It's an image of the collapse of modernity and
the techno bureaucracy and the machine.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: And what you have, as Bellbury is it's you have
two banquets, and this is part of that polyvalency.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So the banquet that we see in Revelation, this feast
that happens at the consummation of a world, let's say,
is destruction for the enemies of God, but a banquet
for the people of God. Right, And that you have
that double vision and Revelation where Christ comes with.
Speaker 1: The feast of the lamb.
Speaker 2: And yet and I think it's Revelation either nineteen or
twenty one, it's the wine press is the trampling of
the enemies of God.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, But like you said, there is this
duality of it also being the consumption and the marriage,
you know, of the of the bridegroom and the bride,
you know, and that is definitely as present until we
have faces that that duality is there.
Speaker 4: All through all through the book.
Speaker 3: And so you know, I, you know, I I'm really
happy that that you're doing this, Like I'm really happy
that it seems like this is the right time, you know,
for people to dive into this story.
Speaker 4: Folks.
Speaker 3: If you haven't read the book, now's now's the time
to read it. It is definitely, it is definitely uh
something that speaks clear It's not clearly, but speaks very
profoundly to our moment. And I'm really happy that you're
that you're doing this class for us. So there's still
time to catch up, folks. I think there's only two
classes that have started. You can watch the first ones
and then jump in live with any uh and the people.
And I think you're doing this very interactive in my understanding.
Speaker 1: Yes, so, and we've only had one class.
Speaker 2: Well, although by the time yeah, and then we're having
a week off, we're gonna have two more classes in February.
Speaker 1: So yeah, if you want to join, jump in.
Speaker 2: The recordings for all of the Symbolic World classes are
always available for people to come in watch those recordings
on their own time participate, you know, go look at
the discussions on the forums. I'm providing quite a few
supplementary resources essays from Lewis and other scholars to walk
you through a story that really it does not speak clearly,
but I think that is exactly why it's important for
this moment is because we are having we are being
pushed to move past leaning on our own clear understanding
and learning to trust in participatory ways of knowing right
through the Great story through you say, go to church
to participate in a reality that is, you know, greater
than your own understanding, and then that reality can carry
you when you go through these seasons you know that
that are that are harder than what you can control.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm curious. It's so interesting C. S. Lewis.
Speaker 3: The more that I think about him, the more that
I meditate on him, it seems like he really is
a prophetic figure, you know, because some of his insights,
he was seeing something that really was just in the
germ there was really still very seed like you know,
that hideous strength, although there was already you know, you
can sense already after World War Two that there that
there were these seeds of things happening. But you know,
when you read it today, you feel like, my goodness,
like this could have you know, except for like the
technical details, some of the descriptions of the technical way
they do things that it's talking exactly about our age
and so so he definitely is a profit and in
some ways a precursor for a lot of the things
that we talk about in SIBAC World, a lot of
the things that Martinshaw talks about, or Paul kings North
and all these people that are kind of appearing on
the scene right now, and even in a weird way
for what Jordan Peterson is doing as well. Strangely enough,
although Jordan's sometimes he has a love of the he
has a bit of a love of the machine that
that that we're still we're still figuring out. And so
everybody go go to symbolic world dot com. Uh you
members of the symbolic world dot com get also a
discount on the courses. You can find that out as
you go on the website and you can find Annie's
class and jump in. It's definitely worth it. And so Annie,
thanks for everything you do. And I can't wait to
see what the next what the next class that you
think is worth our time in the future.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks Jonathan, I appreciate the opportunity