Aslan and the Divine

[rthstewart]

lady_songsmith and her reflections on divinity in TSG

Aslan and the Divine

I really like that you refer to the Divine fluidly -- Him, Her, Aslan, God, Allah -- rather than trying to cram all of this strictly into the Christian theology alone.

Impressed that you keep the mystic/divine on a level that is subtle and understated enough to be wholly believable. Your characters may be hearing the Voice of God, but it is done so delicately that we as readers are not bashed over the head by Great Revelations. One could, if one chose (and were perhaps of a mindset like the Col's), read all of the Aslan-moments as the voices of the characters' subconscious minds rather that any manifestation of the Divine.

I also love L's -- 'casual' is the wrong word, but I lack the vocabulary for what I do mean -- relationship with Aslan, and the way E accepts this a matter of course although it seems he doesn't hear A so clearly nor does he really seem to expect to, ever. Of course, later in QSiT he does have a conversation with A, so perhaps I misread that; my impression in Pt1 was that he sensed A much the way P did in the garden with RR, rather than the solidity of L's conversations.

I can't help thinking that if P makes Asim's inner eye squint, L will probably blind him.

Re: RR and AP's discussion of suicide/euthanasia: this very short interaction has a ton to be unpacked in it, but I’ve tried about a dozen times to take a stab at explaining why I find it both irritating and very fitting and gotten nowhere.

Comments

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

One could, if one chose (and were perhaps of a mindset like the Col's), read all of the Aslan-moments as the voices of the characters' subconscious minds rather that any manifestation of the Divine.

I had meant to comment on this earlier as well. One concept I have been playing with is that different people, of different cultures, education, and background, see Narnia in the Pevensies, though they get there differently and come to different conclusions. After introducing the Tarot and Agnes' ambiguous use of it (which I keep deliberately ambiguous), and hearing Hev speak of Lucy in Jungian archetypal terms, I thought of pushing the Colonel into that mindset -- the spy master trained in psychoanalysis.

I am not sure if Colonel Walker-Smythe is a person of faith or not -- I suspect, traditional man that he is, that there is old COE in there, tempered with a lifetime of seeing very odd, mystical, and unexplained things. Watson said to Holmes in the recent film, "I once heard a man precisely predict his own death." I heard the Colonel speaking in that moment.

It is very likely that the Colonel would consider talking to God and dead people a manifestation of the subconscious. It is an excellent idea. He is not, as Richard is, able to take the mystery on faith. He does, I think, see the miracle of the divine in the complexity of the human mind even if he would not believe the divine to operating through that mind. It's an interesting thought to ponder.