apparently, driveby meta: YET MORE CONSPIRACY THEORIES

[bedlamsbard]

I just had a sudden urge to put the Erinyes into Narnia. No, honey, we're not going to do that, that's the whole point -- by removing the White Witch from the equation, Aslan has destroyed the balance of power in Narnia. Yes, the White Witch disturbed it in the first place by causing the Long Winter and keeping Aslan and Father Christmas (and presumably Bacchus) out of Narnia, and imprisoning the river gods in slumber by freezing the rivers, but she didn't go so far as to kill Aslan until the circumstances had changed. And then Aslan destroyed her utterly, and Narnia was left without a replacement. The Deep Magic was disturbed. (Also, this leads into my conspiracy theories on why The Last Battle ended the way it did.)

"Have you forgotten the Deep Magic?" asked the Witch.

"Let us say I have forgotten it," answered Aslan gravely. "Tell us of this Deep Magic."

"Tell you?" said the Witch, her voice growing suddenly shriller. "Tell you what is written on that very Table of Stone which stands beside us? Tell you what is written in letters deep as a spear is long on the fire-stones on the Secret Hill? Tell you what is engraved on the scepter of the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea? You at least know the Magic which the Emperor put into Narnia at the very beginning. You know that every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey and that for every treachery I have a right to a kill."

[...]

"Fool," said the Witch with a savage smile that was almost a snarl, "do you really think your master can rob me of my rights by mere force? He knows the Deep Magic better than that. He knows that unless I have blood as the Law says all Narnia will be overturned and perish in fire and water."

"It is very true," said Aslan, "I do not deny it."

(C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Ch. 13: "Deep Magic from the Dawn of Time")

...huh, I wonder what the Secret Hill is? I don't think it's mentioned elsewhere in the books -- do you think it's the hill in The Magician's Nephew with the Garden on it? But then what are the fire-stones? You don't want to put too many precious world-creating/world-sustaining immortal magical objects in one place.

(clearly, I have the attention span of a gnat.)

Comments

[snacky]

Oooh, and maybe the Lady of the Green Kirtle was a way of restoring the balance? Of course, she was hacked to bits, so much for that.

In my old books (1970s paperbacks), it's "the roots of the World Ash Tree," instead of "fire-stones of the Secret Hill." I like the idea of both things, although you're right, it's not mentioned again in the books. I always kind of pictured either in Aslan's Country.

[bedlamsbard]

I have not yet worked out where the Lady of the Green Kirtle fits in my own personal Narnia mythology, but maybe! I have Thoughts, which The Magician's Nephew has thrown into a wild frenzy, about the origins of the gods and other immortals in the Narnia 'verse, including Aslan himself. Which I may or may not end up touching on... (Actually, possibly in the narniaexchange story.) The fact that there are canonically a number of different gods in the Narnia world is very important to me and my Narnia mythology. Not just Aslan and Tash, but Bacchus, and the river god, and I think there's a wood god mentioned in MN, too.

OOOH. I GUESS I SHALL HAVE TO GET MY HANDS ON AN OLDER COPY OF LWW. Oh, well, what a trial, how shall I ever bear it. I shall have to get a copy that matches my old school VotDT paperback that I picked up last year in the Quarter. Oooh, I am so intrigued, I love it. Since ash doesn't produce fruit, it can't be connected to the magic apple tree in LWW -- maybe that's why it got changed, Lewis was originally thinking that the wood of the wardrobe came from the world ash tree?

[snacky]

ALSO YOU WILL FIND MAUGRIM WITH A DIFFERENT NAME IN THE OLDER VERSION.

To be honest, the changes are fairly minor in LWW; it's only VDT that has a big change (which I actually prefer to the original version, the one that's currently published).

And ash is extremely enduring, isn't it? So that could be a part of it.

[bedlamsbard]

I remember hearing that somewhere! Fenris Ulf, right?

Ash is enduring, and -- hmm, I think it's got some magical connotations, it might keep away witches? Or spirits? *goes to look up* Yggdrasil, the Scandinavian tree of life, is an ash tree. Oooh, apparently there are some superstitions about whether it will be a wet or dry season connected to whether the ash comes into before or after the oak. (And although it's not in the books, in the movie Peter's symbol is oak, because it's the tree of kings, so I could do things here with this!) The fruit is called "locks" or "keys" or "locks and keys", so if originally the wardrobe came from ash, that's interesting...although Lewis changed that later. Hmm, the Mead of Poetry was made from ash!

Hi, I'm bedlamsbard, and I like trivia. Oh, I never uploaded my Yggdrasil icon!

[snacky]

Fenris Ulf, yes! It was such a wolf-y name!

Ooo, fascinating stuff about the ash, especially the "locks and keys."

[bedlamsbard]

Huh...if you had Fenris Ulf in with the World Ash -- those are both from Scandinavian mythology, which is really interesting. I'm not an expert on Scandinavian mythology, but -- wait. I just thought of something.

*googles* Never mind, I was wrong -- I thought for some reason that Fenrir, in Norse myth, was gnawing at the roots of Yggdrasil, and when he finally succeeds the world will end, but that turns out not to be true. There's a dragon (a wyrm) gnawing on one of the roots of Yggdrasil, and Fenrir (also called the Fenrisulf) is imprisoned until Ragnarok, at which point he goes to war with the gods, but that's probably unrelated.

*cough*

[snacky]

Oh! Lady of the Green Kirtle! I have a theory that she's some kind of balance failsafe, actually! :D Like, she was created by Jadis to come into being, as a backup, in case Jadis was killed.

[bedlamsbard]

Huh, interesting. I -- oh my god, I want to meta so much, but I totally should not because of [redacted on account of narniaexchange]! *wails* (Hint: my recipient did not ask for this. Uh, whoops.)

[edenfalling]

*dons information gnome hat*

It's not an older edition in general; it's specifically an older American edition, from before HarperCollins got the American publication rights and decided to go back to the British texts and also publish the series in "chronological" order rather than publication order. The thing is, the changes from original British text to the old American text were not made by editorial fiat (in which case I could understand ditching them). They were made by Lewis himself, going back and revising with the benefit of hindsight, which is why the alterations to VDT improve the story... though I grant you the ones in LWW are basically cosmetic.

*removes hat*

[bedlamsbard]

Ooooh...are there any alterations in the other books, do you know?

...not that I'm planning on hunting down a complete set or anything...

[edenfalling]

LWW and VDT have the only changes I've noticed, which suggests to me that any changes in the other books would be pretty minor if they exist at all. But I have not done a line-by-line comparison.

[autumnia]

Digging out the old Narnia guide I bought years ago ("Companion to Narnia" by Paul Ford, 1994 ed.), the author didn't think there was anything in particular Lewis was referring to, but using it mainly as a visual of something mysterious. He writes:

No specific place is probably intended here, but Lewis may have used the term to evoke ... pictures of annual druidical rites throughout the British Isles in which the old year's fires were extinguished and the new fire was kindled at a sacred place, usually a low, round hill. The firestones were set in a permanent ring on the crown of the hill.

There's also an entry about the World Ash Tree (appears only in the US editions before 1994) that snacky mentioned above, if you're also interested in that.

[bedlamsbard]

That's what I was thinking too. Which (a) could make it a location outside of Narnia, (b) a location in Narnia we never see in canon, or (c) the hill that the Stone Table is on, though that seems less unlikely. (BUT, in the movie, they do show the Stone Table as being surrounded by standing stones, so the PTB could have had that in mind.) I like the non-Narnia location theory.

I am so intrigued by the World Ash Tree! Theory thrown at snacky up above.

[autumnia]

Hmm. I wish I could remember the exact line about the Ash Tree. Too bad I donated my old copies of the books to the library when I bought the 50th Anniversary color edition.

Here's the entry for the World Ash Tree, which is rather longer than the Secret Hill one:

... According to the White Witch, the words of the Deep Magic are written in at least three places: on the Stone Table, on the trunk of the World Ash Tree, and on the sceptre of the Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea... the written words suggest runes ... The World Ash Tree is Yggdrasill, the great tree of Scandinavian mythology, a symbol for existence...

The footnotes for this entry mentions how Ford consulted with other scholars trying to find references as to why Lewis would mention these things but no one really has an answer. I think the general consensus is that like the Secret Hill, it just adds to the illusion of all these mysterious and sacred places or objects.

[bedlamsbard]

I shall just have to find an older edition of LWW. Oh, such a trouble for me, how shall I ever cope?

[snacky]

I think that part of it was that Lewis was just tossing EVERYTHING into LWW and seeing what stuck. Like Santa Claus. :D

[juniperphoenix]

In my copy the line reads: "Tell you what is written in letters deep as a spear is long on the trunk of the World Ash Tree?" The rest of the passage is the same.