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

[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*