{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3771",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 3771,
    "subject": "Small g and big G",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2003-01-18T12:45:24+00:00",
    "last": "2003-01-18T12:45:24+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0301-2695@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Nigel Price",
        "address": "nigel.a.price at virgin.net"
      },
      "date": "2003-01-18T12:45:24+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Small g and big G",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Greetings, Urthlings! The ArchD'Ikon Zibethicus, he say..."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "...in the juvenile Narnia fictions, he has Tash\nas a god in 'The Last Battle', a _real_ god as I\nread it - at any rate, he exterminates someone\nwho has called on him in vain - but an evil god.\nMy reading, anyway...perhaps the confusion here\nis between the terms 'god' and 'deity'?  Should\nwe define, Socratically, before proceeding further?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "From my own reading of Lewis, I think I can say with reasonable confidence\nthat he would have subscribed to the fairly traditional Christian\nacknowledgement that the universe contains supernatural and powerful beings\nwho, relative to human beings, may seem like gods. But the orthodox\nChristian view is that these \"gods\" are created beings, made by God himself.\nThat includes the Devil, who makes nothing but only warps things already\nmade by God (a point which, incidentally, Tolkien repeatedly makes about\nSauron). The Narnian Tash is a Devil-analogue. His power is real but limited\nand unlike Aslan, the Narnian incarnation of Christ, he is not immortal or\ntruly God."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "Finally!  Someone who remembers that Williams was\nthere!  And this helps to make my point a little\nclearer; in 'The Place of the Lion', Williams has -\nmore-or-less, and speaking very loosely - certain\nJungian 'archetypes' (I'm starting to dislike that\nword) come to life, and examines their effect upon\na community.  Does this make Williams any less of\na sincere Christian, although it is hardly orthodox\ntheology?  (We shall pass over his early membership\nof the Golden Dawn in judicious silence...)"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Williams is such a wonderful but odd writer, isn't he? I confess to an\nintense love-hate relationship with his books.\n\nIf I may make so bold about such a complex and mystical book, can I suggest\nthat the primary thing going on in \"The Place of the Lion\" is that the\narchetype of each of the nine orders of angels is let loose in the world. As\na creation and agent of God, each of these archetypes represents an abstract\naspect of God's character but is not actually God himself. The Lion, for\nexample, is (I think!) God's almighty power, but without the other aspects\nof his character it actually represents, taken in isolation, a caricature\nand distortion of the true divine personality. It is, in a sense, a \"god\",\nbut to worship it would be a sin and would bring about the worshipper's\ndestruction. (As an aside, note how anxious the angel in Revelation is that\nJohn should not make the mistake of worshipping him - Rev 22.9) Which is\nwhat happens to one of the characters in the novel, if I recall.\n\nThe whole syncretistic business of how Neoplatonic thought became\nintertwined with Christian theology and cosmology in the Dark and Middle\nAges is something that I used to know all about, but that was in another\nlifetime (one of toil and blood). The point for us here is that the orders\nof angels were indeed enumarated as nine, each led by a chief angel who was\nfurther identified by some, as referred to above, with an archetypal aspect\nof God's character. God was seen in this scheme as the \"archetype of\narchetypes\". Oh yes, and each of the chief angels was also identified with a\nsymbollic animal.\n\nRemember that the heroine's thesis in \"The Place of the Lion\" is - if my\nmemory serves me - on \"Neoplatonism in the Court of Charlemagne\". Archetypes\nwere Platonic and then Neoplatonic commonplaces long before Jung reapplied\nthe idea of psychology. Which is not to say that that idea may not also be\npresent in Williams, but I really don't believe that it's primary.\n\nAs to what all this has to do with Wolfe, well, think of Tzadkiel and the\nother angelic beings in his writings and consider how much he may too have\nbeen playing with similar ideas to Williams. Interesting to see that he\nexplicitly mentions reading Charles Williams in the interview which he did\nwith Nutria.\n\nNigel"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}