306: Planet Narnia: Moon and Sun

Summary

Classical Stuff You Should Know

Episode 306: Planet Narnia: Moon and Sun

Released: August 4, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this lively episode, hosts A.J. Hanenburg, Graeme Donaldson, and Thomas Magby (with a playful cameo from "old man Dan") continue their deep dive into Michael Ward's Planet Narnia thesis. This theory posits that C.S. Lewis composed the Chronicles of Narnia with each book corresponding thematically and symbolically to one of the seven medieval planets—Jupiter, Mars, Moon, Mercury, Sun, Venus, and Saturn—each bringing its unique influence on atmosphere, characters, and imagery. After previously tackling Jupiter (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe) and Mars (Prince Caspian), the hosts turn their attention to the Moon (The Silver Chair) and the Sun (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader), exploring planetary symbolism, medieval cosmology, and Lewis’s creative methods, all while debating the merits of the planetary framework itself.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Recap of the Planet Narnia Thesis

• Intro to the Planets: The Narnia books are structured around seven medieval “planets,” each with associated moods, humors, and metals (02:19, 08:58).
• Previous Coverage: Jupiter (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe) – “regal, joyful, noble.” Mars (Prince Caspian) – “warrior, aggressive, bold” (02:51–03:33).

2. Medieval Cosmology and Humors

• Planets and Humors: Each planet influences a bodily humor (sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic, melancholic) and corresponding temperament (04:33–08:58).
  • Jupiter: Sanguine (hot and moist)
  • Mars: Choleric (hot and dry)
  • Moon: Phlegmatic (cold and moist)
  • Saturn: Melancholic (cold and dry)
  • Mercury, Sun, Venus: More complex, mixed influences
• Metals: Each planet is associated with a terrestrial metal (Jupiter: tin, Mars: iron, Moon: silver, Mercury: quicksilver, Sun: gold, Venus: copper, Saturn: lead) (15:06–17:05).

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The Moon and "The Silver Chair"

(17:41–38:22)

Theme & Atmosphere:

• The Moon = Phlegmatic, watery, passive, ambiguous, and changeable.
• The Silver Chair is described as the “wettest, most marshy” of the books, saturated in lunar imagery from the opening scene (“Jill Pole…crying on a damp little path”) through constant references to rain, marshes, wetness, and “watery work” (19:05, 29:28–32:00).

Key Lunar Symbols:

• Puddleglum: The classic phlegmatic character: “He is the definition of phlegmatic” (18:11–18:12).
• Silver: Recurring metal throughout—Silver Chair, silver cutlery, chains, and silver banners (34:42–34:46).
• Ambiguity & Wandering: The Moon as the cosmic symbol of confusion, changes, and wandering (“The only thing the kids have to go on…are riddles…[with] ambiguity,” 27:49–29:26).

Medieval Cosmology:

• The Moon as the “shuttle” between fallen Earth and the unfallen heavens (24:02–25:58).
• Produces both earthly wandering (literal journey) and “wandering of the wits” (lunacy) (26:00).

Quotes & Noteworthy Moments:

• “If you are listening to these episodes and are deciding that you’re going to go and reread the Narnia stories, when you reread The Silver Chair, pay attention to how much language there is about how wet everything is.” (19:05–19:45)
• Graeme’s reading of the phlegmatic temperament: “Fatness, color white, sleep superfluous... slowness, dullness of learning, and smallness of courage. I think this is a quote from C.S. Lewis.” (19:45–20:03)
• “Puddleglum rules. I want you to back off of this. I just want to be very clear. He is the greatest character.” – Thomas (18:26)

Mythological Links:

• Persephone’s Silver Chair allusion: Puddleglum and company rescued Rilian from the “Queen of the Underworld”—mirroring Persephone, destroyer of light, seated on a silver throne (34:52–35:40).

Host Reactions:

• Graeme: “This is the book specifically that convinces me this theory…has some weight.” (38:06)
• Thomas: “I don’t buy any of it…I welcome you to do three episodes on it, but I think this is all just like hot madness bunk.” (38:27)
• A.J., defending theory: “The planets are the atmospheric background…” (46:02)

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The Sun and "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader"

(48:32–62:27)

Theme & Atmosphere:

• The Sun = Adventure, glory, radiance, philosophy, liberality, and gold.
• Voyage of the Dawn Treader is a literal “sunward quest”—sailing to the east, toward Aslan’s country, glory, and the rising sun (“Even if you all turn back, I’m going to die with my nose pointed toward the sun” – 48:32).

Key Solar Symbols:

• Gold: The predominate metal—golden banners, Aslan portrayed as a golden lion, the water-turned-to-gold island (52:53–55:43).
• Quest for Glory & Adventure: Reepicheep as “the philosopher-knight,” whose purpose is not utility but honor and adventure (“If by use you mean filling our bellies or our purses, I confess it will be no use at all. So far as I know, we did not set sail to look for things useful, but to seek honor and adventure.” – Reepicheep/ward, 55:53).
• Philosophy & Wisdom: The Sun as the “heaven of philosophers”; the book includes references to Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, especially in comforting Eustace (55:25–55:43).

Medieval & Poetic Links:

• Sun’s liberality: Caspian’s generosity to crew and rescued slaves (53:53–54:31).
• Encounters with ancient wisdom, and a meeting with a Star, emphasizing the sun’s role as “mind and eye of the universe” (49:48–50:48).
• The “liberal” quest for knowledge, glory, and self-sacrifice, rather than material gain.

Mythological Links:

• Norse Myth: Balder, the Sun-God, influential on Lewis (50:48).

Noteworthy Quotes:

• “Soul produces fortunate events…his sphere is the heaven of theologians and philosophers…” – Lewis quoted by A.J. (51:26)
• “This sunrise was really the most exciting [of the trip].” (60:58)

Recurring Motifs:

• Dragons and sun as dragon-slayer (Boethian images, adventure, overcoming self and fortune) (55:43).
• The Duffers, renamed “Duffel Puds,” symbolizing “eclipse”—sun and wisdom obscured (60:58).

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• Graeme on Puddleglum: “I look at the moon and I think dopey instantly.” (07:31)
• A.J. on the planetary method: “The planets bring about these temperaments in the characters and the poema… That’s the way the story is ornamented…” (08:58)
• Thomas to A.J.: “He has such gravitas. I’ve said it’s true four times.” (41:49)

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Debate: Does the Planet Narnia Framework Matter?

• Thomas’ Skepticism: “Lewis never says anything about this. He hasn’t introduced it. I don’t know. I feel like you should be—like, this is a bad theory.” (42:43)
• A.J.’s Defense: “The planets are the atmospheric background of the books, maybe.” (46:02)
• Graeme’s View: “If I am going to do something creative, I like frameworks like this. It provides an easy—ok, what am I doing next?” (42:54)
• Thomas: “I don’t see what this deepens in the books other than, like, hey, that’s a cool thing Lewis did…” (44:33)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [02:19] – Introduction to the Seven Planets & Their Qualities
• [07:06] – Humors and Planetary Influences
• [15:03] – Metals Associated with Each Planet
• [19:05] – Puddleglum, Phlegmatics, and “Wetness” in The Silver Chair
• [24:02] – The Moon as the Threshold between Fallen and Unfallen Realms
• [29:28] – Wet and Marshy Imagery in The Silver Chair
• [34:42] – Persephone, The Silver Chair, and Underworld Allusions
• [38:06] – Graeme: Why the “Moon Book” is Most Convincing
• [41:46] – Thomas and Graeme’s Debate about the Plausibility and Value of the Theory
• [48:32] – Transition to the Sun and Voyage of the Dawn Treader
• [55:25] – Reepicheep, Philosophy, and “Seeking Honor and Adventure”
• [62:27] – Wrapping Up, Preview of Mercury, Venus, and Saturn

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Conclusion

This episode offers an accessible, entertaining journey through Michael Ward’s Planet Narnia thesis as it plays out in The Silver Chair (the lunar, phlegmatic, ambiguous, and watery book) and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (the solar, glorious, philosophical, gold-laden book). While Graeme and A.J. find Ward’s theory enriching for interpretation and creativity, Thomas remains skeptical but admiring of its academic charm. Whether you buy the planetary schema or not, the episode is a testament to the richness of Lewis’s imagination and the fun of classical interpretation.

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Next time: The planets Mercury, Venus, and Saturn will get their turn, along with more debate—especially regarding how (or whether) this planetary framework enriches our readings of Narnia.

Transcript

[Thomas Magby]

Hello, and welcome to Classical Stuff youf Should Know, a podcast about old books and things we're reading and things we want to talk about. My name is Thomas Magby. I am joined, as always, by Mr. A.J. hannenberg. That's me. Mr. Graham Donaldson. Hello. And today we do actually have a guest who's joined us today. We have this doddering old Dan. Enfeebled is the word I would use. Old man who needs reading spectacles to be able to look at the book, listen. And as you scratch your eye. Yeah. So, old man.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

So what they're making reference to is I bought, like, $12 pair of reading glasses from CBS because, one, they're really helpful, and two, my eyes are my glory, and I don't want. What does that mean?

[Thomas Magby]

What?

[A.J. Hannenberg]

I don't want my eyes to die.

[Thomas Magby]

Okay.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

And I don't know. Books are getting smaller. Haven't you noticed?

[Thomas Magby]

You said that right as I took a sip of water.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Did you notice the books have been

[Thomas Magby]

getting smaller and harder to read?

[Graham Donaldson]

What birthday did you just have?

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Oh, yeah, I'm. So anyway, one of the old ones.

[Graham Donaldson]

So I got to look forward to that in a couple of years.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

You do? Well, someone left a pair of reading glasses in the teacher room, and with the sign said, take me. And I was just like, you know, I'm gonna give him a shot. And I loved him. I was like, these are awesome.

[Thomas Magby]

And so you don't wear contacts or anything?

[A.J. Hannenberg]

No, I don't wear glasses at all. And then I was. I've been reading with my. With these reading glasses. They're like circular ones that make me look like Harry Potter. My wife hates them. But then I was up visiting family in Dallas, and I forgot them, and I was like. I was reading books. I was like, the sun. Why am I. My glasses. And so I went to CVS and bought these, and so now I have them so I can read my notes. But the thing is, when you write with. If you write notes with your reading glasses, you actually now have to, like, use your reading glasses to read your notes because, like, it was so many. But whatever, just leave me alone. All right.

[Thomas Magby]

So only people on YouTube will actually see you putting on these glasses and taking them off?

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Yes, looking very. Preface.

[Thomas Magby]

I wanted all of our listeners to

[Graham Donaldson]

know I've been trying to encourage them, because when I have glasses, I will gesture with those. I'll take them off and make a point. I'll put them on to make a point. I'm going to do so much with those glasses. Like, I think I can look good with glasses. I'm just waiting for it.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

So this is part two of three of Talking about the Narnia, the Narniad, as it's known, and Michael Ward's thesis that Narnia. The Narnia books are organized according to the seven planets of the Middle Ages. The seven planets being Jupiter, Mars, the Moon, Mercury, Sun, Venus and Saturn. Those are the planets. What do you guys remember from the last episode?

[Thomas Magby]

We covered two of them. We talked about the lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. And was it Prince Caspian? No, which one?

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Yeah, Prince Caspian. And what were the planets associated?

[Graham Donaldson]

Prince Caspian is Mars. Line. The Witch, the Wardrobe is Jupiter.

[Thomas Magby]

Yep, yep.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

And so Jupiter. So the thesis is, is that the planets in the Middle Ages influenced the human beings and they could influence certain kinds of dispositions, attitudes, moods. If you were born under a certain influence of a planet, you had a certain type of temperament. So if you were born under the influence of Mars, you were very much aggressive and bold and ambitious and maybe hot tempered. And you were a great warrior. And you, if it went, if you sort of leaned into virtue, you would have nightly qualities of being. Of being sort of strong, but then also maybe noble and good and kind. If you lean into the negative qualities, you could maybe be wrathful, you could maybe not rash, but you could maybe be heartless. If you were born under the influence of Jupiter, that was. It was a lot harder to go bad if you were born under the influence of Jupiter. And Jupiter was very much. Get my glasses. You were sort of regal, royal, joyful, optimistic. Right. This was very much the characteristic.

[Thomas Magby]

He's reading to us over the glasses like he's aged 20 years in like 30 seconds.

[Graham Donaldson]

The great juxtaposition is his, like boyish baseball cap that popped on top of the show. He looks like a British school child that has stolen his father's glasses.

[Thomas Magby]

That's right.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Yes, we'll lead into that. Anyway, so now, last episode, we were talking about this.

[Thomas Magby]

I'm so sorry.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

And we were trying to. We were. A.J. you mentioned where the word influence and influenza came from.

[Graham Donaldson]

Yes.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

And. And I was thinking about, like, wait, how did the planets actually influence. How did the middle people in the Middle Ages think the planets influenced people? And I looked into a little bit more and they actually thought that the planets could move or could, I guess, like elevate two out of the four humors inside of you. And so just as a review. So who remembers what the four, the four elements are? The four humors or not the four humors. The Four elements.

[Graham Donaldson]

Four elements are hot, cold, moist, and dry.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

That's right. Hot, cold, moist, and dry.

[Graham Donaldson]

Not fire, earth, water.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

That's air. That's the Aristotelian elements.

[Graham Donaldson]

That's what comes out of the four elements. Like, those things are. So fire is hot and dry.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

That's right.

[Graham Donaldson]

Yeah.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

And then the temperaments are combinations of those elements. So sanguine is hot and moist. And that is supposed to be the best temperament. That is the one where, like, it's associated with blood. It's associated with blood.

[Graham Donaldson]

Each one is associated with a liquid in your body.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

That's right. And so sanguine is associated with blood. Yellow bile is. Is associated with being choleric. Hot and dry. Phlegmatic, islem. Phlegm. And you're cold and moist. And then melancholy is your cold and dry. And that's associated with black.

[Graham Donaldson]

Black, I think I thought black bile was cleric, and yellow bile was.

[Thomas Magby]

Cleric is yellow bile. Okay.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Cleric is yellow bile.

[Thomas Magby]

Yeah, yeah.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

So, okay, now, the planets also were associated with these humors. And in fact, the planets influenced these, or one interpret not. It's not like there was a unified principle of this in the Middle Ages. One understanding of it was that the planets, their influence was. I don't know. I guess they could, like, bubble up the different elements inside of you. So let's play a little game. Let's see if you guys can figure it.

[Thomas Magby]

Not a chance.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Okay, we'll start with the easy one. Which planet do you think could influence the sanguine humor? Being hot and moist. And that would be the best humor. The humor that made you sort of, like, magnanimous and good and like. And, like, enjoyed the right things.

[Graham Donaldson]

And it's got to be Jupiter, right?

[A.J. Hannenberg]

It is definitely Jupiter. So Jupiter was. Was the sanguine planet that was. It was hot and moist. Okay, if we're gonna go choleric, what was the planet that was hot and dry?

[Graham Donaldson]

That's probably Mars.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Yep, it was definitely Mars. Okay, what was the planet that was phlegmatic? It was cold and moist, which may. Would maybe make you passive or calm or dopey gentle to the moon. It is the moon. Why'd you think the moon?

[Thomas Magby]

Just for all those, like, cold, distant. I'm. I'm thinking also of the story that will be for the moon, the Silver chair.

[Graham Donaldson]

I mean, I look at the moon, and I think dopey instantly.

[Thomas Magby]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Now you think flim.

[Graham Donaldson]

Yeah, just snot.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Okay. Okay. Which one is then? Melancholic? Cold and dry. You could be analytical, maybe Produces anxiety or brooding. You could be quiet, you could be overthinking.

[Graham Donaldson]

Can you list the planets again?

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Jupiter, moon, Mercury, sun, Venus, Saturn.

[Thomas Magby]

I have no.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

So we're talking melancholy, cold and dry, analytical anxiety, brooding, quiet. Saturn it is Saturn nailed it. And that leaves us with Venus and the sun and Mercury. And those three planets don't really have their influence is different. So the sun is kind of like a combination of choleric and sanguine. The sun is also hot and dry, but it's hot and dry in a different way than Mars. Venus is also is like kind of sanguine and phlegmatic. So Venus is also hot and moist, but it's a different way than Jupiter is hot and moist. And Mercury is. Its effect that it has on you is incredibly versatile and it like just messes you up. Like Mercury is just all over the place. It's flowing. It could be cold and dry, it could be hot and dry. Which doesn't make any sense. Or. No, it could be like hot and cold and you're like. That doesn't make any sense. Like Mercury is all over the place. It's the most versatile planet.

[Thomas Magby]

Yeah.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Okay, so they, the planets influence maybe the, the humors in your body and that is how they, they bring about these certain kinds of moods. And the thesis that of the book of planet Narnia is that the various stories bring about these, these, these temperaments in the characters and the poema. So that's the way that the story is like ornamented is the poem of the book. So the images, the symbols, the tone, the atmosphere embody these various moods that the planets are. So we talked about Jupiter, we talk about Mars. Just to, for listeners, let me just run through all seven of these moods and then we're going to talk about three today. So we are talking about Jupiter and Mars. Jupiter being regal, joyful, noble, Mars being the war agar, being aggressive and bold and ambitious and bad tempered. Jupiter was Fortuna Major. It was considered the best planet. All the great things happened under Jupiter in Fortuna Major. The worst planet is going to be Saturn. Mars is in Fortuna Minor. It is the, the planet that could go. That could sort of rule a lot of misfortune. Not as much as Saturn, but it, but it could rule misfortune. It's the, you know, it's more like war than disaster. Yeah, it's more than war than disaster. It is. Sometimes wars can be needed and are good.

[Thomas Magby]

Right.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

But sometimes they could also go real bad. And we just, last week we just spent Good chunk of time. Talking about the War of the Odyssey and how seems like a great idea at the beginning and then it drags on and on. Now it seems crappy and all this kind of stuff.

[Graham Donaldson]

Now you're jammed in a horse.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Now you're jammed in a horse. The next planet we're gonna be looking at is the moon. And that is phlegmatic. It is cold and moist. This is where you are passive, you're calm. You could be maybe a dopey, a little bit dopey. It's gentle. It is a planet that brings about wandering. It brings about sort of a wandering spirit, which can both be good and bad. So that's the moon, Mercury. Mercury is the most versatile of the planets. And it is the planet closely associated with being quick, with being quick witted, with being talkative, with being clever, with being skillful, with making some cash. It's the planet of math. It's the planet of education. If you were going to go to school and learn something, it's basically like, you know, in September you get that like that feeling of like, okay, we're back to school. It's time to learn. It's time to buckle down. Summer's done. It's time to, like, apply ourselves.

[Thomas Magby]

Sure.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

That is very mercurial.

[Thomas Magby]

Okay.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

That is the influence of Mercury saying, like, all right, boys and girls, like, welcome back to school. We're gonna get, we're gonna get to it. And everyone's like, I hate this.

[Thomas Magby]

I don't wanna.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Yeah, I don't want to cool. The sun, it is also hot and dry. And the sun is nobility, but it's also adventure and glory and pride and radiance. And I think glory is the best way to describe it. You are wanting to do something dope. That's the sun. You are wanting to climb a mountain. You're not wanting to rule like Jupiter. You're not wanting to, like, be an emperor of good governance. You're kind of wanting to do awesome. You think Apollo, right? The sun God. Apollo is just like the God of, like, being cool at lots of stuff. That's the sun. Okay, then you have Venus. Venus is the planet of. It is the Fortuna Minor. It is the, the planet of good fortune, but not so much like as Jupiter is. Venus is the planet of affection and charm and, and peace. It is the artistic, influential planet. It is the planet of medicine. It is the planet of, of, of. It is very much also the plant, the feminine planet as its name. Sort of the planet of love, the planet of affection and Charm of good graces, of good manners. If you have read, if you have ever enjoyed kind of the easy affection and charm and wittiness of a Jane Austen novel, that is Venus. That is the feel that Venus goes.

[Thomas Magby]

Okay.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

And then the last one, just so we can go through all of them, is Saturn. And Saturn is the planet of melancholy. It is the cold and dry. It is analytical. It is wanting to be by itself. It's not the planet of philosophy. That's still Mercury, but it is. But it is maybe the planet of, like. I don't know if it's the planet of prophecy, but it's definitely the planet of, like, brooding anxiety. And it's also the planet of disaster. It is the in Fortuna Major. It's the planet of, like, just everything going crappy. It's the planet associated with the destruction of things. It's the planet that is, you know, the influence of. Of the end of the age. Our Age of Bronze is ending.

[Thomas Magby]

That really got to you.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

It's so. It was. It just was so jarring.

[Thomas Magby]

Okay.

[Graham Donaldson]

Yeah. There were some not so shiny moments in that movie.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Overall, it was good, though. Overall, it was very good. But that moment, I almost. I almost lulled in the theater.

[Thomas Magby]

Pretty good. Glad you did not.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

I think I snorted.

[Thomas Magby]

Good.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Anyway. Saturn, the cold, analytical anxiety, brooding, quiet. It is the thing that is asleep for a long time, and then when it wakes up, misfortune comes and that. Actually, we see an example of that in our stories. So those are the seven planets. Today we're gonna talk about three of them. We're gonna talk about the moon. We're gonna talk about Mercury. We're gonna talk about the sun. I guess it's the moon.

[Graham Donaldson]

My favorite three.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

And Mercury.

[Thomas Magby]

Are those really?

[Graham Donaldson]

Yeah.

[Thomas Magby]

Oh, cool.

[Graham Donaldson]

I think so.

[Thomas Magby]

Okay.

[Graham Donaldson]

Moon, sun, Mercury.

[Thomas Magby]

That's my job.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

So we're talking about those in that order. So the Moon story is. Oh, and actually, before we seven, they all have their own metals that are associated with them. So.

[Graham Donaldson]

Because I think they thought that that's how the metals grew.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

That's right.

[Graham Donaldson]

The planet, like, forced the Earth to grow it.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

That's right. So the planets, as they sort of span, spun around or moved around the heavens, when they got closer, far away, they kind of like or, like some sort of influence on the Earth. And the metals grew in the Earth because of their influence. So the last time we talked about what Jupiter grew in the Earth, and that was tin, which is very kind of nowadays because tinnis is used in, like, sardine cans. But back then it was because it was so shiny, and it was seen as sort of being sort of regal and royal and cool. So that was what Jupiter did. Maybe we can do another guessing game. What did Mars bring about in the Earth?

[Graham Donaldson]

Had to be iron.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Is definitely iron.

[Graham Donaldson]

Had to be iron.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Okay. The moon. I mean, the. The.

[Thomas Magby]

The.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

The. The name of the book associated with the moon gives it away.

[Graham Donaldson]

Silver.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

It is silver. The moon itself, it's silver. Mercury is also a dead giveaway. It produces mercury. Or quicksilver. The sun. What does the sun produce? The sun definitely does produce gold. Probably the hardest one. These last two are the most difficult. Venus.

[Thomas Magby]

Pewter.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Not pewter.

[Thomas Magby]

No clue.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

No clue. You're not even gonna guess? I'm gonna wager a guess.

[Thomas Magby]

Nothing.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

No, nothing. Venture nothing. Gain, Thomas.

[Thomas Magby]

I shall gain nothing.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

It is copper. Venus produces copper for some reason.

[Thomas Magby]

Okay.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

And then the last one, Saturn, which is maybe dense and analytical and, like, kind of like up its own butt. What does Saturn produce? What is the den. What is dense? No, it produces lead.

[Thomas Magby]

Oh, me right now is dense. Yeah.

[Graham Donaldson]

So how does that associate with something up its own.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Because it's so, like. It's all, like. Like, so dense and so, like, wound up in itself, and it's, like, brooding and anxious and like, lead is supposed to be. This is like this heavy, dense thing that.

[Thomas Magby]

I don't have personality traits for lead, but this is fascinating. Okay. I'm learning a lot right now.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

You don't have personality traits for metals.

[Thomas Magby]

No. Why would any of these things? They're not.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Gold means nothing to you. It doesn't give you any. It doesn't give you any sort of

[Thomas Magby]

feeling of personality put into our computer chips to make them run faster. I don't understand. You think there's more to it than that? Interesting.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

All right. The moon. Silver chair.

[Thomas Magby]

Cool.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

So the moon is the planet of being phlegmatic, cold and moist. It is also the moon of sort of maybe passivity or calmness. And obviously, if you're thinking cold and moist moon, who is the main. Like the main character, but who is the Narnian character that we see in the silver chair that would be considered cold and moist, not cold and. Oh, definitely. And so. And would you say that Apollo, Glam is somewhat phlegmatic?

[Graham Donaldson]

He is the definition.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

He is the definition of phlegmatic. He's not melancholy, where he's all like, oh, everything's terrible. He's the guy that's like, well. And I think he says a lot in the book, like, well, sunny mornings bring rainy afternoons you're like Friggin Puddleglum.

[Thomas Magby]

Puddlegum rules. I want you to back off of this. I just want to be very clear. He is the greatest character.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

As you were. As you were captain of the flag myths.

[Thomas Magby]

I am. Yeah. My avatar, Puddle Glum. I will not stand for the slander.

[Graham Donaldson]

I would not. I do not think you are phlegmatic.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

You don't think he's captain of the phlegmatics?

[Graham Donaldson]

No, no, not at all. Let me. I. I have old.

[Thomas Magby]

Oh, you have Thomas quotes.

[Graham Donaldson]

No quotes about phlegmatic.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Oh, please bring it to us. Well,

[Thomas Magby]

so yeah, he's a marsh wiggle and he's their guide for a large chunk of the book.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

He's their marsh wiggle and he's their guide.

[Thomas Magby]

And it's Eustace and.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Eustace and Jill Pole.

[Thomas Magby]

Jill, yeah.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Now for those of you if you were using these as like primers to go like. We're not going over all the whole plot. That wasn't the point of these episodes. It was. So these episodes are assuming that people have familiarity with the story. But if you are listening to these episodes and are deciding that you're going to go and reread the Narnia stories, when you reread the Silver Chair, pay attention to how much language there is about how wet everything is. It is a very wet, moist story. Puddleglum is a marsh wiggle. He's from the marshes. He does wet, boggy work. He's got wet, boggy language. Do you want to give us some quotes from phlegmatists?

[Graham Donaldson]

Ancient quote about what the phlegmatic complexion is. Fatness, color white, sleep superfluous. That is an exodus. Dreams of things watery or of fish. Slowness, dullness of learning and smallness of courage. I think this is A quote from C.S.

[Thomas Magby]

lewis.

[Graham Donaldson]

Either or he was quoting somebody else. I just have it here in one of my presentations. The phlegmatic boy or girl? Fat, pale, sluggish and dull is the despair of parents and teachers by others either made a but like of a joke or simply unnoticed. Thomas, that's not you, buddy.

[Thomas Magby]

It might be. That's not you.

[Graham Donaldson]

Thomas, you are a jolly person. You laugh loud, you are quick of brain and you are not generally.

[Thomas Magby]

Graham's just calling me fat. That's what I got. Took away from all that.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

No, you were championing Puddleglum.

[Thomas Magby]

He is my hero. I have no. Yeah, no problem.

[Graham Donaldson]

I'm just saying I never thought of you.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Remember Anne in. What's that movie, that television show? Arrested Arrested Development? She's Phlegmatic.

[Graham Donaldson]

Anne is phlegmatic for sure.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

With the egg.

[Thomas Magby]

Her.

[Graham Donaldson]

Her Ann is the egg on plane's face.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Anyway, so Anne is phlegmatic.

[Thomas Magby]

Okay?

[A.J. Hannenberg]

So, yeah. So if you're gonna go read these stories for yourselves, just pay attention to how much language is centered around damp, moist, wet. And that's because that's the influence of the moon. The first line of the story is, I think Jill Pole is crying and sitting on a damp path because she's being bullied by boys at her school.

[Thomas Magby]

Yes.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

And so. And then Eustace.

[Thomas Magby]

Boys and girls. It's a whole.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Boys and girls.

[Thomas Magby]

Yes.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Who they kick the crap out of at the end of the book. Which is awesome.

[Graham Donaldson]

All right.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

And actually, Michael Ward has a. Has something to say about why that is also very lunar at the end. Anyway, here is what. So Michael Ward makes the claim that the moon was one of Lewis's favorite planets. And it's because of Lewis's own own admission that he. Lewis, felt that the moon was treated unfairly in literature. And people never really got the moon.

[Thomas Magby]

This is like the lunatic people don't get. People don't.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

So here, let me. Let me read a little bit of the. The. This is from the very. This is the. At the beginning of the chapter on the moon in the book Planet Narnia, Lewis adopted a protective stance towards Luna's literary reputation, rebuking writers who treated her badly and approving writers who treated her well. He thought so highly of Lodge's line, daughter of Jove and sister to the sun, that is the moon, that he would repeat it to himself for sheer pleasure. But he was outraged when his friend Catherine Ferrer described the moon like the white face of an idiot lost in a wood and told her that she was denigrating the high creatures of God. He suggested she learned Psalm 136 by heart as a penance and added, not safe either to be rude to a goddess.

[Thomas Magby]

Oh, geez.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

So Lewis really loved the moon, and he didn't want the moon just to be treated as kind of like the dopey, crappy sister to the sun. He really loved a story written by George MacDonald called I Think it's the. Is it Philomel and Photogen? It's this children's story where a boy of the sun and a girl, the moon, fall in love, and they realize that and they sort of like embody these differences of the sun and the moon. It's a great. It's photo. I think it's Photogen. And what's her name? I can't remember, but anyway, I'm sure it's an easy Google and people can read it. It's a great story, but Lewis loved like that story. So

[Thomas Magby]

Nick Terrace.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Nick Terrace, that's right, Nick Terrace and Photogen. Photogen and nycteris. Now, the moon in the Middle Ages as a planet is a really interesting planet because it is the planet that is on the cusp between the fallen sinful world and the unfallen immutable heavens. AJ Am I getting that right? So the moon is kind of like the shuttler between the fallen sinful world and the unfallen immutable heavens.

[Graham Donaldson]

I've never heard that before, but.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

So apparently Lewis talks about in this discarded image. And I'll read that section in a minute, where the moon shows one face to us so we see the fate one side of the moon and there's the other side of the moon we don't get to see. That's the Pink Floyd side.

[Thomas Magby]

Yes.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Which I've actually only sat down and listened to Dark side of the Moon for the first time in my life this week.

[Thomas Magby]

I've never. I mean, how was it?

[A.J. Hannenberg]

That's fine. I guess. I feel like it'd probably be better if I was on drugs.

[Thomas Magby]

Probably everything.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Yeah, it was okay. But it did get me going down a rabbit trail of like we maybe talk about this in the in between. I found this really awesome, like experimental music musical band that I've been like absolutely enamored with.

[Graham Donaldson]

What are they called?

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Floating pieces. Floating places.

[Graham Donaldson]

Floating.

[Thomas Magby]

Floating points.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Floating points I've heard of.

[Graham Donaldson]

Floating.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

So good. Anyway, we'll talk about the name Between.

[Thomas Magby]

Okay.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

I have much to say about one of their songs. Okay, so. So the moon shows one face to us and then has another face to the heavens. The moon is wandering, the moon changes. And so in one sense the moon is the closest thing and maybe is also fallen or at least was was hit by the fall, according to some medievalists. And so basically, as soon as you cross the moon sphere, you are now into the realm of the immutable heavens. But once you are sub lunar, you are in the realm of mutability. You are in the realm of change. You were in the realm of sin and all that kind of stuff. So the moon is kind of this like this guardian of the gate between unchanging and changing, or the mutability and the immutable, at least according to Lewis.

[Thomas Magby]

So it's only the earth that's in that mutable category.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Correct.

[Thomas Magby]

And then everything else.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

And so in that Sense like from a cosmological, at least for the mind of the Middle Ages, or at least how Lewis understood it. The sin. The effects of sin only affected and the fall only happened below the moon. So the heavens are unfallen. And you see this definitely represented in, in the space trilogy, the effect that the moon has on people. This is what Lewis talks about it in the Discarded Image. And AJ made reference to this last podcast in Men she produces wandering and that in two senses she may make them travelers. So that as Goer says, the man born under Luna will quote Sikha many launda strange or if you want to take the translated into more modern English, seek many strange lands or wander through many strangers, through many unfamiliar places. But she may also produce wandering of the wits, especially that periodical insanity which was first meant by the word lunacy. Yeah, I'll end the quote there. So. So the moon produces wandering in people. It could be a good wandering, it could be a bad wandering. But it, but it, but that is the effect that it has. In the Silver Chair, the kids don't really know where they're going. Aslan gives them three clues and he's like, go find the prince. Really in. Bye. And then the kids kind of have to wander. They wander with Puglum, they just sort of vaguely go north and they're sort of wandering around. So you get that kind of lunar influence in the story there. The symbol for Lewis was a symbol of ambiguity and uncertainty. So

[Thomas Magby]

yeah,

[A.J. Hannenberg]

it could be. In one sense, Lewis venerates the moon as being the sister to the sun. And the influence of the moon can be just as noble and regal, if a little bit less sort of like in your face than the sun. But then also the influence of the moon could be one where it is bad for you and you makes you crazy and. And it makes you sort of lose your wits. And so the moon is very much an ambiguous. It is the planet of ambiguity. And so not really knowing what is what. I think this is reflected in the story of the Silver Chair in that the. The only thing that the kids have to go on to find Rillian is they are given riddles and the riddles don't make any sense and they're pretty ambiguous and there's just sort of like three riddles and they have to like, they have to. They have to, Aslin says, repeat them to yourselves. Like, don't forget these things. And they're like, okay, we will. And then they forget them and then like things fall apart and they don't really know why they should be remembering these things, but they have to. There's an ambiguity there. Let's see what else we got. So, yeah, we already talked about how the book is a very damp book. Here are just some examples from the story if we want to talk about it from a poem, a standpoint. Let me just read a little bit. I want to read a rather lengthy excerpt from Michael Ward because he does a better job of sort of summarizing everything than I could. So let me just read this here. In one of his defenses as to why this would be considered the moon

[Graham Donaldson]

book,

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Lewis has the moon's drenching, drizzling, dewy effects in mind throughout the Silver Chair. It is a theme introduced on the very first page of the first chapter where we meet a girl called Jill Pole who is crying on a, quote, damp little path. She is joined by Eustace, who we know from the previous book, who sits down on Eustace grass that was soaking wet. We also read of drops that, quote, dripped off the laurel trees that drip off the leaves and of drops of water on the grass. Nothing of significance to the plot comes of these images, but they are beginning to create a definite atmosphere. It would be tedious to detail every other reference of water and wetness in the book, but it is worth noting Jill's baths in chapter three and eight, her quote, wet pillow, the frequent rain mentioned at least six times, Caspian's watery eyes, the fountain where really in's mother met her death, the marshes in chapter five with their muddy water, their countless channels of water, and above all, the suggestively named Marsh Wiggle Puddleglum. Puddleglum belongs to a race who do watery work and himself is thrice described as a wet blanket. A flood features among the disasters he imagines have struck the land. He says his firewood may be wet, his pipe smoke trickles out of his bowl like mistake. He mentions the river Shribble and its lack of bridges, predicts quote, damp bowstrings, snores like a waterfall, wonders if rain is on its way. His drunkenness in chapter seven is a further manifestation of luna, both because it causes confusion and because it comes from liquidity. Once Polum has joined Jill and Eustace on their quest, they ford the shribble, which makes Jill wet to the knees. Pass, quote, countless streams on Estenmore and are never short of water. They see a river, quote, full of rapids and waterfalls and become sick of wind and rain. On their way to Harfang, they endure nasty wet business and everyone got wet too wet by now to bother about being a bit wetter. They all rode by the Note. They are rode by the gnomes of Bism in a boat on the underground sea. The enchanted Rillian's words are quote, like cold water down the back. But later they are glad to find real water for washing. And eventually a flood does indeed strike the land. But it is the witch's kingdom, not Narnia, which is inundated. When we see the last of Puddle Glum, he is still pointing out that bright mornings bring on wet afternoons. So there is sort of Michael Ward's summation of, like, all of the. The imagery. And this is very much a wet book, like, you read it, and water and wetness and dampness and marshiness. It is a marshy book.

[Graham Donaldson]

I think that's why I always avoided it as a kid, because it just made me sad.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

It made you cold and sort of, like, uncomfortable.

[Graham Donaldson]

Yeah, it's not an inviting book.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

And it is not. Yeah, it's not an inviting book. It is kind of gloomy. And then half the book takes place underground.

[Graham Donaldson]

Yeah.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Actually, Amanda was. Was reading the book for the first time. My wife was reading the book for the first time and she did not like it. Cause she's like, I feel so claustrophobic. I'm underground half the book. I just want to go back to the sun. And I was like, exactly. You want to go back to the Overlands. You don't want to go to the Underworld, where. Well, you know, many of a few. Many have come to the sun or to the Sunless Lands and. Or whatever the phrases they say over and over again in the story, and few return. So it is a wandering mission with riddles as a guide. So it's very confusing, really. In himself has a wandering mind. He is under an enchanted spell of the witch. And he is. And he says, like, tie me to the chair, because every day at, you know, this hour, I lose my wits and I become a raving crazy madman. But he's not a raving crazy madman. In fact, he is made whole again. And so he's actually spends the whole book really confused. And it's only in when he's tied to the chair that he's his true person. There is the sad slaves of the underworld who are sort of like. They have these incredibly sort of like, choleric. They're almost like these sort of. Not choleric. Sorry. These phlegmatic, sad, dopey minions of the underworld are. Are kind of tied into this influence. This sort of lunar influence.

[Graham Donaldson]

Isn't it because they're pulled out of their natural space, which is far below. And

[A.J. Hannenberg]

did they mine in the underworld? Their main industry is that they mine silver. And it is true silver, real silver, silver that flows, not like the fake silver on the earth, but it is a sort of like real liquid silver or something. When Lewis describes things in the story, if he's going to use a metal, it is predominantly silver. There's obviously the silver chair, there's silver cutlery, there's silver chains. Caer Paravel has silver banners at the end of the story. Silver is the predominant metallurgical decision in. When he's. When he's forming the book. And then of course, we have the chair. Let's read here. The chair. Yeah, let's talk a little about that silver. This whole.

[Graham Donaldson]

And the.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

The idea of the underworld is supposed to be one that is evocative of the moon because of Persephone.

[Thomas Magby]

Let me.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Let me read. Let me read this. I'm not familiar enough with the story of Persephone. Chief of all the silvers, of course, is the eponymous Silver Chair, the vile engine of sorcery whose origin John Cox traces to Spenser's Silas. Seat or silver seat or seal your stool upon which prosper. Prosper, sorry, Proserpina or Persephone sits in the fairy queen. Persephone probably means destroyer of light. She was originally known as Core and under that name was abducted while out gathering flowers at the fountain of Arethusa and taken to the underworld by Hades. Rather, as Rillian's mother is killed while maying near a fountain and is replaced in his affections by the serpentine queen of Underland. So you also have this. Like the Silver Chair of Persephone is probably in Lewis's mind when he's writing the Silver Chair of this story. And Persephone is the queen of the under of the underworld and Rillian is held captive by the queen of the underworld. And so you have that sort of connotation there as well. And there's other store elements in the story that have to do with also being tricking people and making up stories and lying, although that's more mercurial, but in this sense it's like confusing people. So the giants are tricking the kids. The friendly giants. Are the. Are they called the friendly giants? No, are they called. They're called the Gentle Giants. The Gentle Giants are supposedly supposed to be nice and kind to the kids in Paraglum, but really they're fattening up to eat. Eat them and When Jill and Eustace and Puddle Glum find out about this, they put on. They pretend to be someone that they're not. Jill puts on this like, little girl, like, I'm so glad we're going to be here for the May festival or the harvest festival or whatever it is. And the giants are like, oh, poor poppet, she doesn't know we're going to eat her. And so they put on this, like, fake Persona to confuse the giants. And this is supposed to be kind of like an enchanting acting is like enchanting. And so this is where you get a. Jill and Eustace get to use their sort of like acting. Specifically, Jill uses their acting chops to get out of the. To get out of the getting eaten alive. So all of these things taken together are.

[Thomas Magby]

Are.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

This is the moon book. This is the book that is supposed to be associated with the moon. Michael Ward ends this chapter talking a little bit about his take on the theology of the moon and how it relates to the rest of the story. Something that personally, I don't necessarily find all that compelling. I think the poema is the much more compelling part of it. But that is his defense as to why you would consider this to be the. The watery influenced phlegmatic Moon book.

[Graham Donaldson]

I buy that one.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Yeah. And you do. Well, what's the compelling argument before we move on to the sun?

[Graham Donaldson]

I mean, knowing that Phlegmatic is the. Is the humor and all of the watery stuff, plus all the silver stuff, plus all of the sort of darkness and like, it's just. There's so much there.

[Thomas Magby]

Yeah.

[Graham Donaldson]

This is the one that I think this book specifically is the one that convinces me this theory is. Has some weight.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

And I mean, Puddle himself, right?

[Graham Donaldson]

Yeah, and Puddleglom himself and the silver chair and silver and everything. It just. Yeah. This is the. This is the book where I was like, okay, they might have something here.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Gotcha. Any comments before we move on, Thomas?

[Thomas Magby]

No.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

You're all your convinced not buy it?

[Thomas Magby]

I don't buy any of it.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

But you buy any of it.

[Graham Donaldson]

I like.

[Thomas Magby]

I welcome you to do three episodes on it. But like, I think you think this

[A.J. Hannenberg]

is all just like hot madness bunk.

[Thomas Magby]

Yeah. I mean, really. Yeah. But I love you being excited to share things with the audience.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

I'm just. Why don't you buy. Well, even what.

[Thomas Magby]

What maybe we can talk about from last time. Is it your understanding that Lewis went into writing this series with this framework in mind and that's what's like guiding his plots across the story I think

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Lewis went in to lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, wanting to tell a story of that mirror that sort of mixed in classical medieval and Christian theology together into a tale of a land. And of course, it was going to have this jovial nature quality to it. And then when he decided to write more, he's like, well, I'm going to write all of the plan. I'm going to give all of this. I'm going to have the planets be my unifying factor.

[Graham Donaldson]

For me, I think it's just an easy way to find inspiration and make choices. So if you're like, okay, this is the book about war, well, what do we have them doing? Well, maybe mining or making weapons. Right. So it's just an easy framework for making book choices as you go.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

I think, Dang Thomas

[Thomas Magby]

in 1957, Fan wrote into Lewis and the question was, what order should I read the Narnia books? Because they were published in a different order than they occur chronologically. Right. And so there was a disagreement between whether the mother thought they. Let me see if I can get this. One of the parents thought they should be read in the order they were published. The. The other view was to read them in the chronological order. And so Lewis writes back, Dear Lawrence, I think I agree with your order for reading the books more than your mother's. The series was not planned beforehand as she thinks. When I wrote the Lion, I did not know I was going to write any more. Then I wrote Prince Caspian as a sequel and still didn't think there would be any more. And when I had done the voyage, I felt quite sure it would be the last, but I found I was wrong. And so, like, he didn't have this going in.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Like, he didn't have them. Yeah, he did not have them all mapped out. But every time he reached to write a story, I feel like he reached for a planet.

[Thomas Magby]

I just think like, our starting place was. He has this quote where he says, you either do three, five or seven or whatever the thing is.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

And like seven or nine, whatever.

[Thomas Magby]

Like, that's not true. Like, he just wrote three books. He wrote one book, thought it was done, wrote another book, thought it was done, wrote another book, thought it was done, and there might be something after. I don't know at what point he's like, I'm committing to the seven or nine.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

I think Lewis lied to that child.

[Thomas Magby]

That's why. Okay. I think he. I don't think because.

[Graham Donaldson]

Screw kids.

[Thomas Magby]

Yes, kids are the worst kids rule. But that's just my. Like, I Think this is. I think it's cool. I think it's great that this person thinks there are connections between them. I think it has nothing to do with, like, Lewis's intention. And I think, like, even in your silver chair example right there, you, like, ignored things that were mercurial.

[Graham Donaldson]

Wasn't that, like, the liquid. It was liquid silver.

[Thomas Magby]

Liquid silver. Like quicksilver and.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

But sure. But mercury is even. Well, no. So, okay, if we're gonna actually get the quote, can I.

[Graham Donaldson]

Can I note Donaldson? It's really hard to disagree with you with those glasses.

[Thomas Magby]

You have such gravitas. I've said it's true four times.

[Graham Donaldson]

Sorry.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

It's not liquid silver. Bism has quote. Real silver. Different from the dead silver of the superficial minds. So it's not liquid silver. It's real.

[Graham Donaldson]

Does he say it flows?

[A.J. Hannenberg]

No, no, that was maybe my. My misinterpretation.

[Thomas Magby]

You had another one. You described a characteristic of someone as fitting. More.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

It was with the lying.

[Thomas Magby]

But that's my life.

[Graham Donaldson]

Yes.

[Thomas Magby]

If you go in thinking this is the framework, you're focusing on the elements that.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Do you think we're begging the question?

[Thomas Magby]

Yes.

[Graham Donaldson]

Okay.

[Thomas Magby]

Which is, like, fine. Like, it's a. It's a charming theory. I love hearing about it. But that I will listen. And I just don't, like. I just don't buy it. Outset. Yeah.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Well, let me attempt to refill my sales.

[Graham Donaldson]

Can I just say, this is a strange reversal of rules. This is usually not what happens.

[Thomas Magby]

I'm actually annoyed by how. How on board you are with it, because this is like. It's all extratextual. Lewis never says anything about this. Like, he has not introduced it. I don't know. I feel like you should be the. Like, this is a bad theory.

[Graham Donaldson]

Nah, I'm on board. Okay. I'm on board. Partly because if I am going to do something creative, I like frameworks like this. It provides an easy. Okay, so what am I doing next? It kind of helps with that problem. So if I was gonna write an album or if I was gonna write a story, or if I was gonna write, like a. My question is, how can I make a helpful framework that helps me to make choices as I go through this rather than inventing it whole cloth. Right. Artistry is easier when you set boundaries for yourself and when you have rules. Like, I'm only going to use two instruments to make this song.

[Thomas Magby]

Right.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

I think also, like, Michael Ward is making a. Not an assumption, but he's saying that Lewis had so much of the imagery of the Planets wrapped up in his understanding of this time period. That when he's going to write a story with this time period, all of that is going to bleed through into that. It's a lot more compelling when you read the book and realize that Lewis wrote a poem called the Planets and where he's talking about his understanding of the planets. And from that poem, you actually see that there are allusions to things that he brings out in the various Narnia stories.

[Graham Donaldson]

So the other thing is the inclusion of details that don't seem to matter but point towards planets. You know, like everything being watery and like, all the extra stuff there. And then the. The final thing is it makes me think of Tolkien right when he wrote the Hobbit. And he didn't explicitly steal from Beowulf, but he had studied and translated Beowulf, and it was so thoroughly in his mind that it was unavoidable. And I wonder if the same wasn't true of Lewis as he was putting together seven books.

[Thomas Magby]

You know, I don't know, but that's my. I don't see what this deepens in the books other than, like, hey, that's a cool thing Lewis did. And maybe that is fine. But, like, how do you read. Why is it not. He has a certain view of, like, a right ordered kingdom for lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Why is it not this is how battle should be conducted? Like, why are the planets the right way to understand this as opposed to the, like, actual topics of each book? And then, like, that's the part I'm just not seeing the. Is this just like, hey, this is a cool thing that you can see across the books?

[Graham Donaldson]

For me, that's what it is.

[Thomas Magby]

Okay.

[Graham Donaldson]

It's not a. This is how I should enter into understanding the book. It has a tale, it has a purpose, it has other things going on. But, like, hey, also, the moon is kind of how I get there. I don't know that I would have. If I found this, I would have sat down to write a book that large about.

[Thomas Magby]

About a thing that's like, hey, this is cool. Yeah.

[Graham Donaldson]

But, you know, some things in academia are just cool. And this feels like a. Hey, this is a cool thing to me.

[Thomas Magby]

Yeah.

[Graham Donaldson]

Do you. Do you think it's more.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

I think it's. I think Lewis is wanting to.

[Thomas Magby]

That.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

That quote that I read at the beginning of the Moon where he gets mad at his friend for, quote, getting the moon wrong is enough for me to think that when Lewis is writing these books, he's like, I'm going to treat the Mars correctly. I'm gonna have the Moon be treated correctly. Obviously, the plot of the book is not about the planets.

[Thomas Magby]

That's what.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

But the planets are the. The atmospheric background of the books, maybe.

[Thomas Magby]

Let me. So when you interpret Romeo and Juliet and you find these, like, images, those deepen the story. And like, I read Shakespeare differently based on your episodes. Right. Like. And I'm sure your students read it differently. I don't see. I read Narnia like, every day with my kids and I don't see how this, like, changes anything about this, doesn't deepen the story. And maybe that's not a. That doesn't go to the truthfulness or not. But it's the, like, what is this for? And maybe. And again, if it's like, it's just an interesting thing, maybe one.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

If you wanted to sort of think about it, maybe you could say that there's sort of like, there are different kinds of stories or different kinds of periods in people's lives call for different kinds of toolkits. Like, there are Jupiter times and that calls for the types of things that the lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe talks about. And there are mercurial times or there are lunar times and this. And so you find yourself in a story of, like, confusion and wandering and uncomfortable and wetness and, you know, you. That like, it just kind of sucks for Jill that she had to be in the moon story and not in the Jupiter story. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, I get what you're saying. And maybe it doesn't, like, does it add an interpretive layer? I guess I would want to know more about, like, how the cosmic imagery in Romeo and Juliet help the story. You could definitely read the story and never get that.

[Thomas Magby]

But that's what I mean of like, in a book, when you reread and see themes or images that are repeated and you don't see them the first time, you take more from the story than you do. And that's. I think these are two separate things. My first one is just, I don't think Lewis did this and I haven't read the book, so in fairness, I have not considered the arguments. And the second one is like the. So what? Those are two separate things. Again, I'm only saying it because you asked, but I hope you will continue through the rest of the books. But that is my.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

I will with far less enthusiasm.

[Thomas Magby]

Thank you. Good. And have I, like the bag of winds thrown you off?

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Oh, you just apologm Indeed, my phlegmatic. It's a beautiful morning, but it's just going to rain.

[Thomas Magby]

It'll rain in the afternoon.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Yeah, all right. The sun. The sun is the voyage of the Dawn Shredder. It's in the title. They are. And this is actually the one book where the characters are actually seeking out the planet itself. They are sailing to the east. They are going to find the sun. Reapy Cheep says, I am going to. Even if I. Even if you all turn back, I'm going to die with my nose pointed towards the sun. Continuing to seek out Aslan's country and sort of sail to the edge of the world where the sun is. As the book goes on, the sun gets bigger in the story. It doesn't get hotter, but it gets, like, more full. This is the one story where they actually, like, meet a star and he's. And they. And then they meet him and they talk to him. And Eustace is like, in our universe, stars are balls of gas. And he's like, well, that's what stars are made of. That's not what they are. Which is a very. A thing that Lewis loved to say. The. The chapter on the sun starts off with the treatment of, like, why in the Middle Ages was the sun not Jupiter? Like, why was the sun not Fortuna Major? It's the biggest one. It seems to have the most influence on our lives. Why is far away Jupiter supposed to be the king? And why is the sun not the king when so many other cultures have a sun? Being the king, the sun God, like in Egypt or in other places. And Lewis himself, in the discarded image, makes reference to this. He says, soul is the point. Soul, the sun, at which the concordat between the mythical and the astrological nearly breaks down. Mythically. Jupiter is the king, but soul produces the noblest metal, gold, and is the eye and mind of the whole universe. One of Lewis's favorite poems when he was a kid was that had such an influence on his life was when he was walking down a hall at school, he heard somebody quoting Norse mythology, which said, I heard a voice that cried, balder the beautiful is dead, is dead. And then later on, Lewis became a. A scholar of Norse mythology. And Balder is apparently the king of the sun. He is the. The Norse counterpart of Helios. He was a God of light, the son of Odin and Frigg.

[Thomas Magby]

Odin.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Odin. Frigg had a kid named Helios pretty good as Helios was the son of Hyperion. Thea Lewis would frequently make reference to Balder and the sunward sailing cranes. So apparently Balder went on a grand sailing voyage as the God of the sun. And so now we have the voyage of the dawn Shredder. The sun is the. I. I can't remember what that word is. When you turn things into metal.

[Thomas Magby]

Alchemy.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

No, not alchemy. It's. It'll come to me

[Thomas Magby]

anyway.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

But the. The sun is obviously the. Well, here's the influence of the sun on human beings. Metallurgy, oromancy. I can't remember what it's called. Okay, sun. So this is in the discard image. Lewis talks about this in the sun. The sun or the soul makes wise. Makes men wise and liberal. And his sphere is the heaven of theologians and philosophers, though he is no more metallurgical. I was wrong. So the sun is the philosophers. Though he is no more metallurgical than any other planet, his metallurgical operations are more often mentioned than theirs. We read in Duns Alefanes and Idios how soils which the sun could make into gold may lie too far from the surface for his beams to take effect. Spencer's mammon brings his horde out to sun it. If it were already gold, he would have no motive for doing this. It is still gray. He sons it that it may become gold. Soul produces fortunate events. This is Lewis's understanding of what the sun does. It's. It's the sphere of philosophers. So you'd expect that philosophy and the philosophy would show up. And this is also. You would expect that this is the. Where gold and turning things into gold would show up. And of course you have the famous waters where the. Where the. Anything that goes in the water turns into gold. And that's the haunted. And then they. They first want to fight over it and think it's great and then re. Cheep the wise. Riichi points out that this is not a blessing, this is a curse. And so they decide to hide that the location of that island so that man may never find it. And the poor chap who jumped into the water and is now gold sort of. Sort of serves as this warning. So Reapichi, the sun is also. People are wanting to the sun, like as we mentioned is. This is the. The planet that wants to have grand adventures and above all glory. And of course it is reapy cheap who is wanting all of the glory by sailing off to the east. And at the end he's the one that basically sacrifices his life to go out in a little rowboat and row towards the sun to Go to Aslan's country and he's very much treated as like this. It's sort of like this very. It's the romantic image of the. Of this the philosopher knight sort of going off into the unknown. And RI Be Cheep is that Ri be Cheep is actually. There's more philosophical points in here where Repeat Cheap is uses his philosophy to try to. He uses actually Bowie Ribichy makes reference to Boethius. Ruby Sheet makes reference to Stoic and Boethius philosophy when he's trying to comfort Eustace when Eustace turns into a dragon. This is what Ruby Cheap says when Eustace has turned into a dragon. He. He tries to comfort the In Dragon to Eustace in chapter seven he would explain this is from the Dawn Shredder. He would explain that what had happened was a striking illustration of the turn of fortune's wheel and that if he had Eustace at his own house in Narnia, he could show him more than a hundred examples of emperors, kings, dukes, knights, poets, lovers, astronomers, philosophers and magicians who had fallen from prosperity into the most distressing circumstances and of whom many had recovered and lived happily ever afterwards. So in order to try to comfort Eustace, who is a dragon, Riebe Cheep offers, you know, the sweet milk against adversity philosophy and is making reference to fortune's wheel. Louis thought Boethius was the pinnacle medieval philosophers. So much so that I think Lewis even said if he thought that to acquire a taste for it. The consolation of philosophy was almost to become naturalized in the Middle Ages. So if you understood the philosophy of the constellation of philosophy, you were a middle aged, you understood the Middle Ages. And Riebe Cheap is that.

[Graham Donaldson]

I mean, yeah. Wasn't Boethius's consolation like required reading? Almost every school child Middle Ages and

[A.J. Hannenberg]

every school mouse, apparently.

[Thomas Magby]

Thank you.

[Graham Donaldson]

Yeah, nice one.

[Thomas Magby]

Good.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

And then there is a treatment of how Lewis thought that the sun in of course gold is everywhere. The ship has like golden banners. The Ward points out that this is the only. Usually Aslan is depicted on banners as a red lion, but in but on the Dawn Shredder he is a golden lion. There is the goal of the island, there is the gold of the sun is the golden light. The light is talked about frequently. And then if we want to believe that Lewis believed that the sun produced liberality in the mind that was the influence to be liberal in the minds of people. We have a bunch of examples of that. So here is an example of. So there's apparently three ways that that Lewis interpreted liberality. One was of course, well, Caspian. When he frees the slaves on the island, he also is. He doesn't kill the slave owners. He actually sort of wins them over to rightness and is quite liberal in that. And whereas you know, if this was in Caspian you would expect like justice but here he sort of is more liberal to them. So generous Cat Generos, generous Caspian, that gold headed boy is conspicuously generous. He provides ale for his old salts, rum for the ship's company and after the fight with the sea serpent, grog all around following their escape from the dark island. And he promises gold or land enough to make the sailors rich if they will accompany him to the utter east. He helps bring about the release of pug slaves on the lone island by offering a cask of wine to the slovenly guards at Narrow Haven, forgiving Gumpus his debt and reimbursing both Lord Byrne and the Calamarane traders. So he is Caspian is generous. At another level, liberality appears in the sense of liberal study, the pursuit of knowledge. And so we have an example when, Let's see, sorry, Liberal. Liberal study and knowledge. Lewis, a staunch defender of a liberal education, was keen to keep alive the idea that free study seeks nothing beyond itself and desires the activity of knowing for that activity's own sake. That is what the man of a radically servile character will never understand. He will ask but what use is it? And Reepicheep says this use replied Reebicheep, use captain. If by use you mean filling our bellies or our purses, I confess it will be no use at all. So far as I know, we did not set sail to look for things useful, but to seek honor and adventure. What a baller, which is which Ward is saying would be a very Apollo or sun like response to this idea. And then the third level liberality is to not be paid for to be free. And he makes some sort of references to to people sort of being generous in that sense. We're running sort of more short on time. Apparently Apollos was also known as the dragon slayer. Apollo was famously a killer of dragons. There are apparently four or five dragon scenes in this book. The famous one being Eustace who becomes a dragon and needs to slay or have Aslan slay his dragonly nature because he's such a little beastly little punk. And then that brings about his change of character. And so there is a slaying of the dragon there, but then there is actually they kill a sea Serpent. And there's also some other dragons that they kill which I had forgotten about because I haven't read the Dawn Trout in a long time. So there you go. Obviously, there's gold. There is a. Quite a magnificent and beautiful sunrise that Eustace said, even though we had many adventures on this trip, it was that sunrise that had stuck with me the longest. I can't remember what the line is, but he says something along the lines of like, see if I have it here. As Edmonds send. Afterwards, though, lots of things happened on that trip which sound more exciting that moment. This sunrise was really the most exciting. And it's a sunrise after a terrible storm or something like that. There are lots of. Apparently the sun is the bringer of fortunate events, and there's a lot of, like, ways where they just happen to land on the right side of the island. And they also say, like, well, that was good fortune. That happens quite a number of times. We've already talked about how this is a sphere, the sphere of the philosophers, where they make wise men. There is. They get to that island of the. Of the, like, dumb people and the cup stuffers. Yeah, yeah, the couple bumpers. What they're called Duffel Puds.

[Graham Donaldson]

Duffel.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Yes, the Duffel Puds. And apparently the. The daughter of the king of the Duffel Puds names is Clipsy, which sort of sounds like eclipse, which would be the dimming or the. The darkening of the sun. And they are a dumb doopey people. At which point that magician says, man, I hope one day they are ruled by a wise king, as opposed to them being kind of dumb people who are actually hidden from sight because they were the invisible Duffel buds, because they act, because they. They got a spell put on them or something. So. And then, of course, the very fast, beautiful. The last scene where reboot Chip is sailing off into the end, into the. Into the sun himself because he wants all that glory as part of this. And then with. Apparently the sun is also. Since this is associated with learning or not learning with. With philosophy. Michael Ward makes the claim. I don't know if. I don't know if I buy this one, but at the end, Caspian and Eustace. Oh, no, that was in. That was in the Silver Chair. Sorry, we missed that one. That was where they beat the crap out of the bullies. Yes, but that. That will make.

[Thomas Magby]

I won't.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

I won't spend time sort of unpacking that because we'd have to go back to the Silver Chair. So my apologies. Okay, so that was the sun. That was the dawn shredder. If we are buying this argument, which Thomas is not. Yeah, but that would be that the. That the Don Tretter is the solar book.

[Thomas Magby]

Cool. Makes sense.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

We have time for one more.

[Graham Donaldson]

Not even close.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Not even close.

[Graham Donaldson]

All right, we are. We are over an hour.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

All right, so then we will not talk about Mercury. We'll do Mercury and we'll do Saturn and we will do Venus the other time because we did spend some good discussion. And they're talking about, like, arguing with Thomas. Yeah, arguing with Thomas. Doubting Thomas.

[Thomas Magby]

Doubting Thomas.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

And anyway, so, yeah, maybe. Actually, I kind of want to pick up does this matter in the. In between or like, what? Or I want to know more, Thomas, about how you parsing the differences between looking at the ornamentation of Romeo and Juliet versus the ornamentation of the Narnia books and why you think one is ultimately a deepening. And this one is like.

[Thomas Magby]

Yeah, I don't think it's ornamentation in Romeo and Juliette.

[Graham Donaldson]

Yeah, okay. Yeah, I think that's the.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Okay. Awesome.

[Thomas Magby]

This has been classical stuff. You should know. You can find us [e-mail] YouTube. You can email us theguyslassicalstuff.net you can find us on YouTube. YouTube.com classicalstuff Subscribe. I don't know. That would be cool. And you can find us on Patreon. Patreon.com classicalstuff that's where we post our in between episodes. So after every one of these main episodes, we record some additional discussion and post that just for the patrons on Patreon.

[A.J. Hannenberg]

Cool.

[Thomas Magby]

Check us out there. Thank you all and bye bye. There.