Quotes by C. S. Lewis

Trouble in Narnia: The Occult Side of C.S. Lewis by Mary Ann Collins See Index – How mysticism & the occult are changing the Church

Excerpts

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I’ve been uneasy about the
enthusiasm for Narnia. Then one morning I woke up vividly remembering some
things in the third Narnia book. And now I recognize the root of what has
been troubling me.

I had read all of C.S. Lewis’ books, including his essays, his collections
of letters, his science fiction, and the Narnia books. I read most of the
books more than once, and I read the Narnia books many times. I also read
all the books of Charles Williams
because he was a close friend of Lewis’ and Lewis spoke so highly of his
books. And I read all of George MacDonald‘s
books because Lewis admired him and spoke well of his books.”
 

“The Voyage of the Dawn Treader”
is the third book in the Narnia series. It directly promotes spells and
magic.

One part of the voyage deals with an island inhabited by
invisible creatures called Dufflepods. Lucy works a spell to make the
Dufflepods visible. She goes through a spell book, and it is beautiful and
fascinating. Then she finds the right spell and says the words and follows
the instructions. And then the Dufflepods (and Aslan) become visible. Her
spell made Aslan visible, and he is pleased with what she did.

The book of spells is beautiful and fascinating. One spell is illustrated
with pictures of bees; the pictures come to life and the bees fly off of the
page. In the world of C.S. Lewis’ day, this would not have caused practical
problems. However, these days, kids can go to regular bookstores and buy
spell books written by modern witches.

Many Christians are treating the Narnia books as being an allegory, with
Aslan representing Jesus and the children representing Christians. If you do
this with “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” then you portray Jesus as being
pleased when Christians do magic and work spells. And you support the idea
that that there are “good” spells and “good” magic. That belief is the basis
for modern “white” witchcraft. However, the Bible clearly forbids any form
of witchcraft:

“There shall
not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to
pass through the fire [child sacrifice], or that useth divination
[fortune telling], or an observer of times [astrology], or an enchanter
[working spells], or a witch [practicing witchcraft or consulting a
witch], or a charmer [using charms and other objects for protection or
“good luck”], or a consulter with familiar spirits [channelling], or a
wizard [doing magic], or a necromancer [spiritism, contacting the dead].
For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord.”
(Deuteronomy 18:10-12)

In the book, the Dufflepods are ruled by a wizard. He uses magic to rule
the Dufflepods because they aren’t yet mature enough to be ruled directly by
Aslan. So there is good magic and a good wizard. This magic prepares people
for relationship with Aslan. Again, if Aslan is taken as a symbol for Jesus,
then magic prepares people to become Christians. In our modern culture, that
would mean that Wicca is a way to get to know Jesus and become His follower.

Back when C.S. Lewis wrote the
Narnia stories, Wicca did not
exist. Kids who read the books couldn’t experiment with spells. But this is
a different world today. Now kids are surrounded by movies and TV shows that
promote witchcraft, and they may know kids at their school who dabble in it.

What will happen when Disney comes out with a movie of “The Voyage of the
Dawn Treader”? Christian kids may wind up feeling free to practice magic.
And this could take down the barrier between Christianity and Wicca. It
could “Christianize” witchcraft in the eyes of some Christian kids.

There are some other problems with C.S. Lewis. He taught many good things,
but mixed in with those good things there are other teachings that lay a
foundation for apostasy.

For starters in understanding the man, here is a quotation from a letter
that he wrote describing a trip that he and his wife Joy took to Greece in
1960. He wrote,

“I had some ado
to prevent Joy and myself from relapsing into Paganism in Attica! At
Daphni it was hard not to pray to Apollo the Healer. But somehow one
didn’t feel it would have been very wrong”.

Lewis also said that
“Christianity fulfilled paganism” and “paganism prefigured Christianity.”
(Roger Lancelyn Green,
“C.S. Lewis: A Biography,” Harcourt Inc., 1974, pages 274 and 30.)

In his autobiography (Surprised by Joy),
Lewis tells how at age 13 he abandoned his Anglican faith due to the
influence of a school mistress who was involved with “Theosophy,
Rosicrucianism, Spiritualism; the whole Anglo-American Occultist tradition.”
And Lewis developed a “lust” for the occult that remained with him even
after he returned to Anglicanism. He said,

“And that
started in me something with which, on and off, I have had plenty of
trouble since–the desire for the preternatural, simply as such, the
passion for the Occult. Not everyone has this disease; those who have
will know what I mean. I once tried to describe it in a novel. It is a
spiritual lust; and like the lust of the body it has the fatal power of
making everything else in the world seem uninteresting while it lasts.”
(“Surprised by Joy,” Harcourt Brace, 1955, pages 58-60.)

Lewis said that he described
that lust for the occult in a novel. It occurs in the third book of his
science fiction trilogy. A character named is in the process of being
initiated into an inner ring of scientists who are occultists. They worship
demons, which they call “macrobes” (huge, powerful invisible things, as
opposed to microbes, which are tiny invisible things).

“Here, here surely at last (so his desire whispered to him) was the true
inner circle of all, the circle whose centre was outside the human race–the
ultimate secret, the supreme power, the last initiation. The fact that it
was almost completely horrible did not in the least diminish its
attraction.” (C. S.
Lewis, “That Hideous Strength: A Modern Fairy Tale for Grown Ups,”
Collier Books, Macmillan Publishing Company, 1946, pp. 259 260.)

“These
creatures [demons]… breathed death on the human race and on all joy.
Not despite this but because of this, the terrible gravitation sucked
and tugged and fascinated him towards them. Never before had he known
the fruitful strength of the movement opposite to Nature which now had
him in its grip; the impulse to reverse all reluctances and to draw
every circle anti-clockwise.”
(“That
Hideous Strength,” p. 269.)

Note that he said that Lewis
said that he had trouble with that lust for the occult ever since his
encounter with the Matron in his boys’ school. He wrote that statement in
1955. By then, he had written all but three of his books.
(“The Four Loves,” “Reflections on the Psalms,” and “A Grief Observed”).

Lewis dedicated his autobiography (“Surprised by
Joy”) to Bede Griffiths, a former
student of his who became a long-time friend. Griffiths founded a “Christian
ashram” in India. He said that Hindu temples are a “sacrament.” And he said,
“No one can say in the proper sense that the Hindu, the Buddhist or the
Muslim is an ‘unbeliever.’ I would say rather that we have to recognize him
as our brother in Christ.”
(Randy England, “The Unicorn
in the Sanctuary: The Impact of the New Age on the Catholic Church,” TAN
Books and Publishers, Inc., 1991, pages 70-72)

What Bede Griffiths did and said is the logical conclusion of a statement
that C.S. Lewis made in “Mere
Christianity.”  He said,

“There are
people in other religions who are being led by God’s secret influence to
concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with
Christianity, and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it. For
example, a Buddhist of good will may be led to concentrate more and more
on the Buddhist teaching about mercy and to leave in the background
(though he might still say he believed) the Buddhist teaching on certain
other points. Many of the good Pagans long before Christ’s birth may
have been in this position.”
[There are many editions
of the book, and page numbering varies. This quotation comes from Book
IV, Chapter 10, “Nice People or New Men,” the fourth paragraph.]

Lewis said that he was strongly influenced by George MacDonald, who was
a universalist. MacDonald’s book “Lilith”
is based on an occult teaching that Adam was married to a demon named Lilith
before he married Eve. By the end of MacDonald’s book, Lilith is
redeemed, and Adam says that even the devil will eventually be redeemed.

This universalism shows up in some of Lewis’ fiction books. In “The Great
Divorce,” Lewis is in Heaven. He speaks with George MacDonald and asks
him about universalism, and MacDonald answers that Lewis cannot understand
such things now. In the last of the Narnia books (“The Last Battle”), a
pagan makes it to Heaven (“Aslan’s Land”) because of his good works and his
good motives, in spite of the fact that he did not believe in Aslan and he
worshipped Aslan’s enemy, a false god named Tash.

Lilith shows up in “The Lion,
the Witch and the Wardrobe.” Mr. Beaver tells the children that the
White Witch is descended from Lilith, who is the “first wife” of Adam. This
could cause confusion, especially for children. Although Mr. Beaver is a
fictional character, he is speaking authoritatively about the real
world–the real Adam and Eve of the Bible.

Lewis spoke very highly of Charles Williams and his books, so I read all of
his books. They are novels that mix darkness and occultism with some
insights about Christianity. In “The Greater Trumps,” the hero is a saintly
woman who saves the day by doing magic with Tarot cards.

Williams was as much a mixture as his books were. He started out as a
serious occultist. He believed Theosophy and other occult teachings, and he
joined the
Golden
Dawn, a group that practices “sex magick,” which is ritual sex that is
done for the purpose of getting occult power. (The notorious Satanist,
Aleister Crowley, was a member of the Golden Dawn.) Williams left the Golden
Dawn and joined the Anglican church, but he kept some of his Theosophical
beliefs.

Lewis also had a close friend named
Owen Barfield.
He dedicated the Narnia books to him and named Lucy after Barfield’s
daughter. Barfield was a philosopher who started out with Theosophy and
developed his own version of it.

According to Theosophy, the God of the Bible is a tyrant, and Lucifer (the
devil) came to rescue mankind from him. Even this dark view of God shows up
in C.S. Lewis’ writings.

After his wife Joy died, Lewis wrote “A Grief Observed,” a book describing
his thoughts and emotional struggles as a result of her death. The dark
Theosophical view of God shows up in this book, as shown in the following
quotations.

“Supposing the truth were ‘God always vivisects’?”
(C.S. Lewis, “A Grief
Observed,” Bantam Books, The Seabury Press, 1963, p. 33)

“Is it rational to believe in a bad God? Anyway, in a God so bad as all
that? The Cosmic Sadist, the spiteful imbecile?” (“A Grief Observed,” p. 35)

Lewis didn’t stay there. He vacillated between despair and hope. But in his
moments of agony and despair, the Theosophical view of God came back to
haunt him.

There is another problem with C.S. Lewis. I read all of his books, and I do
not recall any place where he treated Scripture as being authoritative. He
may have done it, but if he did, it was not done often enough, or clearly
enough, or strongly enough, to stand out in my memory. Lewis’ theology seems
to be based primarily on human reasoning (including evolution and Freudian
psychology). Some people have called him a “Christian humanist.”
 

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