40 Days, 40 Moments in Art — Day 5: Deeper Magic from Before the Dawn of Time
In the Summer of 2002, I was in a van in Istanbul. My eyes were taking in the sights, the blend of old and new, the places were the Middle East met Europe, the large, stone aqueducts, the mosques with their tall minarets, the 7–11 on the corner. As we made our way through a narrow avenue, I noticed a sign in front of a store-front. It had an image of a lion, and a word in Turkish underneath: Aslan.
No, this was not some sort of Narnia-themed bookstore (well, I suppose it could have been… we didn’t stop to see). “Aslan” is simply the Turkish word for lion. I’m not sure why Turkish culture featured so prominently in the The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (Turkish delight, anyone?), but, thanks to C.S. Lewis, there is at least one word in Turkish that is familiar to countless English-speakers across the globe, even if its true origins are not as widely known. I wonder what the Turkish translators decided to name Aslan in Turkish? Lion? Leo? Bob?
I spent almost a full month in Turkey, most of it in Izmir (the city formerly known as Smyrna, a college city near the Aegean coast that’s been burned and rebuilt so many times that very little remains of its old world architecture). My fellow Americans and I were there to teach English to Turkish college students. At the time, English was not only a useful skill for international business, it was essential for almost anyone that wanted to pursue grad school, as the amount of higher education reading material that was available in Turkish was limited at best.
Our fearless leader made the decision about a third of the way through our program that we should read a story to our students. Shortly thereafter, our daily readings from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe began, and I reverted back to a kid in elementary school, remembering the time that my mom read the same story to me. We spent hot, humid afternoons indoors, listening as she described the bitter cold of an endless winter.
Most of the students were into it. Others were bored out of the minds, mostly, I think, because their limited English comprehension made story-time frustratingly difficult. There was one student that became so enthralled with the story that he couldn’t stop talking about it. As woodland animals whispered that Aslan was “on the move,” he had his own theory on the matter.
“I think Aslan is an opiate of the masses,” he said. “I don’t think he really exists.”
These were shocking words from someone who was unfamiliar with the story. He didn’t know that C.S. Lewis was a Christian author and that the book was well-known as a spiritual allegory, yet there he was, quasi-quoting Karl Marx, who famously argued that religion served as a sort of pie-in-the-sky pain killer for the oppressed peoples of the world (and perhaps, beavers of Narnia).
Narnia needed hope, that much was certain, but a land bent beneath the weight of Winter needed more than hope, it needed Spring. Only Aslan could bring it. And so (Spoiler Alert), Aslan shows up in the form of a majestic lion. He emerges like a rising sun, melting the snow and sorrows.
Then the lion dies. The reasons involve a Witch and a table and a kid that’s addicted to Turkish delight, but the real thing that makes it happen, the only thing powerful enough to kill the kingly lion is magic, and not just any magic, ancient magic. The Witch calls it the “Deep Magic” from the dawn of time, that which is “written in letters deep as a spear is long on the fire-stones on the Secret Hills.” This was the Law of the land, and the Law demanded blood, blood that was spilled when the lion was killed on an ancient Stone Table. I’m not sure why random pieces of furniture feature so prominently in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but apparently this table was important.
The children cry. The beavers go into hiding. All that had melted is frozen again. Yet a group of mice arrives and begins to chew on the ropes that bound the now lifeless, shaven lion to the table. After a night of cold, bitter tears, the two girls in the story, Lucy and Susan, hear a crack and discover that the great Stone Table somehow broke in half. Aslan approaches, his mane backlit by the rising sun, fully alive and stronger than ever.
Aslan lives. He lives and he speaks:
“…though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation.”
Years later, I would see the ways that Aslan’s words echo those from the first chapter of the Gospel of John. C.S. Lewis uses a fairy tale setting to tap into something primordial and spiritual. Perhaps life’s mysteries are the basis of all fairy tales. This was the first story I had read to me as a child in which the hero dies. It was a story that only worked because the hero came back.
C.S. Lewis demonstrates the ways that simple words often hold the most magic. Words that are simple enough to include in a children’s story can still carry the weight of life and death. Without knowing it when I first heard them, these were words that planted the early seeds of my spirituality, seeds that would sprout their heads through the snows of confusion and doubt.
Yet, in my humble opinion, the story stands on its own without throwing the message in your face. Perhaps the lion that lives again is an emblem of a deeper truth. Perhaps he’s a character in a simple children’s story, far too good to be true. Perhaps he’s an opiate for the masses or perhaps he’s something else.
The choice is up to you.
