S8E19 – Perelandra – Chapter 16: “I have seen Ares and Aphrodite”

Ransom speaks to the ruling angels of Mars and Venus.

S8E19: Chapter 16 – “I have seen Ares and Aphrodite” (Download)

Show Notes

Introduction

Quote-of-the-Week

“The world is born today. Today for the first time two creatures of the low worlds, two images of Maleldil that breathe and breed like the beasts, step up that step at which your parents fell, and sit in the throne of what they were meant to be. It was never seen before. Because it did not happen in your world a greater thing happened, but not this. Because the greater thing happened in Thulcandra, this and not the greater thing happens here.”

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter 16

Chit-Chat

• David was meant to be on a business trip, but his train to Chicago was cancelled, so he was able to join.
• Andrew is in the season of job interviews, as his residency at his church ends in June. He will also be doing another talk back for two more reenactments of “The Screwtape Letters”. Andrew will have an article published in the C. S. Lewis Substack soon.
• In C. S. Lewis news, the BBC has been starting to release audio plays of “That Hideous Strength”.
• David has recently learned that the Wade annotated edition of “Surprised by Joy” might be delayed. Without this cheat code to help, the next season of Pints with Jack might focus instead on “The Abolition of Man”.
• The Mere Christians Conference is coming up, and registration is live!
• There have been amazing discussions on Slack recently. David wanted to highlight a statement by a contributor, Loreal.

I love the line from the book of the unman trying to fill the lady’s imagination “with bright poisonous shapes”- as it is the imagination we use to interpret what we see, think, etc! As Lewis says “Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.”

Loreal on Slack

Toast

• Matt had a dry English stout from a Texan brewery that he has been waiting to try for over a year. It is called “Inklings”, and even has a picture of Lewis and Tolkien on the front!
• David was drinking Hennessy Very Special Cognac.
• Andrew drank an Old Speckled Hen.

• We had no new Patreon supporters, so let’s toast Fr. Santiago Abella, who was recently ordained!

Discussion

Chapter Summary

Ransom speaks to the two angelic rulers of Perelandra and Malacandra. 

The Oyarsa of Perelandra says that “the hour” has come when she will entrust the planet to the unfallen Green Lady and the King.

The eldila transform into appropriate forms for their arrival. Ransom spends quite some time thinking about the appearance of each of them and how it communicates gender and myth. 

Large numbers of animals gather with them as the day dawns and the King and Queen arrive.

01. “Angels in Waiting”

Q. So when we left Ransom at the end of the last chapter he saw that two eldila were present. We begin this chapter overhearing the conversation. There’s so many things to discuss here, but first, what do they say?

• Others are climbing the mountain to join them.

“They have already set foot on the sand and are beginning to ascend.”

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter 16

• One eldil points out that Ransom has arrived, and instructs the other to take care of him, because he is a friend, as his name suggests; “Elwin” means “elf friend” in Anglo Saxon.

“The small one from Thulcandra is already here… Look on him, beloved, and love him… He is indeed but breathing dust and a careless touch would unmake him…  he is in the body of Maleldil and his sins are forgiven… His very name in his own tongue is Elwin, the friend of the eldila.”

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter 16

• However, the description of Ransom is not entirely positive!

“…in his best thoughts there are such things mingled as, if we thought them, our light would perish”

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter 16

• The eldil then explains that he had entered Earth’s atmosphere, and encountered demons at play.

“A thickened air as full of the Darkened as Deep Heaven is of the Light Ones. I have heard the prisoners there talking in their divided tongues and Elwin has taught me how it is with them.”

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter 16

• Ransom realises that one of these beings is the Oyarsa/Archon of Malacandra (Mars). The texts explains a question which was brought up in “Out of the Silent Planet” regarding angelic speech.

[Ransom] did not, of course, recognise the voice, for there is no difference between one eldil’s voice and another’s. It is by art, not nature, that they affect human ear-drums and their words owe nothing to lungs or lips.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter 16

02. “Angelic Names and Roles”

Q. Ransom then speaks up and asks who the other eldil is. Why is he surprised at the answer and what does he learn?

• First, he learns that the term “Oyarsa” only applies to an eldil if they are on their assigned planet.
• Secondly, Ransom is told that the other eldil is the Oyarsa of Perelandra. Both the eldil are referred to as “Malacandra” and “Perelandra”, respectably.
• Ransom is surprised because up until this point, he did not believe that eldila inhabited this planet, because of what the Green Lady told him. However, as the eldil explains, Perelandra had only been seen by the Lady through the planet itself.

“They have not seen my face till to-day,” said the second voice, “except as they see it in the water and the roof-heaven, the islands, the caves, and the trees…”

C. S. Lewis, Oyarsa Perelandra, Perelandra, Chapter 16

03. “Changing Roles”

Q. Perelandra says that she helped form the planet and has ruled it until now, but something is now changing…

• Apparently, the responsibility is being transferred.

“…to-day all this is taken from me. Blessed be He. I was not set to rule them, but while they were young I ruled all else. I rounded this ball when it first arose from Arbol. I spun the air about it and wove the roof. I built the Fixed Island and this, the holy mountain, as Maleldil taught me. The beasts that sing and the beasts that fly and all that swims on my breast and all that creeps and tunnels within me down to the centre has been mine. And to-day all this is taken from me. Blessed be He.”

C. S. Lewis, Oyarsa Perelandra, Perelandra, Chapter 16

• Matt mentioned that this scene reminded him of St. Thomas Moore in the film A Man for All Seasons.
• “Malacandra” doesn’t think that Ransom is going to understand this correctly, thinking that it’s a bad thing. He throws quite a lot of shade at humanity in this chapter! However, Ransom does understand it correctly (suck it, Malacandra!).

“I think I understand,” said Ransom, “for one of Maleldil’s sayers has told us. It is like when the children of a great house come to their full age. Then those who administered all their riches, and whom perhaps they have never seen, come and put all in their hands and give up their keys.“

C. S. Lewis, Ransom, Perelandra, Chapter 16

• This is found in St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians, about the inheritance of children.

What I am saying is that as long as an heir is underage, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. The heir is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. So also, when we were underage, we were in slavery under the elemental spiritual forces of the world. But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.

Galatians 4:1-7

• This connects with a broader theme across the book, particularly in Ransom’s decision to fight the devil. We have a role to play and a responsibility, because God works through us and we have agency. However, we must praise God also when that role is no longer our own. We are stewards, not owners.

Q. Perelandra gives a parallel example regarding the singing animal Ransom encountered. (What is it?)

• Apparently, the mothers of the singing animals do not produce milk, leaving their young to be nursed by another creature of a different species. David got very strong Jungle Book vibes from this, like Mowgli being raised by wolves.

She is great and beautiful and dumb, and till the young singing beast is weaned it is among her whelps and is subject to her. But when it is grown it becomes the most delicate and glorious of all beasts and goes from her. And she wonders at its song.

C. S. Lewis, Oyarsa Perelandra, Perelandra, Chapter 16

• Ransom asks why Maleldil would set things up in this way, but Malacandra says that’s like asking why Maleldil made him.

04. “The Hour Has Come!”

Q. Perelandra then says “The hour has come”. What’s she talking about?

• The reunion of the King and the Queen! The two beings have passed the temptation and have gone further than our parents, Adam and Eve. It was they that the eldil spoke of climbing the mountain.

“The world is born to-day,” said Malacandra. “To-day for the first time two creatures of the low worlds, two images of Maleldil that breathe and breed like the beasts, step up that step at which your parents fell, and sit in the throne of what they were meant to be. It was never seen before. Because it did not happen in your world a greater thing happened, but not this. Because the greater thing happened in Thulcandra, this and not the greater thing happens here.”

C. S. Lewis, Malacandra, Perelandra, Chapter 16

• As the beasts come up with the couple, it reminded Matt of Sarah Smith in “The Great Divorce”, and Andrew of Lewis’ commentary in “The Four Loves”. It’s also like Noah’s ark, though there’s no need of an ark to save anyone or anything.

Q. What does Ransom do?

• Ransom falls to the ground, out of relief, or in a faint, or possibly in a bow of worship! Malacandra offers him a strange bit of assurance, telling him to not think of himself more highly than he ought to.

“Be comforted… It is no doing of yours. You are not great, though you could have prevented a thing so great that Deep Heaven sees it with amazement. Be comforted, small one, in your smallness. He lays no merit on you. Receive and be glad. Have no fear, lest your shoulders be bearing this world. Look! it is beneath your head and carries you.”

C. S. Lewis, Malacandra, Perelandra, Chapter 16

• The passage reminded David of the Gospel of Luke…

So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’”

Luke 17:10

05. “Shapeshifting”

Q. With the King and Queen arriving, the eldila talk about changing their form into something more pleasing to honour the King and Queen. What are some of the “outfits” they try out with Ransom?

• Their first go is “a tornado of sheer monstrosities”.

A tornado of sheer monstrosities seemed to be pouring over Ransom. Darting pillars filled with eyes, lightning pulsations of flame, talons and beaks and billowy masses of what suggested snow, volleyed through cubes and heptagons into an infinite black void.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter 16

• The next is a number of wheels, as seen in Ezekiel.

…there came rolling wheels. There was nothing but that–concentric wheels moving with a rather sickening slowness one inside the other. There was nothing terrible about them if you could get used to their appalling size, but there was also nothing significant.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter 16

• Finally, the eldila take on the appearance of giant human figures.

They were perhaps thirty feet high. They were burning white like white-hot iron. The outline of their bodies when he looked at it steadily against the red landscape seemed to be faintly, swiftly undulating as though the permanence of their shape, like that of waterfalls or flames, co-existed with a rushing movement of the matter it contained. For a fraction of an inch inward from this outline the landscape was just visible through them: beyond that they were opaque.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter 16

• Ransom notices that though the eldila are stationary, they also seem to be moving. He then concludes that they are, in fact, moving rapidly in order to appear stationary:

In relation to their own celestial frame of reference they were rushing forward to keep abreast of the mountain valley. Had they stood still, they would have flashed past him too quickly for him to see, doubly dropped behind by the planet’s spin on its own axis and by its onward march around the Sun.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter 16

06. “She’s a Rainbow”

Q. What else does Ransom note about the colours of the eldila?

• They have white bodies, but streamers of coloured “plumage”, like a halo. Ransom says that he could not quite remember the colours, but that he’d know them if he saw them again. Perhaps the eldila were manipulating Ransom’s senses, so he could perceive colour beyond the range of the human eye.

Their bodies, he said, were white. But a flush of diverse colours began at about the shoulders and streamed up the necks and flickered over face and head and stood out around the head like plumage or a halo. He told me he could in a sense remember these colours–that is, he would know them if he saw them again–but that he cannot by any effort call up a visual image of them nor give them any name … The “plumage” or halo of the one eldil was extremely different from that of the other. The Oyarsa of Mars shone with cold and morning colours, a little metallic–pure, hard, and bracing. The Oyarsa of Venus glowed with a warm splendour, full of the suggestion of teeming vegetable life.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter 16

07. “Now We Have Faces”

Q. What does Ransom have to say about their faces?

• They don’t look anything like popular artistic renderings of angels! Rather, they look statuesque, with changeless expressions.

In that sense their faces were as “primitive,” as unnatural, if you like, as those of archaic statues from Ægina.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter 16

• Ransom concludes that what he is seeing is charitable love, devoid of natural affection.

He concluded in the end that it was charity. But it was terrifyingly different from the expression of human charity, which we always see either blossoming out of, or hastening to descend into, natural affection. Here there was no affection at all: no least lingering memory of it even at ten million years’ distance, no germ from which it could spring in any future, however remote. Pure, spiritual, intellectual love shot from their faces like barbed lightning. It was so unlike the love we experience that its expression could easily be mistaken for ferocity.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter 16

• It reminded David of a scene from “Till We Have Faces”, when the god appears.

08. “Theology of the Bodies”

• David named this chapter after “Theology of the Body”, the magnum opus of St. Pope John Paul II, in which the pope quoted Lewis’ “The Four Loves”.

Q. We discussed their faces… what do the angelic bodies reveal?

• They are naked, a la Genesis; however, their bodies do not have any defining sex characteristics. There is a character distinction between them, however.

But whence came this curious difference between them? He found that he could point to no single feature wherein the difference resided, yet it was impossible to ignore.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter 16

• He tries to articulate the difference. He says that Malacandra was rhythmic, while Perelandra was melodic. Another difference was what that Malacandra was gripping a spear (like the universal symbol for “male”), and Perelandra held nothing, standing instead with her palms outstretched towards Ransom.

One could try–Ransom has tried a hundred times–to put it into words. He has said that Malacandra was like rhythm and Perelandra like melody… He thinks that the first held in his hand something like a spear, but the hands of the other were open, with the palms towards him. But I don’t know that any of these attempts has helped me much.

C. S. Lewis, Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter 16

Q. How does this shape Ransom’s understanding of sex and gender?

• He wonders why many languages assign gender to inanimate objects.

Everyone must sometimes have wondered why in nearly all tongues certain inanimate objects are masculine and others feminine. What is masculine about a mountain or feminine about certain trees?

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter 16

• He dives in further, revealing a depth to gender beyond the mere biological reality. He plays with numerous theories.
• Theory 1: Gender is based on the form of the word.

Ransom has cured me of believing that this is a purely morphological phenomenon, depending on the form of the word.

C. S. Lewis, Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter 16

• Theory 2: Gender is an imaginative extension of sex.

Our ancestors did not make mountains masculine because they projected male characteristics into them. The real process is the reverse.

C. S. Lewis, Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter 16

• Ransom describes gender in almost platonic terms.

Gender is a reality, and a more fundamental reality than sex. Sex is, in fact, merely the adaptation to organic life of a fundamental polarity which divides all created beings. Female sex is simply one of the things that have feminine gender; there are many others, and Masculine and Feminine meet us on planes of reality where male and female would be simply meaningless. Masculine is not attenuated male, nor feminine attenuated female. On the contrary, the male and female of organic creatures are rather faint and blurred reflections of masculine and feminine. Their reproductive functions, their differences in strength and size, partly exhibit, but partly also confuse and misrepresent, the real polarity.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter 16

• Therefore, although sexless, the genders of the eldila were on clear display.

The two white creatures were sexless. But he of Malacandra was masculine (not male); she of Perelandra was feminine (not female).

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter 16

• These characteristics reflected the planets themselves.

Malacandra seemed to him to have the look of one standing armed, at the ramparts of his own remote archaic world, in ceaseless vigilance, his eyes ever roaming the earth-ward horizon whence his danger came long ago. “A sailor’s look,” Ransom once said to me; “you know . . . eyes that are impregnated with distance.”

C. S. Lewis, Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter 16

 But the eyes of Perelandra opened, as it were, inward, as if they were the curtained gateway to a world of waves and murmurings and wandering airs, of life that rocked in winds and splashed on mossy stones and descended as the dew and arose sunward in thin-spun delicacy of mist. On Mars the very forests are of stone; in Venus the lands swim.

C. S. Lewis, Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter 16

• This leads Ransom to consider the myths of the Greco-Roman gods associated with these planets.

09. “Myth Transmission”

• Matt discussed an argument made by G. K. Chesterton in response to atheists, who claim that people buy into the archaic lie that is religion. Rather, as Chesterton contends, it is astonishing that everyone throughout history have turned in the same general direction – towards a higher power – for help, guidance, and explanation. In other words, there is a law stamped on the human heart, and this is the same with gender.

Q. Ransom asked the eldila when and from whom had those on earth learned that Ares was a man of war and that Aphrodite rose from the sea foam. After all, earth is meant to have been in quarantine since the Fall. What do they say?

• His answer is somewhat confusing.

It comes, they told him, a long way round and through many stages. There is an environment of minds as well as of space. The universe is one–a spider’s web wherein each mind lives along every line, a vast whispering gallery where (save for the direct action of Maleldil) though no news travels unchanged yet no secret can be rigorously kept. In the mind of the fallen Archon under whom our planet groans, the memory of Deep Heaven and the gods with whom he once consorted is still alive. Nay, in the very matter of our world, the traces of the celestial commonwealth are not quite lost. Memory passes through the womb and hovers in the air. The Muse is a real thing. A faint breath, as Virgil says, reaches even the late generations. Our mythology is based on a solider reality than we dream: but it is also at an almost infinite distance from that base.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter 16

Ransom then views mythology as “gleams of celestial strength and beauty falling on a jungle of filth and imbecility” – he’s rather embarrassed at the scandal-ridden perceptions of Mars and Venus drawn up by humanity when he gets to see the real thing before him.

 And when they told him this, Ransom at last understood why mythology was what it was–gleams of celestial strength and beauty falling on a jungle of filth and imbecility. His cheeks burned on behalf of our race when he looked on the true Mars and Venus and remembered the follies that have been talked of them on Earth. Then a doubt struck him.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter 16

Q. Ransom then has a doubt – is he seeing the eldila as they really are? Is he?

• Possibly not; he’s not in a place to be able to answer that question, and his mind probably couldn’t comprehend it.

“But do I see you as you really are?” he asked.
“Only Maleldil sees any creature as it really is,” said Mars.
“How do you see one another?” asked Ransom.
“There are no holding places in your mind for an answer to that.”

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Sixteen

10. “Noah’s Ark”

Q. Ransom then notices that there’s “A regular Noah’s Ark” of animals all around them. Of course, an ark isn’t needed because this is an unfallen world. Echoing the Book of Revelation, four singing beasts soar over all the noise. The eldila and the animals are all on one side of the pool, arranged and all looking in the same direction. Ransom asks a question, but realises something when nobody answers him. What is it?

• Ransom wants to know how the King and Queen reach the mountain summit and then depart before night falls. He has naturally assumed that they are on previously trodden fixed land, which they must not spend the night on.

…somehow he knew perfectly well that this island had never been forbidden them, and that one purpose in forbidding the other had been to lead them to this their destined throne.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Sixteen

• In the appearance of a sunrise, the royal couple arrives…

For as the light reached its perfection and settled itself, as it were, like a lord upon his throne or like wine in a bowl, and filled the whole flowery cup of the mountain top, every cranny, with its purity, the holy thing, Paradise itself in its two Persons, Paradise walking hand in hand, its two bodies shining in the light like emeralds yet not themselves too bright to look at, came in sight in the cleft between two peaks, and stood a moment with its male right hand lifted in regal and pontificial benediction, and then walked down and stood on the far side of the water. And the gods kneeled and bowed their huge bodies before the small forms of that young King and Queen.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Sixteen

Wrap Up

Concluding Thoughts

• Andrew reflects on the hope encapsulated within this chapter, written in a hopeless age, with the ongoing second world war.

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