• Prince Caspian by C.S Lewis (Lions 1983) pp. 135-138; 167-174
• That Hideous Strength by C.S Lewis (Pan Books1983) pp. 286-294

These thoughts have almost come about by accident, if such a thing as accident actually exists. Last week I tried to type the word re-enchantment in my post about Faramir’s questioning of Frodo and the device with which I was writing displayed a considerable reluctance to allow me to do so. Time and again it automatically corrected what I had written replacing it with the word, re-enactment. Of course it is possible to persuade a device to change its mind (does it have something that could be described as a mind?). All I had to do was to keep on typing the word that I wanted to use and to tap on it in the bar that either offers me alternative words or corrects the word that I might have misspelt or mistakenly chosen but the process aided by an attentive reader (thank you, Jo!) had got me thinking.

My title comes from Prince Caspian by C.S Lewis and the words are spoken by Aslan at the Fords of Beruna (p.168) after the battle fought between the disenchanted Telmarines and Old Narnia. There is no time here to go into the story in any detail and so if you have not read it I would encourage you to do so. Here in England it is a holiday weekend. Good Friday and Easter Monday are both public holidays, but for most these days are a grimly disenchanted affair and the roads will be jammed with traffic as people try to get from one place to another, getting very frustrated in the process. It is not a holiday in this sense for a parish priest such as I am in the Anglican (Episcopalian) tradition. I will spend much of the weekend in church walking in the footsteps of Christ in the journey from the Cross to the tomb before celebrating the resurrection on Sunday. There will be no long car journeys for me. But there will be another sense in which holiday will be made. Will it be in the same sense that Aslan speaks of?

If you type re-enchantment or re-enchanting into your search engine it is likely that you will soon come across a podcast of that name hosted by the excellent Justin Brierley and Belle Tindall from the roof of the library in Lambeth Palace, the official residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, my boss. Views from the library look across the River Thames in the heart of London to the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben and Westminster Abbey. Each week on the podcast Brierley and Tindall interview a personality who they perceive is re-enchanting life in some way. I enjoy it very much and would highly recommend it to you but again I wonder if C.S Lewis, Charles Williams or J.R.R Tolkien were to be guests would they recognise the material discussed each week as re-enchantment?

Imagine taking Merlin from That Hideous Strength as imagined by the peerless Alan Lee into the library of Lambeth Palace!

And what if Bacchus from Prince Caspian were to enter, or Merlin from That Hideous Strength? As Susan says to Lucy in Prince Caspian, “I wouldn’t have felt safe with Bacchus and all his wild girls if we’d met them without Aslan.”

Or Bacchus as he is imagined by the Renaissance artist, Titian, in his encounter with Ariadne.

And that is the point that I wish to make. In my imagination I intend to take Bacchus and his maenads from Prince Caspian, and Merlin from That Hideous Strength into the library of Lambeth Palace for a recording of Re-enchanting. I don’t think that we will need to worry about security. Merlin will soon put everyone into an enchanted sleep as he did to MacPhee in the house of St Anne’s on the Hill.

Justin Brierley and Belle Tindall in the library of Lambeth Palace and their magnificent view across the River Thames.

But here I am claiming for myself an authority that I do not possess. Did I say that I would introduce Bacchus and Merlin to Justin Brierley and Belle Tindall? I doubt very much if either of these masters of enchantment would take orders from me. Unless Aslan and the Pendragon were present the holiday that I spoke of earlier would be mere chaos and, perhaps, worse than that: it might be carnage. There must be true authority if a re-enchanted world is to be life giving. In That Hideous Strength there is considerable doubt about whether Merlin will serve good or evil. The same is true of Bacchus and the Maenads also.

And what of the holiday of which I spoke earlier? I am sure that my readers know that the origin of this word is holy-day and so I am writing this on Holy Saturday, the eve of Easter, the day on which Christ rested in the tomb before his resurrection, or alternatively the day on which he harrowed hell. Or maybe both. He does not suffer from the limitations that we do. This is the holiest weekend of the Christian year.

So in what sense is the day about which Aslan speaks, Holy? It is a day of liberation. Souls, imprisoned within the disenchanted world are set free from bondage and join the festival dance with the maenads and trees and nymphs. The disenchanted world is harrowed. A holiday begins. But that is Narnia. Miraz and his Telmarines have not been able to disenchant Narnia for very long and Old Narnia is still very much alive, although hidden. Our world is different. As Ransome says to Merlin, “the soul has gone out of the wood and water. Oh, I daresay you could awake them; a little. But it would not be enough.” In That Hideous Strength the powers of heaven, the Oyéresu, must intervene to throw down the powers of darkness. In Tolkien’s legendarium we would be speaking of the Valar when they intervene against Morgoth in the First Age.

So maybe Justin Brierley and Belle Tindall are nearer to holy-day than I earlier suggested. Re-enchantment must begin with a refinding of faith in God. But let it be wild as it is in Prince Caspian or That Hideous Strength, or in a work that greatly influenced these, The Place of the Lion, by Charles Williams. Or might it be through one who was strangely marked by his journey through the perilous land of Lothlórien as was Frodo Baggins? However our dying world is to be re-enchanted let it be according to the spirit of the wild Irish poet, Patrick Kavanagh.

I will have love, Have love, 
And a life with a shapely form, 
With gaiety and charm, 
and capable of receiving, with grace, 
the grace of living, and wild moments too,
Self, when freed from you. 

Frodo is touched, blessed, by the Lady of the Perilous Wood.