The Lion, the Witch, and the Witch Hunt: How C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia Demonizes the Goddess by Courtney McLaughlin

On May 16, 2008, Walt Disney Pictures and Walden Media will release Prince Caspian, the sequel to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005). Over fifty years after it was conceived, the seven books that comprise The Chronicles of Narnia series continue to captivate audiences worldwide. The books, which are ripe with Christian symbolism, are very different than the movies, which showcase flashy computer animation and action. The popularity of the written stories endures precisely because Narnia can be enjoyed at face value or as a Christian allegory.   While author C.S. Lewis thinly-veiled his Christian beliefs in the books, he heavily cloaked his attack on the Divine Feminine.

Peeling away the layers of symbolism uncloaks the perspective of one of the most misunderstood figures in English children's literature - the White Witch. This fascinating feminist character has been burned on the proverbial stake of literature alongside other misunderstood heroines, such as the Wicked Witch from The Wizard of Oz/ Wicked and Morgaine of the Arthurian legends/The Mists of Avalon. Just as those powerful women have been vindicated, the time has come for the White Witch's story to emerge. 

A Christian whose religion influenced and inspired the Narnia series, Lewis purposefully labeled his antagonist a witch: Jadis the White Witch and The Lady of the Green Kirtle who is Queen of the Underworld.  Witch is a loaded term, a label that might have landed strong-willed women on top of a flaming funeral pyre just four hundred years ago. Rosalind Miles, in Who Cooked the Last Supper? The Women's History of the World, wrote, "The persecution of the witch-hunts, arguably the first sustained use of terror as a political weapon, has been seen as the last convulsive throes of the dying Middle Ages, the final revenge of its grim, archaic form of patriarchy on anomalous or nonconformist women." 

C.S. Lewis polluted The Chronicles of Narnia with misunderstood Goddess symbolism-a labyrinth, a magic fruit tree, water/winter, and a serpent. Once these symbols are revealed, the "evil" White Witch transforms into a very green, very earthy, very demonized Goddess.

Labyrinth
In The Magician's Nephew, the story of the genesis of Narnia, characters Polly and Digory find their way through a labyrinth into a ruined palace, where they free the Great Queen Jadis from her petrified state. Then "the Queen led them out of the Hall of Images into a long corridor and then through a whole maze of halls and stairs and courtyards," wrote Lewis. Like the Minoan Palace of Knossos on Crete, Jadis' palace was located at the center of the labyrinth, which was a symbol for a powerful spiritual journey. "It was in the spiral, or labyrinth, that the way had to be danced or walked-in all the rites of the Mother throughout the ages, and the world, the way is always connected with a cave/womb, and with a maze-like spiraling entrance and exit," wrote author Monica Sjoo in The Great Cosmic Mother.

The otherworldly White Witch was not created in the Christian kingdom of Narnia but instead found her way out of a dying society through a labyrinth. She was attempting to survive, just as goddess-worshipping societies were forced to merge with monotheistic patriarchal religions or endure decimation.

Even in modern Christianity, the labyrinth remains an earthly path to the divine and a potent symbol for one's spiritual journey. It is not the only symbol that has been picked up and morphed by Christianity.

Tree
The tree of life stood proudly for tens of thousands of years as one of the most important Goddess symbols, before modern religious traditions borrowed the image and subverted its true meaning. True to his Christian faith, Lewis places an apple tree at the center of the Narnia creation myth. Like Eve, the Witch of this story cannot resist the temptation of the fruit of the tree and she indulges in its sweetness, gushing, "It is the apple of youth, the apple of life." Digory asks Aslan what will happen to the disobedient Witch. He responds, "She has won her heart's desire; she has unwearying strength and endless days like a goddess." 

Water/Winter
Trees weren't the only natural elements where goddess-worshippers connected with Her presence. Our goddess-worshipping ancestors also sought out special rivers, wells, and other bodies of water, Her sacred gifts to the earth. The Goddess was connected with water in all its forms: weather, rain, winter, snow, etc. When the White Witch is first introduced in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, she was accused of controlling the weather, making it always winter but never Christmas. But winter isn't a wasteland; it's the season that celebrates water's crystal form. Many goddess-worshipping people venerated this liquid of life as a divine gift from the Great Mother.

"Water, like fire, was anciently sacred, and specially related to the Moon Mother. Rainmaking and magic control of the weather were secret rites…she was believed to give all moisture, from the morning dew, natural springs, and rain to the great rivers and oceans," according to Monica Sjoo. Many goddess shrines were built over sacred wells.

Serpent
Goddess worship was an attractive faith, a celebration of life, growth, rebirth, and the harvest that especially appealed to women (mothers themselves) and peasants (who cultivated the land). Therefore, it was the main competition to the early patriarchal religions, who harvested the most important symbol in Goddess worship-the serpent of life-and morphed it into the ultimate symbol of evil, according to a number of feminist writers.

Why would the creators of this myth decide on the Goddess' snaking life spiral to be the sign of sin? Sjoo explains the "patriarch tries to destroy the world's original, most widespread, and enduring religion by branding it as 'evil.'" Lewis uses this symbol to reinforce the vile nature of the Witch.  In The Silver Chair, a villainous witch shape-shifts into a murderous serpent. Her names, the Lady of the Green Kirtle and the Queen of the Underland, connect her with goddess worship, since green symbolizes life/rebirth and the Goddess was not only associated with giving new life but taking it away as the death-crone. The Queen of the Underland's subterranean realm positions her as the anti-thesis of Narnia, just as Christians designate the heavenly skies as the location of divinity and the earth home to sin and serpents. To Lewis, the earth-dwelling serpent would have been the symbol for evil itself because of its Biblical appearances.  But for tens of thousands of years prior, the serpent was the ultimate symbol of cosmic life for goddess-worshipping peoples.

Am I reading too much into the stories? Perhaps, but either way the fact that these symbols are included in the stories is a testament to the depth of Mr. Lewis's genius as a thinker and as a writer. The fact that these symbols are in the stories isn't a reason to avoid reading these books, in fact quite the opposite. They're reasons to continue to appreciate such thought-provoking writing and enjoy their on-screen counterparts. On May 16, I'll be in the theater, enjoying Prince Caspian with my son, and when he's a little older we'll read the books together and share our own interpretations with one another. But a word to spring moviegoers: Peel back the layers of Christian themes, decipher the subverted symbolism of the Goddess, and pass on the story of the Goddess to your children.

A note about the irony of the name White Witch: When Lewis wrote Narnia, the term 'witch' was still very derogatory - there was no distinction between a good witch and a bad witch. Perhaps Oz's Glinda the Good Witch was the first to make that distinction?  Today, even mainstream society realizes that a White Witch is an herbalist or a healer, one who casts fortunes or has supernatural intuition. Today, such women proclaim their status as white witches proudly.

Courtney McLaughlin is a mother, writer, eco-feminist and environmental activist. A copywriter at Caslon Business Development in Philadelphia, she also collects original Goddess art.  She has worked in the Creative Services department at Alstin Advertising and for University Communications at The University of the Arts. Her curiosity is satiated only by reading, traveling, and gardening. Read her blog at http://movingvoice.blogspot.com.