C. S. Lewis Collection — Index
TL;DR: C. S. Lewis Collection — Index: Investigating evidence that C. S. Lewis encoded Saturnian / medieval planetary cosmology into his fiction — both explicitly (Space Trilogy) and implicitly (Chronicles of Narnia). Michael Ward’s Planet Narnia (2008) demonstrated that each of the seven Narnia books corresponds to one of the seven medieval planets. This collection gathers the primary texts and analysis. Downloaded from Faded Page (public domain in Canada). Part of the Paradigm Threat investigation into planetary cosmology encoding in literature.
Purpose
Investigating evidence that C. S. Lewis encoded Saturnian / medieval planetary cosmology into his fiction — both explicitly (Space Trilogy) and implicitly (Chronicles of Narnia). Michael Ward’s Planet Narnia (2008) demonstrated that each of the seven Narnia books corresponds to one of the seven medieval planets. This collection gathers the primary texts and analysis.
Investigation Files
| File | Description |
| investigation-narnia-planetary-encoding.md | Full analysis: NARNIA as planetary cipher, Planet Narnia thesis, Space Trilogy cosmology, Saturnian connections |
The Chronicles of Narnia (1950–1956)
Each book secretly themed to a medieval planet (Ward, 2008):
| # | File | Title | Planet | Key Attributes |
| 1 | narnia-1-lion-witch-wardrobe.txt | The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe | ♃ Jupiter | Kingship, festivity, winter→spring, sovereignty |
| 2 | narnia-2-prince-caspian.txt | Prince Caspian | ♂ Mars | Warfare, hardening, martial valor |
| 3 | narnia-3-voyage-dawn-treader.txt | The Voyage of the Dawn Treader | ☉ Sol | Light, gold, searching, journeying east |
| 4 | narnia-4-silver-chair.txt | The Silver Chair | ☽ Luna | Silver, obedience, underground, lunacy |
| 5 | narnia-5-horse-and-his-boy.txt | The Horse and His Boy | ☿ Mercury | Eloquence, twinning, messages, poetry |
| 6 | narnia-6-magicians-nephew.txt | The Magician’s Nephew | ♀ Venus | Fertility, life-giving fruit, gardens |
| 7 | narnia-7-last-battle.txt | The Last Battle | ♄ Saturn | Death, cold, time, ending, sorrow |
The Space Trilogy (1938–1945)
Lewis’s explicit science-fiction treatment of planetary cosmology. Each planet governed by an Oyarsa (angel/intelligence) identical with Greco-Roman gods:
| # | File | Title | Setting | Old Solar Name |
| 1 | space-trilogy-1-out-of-the-silent-planet.txt | Out of the Silent Planet | Mars | Malacandra |
| 2 | space-trilogy-2-perelandra.txt | Perelandra (Voyage to Venus) | Venus | Perelandra |
| 3 | space-trilogy-3-that-hideous-strength.txt | That Hideous Strength | Earth | Thulcandra |
Old Solar Planetary Names
| Old Solar | Planet | Notes |
| Malacandra | Mars | Three intelligent species: hrossa, séroni, pfifltriggi |
| Perelandra | Venus | Unfallen paradise; floating islands |
| Thulcandra | Earth | “The Silent Planet” — cut off by the Bent One (Satan) |
| Glundandra | Jupiter | The great planet |
| Lurga | Saturn | Ancient, cold, weighty sorrow |
| Sulva | Moon | Satellite of Earth |
| Viritrilbia | Mercury | “Language herself… first sprang at Maleldil’s bidding out of the molten quicksilver of the first star called Mercury” |
Non-Fiction / Literary Criticism
| File | Title | Year | Relevance |
| the-discarded-image.txt | The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature | 1964 | Core text. Lewis’s systematic exposition of the Ptolemaic medieval cosmos: planetary spheres, planetary characters (Saturn=lead/melancholy, Jupiter=kingship, Mars=iron/war, Sol=gold/wisdom, Venus=copper/beauty, Mercury=quicksilver/eloquence, Luna=silver/wandering), celestial hierarchy, and the “great frontier” at the Moon between heaven and nature. |
Key Planetary Passages to Examine
In The Discarded Image
- Ch. 5 “The Heavens”: Full description of the seven planetary characters (Saturn as Infortuna Major, Jupiter as Fortuna Major, etc.)
- The Ptolemaic order: Moon → Mercury → Venus → Sun → Mars → Jupiter → Saturn → Stellatum → Primum Mobile
- “The planetary characters need to be seized in an intuition rather than built up out of concepts”
In That Hideous Strength
- The Planetary Descents (near end of book): Each Oyarsa descends to Earth in sequence — Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter — manifesting their planetary character physically on the inhabitants of St. Anne’s
- The Saturn/Lurga passage: “a mountain of centuries sloping up from the highest antiquity we can conceive”
In The Last Battle (Saturn book)
- Narnia dies; time ends; Father Time appears; everything is cold, dark, sorrowful
- The final chapter reverses this with the “further up and further in” movement — but the Saturnian atmosphere pervades
In The Magician’s Nephew (Venus book)
- Creation of Narnia by Aslan’s song
- The Tree of Life with its life-giving fruit
- Fertility, gardens, new beginnings — all Venusian attributes
The NARNIA Anagram Theory
Can the 6 letters of NARNIA be extracted from the 7 Latin planet names, one letter per planet?
6 letters, 6 planets, one-to-one mapping. The 7th planet — Sol (the Sun) — is absent from the name because Sol = Aslan, who is not encoded in the name but is the story itself.
See investigation-narnia-planetary-encoding.md for full analysis.
Source
All texts downloaded from Faded Page — C. S. Lewis author page:
https://www.fadedpage.com/csearch.php?author=Lewis,+C.+S.+(Clive+Staples)
40 Lewis titles available on Faded Page (public domain in Canada). Key additional texts not yet downloaded:
- Miracles (1947) — theological argument relevant to planetary cosmology
- The Allegory of Love (1936) — study of medieval allegory and courtly love
- A Preface to Paradise Lost (1942) — Milton’s cosmic architecture
- Surprised by Joy (1955) — autobiography mentioning formative encounters with planetary imagery
- The Screwtape Letters (1942) — demonic perspective on the cosmos
- The Abolition of Man (1943) — defense of objective value/natural law
- Studies in Words (1960) — linguistic analysis
- The Pilgrim’s Regress (1933) — Lewis’s first published fiction
- The Great Divorce (1945) — heaven/hell vision
- Till We Have Faces (1956) — retelling of Cupid & Psyche myth
- The Problem of Pain (1940)
- The Four Loves (1960)
- Plus essays, lectures, and collections
Keywords: #Cslewis #Lewis #Collection
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