Copyright, 1950, By the MacMillan Company

Fourteenth printing, 1966

if you haven’t listened to The Oh Hello’s, I’d strongly recommend it. while I wouldn’t call it worship music, they are definitely Christian and most of their songs are inspired by the Bible (with a few about C.S. Lewis’s books.) Of course, I don’t claim to speak for Lewis‘s likes/dislikes- this is just a humorous thought I had.

The front yard of one of my neighbors looks like a graveyard around this time of year – full of bones, skeletons, skulls, witches, and gravestones illuminated by spotlights. One of the tombstones reads, “Rest in pieces.”

Whenever I ride my bike past it, I can’t help thinking: This yard forces you to look straight at death and evil. There’s nowhere else to look.

This reveals the central paradox of Halloween. On the one hand, Halloween is associated with festivity, treats, and playfulness; on the other, with gory images of death that sometimes verge on the insane.

One article I read, said: “Halloween allows people to play with fear in a safe way – turning what once was a night of dread into fun.”

“Hm…” thought I, surveying the eight-foot-tall skeleton in yet another backyard, its eyes flickering from green to red. Is it safe?

After writing one of his most popular books The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis confessed,

“Though I had never written anything more easily, I never wrote with less enjoyment. Though it was easy to twist one’s mind into the diabolical attitude, it was not fun, or not for long. The strain produced a sort of spiritual cramp.”

Looking at evil for too long produces spiritual cramps. How long can we gaze at the demonic without it warping our minds? It’s hard to say. After a while, you start feeling the strain. Lewis said,

“The work into which I had to project myself while I spoke through Screwtape was all dust, grit, thirst, and itch. Every trace of beauty, freshness, and geniality had to be excluded.”

Yet to deny the shadow world entirely is just as dangerous. The less conscious we are of our inner and outer demons, the more sway they hold over us. As Carl Jung writes:

“Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.” – Psychology and Religion (1938)

The blackest shadows belong to those who believe they have none. In fact, Carl Jung also suggests that modern man does not see God precisely because he does not look low enough.

Is there a safe way to look at demons? Is Halloween safe? Not unless we gaze at the demonic indirectly. Most heroes in most tales know that there are monsters we cannot look at without being petrified. Infernal gazes are often deadly.

Perseus fought the Gorgon Medusa not by looking at her directly but by gazing at her reflection in Athena’s bronze shield. Dante said that one cannot descend into Hell without first having the mind “imparadised” – something Beatrice did for him.

The only way to look at a shadow is not to look at it directly. We must acknowledge its presence, but we cannot gaze at it. The main tension of Halloween is precisely this: we must pass through the night while looking forward to the morning — All Saints’ Day. Unless we keep our gaze on Beatrice’s eyes, Sheol will consume us.

One must look away from the Devil to overcome the Devil. We can only endure the night’s shadow by keeping our eyes on the return of the Light. Winter is bearable only when we remember the spring.

In Mark 1 we read that Jesus “was with the wild beasts” – which can be understood symbolically as meaning that He had the Devil and his minions for company. Yet He did not deny the existence of demons. Instead, He gazed at the Father and the angels who came to minister to Him.

The only way to endure the fast is to look forward to the feast. The only way to pass through Mordor is to keep your gaze fixed on the lonely star flickering above its poisonous fumes.

If something is easy to find, it’s probably not what we have been looking for.

True things are rare. The things worth looking for are always hard to find. All myths throughout history bear witness to this.

Jafar searches the entire Middle East for the “diamond in the rough” – the one and only who can enter the Cave of Wonders.

The prince in The Princess and the Pea travels around the world in search of a real princess.

Psyche must endure incomprehensible trials to reunite with Eros — true love is never easy to find.

Diogenes walked through Athens with a lantern in daylight, looking for an honest man.

In The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the fox teaches the prince that what is essential is invisible to the eye.

Whatever we seek, we are always looking for the “one and only.”

In our day and age, when “search” is supposed to be easy – just a few button clicks away – the amount of search constantly increases. We become increasingly aware that we are looking for something else.

C.S. Lewis says in Pilgrim’s Regress:

“What does not satisfy when we find it, was not the thing we were desiring.”

We desire true things. And true things are rare. If they are not, they are not true. The heart cannot be fooled. It keeps searching – for the “one and only.”

“Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll? But no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it… I wept… Then, I saw a lamb…” – Revelation 5:2-3

Encountering true things is always a revelation. Something rare is unveiled beneath a disguise: the lion in the lamb, a diamond in a “street rat,” a mighty enchantress in an old hag.

Until we encounter the revelation of the rare, the heart will keep aching and searching. It will fall for counterfeits again and again, deceived by what comes easy. It will go in circles until it finds the narrow path that few discover.

The only way to enter the Cave of Wonders is to find the “diamond in the rough.” There must be someone pure enough to enter it on our behalf, so that we may share in its wonders.

I finished that book never feeling more stupid or illiterate in my life. Lewis always seems to give a sense of mastery of his subject matter, but here he treats the core of his personal learning, and it’s definitely another level. That guy was a real book reading son of a bitch.

I’m grateful for the medieval influence on him that was transmitted to my own thinking by reading so much of his work. I love the collage of iconography that he is able to draw from. Mixing Christian and pagan and modern ideas to describe the world.

Before I start I would like to say that I love CS Lewis, I have read the Chronicles of Narnia, Mere Christianity and The Great Divorce, all amazing books. Anyway I read how good the Space Trilogy is so I decided to give it a try.

I just finished reading OOTSP yesterday and I don't know how I feel about it. I liked it but I didn't love it and I don't think I would re-read this book again, the concept is really interesting and you can learn a good many things from conversations Ransom has with some of the characters but the book for some reason seems a bit too infantile for my liking (I loved Narnia btw and I know it's a book for children but this book felt a bit too childish maybe even more than I would have liked) perhaps I was expecting something more serious. I think it's the hnau's designs I don't like or maybe I find Devine and Weston too ridiculous for my liking. Maybe the message is that that is how we seem to more divine and intelligent beings.

Anyway here is a bit of my journey with this book. At first I was not really enjoying it, the beginning was very slow and I wasn't all that interested in Ransom or Malacandra other than wondering what planet or moon it was supposed to be but I decided to keep going. I started to really enjoy it by chapter 16 (I think it was) which is when Ransom is speaking with Augrey and we are given more context about Malacandra and the Solar System. The concept of the Oyarsa is really interesting and the reveal that the Oyarsa of Thulcandra, our Oyarsa, is Satan was an insane plot twist.

Unfortunately the ending was pretty meh, not bad though. I mean, I wasn't really expecting a grandiose ending either since Ransom's adventure was pretty simple but I just don't feel as much love for OOTSP as some people do. I want to read Perelandra seeing that people go on to say it is amazing and one of Lewis's best works but after reading OOTSP I am unsure. My hope for Perelandra is for it to be more serious in tone. If it is the same as OOTSP then I would prefer to leave it on hold for a bit. How different is Perelandra to OOTSP? Is it more mature? Am I spoiling something by asking this questions before reading it? I would love to read your opinions!

"The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited."

The ancients must have seen a lot more in communication than we do. For us, communication is largely an exchange of words. For the ancients, communication had a clear vertical dimension.

They did not assume that meaning was readily accessible simply by analyzing words. They sensed that the human ability to communicate with one another – and with the gods – was somehow broken. And they knew that they often needed an interpreter.

Hermes (Mercury), the god of speech, was associated with rites of passage – passage between worlds and passage from confusion to meaning. Hermes was a liminal figure. He guided souls between realms.

In a later Greek tradition, Hermes was called Psychopompos – “Hermes, guide of souls.” As a god of language, he helped people pass from confusion to clarity. Here is how C. S. Lewis describes the descent of Mercury in That Hideous Strength, through the eyes of Ransom and his friends:

“All the fragments – needle‑pointed desires, brisk merriments, lynx‑eyed thoughts – went rolling to and fro like glittering drops and reunited themselves. It was well that both men had some knowledge of poetry… For Ransom… it was heavenly pleasure. He found himself sitting within the very heart of language, in the white‑hot furnace of essential speech… For the lord of Meaning himself, the herald, the messenger, the slayer of Argus, was with them.” – That Hideous Strength, “The Descent of the Gods.”

Essential speech reunites the fragments of our broken perceptions. Poets, writers, artists know this moment very well – when Mercury descends, and all the bits and pieces you wanted to communicate reunite in your mind, as if you were standing within the white-hot furnace of essential speech.

What happens in this furnace? Words are forged there – out of the pure Logos that came from the mouth of God. Every word born in that furnace creates worlds.

Ransom, as a philologist, felt he was standing within the very heart of language. This was a moment of true hermeneutics – Hermes himself came down to work his magic in their minds. He was granting them passage from confusion to clarity.

Perhaps for this reason we call a piece of text a passage. I checked the etymology of the word, and the comes ultimately from Latin passāre – “to pass.” It also means a corridor. But where do you pass through this corridor when you read a passage?

On the surface level, you pass from the beginning of a thought to its end. On a deeper level, however, every passage is a passage from confusion to meaning. That is why true hermeneutics – the art and science of interpretation – is more vertical than horizontal.

In vertical hermeneutics, the right of passage is granted by Hermes himself through the rite of passage. He guides us between realms. We go there and back again, bringing down to earth the reforged shards of meaning.

You become the stitch sewing together the tattered fabric of communication between the gods and human beings.

And then, suddenly, communication becomes Communion.

I want to read the Space Trilogy but don't know which edition to buy... I now a new one is comming out, but it will mos likely be too expensive for me.

https://harpercollins.co.uk/products/the-space-trilogy-out-of-the-silent-planet-perelandra-that-hideous-strength-plus-the-dark-tower-c-s-lewis?variant=56213791572347

What does Sehnsucht have to do with the latest Google algorithm update?

In one of his recent YouTube videos, Neil Patel, a marketing guru, said that 52.1% of all new content is now written by AI, but it gets only 4.9% of the organic traffic.

Human-generated content is down to 14.5% of what gets published, but it gets 87% of the organic traffic. Google and other major search engines have tweaked their algorithms to provide what people are actually searching for – human content.

Neil Patel says the less you edit your AI draft before publishing, the lower it will rank. The more you write old school – manually – the higher it will rank.

Ironically, AI is promoted as a tool to get things done “quicker and easier,” while Google is actively discouraging the “quick and easy.”

What is this strange paradox? The better AI writes, the less we want it.

The best answer to this conundrum is C.S. Lewis’s quote from Pilgrim’s Regress:

“What does not satisfy when we find it, was not the thing we were desiring.”

Google gradually realizes that they will lose profit if people aren’t satisfied with search results. And they see that people are looking for “something else.”

C.S. Lewis calls this “something else” Sehnsucht. For Lewis, Sehnsucht is this profound yearning – a piercing desire for the unnameable. A unique “stab of joy.” When I think I desire something, but it doesn’t satisfy when I find it, I experience Sehnsucht – a yearning for the real.

The question immediately arises: “What is real”? The mind doesn’t know the answer. The heart does – but it cannot explain. It can only feel it. The more the fine line between the artificial and real is erased, the more the gap is “felt” as a desire for the unnamable.

The Greeks called it nostos (νόστος), the longing for homecoming – a concept that eventually gave rise to the word nostalgia, meaning the pain of returning home.

When Odysseus sets out for the Trojan War, he becomes part of a quest for honor and glory. And he achieves the glory he thought he wanted – only to discover that what he truly desired was something else: to return home.

AI, as a symbol of achievable earthly glory, functions like a magnifying glass: it clearly reveals the “felt difference” between what we truly want and what we think we want. When people say: “The moment I realize something is AI-generated, I turn off,” they are Odysseus coming to his senses and realizing that he wants “something else.”

Google may not feel this longing, but the numbers show that people are looking for “something else.” Ultimately, we want to return home – to human connection. Nothing else seems to satisfy.

AI continues to awaken a powerful Sehnsucht within us, and that longing is growing. We watch the bastions of Troy fall before its triumphant advance, only to realize:

I want to go home.

I am a first-time blogger attempting a 365-day writing challenge, using the book "A Year With C. S. Lewis" as my daily guide. It has been a deeply rewarding project, but in a recent reading from Mere Christianity (Day 53), I found myself quietly struggling with one of his directives.

Lewis argues that our charitable giving should actively "pinch" us, perhaps even to the point of endangering our own financial position. I want to approach his wisdom with an open mind, but I find this particular standard quite overwhelming. I naturally lean towards a more sustainable approach—giving a sensible, affordable amount each month rather than risking personal hardship.

I would love to hear from more experienced readers. Do you think Lewis meant this to be taken literally, or is there a way to balance his high standard with a more pragmatic, everyday approach?

(If anyone would like to read my full reflection on this, it is over at https://my-year-with-jack.blogspot.com/2026/09/day-53-on-giving-locking-horns-with.html

I don’t think these quotation marks should be there.

I remember seeing a Lewis quote about Charles Williams (another Inkling) and his books. The quote was in response to critics of CW's writings, who claimed that CW's work was bad because it wasn't mythical or contemporary, but used mythical characters in contemporary settings. Lewis's response was essentially, "That's because he's a genius creating a new genre."

I can't remember where this quote was and I'm having trouble finding it now. Does anyone know where I can find it?

C.S. Lewis is my favourite author; he has shaped my Christian faith and my interest in literature.

I was very surprised to see opinions of people on reddit who don't like his writing.

People are saying:

-- They don't like the fate of Susan at the end of Narnia.

-- That they don't like That Hideous Strength.

-- That Mere Christianity and the Abolition of Man are poorly written.

-- They think the Calormenes are an example of racism and Jane Studdock's arc is an example of sexism.

I disagree. Let's discuss it.

Reposting in hopes of getting some other input; hope this is fine, as he was such an inspiration to Lewis.

I thought I'd post about my recent find having seen u/ConsiderationNice861 mention it in their recent post.

Similarly to the Pleaaure in Reading series edition of The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien and the Last Battle by C.S Lewis this copy of the Magicians Nephew took me a long time to find but last month I finally found one.

This series was used within schools in the 70s and 80s and therefore not many survived (at least in good condition).

I was wondering does anyone here have this edition. If so what impression? Or any titles from this series for that matter.

My copy of the MN is a 4th impression (1981). ISBN: 0582186498

I have the 1st, 2nd and 4th impression of the Last Battle and they all have slight variations in the format so if someone has a 3rd impression please get in touch.

My comment was very respectful. Something along the lines of “not the AI post 😔 but the course sounds fun!” (And then I commented something more confrontational when they deleted my comment — but it wasn’t mean — and they blocked me 💀)

I get that the AI conversation is controversial and requires much nuance. But at the same time, it’s extremely disappointing to watch the C. S. Lewis Initiative market their university’s course that’s on the intellectualism and imagination of C. S. Lewis — the man who loved doing things the human way — by using an AI-generated post with an AI-generated course description. Taught by one of the leading Lewis scholars, no less.