"Lewis
would credit... George MacDonald with having influenced virtually
every word he ever wrote.... It began with Phantastes,
a dreamlike tale in which a boy wishes to visit fairy-country.
He awakes the next morning in an enchanted wood where he encounters
profound happiness mixed with perilous adventure — including
death and rebirth of sorts.... And so,
thanks to the imagination of
George MacDonald,
C.S. Lewis found his way
home."
Kurt Bruner,
Birthing Narnia
"...when
God created me [Adam], --not
out of Nothing, as say the unwise, but out of His own
endless glory -- He brought me an angelic splendour to be my wife:
there she [Lilith] lies! For her first thought was POWER....
[She] had so ensnared the heart of
the great Shadow [Satan], that he became her
slave, wrought her will, and made her queen of Hell. ...
Vilest of God's creatures, she lives by the blood and
lives and souls of men."
From
Lilith by George MacDonald.
C.
S. Lewis never hid his fascination with mystical fantasy.
Seventeen years after his
"conversion
to Christianity" to Christianity,
he wrote the following endorsement of Lilith and
other books by George MacDonald in his
1948 book,
George MacDonald:
An Anthology:
"I regarded George MacDonald as my master: indeed I fancy
I have never written a book in which I did not quote from him."
I ntroducing
MacDonald's Lilith, Lewis wrote,
"He [George MacDonald]
was born in 1824.... In 1850 he received what is technically
known as a 'Call' to become the Minister of a dissenting chapel
in Arunder. By 1852 he was in trouble with the 'deacons' for
heresy, the charges being that he had expressed belief in a
future state of probation for heathens and that he was trained
with German theology."
[pages vii-viii]
"What he does best
is fantasy--fantasy that hovers between the allegorical and
the mythopoeic. This, in my opinion, he does better than any
man. [ix]
"It must be more
than thirty years ago that I bought... the Everyman edition
of Phantastes. A few hours later I knew that I had crossed
a great frontier. I had already been waist deep in
Romanticism,
and likely enough, at any moment, to flounder into its darker
and more evil forms, slithering down the steep descent that
leads from the love of strangeness to that of eccentricity
and thence to that of perversity. ... Nothing was at
that time further from my thoughts than Christianity and I therefore
had no notion what this difference really was. I was only aware
that if this new world was strange, it was also homely and humble;
that if this was a dream, it was a dream in which one at
least felt strangely vigilant;
that the whole book also had about it a sort of cool, morning
innocence and also, quite unmistakably, a certain quality of
Death, good Death. What it actually did to me was to convert,
even to baptize (that was where the Death came in) my imagination. It did nothing to my intellect nor (at that
time) to my conscience...."(xi)
"...the quality which
had enchanted me in his imaginative works turned out to be the
quality of the real universe, the divine, magical, terrifying
and ecstatic reality in which we all live." (xii )
C. S. Lewis
On the opposite page
(across from C. S. Lewis' name in the introduction to
MacDonald's book), readers will find a second title
page and a short, revealing quote from "The Kabala" (also spelled Kabbalah,
Qabala, Cabbalah, etc.):
LILITH: A Romance
"'Off, Lilith!' -
The Kabala"
That's not surprising.
The Kabala is based on occult myths that twist Biblical truth into
horrendous lies. In this mystical realm, Lilith was the first wife
of Adam -- a rebellious fallen angel. She plays that demonic role
in this dark, disturbing book, which we don't recommend to anyone.
Hidden from the
public eye for centuries, the mysterious Kabala has more
recently entered the religious
marketplace. In the 18th, 19th and 20th century Europe (and to a
lesser extent in America), Kabbalistic mysticism mingled with medieval
alchemy
and hermetic magic in various popular occult systems and secret
societies. As occult visions, dreams and philosophies merged and
evolved, they gave birth to new forms of occultism which captivated
receptive audiences -- such as Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry,
Swedenborg,
Theosophy and its offshoot, Anthroposophy. The latter
was conceived by Rudolf Steiner (mentioned by Lewis in
The Abolition of Man), the
founder of Waldorf Schools.
Owen Barfield, whom Lewis referred to as his second closest
friend, was also drawn to these occult blends and eventually embraced
Steiner's revision of Theosophy.
All these occult models
successfully prepare the masses for today's New Age religions. Their
amazing success is illustrated by the popular acceptance of books
such as the Gnostic-based "DaVinci Code," occult author Anne
Rice's Gnostic novel on the young life of "Christ, the Lord,"
and John Granger promotion of Alchemy through his book "Looking
for God in Harry Potter," which was published by Tyndale
House, a respected Christian publisher.
Another example of today's
cultural emersion in occult philosophies is the ubiquitous
acceptance
of the Dialectic process.
Conceived by
occultist Georg Hegel, this never-ending process of merging
opposites in order to produce unity or consensus is transforming
churches as well as schools and business. Its evolving synthesis
of opposites -- whether they appear as conflicting realities or
simply good and evil -- is illustrated in MacDonald's Lilith:
"Lilith is the first text to employ the idea of going
through
a mirror into another world.... Lilith is a figure of myth --
Adam's first wife and a fulcrum of the narrator's ambiguous
journey. Tensions of human/animal, good/evil, body/spirit,
and angel/vampire play through the text, finally emerging
in a violent conflict.
Lilith Vote George
MacDonald (1895)
To better understand
the powerful influences that persuaded the masses to blend Biblical
truth with occult philosophies, let's identify some of the other
threads of deceptions that have spread unnamed into the public consciousness
through celebrated "Christian" authors:
Swedenborg
The writings of George
MacDonald were, in part, inspired by the teachings of
Emmanuel Swedenborg.
A
website dedicated to global unity through occult spirituality
gives some background information:
"Visited by a mystic illumination in 1745, Swedenborg claimed
a direct vision of a spiritual world underlying the natural
sphere. He began having dreams, ecstatic visions, trances
and mystical illusions in which he communicated with
Jesus Christ and God and was granted a view of the order of
the universe that was radically different from the teachings
of the Christian church. He resigned his job to concentrate
full-time on his ecstatic visions and transcribing the knowledge
imparted to him from the spiritual world....
"Swedenborg conceived of three spheres: divine mind, spiritual
world, and natural world. Each corresponds to a degree of being
in God and in humankind: love, wisdom, and use (end, cause,
and effect). Through devotion to each degree, unification
with it takes place and a person obtains his or her destiny,
which is union with creator and creation.... His 12-volume
compendium 'The Heavenly Arcana' (1747-56) represents a unique
synthesis between modern science and religion....
"Many of his views were adopted by 19th century spiritualism
and many of his ideas were also disseminated in the works of
writers and poets such as William Blake, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge and Henry James."
An article titled, "Writers
Influenced By Swedenborg,"
lists other influential authors who have spread their philosophies
to gullible children and youth through public schools. The list
includes:
George MacDonald
(1824-1905). Scottish novelist, poet and 'myth-maker,' he is
best remembered for his children's stories At the Back of the
North Wind and The Princess and the Goblin and for his adult
fantasies, Phantastes and Lilith. He was inspired particularly
by the German Romantics (above all Novalis, some of whose
poems he translated), but also by Swedenborg and [William]
Blake."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). The great
German poet, dramatist, novelist, essayist and scientist first
became acquainted with Swedenborg's works as a young student
through Fräulein von Klettenberg of Frankfurt. Students of Goethe's
letters and poetry have found evidence of familiarity with both
scientific and theological works of Swedenborg.
Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961). ...He acknowledged his
debt to Swedenborg: 'I admire Swedenborg as a great scientist
and a great mystic at the same time.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882). Artist and
poet and a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Rossetti
was instrumental in the revival of interest in the work of
William Blake in the 1860s and, with his brother William
Michael Rossetti, he helped Anne Gilchrist to finish her husband
Alexander's Life of Blake after his death. He would
have learned of Swedenborg through his interest in Blake..."
Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892). The most popular
poet of the Victorian age and Poet Laureate from 1850. Like
many of his contemporaries, Tennyson was a reader of Swedenborg.
[See his utopian vision for humanity in the poem quoted
here]
Charles Augustus Tulk (1786-1849). A leading
early English Swedenborgian and a founder member and chairman
for many years of the Swedenborg Society. He was a friend
and patron of John Flaxman, another founder member of the Society
and also of William Blake..."
Walt Whitman (1819-1892). ....
James John Garth Wilkinson (1812-1899). Homoeopathic
physician, translator and biographer of Swedenborg....
He edited the first letter-press edition of Blake's Songs of
Innocence and Experience. His many friends and correspondents
in the literary world included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Carlyle,
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Dickens, Robert Browning, Dante
Gabriel Rossetti, Coventry Patmore, and George MacDonald.
His greatest friend was the American Swedenborgian thinker
Henry James senior...."
Did you notice the references to William Blake? Because his writings
became a major source of inspiration to George Mac Donald (and therefore
to C. S. Lewis as well), it's important to understand what he believed.
The article, " William
Blake and the Radical Swedenborgians,
tells us that -
"In the late 1780s and early 1790s, when Blake sought out Swedenborg
and other mystical and occult sources, he was also a radical
in politics....
" Swedenborg’s
esoteric teaching was absorbed into the socio-cultural matrix
of the late eighteenth century....
"The Church that Blake visited was a development of the non-orthodox
Theosophical Society.... We know that a number of Blake’s
fellow artists were Swedenborgians and met in the Theosophical
Society (in 1785 renamed as The British Society for the Propagation
of the Doctrines of the New Church)...
"Even when Blake seems to be making purely theological
statements, there are inevitable links to be drawn to
Swedenborg’s diatribe against the Christian Churches
and the way they have duped man into spiritual inaptitude.
This dimension is not always expressed with full clarity
in Blake’s writing....
"Swedenborg elucidates at length how the Divine in
the natural universe has been obscured by the churches....
"Masonic Swedenborgianism. ... There
are undeniable links between the reading of Swedenborg and radical
activity, centered on a branch of radical Freemasons who operated
internationally, but gathered in London....
"An occult tradition of seeking spiritual illumination
thrived in the seventeenth century but had since gone underground,
marginalised by the progress of rationalist and empiricist modes
of thinking, and was preserved most fully and systematically
in clandestine Freemasonry. At the inception of Swedenborgianism
into the European network of “irregular” Masonry, it blended
in with the mainstays of Hermeticism, Cabalism, Rosicrucianism,
Spiritualism, Astrology etc. Many lodges and Masonic
societies welcomed Swedenborg’s teaching. His central idea
of 'Correspondences,' which linked all things material to
a spiritual source was used to back up notions of unusual
rapport with other realities.... For many, Swedenborgianism
became an umbrella philosophy under which other occult ideas
could be given a collective rationale....
"Both the Theosophical Society and Duché’s
gatherings were “open” meetings in the sense that the Masons
(primarily noblemen or haute bourgeoisie) here mixed with tradesmen,
artisans and other local Londoners...
"The
convergence between mystical enlightenment and the discourse
of reform in the Swedenborgian milieu opens up a new perspective
on what is usually regarded as Blake’s more straightforward
social commentaries..."
Theosophy
(See
Theosophy)
We mentioned William Blake earlier. he was steeped in various
forms of popular occultism. In fact, his list of occult connections
sound like that of Hegel:
"Blake saw the Eternal
Worlds, and man a potential collaborator with the gods therein.
..in some degree Blake represented for England, along with ...
the Anglo-American Thomas Paine, the great spiritualizing effort
of the closing years of the 18th century. Born in 1757, Blake's
best period came at this time, and his boundless energy and
forward-leaping imagination fitted him to take a part in the
new movement. ...
"Of
the theosophists who influenced Blake, Jacob Boehme was
the first and chief.... Robert Fludd and Thomas Vaughan gave
to Blake ideas of alchemical symbolism; Blake held with
the Hermetists that man is the microcosm of the Divine.
William Law's works were well known to him. ... Blake's intellectual
background... included: The Orphic and Pythagorean tradition,
Neoplatonism in the whole of its extent, the Hermetic, kabbalistic,
Gnostic, and alchemical writings, Erigena, Paracelsus,
Boehme, and Swedenborg. . . . When Blake, in an
impetuous moment, referred to himself as a "mental prince,"
he uttered no more than sober truth.... Blake eagerly read the
English translations of the works of Hindu philosophy
by Sir William Jones and Sir Charles Wilkins....
....the
spiritual body of man -- the Adam Kadmon of the Kabbala -- existed
alone in Eternity "before Earth was, or globes of attraction."
It is in this "Heavenly Man" that the Four Zoas, or Four Faces,
have their being -- rather, the Four Zoas are the four faces
or aspects, the divine energies, of the Man in Eternity."
The Theosophy of
William Blake
:
Most of us are familiar
with Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland
and Through the Looking Glass. Carroll, whose real name was
Charles Dodgson, was a friend of George MacDonald.
Dodgson was a founder
member of the
Society
for Psychical Research and a fascinated student of Theosophy.
His last novel 'Sylvie and Bruno' was largely based on the theory
of 'Esoteric Buddhism' which was grounded in the Theosophy Movement.
The article, "Victorian
Spiritualism," gives us a glimpse of his family:
"From the moment
of Carroll's death in 1898 and continuing for at least the next
sixty years, two generations of his family used their control
over the literary and personal estate of Lewis Carroll to...
manipulate the image that was available to the public.... The
reasons for this... can be explained to an extent by Charles
Dodgson's 'unconventional' lifestyle, his 'experiments'
with different religions (Christian Socialism,
Theosophy,
Spritualism)... his photography of dangerously mature young
ladies in 'bathing dresses' and the like, as well as his intimate
associations with various ladies, married and single....
Dodgson's family, decent, respectable, rather narrowly religious,
were... to some extent distressed and mortified by it all. "
Who mutilated Lewis
Carroll's Diaries?
Dodgson/Carroll also
"photographed MacDonald and members of his family," according to
Dale Nelson's commentary, "Lilith
by George MacDonald." He wrote, "MacDonald's
mirror-entry to
another world
could be borrowed from Dodgson, who was still living
when Lilith was written and published."
The same commentary highlights William Blake's influence on George
MacDonald's beliefs and writings:
"The hawthorn tree
that is a gnarled old man -- this is very much like William
Blake's account of the thistle that was an old man....
MacDonald's scholarly biographer Rolland Hein says that "The
presence in MacDonald's writings of ideas very similar to
Blake's is so noticeable that MacDonald must have had some early
acquaintance with his work."
"MacDonald owned a copy of Gilchrist's Life of Blake
(published in 1863, thirty years before publication of Lilith).
MacDonald's personal bookplate was taken from a Blake design."
"...when writing
THE GREAT DIVORCE, Lewis introduced as a character, George MacDonald
(who was a real-life Christian universalist from a generation
or two before Lewis), and Lewis had that character say, 'St.
Paul talked as if all men would be saved.' Neither did Lewis
have the angel in that novel deny MacDonald's interpretation
of St. Paul's words, but only had the angel reply that it was
not for man to ask such questions. ...
"I also read George MacDonald's novel LILITH in which he employed
sleep as a means of healing tortured souls, a cosmic sleep that
preceded salvation of all. ...C. S. Lewis praised the novel,
LILITH and also called George MacDonald 'my spiritual mentor.'
....It's also clear from Lewis's works that Lewis believed that
even the most peculiar religions contained 'at least some hint
of the truth.' 'There are people in other religions who...belong
to Christ without knowing it."
C.S. Lewis - Author
and Professor
"...the
time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine;
but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate
for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires,
and will turn away their ears from the truth and turn
aside to myths. But you be watchful in all things..."
2 Timothy 4:3-5
Our main reason for sharing this information is to show Christians how
occult teachings have been popularized through respected authors. I have
not read every part of George MacDonald's Lilith, for the dark symbols
and suggestions are too disturbing! But I hope these glimpses
into that darkness -- along with its examples of misused Scriptures
-- will give you a sense of the occult climate that has spread confusion
and blinded eyes to the truth of the gospel for more than a century.
The main characters in the
story:
Mr. Vane:
The young owner of the mansion in the "actual world" (probably
Scotland) who functions as the narrator in the story.
Adam:
First appears as Mr. Raven, the ghostly librarian in the real world.
He leads Mr. Vane through a magic mirror into a another world.
Here, he is seen as the gravedigger at a cemetery, an old man who
shape-shifts into a black raven. Eventually, he identifies himself
as Adam, married to Eve. His first wife was the angelic/demonic Lilith.
Lilith:
Mr. Vane first
encounters Lilith as a beautiful woman who shape-shifts into various
animals, usually a spotted leopard, but also a serpent, a giant leech,
a Persian cat, a vampire and a succubus -- a "night-spirit"
that "preys on sleeping men." Lusting for power, this
rebellious Lilith had rejected her role as a loving wife to Adam,
yet she hates Eve. In MacDonald's story she is a hateful
demonic beast who
stirs anger, murderous battles and uses her beauty to dominate
and seduce others. Despite the pleas of Adam and his
daughter Mara for her repentance and promise of spiritual cleansing,
she refuses -- for a while. But eventually even the evil Lilith
must yield, for in this occult world, the bliss of an
harmonious eternity is the destiny of all.
Eve:
Adam's
wife, the first real woman
Mara:
Daughter of Adam and
Eve.
Lona:
Daughter of Adam and
Lilith.
Shadow:
Satan
You may want to "put on"
The Armor of God before you proceed. This message is a
metaphysical deception that has no place for Jesus Christ or
the cross. It trades God's truth and holiness for human
idealism, God's promises of judgment and eternal life for a
false universal salvation, and the truths about our
sovereign God for a pantheistic vision of absolute oneness.
It's a dream-religion for globalists who envision spiritual
and social solidarity in this fallen world.
Excerpts
from Lilith
MacDonald's misuse of the Scriptures is emphasized in blue
letters
Chapter 2: The Mirror
"Through passage after passage we came to a door at the bottom
of a winding wooden stair, which we ascended. Every step creaked
under my foot, but I heard no sound from that of my guide. Somewhere
in the middle of the stair I lost sight of him, and from the top
of it the shadowy shape was nowhere visible. ... I was in the main
garret, with huge beams and rafters over my head, great spaces around
me, a door here and there in sight....
A few rather dim sunrays, marking their track through
the cloud of motes that had just been stirred up, fell upon a
tall mirror with a dusty face, old-fashioned and rather narrow....
I saw before me a wild country, broken and heathy. Desolate hills
of no great height, but somehow of strange appearance.... I stepped closer to examine the texture of a stone
in the immediate foreground, and in the act espied, hopping toward
me with solemnity, a large and ancient raven....
Chapter
3: The Raven
Had I wandered into a region where both the material and
psychical
relations of our world had ceased to hold? Might a man at any moment
step beyond the realm of order, and become the sport of the lawless?
Yet I saw the raven, felt the ground under my feet, and heard a
sound as of wind in the lowly plants around me!
"How DID I get here?" I said--apparently aloud, for the question
was immediately answered.
"You came through the door," replied an odd, rather harsh voice.
I looked behind, then all about me, but saw no human shape. The
terror that madness might be at hand laid hold upon me: must I henceforth
place no confidence either in my senses or my consciousness? The
same instant I knew it was the raven that had spoken....
"I never saw any door!" I persisted.
"Of course not!" he returned; "all the doors you had yet seen--and
you haven't seen many--were doors in; here you came upon a door
out! ...
"Oblige me by telling me where I am."
"That is impossible. You know nothing about whereness. The only
way to come to know where you are is to begin to make yourself at
home."
"How am I to begin that where everything is so strange?"
"By doing something." ...
As he spoke, he turned his back, and instantly I knew him. He was
no longer a raven, but a man above the middle height with a stoop,
very thin, and wearing a long black tail-coat. Again he turned,
and I saw him a raven...
Chapter
5: The Old Church
"How can a pigeon be a prayer?" I said. "I understand, of course,
how it should be a fit symbol or likeness for one; but a live pigeon
to come out of a heart!"
"It MUST puzzle you! It cannot fail to do so!"
"A prayer is a thought, a thing spiritual!" I pursued.
"Very true! But if you understood any world besides your own, you
would understand your own much better.--When a heart is really alive,
then it is able to think live things....
Chapter 6:
The Sexton's Cottage
...all was a churchyard! Wherever the dreary wind swept, there
was the raven's cemetery! He was sexton of all he surveyed! ...
I stood in the burial-ground of the universe.... I had left spring
and summer, autumn and sunshine behind me, and come to the winter
that waited for me! [Reminders of Narnia]
A candle burned on a deal table
in the middle of the room, and the first thing I saw was the
lid of a coffin, as I thought, set up against the wall; but
it opened, for it was a door, and a woman entered. She was
all in white--as white as new-fallen snow; and her face was
as white as her dress, but not like snow, for at once it
suggested warmth.... What any eye IS, God only knows: her
eyes must have been coming direct out of his own! the still
face might be a primeval perfection; the live eyes were a
continuous creation. ...
"He has not yet learned that the day begins with sleep!" said
the woman, turning to her husband. "Tell him he must rest before
he can do anything!" ...
The sexton sat looking me in the face. His eyes seemed to say, "Will
you not trust me?" I returned his gaze, and answered, "I will."
"Then come," he said; "I will show you your couch."
Chapter
7: The Cemetery
I soon perceived that we were walking along an aisle of couches,
on almost every one of which, with its head to the passage, lay
something asleep or dead, covered with a sheet white as snow. My
soul grew silent with dread. Through aisle after aisle we went,
among couches innumerable. I could see only a few of them at once,
but they were on all sides, vanishing, as it seemed, in the infinite. -- Was
it here lay my choice of a bed? Must I go to sleep among the unwaking,
with no one to rouse me? ... Truly it was no half-way house, this
chamber of the dead! ...
...all were alike in the brotherhood of death, all unlike in
the character and history recorded upon them....
"Are they not dead?" I asked softly.
"I cannot answer you," he replied in a subdued voice. "I almost
forget what they mean by DEAD in the old world. If I said a person
was dead, my wife would understand one thing, and you would imagine
another....
Your sexton looks at the clock to know when to ring the dead-alive
to church; I hearken for the cock on the spire to crow; " AWAKE,
THOU THAT SLEEPEST, AND ARISE FROM THE DEAD!"
Chapter 11:
The Evil Wood
The moon at length approached the forest, and came slowly into
it: with her first gleam the noises increased to a deafening uproar,
and I began to see dim shapes about me. As she ascended and grew
brighter, the noises became yet louder, and the shapes clearer.
A furious battle was raging around me. Wild cries and roars of rage,
shock of onset, struggle prolonged, all mingled with words articulate,
surged in my ears. Curses and credos, snarls and sneers, laughter
and mockery, sacred names and howls of hate, came huddling in chaotic
interpenetration. Skeletons and phantoms fought in maddest confusion.
Swords swept through the phantoms: they only shivered...
The moon shone till the sun rose, and all the night long I had glimpses
of a woman [Lilith] moving at her will above the strife-tormented multitude,
now on this front now on that, one outstretched arm urging the fight,
the other pressed against her side. "Ye are men: slay one another!"
she shouted. ...
Such was the battle of the dead, which I saw and heard as I lay
under the tree. Just before sunrise, a breeze went through the forest,
and a voice cried,
"Let the dead bury
their dead!"
Chapter 15:
A Strange Hostess
I traveled on attended by the moon. As usual
she was full -- I had never seen her other -- and to-night as
she
sank I thought I perceived something like a smile on her countenance.
...
"Will you not come with me?" said a sweet, mellow voice, unmistakably
a woman's. ...
"I saw you," she answered, still with her back to me, "in the light
of the moon, just as she went down. I see badly in the day, but
at night perfectly.... People are frightened if I come on them
suddenly. They call me the Cat-woman. It is not my name."
...
"There is a city in that grassy land," she replied, "where a woman
is princess. The city is called Bulika. But certainly the princess
is not a girl! She is older than this world, and came to it from
yours--with a terrible history, which is not over yet. She is
an evil person, and prevails much with the
Prince of the Power
of the Air.
...
We went on and on, and crossed yet a wide tract of sand before reaching
the cottage...
"My name is Mara," she answered. ... "Some people," she went
on, "take me for
Lot's wife,
lamenting over Sodom; and some think I am
Rachel,
weeping for her children; but I am neither of those."
"I thank you again, Mara," I said. "--May I lie here on your floor
till the morning?"
"At the top of that stair," she answered, "you will find a bed--on
which some have slept better than they expected, and some have waked
all the night and slept all the next day....
Close under the sloping roof stood a narrow bed, the sight of
which with its white coverlet made me shiver, so vividly it recalled
the couches in the chamber of death....
I woke in the middle of the night, thinking I heard low noises
of wild animals.... Before the door of the cottage, in the full
radiance of the moon, a tall woman stood, clothed in white, with
her back toward me. She was stooping over a large white animal like
a panther, patting and stroking it with one hand, while with the
other she pointed to the moon half-way up the heaven, then drew
a perpendicular line to the horizon. Instantly the creature darted
off with amazing swiftness in the direction indicated.... Then I
remembered that, when I lay down in the sandy hollow outside, the
moon was setting; yet here she was, a few hours after, shining in
all her glory! "Everything is uncertain here," I said to myself,
"--even the motions of the heavenly bodies!" ....
When I went down in the morning... I asked her to instruct
me how to arrive at Bulika. She then told me to go up the bank of
the river-bed....
I thanked her, and ventured the remark that, looking out of the
window in the night, I was astonished to see her messenger understand
her so well, and go so straight and so fast in the direction she
had indicated. ...
"Astarte [Goddess of War and fertility in
ancient
Canaan] knows her work well enough to be sent to do it," she
answered. ... "They need no teaching. They are all of a certain breed.... A
new one came to me last night -- from our head while you slept."...
"Then the creature is mine!" I cried.
"...That only can be ours in whose existence
our will
is a factor." [This statement is key to all spells, magic
and occult work. It's the opposite of the Christian walk, for we
seek to do God's will, not our own.]
"Ha! a metaphysician too!" I remarked inside....
Chapter
29: The Persian Cat
A strange, repulsive feline wail
arose somewhere in the room. I started up on my elbow and stared
about me, but could see nothing.
Mr. Raven turned several leaves, and went on:--
"Ah, the two worlds! so strangely
are they one,
And yet so measurelessly wide apart!...
At these words such a howling, such a prolonged yell of agony
burst from the cat [Lilith], that we both stopped our ears. When
it ceased, Mr. Raven walked to the fire-place, took up the
book.... He took a half-burnt stick from the hearth, drew
with it some sign on the floor...and... said, in a still,
solemn voice:
"Mr. Vane, when
God created me, --not
out of Nothing, as say the unwise, but out of His own
endless glory -- He brought me an angelic splendour to be my wife:
there she [Lilith] lies! For her first thought was POWER....
[She] had so ensnared the heart of
the great Shadow [Satan], that he became her
slave, wrought her will, and made her queen of Hell. ...
Vilest of God's creatures, she lives by the blood and lives and
souls of men." ...
"Thou, Lilith, hast not yet repented; but thou must."...
Chapter
39:
That night
...Suddenly it was midnight....
The feet of the princess [Lilith] were toward the hearth; Mara went
to her head, and turning, stood behind it....
"Will you turn away from the wicked things you have been doing
so long?" said Mara gently. ... She spoke the words a third time.
Then the seeming corpse opened its mouth and answered....
"I will not," she said. "I will be myself and not another!"
"Alas, you are another now, not yourself! Will you not be your real
self?" ...
"I would do after my nature."
"You do not know it: your nature is good, and you do evil!"
[This is one of the biggest lies of all. There is no recognition of
need for the cross or redemption when human nature is naturally
good -- and when the human will reigns.]
"You will do as the Shadow,
overshadowing your Self inclines you?"
"I will do what I will to do."
"You have killed your daughter, Lilith!"
"I have killed thousands. She is my own!"...
"You are not the Self you imagine."...
[199]
The face of the princess lay stonily calm.... At length, on the dry, parchment-like skin,
began to appear drops as of the finest dew: in a moment they
were as large as seed-pearls, ran together, and began to pour
down in streams. I darted forward to snatch the worm from the
poor withered bosom, and crush it with my foot. But Mara, Mother
of Sorrow, stepped between... no serpent was there--no searing
trail; the creature had passed in by the centre of the black
spot, and was
piercing through the joints and marrow to the thoughts and
intents of the heart....
"She is seeing herself!" said Mara...
Of a sudden the princess bent her body upward in an arch, then
sprang to the floor, and stood erect. The horror in her face
made me tremble lest her eyes should open...
"She is far away from us, afar in the
hell of her
self-consciousness. The central fire of the universe is
radiating into her the
knowledge of good and evil,
the knowledge of what she is. She sees at last the good she is
not, the evil she is. She knows that she is herself the fire
in which she is burning, but she does not know that the
Light of Life is the heart of that fire."[202]
[Note: "MacDonald believed that hell was a
'purgatory,' a
state of unimaginable suffering experienced by those who reject
the truth for as long as they reject it."
Lilith
by George MacDonald]
"Why did he make me such?" gasped Lilith. "I would have made
myself--oh, so different! I am glad it was
he that made me and not I myself!
He alone is to blame for what I am!"...
With the gray dawn growing in the room, she rose, turned to
Mara, and said, in prideful humility, "You have conquered. Let
me go into the wilderness and bewail myself."
Mara saw that her submission was not feigned, neither was it
real. She looked at her a moment, and returned:
"Begin, then, and set right in the place of wrong....
Open thy hand, and let that which is in it go."...
"I cannot," she said. "I have no longer the power. Open it for
me." She held out the offending hand. It was more a paw than a
hand....
..."I will take you to my father. You have wronged him worst of
the created, therefore he best of the created can help you."
"How can he help me?"
"He will forgive you."
...Softly they
stole in at the opened door, with a gentle wind in the skirts of
their garments. It flowed and flowed about Lilith, rippling the
unknown, upwaking sea of her
life eternal...
[207]
Chapter
40: The House of Death
...When we reached the door,
Adam welcomed us almost merrily....
"We have long waited for thee, Lilith!" he said....
"The mortal foe of my children!" murmured Eve, standing radiant
in her beauty.
"Your children are no longer in her danger," said Mara; "she has
turned from evil."
"Trust her not hastily, Mara," answered her mother; "she has
deceived a multitude!"
"But you will open to her the
mirror of the Law of Liberty,
mother, that she may go into it, and abide in it! She consents
to open her hand and restore: will not the great Father
restore her to inheritance with His other children?"
"I do not know Him!" murmured Lilith, in a voice of fear and
doubt.
[213]
------------
Eve came
from the chamber of death, where she had laid Lona [daughter of
Adam and Lilith] down...
"If thou wilt nor eat nor drink, Lilith," said Adam, "come and
see the place where thou shalt lie in peace."
He led the way through the door of death, and she followed
submissive.... A wild blast fell roaring on the roof, and died
away in a moan. She stood ghastly with terror. ... "The great
Shadow," she murmured.
"Here he cannot enter," said Adam. "...Over him also
is power given me."
"Are the children in the house?" asked Lilith....
"He never dared touch a child," she said. "Nor have you
either ever hurt a child. Your own daughter you have but sent
into the loveliest sleep, for she was already a long time dead
when you slew her. And now Death shall be the atonemaker;
you shall sleep together." [215]
---------
"There, Lilith, is the bed I have
prepared for you!"
She glanced at her daughter lying before her like a statue
carved in semi-transparent alabaster, and shuddered from head to
foot. "How cold it is!" she murmured.
"You will soon begin to find comfort in the cold," answered
Adam.... "But I know it: I too have slept. I am dead!" ...
When the
Shadow comes here, it will be to lie down and sleep also.--His
hour will come, and he knows it will."
"How long shall I sleep?"
"You and he will be the last to wake in the morning of the
universe."...
"Lilith," said Mara, "you will not
sleep, if you lie there a thousand years, until you have opened
your hand, and yielded that which is not yours...."
"I cannot," she answered. "I would if I could, and gladly, for I
am weary, and the shadows of death are gathering about me."
"They will gather and gather, but they cannot infold you
while yet your hand remains unopened. You may think you are
dead, but it will be only a dream.... Open your hand, and
you will sleep indeed--then wake indeed."
[218]
Note: "'You may think you are dead...'"
C.S. Lewis, creator
of Narnia and a great admirer of MacDonald, cited this statement
with particular acclaim. "This has a terrible meaning, specially
for imaginative people," he wrote. "We read of spiritual efforts,
and our imagination makes us believe that, because we enjoy the
idea of doing them, we have done them. I am appalled to see how
much of the change which I thought I had undergone lately was only
imaginary. The real work seems still to be done. It is so fatally
easy to confuse an aesthetic appreciation of the spiritual life
with the life itself--to dream that you have waked, washed, and
dressed, & then to find yourself still in bed"
(letter to his friend
Arthur Greeves dated 15 June 1930)."
"There was a sword I once saw in
your husband's hands," [Lilith] murmured. "I fled when I saw it.
I heard him who bore it say it would divide whatever was not one
and indivisible!"
"I have the sword," said Adam. "The angel gave it me when he
left the gate."
"Bring it, Adam," pleaded Lilith, "and cut me off this hand that
I may sleep."
"I will," he answered.... "A wound from that sword needs no
dressing. It is healing and not hurt."
[219]
Chapter 42: I
sleep the sleep
"Every creature must one night yield himself and lie down,"
answered Adam: "he was made for liberty, and must not be left a
slave!"[228]...
"Even
Lilith already begins to look younger!" I lay down, blissfully drowsy.
"But when you see your mother again," he continued, "you will
not at first know her. She will go on steadily growing
younger until she reaches the perfection of her womanhood--a
splendour beyond foresight."
Chapter 43:
The Journey Home
...It had ceased to be dark; we walked in a dim twilight,
breathing through the dimness the breath of the spring.
[Sounds like the birth of Narnia!] A wondrous change had passed
upon the world--or was it not rather that a change more
marvelous had taken place in us? ... Nothing cast a
shadow; all things interchanged a little light. Every growing
thing showed me, by its shape and color, its indwelling
idea--the informing thought, that is, which was its being, and
sent it out. My bare feet seemed to love every plant they trod
upon. The world and my being, its life and mine, were one.
The microcosm and macrocosm were at length atoned, at length in
harmony! I lived in everything; everything entered and
lived in me. ...
I was myself in the joy of the bells,
myself in the joy of the breeze....
I was a peaceful ocean
upon which the ground-swell of a living joy was continually
lifting new waves; yet was the joy ever the same joy, the
eternal joy, with tens of thousands of changing forms. Life was
a cosmic holiday.
Now I knew that life and truth were one.... At last
I was! I lived, and nothing
could touch my life! ...we were on
our way home to the Father!
(Last) Chapter
48: The "Endless Ending"
When a man dreams his own dream, he is the sport of his dream; when
Another gives it him, that Other is able to fulfill it.
I have never again sought the mirror. The hand sent me back: I will
not go out again by that door! "All the days of my appointed time
will I wait till my change come."...
Strange dim
memories.... It may be, notwithstanding, that, when most
awake, I am only dreaming the more! ...
Novalis says, "Our life is no dream, but it should and will perhaps
become one."
Novalis (1772-1801)
is one of those
"German Romanticist" who caused the deacons at MacDonald's first
church to rightly dismiss their pastor for heresy. This German poet
has been called "the prophet of Romanticism."
"Novalis sees,
that humankind's historical and spiritual apotheosis will be
reached when the epoch of science is left behind. The limitless
power of Imagination, 'magical knowledge,' combines all
the elements of senses and scientific principles invented by
reason - Novalis called his philosophy 'magic idealism.'
The spiritual world is open for everybody all the time.....Novalis
defined philosophy as home-sickness, as the urge to be at home
in all places, and the fairy tale as a dream of "that homeland
which is everywhere and nowhere." Novalis' ideas have profoundly
influenced generations of German writers, among them Joseph
von Eichendorff, Rainer Maria Rilke, Herman Hesse, and Thomas
Mann."
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/novalis.htm
MacDonald was an outstanding imaginative writer in his own
right, but he was also, consciously, an heir of the Romantics of
the late 18th and early 19th century, particularly of the German
poet Novalis (1772-1801) and the English poets Blake (1757-1827)....
H. G. Wells wrote a letter to MacDonald (24 Sept. 1895) in
which he praised Lilith. He too was fascinated by the idea that
"assuming more than three dimensions, it follows that there must
be wonderful worlds nearer to us than breathing and closer than
hands and feet."
http://www.george-macdonald.com/lilith_notes.htm
http://www.congregationbethhaari.org/mila_yomit_archive.htm: "The Zohar speaks of the Creator summoning the light to issue forth in a particular way, to a particular direction. It describes this process as the Divine designing and forming the various parts of the Tree of Life and creating
the foundations of this world.... 'LILITH
-- (lamed, yud,l amed, yud, tav) is the night
spirit.... Adam's first wife.... Hirsch relates it to LUL (lamed, vav, lamed) which is a spiral leading down
--"the time when everything sinks down and the whole world is lying down, and no longer stands there in its own separate outline."
[This sounds like one of George McDonald's' major themes.]
"Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil;
Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness....
Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes,
And prudent in their own sight!" Isaiah 5:20-21
"Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty
deceit,
according to the tradition of men, according to the basic
principles of the world,
and
not according to Christ." Colossians 2:6-9
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