It seemed to [Tuor] that a great wave rose far off and rolled towards the land, but wonder held him. […] The wave came towards him, and upon it lay a mist of shadow. Then suddenly as it drew near it curled, and broke, and rushed forward in long arms of foam; but where it had broken there stood dark against the rising storm a living shape of great height and majesty. (Unfinished Tales 30)

Tuor’s encounter with Ulmo made quite an impression on me, an impression that was deepened after seeing some awe-inspiring works of art illustrating the scene:

While reflecting on the story, I coined the phrase “journey to the sea” to summarize the story and its effect on me. As I continued to contemplate the phrase and study other myths, my affinity for it grew. The two nouns, journey and sea, contain such rich mythic meanings! Let me look briefly at what each of these words means to me.

“Sea”

Sextus Empiricus, a second-century Roman doctor and philosopher, made this observation:

How great is the astonishment the sea causes in a man who beholds it for the first time! (69)

Myth and the sea impact me in similar ways. I have spent most of my life living in landlocked areas, and I still feel this astonishment every time I stand on the shoreline and experience the vastness of the sea, the impressive power of the crashing waves, the delightful sounds of seagulls, and the refreshment of the cool sea breeze. Since childhood, myth has delighted me, instructed me, strengthened me, and taken my breath away. Sometimes these stories fill me with hope and joy; other times, they move me to tears.

In an influential lecture, Tolkien described Beowulf with this analogy:

A man inherited a field in which was an accumulation of old stone. […] Of the [stone] he took some and built a tower. […] From the top of the tower the man [was] able to look out upon the sea. (“Monsters” 105-106)

The tower here refers to the poem itself, the old stone to ancient themes and images the poet incorporated into it. The sea represents the experience myth can produce in its readers, the same experience I described above.

“Journey”

Many myths contain a common pattern of events referred to as the hero’s journey. Scholars have detailed the many different stages and variations in this pattern, but the important stages of this journey for me are these:

1. The hero leaves the ordinary world, often prompted by a call to adventure.
2. The hero reaches another realm, often with some magical aid, where he completes a set of tasks and achieves some boon.
3. The hero returns to the ordinary world, where he uses the boon to benefit others.

This pattern appears in the two stories that had the strongest impact on me in my childhood. In Redwall, the young mouse Matthias recovers the lost sword of ancient lore to save his abbey from the invading rat Cluny the Scourge; in Star Wars, Luke Skywalker learns the ways of a Jedi Knight to rescue his father from the Dark Side and save the galaxy from the tyranny of the evil Empire. These stories resonated with me in ways that I did not fully understand at the time.

Much later, Joseph Campbell’s work introduced me to the power these stories possess for transforming our lives. They can serve as inspiration and models for us to achieve our full potential. Campbell spoke often of a feeling he called “bliss,” a deep satisfaction that comes from “doing what you absolutely must do to be yourself” (xxii). He described life as a hero’s journey to discover what produces this bliss in us, to overcome any trial in our effort to pursue it, and then to benefit others in that pursuit. For me, that pursuit involves myth.

All these thoughts came to my mind when I chose the name Journey to the Sea. This site exists as a way for me to pursue my bliss in myth and to share what I achieve on the journey with others. Through researching and writing articles, I should continue to experience astonishment at myth; I look to other contributors for articles and comments as the magic helpers to aid me in my own journey; and with any luck, the articles I write and my replies to comments will in turn benefit others. I hope that through this site we can all achieve a richer experience of wonder and delight in myths and learn to apply their instruction and wisdom to our everyday lives.

References

• Tolkien, J. R., and Christopher Tolkien. Unfinished Tales. Westminster: Del Rey, 1988.
• Tolkien, J. R.R. The Silmarillion. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004.
• Sextus Empiricus. Outlines of Pyrrhonism. In Selections from the Major Writings. Trans. Sanford G.  Etheridge. Ed. Phillip P. Hallie. Boston: Hackett, 1985.
• Tolkien, J.R.R. “Monsters and Critics.” Beowulf : A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Daniel Donoghue. Boston: W. W. Norton, 2002.
• Jacques, Brian. Redwall. New York: Penguin, 1987.
• Star Wars. George Lucas. 20th Century Fox, 1977.
• Campbell, Joseph. Pathways to Bliss. “Introduction” (xv-xxii) and “The Self as Hero” (111-134). Chicago: New World Library, 2004.

Image modified and used with permission of John Howe

When Red Prophet begins, we find ourselves cast back in time, prior to the events of Seventh Son, as we meet the character who will become the Shining Man in Alvin’s vision, Tenskwa-Tawa. Tenskwa-Tawa is an actual historical figure, also known as “The Prophet” or “The Shawnee Prophet.” He was the brother of the famous Shawnee warrior Ta-Kumsaw (Tecumseh), and he founded the Native American settlement called “Prophetstown” at the juncture of the Wabash and Tippecanoe rivers in Ohio territory (modern-day Indiana). This is where the so-called Battle of Tippecanoe took place in 1811, when troops led by William Henry Harrison, future President of the United States, burned Prophetstown to the ground in a bloody victory that earned him the nickname “Old Tippecanoe.”

As Card weaves the story of Alvin Maker into these historical events, Alvin learns from the Indians Tenskwa-Tawa and Ta-Kumsaw  that his knacks are not some kind of personal prowess, but instead derive from the powers of the living land itself. When the Europeans practice their knacks in ignorance of this fact, they are stumbling in the dark, not even aware of what they are doing. This makes the Europeans and their knacks contemptible in the eyes of someone like Ta-Kumsaw, who lives his life in full awareness of the natural order:

These White men with their weak little knacks. These White men with their hexes and their wardings. Didn’t they know their hexes only fended off unnatural things? If a thief comes, knowing he does wrong, then a good strong fending hex makes his fear grow till he cries out and runs away. But the Red man never is a thief. […] To the Red man a knack is like a fly, buzz buzz buzz. Far above this fly, the power of the living land is a hundred hawks, watching, circling. (Chapter 2)

With the help of Ta-Kumsaw, Alvin is able to deepen his understanding of his own powers, going far beyond the tricks he had learned to do with his knacks. As a result, Alvin is able to perceive the greensong and feel a connection with the land itself, much as Ta-Kumsaw and the Prophet are able to do.

At a certain point in the novel, Ta-Kumsaw and Alvin must make their way on foot to Fort Detroit, 200 miles, which Ta-Kumsaw planned to travel in a single day. How could that be possible? The Indians are able to travel that distance by calling on the power of the land itself:

The Red man called on the strength of the land to help him. The ground pushed back against his feet, adding to his strength. The bushes parted, making paths, space appeared where there was no space. […] Ta-Kumsaw’s hunger to arrive at Fort Detroit was so strong that the land answered by feeding him, giving him strength. (Chapter 11)

These are powers which Ta-Kumsaw has known all his life, but he did not expect that Alvin would be able to keep up with him, and he planned to carry the boy. Instead, much to Ta-Kumsaw’s surprise, Alvin was able to hear the greensong of the land and keep up with Ta-Kumsaw, pace for pace, in their 200-mile journey. Prior to this journey, Alvin did not know that he had this power, this connection to the land. It is the first of many lessons that he will learn in his journeys with Ta-Kumsaw.

These magical powers which Ta-Kumsaw and the Shawnees use are part of the natural order; they are what you could call perfectly natural powers, with nothing supernatural about them at all. To the White men, however, the Indians’ powers appear to be supernatural simply because the White men’s magic is itself an act against nature, something that stands outside the natural order and violates the limitations that keep that ecology in balance. Indeed, the entirety of White civilization is seen as an assault on the natural order of things, and Ta-Kumsaw and his brother Tenskwa-Tawa are struggling to drive the White men from the land before it is utterly destroyed:

Hack and cut and chop and burn, that was the White man’s way. Take from the forest, take from the land, take from the river, but put nothing back. The White man killed animals he didn’t need, animals that did him no harm; yet if a bear woke hungry in the winter and took so much as a single young pig, the White man hunted him down and killed him in revenge. He never felt the balance of the land at all. (Chapter 2)

The ecology of magic turns out to be about the ecology of nature itself, and the balance of the living ecosystem. When Alvin leaves Ta-Kumsaw and returns to his family’s home at the end of the novel, he still hears the greensong around him:

At night in his own bed, Alvin listened to the distant greensong, still warm and beautiful, still bright and hopeful, even though the forest was getting so sparse, even though the future was so dim. (Chapter 19)

Of course, this is just the end of Book 2 in what will be a seven-book series, with much opportunity still for Alvin to struggle towards a brighter future, even after the tragedy at Tippecanoe.

The themes of magic and environmentalism are beautifully entwined in this book, providing a new dimension to the ethical moralism of Alvin’s vow in Seventh Son. Alvin had recognized that there were moral limits which limited his magical knacks, but in Red Prophet he begins to learn how those magical powers are part of a larger natural order which depends not just on individual righteousness but on the principle of balance, and the limitations which are needed to sustain that balance. In my next article, I’ll turn to the third magical stream which flows through Card’s imaginary America — African magic — to see what it has to teach us about magical powers, and about their limits.

References

• Card, Orson Scott. Red Prophet. New York: Tor Books, 1988.

Satan’s rebellion begins when God calls an assembly of all the angels in Heaven in order to announce that he has appointed his Son to reign over them: “To Him shall bow / All knees in Heav’n” (V.607-608). Satan believes that he and the Son are equal in rank, and he concludes that God in this exaltation of the Son is unjust. Satan refuses to surrender his personal freedom or to submit to what he regards as the illegitimate reign of the Son, and he appeals to the other angels to do the same:

Will ye submit your necks and choose to bend / The supple knee? Ye will not […] if ye know yourselves / Natives and sons of Heav’n possessed before / By none. (V.787-791)

One-third of the angels join Satan, and Satan criticizes those that do not follow him: “I see that most through sloth had rather serve” (V.166). Satan then leads his followers in an attack against Heaven. The battle between the loyal and rebel angels rages for days before the Son comes forth from his throne; the Son defeats Satan and casts the rebellious angels from Heaven to Hell.

Even in Hell, Satan remains committed to the cause which he sees as just. He implores his troops to have the “courage never to submit or yield” (I.108). He describes God’s reign as “the tyranny of Heav’n” (I.122-124). He stands firm in his dedication to freedom and liberty, proclaiming:

Here at last [in Hell] / We shall be free. […] Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven! (I.258-259, 263)

John Milton published the first edition of Paradise Lost in 1667. Literary critics for over a hundred years afterwards interpreted the fall of Satan along the lines of traditional Christian theology. They took Satan to be the villain and Adam the hero. They read the poem as consistent with what I am calling the “religious theme”: Man must submit to God as the absolute authority; God’s actions are beyond scrutiny. For example, John Dryden (the first literary critic to comment on Paradise Lost) in 1697 criticized the poem for having the villain take center stage and defeat the hero (214).

Near the end of the eighteenth century, however, William Blake put forth a new interpretation. Blake believed that Milton portrayed Satan more richly and magnificently than he portrayed God, and he took this as evidence that Milton (perhaps unwittingly) sided with Satan:

The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil’s party without knowing it. (Plate 6)

Blake took the meaning of the poem to be consistent with what I am calling the “humanistic theme”: Man should judge whether God’s actions are good or wicked; if man determines that God is wicked, he should rebel against him.

Blake’s interpretation, taking Satan as the hero of Paradise Lost, dominated nineteenth century criticism of the poem. These critics saw Satan’s response to God as similar to that of Prometheus’s response to Zeus, both rebelling against wicked tyrants and both regarding their cause as just. Walter Alexander Raleigh, writing at the conclusion of the nineteenth century, clearly took Satan to be the hero of the poem:

Satan unavoidably reminds us of Prometheus. […] His very situation as the fearless antagonist of Omnipotence makes him either a fool or a hero, and Milton is far indeed from permitting us to think him a fool.

In reaction to this humanistic interpretation of the nineteenth century, some twentieth-century scholars began reasserting the religious interpretation. Charles Williams, in his 1940 introduction to an edition of Paradise Lost, contended that Satan is indeed not a hero but a fool. His close fried C.S. Lewis developed the idea further in his 1942 A Preface to Paradise Lost:

A creature revolting against a creator is revolting against the source of his own powers — including even his power to revolt. […] The same rebellion which means misery for the feelings and corruption of the will, means Nonsense for the intellect. (97)

In 1967, Stanley Fish brought the religious interpretation back to prominence. Unlike Williams and Lewis were, Fish is not religious person; the irony of him arguing for a religious interpretation may have added to the persuasiveness of his argument. He claimed that the poem tempts the reader in the same way that Satan tempted Adam and Eve, but that the reader must overcome the temptation and see Satan as the villain:

The reader who falls before the lures of Satanic rhetoric displays […] the weakness of Adam and … [fails] to avoid repeating [Adam's] fall. (Surprised By Sin 38)

Both interpretations of Satan’s fall have their adherents today. Philip Pullman’s award-winning His Dark Materials fantasy trilogy was heavily influenced by the humanistic interpretation of Paradise Lost. He tells a story he heard of a country squire from the time of Blake whose reaction to hearing the poem read aloud mirrors Pullman’s own reaction:

Suddenly he bangs the arm of his chair, and exclaims, ‘By God! I know not what the outcome may be, but this [Satan's a] fine fellow, and I hope he may win!’ (1)

Stanley Fish continues to be influential, developing and refining this religious interpretation of Paradise Lost over the last thirty years. In a collection of essays published in 2001, he wrote:

[Satan] is trying to bootstrap himself […] to deity. […] His failure is [the failure] to understand [that] deity is an order of being that is fundamentally different from, and infinitely superior to, one’s own — a source not a rival. (How Milton Works 99)

The two interpretations found among literary critics of this poem reflect the two themes we saw reflected in Western myths concerning man’s proper response to the divine — Job on the one hand, Prometheus Bound on the other. In the next article in this series, I will look at how these two themes appear in interpretations of a story about Iblis (a character in the Qur’an with striking similarities to Milton’s Satan) among Islamic theologians.

References

• Milton, John. Paradise Lost: A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Gordon Tesky. W. W. Norton, 2004.
• Dryden, John. “Virgil and the Aeneid.” Dramatic Essays. Ed. William Henry Hudson. E.P. Dutton, 1921.
• Blake, William. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. (Full text available online.)
• Raleigh, Sir Walter Alexander. Milton. E. Arnold, 1900.
• Lewis, C. S. A Preface to Paradise Lost. 1942. Oxford University Press, 1961.
• Fish, Stanley. Surprised By Sin. St. Martin’s Press, 1967.
• Pullman, Philip. “Introduction.” Paradise Lost. Oxford University Press, 2005. 1-10. (Full text available online.)
• Fish, Stanley. How Milton Works. Harvard University Press, 2001.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia