Ever since word began circulating about the upcoming Netflix production of something resembling The Magician’s Nephew, I have been trying to ignore it. In fact, this week, I was just hoping to post a little something about the lovely experience of seeing the theatrical re-release of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (yes, they fixed the title!) with our adult child who was not born for the first time. I’ll get to that soon, I hope. Recent announcements about the Netflix show have created a storm of responses on social media, so I should probably wade into the fray. It should come as no surprise that I am less than enthusiastic about this latest exhibition of Hollywood nonsense. However, as some others have pointed out, it is important to heed the admonition of King Tirian, who tells Eustace not to “scold like a kitchen girl.” In that spirit, I am avoiding mere complaints about Hollywood being Hollywood and offering a few of my thoughts about Lewis’s work, my own complete lack of enthusiasm for this newest, predictable business, and some suggestions for us all to maintain our joy and mental well-being in this fallen world.
The Magician’s Nephew and Magic Far Deeper than Netfilx
Annie Crawford: The Cosmic Alchemy of C. S. Lewis’ ‘That Hideous Strength’
I have been talking about the literary alchemy of C. S. Lewis’ Ransom Trilogy of which That Hideous Strength is the finale since 2005 when I gave a talk on the subject at Dr Amy H. Sturgis‘ ‘Past Watchful Dragons’ conference at Belmont University on the ‘Fantasy and Faith’ of Lewis. I was invited at that gathering to speak to the New York C. S. Lewis Society in January 2008 on the same subject which led to a date in April 2010 at the Oklahoma City C. S. Lewis Society conference to revisit alchemy in outer space. That trip led to my family’s move to OKC, believe it or not, later that year.
It’s a subject dear to me and I hope that Annie Crawford’s talk about the third book’s ‘Cosmic Alchemy’ fosters an interest in the traditional and literary hermeticism in CSL’s work beyond and in tandem with the astrology.
Here are links to three Substack posts about literary alchemy which touch at least tangentially on Lewis’ occult artistry:
- Literary Alchemy: Sacred Science, Sacred Art, and ‘The Alembic of Story’ This is a draft chapter from my PhD thesis in which I explained the Perennialist view of metallurgical alchemy as a sacred science, non-liturgical story telling heavy in hermetic symbolism as sacred art, and why and how readers are transformed in the ‘Alembic of Story.’
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Metallurgical, Literary, and Psychological Alchemy: Is Jung a Good Guide for Understanding J. K. Rowling’s Artistry and Meaning? This podcast and article is valuable both for the succinct introduction in the discussion I have in it with Nick Jeffery of why writers, poets, and playwrights from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Lewis and Rowling have used alchemical symbolism (cf., the ten minutes beginning ~ 35:00 in the podcast) and for the bullet-point notes in the write-up beneath the video with a host of links.
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A Spirited Conversation about Rowling-Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike Series and C. S. Lewis’ ‘Till We Have Faces’ This conversation with Nick Jeffery focuses on the correspondence with and differences between Lewis’ adaptation of Cupid and Psyche myth in his Till We Have Faces and Rowling-Galbraith’s in the Cormoran Strike novels. It begins, however, with a review of all the traditional Shed tools that Lewis and Rowling have in common, which include literary alchemy.
I share in the last one the story of how I learned about ring composition via my search of Lewis scholarship in 2010 to see if anything had been written about the hermeticism embedded in the Space Trilogy; there wasn’t, but, reading Sanford Schwartz’ C. S. Lewis on the Final Frontier: Science and the Supernatural in the Space Trilogy in that search, I was introduced to Lewis’ chiastic writing and to Mary Douglas which led directly to my writing Harry Potter as Ring Composition and Ring Cycle. Imagine Rowling Studies today if I hadn’t been exploring C. S. Lewis scholarship to learn more about her hermetic artistry and meaning; a very different place!
Let me know in the comment boxes below what you think of Annie Crawford’s ‘Cosmic Alchemy in That Hideous Strength‘ and my various pieces linked above! If you want my notes and Power Point slides on Lewis and alchemy, drop me a note at john at HogwartsProfessor dot com and I’ll send them on.
The Cupid and Psyche Myth Retellings: C. S. Lewis’ ‘Till We Have Faces’ and J. K. Rowling’s Cormoran Strike Novels
At the Hogwarts Professor Substack page, Nick Jeffery and I both wrote pieces this month about C. S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces and Rowling-Galbraith’s Strike-Ellacott mysteries. We then filmed our conversation about why the Serious Striker or Generic Thoughtful Rowling Reader would benefit from time with CSL in the Kingdom of Glume, Queen Orual presiding.
I began my post about the two Cupid and Psyche adaptations with several reasons reading Till We Have Faces is a very good investment of any Rowling fan’s time:
First, anything by C. S. Lewis rewards a close reading by any thoughtful person and lover of challenging modern writing (and, though Lewis is often dismissed as some kind of Christian dinosaur, he is a thoroughly modern writer). Faces was his last fiction piece, he and Tolkien thought it was his best, and it is a catharsis inducing masterpiece, frankly, that makes a more than generous return on any time invested in it.
Second, despite Rowling’s several digs at Lewis near the end of Potter Mania’s peak around the publication of Deathly Hallows, it would be hard to exaggerate the hat-tips and references to CSL’s Narniad in the Hogwarts Saga. Rowling’s efforts to diminish if not dismiss that influence have to be read in tandem with her earlier effusion of admiration for Lewis and his work. Her Christmas Pig, I think, can be read as her attempt — her wonderfully successful attempt, by the way, at least with respect to accessibility and humor — to out-do Lewis’ The Great Divorce. Reading Lewis is a good idea for the Serious Striker, then, because its a decent bet based on the postmodern writer’s track record that the bibliographical inspiration or Lake aspect of her work might be found in his writing.
Third, forget the Lake, Rowling’s Shed is filled with tools that Lewis used.
- Literary alchemy? Read his Space Trilogy.
- Ring composition? Every Chronicles of Narnia novel and Space Trilogy piece is chiastic.
- Psychomachia or Soul-Allegory? Pilgrim’s Regress, Great Divorce, Till We Have Faces.
- Genre Blend with Heavy Doses of Literary Allusion? Again, the Narniad and Space Trilogy.
- Christian symbolism? If Lewis is known for anything, loved by his fans and despised by his detractors, it is because of his “smuggling the Gospel” into his stories, not-so-subtly and supremely subtly (see Planet Narnia for exposition of the latter).
And to the point today, use of Classical myth as a story launching pad and template. Serious Strikers know that the Strike-Ellacott series is up to its eyeballs in mythic backdrops; think of Leda and the Swan, Castor and Pollux, Tisiphone and Artemis, and, the only one confirmed by the author via tweet, Cupid and Psyche. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces is a re-telling of this exact myth.
It’s not a direct match by any means. Lewis’ adaptation is fairly straight-forward (well, relative to Rowling-Galbraith’s). He re-tells the Cupid and Psyche myth from the perspective of one of Psyche’s supposedly jealous sisters. It’s still set in a mythic time and in a pagan or pre-Christian Greece (or thereabouts). Rowling uses the myth, in contrast, as a near invisible back-drop or atmosphere that informs her story, a subtle deployment that wasn’t noticed by readers until its reveal in Troubled Blood and Ink Black Heart (a revelation that wasn’t accepted by fandom until Rowling’s tweet post Hallmarked Man).
Nick Jeffery wondered if it was possible that Rowling-Galbraith used Till We Have Faces as something of a template’s template for her adaptation of Cupid and Psyche in her Strike novels. Read his C. S. Lewis’ ‘Till We Have Faces’ and Rowling-Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike Series (Part One) for his answer to the question, ‘Is Till We Have Faces the The Thematic Template for the ‘Strike-Ellacott’ Series?’
In my follow-up to Nick’s post, C. S. Lewis’ ‘Till We Have Faces’ and Rowling-Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike Series (Part Two), I shared the seven points of intersection I found in CSL’s 1956 adaptation and JKR’s eight Strellacott books: the underlying myth, Artemis and Aphrodite, the Pursuit of the Real, the Hidden Nature of Divinity, the Story Structure, the Meaning of ‘Faces,’ and the Eros-Anteros Distinction (what Lewis called ‘The False Cupid’ in his essays on Spenser).
In our subsequent discussion-podcast, A Spirited Conversation about Rowling-Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike Series and C. S. Lewis’ ‘Till We Have Faces,’ we reviewed our findings and played pickle-ball with the subject of what Faces might suggest about the contents of Strike 9, tentatively titled Sleep Tight, Evangeline.
Nick and I will be talking about fan theories and Rowling’s Golden Threads this week and I will be writing about the literary alchemy of the Lions in Hallmarked Man as well as more notes about the plethora of names in Strike 8. I also hope to share the introduction to and TOC for my book in progress, Harry Potter for Grown-Ups: Volume 1 Philosopher’s Stone, and a chapter of the only book to my knowledge written exclusively about the Perennialist Theory of Literature, the school of thought best suited to grasping the traditional tools used by both Lewis and Rowling in their stories.
The JKR 60th Birthday Party Kanreki Celebration Index: Links and Blurb summaries of the 31 Lake and Shed Conversations of Rowling’s Life and Work in July 2025
Last month, Nick Jeffery and I logged a marathon of Kanreki ‘Lake and Shed’ posts at our Substack site in celebration of Rowling’s life and work at her 60th birthday. Nick has been re-posting links to that work here at the weblog and now I have assembled below an easy-to-access-and-reference single place for readers to find any part of this fun series. Enjoy!
Introduction to the Kanreki Project
On 31 July 2025, Joanne Murray, aka J. K. Rowling and Robert Galbraith, celebrated her 60th birthday. This specific celebration is considered a ‘second birth’ in Japan or Kanreki because it is the completion of the oriental astrological cycle. To mark JKR’s Kanreki, 還暦, Dr John Granger and Nick Jeffery, both Nipponophiles, read through Rowling’s more than twenty published works and reviewed them in light of the author’s writing process, her ‘Lake and Shed’ metaphor. The ‘Lake’ she said in 2019 and 2024 is the source of her inspiration and the ‘Shed’ is the alocal place of her intentional artistry, in which garage she transforms the biographical stuff provided by her subconscious mind into the archetypal stories that have made her the most important author of her age.
Join us after the jump for the complete compendium of the Harry Potter, Cormoran Strike, Fantastic Beast, ‘Stand Alone’ stories, and Golden Thread posts! [Read more…]
Whence Potter-Mania?: The Spiritual Content and Christian Message of the Hogwarts Saga (Eighth Day Books)
I pledged yesterday to write three posts in sequence that together will reveal the Foundation Crime of the Strike-Ellacott series and an epicycle structure to the last three books. I had the second post sketched before I wrote up an introduction to this effort yesterday so I was hopeful I could complete it relatively easily today.
I have been sick and I relapsed. The second post, consequently, remains a challenging ambition!
So, to keep my six month streak of posting every day alive, I took my cue from a Serious Reader who was looking for the talks I gave at the Eighth Day Symposium in January 2011. The links in my original post about those talks were to Ancient Faith Radio but they apparently have been broken, i.e., the links no longer go to anything.
But the Web Archive, aka the ‘Wayback Machine,’ had saved it. I’ve been listening to it tonight in my malaise and I think it holds up. I discuss Soul Triptychs, Literary Alchemy, and Ring Composition, and, though it’s not quite the talk I’d give today, fourteen years later, it’s still challenging and fun.
So I post the Wayback Machine link here for you to enjoy! It’s another introduction to Rowling ‘Shed’ or Formalist artistry which will serve us well as we hunt for the Foundation Crime of the Strike-Ellacott series.
Enjoy!
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