Till We Have Faces (Part 2)

In our previous post we introduced C.S. Lewis' "Till We Have Faces" (TWHF) and addressed the question of why a Christian man would see fit to retell the story of Cupid and Psyche. We also outline what we would expect to see from this Christianized version of the story and noted how, if we are correct, that it is due to those who persuaded Psyche to rebel against her lover, are in fact the ones who spur the manifestation of the true religion. 

So, let's see how well TWHF fulfills our expectations. 

We start with a quick review of Glome’s society pre-Queen Orual.

Glome is a small kingdom on the Shennit river ruled by a monarch (King Trom) who is of “divine blood.” The kingdom, like the other kingdoms surrounding it, is uncivilized when compared to Greece. It is an agricultural society with no books, art, or any sort of standard education. The people of Glome worship the goddess Ungit, a black stone “without head, hands, or face” who sits in the dark, bloody, inner recesses of her house. The worship of Ungit is sacrificial, usually birds and animals, and occasionally humans, and punctuated by regular pagan rituals. Ungit is served by a band of priests and a group of girls. The head priest has a bird’s mask which usually hangs from his neck, but which he wears on special occasions. The girls are heavily masked with makeup and apparently prostituted during ritual worship. The House of Ungit has its own land and army and may sometimes be at odds with the monarch.

Let's consider the loathsome mode of worship to the gods of Glome. Human sacrifice, prostitution, darkness, and the stench of blood. Who is Ungit that she is worshiped in this way?

Perhaps it will be helpful to compare the gods of Glome to the gods of another of Lewis’ pagan societies, Calormen. The main Calormen god, Tash, is four-armed and bird-faced (like the mask of the Glome High Priest). It too is served by human sacrifice, and it is said that the rulers of Calormen, the Tisrocs, descend directly from Tash.

However, as we have seen previously but much to the surprise of the Narnians, Tash is not a false god! Instead, he is Aslan’s opposite. Aslan is the force of holiness and good, Tash is the force of impurity and evil.

Identifying Ungit with Tash enables us to contrast the story of Glome with that of Calormen. With respect to Calormen we asked, “How can a society descend to the point of actually worshiping evil, which is Tash? Yet by posing evil as good Calormen did just that. In Glome we struggle with the opposite question. How can a society be raised from serving Tash/Ungit to serving Aslan? How can the religion of Glome become beautiful?

To explore this question, we should look at the different relationships people have with Tash and Ungit:

The rulers of both Calormen and Glome claim to descend from the gods. Thus, both exhibit much evil and unholiness just like their gods.

The common folk, on the other hand, likely treat the gods as the Glome general Bardia does, “I’m not impious. I wouldn't… [list of actions forbidden by the gods]... or do anything else that's unchancy and profane, even if the King himself were to bid me. And as for sacrifices, I've always done all that can be expected of a man on my pay. But for anything more — I think the less Bardia meddles with the gods, the less they'll meddle with Bardia.” One could imagine Arsheesh (though a much less noble man than Bardia) saying something similar.

Yet others can take comfort from the imperfections of the gods, like the woman who prays to the plain Ungit rather than the Greek statue of Ungit/Aphrodite. They see in the unshapeliness and grotesqueness of the gods something of themselves and relate to them through ugliness.

A precious few, however, rejoice in the gods and love them. Their vision completely pierces through the ugliness of the gods. For though the gods are not yet beautiful they can become so. Emeth and Psyche both loved the pagan gods. Emeth enters Alsan’s country and perceives that it had been Aslan he was worshiping all along. There was no opportunity to make Tash beautiful. Psyche sins against the gods despite her love for them and is tasked with making the beauty of the gods obvious to everyone.

Finally, there are those who see the ugliness of the gods and hate them. This is Orual. She does right to hate the gods in their current form. However, by rejecting the gods completely, and corrupting the vision of Psyche, she is also tasked with making the gods beautiful. As the god of the west wind declares Orual, "also shall be Psyche."

The tasks of Psyche herself are well-known, they are the stuff of myth and legend. In Lewis’ retelling she performs the tasks joyfully for she knows the happiness she will attain should she succeed 

Orual’s tasks are parallel but different. Against her will and without her knowledge she prepares Glome for the beauty of the gods.