“Great Lion” – Callum Quinn, © 2022
Another thing to like about Aslan the Lion is his sense of humor and playful nature. It’s reassuring to imagine that any truly righteous, loving and forgiving god looking down on us would have a fantastic sense of humor.
I didn’t get that impression in Sunday school.
I did, however, get it from Aslan. There are several moments in the books when his kingly façade gives way to joyful, carefree innocence. The first of these moments can be seen in The Magician’s Nephew, within hours of the creation of Narnia. As Aslan gives the animals their voice he warns them:
“But do not go back to [the dumb beasts’] ways, lest you cease to be talking beasts. For out of them you were taken, and into them you can return.”
After the initial shock of this is registers on the crowd, one of the animals plucks up the courage to proclaim, “No fear, Aslan!”, which seems to be a Narnian rendition of, “No pressure!” Understandably, some of the animals begin to nervously chuckle at this, whereby Aslan says:
“Go on, laugh! And fear not, creatures. Now that you are no longer dumb and witless, you need not always be grave. For jokes as well as justice come in with speech.”
Even further onward, he demonstrates this in a way that seems very unlike a god, when the animal who made the joke flutters around, asking anxiously if they would always be known for making the first joke. The Lion responds rather cheekily, “Little friend, you have not made the first joke. You have only been the first joke,” to which all the other animals laugh.
Narnia’s first burn. And Aslan gave it.
Another example of Aslan’s playfulness is in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Here, the lion has just risen from death (yeah yeah, we know), and due to the deep magic that restored him he appears to grow more youthful by the minute, rejoicing with Susan and Lucy—
“…diving between them, [and] tossing them in the air with his huge and beautifully velveted paws and catching them again…[in] a romp as no one has ever had except in Narnia; and whether it was more like playing with a thunderstorm or playing with a kitten Lucy could never make up her mind.”
At one point, he even stops short and decides to roar for the pure joy of it, telling the girls, “You had better put your fingers in your ears!”
This is not to mention his first encounter with Trumpkin the dwarf in Prince Caspian, who has been an outspoken denier of Aslan’s existence through much of the book. Any denier of god within the Christian faith is automatically pegged as hell bound, or at least due for some terrible, divine punishment. But in contrast with eternal damnation, Aslan simply doles out a reality check by treating the dwarf like a ball of string, tossing him around much the same way he had with the girls in the scene mentioned above, though in this instance, Trumpkin has not consented to the treatment. Subsequently, Aslan sets the shaking dwarf on his feet and asks, “Son of Earth, shall we be friends?”
This playful nature is derived from a sense of joy that all Narnians seem to carry naturally within them, especially the Great Lion. Later in Prince Caspian, Aslan and the girls travel across the land wreaking havoc for the “New Narnian” citizens with a Bacchanalian frolic that’s only a few steps short of a spree. Even Susan remarks at one point: “I wouldn’t have felt safe with Bacchus and all his wild girls if we’d met them without Aslan,” and Lucy is quick to agree—as if Aslan is the experienced party boy, the one who knows the ins and outs of a situation that would otherwise be hazardous for two young women. It is a scenario that makes the lion-god seem, surprisingly, very human. And very jovial.
Once the party dies down at the end of the day, C.S. Lewis ends the scene with this description:
“…but as the talk grew quieter and slower, one after another would begin to nod and finally drop off to sleep with feet towards the fire and good friends on either side, till at last there was silence all round the circle, and the chattering of water over stone at the Fords of Beruna could be heard once more. But all night Aslan and the Moon gazed upon each other with joyful and unblinking eyes.”
This last sentence in particular should ring a bell for spiritual non-Christians. Like karma, the significance of the moon is found amongst many pagan religions. For some, it is a deity all to itself: conscious, alive, and very feminine. To say that Aslan and the Moon (noting the capital on Moon, as well) “gazed upon each other with joyful…eyes” is to present something very rooted in nature spirituality: not only a mutual respect and admiration among deities, but a balance of masculine and feminine powers as well.
This same balance is demonstrated from the beginning of the series by the inclusion of queens in Narnia. When the Pevensies enter Narnia for the first time they encounter the prophesy that, “Two Sons of Adam and two Daughters of Eve,” will bring salvation to Narnia and end the reign of the White Witch. Not only does this imply a level of importance in four human/mortal beings, but it also alludes to the pagan significance of both masculine and feminine influences.
But it’s not just the importance of balance, or the good nature (literally and figuratively) of the Lion that should be noted. For a supposedly all-powerful deity, his subjects have a significant amount of agency in his world. Akin to the idea that other peoples in Narnia can perform magic, those who are called by/encounter Aslan are also given some amount of power that puts them on almost equal footing with him.
Nowhere is this agency more clearly observed than in Lucy (quite obviously Aslan’s favorite, even though he preaches never to have favorites. How very human). She is the first of the Pevensie children to enter Narnia; she is always the first to see Aslan, and is always the one approached by him—usually when she is alone, as she is in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, after she’s read the spell to make invisible things visible:
“Oh, Aslan! It was kind of you to come.”
“I’ve been here all the time. You have just made me visible.”
“Aslan, don’t make fun of me. As if anything I could do would make you visible.”
“Oh, it did. Don’t you think I wouldn’t obey my own rules?”
It is easy to suppose that Aslan is teasing her. After all, why would a child have the ability to make a god appear? But then again, why shouldn’t a child have the power to make a god who loves them unconditionally appear from thin air?
It is especially interesting that the Lion always seems to grant power, both magical and political, to children, and not adults. When, in Prince Caspian, he asks the prince if he feels ready to take up the throne of Narnia, Caspian responds, “I don’t think I do, sir. I am only a kid.” But Aslan seems pleased by this, remarking that if Caspian had felt ready, it would surely be proof that he was not. By this, Aslan demonstrates a faith in the innocence of youth; Caspian’s doubt shows that he has no agenda in mind for when he takes the throne. His rule will be fair, just, and modest.
Children are often taken less seriously than adults, but in Aslan’s realm they are the most powerful vessels of wisdom, not knowing the fear of speaking one’s mind and always living in the present moment.
Aslan also seems to find value in the present, in the here and now. In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Aslan tells Lucy that they will meet again soon enough. And when she tearfully asks him what he means by ‘soon,’ he replies, “I call all times ‘soon.’” How like a god, who is supposedly an ageless being, to look upon time as merely a constant present moment. He holds no grudges, and does not judge people by their pasts. Even after Edmund’s betrayal in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, when Aslan returns the boy to his siblings he states:
“Here is your brother, and there is no need to talk to him about what has passed.”
And later, in The Silver Chair, when Jill begins to feel guilty about all that had gone wrong during their journey, the Lion says:
“Think of that no more. I will not always be scolding. You have done the work for which I sent you into Narnia.”
To Aslan, the end result is the most important. While the journey is definitely an important step, any mistakes made along the way are forgiven and forgotten as long as the right destination is reached. Several times throughout the series it is asked of him what might have happened if a different choice had been made. His response is always, “No one can be told what might have been.” (Except in The Magician’s Nephew, when he tells Diggory exactly what would have happened if he had stolen an apple for himself. Consistency is not always easy…) To Aslan, asking what “might have been” is a useless endeavor. Nothing can be changed, and therefore, we must keep our focus on what has happened and what we must do to move on.
— CO
