Sunday, April 13, 2008

Planets and Art

Some more things on the art subject....

I recently "read" (more like "skimmed") Michael Ward's book called Planet Narnia.  In it he argues that Lewis used each of the 7 medieval planets as inspiration for each of the books in the Narnia series.  He says that Lewis did this because he believed that each of the mythological characterizations for the planets represented an aspect of God's character.

If we took this standard idea than we would have 7 major characteristics of God (well, 6 really because the Moon is the border between the sinful world and the unfallen worlds), and if these followed the planets we would have:
Sun = glory, majesty
Mercury = messenger of the Word
Venus = beauty, creativity, life
Moon = separation from God
Mars = War
Jupiter = joy, cheerfulness (joviality)
Saturn = God of Ages/Time, Ancient of Days

It seems as though the goal of any good art project would be to accurately reflect God's character in any of these individually or combined.  All of the stories in the Bible also reflect these characteristics, so that if you were to say, write a story that imitated the life of King David (with different characters and situations, of course), that could potentially be a great story.

This seems to open up creativity in a way that doesn't stifle the idea of taking one or two of God's characteristics and setting them up as supreme.

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