C.S. Lewis, when speaking of Narnia, describes how he felt that fiction, and children’s stories in particular, could “steal past those watchful dragons” of religiosity that for many make faith seem such a dead and implausible prospect. And boy, was he right! For generations, children young and old have cheered to Puddleglum’s defiance of the Green Witch, or wept with Digory when it seemed all hope was lost, or rejoiced in the transformations of Edmund and Eustace, or were comforted with Lucy. Those of us who grew up reading and rereading the stories know the treasure they provide for living out the Christian faith.

But Lewis did so much more than provide rich images of Christian discipleship that we can live into: he also encapsulated and imaged forth the high doctrines of our faith, the deep mysteries before which reason trembles in both trepidation and excitement. In his hands, the words of our doctrines take on literary flesh.

The Classical Mind’s own Junius Johnson has been working on a project drawing out the deeper theological significance of the Narnia books, especially The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. On Thursday, October 15 at 5:30 CT, he will present a free webinar presenting some of this work. He will begin by describing what theological reading of texts like Narnia looks like, and consider what Lewis himself might have thought about the method. Then he will demonstrate it by diving deep into one of the most theologically rich episodes in the text: the transformation of Eustace into a dragon, and his return to being a boy.

Registration is free but required. Go to https://academics.juniusjohnson.com/courses/theology-vdt/ to learn more and sign up!

Gollum, Hugh of Saint Victor, Ents and the Entmoot, Gimli, Sarumon and Gandalf, and Boromir and Faramir. It’s all there!

Endnotes

• Junius: Tolkien’s The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún

• Wesley’s endnote: Realms of Tolkien: Images of Middle-earth

Some of you have just recently joined us: welcome! We’re so glad you’re here, and we hope you will reach out to share your thoughts with us via Substack.

Others of you have been here for a while, and to you we want to say thanks: you are the reason we are on the verge of starting our 5th season. Podcasting can be so impersonal, because you send material out, and you don’t see what effect (if any) it has out there. But the number of you who have found one of us at conferences and told us how you read along with us, or use our episodes to help you prep for teaching, has been really encouraging.

And we’re just getting started. You’ve seen the book list for season 5. We also have exciting guests coming to join us, including Malcolm Guite discussing Tolkien’s incomplete poem The Fall of Arthur and leading artist and thinker on aesthetics Makoto Fujimura to discuss Endo’s Silence.

As the show continues to grow and evolve, we are coming to depend more than ever before on the support of our subscribers. We’d like to invite you to consider becoming a paid subscriber at the modest rate of $5 per month. As a paid subscriber, you gain access to:

• An additional episode on each book that focuses on strategies and advice for teaching it well

• Behind-the-scenes discussions with our guests

• Special bonus episodes ranging from discussions of works related to those featured in the main episodes to the afterlife of the stories or ideas in popular culture.

Many hands make light work, and your small contribution could make a big difference to the work we are able to do going forward. Won’t you consider joining us as a $5 per month paid subscriber?

Either way, we continue to be grateful for your support, and we look forward to many more seasons!

Keep reading,

Junius and Wesley

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Fr. Wesley Walker and Dr. Junius Johnson head to the theater for another Classical Mind Goes to the Movies episode, this time tackling Christopher Nolan’s big-screen adaptation of The Odyssey.

Have you seen Nolan's The Odyssey? Let us know what you thought in the comments or in our community chat on Substack.

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Dr. Manton walks through how the project began small and grew into a multi-part documentary spanning the two writers’ entire life together, and how, along the way, the project itself became something of a case study in its own subject: it has connected Tolkien fans and Lewis fans, two overlapping but distinct communities, into new friendships of their own. Junius and Kirk also discuss what makes the Lewis-Tolkien friendship worth telling in this much depth, why Eastgate Creative chose to build this project as a donor-funded nonprofit rather than a traditional investor-backed production, and what’s still ahead as the documentary moves through post-production toward release.

This is a great listen for anyone who loves Tolkien, Lewis, or the Inklings — and a chance to support a project built entirely on donations from people who believe this story is worth telling well.

Support the Project

Eastgate Creative has funded this documentary entirely through donations — no investors, no profit distributions. Every dollar goes straight into finishing the production and funding the next generation of Christian filmmakers.

• Watch the trailer & learn more: eastgatecreative.org

• Sign up for updates: Join the Eastgate Creative newsletter

• Donate directly: Support The Forge of Friendship

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In this episode, Wesley and Junius explore what actually sets Tolkien apart from the fantasy writers who came before, and the flood of imitators who came after. They dig into Tolkien’s remarkable balancing act: a world built with more depth and history than perhaps any fictional world ever created, yet worn so lightly that you never have to read a page of the appendices to feel its weight. They trace the providence that runs quietly beneath the entire tale — the “hand that is not Gandalf’s” guiding events from the moment Bilbo is chosen for the quest in The Hobbit — and ask what it means that Middle-earth’s races are written almost as facets of human nature itself, essential yet never simple.

The conversation also turns to Frodo: is he really the hero of the story, or is that title quietly earned by someone else? Wesley and Junius make the case that Frodo’s heroism isn’t the sword-and-glory kind; it’s the daily, unglamorous courage of simply doing the next right thing, again and again, all the way to Mount Doom.

Along the way: the structure of the six “books” hidden inside the trilogy, the guerrilla-war tension of hobbits slipping across a Shire already crawling with Nazgûl, and why the Council of Elrond marks the one time the Fellowship, as a whole, actually exists.

Endnotes

• Junius: The Children of Húrin by J.R.R. Tolkien

• Wesley’s endnote: The Fellowship of the Ring trick-taking card game

Next month: The journey continues with The Two Towers!

Here is the list:

• October 2026: Theogony by Hesiod

• December 2026: The Life of Moses by Gregory of Nyssa

• January: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

• February 2027: Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne

• March: Hamlet by William Shakespeare

• April: Timaeus by Plato

• May: Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

• June: Silence by Shusaku Endo

• July: The Odyssey by Homer

• August: Principles of Human Knowledge by George Berkeley

• Season Conclusion: The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

Be sure to check out Joe Carlson’s new translation of The Divine Comedy through Romans Road Press.

Thank you for being a paid supporter of The Classical Mind! We hope these pedagogical breakdowns help bring these vita…

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While often celebrated for its lighthearted magical antics and brilliant comedic performance, the hosts unpack the surprisingly dark premise that sets the play in motion: forced marriages, legal coercion, and the stripping away of individual autonomy. From the rigid laws of Athens to the chaotic, transformative "green world" of the forest, this conversation explores how Shakespeare juxtaposes cold logic with wild imagination.

Endnotes

• Heidi: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

• Junius: Dear Brutus by J.M. Barrie

  

  
  

• Wesley: The Hazards of Love by the Decemberists

Endnotes

• Junius: Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales—The Happy Prince, The Nightingale and the Rose, and The Selfish Giant

• Wesley: Ricky Stanicky

• Grace: Arrested Development

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Endnotes:

• Dr. Juilfs:

  • The Pearl

  • The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius

  • What Dreams May Come
    

• Wesley: Little Gidding from Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot

• Junius:

  • The Discarded Image by C.S. Lewis

  • The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis

  • Perelandra by C.S. Lewis

Endnotes:

Heidi: The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis

Junius: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis

Wesley: “Ash Wednesday” by T.S. Eliot

I

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.


II

Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
In the cool of the day, having fed to sateity
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained
In the hollow round of my skull. And God said
Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live? And that which had been contained
In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:
Because of the goodness of this Lady
And because of her loveliness, and because
She honours the Virgin in meditation,
We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled
Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.
It is this which recovers
My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions
Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn
In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.
Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.
There is no life in them. As I am forgotten
And would be forgotten, so I would forget
Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping
With the burden of the grasshopper, saying

Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.

Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining
We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other,
Under a tree in the cool of day, with the blessing of sand,
Forgetting themselves and each other, united
In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye
Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity
Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.


III

At the first turning of the second stair
I turned and saw below
The same shape twisted on the banister
Under the vapour in the fetid air
Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
The deceitul face of hope and of despair.

At the second turning of the second stair
I left them twisting, turning below;
There were no more faces and the stair was dark,
Damp, jaggèd, like an old man's mouth drivelling, beyond repair,
Or the toothed gullet of an agèd shark.

At the first turning of the third stair
Was a slotted window bellied like the figs's fruit
And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene
The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green
Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.
Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,
Lilac and brown hair;
Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind
over the third stair,
Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair
Climbing the third stair.


Lord, I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy

but speak the word only.


IV

Who walked between the violet and the violet
Whe walked between
The various ranks of varied green
Going in white and blue, in Mary's colour,
Talking of trivial things
In ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour
Who moved among the others as they walked,
Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs

Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand
In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary's colour,
Sovegna vos

Here are the years that walk between, bearing
Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring
One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing

White light folded, sheathing about her, folded.
The new years walk, restoring
Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem
The time. Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.

The silent sister veiled in white and blue
Between the yews, behind the garden god,
Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke no word

But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down
Redeem the time, redeem the dream
The token of the word unheard, unspoken

Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew

And after this our exile


V

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice

Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee,
Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between
Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait
In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray
For children at the gate
Who will not go away and cannot pray:
Pray for those who chose and oppose

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Will the veiled sister between the slender
Yew trees pray for those who offend her
And are terrified and cannot surrender
And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks
In the last desert before the last blue rocks
The desert in the garden the garden in the desert
Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.


O my people.


VI

Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

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For posterity’s sake, here is the bracket in its totality. It’s interesting to note that The Aeneid won more convincingly in the finals than it did in the semi-finals against Taming of the Shrew.

Thanks to everyone who voted in the tournament! Be sure to tune in next March for a whole new tournament!

It’s been an exciting few weeks here at the Classical Mind as we’ve watched our books from the last year battle it out for grant champion in the inaugural Battle of the Books. Sadly there can only be one winner and that’s what we’re here to decide.

Frankenstein comes into the final round off the biggest victory in the whole tournament, garnering 79% of your votes. Perhaps this shouldn’t have been surprising given the Lilith had the lowest percentage win in round two. No love for George MacDonald here, apparently!

But now it’s time for us to make an important decision. The most important decision of this tournament: Virgil’s Aeneid or Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. You decide!

The Championship: The Aeneid by Virgil vs. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Round 2 of the Battle of the Books has concluded. No surprises or upsets were had in the second round as all of the heavily-favorited top seeds entered the tournaments rested up from a round one bye. The only outlier was The Journey of the Mind to God by Bonaventure giving George MacDonald’s Lilith a run for its money at 52-48. For a while, it looked as if Bonaventure might make a Cinderella-run, but, as Lilith teaches us, ultimately everything works out.

The semi-finals consist of seriously fascinating matchups: Virgil’s Aeneid vs. Taming of the Shrew and Frankenstein vs. Lilith. Do listeners prefer epic poetry or Shakespearean comedy? Do they prefer gothic novels about the hubris of scientism or a fantasy world in which all things truly do work together for good?

Please vote for your favorite reads below. If you’re having trouble deciding who to vote for, each of our episodes about the various books are linked in the title.

Let us know who you voted for in the comments and why!

Match Up #1: The Aeneid by Virgil vs. The Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare

Match Up #2: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley vs. Lilith by George MacDonald

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The first round of the Classical Mind Battle of the Books has concluded! The biggest winner (and perhaps the most surprising result) is Love in the Ruins beating The Castle of Otranto 72%-28%. The closest matchup was Peter Pan vs. The Communist Manifesto.

As we look towards round 2, we have some exciting matchups as our heavy-hitters have entered the competition.

Please vote for your favorite reads below. If you’re having trouble deciding who to vote for, each of our episodes about the various books are linked in the title.

Let us know who you voted for in the comments and why!

Match Up #1: The Aeneid by Virgil vs. Proslogion by Anselm

Match Up #2: The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare vs. Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

Match Up #3: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley vs. Love in the Ruins by Walker Percy

Match Up #4: Lilith by George MacDonald vs. The Journey of the Mind to God by Bonaventure