Last night, I decided to allievate my curiousity. I'd been wondering what the film NARNIA was like. I'd heard it has Christian elements, "Lord of the Rings and Passion of the Christ integrated into one movie", as one reviewer declared. But I was curious about the possibly mythic elements it might contain, and how the themes would be handled. The first half of the movie is charming. Actually, it begins in a shocking fashion, with a war scene. I was puzzled, had we somehow entered the wrong movie theater? But then it becomes apparent, the four Pevensee children are being evacuated from a war torn area of Britain to one less dangerous in the countryside. While playing hide and seek at the home of 'The Professor', the littlest finds an entire world just beyond the back of a wardrobe. Up until this point, the movie is charming. The actress playing Lucy Pevensee conveys an endearing innocence and wonder that is captivating.

However, not everything in this other world that she discovers is all as it should be. And this is where the movie turns a sour note, the not so subtle Christian message to the movie, lots of them, actually. I noticed, too, the making of the wolves evil, and thought how northern Europe lost its wolf populations to Christian persecution. Not only that, the clear message is that witches are 'evil', that all workings from the Will only support 'Power Over' and not 'Power to Do'. The White Witch is a hideous creature.

It's a simplistic view of things and not really good for kids who are so easily confused.

It seems a synchronistic thing that I am reading about another's simplistic view of things, Akhenaten of ancient Egypt. It's been a thought provoking time reading Hornung's Akhenaten and the Religion of Light. Hornung describes this Egyptian pharoah who tried to establish his own monotheistic religion, replacing all others, as the "first fundamentalist in human history"(page 126). Fundamentalists strive to reduce everything in the world to a single principle. I remember one of my philosophy teachers in college calling a type of this, a 'radical critique', namely, all the fault in the world is attributable to only one cause. ( I did my paper on radical feminism, as this sort of feminist blames all the world's ills on the actions of men).

Meanwhile, back to Hornung, who explains part of the results of Akenaten's fundamentalism:

"But with light, he committed himself to the visible and was constrained to deny everything that did not belong to the visible world: darkness, the afterlife, and the deities of the pantheon, especially Amun, the 'Hidden One'!" (pg93)

He decribes what Akhenaten did:

"Now there would be no god but Aten, and the physical existence of the old deities would be obliterated by the erasure of their names and sometimes of their representations as well....In some instances, Akhenaten even had his own original personal name Amenophis mutilated in his effort to do harm to the hated Amun. This ferocity was surely aimed not only at the heretofore predominant state god but at the 'refuge of the poor,' which Amun had increasingly become - in the Ramesside Period, he would become a special focus of personal piety, thus occupying the very position claimed by Akhenaten." (pg 87-88)

Instead of the various old 'holy trinities', he established a new one, the Aten, his wife Nefertiti and himself! Akhenaten wanted to be venerated as peoples' "personal god"(pg 76)!!!

This is 'the there can be only one' at its most ugly. Akhenaten wanted all the people's devotion to go only to him and his favored deity, for he was sole 'god' to the people', and sole representative of his sole god on earth. Talk about 'Power Over'!!!!

The relation between a person and their deity is a private one, in the heart he prepares his temple, and none can truly inspect it but that person himself.

I may, by my words and actions, give evidence that I am 'of Set', but the nature of this exact relationship, the forms it takes is known only to me.

This is one amazing Egomaniac to declare he wants this sort of adoration by the whole of Egypt all to himself!!!

Fortunately, his rule did not last long. Also, there was evidence people still stayed by their favorite deities, in private. As soon as Akhenaten died, they went public. Then Amun, Ptah and the others were again restored to their temples. It is a lesson for today's time.

Hornung concludes:

"The fundamentalism rearing its head everywhere today has no future. For Akhenaten has taught us, as has history, which is the most infallible of all oracles, that to be human is to be holistic, and that bigotry leads to nothingness and to ineluctable failure." (page 127)

I will continue to hope that people the world over learn this lesson.

see also Polytheism and the Roles of Cooperation and Diversity