What if.... Narnia was real?

[DiGoRyKiRkE]

First off, welcome to NarniaWeb, DanielleLauren! I'm glad that you're getting involved around the forum (particularly the Talk About Narnia section ).

That being said, I have to ask you whether your post is intended to be literal or metaphorical? I suppose one could draw metaphorical lines from our world to the world of Narnia, and that's as good as far as it goes, but to actually consider the possibility that Earth = A literal Narnia is a very dangerous and very disturbing supposition. At best it reveals a "new-agey-spirit-and-force-filled" worldview, at worst it results in pantheism and nature worship.

Not to mention that logically it doesn't hold up as an argument. The Narnia books take place both in our world, and in the world of Narnia. . . this is an essential plot point to the series as a whole. But if our world was actually Narnia, then there is no magic. The wardrobe becomes nothing more than a teleportation machine. You more or less stip all of the magic out of the book series (not to mention introduce a plethora of logical issues, as well as issues concerning C.S. Lewis' ability as an author).

If Earth equals Narnia then what is Charn? What is the Wood Between the World? What is Aslan's Country? There are too many difficulties with this logic alone (not even touching the existence of magic, mythical creatures, mythical lands, etc...) for a literal interpretation of what you're saying.

[DanielleLauren]

It is just a theory, if I'm honest. I have met people on different forums who believe in the theory, and I have met people like you, who think it's dangerous or whatever. Well it could be literal or metaphorical. And I do but believe if I was to base your questions upon my theory, I would say, deep below the earth is Charn, and also some unfortold underwater kingdoms, islands flooded by our seas. And I but believe the wood between the worlds could be a place that leads to another place our ancestors are hiding and Aslans country is a place you leave for upon death. Or a place where everything is perfect and nothing faulters.

Feel free to critisize my theory, but I do but believe in it dearly..

[DiGoRyKiRkE]

One of the things that is essential for any theory (be it scientific, moral, or philosophical) is the necessity for evidence. It's all well and good to say "I believe pancakes can talk!" but if there isn't a shred of evidence to prove that (and I'm using the term evidence very loosely here), then it isn't very wise to believe it.

Well it could be literal or metaphorical

Could you explain how? Because that's like saying that a lightbulb is on and off at the same time. If something is literal, then by it's definition it cannot be metaphorical. If something is metaphorical, then by the definition of the word, it cannot be literal. It's as simple as that.

I would say, deep below the earth is Charn, and also some unfortold underwater kingdoms, islands flooded by our seas. And I but believe the wood between the worlds could be a place that leads to another place our ancestors are hiding and Aslans country is a place you leave for upon death. Or a place where everything is perfect and nothing faulters.

Again, I ask for your evidence of this. Believing in something with no evidence to back it up, isn't really belief, it's wishful thinking. Furthermore, if Charn was below the earth then A: It would not have had a sun or stars. B: It would not have had a wind. ("The wind that blew in their faces was cold, yet somehow stale.") C: It's destruction via the deplorable word would have destroyed every living thing on the planet.

Feel free to critisize my theory, but I do but believe in it dearly..

Again, you have yet to prove that this is a theory at all. . . it's nothing more than a wish or an opinion. Find a shred of evidence that supports this (either in the texts of Narnia, history books, science books, the Bible, etc...) and then you can call it a theory, but until then, this is nothing.

[Gwendolen]

Well, I wouldn't call it nothing. I think it's an interesting idea. I don't necessarily agree with it, as Lewis was pretty clear about the difference between Narnia and our world, but I don't think it's wrong to speculate about these things (even without evidence, which, if we're being technical, is important but will never "prove" anything (at least in science--I know little about philosophy)).

I am curious, though; is this something you truly believe or just something you think about? Why is this theory important to you?

Going back a bit more to the original topic, when I was younger I did badly want to believe that Narnia was real. Like many kids, I tried every space that looked like it could possibly lead to Narnia--closets, bushes, underneath beds, etc. This is embarrassing to admit, but while I knew it was fiction and never really believed Narnia existed, I wanted so much to believe that when I was about 7 or 8 I would talk as if I did. I was so convincing that had several people really worried about me and they did an intervention of sorts and talked to my mom, who just laughed.

Anyway, I thought that since the time relationship between our world and Narnia was a bit wonky and it's all done with magic anyway, one should be able to sort of time travel back into Narnia. (I have never admitted this before, but when I was 14 I, uh, wrote some fan fiction using this theory. It's up on a fan fiction website and just when I've managed to forget about it, I get an e-mail notification about a new comment. )

I think the thing to hope for, though, is that there's another world like Narnia out there that could use some daughters of Eve and sons of Adam. (I may have once written a series of compositions based on this idea, too, ending with a sanctimonious anti-evolution essay on why our world is so great... )

It's important that Narnia is fiction (though even fiction can have Truth), but it is a lot of fun to imagine what things would be like if it were not.

[GlimGlum]

This is embarrassing to admit, but while I knew it was fiction and never really believed Narnia existed, I wanted so much to believe that when I was about 7 or 8 I would talk as if I did.

You are definitely not alone, Gwendolen.

That and this topic itself reminded me of a very similar poll topic I did on the old forum called "Ever wished Narnia was really Real?".
Link is still good: http://209.210.60.109/forum/forum_posts ... 20302&PN=1

The poll question was "Have you ever wished Narnia was a real place?"
Options and results:

Yes. Most certainly. 37 [86.05%]
Almost, but not quite. 0 [0.00%]
I wish I could wish that it was real. 1 [2.33%]
No, not really. 1 [2.33%]
Other - Please share(if you dare) 4 [9.30%]

I thought it appropriate to share a very nice poem from that thread posted by member EveningStar:

I once put it this way:

IF DREAMS CAME TRUE

If fondest wishes could come true

I'll tell you what I'd want to do

I'd run to Aslan's soft embrace

And plant sweet kisses on his face

And, trembling, stroke his silky mane

And share with him my joy and pain

He'd seal me for his courts above

And I would pledge undying love

And that is what I'd surely do

If fondest wishes could come true

[Tesseract]

A hundred years ago people did not believe in the existence of atoms, even when scientists could prove it they did not believe, so my theory is that anything coud be real. Even if it is not found,discovered, proved or disapproved.

"Even when scientists could prove [that atoms exist], they did not believe?" Where did you hear that?

I don't think your theory works because there are many things that can be proved to not exist. It's possible to prove that circular triangles don't exist. Circular triangles have two basic properties that are incompatible with each other, therefore they are an impossible object.

Reasoning is what led to the creation of things like the Invisible Pink Unicorn.

[LUCYOFMIDDLEEARTH]

is narnia real?

[Lilygloves]

I always talk about Narnia as if it were real and I always avoid saying that it isn't. It is a real place to so many people and honestly, whenever I imagine heaven, it is what Lewis describes in LB. I could not imagine a better heaven than Narnia, with Aslan and the Emperor over the Sea.

[DiGoRyKiRkE]

When I'm asked this question, I always go to a different fantasy franchise: Harry Potter.

Harry: Professor. . . is this real, or is it just happening in my head?

Dumbledore: Of course it's just happening in your head you silly boy. . . why should that mean that it's any less real?

So although Narnia may not exist physically. . . that doesn't mean that it's reality cannot be felt.

[LUCYOFMIDDLEEARTH]

call me crazy but i think i found Narnia. i looked at the map and it matched a part of the middle east. Strangely its near a body of water this bears resemblance to reechipes song. there is the utter EAST.

[King_Erlian]

One thing to consider, if Narnia were a real place, is that the nature of Narnian reality - their laws of physics are very different to our own. For instance:

1) Uncle Andrew explained (and just because he was a bad 'un doesn't mean he was wrong about this) that the magic rings took you into other universes, which you would never reach by travelling through our space for ever and ever, but could only reach by magic (or possibly by some kind of inter-dimensional jump).

2) The world in which Narnia lies (the world as a whole doesn't appear to have a name) is flat, and has an edge - Edmund, Lucy, Eustace, Caspian and Reepicheep discovered this.

3) Stars in the Narnian universe are not huge balls of flaming gas (as Eustace pointed out), millions of miles in diameter, but are people, human-sized and human-shaped, sentient beings who move across the sky for specific purposes such as heralding the arrival of Aslan (as described by Roonwit the Centaur), not in fixed elliptical orbits like astronomical objects in our universe.

From 2 and 3, it seems safe to conclude:

4) The world in which Narnia lies does not move; instead its sun, moon and stars move around it.

Therefore, things like gravity must work in a completely different way to how they do in our universe. Yet, to the casual observer on the Narnian ground, things look and feel just like they do in our world. The children arriving in Narnia from our world didn't notice gravity acting differently. The stars, to the naked eye, look like points of light in the sky, albeit arranged differently to how they look from Earth. There is a sun, and a moon (just one visible moon, like ours). The length of a day, and of a year, as a human being living in Narnia observes them, seem to be the same as a day and a year as he would observe them in our world. This is the strange thing: despite the fundamental nature of Narnian nature being completely different to ours, it looks very similar to ours to people living in it. Charn, too, looks pretty much like our world; the sun has gone all big, red and cold, due to age, but it too has normal gravity and breatheable air, and man-made structures not that different to buildings in our world.

I think the real reason is simply that C.S. Lewis just wanted to create a magical land where animals could talk, not consider the ramifications of the possible natures of alternative realities where the laws of physics worked differently. Things like that would have been too complex for an entertaining story for children, and he wasn't a scientist anyway. But if we wanted to consider Narnia as a real place, we would need to determine how constrained God might be in creating physical laws. Are our physical laws the way they are merely because God arbitrarily decided them to be this way, and was more than able to create another universe where they were different? Or are they the way they are because they have to be this way in order to make sense? For matter to exist in a way which would feel familiar and "normal" (in order for Narnia to be the way it's described), would it have to be bound by physical laws the same (or nearly the same) as our own, or could it still feel the same while being subject to totally different physical laws? Personally, I don't think we can blithely say "God can do anything". God can't create a triangular-shaped circle because a triangular-shaped circle is a contradiction in terms and therefore meaningless. I think that a "real" Narnian universe would be similar to our own: Narnia would be a country on an almost-spherical planet, orbiting a yellow sun in a galaxy not so different to ours. But it's fun to create worlds that are completely different in our imaginations.

[7chronicles]

I believe that the new Narnia is real, it just has another name here in this world!
And I when I finally arrive there, I will no doubt feel as Jewel felt:

"I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here.

"The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning." And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all stories, and we can most truly say they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.
Closing lines, in Ch. 16 : Farewell to Shadowlands

[Louloudi the Centaur]

If Narnia were real, I'm sure people would be checking their wardrobes 24/7 in hopes of getting there, but of course, you can't get into Narnia by trying.

On a more serious note, I do believe there is very much a place like Aslan's Country, where I will one day meet the great Lion Himself, no longer in the form of a lion.

[Narnian_Badger]

Narnia, as imagined in the Chronicles, is unfortunately not real. If it were, though, I should drive to a train station, have a Wardrobe shipped in, place a painting of a Narnian-looking ship inside of said Wardrobe, put on a yellow ring, and then step inside whilst asking Aslan very, very nicely.

However, I believe that the place the Real Narnia was based on--that is, The New Heavens and New Earth--is most certainly real... and I don't need a Wardrobe for that. For the wood has taken on a different shape: that of a cross.

[Varnafinde]

If Narnia was real, we would be too late to go there - it ended about sixty years ago, seen from our side of the wardrobe.

If it had been real, it wouldn't only be possible to go there from England. The ancestors of the Telmarines went there from an island - I think in the South Seas somewhere, definitely nowhere in England. And Aslan said that the portal they used in PC was one of the last ones, but not necessarily the very last. So before that train accident, people would have been able to go to a real Narnia from anywhere, provided there was some sort of portal to go through.

But portals aren't the way to go to New Narnia, which is a part of Aslan's Country.

And the inspiration for his country is real.

[Ithilwen]

Do I believe Narnia is real? Of course not. Why? Well, for one thing, I have no reason to believe it's real. As MfA said, the burden of proof is on the believer. Just because something cannot be disproven, that does not, by default, make it a possibility. There are plenty of things in this world, some extremely outlandish, that cannot be disproven either. (Also, if you look up the records, I doubt you'll find any trace of a Peter, Susan, Edmund, or Lucy Pevensie who went to live with a Professor Kirke. )

As for the scientific possibility of other worlds or a parallel universe, it's not impossible; but again, I have no reason to believe in it until I have the proof. And even if there are other worlds, you still will not find Narnia among them. You might, by coincidence, find a world that reminds you of Narnia in some ways. But it will still be its own world, not Narnia.

How do I know? Well, because Narnia was a fictional idea. It's not a legend. It's not written in a book as an eye witness account. It was written by a man named C.S. Lewis who admits he created it as an entertaining story. He made up the name, he planned out the history, he used his own human imagination to decide how he wanted the world to be. The possibility of it being a real place is the same as the possibility that real places could include Middle Earth, Naboo, Discworld, or any world we ourselves create in our own novels. (If someone read a book you wrote during NaNoWriMo, and they told you they believed the places in your story were real, what would you think? ) To say that C.S. Lewis sat down and wrote about a world that physically existed somewhere in reality, is to imply that Lewis was either psychic somehow; or was being inspired by the Holy Spirit as he wrote, being divinely told about some place we never knew before, much the same way the writers of the Bible were inspired. And that treads in some very dangerous territory.

As for why Narnia feels so real, of course it's going to be easier to believe in Narnia than disbelieve in it. We're Narnia fans; we want it to be a real place. (Just like this Whovian would find it much easier to believe that the Doctor is coming for me in his TARDIS than it would to believe I will spend the rest of my days on earth, never to explore strange planets or battle Daleks.) But I think it's important to discern the difference between wishful thinking and truth.

Another reason why Narnia feels so real is because our hearts were made for another world. Although Narnia is not a real place, it has certain qualities - beauty, joy; the face-to-face presence of a loving, omniscient, omnipotent being - that reminds us of a real place.

And this is where the important part comes in. People like Lewis write stories like Narnia in order to get us excited about the real thing - God and the wonders He has in store for us. They didn't write it so that we would get distracted from the real thing and focus only on the fictional story parts of it. We should love Aslan because he reminds us of Christ; not love Christ because He reminds us of Aslan. We should look forward to Christ's return, to the New Heavens and the New Earth; not look forward to possibly finding the fictional world that a human based on it. It's no good saying things like, "I hope Heaven is as good as Narnia" or "I hope Christ is as wonderful as Aslan". Christ, and what he has in store for us, is the original. Aslan and Narnia are the copies. When we see God, and everything else, Narnia will look rather dim in comparison.


~Riella