New!
Author resources • Lorehaven Guild
Podcast sponsors • Subscribe for free
Crew manifest Faith statement FAQs
All author resources Lorehaven Guild Subscribe for free

Into the Darkness
Reviews, Feb 3, 2023

The Chosen Succeeds Where ‘Woke’ Stories Fail
Jenneth Dyck in Articles, Feb 2, 2023

Rose Petals and Snowflakes
Book Quests, Feb 1, 2023

Library

Find fantastical Christian novels

fantasy · sci-fi · and beyond
middle grade · young adult · grown-ups
All novels Search Add a novel
Silver Bounty, Victoria McCombs
A Sword for the Immerland King, F. W. Faller
Calor, J. J. Fisher
Once Upon A Ren Faire, A. C. Castillo
The Genesis 6 Project, Michael Ferguson
Exile, Loren G. Warnemuende
Aberration, Cathy McCrumb
The Truth Beyond the Lies, Kathleen Bird
Frost, Winter's Lonely Guardian, E. E. Rawls
Dream of Kings, Sharon Hinck
The Change, Bradley Caffee
Quest of Fire: Desperation, Brett Armstrong
Wishtress, Nadine Brandes
Flight, Kristen Young
Podcast

Get the Fantastical Truth podcast

Podcast sponsors | Subscribe links
Archives Feedback

147. Why Can Christians Celebrate Stories about Merlin and King Arthur? | with Robert Treskillard
Fantastical Truth, Jan 31, 2023

146. How Did Animators Adapt The Wingfeather Saga For Streaming TV? | with Keith Lango
Fantastical Truth, Jan 24, 2023

145. How Did Edmund Spenser’s ‘The Faerie Queene’ Shape Christian Fantasy? | with Rebecca K. Reynolds
Fantastical Truth, Jan 17, 2023

144. Which Top Six Fantasy Franchises Gave Fans Grief in 2022?
Fantastical Truth, Jan 10, 2023

143. Which Top Ten Lorehaven Stories Proved Most Popular in 2022?
Fantastical Truth, Jan 6, 2023

142. What Christmas Gift ‘Tools, Not Toys’ Helped You Grow As a Person?
Fantastical Truth, Dec 20, 2022

Quests

Join our monthly digital book quests.

Lorehaven Guild Faith statement FAQs

Rose Petals and Snowflakes
Book Quests, February 2023

Prince Caspian
Book Quests, January 2023

Dream of Kings
Book Quests, December 2022

On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness
Book Quests, November 2022

Reviews

Find fantastical Christian reviews

All reviews Request review

Into the Darkness
“Charles Hack’s Into the Darkness summons a close-range science fiction story, focusing on the personal challenges of space warfare among alien cultures with a steady pace and serious tone.”
—Lorehaven on Feb 3, 2023

A Crown of Chains
“A Crown of Chains creatively retells a biblical tale to explore themes of providence, racism, faith, and fidelity.”
—Lorehaven on Jan 27, 2023

Lander’s Legacy
“Lander’s Legacy stacks modern thrills and complex characters on a foundation of biblical what-ifs.”
—Lorehaven on Jan 20, 2023

Prince Caspian
“Pacing starts slow but creature lore grows in C. S. Lewis’s sequel, introducing practical tyrants and talking-beast politics into a Narnian resistance.”
—Lorehaven on Jan 13, 2023

Gifts

Find new gifts for Christian fans

Archives

The original SpecFaith: est. 2006

Speculative Faith | archives

Lorehaven issues (2018–2020)

Order back issues online!
New
Library
Podcast
Quests
Reviews
Gifts
Archives
Lorehaven helps Christian fans explore fantastical stories for Christ’s glory: fantasy, science fiction, and beyond. Articles, the library, reviews, podcasts, gifts, and the Lorehaven Guild community help fans discern and enjoy the best Christian-made fantastical stories, applying their meanings to the real world Jesus Christ calls us to serve. Subscribe free to get any updates you choose and to access the Lorehaven Guild.
Subscribe free to Lorehaven
/ Articles

Venus is More Than Just a Love Goddess

C. S. Lewis shows that we think too small if we fail to find satisfaction in Venus’s influence.
Shannon Stewart on Feb 18, 2021
4 comments

As of last year, my top three favorite books of all time—Milton’s Paradise Lost, Lewis’s Perelandra, and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings1—welcomed a new friend, to become my top four favorite books of all time. The new nonfiction addition? Planet Narnia by Michael Ward.

With his premise that C. S. Lewis based each Narnia book on one of the “seven heavens” of the pre-Copernican model of the solar system, Ward not only enriched my view of Lewis, but also deepened my understanding and appreciation of mythology, medieval and Renaissance literature, and even stargazing.

Medieval Christians freely used and enjoyed the planets and the ancient mythological associations that have become inextricably tied to the planets. Christians saw these bodies as reflective of truths embedded deep in human consciousness. For Lewis, too, “the characters of the planets, as conceived by medieval astrology . . . have a permanent value as spiritual symbols.”2

Planet Narnia, C. S. LewisHow we see the sky’s royal pantheon of symbols

These celestial symbols are deep and rich, when we avoid the modern habit of reducing them to one-to-one correspondences (such as “Mars = war”). Instead, each planet carries a rich panoply of associations, symbols, and connections. For example, Mars does not only stand for war, but also forestry, growth, and masculinity, and he’s associated with spring. After all, March is his month.

Meanwhile, Venus is generally known as the goddess of love. But if we draw from Ward’s observations about Venus in Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength, and “The Planets,” we find more themes that Lewis inextricably links to Venus, such as laughter, beauty, motherhood, creativity, and paradise.

We might associate all of these themes with love, but they also easily fall outside love’s realm. For example, creativity brings to our minds fruitfulness or fertility. These ideas can result from love, but also encompass much more than just romance or procreation. Beauty and laughter, too, often coincide with love, yet also frequently fall outside love’s scope. We think of Venus as the love/sex goddess, but Lewis’s rich range of imagery shows that love is not all that Venus is about.

Yes, Venus includes love themes, but also a greater image

There may not be a one-to-one correspondence for Venus, but if there’s a general theme, it must surely be more all-encompassing than love, sex, or fertility. Yes, the fruitful unity of copulation is part of Venus’s influence, and may be one of the best symbols for Venus. But another theme is so closely linked to her that we must look beyond love for the final answer to Venusian imagery.

In particular it is the theme of paradise that kept defying my previous conceptions of Venus. In Lewis’s work, several elements relate to Venus—that is, they are Venusian: the freshly created Narnia, the perfect potential of the Wood Between the Worlds, the Eden-like garden of Hesperides, and the new world of Perelandra.

What do pre-Fall paradises have to do with love (other than love songs claiming that “ooohh, heaven is a place on earth”)?

I found the word I sought in Michael Ward’s treatment of That Hideous Strength, where Ward writes that the descent of Venus brings about “satisfaction of every fleshly appetite” 3 among other blessings.

Here I circled the word satisfaction. That is what Venus is about: to consummate a marriage, to experience the freedom of laughter, to run to the arms of a mother who accepts you (and feeds you) without qualification, to bask in beauty, to enter paradise. These all fall under the influence of satisfaction, of desires fulfilled.

I argue that Lewis supports this interpretation in “The Weight of Glory,” in which his invocation of Venus is no accident:

We are . . . to be given the Morning Star [Venus]. I think I begin to see what it means. In one way, of course, God has given us the Morning Star already: you can go and enjoy the gift on many fine mornings if you get up early enough. What more, you may ask, do we want? Ah, but we want so much more. . . . We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. . . . We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.4

In an essay filled with the idea of “our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off,”5 Lewis clearly connects being given the morning star, Venus, with finally fulfilling that “deep desire.”6

Venus illuminates our true and better satisfaction

What do we gain by seeing that Venus represents satisfaction and desire fulfilled?

First, we understand more of Lewis. In all Lewis’s life, he tagged experiences of Joy, which he defines as “an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction.”7 And in Mere Christianity, he famously argues:

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.”8

No wonder Venus became such an important planet to Lewis—in fact, his favorite planet, after Jupiter. Venus encapsulates in itself his entire argument about Joy.

Through Venus, Lewis also shows us more about the true nature of satisfaction. As Ward notes, “Venus, more than any of the other planets, can properly operate only under Jupiter’s sovereign and cynosural influence.”9

In our real-life culture, we constantly pursue satisfaction through sex, food, or our latest Netflix binge, only to have satisfaction elude our grasp, making us disappointed and harsh rather than beautiful and productive. If we chase satisfaction beyond the King’s bounds, outside the King’s way, we are doomed to find only twisted and soured “satisfaction.” Outside of this King’s headship, Venus is no longer Fortuna Minor, but becomes Venus Infernal: in Lewis’s world, she is more like Jadis, the capricious and selfish pagan goddess we find in myths.

We can only properly pursue and receive not just love, but all satisfaction, from a beneficent, authoritative king. The King. In Lewis, alluring Venus beckons us to find True Satisfaction at last. As Lewis phrased it: some day, God willing, we shall get in.

  1. “That still only counts as one!” ↩
  2. C. S. Lewis, “The Alliterative Metre,” quoted in Michael Ward, Planet Narnia. Oxford UP, 2008, page 30. ↩
  3. Michael Ward, Planet Narnia, p. 174 ↩
  4. C. S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory.” The Weight of Glory, HarperCollins, 2001. pp. 42-43 ↩
  5. Ibid. 42 ↩
  6. Ibid. 39 ↩
  7. C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy. Harvest, 1984, pages 17–18. ↩
  8. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. HarperCollins, 2001, pages 136–137. ↩
  9. Michael Ward, Planet Narnia, p. 52 ↩
Shannon Stewart
Shannon Stewart is a homeschooling mom of three and high school English teacher with an MA in English literature. She reads widely and voraciously, but her favorites are still books by and about C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. Her other interests include video games, Anglo-Saxons, and all forms of cheese. She blogs at The Word-Hoard, and all her (hitherto unpublished) fiction somehow ends up with the central theme of memory.
Website ·
  1. Rachel Laird says:
    February 18, 2021 at 4:51 pm

    Interesting article. I have read the Narnia books, but not the others mentioned. You did know Lewis‘s wife was named Joy? I must admit that I have never considered the points you brought up regarding the planet Venus. Now I am interested in reading the Planet Narnia. Thanks for sharing.

    Reply
    • Shannon Stewart says:
      February 18, 2021 at 5:10 pm

      Thanks for the comment, Rachel! Yes, I love that his wife was named Joy. I’ve always thought it was such a cool thing that God wrote Lewis’s love story that particular way.

      Planet Narnia is a GREAT book, and I can also highly recommend The Narnia Code, which is Ward’s book on all the same subject matter–but is written less like a PhD dissertation! 🙂

      Reply
  2. davelandrum says:
    March 10, 2021 at 2:08 pm

    Very good. I am currently reading Planet Narnia. It’s a challenging book, very scholarly, but I’m enjoying the scholarship and the thorough exploration he gives of Lewis in this book.

    Reply
    • Shannon Stewart says:
      March 16, 2021 at 1:52 pm

      Isn’t it great?! It gives you so much to chew on. I felt I could barely contain what each chapter delivered!

      Reply

Share your fantastical feedback. Cancel reply

  • "These are tools, not toys," says Father Christmas in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe"C. S. Lewis Despised 'Exmas' Cards and Cosplays, But Loved Serious Cel...
  • Prince Caspian, C. S. LewisI Love Beholding the Old Stories Coming True in ‘Prince Caspian’
  • Stories Disciple Your Child’s Moral ImaginationStories Disciple Your Child’s Moral Imagination
  • How to Discern Moral Christian Fiction Without Expecting SermonsHow to Discern Moral Christian Fiction Without Expecting Sermons
Lorehaven magazine, spring 2020

Wear the wonder:
Get exclusive shirts and beyond

Listen to Lorehaven’s podcast

Authors and publishers:
Reach new fans with Lorehaven

Lorehaven helps Christian fans explore fantastical stories for Christ’s glory: fantasy, science fiction, and beyond. Articles, the library, reviews, podcasts, gifts, and the Lorehaven Guild community help fans discern and enjoy the best Christian-made fantastical stories, applying their meanings to the real world Jesus Christ calls us to serve. Subscribe free to get any updates you choose and to access the Lorehaven Guild.
Website · Facebook · Instagram · Twitter