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Tolkien's Spiders

Plato to MacDonald to Chesterton, Tolkien and the Boys in the Pub.
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Postby contra mundum » July 17th, 2007, 8:37 pm

“Doubt no longer, then, when you see death mocked and scorned by those who believe in Christ, that by Christ death was destroyed . . .”

Athanasius
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Postby The Pfifltrigg » July 19th, 2007, 4:50 am

In casting wolves and spiders and serpents as evil, and eagles and such as good, the Inklings were following the traditions of European faerie-stories and animal-fables. The fox is sly, the serpent is cunning, the wolf is ravenous, the lion is mighty, the horse is swift, the eagle is majestic. Fellow Inkling Charles Williams takes it a step further to animify Platonic archetypes of Strength (as a lion), Cunning (a serpent), Beauty (a butterfly), Majesty (an eagle), Swiftness (a horse) and the like in his book The Place of the Lion. He didn't use spiders for anything, though. The Archetypal Butterfly was deadly enough.
False ideas may be refuted indeed by argument, but by true ideas alone are they expelled. — Apologia Pro Vita Sua: Cardinal Newman
Freedom lost and then regained bites with deeper fangs than freedom never in danger. — Cicero
You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them. — Ray Bradbury
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