First up:
THE CHILDREN OF THE EMPEROR
There is only one Emperor-Over-Sea. Where people go wrong is in thinking that He has only one son.
In fact the Emperor-Over-Sea--called Mahmeen in Calormen and among the jinn, and Enkin on the Islands and by the stars, and Gruk by Black Dwarves and Bismian gnomes--had many children, each given some portion of the world to themselves. We may call them
Titans here, for they are not gods in the traditional sense, nor angels serving a single purpose, but (for the most part) independent beings bound to the lands they call their own. Their command, or purview, is over the living beings in the world--and at one point or another, everything in the world Narnia was alive, even the minerals and metals beneath the earth..
Only one is called upon in the
Chronicles of Narnia in any real capacity, because only one child had power enough to rule all the world. This is
Aslan, the Great Lion, High King of High Kings, Bound to the World and yet Beyond it. He is the first-born child of the Emperor, and the first to enter the world, when it was dark. His command is over life itself--
all life, in one way or another, every soul beyond his siblings. All things yearn to live in the world of Narnia; Aslan's call is strongest in those who find joy in the world and its people, seeking not power but presence, and above all
love. He judges the dead, and guides the living; his reign is over all places where living beings make their home. Aslan by himself has the strength to equal all other Titans--and his will is closest, they say, to that of his father, having power and wisdom both. Indeed, it is not uncommon to claim Aslan as distinct from the Titans, who are bound to this world and smaller worlds of their own making, and who must obey the rules with little leeway. He is, as they say, Not a Tame Lion.
But there are others.
- The most well-known titan beyond Aslan is Tash, the inexorable and irresistible. The patron deity of the Great Desert, and of the tribes within it, Tash is the Father of Jinns. He lives above the peak of the Flaming Mountain of Lagour, in the cloud from which he holds sway over the land of Calormen. His governance is over those souls who fear the world, and seek dominion over others, who would bend an unthinking and dangerous world to their will; he is the storm in the desert, at once pouring forth life-giving rain and terrifying lightning. His halls are full of impossible games of strategy, in which those who pass to him gain powers as of the gods to wage war against the demons from Beyond; those who wish it may join others in Aslan’s Country later, though this is not said in Calormen. Normally he takes on the form of a dark, bird-headed man with four long arms--a classical representation of a thundercloud in Calormene mythology, where thunder is Tash's call and lightning thrown to all four corners of the world at his command.
- Zardeenah comes next, the Lady of the Night. She is the queen of starlight and constellations, and of the blank spaces in the middle of the sky. Her home is in a big cloud of celestial dust called Kooyol, a shape cloud against the sky outlined in blue light and only visible in the south of the world in Calormen and beyond, where she holds court among the constellations and sends forth planets to act as messengers. Astrocygne, the centaurs call her, for her cloud is shaped as a great swan in flight, or Urania. She holds those who have not yet come to their full potential, but whose innocence is as important as what they will become; on the Lone Islands they call on Hebati to watch over voyagers as they navigate the oceans, but in Calormen her primary role is in allowing maidens to grow unmolested--or else enact swift revenge if their innocence is cut short before its time. Her halls in the heavens are filled with the laughter of children and the pleasant conversation of Archen hermits and Telmarine gurus. In Calormen and the Lone Islands she is portrayed as a black swan, or else as a dark maiden with wings flecked by starlight.
- Azaroth is the last figure that people tend to know about from reading the Chronicles, a goddess whose care is for women while alive. Her power is over those who would bring new life into the world, but through order and balance, the proper regulation of cycles. She is the moon itself; the Tehishenes in Calormen’s west say she dances behind the white screen, forever twirling a lantern that shines with soothing light, and brings about the ebb and flow of waters within and without the womb. (In actuality the moon is her own copy of the world, and she keeps quite tidy if a bit bleak. She still apparently enjoys dancing, though.) Azaroth is the matron, the confidante, the mother and midwife of all things born after Creation. She is also the goddess of justice, ensuring the balance is kept; she turns to see all sides, and by her will the fundamental forces of life maintain their course. Loved best in Calavar and western Atarsidar and the Islands (where she is called Sinoom), she guards the bearers of new life. In Narnia she is Clio. It is said that when the world ends she will be a part of its reformation. She is portrayed (when not as the Lady in the Moon) as a whale or fish, or as one of the merfolk, who are bound to her cycles and welcome the deaths of the drowned and miscarried among their number--only to pass on to the East when they in turn pass away and dissolve into foam.
- Chaji is the strangest of the gods, perhaps. To the Narnians and Ettinsmoorians, he is Old Father Time, lying buried beneath the earth to awaken at the end of the world. In Telmar they called him Etad. But to the giants, those who did not turn to their cousin Jadis, he is the Doomdreamer; his snoring causes the earth to rumble, and his people listen for the vibrations and feel with their feet that are his dreams for his people. He is the source of all thought, they say, and rewards those who think best--who laugh loudest, who grieve deepest, who fight with wild abandon and beg forgiveness most sweetly--with a place by his side, in the hollowed caverns near his own. (For a giant not to bury their dead is unthinkable, at least among those who have not abandoned the Old Song.) There they will stay, until it is time. He is a tired and emaciated old man, dressed in a loincloth and never awake--but he visits people in his dreams. When he wakes, the dream will end and Narnia will be no more.
- Where one finds the crops, there Bacchus--though of course his call is not over Narnia alone. He is a spirit of wild abandon, visiting each country in turn--in Narnia he is seen most in the spring, as is Ey in Archenland; in Calormen Hiyesh comes during the summer; past Calavar Malifu comes after the rainy season; he visits the Islands rarely (though he brings joy to sailors as a great dolphin), and the Far North even less. And always is he portrayed as a wild young man, almost female in appearance, draped and crowned with skins and branches, though his skin may darken or lighten as he travels north and south. His own land lies far in the west of the world, in a secret garden hidden by snowy peaks with a blue lake, where grapes grow all year round and the apples of immortality hang, and the revelry of souls who followed his path is tremendous.
(Not every soul who reaches Bacchus is good. He loves the wild, and will condone many things that in the world will do harm to others. What matters, at the end, is the Judgement of Aslan. Until then, there's plenty of time to enjoy the party.)
- Another strange figure is Father Christmas; if Bacchus is wild youth and Zardeenah carefree childhood, he is a grandfather still active enough to listen to the stories of the young, and give them guidance and advice. He lives at the north of the world, in the high mountains at its edge, but every year he travels with the snow down to Narnia and Archenland. The latter call him Hight (pronounced like "height"; sometimes they call him Eyin), and the Telmarines came to know him as Vidaz the protector. He claims no souls, but nourishes all of them as the year draws to a close and the sun turns the Southern Wastes into unbearable desert.
- Balancing Father Christmas is Hur; if the former is the spirit of coldest winter, he holds most sway over the burning summer. Hur rewards those who are brave, who struggle on despite the heat. He is not the sun--but he is its master, and the sun his kingdom. If one actually approaches the body of the sun, one finds it contains more than just a construct of gas and plasma; there is an entire world on its surface, mountains and valleys, the size of Narnia at least. Hur tends to these orchards, and on occasion will send birds carrying the harvests to those in need--the stars on the surface, those in need of great gifts, and such. He calls none his own save those who have struggled in life, who have often been crippled by birth or fate but kept on going--only to find their dreams answered and wounds healed (and, quite often, their children in Zardeenah’s halls, which isn’t actually that far away and has an excellent exchange program) as they tend to his gardens. His choices are his own, though Aslan may intercede; the elixir of immortality has been sought by Calormen poets for centuries, not through chemical means but through prayer and fasting. (Calormene alchemists, on the other hand…) It is said his dominion will be a part of the world’s remaking. He appears as a man of purest gold.
- Aslan likes love, Bacchus laughter, Azaroth justice, Hur bravery. Handeh likes a little of all of that. If she is closest to any goddess of Earth she would be the Muse, for she loves story and song; but her stories often come with a twist. She loves creativity the best, serendipitous bursts of energy followed by periods of polishing and refining. She also loves japes and jokes, particularly against the stubborn, the rash, and the ridiculous, and favouring the put-upon, down-trodden, and those in need (from life getting them down) of a good laugh. In this she is often joined by her sisters, Zardeenah and Azaroth. She is Thalia in Narnia, Pret in Archenland, Naarum on the Islands, Segrella among the Telmarines. She has no heaven; instead, she acts as a psychopomp, leading those who pray to her where they best belong. She appears as a large corvid, perhaps a raven or a jackdaw, but instead of black feathers her plumage is every colour of the rainbow--though naturally when watching her devotees from afar she may appear a little more regular-hued.
- While Azaroth ensures the world’s cycles and Bacchus its wildness, the one best revered among gardeners and horticulturalists is Pomona. She does not live in Narnia, though it is easy to see how one might make that mistake, for her daughters are the hamadryads. And Pomona is the last vestige of the Tree of Protection; her birth came but a day after Narnia’s. But when the White Witch cut down her tree she did not die, but fled elsewhere, to southern lands. Sylve she is called in Archenland, Mazania in Telmar, Tiffah in Calormen; every place she visited, she planted seeds in sacred groves. In Calormen the original remains intact, but an apple was seized by Fayti Tisroc for his own grove, and Calormen has never been the same. (“May he live forever” has a surprisingly factual basis behind it, given that Fayti lasted into his hundred-and-twenties despite everything.) In Telmar the grove expanded across the forests, which started up a procedure of asking the local wise women (of a line chosen by Pomona) to grant permission to go into the woods to procure the apples; this would evolve into something quite different, given time. In Archenland the tree died, but a seedling was brought to Terebinthia, where it grew for sixteen hundred years.
Pomona has no afterlife of her own per se; she rewards those who seek a return, not for revenge, but to gain the peace of heart and mind that they could not have known as humans or beasts. Any child of a dryad, unlike children born of naiads or hamadryads, will not on its own become a dryad; for that, it requires a soul, which Handeh brings to her orchards to tend to. The dryads awaken when Pomona plants the soul inside the seed. If they do live a life filled with love, for the world and for Aslan, then on they pass to his special country. It matters not who they were in their past life.
Pomona is portrayed as an apple-dryad, clothed in bark-cloth and blossoms in her hair. (She is occasionally linked with the orange tree as well, mainly in Calormen.)
- Epona, of course, is known on Earth--and in Narnia--as the goddess of horses, but in this world she has other titles and many, many other names. No wonder--her domain is loyalty, particularly in the manner of horses, hounds, and cattle, those who offer their services to the humanity as masters of nature and are rewarded in turn. The beasts do not talk, of course, anywhere besides Narnia--in Calormen for a non-human to talk is a sign of possession. Instead, she makes it clear through her mind what is necessary, transmitting the thoughts without speaking, and whoever looks upon her will know her thoughts (and may come to know their own better for it). Her followers go straight to Aslan's Country, where they may be rewarded for their servitude. She has no tolerance for breakers of beasts, however, and at times will incite wrath in the loyal followers to show the rulers just how far they have gone against the will of their subjects. (Again without speaking; charity in Calormen is meant to be inferred, and improper inference on the part of the donator is quite a difficult matter.) She is portrayed as a milk-white horse, or at times as a white cow, or white elephant, or snow-coloured hound--or else as a pale woman with white hair and grey eyes. (In Calormen, where she is called Aspa, albinos and other "deformities" are said to be sacred to her, and indeed "Aspa's hair" refers to a small but necessary defect in a work to demonstrate its imperfection before the gods--as we would say "Persian flaw," in fact.)
- The last of the gods to appear in the world of Narnia came with a different purpose entirely. Iskeera holds little to no sway over the plants or animals of the upper world; there is no love in her mind for such things, though she does not deny their importance. Iskeera, rather, is the goddess whose role it is to grow the underlands, to bring forth trees of gold and silver and jewels made alive as fruits. These are similar to surface plants--they can be eaten--but also quite different, for when left for too long they become dead and cold. What Iskeera loves best, then, are those who seek to bring new life to her creations, by forging them and making them into something new. She is sometimes called on for other crafts as well, meticulous work where the wild creativity of Handeh simply isn't enough, and honest toil is required. For those who serve her well there is a place in her furthest-underland, called Bism by the gnomes who live there (for this is what the souls Handeh brings to her become). Deep within the bowels of the earth itself, Bism promises one of the few routes to Aslan's Country accessible through Narnia proper--you never know what world you'll tunnel up into, once you grow tired of Bism. (There was actually an expedition of gnomes that set out in the 21st Century to do just that--unfortunately they happened on a witch in green, and, well, let's just say they were content to wait for the end of the world after they got away.) Iskeera--or Grishtil to the dwarves, Brigid to Narnians, Gibil to the Islanders, Frauga to the Telmarines--appears most often as a short but strong lady with twinkling pure-black eyes, a cross between a cheery grandmother and a Narnian dwarf.
