On the Value of Imagination

Enchantment, the Mysterious, and Meaning in a Material Age

[Greetings, friends, from Austin! Last week, I began a course on C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces with the Symbolic World. It’s a book I read for the first time last year, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I wanted… BADLY… to be able to write an essay on it then, but I wasn’t sure I understood the story enough to do it justice. So, I’ve always known that I would go back through the story, study it a little closer the second time through, and then write an essay on it.

This essay is not that essay, but I’m hoping that by the end of this class, I will have some fully formed thoughts to share with you on what has become one of my favorite books. It was also one of Lewis’s favorite creations (even if it was, by Lewis’s own admission, one of his worst-performing by external metrics).

There is another reason I am deciding to dive back into Lewis’s story as I get into the thick of my first attempt at a fiction book. Till We Have Faces is Lewis’s re-telling of the ancient myth of Cupid and Psyche. Just as my book is a re-telling of the myth of Perceval. As I throw myself into my work, I want the work of the master (Lewis) to be top of mind. How he re-imagines a myth, adding new elements but staying true to the story. How he builds and describes characters. How he works his non-fiction into his fiction. All skills I deeply admire and one day hope to possess myself.

As I re-familiarize myself with Till We Have Faces, it strikes me as Lewis’s rebellion against, and counter, to the worldview he possessed as an atheist… it is imagination’s rebuttal to the supremacy of reason; a qualitative (or experiential) response to a quantitative (or measurable) understanding of life. The whole book seems to be a veiled commentary on the limits of pure reason and the value of imagination and enchantment.

It is to the value of imagination that we devote the rest of today’s essay.]

Figure: The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch (1490-1510)

“The glory of God is to conceal a thing, but the glory of the king is to find it out.”
(Proverbs 25:2)

Of the many things post-Enlightenment education trains us to discard at an early age, imagination is among the first to go. “‘Are there not facts?’ say they. ‘Why forsake them for fancies? Is there not that which may be known? Why forsake it for inventions?’”¹

In a world that favors the objectively measurable over the subjectively meaningful, it should come as no surprise that scientific advances far outpace our spiritual growth… it should come as no surprise that we live in an age of disenchantment, where there is no space for the magical and mysterious.

Nowadays, we take words like myth and imagination as synonyms for false or fake. But that isn’t what these words mean at all… or, at least, these definitions are incomplete. Both myth and imagination are pattern-recognizing methods. Many times, the stories and images that present themselves in myth and derive from the imagination are archetypal (original patterns) and represent something “meta-true”—that is, true in a way that they represent things that don’t just happen one time at a specific point in history but are always happening (or recurring).

Take the word imagination, which shares the Latin root imago with the words imitate and image. Imagination is the instrument used to make a likeness—an internal machine projecting a preexisting form. We can think of imagination as the creative faculty by which our abstract thoughts take a concrete form.

But its creations are not the conjuring of something entirely new and unheard of; when done genuinely, the process is drawing up from the well of cosmic symbols and using them as raw materials. To deviate too far from or willfully ignore the primordial form is to violate the laws of nature and produce what we might call chaotic or incoherent art. To use our imagination to remember what’s been there from the beginning, by contrast, is to tap into the creative source that saw God give form to the formless.

The imagination of man is made in the image of the imagination of God. Everything of man must have been of God first; and it will help much towards our understanding of the imagination and its functions in man if we first succeed in regarding aright the imagination of God, in which the imagination of man lives and moves and has its being.²

While imagination has the function of putting thought into form, it also has the duty to find and follow the Imagination from which it is derivative (that is, the Imagination of the Creator). This is the work of the Imagination at its best. This is the work of the neo-Platonist that seeks to mimic the Forms in their art. This is the creation of the Beautiful as a visible manifestation of the Good and True. Something magical happens when we try to make our art a meeting place between time and eternity; our works become windows into a world to which we belong but cannot enter.

As J.R.R. Tolkien argues in On Fairy-stories, we are inevitably sub-creators. “Made in the image and likeness of a Maker,” we too form new ideas and create new things, not ex nihilo or out of nothing, but “in our own derivative mode,” using the Forms God has made as models for our own secondary creations. (See On the Art of Subcreation)

We see in Shakespeare and Tolkien an example of imaginations fulfilling this duty; two artists giving different forms to the same (everlasting) thought regarding the fleeting nature of life (using variations of ubi sunt, or “where are they?”). “Where be your gibes now, your gambols, your songs, your flashes of merriment…?” writes Shakespeare. “Where now are the horse and the rider?” pens Tolkien. It is the same sense sent through the song “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” sung by Pete Seeger (lyrically inspired by Marlene Dietrich):

Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long, long time passing
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards every one…³

This is one of the beautiful traits of a properly functioning imagination: it translates an eternal thought, idea, or concept into a form true to the artist. When something comes to us from the various imaginative filters of different artists, what gets reflected back to us is a more complete vision of what stands outside of us… with each addition, we are given more angles from which to view something that seems to transcend time. We begin to see how “the world is…the human being turned inside out. All that moves in the mind is symbolized in Nature…”⁴ As above, so below. As within, so without.

[E]very new embodiment of a known truth must be a new and wider revelation. No man is capable of seeing for himself the whole of any truth: he needs it echoed back to him from every soul in the universe; and still its centre is hid in the Father of Lights. In so far, then, as either form or thought is new, we may grant the use of the word Creation, modified according to our previous definitions.

This operation of the imagination in choosing, gathering, and vitally combining the material of a new revelation, may be well illustrated from a certain employment of the poetic faculty in which our greatest poets have delighted. Perceiving truth half hidden and half revealed in the slow speech and stammering tongue of men who have gone before them, they have taken up the unfinished form and completed it; they have, as it were, rescued the soul of meaning from its prison of uninformed crudity, where it sat like the Prince in the “Arabian Nights,” half man, half marble; they have set it free in its own form, in a shape, namely, which it could “through every part impress.”⁵

It is not a stretch to say that imagination is how God enters us because it is how the infinite enters the finite and how abstract becomes concrete. By definition, God is beyond words or our ability to reason and must be gestured at with metaphor and symbol. Those gestures, produced by our imagination, are the bridges that can take us beyond where reason and logic alone can go (even if they cannot take us the entire way). “The heart has its reasons,” writes Blaise Pascal, “that reason knows nothing of.”

This connection to the heart apart from the head is why true works of imagination are not works of intention or will. They may be made clear and refined by intention, but that is not where they start; they start with a revelation to those with eyes to see, ears to hear, and hands willing to go where the Spirit sends.

Such embodiments are not the result of the man’s intention, or of the operation of his conscious nature. His feeling is that they are given to him; that from the vast unknown, where time and space are not, they suddenly appear in luminous writing upon the wall of his consciousness. Can it be correct, then, to say that he created them? Nothing less so, as it seems to us. But can we not say that they are the creation of the unconscious portion of his nature? Yes, provided we can understand that that which is the individual, the man, can know, and not know that it knows, can create and yet be ignorant that virtue has gone out of it. From that unknown region we grant they come, but not by its own blind working. Nor, even were it so, could any amount of such production, where no will was concerned, be dignified with the name of creation. But God sits in that chamber of our being in which the candle of our consciousness goes out in darkness, and sends forth from thence wonderful gifts into the light of that understanding which is His candle. Our hope lies in no most perfect mechanism even of the spirit, but in the wisdom wherein we live and move and have our being. Thence we hope for endless forms of beauty informed of truth. If the dark portion of our own being were the origin of our imaginations, we might well fear the apparition of such monsters as would be generated in the sickness of a decay which could never feel—only declare—a slow return towards primeval chaos. But the Maker is our Light.⁶

At this point in the essay, we must address what I suspect a skeptic might be thinking to themselves. “Is it not possible to use our imagination to make up false narratives? Is that not what Odysseus does when he tells misleading stories to those who give him hospitality? Aren’t we encouraging people to tell lies by encouraging the imagination?” My response to that critique is this: Just because it can be abused and used for destructive purposes does not mean it should be discarded. This is true of much more in life than just the imagination. Rarely are things used wholly for good or bad; far more often, they are a mixture, capable of being used for good or ill.

When our fleshly and material desires drive imagination, it can twist reality in a distorted way that aims at disorder and destruction. Imagination used this way might be understood as a sin in the same way we think of lying as a sin—it is to miss the mark and set ourselves on a path where the inevitable consequences contain misery of our own making. To use our imagination in creating things that do not align with Nature is to ambush ourselves in our vain attempts to think we can get away with ignoring the laws that exist, irrespective of our opinions about them (e.g., gravity). Lies are always self-defeating because eventually, they are found out; the only question, in the end, is the magnitude of the cost.

But just as imagination can be used to tell lies, it can be used to tell truths. Imagination aimed at truth-telling has the power to refine and transform us in divine presence.

That evil may spring from the imagination, as from everything except the perfect love of God, cannot be denied. But infinitely worse evils would be the result of its absence. Selfishness, avarice, sensuality, cruelty, would flourish tenfold; and the power of Satan would be well established ere some children had begun to choose. Those who would quell the apparently lawless tossing of the spirit, called the youthful imagination, would suppress all that is to grow out of it. They fear the enthusiasm they never felt; and instead of cherishing this divine thing, instead of giving it room and air for healthful growth, they would crush and confine it—with but one result of their victorious endeavours—imposthume, fever, and corruption. And the disastrous consequences would soon appear in the intellect likewise which they worship. Kill that whence spring the crude fancies and wild day-dreams of the young, and you will never lead them beyond dull facts—dull because their relations to each other, and the one life that works in them all, must remain undiscovered. Whoever would have his children avoid this arid region will do well to allow no teacher to approach them—not even of mathematics—who has no imagination.⁷

In a world where we have forgotten how to use our imagination as an instrument of the True, Good, and Beautiful, we have left the instrument in the hands of the charlatans. Those who would use imagination, not to reflect back to us eternal things, but for their gain. This is how we come to live in a world of shadows cast by image-makers who would manipulate us. Our best defense against this kind of corrupted imagination is to reclaim and participate in restoring the sacred imagination.

In very truth, a wise imagination, which is the presence of the spirit of God, is the best guide that man or woman can have… For the end of imagination is harmony. A right imagination, being the reflex of the creation, will fall in with the divine order of things as the highest form of its own operation; “will tune its instrument here at the door” to the divine harmonies within; will be content alone with growth towards the divine idea, which includes all that is beautiful in the imperfect imaginations of men; will know that every deviation from that growth is downward; and will therefore send the man forth from its loftiest representations to do the commonest duty of the most wearisome calling in a hearty and hopeful spirit. This is the work of the right imagination; and towards this work every imagination, in proportion to the rightness that is in it, will tend. The reveries even of the wise man will make him stronger for his work; his dreaming as well as his thinking will render him sorry for past failure, and hopeful of future success.⁸

This, then, is our task: to live well amidst the shadows of that Hideous Strength. To reclaim Imagination from dark clutches. It will require that we actively exercise the capacities of the sacred imagination. We must see the world as it was made to be seen, take the ruins around us, build something beautiful, and create new ways of living and working to help us recover our lost humanity.

With the mission in mind, we now come to the practical business of training (or cultivating) the sacred imagination. It starts by feeding it. The imagination is furnished by, and takes on the character of, the experiences and images we feed it. Read old books and classic stories. Fill your home with beautiful art and your air with the stirring harmonies of music. Avoid the screen demons that want to train your focus on what’s new instead of what’s true. Go experience the world and allow the glory of Creation to fill you. Stare at the sturdy majesty of mountains and the agile strength of running rivers… contemplate the stillness of calm brooks and the splendor of stars. Feel the warmth of a sunrise and witness “the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn” declare the glories of the heavens.

After you have fed your imagination, you must use it. As often as you are able, for it grows like a muscle. Make things with as much regularity as you can muster. Do your level best to draw on the most enduring images in your mind and let them pour out of you as true to Form as you can. You will get better as time passes. The only thing that matters is that you begin the habit of using your imagination and then working to bring it to being.

If writing is your preferred method, keep a notepad with you at all times. Write quotes, scenes, characters, or poetry down whenever they pop into your mind. If it’s painting or drawing you prefer, keep a sketch pad on your person. Signal to the universe that you are serious about the craft. Stop filling your “down” time with more noise and other people’s opinions; start using it as an opportunity to uncover a little more of the images in your imagination. To see things a little clearer.

It doesn’t have to be writing or drawing. Sculpt a pot. Carve wood. Plant a garden. Decorate a cake. Build an owl box or a free library. Whatever your method, just make it a habit of making things as beautiful as you can. Make every work a canvas for your imagination.

It was Dostoevsky that said beauty would save the world. What we must understand is that beauty is the offspring of the great Imagination. It is in using our power of imagination that we are most like God. As children of a Creator, we are called to create—to bring art and institutions, books and businesses into being. To use our creations as vehicles for bringing our unique flavor of beauty into the world. If beauty is to save the world, it will do so through the imagination. As Shakespeare says in A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name…⁹

It falls then to each of us to give Truth, Beauty, and Goodness a place where they might land… to create a “local habitation and a name.” That’s what our imagination is capable of. The extent to which it is used for the purpose is the extent to which it is excellent (in the Greek sense of arete, referring to a thing’s “full realization of potential or inherent function”). It’s not a question of whether we have an imagination or are capable of using it; it’s question of whether we will work to make the most of it and wield it for good.

And it is in that question, I submit, that we find the answer to the meaning of life.

The glory of God is to conceal a thing, but the glory of the king is to find it out,” says Solomon. “As if,” remarks Bacon on the passage, “according to the innocent play of children, the Divine Majesty took delight to hide his works, to the end to have them found out; and as if kings could not obtain a greater honour than to be God’s playfellows in that game.¹⁰

—

P.S. Shakespeare had one of the best imaginations in history. His ability to capture and communicate timeless patterns of human behavior through specific plays and scenes is a masterclass for any aspiring Imaginative Artist. In his Rape of Lucrece, Shakespeare includes a passage about Time that illustrates his ability to channel the eternal Imagination. (I say passage about Time, but the passage is actually about history… because Time does nothing; it is the forces at work in time that produce all change and create what we call history.)

Mis-shapen Time, copesmate of ugly Night,
Swift subtle post, carrier of grisly care,
Eater of youth, false slave to false delight,
Base watch of woes, sin’s pack-horse, virtue’s snare;
Thou nursest all and murder’st all that are:
O, hear me then, injurious, shifting Time!
Be guilty of my death, since of my crime.

Why hath thy servant, Opportunity,
Betray’d the hours thou gavest me to repose,
Cancell’d my fortunes, and enchained me
To endless date of never-ending woes?
Time’s office is to fine the hate of foes;
To eat up errors by opinion bred,
Not spend the dowry of a lawful bed.

Time’s glory is to calm contending kings,
To unmask falsehood and bring truth to light,
To stamp the seal of time in aged things,
To wake the morn and sentinel the night,
To wrong the wronger till he render right,
To ruinate proud buildings with thy hours,
And smear with dust their glittering golden towers;

To fill with worm-holes stately monuments,
To feed oblivion with decay of things,
To blot old books and alter their contents,
To pluck the quills from ancient ravens’ wings,
To dry the old oak’s sap and cherish springs,
To spoil antiquities of hammer’d steel,
And turn the giddy round of Fortune’s wheel;

To show the beldam daughters of her daughter,
To make the child a man, the man a child,
To slay the tiger that doth live by slaughter,
To tame the unicorn and lion wild,
To mock the subtle in themselves beguiled,
To cheer the ploughman with increaseful crops,
And waste huge stones with little water drops.¹¹

1. George MacDonald, The Imagination: Its Function and Its Culture (“The Imagination”).

2. The Imagination.

3. Marlene Dietrich, Where Have All the Flowers Gone.

4. The Imagination.

5. The Imagination.

6. The Imagination.

7. The Imagination.

8. The Imagination.

9. William Shakespeare, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1.

10. The Imagination.

11. William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece.