Till We Have Faces: Sacrifice

By: Amy Stello

During the reading of any myth, I always return to some concepts found within another course I have taken on myth, symbol and ritual. I am always reminded of how little indigenous tribes and their belief systems were so radically looked down upon by anthropologists who studied their cultural beliefs in such a shoddy way. Till We Have Faces, C.S. Lewis's retelling of myth, surprises me in this way. Lewis does not undervalue the importance of myth in the least and almost puts it as being of the utmost importance. Originally, I was a bit shocked when Till We Have Faces had Psyche being sacrificed for Ungit's son. I immediately thought of all the horrific sacrifice traditions that were found in the ancient Incan cultures and found it strange that Lewis would use such a brutal ritual in his own myth.
However, when taken in the whole context of the myth, the sacrifice of Psyche is something incredibly beautiful and symbolic. The complaints and horror which both Orual and the King feel about losing Psyche is the same which people feel towards God when someone close to them dies. I wonder if Lewis was thinking in terms of his own wife and if he was still working through his sorrow about her when he wrote of the sacrifice of Psyche. Either way, this myth closely parallels the duality between death (Psyche's sacrifice) and eternal life (Psyche being with Ungit's son). Psyche feels drawn to the Grey Mountain because it is "her time." The humans around her feel horror and sadness at the idea of her being sacrificed. Nothing could describe this duality better than a myth.