I am reading MacDonald’s quite strange and wonder filled book, Phantastes. In chapter eight, Anodos, a young man travelling in Fairyland, takes on a shadow-self that follows and eventually surrounds him, killing any light and any beauty that comes near. And after some travel in the company of the shadow, Anodos writes:

“But the most dreadful thing of all was that I now began to feel something like satisfaction in the presence of the shadow. I began to be rather vain of my attendant, saying to myself, ‘In a land like this, with so many illusions everywhere, I need his aid to disenchant the things around me. He does away with all appearances, and shows me things in their true color and form. And I am not one to be fooled with the vanities of the common crowd. I will not see beauty where there is none. I will dare to behold things as they are. And if I live in a waste instead of a paradise, I will live knowing where I live.'”

Phantastes by George MacDonald, p.78

Just like C.S. Lewis’s dwarfs in The Last Battle, Anodos is no longer to be fooled by the illusions of beauty and magic and fairy dust. Anodos believes that the darkness of the shadow is showing him reality, but darkness can’t “show” anything. One can only truly see when one is in the light, not the shadow.

Unfortunately, I know at least one young man whose name could be Anodos, a name that means “lost” or “pathless.” I am praying that he comes to see the enchanted and beautiful paradise where he actually could be living instead of trusting the disenchantments of the Shadow.