I’ve no idea who the artist is of this or what its era of creation is, as it’s from a Russian language site. But doesn’t it look like an untold tale from Narnia with the deadly yet puzzled wyrm and all the astonished unicorns?
Worldbuilding Wednesday 8/23/23: Centaurides (Narnia XLVIII)

Decorative medallion, 1770s
A centauride is the Greek term for a female centaur. Though only one was named in Greek myth, they were common motifs in ancient Greek and Roman art and have remained so up until the present day. Walt Disney even played a riff on them for Fantasia (1940); they were going to be bare-breasted like the one above, but the censors nixed that, so they got garlands or bikini tops made of flowers.
I love the 1930s Art Deco stylization of this sequence, which is set to Beethoven’s Pastoral, but narratively I cringe because it’s so sappy.
The candy-colored creatures, however, may have inspired the creations of two later fantasists, writers Piers Anthony and John Varley. Anthony used them as a template for the magical unicorns in his Apprentice Adept series, whose first book was published in 1980. Anthony’s unicorns can shapeshift between human and centaur versions of themselves and are as crazily-colored as Disney’s version. Plus, their horns emit the sounds of different musical instruments through which they communicate. But Anthony was beaten to the punch by John Varley, who came out with a similar creation, the Titanides, who were published a year earlier in his SF novel Titan. Did the latter steal from the former? Or the former, the latter? Or did they both drink from the same source?

Wraparound jacket from John Varley’s Wizard, the second of his Gaea trilogy.
Varley’s Titanides are the creations of Gaea, a living orbital ring space habitat in the vicinity of Saturn. They all look like sensual, multicolored female centaurs and are gendered only by the human organs growing out of their human torsos; their horse parts are hermaphroditic. Titanides also communicate in song and have a unique reproductive system because of their three sets of genitals, the various combinations referred to by the names of chords. (The author helpfully includes a chart of them in the back of the book.) They come across as “improved” versions of human beings because they are stronger, smarter, braver, purer, and don’t need to sleep; in keeping with the time the book was written (the 1970s) they are enthusiastic proponents of recreational sex and polyamory so they don’t fall victim to nasty human jealousies, which, in the ethos of the decade, makes them morally superior.

The Titanides show their silly side. Line drawing by Connor Freff Cochran.
Neither book is discussed much today, which is a shame. But on the other hand, there are thousands of artists creating their own centaurides on sites such as Deviantart.com. The one below is based off an antelope or gazelle.

Artwork by Skeptic Archer
No female centaurs were mentioned by Lewis in the Chronicles, but at least one was depicted in the movies.
She’s a little… off-putting, I guess? The rustic clothing and braided hairstyle doesn’t fit in with the Greco-Roman aspect of Narnia’s inhabitants. It looks like something from the Viking Age, save for that crocodile leather armor. But, more on the awkwardness of the movie centaurs later.
Here’s a bunch of names that would be appropriate for centaurides who are named in the Greek style. They were culled from lists of actual names of Greek deities, historical personages, and demigods. (Note: The Charities are demigodesses in the same vein as the Muses or Graces.)
Some Greek Names for Narnian Female Centaurs
Aella (Amazon)
Agnodice (Historical woman) Arktos (Goddess of the night sky) Aspasia (Historical woman) Bremusa (Amazon) Calleis (Beauty – a Charity) Cheimon (Winter goddess) Cleta (Glorious- a Charity) Dysis (Sunset goddess) Eiar (Spring goddess) Epione (Goddess of soothing a sick one’s pain) Erada (Goddess of crossroads) Hesperis (Evening goddess) Hydna (Historical woman) Hypatia (Historical woman) Iaso (Goddess of healing) Mesembria (Noon goddess) Myrina (Amazon) Orithyia (Amazon) Paidia (Play and amusement – a Charity) Pandaisia (Banquet – a Charity) Phaenna (Shining – a Charity) Philaenis (Historical woman) Pthinoporon (Autumn goddess) Telesilla (Historical woman) Thargelia (Historical woman) Theros (Summer goddess) |
Malignment in Emerald [Fanfic]
I realized I didn’t announce this particular fanfic. It’s on AoW.
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I am tired of this slander.
Oh, I suppose I should be flattered that all of Narnia thinks of me as a femme fatale… the cunning, poisonous witch who seduced a crown prince and kept him in my thrall. The lute-playing enchantress who created an underground army of earthmen that would burst through Narnia’s fertile crust, spilling my armies out onto its green, virgin lawns, to claim Cair Paravel for my captive prince and rule through him as its Queen. Yet, none of that is true. |
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Narnian Witches: The Lady of the Green Kirtle (AI Remix)
Let’s see what AI does with this poisonous green lady. For example, bringing her into the 1970s.
OF COURSE she’d have an electric guitar as her instrument of choice! That said, this one looks like a still from the movie flop Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the one that starred the Bee Gees and Peter Frampton.
But honestly, her era is the Pre-Raphaelite one, and to get these pics I used those artists. Midjourney would not generate a mandolin no matter how hard I tried (she got an acoustic guitar instead) and her feet came out abnormally large, at least a woman’s size 10. But, I like her threatening expression in the first pic and the more “innocent” one in the second.
The definitive version, based on Titian and Rembrandt. The mandolin is a little odd, but at least it’s a mandolin! Stylistically the painting is similar to this one, Francesca and Her Lute, by Charles Edward Halle, but I think the expression in the AI painting is more fitting for the character.
What else did the Green Witch do, besides play her mandolin? Well, she rode around sidesaddle on a beautiful white horse.
I set her on my pacing steed
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
“I love thee true.”
The above is from “La Belle Dame sans Merci” by John Keats, clearly inspirational for Lewis’s conception of the Green Witch. Maybe I’ll go into the whole poem next year.
The artists in the above prompt were George Stubbs and Alfred Mullins, British equestrian painters, because Midjourney would not generate a woman riding sidesaddle with a text-only prompt. The attempts were laughable so I won’t post them here. I added Sir Laurence Alma-Tadema for the bright palette. The witch’s gown turned out to be a paler green than I’d like, though. Who are those figures huddling in the background? Some enslaved Earthmen?
Not only was it hard for AI to do mandolins and gowned ladies sitting sidesaddle. Serpent transformations were also incredibly difficult.
This one is evocative but jumbled in that all her limbs are transforming separately.
In this pic she puzzles over her next move. Again, her snake part is jumbled up so it’s not one coherent creature.
Lastly, here’s one of the witch and her victim in a vague Book of Hours style. AI still has problems with expressions, but in this case, it captured the lady’s look of feigned surprise, along with her hypnotic gaze, as Rilian asks her if she’s seen the serpent that murdered his mother. (Edits made for finger and hand oddness, as usual.)
Scenes of Narnia I
Here I thought I’d present a selection of AI-generated images that to me seem to be from the books.
The cave of the Bulgey Bears (Prince Caspian)
Cair Paravel on a stormy night (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe)
The Northern Moors (The Silver Chair)
Mt. Pire in the Archenland mountains (The Horse and His Boy)
Tashbaan (The Horse and His Boy)
Courtyard in the Tisroc’s palace (The Horse and His Boy)
The Great Ice Mountains (The Magician’s Nephew)
Charn (The Magician’s Nephew)
Aslan + Lovecraft
This Aslan statuette, with a beard made of tentacles, probably wouldn’t fly with fans. (AI art)
Worldbuilding Wednesday 8/16/23: Centaurs (Narnia XLVII)

Chiron Tutoring Achilles,lithograph after J. B. Regnault. This is how I always pictured the Narnian centaurs: muscled, bare-chested, bearded, their horse part proportional to their human one.

Detail from Centaurs, by Eugene Fromentin
Centaurs are one of the mythic creatures most associated with Narnia, along with fauns and nymphs. They appear in four of the seven books (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, The Silver Chair, and The Last Battle) where they are renowned for being wise teachers, prophets, healers, and stargazers, as well as fierce warriors vital to Narnia’s defense. They are so integral the land can’t be imagined without them, and C. S. Lewis, in the books, has a lot to say about them in offhand, conversational details sprinkled throughout the books.
The original centaurs, those of Greek myth, were not as wise. They were coarse, bestial beings, like the original conception of satyrs/fauns, though more given to fighting than recreational sex. In psychological terms, they could be said to embody the animus, that part of Man that is still beast, and given to bestial urges. In most of the myths they made up their own tribe. That tribe, which had various semi-divine origins, went to war with a neighboring human tribe called the Lapiths, in which the centaurs, crazed with drink, attempted to abduct the human women of the tribe during the Lapith king’s marriage ceremony. Little did the centaurs know that the Lapiths had wily Theseus (he of the labyrinth and minotaur fame) on their side, and were defeated.
Another myth showing the centaur’s uncontrollable nature — and how they couldn’t handle their liquor — was how Pholus, one of the rare civilized centaurs, treated his friend Heracles (Hercules in Roman myth) to some wine in his cave. When the jar was uncapped, the neighboring centaurs smelled it and came rushing over, already driven mad by the alcoholic fumes. In the ensuing battle, Hercules slew many of them with his poisoned arrows — arrows which had been dipped in the blood of the Lernaean Hydra in the second of of his labors — including Chiron, who had blundered into the bloody scene, and his original friend Pholus, who had stayed back but picked up one of the poisoned arrows, wounding himself with the tip. This myth, not as widely known as the Labors, illustrates the hard-luck nature of Heracles, who is doomed to kill his friends even as he performs amazing deeds of strength. His own, in fact, death occurs at the hands of a centaur, Nessus, who tricks Deianera, his wife, into giving him an acid-laced shirt as a present.

Roonwit the centaur, by Pauline Baynes (colorized version)
But is Chiron who most casual readers of Greek myth will be the most familiar with. Chiron was one of the civilized centaurs, like Pholus and Asbolus, who were renowned for being prophets, seers and teachers, and in Chiron’s case, skilled in medicine and herbs, music, archery, hunting, and gymnastics. (I’d sure like to see a centaur do a flip and tumble.) Apollo himself was Chiron’s tutor, and Chiron in turn tutored many other Greek heroes, such as Achilles, Jason, Actaeus, and Asclepius, the god of Greek medicine. The go-to guy for mentoring, so to speak.
It was from wise Chiron that Lewis took his template, making his centaurs into grave, yet good, Renaissance men/warriors.
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At that moment there was a sound of horse-hoofs tapping on rock from the mouth of the cave, and the children looked up. The two Centaurs, one with a black and one with a golden beard flowing over their magnificent bare chests, stood waiting for them, bending their heads a little so as to look into the cave. Then the children became very polite and finished their breakfast very quickly. No one thinks a Centaur funny when he sees it. They are solemn, majestic people, full of ancient wisdom which they learn from the stars, not easily made either merry or angry; but their anger is terrible as a tidal wave when it comes.— From The Silver Chair, by C. S. Lewis | ![]() |
How did myths of such centaurs arise in the first place? Some historians think it was a more primitive peoples’ reaction to humans mounted on horses, seeing them as hybrids, rather than two creatures. Others, that these are older myths from Indian civilizations, where human-horse mashups existed long before the Greek myths. One Greek myth gives a very logical origin for them: they were the offspring of Centaurus, a man who mated with a herd of mares. Obviously, that wouldn’t make it into Narnia.
(By the way, the name centaur, in Greek, means not man-horse, but bull-piercer, or bull-slayer. An excellent name for a hunter and warrior, but it also means all those fantasy staples of unitaurs, tigertaurs, or rabbitaurs are referring to cattle hybrids.)
In the Chronicles, Lewis names only four of the centaurs: Glenstorm, Cloudbirth, Roonwit, and Oreius. Only Oreius has a Greek name, which is odd. If you want more, here’s a list, culled from the centaur/Lapith battle I mentioned earlier.
Some Greek Names for Narnian Centaurs
Amycus
Anchius Arctus Areos Bromus Chromis Clamis Crenaeus Doupon Dryalus Echeclus Elymus Gryneus Helops Homadus Hylaeus Hyles Iphnaeon Isoples |
Latraeus
Lycabas Lycidus Melanchaestes Monychus Nedymnus Ophion Orius Petraeus Phlegraeus Phrixus Pylenor Pyraethus Rhoetius Ripheus Styphelus Thaumas Thereus Uraeus |
Though Lewis did not mention female centaurs, the Greeks did: her name was Hylonome.
The White Album
[Reading Challenge 2023]
The White Album
by Joan Didion
Open Road Media, 2017
(Originally published by Simon & Schuster, 1979)
[ #1 — 3rd Year, 23rd Letter: A book whose title begins with the letter W) ]
When I first made up my reading list at the start of the year I hadn’t decided on a candidate for the letter W, so I left it open. But a few months later Amazon Prime decided for me, because one of the free monthly downloads was Joan Didion’s The White Album. I’d heard a lot of things about it so I decided to give it a go.
This was a book that came with a lot of baggage and speculation on my part. I remember when it first came out (I was in high school) because I read about it in The New York Times Book Review, which my elderly uncle faithfully brought over to us every Sunday along with the rest of the Times. Since the book had the same title as The Beatles album I assumed the essays were all about the turmoil of the 1960s. Well, the first one in the book was, but the others ranged from that time up to the mid-1970s and were about Vietnam, architecture, infrastructure, and Hollywood. Wide-ranging, but the focus was on California.
But not California’s youth culture. Didion was born in 1934 so she was in her 30s when the decade began and wasn’t inclined to find resonance with drugs, sex, and rock and roll, only unease and a vague horror. I can guess for someone whose life had gone swimmingly until then, with hard work begetting success and that success buoyed by American society running smoothly, the likes of Charles Manson and campus shootings would have been a true shock, though frankly they pale compared to subsequent news events in the 2000s and beyond.
So the age of the book, and the long lens of the 2020s, didn’t allow me to find resonance with it either. Some of the essays were almost indecipherable, like one about feminism that was extremely dated, and another about the introduction of commuter lanes, called then “Diamond Lanes,” to the city of Los Angeles. As a writer she took great pains to be neutral, but I can sense her irritation at the idea, and she came across as bitching about a whole lot of nothing. The joke turned out to be on her, as today commuter lanes are alive and kicking.
Other essays were more timeless, or if dated, interesting slices of life back then. Like an essay on California infrastructure — that of water and electricity and how it is portioned out in the American West — and her personal experiences dealing with migraines, Malibu, and vacationing at The Royal Hawaiian Hotel, now dwarfed by the megahotels that have been built up next to it on the shores of Waikiki. She could turn a phrase, and it was interesting to read the original, deadpan style that in turn influenced luminaries like Hunter S. Thompsen, Fran Leibowitz, Lester Bangs, even Joanna Russ.
But like all of those, I wound up getting impatient with her authorial voice. Very self-absorbed. I think I’d like her more autobiographical work though.
Narnia Bento Boxes
With the magic of Midjourney, here’s some AI-created Narnia-themed bento boxes! Using a photorealistic style after those posted in Gourmet magazine.
This is the first one. Rustic container, Aslan cut-food art (I think it’s daikon radish) in the center, something that looks like Turkish Delight to his upper left. I had specified Narnian foods, thinking I’d get some of the delicacies Lewis describes, but most of it seems suited for animals — carrots, broccoli, grapes, cherry tomatoes, and dried apricots. Something that looks like arborio rice, and, disturbingly, two dishes that look like they contain mealworms. Aside from Aslan’s grimace, it’s plausible.
This Aslan face is nicer and has a pasta mane. The container is still rustic, and we also get buckwheat noodles, almond butter, a fresh star anise, tiny lemons, a fresh fig, small slices of parmesan cheese, a small bulb of fennel, and a tomato that looks to be made out of sundried tomato paste. I’ll call it the Italianate version.
And oh boy, Midjourney threw out this Christmas kid’s edition bento box! TWO Aslan cookies, goldfish crackers, and wafers depicting Mr. Tumnus and Mr. and Mrs. Beaver.
May the Purple Reign
When the Prince Caspian movie came out in 2008, someone made this spoof.