The Well-Tuned Harp

A substack against discord

A long time ago, in a galaxy not so different from our own, a man named Scipio had a dream.

In this dream he encounters his grandfather Africanus who brings him to stand far above the earth among the stars and instructs him to look not down at the planet he has left, but at the cosmos around him. Africanus goes on to describe to his grandson the nine cosmic spheres beginning with the moon and ascending all the way up through Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the constellations, and finally the Empyrean, “the supreme god confining and containing all the other spheres.” Scipio is amazed, but what is even more wondrous to him is the glorious music which echoes about the heavens. The planets, they’re singing! His grandfather reveals that as the spheres rotate, the produce music and all creation echoes this song with great joy.

Sometime later, another man embarks on a similar cosmic journey through the medieval spheres and arrives even higher up the celestial ladder than Scipio did. Dante Alighieri ascends to the Empyrean itself, the throne of God. He too, discovers a cosmic symphony echoing about the heavens and discovers that source of spherical movement.

“And now, even for my high imagination, all power failed /Already my desire and my will were being turned / Just like a wheel that moves in balance, by / the love that moves the sun and the other stars".”

-Dante, Paradisio

Yes, the planets are singing as they spin, but it is the love of their creator that is causing them emit such glorious melody.

Tolkien captures this perfectly in the opening lines of his Ainulindale.

“Then the voices of the Ainur, like unto harps and lutes, and pipes and trumpets, and viols and organs, and like unto countless choirs singing with words, began to fashipn the theme of Iluvatar to a great music; and a sound arose of endless interchanging melodies woven in harmony that passed beyond hearing into the depths and into the heights, and the places of the dwelling of Iluvatar were filled to overflowing, and the music and the echo of the music went out into the Void, and it was not void.”

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

Lewis too, introduces his world, Narnia, with the theme of song.

“In the darkness something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing… the most beautiful noise he had ever heard. It was so beautiful he could hardly bear it… Then two wonders happened at the same moment. One was that the voice was suddenly joined by other voices; more voices than you could possibly count. They were in harmony with it, but far higher up the scale: cold, tingling, silvery voices. The second wonder was that the blackness overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars. They didn't come out gently one by one, as they do on a summer evening. One moment there had been nothing but darkness; next moment a thousand, thousand points of light leaped out… If you had seen and heard it..., you would have felt quite certain that it was the stars themselves which were singing, and that it was the First Voice, the deep one, which had made them appear and made them sing…”

-C.S. Lewis, The Magicians Nephew

There is something incredibly profound here, a (now forgotten) illustration of the universe as an ordered whole, singing a symphony of being. If this ancient idea of the cosmos could be summed in one phrase it would be “a place for everything and everything in its place.” The universe is a great Symphony, the conductor the Creator, and each being is singing its own part, while still harmonizing together into one chorus.

And man has become deaf to this cosmic song. How? Well, the opposite of harmony is, quite simply, discord.

Looking at the word “discord” we see it comes from the latin discors. “Dis” meaning “apart” and “cor” meaning “heart”. Discord is the literal rending of the soul of the universe, a shattering of being. Once again, in his Silmarillion Tolkien paints this image. Melkor, one of the Anuir, (angelic beings of Tolkien’s mythology) begins to sing his own theme against the theme of the Creator Illuvatar. His music is jarring and crashes against the first in a conflicting tangle of song. The music of the spheres is overrun by the dividing disharmony of rebellion against the ordered world.

It is this discord, this rebellion against Nature that has filled the hearing of man and deafened us to the music of the spheres. We can’t hear the stars sing, because we’re too busy singing our own anthems against the great Chain of Being and replacing our given roles in the symphony with cookie-cutters of our own making. We’ve lost our identity in forgetting the music. We’re uncreating ourselves.

How on earth can humanity learn to hear again?

Cicero’s Dream of Scipio goes on to provide an answer to the dilemma of our own making. Grandpa Africanus tells his grandson that there are still ways for mankind to “tune” themselves to the music of the spheres by imitating the harmony of the cosmos through music, art and story. This imitation of reality is what reminds us of our spiritual roots and subsequently, our identity, our place in the Symphony.

I think you get the well-tuned part. But the harp?

Enter the celtic bardic tradition.

For the celts and medieval imagination as a whole, the songs and tales of the poets were a “tuning fork” themselves. Celtic bards would roam about, carrying their harps and singing as they went, ordering the souls of the people they encountered. Think of Sir Orfeo, who after his kingdom falls into chaos wanders into the forest with his harp and sits there, harping and striving to retune the great discord that has come upon him. Or King David, who sang harmony into his kingdom through the psalms.

This is my hope for The Well-Tuned Harp.

While we cannot roam the hills with our instruments, violating traffic laws and HOA restrictions (although someday….) it is my desire that this substack will act as a sort of digital bard, turning out writing, reflections and on occasion, perhaps a story or two to aid in the battle against discord, and the tuning of our souls to the love which moves the sun and other stars.

I am first and foremost a student, a leorningcild as the Anglo Saxons put it, and so if anything strummed out here has errors due to the imperfections of the player, do not hesitate to give the apprentice a whack and a tuner for her strings. The Lord knows we all need tuning in more than one way.