Oyarsa

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into The Space Trilogy. (Discuss)

This article may not meet the general notability guideline or one of the following specific guidelines for inclusion on Wikipedia: Biographies, Books, Companies, Fiction, Music, Neologisms, Numbers, Web content, or several proposals for new guidelines. If you are familiar with the subject matter, please expand or rewrite the article to establish its notability. The best way to address this concern is to reference published, third-party sources about the subject. If notability cannot be established, the article is more likely to be considered for redirection, merge or ultimately deletion, per Wikipedia:Guide to deletion. This article has been tagged since December 2007.

Oyarsa (pl. Oyéresu) is a word in the Old Solar language of C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy. While in Out of the Silent Planet Elwin Ransom thinks it is the name of a god-like character that rules Malacandra, in Perelandra, it is revealed that Oyarsa is its title. When the Oyarsa of Mars visits other worlds, he is known not as "Oyarsa", but simply as "Malacandra".

The other planets of the solar system are likewise ruled by their own Oyéresu. The Oyéresu of Viritrilbia (Mercury), Glund (Jupiter), and Lurga (Saturn) appear in That Hideous Strength, along with the Oyarsa of Malacandra and the former Oyarsa of Perelandra. The Oyarsa of Earth is a rebel against God, and is strongly implied to be Satan.

Lewis implies in the final chapter of Out of the Silent Planet that he derived his term for these beings from Oyarses, the name given in Bernard Silvestris's Cosmographia to the governors of the celestial spheres. Bernard's word is almost certainly a corruption—or a deliberate alteration—of Greek οὐσιάρχης ("lords of being"), used with the same meaning in the Hermetic Asclepius.