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I. R.'s avatar

Funny that you should mention C. S. Lewis in that context, since his final novel, "Till We Have Faces", deals with exactly this subject (the imperial rationalization of cthonic goddess cult in the ancient Mediterranean hinterland) — and his judgement seems equivocal at best. It's ostensibly a Christian allegory but comes across almost more as a visionary defense of the anti-Christian feminist mysticism of subsequent decades. (At least to this reader).

(It's also an adaptation of an episode from the Metamorphoses! ...Apuleius's Metamorphoses, that is, not Ovid's. But still.)

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st's avatar

If you can find it (I had to buy it on kindle) you should maybe give Sphinx by David Lindsay a shot. It’s significantly different in form and function and I think would fit in interestingly on your Melville-James spectrum.

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