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The present issue of North Wind appears out of sequence. Number 18 for 1999 will be published early in 2001. Future issues will be published regularly each December, (D.V.), as was the case up to number 15. A planned enlargement of the Society's website and its newsletter Orts will allow North Wind to be composed primarily of original papers and book reviews. Economic circumstances have necessitated a return to saddle-stitching for this issue, but the journal will again be produced with a lettered spine as soon as this becomes possible. A major theme of the papers in this number is the relationship between what may be termed theistic and non-theistic discourses in MacDonald's fiction. Both discourses are Christian at their core—the "non-theistic" is sometimes called the Christian-Neoplatonic. The late Lord Runcie, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, was a great admirer of this aspect of MacDonald's writings. Both discourses "potentially express what lies beyond utterance" as John Pridmore expresses it. The relationship between these two types of spiritual discourse, and the relation of the "non-theistic" discourse to the world of nature is explicitly approached in John Pridmore's study of part of What's Mine's Mine, where they are perfectly balanced. Of all MacDonald's works, the one which might least be expected to be deeply concerned with spiritual matters is his boys' adventure story Gutta Percha Willie. Yet Michael Düring's paper reveals a profound spiritual theme flowing through the story. Here the balance is achieved by a scientific and technological approach integrating with the spiritual instead of opposing it in the usual modern fashion. The book's central theme of the Water of Life is not specifically a Christian one, but Willie is linked with St. Michael and he symbolically marries the parson's daughter. (This paper is a translation of an essay which appeared in Inklings 17 for 1999. It is published by kind permission of the Inklings Gesellschaft). Several critics have recognised that Phantastes possesses a powerful spiritual framework, but they have concentrated upon secondary elaborations of the framework —the "new habiliments" referred to in the quotation MacDonald attaches to his title. Fernando Soto, with extensive quotations, demonstrates that the book's basic framework is constructed from Greek myths of death and rebirth. With MacDonald's strongly patriarchal outlook it is no surprise that the book reflects the historical transition from matriarchal to patriarchal versions of the myths. The Christian evangelical rewriters of MacDonald's novels might have been expected to highlight his theistic discourse, but that has not happened. The founders of the MacDonald Society chose North Wind as the title of its journal because his writing should produce an effect comparable to fierce northern blasts which rouse us and oblige us to wrestle with them (like Jacob with his angel). Yet the rewrites are more akin to warm southerly breezes lulling us into soporific inactivity. Their authors eliminate virtually every vestige of the wind of the spirit from MacDonald's books. This is explored in John Docherty's paper on Thomas Wingfold, Curate. The relationship between writers and readers has recently become a popular subject of study and we carry a review of Rebecca Ankeny's important new book on MacDonald's understanding of this relationship. A check-list of potentially non-ephemeral pieces from Orts is also included.
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