A brief first response was posted earlier today (01/01/20) on the Amazon review boards. This is a work in progress. Here it is much more developed. I also sent the author two emails over the last couple of days which’ll append later to this post, along with other thoughts that I’ve not yet sent the author. I’ll include extra diagrams and pictures to help make my points clearer to the reader here. I would strongly advise you to first read The Turn in Principle and The Turn in Practice.
This book is a great book because it invites the audience to look at Tolkien’s works as riddles and there are some very important discoveries in this book. And I can almost feel the author taking the readership by the shoulders and shaking them and shouting ‘LOOK CAN’T YOU SEE IT!?’ :-D. I have been there. I know your pain. I have solved most of the Mazarbul puzzle. You have discovered some things which I didn’t. And you are right in identifying EVERY SINGLE mark he made including the holes and how many of them there are. You have to be forensic. Look at the very top of page of the Book of Mazarbul with the Balrog cutout as Seth describes it. The arrow “pointing” to the U shaped tear in the centre. To fully understand the riddle in the round you have to start with the etymologies. You said of the puzzle of Mazarbul.
| “Because there is little doubt Tolkien wanted the reader to philologically pore over the manuscripts. For purposely left were several runes, legible enough for the amateur sleuth, which Gandalf in his haste was unable to decipher. “ |
I would say he wanted the reader to philologically pore over his own words in the text! I wrote over two hundred pages on the Moria passage looking at the etymology of hundreds of those words.
You said that Tolkien described the text as “pointless” without the facsimiles. You have to consider the word pointless. What about the fingers pointing on the Hobbit map and the arrows on it? The two are equivalent. Arrows point both on maps and symbolically they are used in the same way from bows.
And consider the arrow theme which runs throughout the whole of the story surrounding Moria, Balin, and the Elves of Eregion? For starters look at the Doors of Durin- the arrow formed by the arrangement of devices on them. The ray of sunlight in the tomb is ‘a finger’ pointing1. So the maps and the text are as one. Balin is killed by an arrow. Gimli remarks about hunters and arrows in the dell when they reveal the mithril shirt. The arrows of the orcs in the Chamber and at the bridge. The arrow in Gandalf’s hat. Hint? Yes! The arrow pointing to the U tear at the top of that page is a big clue because it POINTS. ARROWS. HINTS. Look at the page 5 of the Book of Mazarbul- do you see a horned bull-like head in the shape of that page and the colouring? Look at the dwarven rune for the number 5 on that page. That forms the bull nose. Do you see the bull’s head in the cliff face in the illustration of the West Gate? Go check. And also observe the heart shape in the rock at the bottom of the West Gate illustration and the two hearts in the illustration ‘Eeriness’ also positioned in the centre of the image. Right down the middle. That’s the Straight Road. The stab holes in the last page..do you see an angry face with a mouth (wrath)?..the Balrog hole is there also to indicate the chin in my opinion- it has a double, even triple function. There are possibly two sets of arrows in that Balrog hole shape. The NW pointing arrow (chevron shape) on the right. I’ve known him to encode more than one idea into one symbol. I believe there is an arrow pointing NW in that Balrog cutout. That points to water which is what the Balrog and Gandalf fall into -this will be explained later. There is also a set of three arrows pointing downwards south-westerly. Mazarbul = Maze-AR-bull.
After several days of thinking about the whole puzzle, I do agree that the cutout IS intended to be the Balrog as a visual approximation. And it also incorporates two sets of arrows. Seth’s example of the dragon revealed through the hole in the covering page in the Bamberg, Universitätsbibliothek, Msc. Nat. 1 (9th century) is a similar phenomenon. Tolkien actually did something very similar in his early painting ‘The Land of Pohja’.
To quote Hammond and Scull:
‘The Land of Pohja’ in fact is two paintings in one, made on two pages of the sketch-book. Tolkien first painted a tree, or perhaps it is three trees growing together, against a background divided by a diagonal line. Then he cut the sketch-book leaf along the diagonal, and on the sheet following painted an alternative upper background, which is visible when the upper part of the first sheet is pulled back. In the first painting the upper background is a rich purple; in the second it is blue-grey with a border of icicles (as shown in [41]), Pohja, or Pohjola, is the land in the North which, near the end of ‘The Kalevala’, the old magician Väinämöinen fills with music so sweet that the Moon settles in a birch-tree and the Sun in a fir-tree so that they may hear it better. Louhi, the evil Mistress of Pohjola, captures the Moon and Sun and hides them away. Then,
When the moon away was carried,
And the sun had been imprisoned
Deep in Pohjola’s stone mountain,
In the rocks as hard as iron,
The she stole away the brightness,
And from Väiniölä the fires,
And she left the houses fireless,
And the rooms no flame illumined.
Therefore was the night unending,
And for long was utter darkness.
[]
There can be little doubt that the painting shows, with the flap closed, the Sun atop the tall fir-tree, and with the flap opened, the land gripped by cold. It is an ingenious work, unique among Tolkien’s art – other than this, he did not go in for mechanical effects23 – and extremely effective. Also it is yet another precursor of his ‘Silmarillion’ mythology, for the Kalevala episode of the theft of the Sun and the Moon almost certainly influenced Tolkien’s pivotal tale of the destruction of the Two Trees, the theft of the Silmarils, and the Darkening of Valinor.
The diagonal line that Tolkien painted and cut along is part of the geometry of Tolkien. The diagonal line is the plane of the hypotenuse. We’ll return to the significance of that shortly. The diagonal line is the same diagonal we can draw between the two set of 4 dots on the monogram which Seth ponders the significance of.
To support Seth’s ‘nothing more’ claim…Tolkien uses ‘nothing’ to symbolize the Enemy- you have to look at the etymology, but it’s related to Old Uppsala and having ‘no counsel’ (no-thing, naught): headless- and the north Gate on the Barrow Downs, the decapitated head of the statue of the King at the crossroads.
Also the etymology of the word ‘more’ does support your interpretation [Old English mara ;greater, relatively greater, more, stronger, mightier; used as a comparative of micel ;great;]. Tolkien associates the Enemy with ‘might’ (He Who Arises in Might), and ‘great’, vast, physical larger, strength, taller, higher etc. The Balrog makes itself taller.
| more (adj.) |
|
Old English mara “greater, relatively greater, more, stronger, mightier,” used as a comparative of micel “great” (see mickle), from Proto-Germanic *maiz (source also of Old Saxon mera, Old Norse meiri, Old Frisian mara, Middle Dutch mere, Old High German meriro, German mehr, Gothic maiza), from PIE *meis- (source also of Avestan mazja “greater,” Old Irish mor “great,” Welsh mawr “great,” Greek -moros “great,” Oscan mais “more”), perhaps from a root *me- “big.” Sometimes used as an adverb in Old English (“in addition”), but Old English generally used related ma “more” as adverb and noun. This became Middle English mo, but more in this sense began to predominate in later Middle English. “Take some more tea,” the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly. |
| nothing (n., pron.) |
| “no thing, not any thing, not something,” Middle English, from Old English naþing, naðinc, from nan “not one” (see none) + þing “thing” (see thing). Meaning “insignificant thing, thing of no consequence” is from c. 1600. As an adverb, “not at all, in no degree,” late Old English. As an adjective by 1961. For nothing “not at all” is from c. 1300. Nothing to it, indicating something easy to do, is by 1925. Nothing to write home about, indicating an unremarkable circumstance or thing, is from 1917 among the World War I soldiers. |
| thing (n.) |
|
Old English þing “meeting, assembly, council, discussion,” later “entity, being, matter” (subject of deliberation in an assembly), also “act, deed, event, material object, body, being, creature,” from Proto-Germanic *thinga- “assembly” (source also of Old Frisian thing “assembly, council, suit, matter, thing,” Middle Dutch dinc “court-day, suit, plea, concern, affair, thing,” Dutch ding “thing,” Old High German ding “public assembly for judgment and business, lawsuit,” German Ding “affair, matter, thing,” Old Norse þing “public assembly”). The Germanic word is perhaps literally “appointed time,” from a PIE *tenk- (1), from root *ten- “stretch,” perhaps on notion of “stretch of time for a meeting or assembly.” The sense “meeting, assembly” did not survive Old English. For sense evolution, compare French chose, Spanish cosa “thing,” from Latin causa “judicial process, lawsuit, case;” Latin res “affair, thing,” also “case at law, cause.” Old sense is preserved in second element of hustings and in Icelandic Althing, the nation’s general assembly. Of persons, often pityingly, from late 13c. Used colloquially since c. 1600 to indicate things the speaker can’t name at the moment, often with various meaningless suffixes (see thingamajig). |
As you can see ‘thing’ and ‘hypotenuse’ share the same root.
| hypotenuse (n.) |
| the side of a right triangle that is opposite the right angle, 1570s, from Late Latin hypotenusa, from Greek hypoteinousa “stretching under” (the right angle), fem. present participle of hypoteinein, from hypo- “under” (see hypo-) + teinein “to stretch,” from PIE root *ten- “to stretch.” Formerly often erroneously hypothenuse. Related: Hypotenusal. |
The vital piece of information we need to make sense of this is that Tolkien represents the plane of the hypotenuse using word games. He word-plays on ‘nuse’ to mean ‘nose’. So, in this way the word hypo-tenuse can be interpreted ‘under- the nose’. And this is why the nose and sense of smell features so much in his works. Ever noticed that many of the evil creatures reek?
The Nazgûl use their sense of smell to navigate the world. And that’s because the Nazgûl inhabit the plane of the hypotenuse, they live between worlds, in a grey world. We also find that the etymology of nose reveals:
| nose (n.) |
|
Middle English nose, from Old English nosu “the nose of the human head, the special organ of breathing and smelling,” from Proto-Germanic *nuso- (source also of Old Norse nös, Old Frisian nose, Dutch neus, Old High German nasa, German Nase), from PIE root *nas- “nose.” Used of beaks or snouts of animals from mid-13c.; of any prominent or projecting part supposed to resemble a nose from late 14c. (nose cone in the space rocket sense is from 1949). Meaning “sense of smell” is from mid-14c. Meaning “odor, scent” is from 1894. In Middle English, to have one’s spirit in one’s nose was to “be impetuous or easily angered” (c. 1400). Kiv, It could bee no other then his owne manne, that had thrust his nose so farre out of ioynte. [“Barnabe Riche His Farewell to Military Profession,” 1581] |
And we see likewise in the etymologies: Nazgûl derives from nasag, incorporating the same ‘nas’.
What’s more the letter n represents a nasal. Yes, Tolkien employed the idea that a ‘nasal’ in linguistic technical usage was incorporated into the system of the senses and their incorporation into the symbolic landscape. And Tolkien assigned the senses to the geometry. He assigned hearing to the plane of the opposite, sight to the adjacent and smell to the hypotenuse. Indeed he employs the body and the face as metaphors- also, legs, arms, and head (hence, ‘headless’ nothing). And this brings us to how the very language of Tolkien is geometric. Tolkien incorporates the geometry into the functioning and development and evolution of the language using geometry. To quote Clyde Kilby, writing about his ‘First Meeting’ with Tolkien in ‘Tolkien and the Silmarillion’:
| “I asked how he went about inventing the hundreds of names and characters and places, and he said that he did it by a “mathematical” system. He meant, I think, that his inventions, including his Elvish languages, arose not simply out of imagination but from his professional knowledge of the origin and growth of languages themselves…” |
| mathematics (n.) |
| “the science of quantity; the abstract science which investigates the concepts of numerical and spatial relations,” 1580s; see mathematic (the older form of the word in English, attested from late 14c.) + -ics. Originally one of three branches of Aristotelian theoretical science, along with first philosophy (or metaphysics) and physics (or natural philosophy). |
| mathematic (n.) |
|
“mathematical science,” late 14c. as singular noun, mathematik (replaced since early 17c. by mathematics, q.v.), from Old French mathematique and directly from Latin mathematica (plural), from Greek mathēmatike tekhnē “mathematical science,” feminine singular of mathēmatikos (adj.) “relating to mathematics, scientific, astronomical; pertaining to learning, disposed to learn,” from mathēma (genitive mathēmatos) “science, knowledge, mathematical knowledge; a lesson,” literally “that which is learnt;” from manthanein “to learn,” from PIE root *mendh- “to learn.” As an adjective, “pertaining to mathematics,” from c. 1400, from French mathématique or directly from Latin mathematicus. |
Important point: I only discovered the above quote from Clyde Kilby’s meeting from Priya Seth’s book. That was the first time I’d encountered that. That was yet another occasion that this kind of confirmation happened.
Tolkien incorporates two areas of mathematics: geometry and his own personal numerology. He also incorporates arithmetic through multiplication, division, addition and subtraction and powers. How? Well, consider that God said unto Noah:
| And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein. [Genesis 9:7] |
And that the etymology of demon gives ‘to divide’.
| demon (n.) |
|
c. 1200, “an evil spirit, malignant supernatural being, an incubus, a devil,” from Latin daemon “spirit,” from Greek daimōn “deity, divine power; lesser god; guiding spirit, tutelary deity” (sometimes including souls of the dead); “one’s genius, lot, or fortune;” from PIE *dai-mon- “divider, provider” (of fortunes or destinies), from root *da- “to divide.” The malignant sense is because the Greek word was used (with daimonion) in Christian Greek translations and the Vulgate for “god of the heathen, heathen idol” and also for “unclean spirit.” Jewish authors earlier had employed the Greek word in this sense, using it to render shedim “lords, idols” in the Septuagint, and Matthew viii.31 has daimones, translated as deofol in Old English, feend or deuil in Middle English. Another Old English word for this was hellcniht, literally “hell-knight.” The usual ancient Greek sense, “supernatural agent or intelligence lower than a god, ministering spirit” is attested in English from 1560s and is sometimes written daemon or daimon for purposes of distinction. Meaning “destructive or hideous person” is from 1610s; as “an evil agency personified” (rum, etc.) from 1712. The Demon of Socrates (late 14c. in English) was a daimonion, a “divine principle or inward oracle.” His accusers, and later the Church Fathers, however, represented this otherwise. The Demon Star (1895) is Algol (q.v.). |
And of course multiplication and division are simply addition and subtraction. Tolkien often has quite a literal mind, which is really the essence of the pun, which he uses frequently. We’ll encounter multiply shortly in Tolkien’s wedding poem and in the numerology in the Moria narrative.
His geometry, or his Sacred Geometry (because it describes his marriage to Edith ordained under God), can be viewed as three planes of a right-angled triangle. It is a dialectic because the movement between planes requires both the left and the right hands of Time and Space, the opposite and adjacent planes of the triangle. These are Goldberry-Edith and Bombadil-Tolkien and his entire works are a conversation between the two, between himself and his wife. This geometry is created in the hands sequence of Ilúvatar in the Music of the Ainur. First the left, then the right, then the hypotenuse at the raising of both hands. One of the clearest indications of the importance of the symbolism of the hands and the underlying duality, is found in Mordor with Tolkien’s description of Frodo.
| Sam guessed that among all their pains he bore the worst, the growing weight of the Ring, a burden on the body and a torment to his mind. Anxiously Sam had noted how his master’s left hand would often be raised as if to ward on a blow, or to screen his shrinking eyes from a dreadful Eye that sought to look in them. And sometimes his right hand would creep to his breast, clutching, and then slowly, as the will recovered mastery, it would be withdrawn. Now as the blackness of night returned Frodo sat, his head between his knees, his arms hanging wearily to the ground where his hands lay feebly twitching. |
The discords of Melkor present in that moment create the angle of separation between the two planes. In this way the Enemy is bound up with Time and Space itself. To quote Tolkien ‘This is a fallen world’. We’ll encounter this set of ideas more below.
| dialectic (adj.) |
| 1640s, “relating to the art of reasoning about probabilities,” from Latin dialecticus, from Greek dialektikos “of conversation, discourse,” from dialektos “discourse, conversation” (see dialect). From 1813 as “of or pertaining to a dialect or dialects.” |
Time and Space therefore are created in that passage of the hands sequence of Ilúvatar. The very geometry is shaped by the discords. In fact Tolkien assigns EVERYTHING in his world to these planes. EVERYTHING. And we can concatenate a whole list of qualities and phenomena which are oppositional to one another. For our purposes here in this essay we can consider: Tolkien-Right hand-Space-Bombadil-Moon-Sight and Edith-Left hand-Time-Goldberry-Sun-Hearing. The sense of smell is on the plane of the hypotenuse. Movement between the two planes of Time and Space- the conversation between the Sun and Moon in their marriage, is via the plane of the hypotenuse. Movement is through the Door at the right-angle. The Door consists of the two planes of the opposite and adjacent. It requires both to function. It is represented by the rune Dagaz, the butterfly rune which you can see in the picture ‘Eeriness’ below suggested by the hidden geometry. I’ve highlighted it in red. You can see the triangle in many places, in the following illustrations: ‘Before’, ‘Eeriness’, ‘Wickedness’, suggested in the ‘Land of Pohja’, ‘Beyond’, ‘Undertenishness’. The two wings of the butterfly correspond to the left and right hands, woman and man. If we look at the etymology of door we find that it was thought that the word door was originally a reference to a door of two halves :
| door (n.) |
|
“movable barrier, commonly on hinges, for closing a passage into a building, room, or other enclosure,” c. 1200, a Middle English merger of two Old English words, both with the general sense of “door, gate”: dor (neuter; plural doru) “large door, gate,” and duru (fem., plural dura) “door, gate, wicket.” The difference (no longer felt in Old English) was that the former came from a singular form, the latter from a plural. Both are from Proto-Germanic *dur-, plural *dures (source also of Old Saxon duru, Old Norse dyrr, Danish dr, Old Frisian dure, dore, dure, Old High German turi, German Tr). This is from PIE root *dhwer- “door, doorway.” Middle English had both dure and dor; the form dore predominated by 16c. but was supplanted later by door. The oldest forms of the word in IE languages frequently are dual or plural, leading to speculation that houses of the original Indo-Europeans had doors with two swinging halves. |
Tolkien would have known that, and in his works, those two halves are the two planes of the opposite and the adjacent: Time and Space, woman and man. In the hands sequence of the Music we have a progression of thesis (Time), antithesis (Space), and 
synthesis (Straight Road) when the hypotenuse is invoked, in the 3 chords. A change of state in a character involves a TURN. The movement between the two planes of the opposite and adjacent is THE TURN. A turn of 90 degrees. You can see the mechanics of the Turn from the two paired illustrations ‘Before’ and ‘Afterwards’ from the Book of Ishness. You can see the figures clearly turn after passing through the Door, the Megalithic Door. At the Door we can turn either left or right. The turn either takes the character via rational planes upwards to God via repentance or a turning away from God downwards to hell. Moving downwards is a fall. These planes as they relate to the spiritual journey in The Lord of the Rings, can be seen as the tiers of Minas Tirith. It is a symbolic landscape and the inner spiritual reality is manifested outwardly (I’ll be posting a pdf outlining the details of the symbolic Lord of the Rings map). The hands sequence of Ilúvatar is itself a TURN. For more information see ‘The Turn in Principle’ and the ‘The Turn in Practice’. Tolkien based this system on the dialectic in Book 10 of Plato’s Republic including details from the description of the ‘Spindle of Necessity’ and the Myth of Er. Tolkien had begun to study Greek and Old English while at King Edward’s grammar School at least 7 years before making his drawings for the Book of Ishness.
|
Then, my noble friend, geometry will draw the soul toward truth, and create the spirit of philosophy, and raise up that which is now unhappily allowed to fall down. [Plato. Plato’s Republic.] |
The essential characteristics of Time and Space are straightness and curvedness. And these characteristics are metaphorical of certain qualities and natures in characters and creatures.
| We do not, or need not, despair of drawing because all lines must be either curved or straight, nor of painting because there are only three “primary” colours. We may indeed be older now, in so far as we are heirs in enjoyment or in practice of many generations of ancestors in the arts. In this inheritance of wealth there may be a danger of boredom or of anxiety to be original, and that may lead to a distaste for fine drawing, delicate pattern, and “pretty” colours, or else to mere manipulation and over-elaboration of old material, clever and heartless. But the true road of escape from such weariness is not to be found in the wilfully awkward, clumsy, or misshapen, not in making all things dark or unremittingly violent; nor in the mixing of colours on through subtlety to drabness, and the fantastical complication of shapes to the point of silliness and on towards delirium. Before we reach such states we need recovery. [On Fairy Stories] |
These manifest themselves in various behaviours and predilections within characters. Time is straight. Space is curved. Space without Time is a closed circle. That is hell and the Ring, or the Iron Crown. Time without Space is also a kind of hell, a hell from a non-interaction with the physical space of the world. In reality, the two interact as the marriage of Edith and Tolkien and produce two interweaving spirals, which describe the astrological/astronomical courses of the Sun and Moon. Here is Tolkien’s wedding poem to Edith.
| Lo! Young we are and yet have stood like planted hearts in the great Sun of Love so long (as two fair trees in woodland, or in open dale stand utterly entwined and breathe the airs and suck the very light together) that we have become as one, deep rooted in the soil of Life and tangled in the sweet growth. |
Note the reference to two hearts. We see the two hearts in his illustration ‘Eeriness’ (below).
| twine (n.) |
| “strong thread made from twisted strands,” Old English twin “double thread,” from Proto-Germanic *twiznaz “double thread, twisted thread” (source also of Dutch twijn, Low German twern, German zwirn “twine, thread”), from PIE root *dwo- “two.” |
| twine (v.) |
|
“to twist strands together to form twine,” c. 1300, from twine (n.) and probably also from Old Norse tvinna “to double.” Sense of “to twist around something” (as twine does) is recorded from late 14c. Related: Twined; twining. |
And we return to the mathematics, of multiply.
| multiply (v.) |
|
mid-12c., multeplien, “to cause to become many, cause to increase in number or quantity,” from Old French multiplier, mouteplier (12c.) “increase, get bigger; flourish; breed; extend, enrich,” from Latin multiplicare “to increase,” from multiplex (genitive multiplicis) “having many folds, many times as great in number,” from combining form of multus”much, many” (see multi-) + -plex “-fold,” from PIE root *plek- “to plait.” Intransitive sense of “grow or increase in number or extent” (especially “to have children, produce offspring”) is from mid-14c. Mathematical sense “perform the process of multiplication” is attested from late 14c. Related: Multiplied; multiplying. |
| ply (v.1) |
|
“work with, use,” late 14c., shortened form of applien “join to, apply” (see apply). The core of this is Latin plicare “to lay, fold, twist,” from Proto-Italic *plekt-, from PIE root *plek- “to plait.” Sense of “travel regularly” is first 1803, perhaps from earlier sense “steer a course” (1550s). Related: Plied; plies; plying. |
So we can see the two trees entwined as two trees, two threads plaited, twisted together. The two trees are an example of ‘multiply’. And as representing Tolkien and Edith’s marriage, this multiplication is the basis of procreation and God’s directive to Noah.
You can see the two spirals below, in the green and red paths of the Sun and Moon. This is Tolkien’s the ‘Music of the Spheres’, that sweet Music of the Ainur and Väinämöinen, and the sweet growth in Tolkien’s wedding poem.
The Númenorean carpet is intended to be a kind of ‘carpet page’, after the pages in Insular art.
| Carpet pages are a characteristic feature of Insular illuminated manuscripts. They are pages of mainly geometrical ornamentation, which may include repeated animal forms, typically placed at the beginning of each of the four Gospels in Gospel Books. [carpet page, wikipedia] |
The red course represents the influence of the Enemy, the ‘discord’. That crosses between right and left hands and therefore crosses between man and woman. Both are fallen. Their fallen nature manifests as a desire to dominate and silence the other in the conversation, the dialectic. It begins with the right hand, the male. Melkor was of course male. You can see that the red discords interweave in the courses of the Sun and Moon.
| But now Ilúvatar sat and hearkened, and for a great while it seemed good to him, for in the music there were no flaws. But as the theme progressed, it came into the heart of Melkor to interweave matters of his own imagining that were not in accord with the theme of Ilúvatar, for he sought therein to increase the power and glory of the part assigned to himself. |
As stated the divergence of the two planes of the opposite and adjacent are caused by Melkor through the discords in the Music of the Ainur. This is separation, that is, division. Again mathematics. It is of course the opposite of multiplication. And thus in the course of the Sun and Moon above we see both multiplication (the two threads plyed together) and division in the diverging paths which climax in noon and midnight. And we can see why Tolkien chose the language element mel in Melkor:
| *mel- (2) |
|
Proto-Indo-European root meaning “strong, great.” It forms all or part of: ameliorate; amelioration; meliorate; melioration; meliorism; multi-; multiform; multiple; multiply; multitude. It is the hypothetical source of/evidence for its existence is provided by: Greek mala “very, very much;” Latin multus “much, many,” melior “better.” |
Both strong and great are two qualities Tolkien repeatedly uses to describe the Enemy and the aspirations of the Enemy. These aspirations were imparted to the man and the woman during the discords in the Music of the Ainur, and more broadly in the right and left hands (for example, Boromir and Faramir are the left and right hands, but they are both male of course, see The Turn in Practice) producing the battle of the sexes and the attempt to dominate each other, and the origin of all strife within the World.
| *mel- (3) |
|
Proto-Indo-European root meaning “false, bad, wrong.” The exact sense of the root remains uncertain, “since it concerns a collection of largely isolated words in different IE branches” [de Vaan]. It forms all or part of: blame; blaspheme; blasphemous; blasphemy; dismal; mal-; malady; malaise; malaria; malediction; malefactor; malefic; malevolence; malevolent; malice; malicious; malign; malison; malversation; mauvais. It is the hypothetical source of/evidence for its existence is provided by: Avestan mairiia‑, “treacherous;” Greek meleos “idle; unhappy;” Latin male (adv.) “badly,” malus (adj.) “bad, evil;” Old Irish mell “destruction;” Armenian mel “sin;” Lithuanian melas “lie,” Latvian malds “mistake,” possbily also Greek blasphemein “to slander.” |
Movement up and down between rational planes is along the diagonal which is the plane of the hypotenuse, through the Door. This opens when man and woman are in union, in harmony. It closes when they are in disharmony. Recall that in the Land of Pohja, the Sun and Moon both landed in two trees: a birch and a fir tree.
| “Pohjola, is the land in the North which near the end of the Kalevala, the old magician Väinämöinen fills with music so sweet that the Moon settles in a birch-tree and the Sun in a fir-tree so that they may hear it better. Louhi, the evil Mistress of Pohjola, captures the Moon and Sun and hides them away.” |
That coming together was on the line of the diagonal in that picture. In other words the Sun and Moon come 
together on this line: the hypotenuse. The picture ‘The Land of Pohja’ was an early development of the system he later arrives at. The Devil (Louhi in the Pohja tale) seeks to close the Door, permanently. Harmony occurs at twilight when both the Sun and Moon are in the sky turned to one another. At this point we have convergent wills and the Door opens. Disharmony occurs during the day and night during which we have divergent wills. The two face away from one another. The divergent wills can be seen in the divergence of the two planes of the opposite and adjacent in the triangle above and in the two horns of the bull symbolized in the geometry of the West Gate and page five of the Book of Mazarbul above- suggested as resembling the letter ‘Y’. Imagine the two diagonals in the letter Y to be the same divergent lines in the triangle. This divergence was caused by the discords of Melkor. During the day the Sun dominates the Moon and it reaches a climax at mid-day. During the night the Moon dominates the Sun and this climaxes at mid-night. At these times the Sun or the Moon is on top in the sky, the other is underneath the world. This constant oscillation between harmony and disharmony is ‘the battle of the sexes’ and symbolizes Tolkien’s marriage. It’s helpful to view the geometry as triangular arrow heads and the arrow heads as faces, oriented towards or away from one another. Indeed, Tolkien employs arrows in this symbolic way to point and indicate orientation as previously stated, hence ‘pointless’. Arrows are a theme throughout the Moria sequence and the background story. Thus already we can see the equation of geometry and the narrative and character interaction. Orientation between man and woman, between left and right hands is key.
The geometry corresponds to the cardinal points of the compass during the day and during the night. This agrees and aligns with the geometry of the monogram. The vertical and horizontal graphemes (strokes) of the letter T conform to the opposite and adjacent planes of the triangle. In other words during the day and night the triangle of the dialectic is on its side and rotates 45 degrees at twilight to give us the triangle we’ve been looking at. The first time Tolkien is known to have used his 
monogram was in the picture ‘Eeriness’ which displays the complete form of the geometry. The vertical stem of the letter T symbolizes Time, the axis mundi, The horizontal represents Space. Space consists of vertically stacked circular rational planes up through time like the rungs of a ladder, proceeding from the lowest rational plane which is hell, and proceeding upwards towards heaven. Up through the page towards the ceiling also equates to north at the top of the map flat on the page. More explanation elsewhere. The axis mundi runs through Polaris, Stella Maris and the world rotates around this pole. The world rotates around this axis. Ursa Major and Ursa Minor mirror each other to either side and spin around the axis. Tolkien’s world of his Father Christmas Letters and North Polar Bear are explorations of this mythology and geometry. Time and Space act on one another to produce two spirals. The Endless Stair is symbolic of this geometry. Gandalf and the Balrog each symbolize one of the spirals, red and green in the diagram of the astronomy and this is why they first fall and then they go up. In Tolkien’s numerology the two spirals are symbolized by the numbers 6 and 9. They spiral around the World Tree, which is also the axis Mundi. These correspond to the letter T and J superimposed on one another in Tolkien’s monogram. The number 6 is the left-hand, anti-clockwise spiral that moves down away from God towards hell. The number 9 is the right-hand, clockwise spiral, that spirals upward towards God.
| Then darkness took me; and I strayed out of thought and time, and I wandered far on roads that I will not tell. ‘Naked I was sent back – for a brief time, until my task is done. And naked I lay upon the mountain-top. The tower behind was crumbled into dust, the window gone; the ruined stair was choked with burned and broken stone. I was alone, forgotten, without escape upon the hard horn of the world. There I lay staring upward, while the stars wheeled over, and each day was as long as a life-age of the earth. Faint to my ears came the gathered rumour of all lands: the springing and the dying, the song and the weeping, and the slow everlasting groan of overburdened stone. And so at the last Gwaihir the Windlord found me again, and he took me up and bore me away. |
The world rotates 90 degrees between Day and Night and briefly during the process of that rotation we find twilight. That equates to the geometry rotated by 45 degrees, which produces the butterfly rune. Therefore the point of perfect union, the Door, is the axis Mundi, the Pole Star.
We can see the butterfly between the Two Trees in ‘Undertenishness’ (left). These trees prefigure the Two Trees, which both correspond to the Sun and Moon, and therefore symbolize Time and Space, Edith and Tolkien. The 
butterfly represents twilight, lying between the two lights of Sun and Moon, the diagonal. The diamonds echo the geometry of the Sun and Moon above. And this is in fact the theme of the picture ‘Undertenishness’. We see the same pattern in the diamonds and the white lines separating the diamonds as the butterfly rune, dagaz. This gives us the same alternation between the diamond and dagaz we saw in the astronomical courses previously. They are ‘under’ the area between the trees that symbolizes the Door. Anything ‘under’ in Tolkien is closer to hell or further away from heaven. The Door lies between the Two Trees, between Time and Space where the butterfly is. The Door leads to a higher rational plane and ultimately at the end of our lives, to heaven or hell. Therefore the ‘under’ here symbolizes mortal life: lifetime. And that is the realm of Time and Space, of Creation, where the Sun and Moon and the stars inhabit. That leads us to the question what is ‘ten’ in ‘Undertenishness? The answer is, it has nothing to do with age. It involves Tolkien’s number symbolism. We’ll return to this later, but suffice to say that Tolkien echoes Dante’s symbol for perfection being the number 10. Therefore the picture depicts everything that is under perfection, that is, everything that is imperfect. That equates to everything in the mortal world, of life. We can see the suggestion of human shapes in the trees. The branches of the trees suggest outstretched arms. A figure with both arms outstretched is symbolic of command, of the diamond, of divergent wills. We first find that in the third chord of the Music of the Ainur when Ilúvatar raises both hands in a command and stops the Music. He stops the dialogue. The two figures also suggest that they are on their knees. That symbolizes man and woman’s fallen state and nature (more elsewhere on knee symbolism). The colours symbolize man and woman. The woman is blue, the man is green. This is because Tolkien is using alchemy and the 4 elements and he assigns water and air (blue) to the female as the left wing of the butterfly and earth and fire to the right wing of the butterfly. These two diamonds correspond to water and earth, because they are both ‘under’- they lie at the bottom. That echoes them being on their knees. Above them correspondingly lie air (sky) over water, and fire, the firmament over earth- hence the flame at the top of Tolkien’s monogram. At the very bottom we have a set of diamonds that are moving close to a black colour. This represents them being close to hell. There are 5 of them. That again is Tolkien’s number symbolism, that being the number of the ‘the will’ which is the Battle of the Sexes, of imperfect man and woman. We’ll encounter 5 a lot shortly. The foliage of the trees is red. That represents fire. The same fire that we see in the two flames of ‘Before’. The two lines forming what look like an arrow pointing upwards lead down what is suggestive of a road lined with trees much like we find in ‘Eeriness’. We see the upward pointing triangle in the shape of that road and the internal details of the butterfly. The unusual designs of the wings are very reminiscent of the domed towers in the Palace of the Merking. See below. And we might see them as some kind of pavilion- which has its etymology in butterfly. Indeed Tolkien uses pavilions in his works symbolically.
| pavilion (n.) |
| c. 1200, “large, stately tent,” from Old French paveillon “large tent; butterfly” (12c.), from Latin papilionem (nominative papilio) “butterfly, moth,” in Medieval Latin “tent” (see papillon); the type of tent so called on resemblance to wings. Meaning “open building in a park, etc., used for shelter or entertainment” is attested from 1680s. |
They also appear to resemble something fungal (more elsewhere).
We can see that the astronomical course of the Sun and Moon oscillate between the butterfly rune dagaz (the Door opens) and the diamond (the Door closes). At the juncture of divergent wills we can see a diamond shape. This is the same diamond shape we see in ‘Wickedness’ (centre below), and we also see it in the architecture above the curtain:
The two triangles are separated in Wickedness indicating separation in their relationship. Hence ‘wickedness’. In speaking about divorce in a draft letter, Tolkien writes to C.S.Lewis.
| ‘I’d be very angry if the Mohammedans tried to prevent the rest of us from drinking wine.’ Justly so. Let us consider this point alone, at first. Why? Well, if we try to ascend straightaway to a rational plane, and leave behind mere anger with anyone who interferes with our habits (good or bad), the answer is: because the Mohammedans would be guilty of injustice. [49 To C. S. Lewis (draft)] |
Note he mentions anger. This is wrath and is created by divergent wills when man and woman are turning away from one another, which can end in divorce of course. They are no longer listening to one another and the conversation has stopped. This means that the Door can no longer function. He also mentions ‘ascend straightaway’. This is a reference to the Straight Road through the Door in the triangle of the dialectic, through which we ascend or descend rational planes. And note that the rune at the top of the West Gate down the centre is ando, meaning ‘gate’. Idiomatically we can regard the diamond as ‘the stone’, the heart turned to stone. the ‘heart of stone’. The stone heart in the cliff face in the illustration of the West Gate of Moria symbolizes the state of warring wills, of wrath between the right and left hands. A big clue is in the crescent moon shapes on both sides of the pillars on the West Gate. We should see Sun and Moon flanking the gate on those pillars. The Sun is missing.
And here is something new I’ve discovered while writing this essay. Note the butterfly rune dagaz I superimposed on ‘Before’ which the geometry of the picture implies. I discovered that around 4 years ago. But I realized yesterday that there was something more going on in the picture ‘Before’- I’d missed a really obvious detail which totally supported my observation about the butterfly rune dagaz. Do you see the angel-like wings in the picture?
And then I saw the suggestion of the head with two eyes above it. Then I saw the details in the right hand flame- the raised arms and the erect phallus. You can see how he has made a black mark along the top of the phallus to make it more clear. Then I saw the small dagaz rune in the left hand flame. The pregnancy is suggested by the odd rounded very thin line of flame describing an oval. The oval features in his works- the same oval Seth ponders the significance of in the version of the monogram (see below). And finally I saw the figures in the flames on the ground. The two spirals are obviously the two entwined trees of the wedding poem. I already knew that. The rest had escaped me. The details of the flames describe the relationship between man, the right hand on the right and woman, on the left. The male is the progenitor of the evil through Melkor. (For more discussion on why Tolkien chose to arrange things in this manner, see elsewhere on this site but consider the etymology of mel above ‘Latin male (adv.) “badly,”‘ and Tolkien’s often literal mind). That crosses between the male and the female as stated. That is the desire to silence the other and dominate and the symbolism Tolkien uses is both arms or hands, or wings raised. That is the ‘command’ used by Ilúvatar in the 3rd chord. You also find it in Iglishmek, the sign language of the Dwarves (see Vinyar Tengwar 39).
In the Music of the Ainur, when Ilúvatar raises both hands, the plane of the hypotenuse is created. The plane of the hypotenuse is twilight. The Door is accessed through this plane in a state of union and harmony between man and woman, but the Door can also be forced (pierced) and the two hands indicate a seizing of both hands, of both sides of the conversation and an end to the conversation: an attempt at a unilateral act. Hence the single flame in ‘Wickedness’ as opposed to two flames in ‘Before’. This is why Gandalf has to use the word of command against the Balrog at the east door of the chamber of Mazarbul. And this is why the Balrog makes itself taller and spreads its wings from wall to wall. Both are symbolic acts of domination. Gandalf is Tolkien. The Balrog is Edith. Of course Tolkien is not saying his wife is a firey evil demon. That would be absurd….at least I think! Tolkien has used his marriage, the duality of man and woman under God to create his geometry. And since everything in his world is a conversation between those two sides of the geometry, the dialectic, then the rest will follow logically on from that. It’s artifice and his mathematical system. But he is allowed to draw some private humour and amusement from it too of course! We could certainly see it as private and mischievous husband and wife banter. The left hand, the female is wrathful in the Moria passage. Seth’s anagram “MINE HOLE FALL, HELD LEFT WING” as we shall see later reveals the link between the Balrog and the female. Seth rightly identified Tolkien’s mention of the etymology of butterfly in his letters:
| Wings of a “Butterfly” or did the demon somehow “Flutter by”? The etymological source of the word ‘butterfly’ was one that Tolkien said defied discovery1. And according to the Professor, the ‘Flutter by’ proposition was not a serious candidate. Rather than delving into this poser or other puzzles Tolkien clandestinely hid, [Seth, Priya. Breaking the Tolkien Code (p. 57).] |
The reason is not because Tolkien was hinting about the corporeality of the Balrog’s wings. The author argues that the substance of Balrog wings is a burning question in the community and that Tolkien had hidden the clues to the answer in the anagrams. The problem with that argument is that the Tolkien community had never heard of Balrogs until the Lord of the Rings was published. You have to ask the question, why would Tolkien create a riddle answering a question years before that question had been asked? And he would have had to predict that that question would be asked. It’s understandable why she would arrive at this conclusion, because of ‘HELD LEFT WING’. But after 15 years of studying this subject, and as I stated on the homepage, which began through a stroke of complete luck, I can, with confidence, offer the real reason is that the Balrog is female, and is in fact his wife Edith, according to the fundamental geometry of the dialectic. And the broader, deeper riddle is in fact ‘The Hunt’ and Tolkien’s use of the Tetramorph and the Tetragrammaton, which has major consequences for Middle-Earth (see elsewhere on this site). It is literally a world-moving set of events. It involves the geometry and the mechanics of TURN at a global level. And that’s why Tolkien would go to so much trouble creating and hiding the anagrams.
| hint (n.) |
| c. 1600 (Shakespeare), “an indirect suggestion intended to be caught by the knowing,” apparently from obsolete hent, from Middle English hinten “to tell, inform” (c. 1400), from Old English hentan “to seize,” from Proto-Germanic *hantijan (source also of Gothic hinþan “to seize”), related to hunt (v.). OED dates the sense “small piece of practical information” to 1777. |
So what is Tolkien hinting at in the anagram MINE HOLE FALL, HELD LEFT WING? It is the theme of domination. Gandalf is Tolkien and the Balrog is Edith. We have already established that the two wings of the Balrog equate to the two hands or arms in the dialectic- the two wills and voices of left-female and right-male. The two wills of Tolkien-Gandalf and the Balrog-Edith. Tolkien incorporates a theme of ‘to hold’, ‘to possess with the hands’ and to behold with the eyes- which does not seek possession of things as property. The hands symbolize the will as we’ll see shortly.
| hold (v.) |
|
Middle English holden, earlier halden, from Old English haldan (Anglian), healdan (West Saxon), “to contain; to grasp; to retain (liquid, etc.); to observe, fulfill (a custom, etc.); to have as one’s own; to have in mind (of opinions, etc.); to possess, control, rule; to detain, lock up; to foster, cherish, keep watch over; to continue in existence or action; to keep back from action,” class VII strong verb (past tense heold, past participle healden), from Proto-Germanic *haldanan (source also of Old Saxon haldan, Old Frisian halda, Old Norse halda, Dutch houden, German halten “to hold,” Gothic haldan “to tend”). Based on the Gothic sense (also present as a secondary sense in Old English), the verb is presumed originally in Germanic to have meant “to keep, tend, watch over” (as grazing cattle), later “to have.” Ancestral sense is preserved in behold. The original past participle holden was replaced by held beginning 16c., but survives in some legal jargon and in beholden. The modern use in the sense “lock up, keep in custody” is from 1903. Hold back in the figurative senses is from 1530s (transitive); 1570s (intransitive). To hold off is early 15c. (transitive), c. 1600 (intransitive). Hold on is early 13c. as “to maintain one’s course,” 1830 as “to keep one’s grip on something,” 1846 as an order to wait or stop. To hold (one’s) tongue “be silent” is from c. 1300. To hold (one’s) own is from early 14c. To hold (someone’s) hand in the figurative sense of “give moral support” is from 1935. To hold (one’s) horses “be patient” is from 1842, American English; the notion is of keeping a tight grip on the reins. To have and to hold have been paired alliteratively at least since c. 1200, originally of marriage but also of real estate. To hold water in the figurative sense “be sound or consistent throughout” is from 1620s. |
| seize (v.) |
|
mid-13c., from Old French seisir “to take possession of, take by force; put in possession of, bestow upon” (Modern French saisir), from Late Latin sacire, which is generally held to be from a Germanic source, but the exact origin is uncertain. Perhaps from Frankish *sakjan “lay claim to” (compare Gothic sokjan, Old English secan “to seek;” see seek). Or perhaps from Proto-Germanic *satjan “to place” (see set (v.)). Originally a legal term in reference to feudal property holdings or offices. Meaning “to grip with the hands or teeth” is from c. 1300; that of “to take possession by force or capture” (of a city, etc.) is from mid-14c. Figurative use, with reference to death, disease, fear, etc. is from late 14c. Meaning “to grasp with the mind” is attested from 1855. Of engines or other mechanisms, attested from 1878. Related: Seized; seizing. |
| hand (n.) |
|
Old English hond, hand “the human hand;” also “side, part, direction” (in defining position, to either right or left); also “power, control, possession” (on the notion of the hand’s grip or hold), from Proto-Germanic *handuz (source also of Old Saxon, Old Frisian, Dutch, German hand, Old Norse hönd, Gothic handus), which is of uncertain origin. The original Old English plural handa was superseded in Middle English by handen, later hands. Indo-European “hand” words tend to be from roots meaning “seize, take, collect” or are extended from words originally meaning only a part of the hand (such as Irish lam, Welsh llaw, cognate with Latin palma and originally meaning “palm of the hand”). One ancient root (*man- (2)), represented by Latin manus is the source of Old English mund “hand,” but more usually meaning “protection, guardianship; a protector, guardian.” Meaning “manual worker, person who does something with his hands” is from 1580s, hence “hired workman” (1630s) and “sailor in a ship’s crew” (1660s). Meaning “agency, part in doing something” is from 1590s. Clock and watch sense is from 1570s. Meaning “round of applause” is from 1838. The linear measure of 4 inches (originally 3) is from 1560s, now used only in giving the height of horses. The meaning “playing cards held in one player’s hand” is from 1620s; that of “a round at a card game” is from 1620s. Meaning “handwriting” is from late 14c.; also “one’s style of penmanship” (early 15c.). The word in reference to the various uses of hands in making a pledge is by c. 1200; specifically “one’s pledge of marriage” by late 14c. First hand, second hand, etc. (mid-15c.) are from the notion of something being passed from hand to hand. At hand is from c. 1200 as “near in time,” c. 1300 as “within reach.” Out of hand (1590s) is opposite of in hand “under control” (c. 1200). Adverbial phrase hand-over-fist (1803) is nautical, suggestive of hauling or climbing by passing the hands one before the other alternately. Phrase on the one hand … on the other hand is recorded from 1630s, a figurative use of the physical sense of hand in reference to position on one side or the other side of the body (as in the lefthand side), which goes back to Old English Hands up! as a command from a policeman, robber, etc., is from 1863, from the image of holding up one’s hands as a token of submission or non-resistance. Hand-to-hand “in close contact,” of fighting, is from c. 1400. Hand-to-mouth is from c. 1500. Hand-in-hand attested from c. 1500 as “with hands clasped;” figurative sense of “concurrently” recorded from 1570s. |
I suspect Tolkien incorporated the theme of holding and possessiveness from the wedding vows ‘to have and to hold’
which originates in the Sarum rite of mediaeval England. That hints at the subtext and symbolism of what the One Ring is in the dialectic. The anagram is about the battle of the sexes being played out as the subtle subtext of the narrative. Gandalf and the Balrog are trying to master, to control one another- hence the battle of command at the east door of the chamber of Mazarbul. The Book of Mazarbul has actually been planted by the Enemy as a lure for Gandalf, because the Enemy (here, Edith) knows the weakness of the wizard (Tolkien). The wizard’s penchant for puzzles delays him long enough to spring the trap in the chamber. And remember the left hand Edith is the Sun. We recall Gandalf’s words:
| `I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor. You cannot pass. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udûn. Go back to the Shadow! You cannot pass.’ |
No time to discuss the Secret Fire here. Anor is the Sun. Anor is derived from the root anár:
|
Anar, Isil, and Anor, Ithil (p. 41): in QS $75 the names of the Sun and Moon given by the Gods are Urin and Isil, and by the Elves Anar and Rana [The Lost Road and other Writings] |
And we can see what Gandalf is implying in the context of domination of the wills. He is stating he is the master.
| wield (v.) |
|
Old English weldan (Mercian), wieldan, wealdan (West Saxon) “have power over, compel, tame, subdue” (class VII strong verb; past tense weold, past participle gewealden), merged with weak verb wyldan, both from Proto-Germanic *waldan “to rule” (source also of Old Saxon and Gothic waldan, Old Frisian walda “to govern, rule,” Old Norse valda “to rule, wield, to cause,” Old High German waltan, German walten “to rule, govern”). The Germanic words and cognates in Balto-Slavic (Old Church Slavonic vlado “to rule,” vlasti “power,” Russian vladeti “to reign, rule, possess, make use of,” Lithuanian veldu, veldėti “to rule, possess”) probably are from PIE *woldh-, extended form of root *wal- “to be strong, to rule.” Related: Wielded; wielding. |
So the left hand in the geometry is all of those things as stated- we can concatenate Balrog, Sun, Edith, etc as symbolizing the left hand, the plane of the opposite. The subject of possessing things in the passage of Bombadil and Goldberry in the Old Forest and indeed Tolkien’s own words, needs a little more complex discussion and covered elsewhere. Gandalf holding the left wing of the Balrog in the fall is an act of domination. Gandalf at that point has lost his staff but not his sword. Indeed the encounter and the fall itself is the battle of the wills played out. If you look at the next diagram you can see the relationship between the symbolism of the sword, staff and the left and right handedness. The Balrog carries a whip in its left hand and a sword in its right. The Balrog carries a whip. This is Tolkien’s private humour relating to Balrog’s being female (symbolizing the left hand) and the whip is the ‘cracking of the whip’ in his marriage- hence domination and the battle of the sexes. Gandalf carries his staff in his left hand and a sword in his right. The clue to the symbolism and symmetry is in the fact that they both carry a sword in their right hands. They are both asserting that their point of view in the dailectic, the conversation, is right but handedness is reversed depending on that point of view. As we can see in the statement regarding points of view and mirrors in the diagram below. It is further complicated by the reversal of orientation which occurs when Gandalf is found facing the Balrog looking west. The Devil has engineered this. This was the whole point of the Chamber of Mazarbul and brings me to why I knew that there was a mirror in the narrative and that the letters of the monogram run down through the Chamber of Mazarbul, and how I could make my latest predictions on the homepage regarding Seth’s book. We’ll look at that mirror in the diagram surrounding Gimli’s chant later. I knew where to look for the plane of symmetry: in the Chamber itself. Gandalf’s staff is destroyed. Gandalf is therefore holding the left wing with his left hand. Gandalf holding the Balrog’s left wing with his left hand is a statement that his left hand is the correct orientation and point of view, not the Balrog’s. (The answer to why that is, can be found in the opening of The Turn in Practice. It involves the Music and following Eru’s plan). It’s an act of domination since the hand symbolizes the will and to hold with the hand symbolizes rule, mastery and domination. Because of the geometry, orientation is fundamental to all of the symbolism in the narrative and hints at why mirrors and symmetry appear so frequently in Tolkien’s writings.
So what is so important about the left hand? The left hand is created first in the Music of the Ainur, it is the elder and therefore carries the authority because it is closest to the origin, which is God, Ilúvatar. This involves the Two World of the Mystic Talmud, alef and bet, and how Tolkien chose to incorporate his marriage and relationship with Edith as Sacred Geometry and the Music of the Spheres. Essentially the Balrog is a female masquerading as a male because it seeks domination and the silencing of the other. Gandalf keeps referring to the Balrog as Him. It’s a hint. Even though the female is the elder, silencing the other is contrary to God’s will, because it stops the conversation and closes the door which allows passage towards God and higher planes of understanding. In the astronomical geometry, that is symbolized as the day when the Sun is dominant. We have an attempt at a gender swap, a role reversal in the marriage which is inherent in the seizure of both hands and sides of the conversation. When the female left hand wants to dominate she takes on the male characteristics, and when the male wants to dominate he takes on female characteristics. Their positions become reversed- which is echoed in the astronomical courses. The male is physically larger, and stronger- he has physical power, and sternness which is an ability to use fatherly controlled force; the sword. The female is eldest, the guiding star and is the motherly voice of authority in counsel; the shield. The attempt at domination is an attempt to ignore the place of man and woman in God’s divine order. Consider this a Catholic’s set of sociological observations about the roles in marriage, about modern secular society, vis a vis the teachings of the Catholic Church. But we have one key difference, a reversal of the male primacy dogma of the Creation of Man and Woman. And this is why the Witch-King, a male seeking to be female is slain by Eowyn a female seeking to be male. The origins of that go back to the Akallabêth (She That is Fallen) culminating in the seizure of the sceptre by Ar-Pharazôn. More elsewhere.
But why is she wrathful we might ask? The clue is in the asymmetry of the West Gate and in the North Gate- that being the crescent Moons to either side of the Door on the West Gate, and the two raised left hands in the Statues of 
the Argonath. The two gates are paired together as in the geometry of the map left. The statues of Isildur and Anorien are clear references to the Moon and Sun. Anárion in Quenya means “sun-son”. Isildur the elder son of Elendil, is a Quenya name, meaning “Servant of the Moon” (Ithil “Moon” + -dur “servant”). They looked north so their left arms correspond to the Hill of Seeing if we look southwards, which makes them right arms. For an explanation of why we should interpret them oriented south see ‘The Turn in Practice‘. In addition, as stated, Seeing and sight is of the right hand of the geometry, hearing is of the left hand. And the right hand is the male. The asymmetry is why Frodo in fact sees AND HEARS while he is on the Hill of Seeing. The two voices symbolize the two counsels of Good and Evil, of Gandalf and Sauron which influence the inner mind, oré, and looking southwards the Hill of Seeing corresponds to the right hand oré as laid out in the geometry of the West Gate previously. Therefore the statues are displaying the same asymmetry as on the West Gate. In both Gates the Sun, the female is absent. And in the dialectic which the geometry represents, the woman therefore has been silenced. This is why the female is wrathful. So where is the wrathful female in the North Gate? The waterfall of Rauros symbolizes the wrathful female. We can’t go too much into the proofs but a large clue is to be found when the Sun is first created:
| Then Anar arose in glory, and the first dawn of the Sun was like a great fire upon the towers of the Pelóri: the clouds of Middle-earth were kindled, and there was heard the sound of many waterfalls. |
We have no explanation whatever why many waterfalls were heard. The explanation involves Tolkien’s implementation of Alchemy. Goldberry is Time, and as Time she is Water and Air. In short she is ‘weather’. Bombadil as Space, symbolizes Earth and Fire. And between the West and North Gate we have Rhovanion and Galadriel and Celebrimbor. Galadriel symbolizes the wrathful female in between those two gates and this is why she is seen to raise both of her arms at their parting, and as mentioned, we find the word ‘piercing’. And in the boat which approaches the Fellowship she is sat in the stern, and as I have said sternness is a male attributed. Tolkien is punning on stern here. The boat (and ships generally) is itself a metaphor for the geometry.
| Then it seemed to Frodo that she lifted her arms in a final farewell, and far but piercing-clear on the following wind came the sound of her voice singing. … beneath the blue vaults of Varda wherein the stars tremble in the song of her voice, holy and queenly. Who now shall refill the cup for me? For now the Kindler, Varda, the Queen of the Stars, from Mount Everwhite has uplifted her hands like clouds, and all paths are drowned deep in shadow; |
Tolkien described Galadriel interestingly in Unfinished Tales:
| “even among the Eldar she was accounted beautiful, and her hair was held a marvel unmatched. It was golden like the hair of her father and of her foremother Indis, but richer and more radiant, for its gold was touched by some memory of the starlike silver of her mother; and the Eldar said that the light of the Two Trees, Laurelin and Telperion, had been snared in her tresses. Many thought that this saying first gave to Feanor the thought of imprisoning and blending the light of the Trees that later took shape in his hands as the Silmarils.” |
The suggestions in the language are clear: ensnare and imprison. And again Tolkien mentions the hand, the hand of Feanor the most wilful of all Middle-Earth’s Children. Feanor wants to imprison the light and Galdriel’s hair has done likewise. The same imprisonment we saw in Pohjola’s stone mountain. Feanor’s desire for a lock of her hair is courtly love and amorous pursuit. This is the Battle of the Sexes between two very wilful characters. The fact that her hair has the light of both symbolizes that she has silenced the voice of the other hand in the dialectic.
| snare (n.1) |
| “noose for catching animals,” late Old English, from a Scandinavian source such as Old Norse snara “noose, snare,” related to soenri “twisted rope,” from Proto-Germanic *snarkho (source also of Middle Dutch snare, Dutch snaar, Old High German snare, German Schnur “noose, cord,” Old English snear “a string, cord”). Figuratively from c. 1300. |
| tress (n.) |
| c. 1300, “long lock of hair,” from Old French tresse “a plait or braid of hair” (12c.), of uncertain origin, perhaps from Vulgar Latin *trichia “braid, rope,” from Greek trikhia “rope,” from thrix (genitive trikhos) “hair.” Related: Tresses. |
Braid and plait give us something twisted. (braid (v.) “to plait, knit, weave, twist together,”). We’ll see that again shortly in our discussion of the Moria passage.
We might ask, why would hands and arms be symbolic of the man and woman, of the geometry of right and left? The two sides of the geometry represent free will of man and woman created by God, Ilúvatar, and the two worlds of the Mystic Talmud. The hand has 5 fingers. Five is the number of the will in Tolkien’s symbolism. And the hand is the instrument in the world which affects change. We can see a clear association of the hand with the number 5 in the unusual hand with 5 fingers in ‘Wickedness’. Wickedness is the dissolute will. The Ring, and all of the Rings of Power of course are worn on the hand and through it, the Enemy influences the will, through his counsel.
|
He unfastened it and handed it slowly to the wizard. |
We see that handing it to someone else’s care is a matter of will, which the Ring begins to control. This is why Tolkien uses the word ‘handing’ more than once, because the hand is the instrument of the will. At root, the free will of right and left hands in the geometry. The grip of the Ring is the hand of the Enemy seizing the hand of the wearer. Will acting on will. The Ring binds the finger, shackles the hand and spirit, it becomes a prison for the will. And we see that finger is ‘probably’ from ‘five’:
| finger (n.) |
|
“terminal or digital member of the hand” (in a restricted sense not including the thumb), Old English finger, fingor “finger,” from Proto-Germanic *fingraz (source also of Old Saxon fingar, Old Frisian finger, Old Norse fingr, Dutch vinger, German Finger, Gothic figgrs “finger”), with no cognates outside Germanic; perhaps ultimately from PIE root *penkwe- “five.” As a unit of measure for liquor and gunshot (late Old English) it represents the breadth of a finger, about three-quarters of an inch. They generally are numbered from the thumb outward, and named index finger, fool’s finger, leech- or physic-finger, and ear-finger. |
Why has the woman been silenced? When? It all begins at the Creation of Arda itself. Arda was created with some confusion because of the Discords of Melkor. This is why Illuin was placed in the north and Telperion was considered the elder and was created first. This theme underpins all of the geometry throughout the entire histories. (see ‘The Turn in Practice‘). As I’ve stated, it’s all about the dialectic between Tolkien, Edith, under God. The map of the Lord of the Rings is a symbolic landscape. And in order to understand the symbolism you must turn the map on its head. The landscape was created at the Downfall of Númenor. The Cataclysm is also know as ‘She That is Fallen’. The ‘She’ is Womankind. The Battle of Wills between Man and and Woman is explored in his story of Aldarion and Erendis, which provides a backdrop to the Akallabêth in the Silmarillion. Both man and woman are wilful but ultimately the male dominates, which finds its ultimate act in the seizure of the Sceptre from Tar-Miriel by Ar-Pharazôn. The inner spiritual reality is manifested in the geographic features of the Lord of the Rings map. The Y shape of the divergent wills can be found primarily in two important places in the Akallabêth. The first I predicted (Prediction #37, see Tolkien Predictions on this site) would occur in the fifth generation of the Line of Kings based on my understanding of the number 5 symbolizing the will. The second you can see in Elendil’s sons, Isildur and Anarion in which you can clearly see the left and right hands of Sun and Moon. (I have written a full analysis of the entire Line of Kings which will appear on this site). Tolkien also assigns Boromir and Faramir to the left and right hands. See ‘The Turn in Practice‘.
The separation of the light from the tree is manifested on many levels throughout the narrative. One of which is the change in the language which changes ‘Tar’ to ‘Ar’. That change is the linguistic equivalent of the splitting of the light from the tree. The Tree is the letter ‘T’ and ‘ar’ is symbolic of the Sun. The great ‘Sun of Love’ that Tolkien writes of in his wedding poem. The Sun is the female, and she is silenced. Hence, She That is Fallen. This is symptomatic of the spiritual confusion which is hastened by Annatar. This confusion is further manifested in the language in the name of Ar-Pharazôn ‘The Golden’. Ar refers to the Sun which is female but Ar-Pharazôn is male and this swapping of hand orientation is continued with the Witch-King and Eowyn narrative.
We know that Tolkien converted Edith to the Catholic faith- and we know that he had many years of struggle to keep her on the path. The Y shape represents the two horns shape that we see implied in the West Gate geometry as 
indicated. That symbolizes divergent wills and it appears on the right hand next to the flame in ‘Before’ which I’ve suggested has two raised arms. Two raised arms is symbolized by the Y shape, and indeed the letter ‘Y’ in his alphabet. It is the same two raised hands of Ilúvatar in the Music of the Ainur. We’ve talked about wrath and the flames and colouring of the scene strongly suggest this too. The geometry on the West Gate has a third route making it a trefoil. That route is the Straight Road. That road leads to the Door. The Door closes when we have divergent wills, and we are left with the Y shape. And that’s why we see Moons to either side of the Door at the West Gate and no Sun. And we see the hammer and anvil in the centre of the diamond shape on the West Gate. The hammer we shall see shortly can be identified with the Enemy in the narrative of the Dwarves. The diamond symbolizes the hearts turned to stone, a heart of stone and can also be viewed as a stone across the Door blocking it.
The sexuality very much echoed what I’d found in the period since finding the dagaz geometry. The Door, dagaz is also the female vagina, sex. This seems natural if you consider that his whole mathematical Sacred Geometry is built around his marriage and his relationship with his wife under God. And the Sun and Moon are in union at the hour of twilight. That union is not limited to, but includes sex. The pictures Before and Afterwards describe life and the Afterlife. Before is life. And the Door is Death’s Door which is the Paths of the Dead that Aragorn has to pass through. Therefore the door is death. And the orgasm has been described as ‘the little death’. The butterfly rune dagaz means ‘day’ and we see:
| day (n.) |
|
Old English dæg “period during which the sun is above the horizon,” also “lifetime, definite time of existence,” from Proto-Germanic *dages- “day” (source also of Old Saxon, Middle Dutch, Dutch dag, Old Frisian di, dei, Old High German tag, German Tag, Old Norse dagr, Gothic dags), according to Watkins, from PIE root *agh- “a day.” He adds that the Germanic initial d- is “of obscure origin.” But Boutkan says it is from PIE root *dhegh- “to burn” (see fever). Not considered to be related to Latin dies (which is from PIE root *dyeu- “to shine”). Meaning originally, in English, “the daylight hours;” it expanded to mean “the 24-hour period” in late Anglo-Saxon times. The day formerly began at sunset, hence Old English Wodnesniht was what we would call “Tuesday night.” Names of the weekdays were not regularly capitalized in English until 17c. From late 12c. as “a time period as distinguished from other time periods.” Day-by-day “daily” is from late 14c.; all day “all the time” is from late 14c. Day off “day away from work” is attested from 1883; day-tripper first recorded 1897. The days in nowadays, etc. is a relic of the Old English and Middle English use of the adverbial genitive. |
We see both lifetime and ‘to burn’. And we see the two flames burning, both representing the mortal man and woman. ‘Before’ is the fear of death- the colours of red and black are colours of the Enemy- clearly throughout his works. The figure with wings is the ‘angel of death’ or the spectre of death which is created in the mind of Man by the lies of the Enemy. And ‘Afterwards’ is the ‘happy turn’, the Eucatastrophe where we turn left, or to the West. The very different colouring of ‘Afterwards’ reveals the Truth: golden light, no doubt a dawning light and the blue of water on the floor, the same water that is the Music of the Ainur at the beginning. The dance of Bombadil and Goldberry in the Cottage is symbolic of sex of this union at twilight. We are warned before that:
| Tom’s going on ahead candles for to kindle. Down west sinks the Sun: soon you will be groping. When the night-shadows fall, then the door will open, |
The Door opens when the Sun (Goldberry) sinks and you will be ‘groping’. He says ‘you’ because ‘we’ would be too obvious and ‘you’ symbolizes his wife as the letter ‘U’ (‘You’). More below.
| grope (v.) |
| late Old English grapian “to feel about (as one blind or in darkness),” also “take hold of, seize, touch, attain,” related to gripan “grasp at” (see gripe (v.)). Transitive sense “search out by sense of touch alone” was in late Old English. Figurative sense is from early 14c. Indecent sense “touch (someone) amorously, play with, fondle” (marked as “obsolete” in OED 2nd edition) is from c. 1200. Related: Groped; groping. |
At the end of the dance Bombadil hops through a Door, and note just before it he lights a candle and lights it with Goldberry’s flame:
| ‘And let us have food and drink!’ cried Tom. ‘Long tales are thirsty. And long listening’s hungry work, morning, noon, and evening!’ With that he jumped out of his chair, and with a bound took a candle from the chimney-shelf and lit it in the flame that Goldberry held; then he danced about the table. Suddenly he hopped through the door and disappeared. Quickly he returned, bearing a large and laden tray. Then Tom and Goldberry set the table; and the hobbits sat half in wonder and half in laughter: so fair was the grace of Goldberry and so merry and odd the caperings of Tom. Yet in some fashion they seemed to weave a single dance, neither hindering the other, in and out of the room, and round about the table; and with great speed food and vessels and lights were set in order. The boards blazed with candles, white and yellow. Tom bowed to his guests. ‘Supper is ready,’ said Goldberry; and now the hobbits saw that she was clothed all in silver with a white girdle, and her shoes were like fishes’ mail. But Tom was all in clean blue, blue as rain-washed forget-me-nots, and he had green stockings. |
We encountered ‘to burn’ and we see the flames of ‘Before’ are part of their dance. Their dance symbolizes the weaving dance of the courses of the Sun and Moon, of the two spirals in ‘Before’, and the entwined trees of the wedding poem. The room here symbolizes Arda, with entry into and out of the room via the Doors of Night and the Gates of Morn. And Tolkien describes the Sun and Moon as vessels.
| Know then that to such vast heights did the Sunship climb, and climbing blazed ever hotter and brighter, that ere long its glory was wider than ever the Gods conceived of when that vessel was still harboured in their midst. … Therefore did the Gods let send to Aule’s halls, for there was a great silver charger, like to a table of the giants, and they set the latest bloom of Silpion upon it, and despite its hurts its glory and fragrance and pale magic were very great indeed. Now when Lorien had mastered his grief and ruth he spake the counsel that Ulmo’s words had called to his heart: that the Gods build another vessel to match the galleon of the Sun, “and it shall be made from the Rose of Silpion,” said he, “and in memory of the waxing and waning of these Trees for twelve hours shall the Sunship sail the heavens and leave Valinor, and for twelve shall Silpion’s pale bark mount the skies, and there shall be rest for tired eyes and weary hearts.” This then was the manner of the shaping of the Moon, |
Tolkien uses the word manner here for good reason. I have already said that the left and right are Sun and Moon and handedness according to the left and right sides of the geometry.
| manner (n.) |
|
c. 1200, manere, “kind, sort, variety,” from Anglo-French manere, Old French maniere “fashion, method, manner, way; appearance, bearing; custom” (12c., Modern French manière), from Vulgar Latin *manaria (source of Spanish manera, Portuguese maneira, Italian maniera), from fem. of Latin manuarius “belonging to the hand,” from manus “hand” (from PIE root *man- (2) “hand”). The French word also was borrowed by Dutch (manier), German (manier), Swedish (maner). Meaning “customary practice” is from c. 1300. Senses of “way of doing something; a personal habit or way of doing; way of conducting oneself toward others” are from c. 1300. Meaning “specific nature, form, way something happens” is mid-14c. Of literature, art, etc., “way in which a work is made or executed,” from 1660s. Most figurative meanings derive from the original sense “method of handling” which was extended when the word was used to translate Latin modus “method.” |
And he uses the word manner to describe the astrological variations and phenomena that describe the motions of the Sun and Moon and the heavens:
|
Now the Gates of Morn open also before Urwendi only, and the word she speaks is the same that she utters at the Door of Night, but it is reversed. |
Thus the movements of the Sun and Moon are described with a reference to the hands, which indicates the geometry. And we see another reference to longing in the etymology of ‘wistful’.
| wistful (adj.) |
| 1610s, “closely attentive,” perhaps from obsolete wistly “intently” (c. 1500), of uncertain origin. Perhaps formed on the model of wishful. Middle English wistful meant “bountiful, well-supplied,” from Old English wist “provisions.” The meaning of “longingly pensive, musing” is by 1714. Related: Wistfully; wistfulness. |
From wist be find stretching again which we’ve already described as symbolizing the plane of the hypotenuse.
| intent (n.) |
| “purpose,” early 13c., from Old French entent, entente “goal, end, aim, purpose; attention, application,” and directly from Latin intentus “a stretching out,” in Late Latin “intention, purpose,” noun use of past participle of intendere “stretch out, lean toward, strain,” literally “to stretch out” (see intend). In law, “state of mind with respect to intelligent volition” (17c.). |
Tolkien chose this word in order to convey that the Sun and Moon when they mingle, they meet on the plane of the hypotenuse. The plane of the hypotenuse is invoked at the time of twilight, when both Sun and Moon are in the sky. So that agrees well. And we find that wish is very much related to the will:
| will (v.1) |
|
Old English *willan, wyllan “to wish, desire; be willing; be used to; be about to” (past tense wolde), from Proto-Germanic *willjan (source also of Old Saxon willian, Old Norse vilja, Old Frisian willa, Dutch willen, Old High German wellan, German wollen, Gothic wiljan “to will, wish, desire,” Gothic waljan “to choose”). The Germanic words are from PIE root *wel- (2) “to wish, will” (source also of Sanskrit vrnoti “chooses, prefers,” varyah “to be chosen, eligible, excellent,” varanam “choosing;” Avestan verenav- “to wish, will, choose;” Greek elpis “hope;” Latin volo, velle “to wish, will, desire;” Old Church Slavonic voljo, voliti “to will,” veljo, veleti “to command;” Lithuanian velyti “to wish, favor,” pa-velmi “I will,” viliuos “I hope;” Welsh gwell “better”). Compare also Old English wel “well,” literally “according to one’s wish;” wela “well-being, riches.” The use as a future auxiliary was already developing in Old English. The implication of intention or volition distinguishes it from shall, which expresses or implies obligation or necessity. Contracted forms, especially after pronouns, began to appear 16c., as in sheele for “she will.” In early use often -ile to preserve pronunciation. The form with an apostrophe (‘ll) is from 17c. |
We have vessels and lights set in order. He also describes the stars as vessels.
| Others there were whose vessels were like translucent lamps set quivering above the world, |
And he also describes the Trees of Kortirion as vessels. The Trees of Kortirion later becomes the Two Trees, and the Trees in ‘The Land of Pohja’.
| Now are thy trees, old Grey Kortirion, Through pallid mists seen rising tall and wan, Like vessels floating vague, and drifting far |
We see the trees the first suggestion of the trees of Kortirion in the illustration ‘Eeriness’. And in them we have later the Sun and Moon. The Sun and Moon are Edith and Tolkien and in The Lost Play poems, You and I, which are the letters ‘U’ an ‘I’ in his alphabet. You and I are in the Cottage of Lost Play which is in the same place that Kortirrion occupies in the mythology. This supports the statement that ‘Down west sinks the Sun: soon you will be groping’ refers to Edith and refers to the sexual subtext of the dance around the table. The table about which Bombadil and Goldberry dance symbolizes the same table as that on which Silpion is set. The reference to ‘the vessels and light were set in order’ refers to two things. Firstly it refers to who is the Elder of the two (the order of their creation), and it also refers to the interweaving of them both.
| order (n.) |
|
c. 1200, “body of persons living under a religious discipline,” from Old French ordre “position, estate; rule, regulation; religious order” (11c.), from earlier ordene, from Latin ordinem (nominative ordo) “row, line, rank; series, pattern, arrangement, routine,” originally “a row of threads in a loom,” from Proto-Italic *ordn- “row, order” (source also of ordiri “to begin to weave;” compare primordial), which is of uncertain origin. Watkins suggests it is a variant of PIE root *ar- “to fit together,” and De Vaan finds this “semantically attractive.” The original English word reflects a medieval notion: “a system of parts subject to certain uniform, established ranks or proportions,” and was used of everything from architecture to angels. Old English expressed many of the same ideas with endebyrdnes. From the notion of “formal disposition or array, methodical or harmonious arrangement” comes the meaning “fit or consistent collocation of parts” (late 14c.). Meaning “a rank in the (secular) community” is first recorded c. 1300. Sense of “a regular sequence or succession” is from lare 14c. The meaning “command, directive” is first recorded 1540s, from the notion of “that which keep things in order.” Military and honorary orders grew out of the fraternities of Crusader knights. The business and commerce sense of “a written direction to pay money or deliver property” is attested by 1837; as “a request for food or drink in a restaurant” from 1836. In natural history, as a classification of living things next below class and next above family, it is recorded from 1760. Meaning “condition of a community which is under the rule of law” is from late 15c. In order “in proper sequence or arrangement” is from c. 1400; out of order “not in proper sequence or orderly arrangement” is from 1540s; since 20c. principally mechanical, but not originally so (“and so home, and there find my wife mightily out of order, and reproaching of Mrs. Pierce and Knipp as wenches, and I know not what,” – Pepys, diary, Aug. 6, 1666). Phrase in order to “for the purpose of” (1650s) preserves etymological notion of “sequence.” In short order “without delay” is from 1834, American English; order of battle “arrangement and disposition of an army or fleet for the purposes of engagement” is from 1769. The scientific/mathematical order of magnitude is attested from 1723. |
The table has a special symbolic significance for Tolkien. It symbolizes the two planes of the letter ‘T’, which equate to the opposite and adjacent sides of the triangle. If you look at the letter ‘T’ you can imagine a one-legged table. That’s the same one-legged table in the riddle No-Legs in the Hobbit: Time and Space. Which are Goldberry and Bombadil- the Sun and Moon. This is twilight, and here in this symbolic dance day moves to night. And this is why Tolkien tells us their livery. Goldberry is actually wearing the livery of Bombadil. This equates to the crossing over of handedness we see in the diagram of the course of the Sun and Moon above, and the rotation of 90 degrees. More elsewhere on this site.
And where is the candle on the monogram? We can see the flame at the top of the monogram. That is symbolic of the soul passing through the Door to the Afterlife. This is not ‘merely’ sex but the mythologized relationship of Tolkien and his wife Edith: the rhythms of life and death; the mysteries of Time and Space. I think you can guess what ‘long tales’ are and what the ‘nightly noises’ are which the hobbits are told not to fear. They are both sex and death. The Hobbits symbolize Tolkien and Edith’s children in the Bombadil passage.
And finally the raised two arms in the flaming figure on the floor opposite the right hand flame in ‘Before’ is symbolic of the crossing over between right and left hands of the influence of the devil; the discords.
Returning to the geometry of the triangle and the creation of the diverging two sides of the triangle by the discords of the Enemy.
|
while Genesis is separated by we do not know how many sad exiled generations from the Fall, but certainly there was an Eden on this very unhappy earth. We all long for it, |
The divergence between the two planes of the opposite and adjacent from the origin (God) describes geometrically this ‘many sad exiled generations’ and as we’ll see in this essay, the longing is the yearning of man and woman to 
return to the origin at the top of the triangle with God, and becomes as one in God. And the hypotenuse is a geometric expression of this longing. The length of the hypotenuse equates to the degree of separation between man and woman from each other and their distance from God. Therefore Tolkien is punning on ‘long’ as both to yearn for in the heart, and the length of the plane of the hypotenuse. In his wedding poem he writes: “like planted hearts in the great Sun of Love so long”. We can also see the ‘X’ shape in the arms of the tree on the right. That is the Enemy who seeks to close the Door permanently. He seeks to lead you off the straight and narrow path, astray into the many distractions of this world; create a false door which leaves the conversation and marriage into pleasing the self. Turning left at the Door clearly takes you to the prototypical Kortirion, which agrees with the left TURN of ‘Afterwards’. In Eeriness this is in the West, left. To the right we see the evil looking tree. Right would equate to the East.
| Now living Men may not tread the swaying threads of Ilweran and few of the Eldar have the heart, yet other paths for Elves and Men to fare to Valinor are there none since those days save one alone, and it is very dark; yet is it very short, the shortest and swiftest of all roads, and very rough, for Mandos made it and Fui set it in its place. Qalvanda is it called, the Road of Death, and it leads only to the halls of Mandos and Fui. Twofold is it, and one way tread the Elves and the other the souls of Men, and never do they mingle.’ |
And we have another facet to it. He is also punning on a sexual meaning. They each make the other ‘long’ for them, hence ‘long tales are thirsty’ in the Bombadil passage. The phrase ‘long tales are thirsty’ makes no grammatical sense but Tolkien disguises it next to ‘And long listening’s hungry work…” which does make sense. But the fact still remains that the first phrase does not make sense. And the second phrase is used as a very subtle hint of something amiss. It’s of the order of subtlety of Tolkien referring to the Balrog as Him. Tolkien hides things under our noses constantly as Preth’s discoveries attest to. And this is supported by the observation of the phallus in the right hand male flame in ‘Before’. That flame is the right hand, Bombadil-Tolkien-Space. The clues at to the sexual subtext revolves around Bombadil being described by Goldberry as both ‘Master’ and ‘the Master’. It’s extremely subtle and the only way you can have any chance whatever of solving the riddle is to look at the etymology of every single word he ever uses, and make the important leap of realizing that his illustrations are also part of the riddle game. I began with the etymology and only later realized that the illustrations were also riddles and part of a unified whole. Then I discovered the symbolic map. Goldberry here describes him as ‘the Master’ twice and then as simply ‘master’ once. The lack of capitalization in the last occurrence is the subtlest of clues. He has already been described twice with the capitalization. The riddle going on here is with the reader, and Tolkien hints at that with Frodo’s opening ‘Tell me, if my asking does not seem foolish’. He explicitly stated that Bombadil was a riddle.
| ‘Tell me, if my asking does not seem foolish, who is Tom Bombadil?’ ‘He is,’ said Goldberry, staying her swift movements and smiling. Frodo looked at her questioningly. ‘He is, as you have seen him,’ she said in answer to his look. ‘He is the Master of wood, water, and hill.’ ‘Then all this strange land belongs to him?’ ‘No indeed!’ she answered, and her smile faded. ‘That would indeed be a burden,’ she added in a low voice, as if to herself. ‘The trees and the grasses and all things growing or living in the land belong each to themselves. Tom Bombadil is the Master. No one has ever caught old Tom walking in the forest, wading in the water, leaping on the hill-tops under light and shadow. He has no fear. Tom Bombadil is master.’ A door opened and in came Tom Bombadil. He had now no hat and his thick brown hair was crowned with autumn leaves. He laughed, and going to Goldberry, took her hand. ‘Here’s my pretty lady!’ he said, bowing to the hobbits. ‘Here’s my Goldberry clothed all in silver-green with flowers in her girdle! |
And the joke on the reader is continued:
|
pretty (adj.) |
|
Old English prættig (West Saxon), pretti (Kentish), *prettig (Mercian) “cunning, skillful, artful, wily, astute,” from prætt, *prett “a trick, wile, craft,” from Proto-Germanic *pratt- (source also of Old Norse prettr “a trick,” prettugr “tricky;” Frisian pret, Middle Dutch perte, Dutch pret “trick, joke,” Dutch prettig “sportive, funny,” Flemish pertig “brisk, clever”), of unknown origin. Connection between Old English and Middle English words is uncertain, but if they are the same, meaning had shifted by c. 1400 to “manly, gallant,” and later moved via “attractive, skillfully made,” to “fine,” to “beautiful in a slight way” (mid-15c.). Ironical use from 1530s. For sense evolution, compare nice, silly. Also used of bees (c. 1400). “After the OE. period the word is unknown till the 15th c., when it becomes all at once frequent in various senses, none identical with the OE., though derivable from it” [OED]. Meaning “not a few, considerable” is from late 15c. With a sense of “moderately,” qualifying adjectives and adverbs, since 1560s. Pretty please as an emphatic plea is attested from 1902. A pretty penny “lot of money” is first recorded 1768. Pretty applies to that which has symmetry and delicacy, a diminutive beauty, without the higher qualities of gracefulness, dignity, feeling, purpose, etc. A thing not small of its kind may be called pretty if it is of little dignity or consequence: as a pretty dress or shade of color; but pretty is not used of men or their belongings, except in contempt. [Century Dictionary, 1900] |
She has just answered the readers’ question which Frodo voiced and replied regarding him being the Master, and master. And she said that ‘as if to herself’..that is Tolkien hinting at the deeply private nature of what she is referring to here. “No one has ever caught old Tom walking in the forest, wading in the water, leaping on the hill-tops…”. In other words nobody has ever solved Tolkien’s riddles and nobody has ever discovered the sexual subtext either. And note that immediately after she says ‘he is master’, Tom comes in through a door. Not ‘the door’, ‘A door’. The Door is in sexual terms the vagina. And he phrases it so that ‘A door’ appears right next to the preceding sentences. He laughs and then takes her hand (which we know to be a hint at the handedness of the geometry), and describes her as ‘pretty’, which we know the real meaning of. And what’s more Tolkien then mentions what she is wearing which foreshadows the sexual scene where they interweave around the table. This foreshadowing and linking is classic Tolkien method which is covered in great depth in ‘The Turn in Practice‘ surrounding the development of the characters of Faramir and Boromir. Things get quite risqué but we’ll leave that for a more in-depth discussion. Her description of him as master of wood, water and hill is also part of the sexual subtext. And we note that the dreams of the hobbits are surrounding a hill, the wood of the tree old Man Willow, and rising water. And this links the nightly noises to the sexual subtext in this passage. I think you’ll agree, it is an extremely difficult and subtle lock to spring. Just like the anagrams that he left which Preth discovered. And we’ve only recently encountered tricky in another relevant quote regarding the dances of Bombadil and Goldberry. The Moon is described as fickle. ‘wherefore is it that he is often less timely than the Sun and is more fickle. ‘We know that to be Tolkien. He is of course the Master who has never been caught. We wouldn’t know that without looking at the etymology:
| fickle (adj.) |
|
c. 1200, “false, treacherous, deceptive, deceitful, crafty” (obsolete), probably from Old English ficol “deceitful, cunning, tricky,” related to befician “deceive,” and to facen “deceit, treachery; blemish, fault.” Common Germanic (compare Old Saxon fekan “deceit,” Old High German feihhan “deceit, fraud, treachery“), from the same source as foe. Sense of “changeable, inconstant, unstable” is from c. 1300 (especially of Fortune and women). Related: Fickleness. Fickly (c. 1300) is rare or obsolete. Also with a verb form in Middle English, fikelen “to deceive, flatter,” later “to puzzle, perplex,” which survived long enough in Northern dialects to get into Scott’s novels. Fikel-tonge (late 14c.) was an allegorical or character name for “one who speaks falsehoods.” |
The closed circle is hell, the Ring, the Iron Crown; Space without Time, Tolkien without Edith. And we can see that repentance works spirally. The spiral is in the interaction of Time and Space and therefore requires both Edith and Tolkien. In this situation, the Door is functioning. Tolkien talks about Recovery in ‘On Fairy Stories’. Recovery is in geometric terms the same point in Space, but on a higher rational plane. In other words Time allows travel upwards or downwards. Therefore Time is the vertical axis in his world. Space is the horizontal axis. And we see that the bottom is the bitter bottom: hell. In the previous quotation from On Fairy Stories, Tolkien talks about the Straight Road which leads to recovery: “But the true road of escape from such weariness”. And that road requires a heart, which we see in ‘Eeriness’ (left) and in the heart-shaped rock in the West Gate (above) etc.
We can see Tolkien’s numerology in his Epigraph; the 3, 7 and 9. But it is much more developed than that. He lays out his number symbolism in the Chain of Angainor. My prediction #28 involves Bombadil and Goldberry and the Chain. I have made a number of predictions related to the numerology. One example of his numerology is in the Moria sequence. We are told that the Watcher in the Water has 21 arms. The 21st hall plays a pivotal role in the narrative. Gimli’s chant is delivered there. And we note that oré the letter that is at the top right of the Door on the West Gate is the 21 st letter of the Tengwar. In the appendices to The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien describes it as óre heart (inner mind) and we know that it refers to the counsel of the heart from Vinyar Tengwar 41.
| Óre is also the name in Quenya of the twenty-first letter of the Tengwar alphabet.[1] It is the first letter of the sixth grade or Tyellë, which contains “semi-vocalic” consonants and it is the sixth letter in the dental or t-series of consonants, the Tincotéma. In most modes this letter represents weak or untrilled R (usually used medially or at the end of words).[4] However, in the Mode of Beleriand, as in the inscription on the West-gate of Moria, this letter represents N.[5] The Westron name for this letter is Ar.[6] [Tolkien Gateway, óre] |
And we know that 3 and 7 are the numbers of the Elves and Dwarves in relation to the Rings of power. And they are both bound up in the narrative of Moria and the creation of the Gate. 3 x 7 just happens to be 21. We don’t have to time to go into it here, but note the mention of untrilled R. More elsewhere on this site. And here we see the mathematics again, of multiplication. And we see the two twisting arms of the trees around the two pillars on the West Gate. These are the same two Trees of the wedding poem, which we’ve identified as multiplication. But we know that the trees also suggest the arms of the Watcher in the water. and we know that it has 21 arms. Therefore we can equate the two trees twisting around the pillars as symbolizing the 3 and 7 of the Elves and Dwarves. The two trees of their genealogies, of their narratives. And this is supported in the intimation in the scene at the West Gate:
| ‘What was the thing, or were there many of them? ‘ ‘I do not know,’ answered Gandalf, ‘but the arms were all guided by one purpose. |
Hands, arms and wings all symbolize the same thing in the geometry, right and left handedness, that being the will. Therefore the collective wills are all controlled by a single will. The Enemy. This is the same ‘thing’ as the ‘nothing’ of the hole of the Balrog that Seth identifies as ‘nothing more’, correctly I believe, as the Balrog. If ‘thing’ has its root in ‘stretch’ and therefore is found on the hypotenuse, and thing means counsel, meeting, then ‘nothing’ will mean that there is no meeting. The conversation of the two hearts, the two wills, in the dialectic takes place on the hypotenuse, and if there is no meeting, then there is no conversation. This agrees very well with the domination of the Enemy.
We can also see a large number of instances of the number 5 in the Moria sequence and in the background story of Elvers and Dwarves. Prediction #20 was that Celebrimbor was Feanor’s fifth son. I predicted that because of Tolkien’s numerology and the role of the will in the narrative of Feanor ending in Celebrimbor. Celebrimbor created the Rings of Power and we have just observed their relevance as 3 x 7 giving 21. And the number 5 symbolizes ‘the will’ and the Enemy influenced the will of Celebrimbor in the forging of the Rings of Power. Iron is the fifth link in the chain of Angainor. We can view this symbolism idiomatically as ‘iron will’, unyielding, obstinate to the point of destructiveness. All traits of Celebrimbor’s grandfather Feanor whose star also appears on the West Gate. The number 5 therefore is linked with the Devil for obvious reasons. The Battle of the sexes exists because of the influence of the devil, the discords of Melkor. The very course of the Sun and Moon exist because of this. And we know that oré (inner mind) appears on the West Gate- which, we read in V.T 41 is where the the counsel of God or the Enemy is heard. Indeed the separation of Time and Space into 
the geometry exist because of the separation created by the diverging wills as stated. The hand in ‘Wickedness’ curiously has 5 fingers. This symbolizes the will. The shape of the two horns we can see on the cliff face as the bull’s head, in page five of the Book of Mazarbul (again the number 5), derives from the ancient form of the number 5. We can understand this idiomatically as ‘the horns of a dilemma’.
| dilemma (n.) |
|
1520s in rhetoric (see below), from Late Latin dilemma, from Greek dilemma “double proposition,” a technical term in rhetoric, from di- “two” (see di- (1)) + lemma “premise, anything received or taken,” from root of lambanein “to take” (see lemma). A form of argument in which it is shown that whoever maintains a certain proposition must accept one or other of two alternative conclusions, and that each of these involves the denial of the proposition in question. [Century Dictionary] |
Remember the dialectic is a conversation between man and woman. This forcing between one or the other is the devil preventing man and woman both voices being heard. There is no harmony in music without two strains. When one is silenced the Door closes. The Straight Road is a union of both together. A meeting in the middle under God. There are many occurrences of the number 5. The stairs that the Fellowship run down eastward from the Chamber of Mazarbul consists of 7 flights of fifty or more steps. Remember any multiple of 5 symbolizes 5. This symbolizes the fall of the dwarves. The 7 flights down each represent a fall; that being the Enemy’s seizure of the 7 dwarven rings, culminating in Dol Guldur. Each flight is a hammer blow to the dwarves and symbolizes the loss of one of the Rings of Power.
| `There lies the fastness of Southern Mirkwood,’ said Haldir. `It is clad in a forest of dark fir, where the trees strive one against another and their branches rot and wither. In the midst upon a stony height stands Dol Guldur, where long the hidden Enemy had his dwelling. We fear that now it is inhabited again, and with power sevenfold. |
The hammer and anvil on the West Gate are invoked as symbols. When they hear the sounds of the Balrog’s disturbance at the well room, Gimli is very sure that he hears the sound of a hammer:
| Nothing more was heard for several minutes; but then there came out of the depths faint knocks:tom-tap, tap-tom. They stopped, and when the echoes had died away, they were repeated: tap-tom, tom-tap, tap-tap, tom. They sounded disquietingly like signals of some sort; but after a while the knocking died away and was not heard again. ‘That was the sound of a hammer, or I have never heard one,’ said Gimli. |
The Enemy at the west door in the Chamber is described:
| There was a crash on the door, followed by crash after crash. Rams and hammers were beating against it. |
Frodo hints at the Enemy being the hammer in his response to being attacked in the Chamber:
| ‘Well, it did not skewer me, I am glad to say,’ said Frodo; `though I feel as if I had been caught between a hammer and an anvil.’ |
In all three instances we’re dealing with the Enemy- all three are incarnations of the Enemy, the devil. The ‘trees striving against one another’ symbolizes the right and left hands opposing one another. Remember I said that Tolkien assigns everything to his geometry? In the narrative of Moria the Elves and the dwarves are the left and right hands of the geometry. They have been turned against one another. In the Moria sequence right and left hands are the dwarves and the Elves. The Enemy actually turns them into the hammer and the anvil on the West Gate. The West Gate is prophetic of course. More elsewhere on this site about that. In other words the multiplication of 3 and 7 is actually the work of the Enemy. The two should grow together, entwined under the light of love according to the wedding poem. But they become bound together and that’s why the 21st hall lies immediately next to the Chamber of Mazarbul. Tolkien gives us hints. He tells us that the 3rd hall lies high up in the west. This symbolizes the Elves. The Dwarves begin in the east and delve westwards after Durin finds Mirrormere. The dwarves symbolize the east. West and east here are left and right hands in the geometry. Right in the centre of those we have the 3 x 7 of the 21st hall. God tells Noah ‘Go forth and multiply’- that’s the sweet growth of the wedding poem. The Devil makes a cruel mockery of this and we see it suggested in the two binding spiraling trees on the West Gate. The trees of course suggest the Watcher, and we know that that has 21 arms. Therefore we can determine that this symbolizes the 3 x 7. Multiply involves a ply, which derives from plaiting, entwining, just like the trees in the wedding poem. And if we look at the etymology of ply we find the very word which Tolkien uses to describe the sevenfold hammering of the dwarves.
| ply (v.1) |
|
“work with, use,” late 14c., shortened form of applien “join to, apply” (see apply). The core of this is Latin plicare “to lay, fold, twist,” from Proto-Italic *plekt-, from PIE root *plek- “to plait.” Sense of “travel regularly” is first 1803, perhaps from earlier sense “steer a course” (1550s). Related: Plied; plies; plying. |
To twist and ‘fold’, the origin of sevenfold. And I stated to fall is to TURN. In this way the 7 flights of stairs each symbolize the fall at the capture of the 7 Dwarven Rings of Power.
| fold (v.) |
|
Old English faldan (Mercian), fealdan (West Saxon), transitive, “to bend (cloth) back over itself, wrap up, furl,” class VII strong verb (past tense feold, past participle fealden), from Proto-Germanic *falthan, *faldan (source also of Middle Dutch vouden, Dutch vouwen, Old Norse falda, Middle Low German volden, Old High German faldan, German falten, Gothic falþan), from PIE *pol-to-, suffixed form of root *pel- (2) “to fold.” Of the arms, from late Old English. Intransitive sense “become doubled upon itself” is from c. 1300 (of the body); earlier “give way, fail” (mid-13c.). Sense of “to yield to pressure” is from late 14c. The weak conjugation developed from 15c. Related: Folded; folding. |
| fold (n.2) |
| “a bend or ply in anything,” mid-13c., from fold (v.). Compare similarly formed Middle Dutch voude, Dutch vouw, Old High German falt, German Falte, Old Norse faldr. |
And there you have the ‘ply’ of multiply. And if you search the Moria sequence you’ll find that the word ‘hammer’s is mentioned 7 times. That was Prediction #15. I define the Moria sequence beginning at the West Gate and ending in the dell where the mithril shirt is revealed. (More explanation why elsewhere). That’s the moment where Aragorn fully takes on the role as the new leader. God tells Noah to go forth and multiply, and we can see the ‘x’ of the operator of multiplication as the crossing point at twilight in the courses of the Sun and Moon above. That is the point that man and woman, right and left hands are in harmony, and the Door opens to higher rational planes leading close to God. Their wills are convergent. However, the Devil seeks to divide, and this produces the diverging paths of the Sun and Moon, left and right hands, producing the domination of the Sun and Moon during the day and night. The courses of the Sun and Moon therefore serve as a metaphor for the battle between Good and Evil (the Endless Stair), interaction between characters and actors within the world (for e.g. the races of Elves and Dwarves in the Moria narrative), both of conflict and reconciliation, or more specifically turning away or toward God.
The Chamber of Mazarbul lies right in the centre of the mirror symmetry as indicated in the chant of Gimli (see diagram below) which is reflected in the details on the pages of the Book of Mazarbul. And this is why Frodo describes his attack in the Chamber as being stuck between hammer and anvil- those being the hammer to the east of the dwarves, and the anvil of the west of the Elves. The crafting of the Doors together by Celebrimbor and Narvi symbolizes this hammer and anvil.
In Tolkien’s numerology any multiple of 5 symbolizes 5. That’s generally the case in Kabbalistic numerology. Tolkien hints at the number symbolism here:
| Every now and again it descended a flight of steps, fifty or more, to a lower level. … At the bottom of the seventh flight Gandalf halted. |
They don’t descend any more stairs after that point. Fifty symbolizes the number five. Five represents the will of the Enemy, the hammer. And this is why Gandalf halts to tell them about the Balrog at that point. At that point after descending the 7 flights of fifty or more steps the fall of the dwarves is complete and the Balrog was responsible as an incarnation of the Enemy. Again this is a symbolic landscape where the the inner spiritual reality is made incarnate in the outer world. The stairs are that narrative. You will also find multiples of fifty in the dimensions of Armenelos the Golden, the temple Sauron persuaded the the Númenoreans to build to worship Melkor.
| Armenelos the Golden, a mighty temple; and it was in the form of a circle at the base, and there the walls were fifty feet in thickness, and the width of the base was five hundred feet across the centre, and the walls rose from the ground five hundred feet, and they were crowned with a mighty dome. |
We also see other occurrences of the number 5.
| `There must have been a mighty crowd of dwarves here at one time ‘ said Sam; `and every one of them busier than badgers for five hundred years to make all this, and most in hard rock too! |
and..
| Gandalf paused and set a few leaves aside. ‘There are several pages of the same sort, rather hastily written and much damaged, he said; `but I can make little of them in this light. Now there must be a number of leaves missing, because they begin to be numbered five, the fifth year of the colony, I suppose…. Poor Balin! He seems to have kept the title that he took for less than five years. I wonder what happened afterwards; but there is no time to puzzle out the last few pages. |
Even the bull headed cliff is five fathoms high, naturally:
| Rounding the corner they saw before them a low cliff, some five fathoms high, with a broken and jagged top. |
The number 5 is in the geometry of the West Gate in two forms.
And we can uncover the exact location of the 21st hall via the following. At this point they come to the the 21st hall:
| In this way they advanced some fifteen miles, measured in a direct line east, though they must have actually walked twenty miles or more. |
Compare this to this scene on Caradhras:
|
At these words all fell into silent thought. They heard the wind hissing among the rocks and trees, and there was a howling and wailing round them in the empty spaces of the night. |
Looking at the passage in the 21st hall more thoroughly:
|
and still at times he heard, or thought he heard, away behind the Company and beyond the fall and patter of their feet, a following footstep that was not an echo. |
We have three correspondences between these two scenes. Firstly, the hunting of the wolves and the following hunt of Gollum. Secondly, the waiting til the morning for the new light. And thirdly the empty space. This is one of Tolkien’s chief narrative methods: linking. It will be covered in more detail elsewhere. Tolkien in this correspondence is hinting that the Chamber is directly beneath Caradhras, and Caradhras is another incarnation of the Enemy. But the pairing is principally for the purposes of the theme of alchemy. It’s covered in detail in ‘The Turn in Practice‘ where I show how he uses it to develop the characters of Boromir and Faramir and how that development echoes the details in the hands sequence in the Music of the Ainur. And of course we have the hunting imagery when Frodo is attacked in the Chamber of Mazarbul; the skewering of the wild boar which links to the hunting theme in Sir Gawain where while Lady Bertilak hunts Gawain in the castle, her husband, Lord Bertilak, is away, hunting in the fields.
In every one of Tolkien’s poems he employs his numerological symbolism in stanza length. Yes, that’s right, every one. Tolkien here is clearly interested in the fact that both Pearl and Gawain have 101 stanzas, and he ponders on their significance of the author of Pearl. And we see his interest in the number 5 symbolism in Gawain.
| As these things interest you, I send you the original stanzas of my own – related inevitably as everything was at one time with my own mythology. I will send you a copy of the Pearl, as soon as I can get a carbon copy made. It has 101 twelve-line stanzas. It is (I think) evidently inspired by the loss in infancy of a little daughter. It is thus in a sense an elegy; but the author uses the then fashionable (it was contemporary with Chaucer) dream-framework, and uses the occasion to discuss his own theological views about salvation. Though not all acceptable to modern taste, it has moments of poignancy; and though it may in our view be absurdly complex in technical form, the poet surmounts his own obstacles on the whole with success. The stanzas have twelve lines, with only three rhymes: an octet of four couplets rhyming a b, and a quartet rhyming b c. In addition each line has internal alliteration (it occasionally but rarely fails in the original; the version is inevitably less rich). And if that is not enough, the poem is divided into fives. Within a five-stanza group the chief word of the last line must be echoed in the first line of the following stanza; the last line of the five-group is echoed at the beginning of the next; and the first line of all is to wind up echoed in the last line of all. But oddly enough there are not 100 stanzas, but 101. In group XV there are six stanzas. It has long been supposed that one of these was an uncancelled revision. But there are also 101 stanzas in Sir Gawain. The number was evidently aimed at, though what its significance was for the author has not been discovered. The grouping by fives also connects the poem with Gawain, where the poet elaborates the significance: the Five Wounds, the Five Joys, the Five virtues, and the Five wits. |
And therein we see his reference to the medievalist’s religious number symbolism. Dante used number symbolism and Tolkien described him ‘the supreme poet’.
|
Dante’s use of numerical symbolism in the Divine Comedy is well known but apparently less familiar is the Pearl-poet’s similar use of it. As the Divine Comedy is built upon the numbers 3,9, and 10, so the Pearl is built upon 3, 4 and 12. As the numerical symbolism of Dante has its roots in the Bible, so that of the Pearl has its root in the Bible [Numerical Symbolism in Dante and the Pearl, Coolidge Otis Chapman, Modern Language Notes Vol. 54, No. 4 (Apr., 1939), pp. 256-259 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press] |
The following is a demonstration of Tolkien’s numerology and his geometry. I knew that there was a mirror running through the Moria passage from my understanding of the symbolism and geometry of the map of The Lord of the Rings. The mirror however is a broken (false) mirror as is revealed in the stanza lengths of Gimli’s chant. The mirror involves the Mirrormere and Durin on the one side, and the Watcher in the Water in the pool at the West Gate, on the other. The line of symmetry can be traced precisely to the narrative in the pages of Book of Mazarbul. At the point I created the graphic summary below some time ago, I had made 14 predictions. All of the numbers have a symbolic meaning. 6 is paired with 4 as the two stanzas demonstrating the broken symmetry (you can see that referenced in the numbers for the diamond (stone) on the astronomical courses of the Sun and Moon above). If we refer to the Chain of Angainor, 6 is gold and 4 is lead. We can see that if we pass from one side of the mirror to the other that gold changes to lead. And this reveals Tolkien’s extensive use of alchemy throughout his works. In the chain of Angainor Tolkien uses the 7 planetary metals of the ancient world which were used in alchemy. He arranges them according to own system. Tilkal is in fact Mercury, Quicksilver. We know that the transmutation of lead into gold was one of the alchemists’ chief pursuits. Here the change from gold into lead is symbolic of the Fall of Gandalf.
You can see the mirror symmetry in the lines of the poem:
| He stooped and looked in Mirrormere, And saw a crown of stars appear, … But still the sunken stars appear In dark and windless Mirrormere; |
And that’s why Gimli’s chant is sung in the 21st hall which I described as pivotal to the overall symmetry. The chant reveals the symmetry in its stanza lengths and its interweaving with the details on the pages in the Book of Mazarbul which lies just to the north. We have determined the exact location of the Chamber of Mazarbul as being associated with Caradhras. We’ll have to leave the development of the identity of Caradhras and why it is important to be located precisely with Caradhras, and the details of the alchemy, for another discussion.
In writing this response, here I made Prediction #60.
Tolkien Prediction #60
That Fanuidhol would be referred to as ‘the grey’.
| `Only once before have I seen them from afar in waking life, but I know them and their names, for under them lies Khazad-dûm, the Dwarrowdelf, that is now called the Black Pit, Moria in the Elvish tongue. Yonder stands Barazinbar, the Redhorn, cruel Caradhras; and beyond him are Silvertine and Cloudyhead: Celebdil the White, and Fanuidhol the Grey, that we call Zirak-zigil and Bundushathûr. |
Why would Fanuidhol be referred to as ‘the grey’?
Because of the appearance of the letters UI in the name. UI refers to ‘You and I’. You = white. I = black. UI = grey. You and I refers to Tolkien-Space-Moon and Edith-Time-Sun, and the Straight Road back to the Cottage of Lost Play is the grey in between, that is, West of the Moon, East of the Sun. See discussion below.
Onwards…
The mirror is also suggested in the inscription on Balin’s tomb. The character at either end of the inscription replicates the character we see in the West Gate geometry. The narrative is completely entwined with the language since the language itself was created by mathematics as Tolkien stated.
To quote Tolkien Gateway:
|
UZBADKHAZADDUMU The phrase is translated as “Lord of Moria”; uzbad seems to be translated as “Lord”, however since Khuzdul words of three consonants normally don’t begin with a vowel, Magnus Åberg proposes that the word is enclitic, and *u- is actually a prefix meaning “and”.[3] If this is so, uzbad is meaning “…and lord”, the full phrase being “…son of Fundin and lord…”. Åberg suggests that the basic form of “Lord” would be *zâbad and “Lord of Moria” would be *zâbad Khazaddûmu.[3] The ending -u in Khazaddûmu is probably “an ending that gives the noun an objective or locative meaning”.[3] |
My explanation is a little different. The evidence clearly indicates a mirror. The plane of the mirror runs through the Chamber of Mazarbul (more evidence elsewhere regarding the actual content of the pages and how they link up with Gimli’s chant). The U appears at the front, on the west side, because that would create a symmetry- the U at both ends. Just like the pool of the Watcher is a mirror of the Mirrormere- but a broken, twisted mirror as we’ve stated. This is replicated in the language. The symbolic reality in the narrative manifests in the language and changes in the language- and that can include errors. The Devil is responsible for those errors because he acts on the spirit, through oré. He turns the spirit. If the spirit becomes corrupted then the the language does, just as we see in Adunaic in the Akallabêth in which we find the influence of the will of the Enemy in the building of Armenelos the Golden and its dimensions. And you can find the 3 stages of this process in The Turn in Principle and The Turn in Practice.
The west indicates the left side, the left side is the left hand. That is the female. And as we shall see later, that is the letter ‘U’. The left and right sides, hands, correspond to the left and right wings of the dagaz rune. So we have a female on either side of the geometry. That indicates that the female is dominant here, a U on both sides instead of U and I. And as we shall see later, Seth found the anagram which indicates that Gandalf held on to the left wing as he fell down the pit. She concludes that the news that Tolkien wanted to impart is regarding the substance of the Balrog’s wings. I disagree.
VERY briefly, Gandalf holding the left wing is a clue that the Balrog is female. The Balrog is Edith. Edith as the dominant left hand. And in fact all Balrog’s are female. They represent the left hand, but the left hand trying to dominate the right hand. There are many clues, one being the letters of the name ‘b-a-l’, another being that it comes from the west in this sequence. The positions of the Fellowship and the Enemy become inverted in the lead up to the encounter on the Bridge as do the positions of Boromir and Aragorn in the Chamber defending the west and east doors. I’ve already covered this reversal previously, in the courses of the Sun and Moon. It also involves geometry from the points of the compass. NEWS = North-east-west-south. I wrote two hundred pages on the Moria sequence. The full argument and evidence will appear elsewhere on this site.
Regarding gold turning into lead. The sound that the stone makes when Pippin throws it down the well?
| plunk (v.) |
| 1805, “to pluck a stringed instrument;” 1808 in sense of “drop down abruptly;” 1888 as “to hit, wound, shoot.” Probably of imitative origin in all cases. Related: Plunked; plunking. |
| plumb (adj.) |
| “perpendicular, vertical,” mid-15c., from plumb (n.). The notion of “exact measurement” led to extended sense of “completely, downright” (1748), sometimes spelled plump, plum, or plunk. |
| plumb (n.) |
| “lead hung on a string to show the vertical line,” early 14c., from Old French *plombe, plomee “sounding lead,” and directly from Late Latin *plumba, originally plural of Latin plumbum “lead (the metal), lead ball; pipe; pencil,” a word of unknown origin, related to Greek molybdos “lead” (dialectal bolimos) and perhaps from an extinct Mediterranean language, perhaps Iberian. |
The fall down the well symbolizes the fall of the Dwarves which is mirrored in the fall of Gandalf. The narrative of the Fellowship in their visit to the the mines becomes an echo of the fate of Balin as we see in the 8 points of symmetry above. The Enemy attempts to create a mirror, an attempt to turn the fate of the Fellowship mirrors the fate of Balin and company. One of the manifestation of this intent is the creation of the west pool with the Watcher in the Water. Durin also looks into the water in Gimli’s chant. The Watcher is a twisted incarnation of the narrative of the dwarves and elves, hence 3 x 7, 21 arms. This is why the Book of Mazarbul was left in the Chamber. It was left their because of the influence of the devil on the returning dwarves. In the symbolic landscape everything in the outer world is an incarnation of the inner spirit, the inner mind, oré, on which both God and the devil seek to influence with counsel. The devil knows the wizard’s weakness for lore and fondness for puzzles and riddles. The book of Mazarbul is a lure which entraps the wizard and we see the fate of Balin echoed in the 8 points of symmetry in the unfolding narrative above. The process of falling is the turning of gold into lead.
So…if there were 7 instances of the word ‘hammer’ in the sequence. and the hammer is paired with the anvil as 7 and 3, logic would suggest that there will be 3 instances of the word anvil in the sequence right? There are actually 5 instances. Why? The number 5 is the Devil here, the will. Will represents the left fork on the West Gate, the rune calma. What happens is that the Devil convinces the dwarves that the Elves are the Enemy. Where they originally were travelling westwards towards the Elves in Eregion, they are TURNED and begin mining to the north under Caradhras. This is when they begin to close down their friendship. The north is where the Enemy resides. We have to get into things beyond the scope of this essay to fully demonstrate that. The Enemy likewise attempts to turn Frodo in the Chamber to the north- attempts to pin him to the north wall. The clues are all there.
I will discuss alchemy at great length on this site. Alchemy is the work of the Enemy, not of God, Eru. The discords in the Music of the Ainur separate and produce the diverging planes of the opposite and adjacent in the triangle. That separation is the chief pursuit of the Enemy. Alchemists sought the Universal Solvent.
|
Alkahest is a hypothetical “universal solvent”: able to dissolve every other substance, including gold. The famous alchemist Philippus Paracelsus described alkahest in the 1500s. Because of its perceived invaluable medicinal qualities, Alchemists of the time were concerned with its plausibility and existence. |
Solvent is from ‘solve’:
| solve (v.) |
| late 14c., “to disperse, dissipate, loosen,” from Latin solvere “to loosen, dissolve; untie, release, detach; depart; unlock; scatter; dismiss; accomplish, fulfill; explain; remove,” from PIE *se-lu-, from reflexive pronoun *s(w)e- (see idiom) + root *leu- “to loosen, divide, cut apart.” The meaning “explain, answer” is attested from 1530s; for sense evolution, see solution. Mathematical use is attested from 1737. Related: Solved; solving. |
That ‘cutting apart’, division is the work of the Devil and can be first seen in the effect of the discords which produce the diverging planes in the triangle. And we see that division in the etymology of demon later. The Devil is the Alchemist and the etymology gives us the modern ‘chemist’:
| alchemy (n.) |
|
“medieval chemistry; the supposed science of transmutation of base metals into silver or gold” (involving also the quest for the universal solvent, quintessence, etc.), mid-14c., from Old French alchimie (14c.), alquemie (13c.), from Medieval Latin alkimia, from Arabic al-kimiya, from Greek khemeioa (found c.300 C.E. in a decree of Diocletian against “the old writings of the Egyptians”), all meaning “alchemy,” and of uncertain origin. Perhaps from an old name for Egypt (Khemia, literally “land of black earth,” found in Plutarch), or from Greek khymatos “that which is poured out,” from khein “to pour,” from PIE root *gheu- “to pour” [Watkins, but Klein, citing W. Muss-Arnolt, calls this folk etymology]. The word seems to have elements of both origins. Mahn … concludes, after an elaborate investigation, that Gr. khymeia was probably the original, being first applied to pharmaceutical chemistry, which was chiefly concerned with juices or infusions of plants; that the pursuits of the Alexandrian alchemists were a subsequent development of chemical study, and that the notoriety of these may have caused the name of the art to be popularly associated with the ancient name of Egypt. [OED] |
And this explains Tolkien’s curious engagement with the name of the chemist in Oxford as noted by Christopher Tolkien in the Notion Club Papers:
| Dolbear is an uncommon surname, but there was a chemist’s shop in Oxford called Dolbear & Goodall, and I recollect that my father found this particularly engaging; it may be that he simply found in Dolbear the chemist a comic appropriateness to Havard, or to Havard as he was going to present him. |
In the N.C.P Dolbear is the Enemy. Proof is related to the identity of Bombadil and the words dol, as in hey dol merry dol, and ‘bear’ as Ursa Major and North Polar Bear as mentioned previously. A chemist with the name ‘Good-all’ would clearly be amusing to Tolkien.
Seth asks: in the section ‘The Influence of Lewis Squared on JR Squared’:
“Why anagrams, why a jigsaw and why trigonometry? Why such a mixture of mind-benders?”
In her evidence to support the fourth letter in the riddle being ‘T’ for ‘Trigonometric Riddle’, she devotes 8 pages to arguing the case that Tolkien has used mathematical techniques in his works, including a reference to Alcuin’s puzzle 28, the geometric puzzle in his attributed ‘Problems to Sharpen Youths (Propositiones ad acuendos juvenes)’.
She asks: “But then what Anglo-Saxon mathematics? Where can we locate geometric or algebraic evidence?”, and that Tolkien mentions Alcuin in ‘Beowulf, The Monsters and the Critics’. She also refers to the encounter with Clyde Kilby and that quote.
This is the same geometry and mathematics you can find in my header statement on the homepage, although my research shows that it doesn’t have its source in Anglo-Saxon riddles. It has its source in the Mystic Talmud and the fundamental origins of the letters of our alphabet in pictograms and hieroglyphics.
| “The following predictions were generated and derived from my theory of Geometry, Rational Planes and Time and Space within Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. The geometry within his works is accompanied by a device called THE TURN. The theory first began to take shape about 15 years ago, where I arrived at the ideas regarding the identities of Bombadil and Goldberry as Space and Time.” |
I disagree with Seth’s identification that ‘T’ is for ‘Trigonometric Riddle’ because ‘T’ is the first letter of that word. The letter T appears because Tolkien uses the very letters of his monogram as the material”structures of the world just as we read in the Mystic Talmud. Indeed all of those letters his monogram appear in his world for that reason, not because “of their being the first letters of “‘Jigsaw Riddle’, ‘Rearrangement Riddle’ and ‘Trigonometric Riddle’. The entirety of the work on this website is my answer to her question: Why anagrams, why a jigsaw and why trigonometry? Why such a mixture of mind-benders?”. This is the symbolic landscape in which inner meaning manifests in the exterior world. Tolkien signs himself signs his monogram in the Lord of the Rings no less than that 10″times, to my knowledge so far. Seth found one of them and a number of anagrams that I didn’t. It’s a great find for sure!
There is a clue to this link between the geometry and the symbolic landscape in Tolkien’s reference to Alcuin in ‘Beowulf, The Monsters and the Critics’.
| Namely the use of it in Beowulf, both dramatically in depicting the sagacity of Beowulf the hero, and as an essential part of the traditions concerning the Scylding court, which is the legendary background against which the rise of the hero is set- as a later age would have chosen the court of Arthur. Also the probably allusion in Alcuin’s letter to Speratus: see Chambers’s Widsith, p.78.” [The Monsters and the Critics] |
The clue is in his mention of the court of Arthur, which inhabits the medieval symbolic landscape which he mentions in the Notion Club Papers. He’s referring to the hidden realm, the plane of the hypotenuse and this is why he even uses the word in his Elvish language. Here is a post from my FaceBook account dated Dec 5th, 2018:
|
“Not so much a prediction this one. As stated previously, the Lord of the Rings map is a symbolic landscape much like the landscapes in the Arthurian Romances. The symbolism is hidden because it represents true spiritual reality. The symbolism can only be understood if the map to the Lord of the Rings is turned upside down. I found this today in HOME V. The Lost Road and other Writings. THUR- surround, fence, ward, hedge in, secrete. Ilk. thuren guarded,hidden. Cf. Ilk. Garthurian Hidden Realm ( = Doriath), sc. gard-thurian; Noldorinized as Arthurien, more completely as Ar (Anglo Saxon eth) -thoren: thoren (*thaurena) pp. of thoro- fence [see 3AR]. Thurin-gwethil (woman of) secret shadow, Doriathren name (N Dolwethil)assumed by Tinuviel as a bat-shaped fay [WATH]. [Cf. the Lay of Leithian line 3954, where a marginal note explains Thuringwethil as ‘she of hidden shadow’ (III. 297, 304). The present entry retains the story of the Lay: it was Lúthien who called herself by this name before Morgoth (see III. 306).] —-> Cf. Ilk. Garthurian Hidden Realm ( = Doriath)….that’s G-ARTHURIAN He even uses the word here GARAT- Q arta fort, fortress. N garth: cf. Garth(th)oren His use of it for G-Arthurian and GARAT can be further explained if we understand what the letters H and G refer to in the Floral alphabet rebus. I finally deciphered what the letter H refers to last week. It refers to the plane of the hypotenuse which is also the diagonal shaft of sunlight in his works and can be found in the line connecting the two sets of four dots in Tolkien’s monogram. See below. Historically, the letter H began probably as symbolizing two fence posts. You can see that in the pic. That gives us the connection between the letter H and the notion of ‘fence, surround’. And from the above, we are back to the element ‘AR’ again. AR =the sun which adds up since the hypotenuse is the shaft of sunlight. But its what lies in between those two fence posts that’s important. We can see the red triangle in the pic. It points upwards like an arrow with a right angle at the top. That line goes through the plane of the hypotenuse in that triangle.The line/plane of the hypotenuse can also be viewed as the ‘gnostic line’ – it giving a direct line to God, bypassing the normal protocols of Time and Space (adjacent and opposite planes). The gnostic (and God) can be found symbolized by the letter G in the floral alphabet rebus. G is for Gnostic and God. G is also for Gandalf which is why he is the wielder of the Flame of Anor (the sun). Tolkien is appropriating the notion of ‘gnostic’. This connects the letters G and H. The gnostic line, the hypotenuse are one and the same thing. It is hidden in normal (non-spiritual) reality (Time and Space), unless you have a spiritual understanding of true reality. And this notion of ‘secret’ and hidden connects the two letters G and H back to Tolkien’s hidden Arthurian map. Hence G-Arthurian meaning secret, hidden realm. The gnostic line is also ‘the path of the heart’.As such Sam Gamgee is able to navigate the world via this plane.This also explains his name: Gam is a leg. Triangles have legs. A triangle leg is a plane of the triangle. ”Gee’ =’G’ (is the hypotenuse). The hypotenuse unites/joins the two planes of the adjacent and opposite. You’ll also find the notion of ‘together’,’join’ in the etymology of ‘sam’, and also ‘half’, him being Frodo’s other half . ‘Samwise’ can be understood as ‘some kind of wisdom’..that is, the path of the heart, but also as a movement, a ‘way of proceeding’ -which as we’ve just pointed out, is navigation via the path of the heart, hypotenuse. The path of the heart is also the ‘Straight Road’ and we find in the etymology of ‘Realm’ realm (n.)
|
That post links up the monogram, the underlying real reason for the 4 letters of Seth’s puzzle solution JRRT, the hidden nature of the plane of the hypotenuse, the Arthurian medieval symbolic landscape, the geometry. And you can see my reference to the two sets of 4 dots in his monogram, as the plane of the hypotenuse, about which Seth pondered:
| “It should be noted that the monogram dots were possibly another aspect of Tolkien’s propensity for coding in that he left an even deeper puzzle than that immediately depicted by just the initials of his name.” |
I sent the author an explanation regarding the deeper puzzle, involving some of the ideas in this page, and the meaning of the 4 dots. The Floral Alphabet rebus is part of the deeper puzzle and like the Mystic Talmud, the letters represent the material structures of Tolkien’s world. I’ll publish my emails to her on a separate page soon. The point at which Tolkien developed his geometry, his mathematics, was early on in the book if Ishness. ‘Ishness’ stands for the ishness in ‘Englishness’. England is literally the ‘land of the Angles’, who were a germanic people.
| England (n.) |
| Old English Engla land, literally “the land of the Angles” (see English (n.1)), used alongside Angelcynn “the English race,” which, with other forms, shows Anglo-Saxon persistence in thinking in terms of tribes rather than place. By late Old English times both words had come to be used with a clear sense of place, not people; a Dane, Canute, is first to call himself “King of England.” By the 14c. the name was being used in reference to the entire island of Great Britain and to the land of the Celtic Britons before the Anglo-Saxon conquest. The loss of one of the duplicate syllables is a case of haplology. |
| English (n.1) |
|
“the people of England; the speech of England,” noun use of Old English adjective Englisc (contrasted to Denisc, Frencisce, etc.), “of or pertaining to the Angles,” from Engle (plural) “the Angles,” the name of one of the Germanic groups that overran the island 5c., supposedly so-called because Angul, the land they inhabited on the Jutland coast, was shaped like a fish hook (see angle (n.)). The use of the word in Middle English was reinforced by Anglo-French Engleis. Cognates: Dutch Engelsch, German Englisch, Danish Engelsk, French Anglais (Old French Engelsche), Spanish Inglés, Italian Inglese. Technically “of the Angles,” but Englisc also was used from earliest times without distinction for all the Germanic invaders — Angles, Saxon, Jutes (Bede’s gens Anglorum) — and applied to their group of related languages by Alfred the Great. “The name English for the language is thus older than the name England for the country” [OED]. After 1066, it specifically meant the native population of England (as distinguished from Normans and French occupiers), a distinction which lasted about a generation. But as late as Robert of Gloucester’s “Chronicle” (c. 1300) it still could retain a sense of “Anglian” and be distinguished from “Saxon” (“Þe englisse in þe norþ half, þe saxons bi souþe”). … when Scots & others are likely to be within earshot, Britain & British should be inserted as tokens, but no more, of what is really meant [Fowler] |
Wiki says the following:
|
The name of the Angles may have been first recorded in Latinised form, as Anglii, in the Germania of Tacitus. It is thought to derive from the name of the area they originally inhabited, the Anglia Peninsula (Angeln in modern German, Angel in Danish). This name has been hypothesised to originate from the Germanic root for “narrow” (compare German and Dutch eng = “narrow”), meaning “the Narrow [Water]”, i.e., the Schlei estuary; the root would be *h₂enǵʰ, “tight”. Another theory is that the name meant “hook” (as in angling for fish), in reference to the shape of the peninsula; Indo-European linguist Julius Pokorny derives it from Proto-Indo-European *h₂enk-, “bend” (see ankle).[2] During the fifth century, all Germanic tribes who invaded Britain were referred to as either Englisc, Ængle or Engle, who were all speakers of Old English (which was known as Englisc, Ænglisc, or Anglisc). Englisc and its descendant, English, also goes back to Proto-Indo-European *h₂enǵʰ-, meaning narrow.[3] In any case, the Angles may have been called such because they were a fishing people or were originally descended from such, so England would mean “land of the fishermen”, and English would be “the fishermen’s language”.[4] Gregory the Great, in an epistle, simplified the Latinised name Anglii to Angli, the latter form developing into the preferred form of the word.[5] The country remained Anglia in Latin. Alfred the Great’s translation of Orosius’s history of the world uses Angelcynn (-kin) to describe the English people; Bede used Angelfolc (-folk); also such forms as Engel, Englan (the people), Englaland, and Englisc occur, all showing i-mutation.[6] |
| Angle |
|
member of a Teutonic tribe, Old English, from Latin Angli “the Angles,” literally “people of Angul” (Old Norse Öngull), a region in what is now Holstein, said to be so-called for its hook-like shape (see angle (n.)). Or the name might refer to fishing (with hooks) as a main activity of the people, and Proto-Germanic *anguz is said also to have meant “narrow,” so it might refer to shallow coastal waters. People from the tribe there founded the kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbia, and East Anglia in 5c. Britain. Their name, rather than that of the Saxons or Jutes, may have become the common one for the whole group of Germanic tribes because their dialect was the first committed to writing. |
| angle (v.1) |
| “to fish with a hook,” mid-15c., from Old English angel (n.) “angle, hook, fish-hook,” related to anga “hook,” from Proto-Germanic *angul-, from PIE *ankulo-, suffixed form of root *ang-/*ank- “to bend” (see angle (n.)). Compare Old English angul, Old Norse öngull, Old High German angul, German Angel “fishhook.” Figurative sense “catch or elicit by artful wiles” is recorded from 1580s. Related: Angled; angling. |
| angle (n.) |
|
“space or difference in direction between intersecting lines,” late 14c., from Old French angle “an angle, a corner” (12c.) and directly from Latin angulus “an angle, a corner,” a diminutive form from PIE root *ang-/*ank- “to bend” (source also of Greek ankylos “bent, crooked,” Latin ang(u)ere “to compress in a bend, fold, strangle;” Old Church Slavonic aglu “corner;” Lithuanian anka “loop;” Sanskrit ankah “hook, bent,” angam “limb;” Old English ancleo “ankle;” Old High German ango “hook”). Figurative sense “point or direction from which one approaches something” is from 1872. Angle-bracket is 1781 in carpentry; 1956 in typography. |
You can see that both meanings of angle, to fish and the geometric term, share the same root in PIE root *ang-/*ank- “to bend”. Tolkien in fact incorporates both meanings but the geometric one is the principle one. You can clearly see the geometry in his illustration ‘Eeriness’ from the Book of Ishness and not coincidentally, this is the first time we see Tolkien use his full monogram. His monogram and the geometry are two expressions of the same structures of his world, the mathematics Tolkien spoke of. The picture on the right is Kipling’s ‘The Cat That Walked By Himself’ which it is suggested by Hammond and Scull, influenced Tolkien’s picture and his monogram.
The meaning of ‘narrow’ or narrow water in the etymology of the word Angle is incorporated into the geometry. Tolkien incorporates the ‘angle’ at the top of the triangle in ‘Eeriness’ as ‘the narrow way’ from the Bible. Matthew 7:13:
Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way,that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:
The narrow way from the Bible is Tolkien’s Straight Road, or the Path of the Heart. And you can clearly see the two 
hearts at the top of the angle as already stated earlier in Eeriness. Why two hearts? The two hearts of the will of man and woman. This is reproduced in the rock face in the illustration for the West Gate of Moria. It is also reproduced in the leaf shape at the side of the Path leading to the Merking’s Palace in the Merking’s Palace illustration. And this appearance of the heart at the West Gate, in the exact centre between the two trees to either side of the Door, hints that the Bridge of Khazad-Dûm is the narrow way. Gandalf even refers to it as such:
| ‘Over the bridge!’ cried Gandalf, recalling his strength. `Fly! This is a foe beyond any of you. I must hold the narrow way. Fly! ‘ |
But in Moria it is a heart of stone, indicating the way is blocked. That brings Gandalf’s fall. The Straight Road is a spiritual way conforming to the underlying geometry, not merely the Straight Road only accessible to the Elves. The sense of narrow can be found in the word strait which is a narrow water:
| strait (n.) |
| mid-14c., “narrow, confined space or place,” specifically of bodies of water from late 14c., from Old French estreit, estrait “narrow part, pass, defile, narrow passage of water,” noun use of adjective (see strait (adj.)). Sense of “difficulty, plight” (usually straits) first recorded 1540s. Strait and narrow “conventional or wisely limited way of life” is recorded from mid-14c. (compare straight (adj.2)). Related entries & more |
| strait (adj.) |
| “narrow, strict” (late 13c.), from Old French estreit, estrait “tight, close-fitting, constricted, narrow” (Modern French étroit), from Latin strictus, past participle of stringere (2) “bind or draw tight” (see strain (v.)). More or less confused with unrelated straight (adj.). Related: Straightly. |
| straight (adj.2) |
| “conventional,” especially “heterosexual,” 1941, a secondary sense evolved from straight (adj.1), probably suggested by straight and narrow path “course of conventional morality and law-abiding behavior,” which is based on a misreading of Matthew vii.13 (where the gate is actually strait), and the other influence seems to be from strait-laced. |
| straight (adj.1) |
|
late 14c., “direct, undeviating; not crooked, not bent or curved,” of a person, “direct, honest;” properly “stretched,” adjectival use of Old English streht (earlier streaht), past participle of streccan “to stretch” (see stretch (v.)). Related: Straightly; straightness. Meaning “true, direct, honest” is from 1520s. Of communication, “clear, unambiguous,” from 1862. Sense of “undiluted, uncompromising” (as in straight whiskey, 1874) is American English, first recorded 1856. As an adverb from c. 1300, “in a straight line, without swerving or deviating.” Theatrical sense of “serious” (as opposed to popular or comic) is attested from 1895; vaudeville slang straight man first attested 1923. Go straight in the underworld slang sense is from 1919; straighten up “become respectable” is from 1907. To play it straight is from 1906 in theater, 1907 in sports (“play fair”), with figurative extension; later perhaps also from jazz. Straight arrow “decent, conventional person” is 1969, from archetypal Native American brave name. Straight shooter is from 1928. Straight As “top grades” is from 1920. |
Tolkien is punning on ‘strait’ from the Biblical usage in the narrow way, and ‘straight’ in his incorporation of the straight road being the narrow (strait) way. He is equating the two via the pun. So we have in the two alternative suggestions for the etymology of Angle the two meanings of ‘to bend’, ‘be crooked’, and ‘to be narrow’, straight, via the narrow way and the pun with strait/straight. In those two meanings we have the two opposites of the paths of evil and good, and using the TURN moving between those planes, Tolkien has all he needs to build the mechanics of his geometry and for narrative and character, and language development. Yes, the same mathematics he told Clyde Kilby he had used. And as I state in the opening in the homepage, Tolkien employs rational planes which can be ascended to or descended to via the Turn. Ascending leads to heaven, closer to God. Descending leads to hell.
| We do not, or need not, despair of drawing because all lines must be either curved or straight, nor of painting because there are only three “primary” colours. (On Fairy Stories, Recovery, Escape, Consolation). |
And in the meaning of straight we see ‘stretch’ from PIE root *strenk- “tight, narrow; pull tight, twist” which brings us back to the hypotenuse which has its root in teinein “to stretch,” from PIE root *ten- “to stretch.” Different roots but the same meaning. And we see ‘narrow’ which supports the equation of straight with ‘narrow’ and the Straight Road with the Narrow Way.
| stretch (v.) |
|
Old English streccan (transitive and intransitive) “to stretch, spread out, prostrate; reach, extend” (past tense strehte, past participle streht), from Proto-Germanic *strakjanan (source also of Danish strække, Swedish sträcka, Old Frisian strekka, Old High German strecchan, Middle Low German, Middle Dutch, Old High German, German strecken “to stretch, draw out”), perhaps a variant of the root of stark, or else from PIE root *strenk- “tight, narrow; pull tight, twist” (see string (n.)). Meaning “to extend (the limbs or wings)” is from c. 1200; that of “to lay out for burial” is from early 13c. To stretch (one’s) legs “take a walk” is from c. 1600. Meaning “to lengthen by force” first recorded late 14c.; figurative sense of “to enlarge beyond proper limits, exaggerate,” is from 1550s. Stretch limo first attested 1973. Stretch marks is attested from 1960. Related: Stretched; stretching. |
What is the significance of the words straight and hypotenuse sharing the same meaning in ‘stretch’ you might ask?
The angle is the right angle. The right angle is the Door, which can be seen in ‘Before’ and ‘Afterwards’. The megalithic door. Going through the Door via the Straight Road requires a sequence of three turns each of 90 degrees. Those turns are metaphorical and are manifested in the spirit, the physical world, and in the language. This is the meaning of Frodo’s words: ‘The third turn may turn the best’ which you’ll also find in the header on the homepage. The outcome of those three turns equates to ascending or descending a rational plane along the hypotenuse. In this way the stretch of ‘straight’ and ‘hypotenuse’ can be equated. This understanding is how I was able to make Prediction #7 which you can find on the homepage. And this prediction led to my decision to analyse the Denethor sequence to prove my hypothesis of the TURN, which I first discovered fifteen years ago in the Akallabêth. You can find that analysis in two articles here:
The Turn in Principle.
The Turn in Practice.
But what of the etymology of ‘angle’ being ‘crooked, bent’ you might ask? How can the straight road go through something which is bent? The answer is, we need to remember that the angle is specifically a right angle. As you’ll see shortly, the etymology of ‘right’ gives morally correct,” Old English riht “just, good, fair; proper, fitting; straight, not bent, direct, erect,” from Proto-Germanic *rehtan.
You can see that, as a right angled triangle, in the triangle in ‘Eeriness’, the hypotenuse forms the bottom side and the hypotenuse stretches between the two- rather like a cobweb might stretch across a corner in a room. And spiders in fact also inhabit this plane (more elsewhere). It is longer than the other two sides: stretched. The left and right sides on either side are the opposite and adjacent. And we can see that the wizard is on a road which leads to the angle. The angle is the narrow way through which he must squeeze, in the Moria sequence, that is the bridge of Khazad-Dûm. That straight road is formed from the side of the hypotenuse, which is characterized as being ‘stretched’ simply extended upwards and gradually narrowing. While he travels along that road he remains between those two planes. In the West Gate of Moria illustration, the heart in the rock is positioned in the centre between the two trees. The two trees, and the two columns on the door, symbolize the left and right sides of the triangle we see in ‘Eeriness’. And that ‘s why we see the geometry at the top of this essay in the pages of the Book of Mazarbul, which parallel the geometry on the Door of the West Gate: centre with left and right. The single heart on the right in the Merking’s illustration requires a deeper level of explanation of the symbolism. We can see the same geometry in ‘Before’ and we see that the figure in the sister drawing, ‘Afterwards’, TURNS. And recall my opening remarks in the header in the homepage.
| “The following predictions were generated and derived from my theory of Geometry, Rational Planes and Time and Space within Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. The geometry within his works is accompanied by a device called THE TURN. |
And we find the same right angled triangle in his drawing ‘Wickedness’ (the separation of the geometry into two separate triangles in that picture is Tolkien’s symbolism for ‘wickedness’ in his geometric language) and interestingly in the drawing by Patrick Wynne for the article ‘The Road and the Ring: Solid Geometry in Tolkien’s Middle-earth’ by Mark. M. Henneley Jr that appeared in Mythlore in 1982, almost 40 years ago. In that Hennelley also identified the same abstraction into straight and bent that I have.
The same geometry in ‘Wickedness’ can be seen in the heart shaped rock in the illustration of the West Gate.
The diamond symbolizes divergent wills (evil) and will be discussed fully elsewhere.
You can find a pdf of my research and findings regarding the symbolic landscape of the map of the Lord of the Rings, very crudely presented here: The Symbolic Landscape.
To return to the symbolism of the nose. So I said that the hypotenuse was a pun on ‘under the nose’. Ever heard of the phrase ‘hidden under your nose’? ‘Hidden in plain sight’? Or ‘follow your nose’, or ‘as plain as the nose on your face’? These phrases exist because the sense of smell has a special place in the human senses which is something like instinct, intuition or distant memory. The nose has the unique ability to recall distant memories from smells and odours in an instant without any conscious or rational engagement. The world that the sense of smell reveals is hidden to us and it has a special power to speak directly, in an instant. Seth makes the point a number of times, quoting Michael Tolkien’s words about his grandfather:
| “Riddles have rules. … He liked the challenge of the rules and challenging you with them. But like Gandalf he’d often triumph by telling you there were ways of bypassing the rules without necessarily breaking them.” |
The sense of smell was employed by Tolkien in just this way, to break the rules, to bypass the normal everyday protocols. The nose and the plane of the hypotenuse involve this same breaking of the rules. The rules being the navigation between planes. Some characters have the ability to use ‘lateral thinking’, to follow their nose. Gandalf and Sam are two of those characters. These two characters have a kind of ‘sixth sense’. Imagine the right angled triangle. Each point labelled ABC, B being at the right angle. Normal travel between the opposite and adjacent planes is via the right angle at B, the Door. And that involves the TURN at the angle. But some entities can take a leap of faith or intuition and travel directly from A to C via the plane of the hypotenuse. This is the path of the heart. Sam can do this because his heart is right and true, at the expense of book learning. This is why Sam knows that Frodo has gone to the boats at Rauros, whereas Aragorn and the rest don’t.
Tolkien developed his geometry and its symbolism from these idiomatic expressions here. This hidden quality of the hypotenuse in the Land of Pohja painting, is ‘hidden in plain sight’. The plain here being the plane of the hypotenuse. The word plain etymologically derives from plane. We can understand ‘plain sight’ as the sense of smell and ‘plane sight’. In other words a way of perceiving things through that plane and its associations in his world. And this is the plane sight of the Nazgûl who can be found smelling the ground. They can smell blood. And this geometric understanding in fact explains why the Hobbits are told to lie flat on the ground to avoid detection even though the Nazgûl can smell. That makes no sense until you understand the further implications of this geometry. The explanation for that will appear later on this site. And this is why the other hidden reality is revealed when the diagonal piece of paper is moved in The Land of Pohja painting. The diagonal represents the plane of the hypotenuse on which something is hidden.
| plain (adj.) |
|
c. 1300, “flat, smooth,” from Old French plain “flat, smooth, even” (12c.), from Latin planus “flat, even, level” (from PIE root *pele- (2) “flat; to spread”). Sense of “evident” is from, c. 1300; that of “free from obstruction” is early 14c.; meaning “simple, sincere, ordinary” is recorded from late 14c., especially of dress, “unembellished, without decoration.” In reference to the dress and speech of Quakers, it is recorded from 1824; of Amish and Mennonites, from 1894 (in the Dutch regions of Pennsylvania Plain with the capital is shorthand adjective for “Amish and Old Order Mennonite”). Of appearance, as a euphemism for “ill-favored, ugly” it dates from 1749. Of envelopes from 1913. As an adverb from early 14c. Plain English is from c. 1500. Plain dealer “one who deals plainly or speaks candidly” is from 1570s, marked “Now rare” in OED 2nd edition. To be as plain as the nose on (one’s) face is from 1690s. |
To return to the word Nazgûl. We have said that the element ‘nas’ refers to the nose via the shared ‘nasag’ in the etymology of Nazgûl in Elvish, and ‘nas’ in the etymology of nose in English. So the element ‘nas’ also means ring. And this is why we find ‘to bind’, fetter’ in ‘strait’. In other words the Nazgûl are bound to the plane of the hypotenuse from which they cannot escape. It is a prison because the process of being turned into a Nazgûl slowly stretches the plane of the hypotenuse, and the other two planes become increasingly short. Imagine a hinge gradually opening until it becomes a straight line- that being the plane of the hypotenuse. This is the process that we see in Stinker and Slinker. Note the reference to smell again in ‘stink’. We’ll discuss the how that reference relates to the geometry elsewhere.
| stink (v.) |
| Old English stincan “emit a smell of any kind; exhale; rise (of dust, vapor, etc.)” (class III strong verb; past tense stanc, past participle stuncen), common West Germanic (cognates: Old Saxon stincan, West Frisian stjonke, Old High German stinkan, Dutch stinken), from the root of stench. Old English had swote stincan “to smell sweet,” but offensive sense also was in Old English and predominated by mid-13c.; smell now tends the same way. Figurative meaning “be offensive” is from early 13c.; meaning “be inept” is recorded from 1924. To stink to high heaven first recorded 1963. |
The important point to make is that the angle in the geometry is a right angle, not just any angle. And we see this emphasized in the exchange between Gandalf and Bilbo. Being ‘right’ is important. The angle in the geometry
We see the underlying symbolism in Bilbo’s curious and now iconic words:
| ‘I am old, Gandalf. I don’t look it, but I am beginning to feel it in my heart of hearts. Well preserved indeed!’ he snorted. ‘Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread. That can’t be right. I need a change, or something.’ Gandalf looked curiously and closely at him. ‘No, it does not seem right,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘No, after all I believe your plan is probably the best.’ |
I have highlighted the relevant details although there are more details in that quote to be discussed more thoroughly elsewhere. Note how Bilbo mentions the heart. Tolkien is referring to the path of the heart. Note that he snorts. That’s a reference to the nose.
| snort (v.) |
| late 14c., “to snore,” probably related to snore (v.). Meaning “breathe through the nose with a harsh sound” first recorded 1520s. Sense of “express contempt” is from 1818. Meaning “to inhale cocaine” is first attested 1935. Related: Snorted; snorting. American English snorter “something fierce or furious” is from 1833. |
| snore (v.) |
| mid-15c., probably related to snort (v.) and both probably of imitative origin (compare Dutch snorken, Middle High German snarchen, German schnarchen, Swedish snarka; see snout). Related: Snored; snoring. |
| snout (n.) |
| early 13c., “trunk or projecting nose of an animal,” from Middle Low German and Middle Dutch snute “snout,” from Proto-Germanic *snut- (source also of German Schnauze, Norwegian snut, Danish snude “snout”), which Watkins traces to a hypothetical Germanic root *snu- forming words having to do with the nose, imitative of a sudden drawing of breath (compare Old English gesnot “nasal mucus;” German schnauben “pant, puff, snort” (Austrian dialect), schnaufen “breathe heavily, pant,” Schnupfen “cold in the head;” Old Norse snaldr “snout” (of a serpent), snuthra “to sniff, snuffle”). Of other animals and (contemptuously) of humans from c. 1300. |
He says he feels ‘stretched’. That’s a reference to the plane of the hypotenuse. And then we see the word ‘right’ used twice. That’s a reference to the right angle, which indicates from the etymology ‘true, straight, good’. And this is why Tolkien chose the right angled triangle and why the straight road, the path of the heart leads through a right angle.
| right (adj.1) |
|
“morally correct,” Old English riht “just, good, fair; proper, fitting; straight, not bent, direct, erect,” from Proto-Germanic *rehtan (source also of Old Frisian riucht “right,” Old Saxon reht, Middle Dutch and Dutch recht, Old High German reht, German recht, Old Norse rettr, Gothic raihts), from PIE root *reg- “move in a straight line,” also “to rule, to lead straight, to put right” (source also of Greek orektos “stretched out, upright;” Latin rectus “straight, right;” Old Persian rasta- “straight; right,” aršta- “rectitude;” Old Irish recht “law;” Welsh rhaith, Breton reiz “just, righteous, wise”). Compare slang straight (adj.1) “honest, morally upright,” and Latin rectus “right,” literally “straight,” Lithuanian teisus “right, true,” literally “straight.” Greek dikaios “just” (in the moral and legal sense) is from dike “custom.” As an emphatic, meaning “you are right,” it is recorded from 1580s; use as a question meaning “am I not right?” is from 1961. The sense in right whale is “justly entitled to the name.” Right stuff “best human ingredients” is from 1848, popularized by Tom Wolfe’s 1979 book about the first astronauts. Right of way is attested from 1767. Right angle is from late 14c. |
The word plan is used as Tolkien’s reference to the geometric planes which form the underlying symbolic reality. Plan having the same etymological root as ‘plane’.
Gandalf later remarks:
| ‘Very wise,’ said Gandalf. ‘But as for his long life, Bilbo never connected it with the ring at all. He took all the credit for that to himself, and he was very proud of it. Though he was getting restless and uneasy. Thin and stretched he said. A sign that the ring was getting control.’ |
In other words the effects of the Ring were having bad effects on him. Those effects were observed as ‘not being right’. We know that right means ‘straight’ here, that is geometrically a straight line, the Straight Road, the Path of 
the Heart. The Ring was bending that straight line. And that bending has the consequence that ultimately it bends the wearer into a hoop, a line which bends forever from which there is no escape, just like the ring. This prison is the plane of the hypotenuse. So what is the significance of the right angle regards this prison? The right angle is the Door, through which we escape the ‘Circles of the World’. And we see that door in ‘Before’ and ‘Afterwards’. Mortal Man’s doom is to be freed from the Circles of the World. The Ring is an attempt by the Enemy to create a prison from which mortal man cannot escape. The Ring is an attempt to create a counterfeit ‘Circle of the World’, and this is why the One Ring is in fact the missing fourth ring, the Ring of Earth (see Tolkien’s draft dust jacket cover for the Fellowship of the Ring left, and more explanation later elsewhere on this site).
So we see that escape from the Circles of the World is via the plane of the hypotenuse but it can also become a prison. It offers a means of escape if we travel straight, down the centre. Meaning if we maintain a good heart and keep Faith. It eventually becomes a prison if we become bent and lose Faith. If we become evil. And this is referenced in the etymology of the word ‘credit’ used by Gandalf which describes Bilbo’s growing ego, pride and possessiveness and control by the One Ring ‘He took all the credit for that to himself, and he was very proud of it.’
| credit (n.) |
|
1540s, “belief, faith,” from Middle French crédit (15c.) “belief, trust,” from Italian credito, from Latin creditum “a loan, thing entrusted to another,” neuter past participle of credere “to trust, entrust, believe” (see credo). The commercial sense of “confidence in the ability and intention of a purchaser or borrower to make payment at some future time” was in English by 1570s (creditor is mid-15c.); hence “sum placed at a person’s disposal” by a bank, etc., 1660s. From 1580s as “one who or that which brings honor or reputation to.” Meaning “honor, acknowledgment of merit,” is from c. 1600. |
And we simply could not make that subtle connection if we did not look at the etymologies of Tolkien’s words. And we begin to understand the full significance of Tolkien’s incorporation of his religious beliefs into his works.
The Nazgûl guard the door through which the Ring bearer can escape. They lurk on the plane of the hypotenuse and this is in fact the plane that Ring Bearer goes to, or anyone goes to, when they put on the One Ring. We see the Nazgûl exhibit their strange behaviour at Crickhollow, standing all night to the left and right of the door until twilight. Why wait until then? More elsewhere. We see the Witch King trying to come through the gate, the door of Minas Tirith. And guess what, it’s also twilight then too. Very briefly, twilight is the time of the ‘two lights’ (see etymology). Those two lights symbolize the planes of the opposite and adjacent, the left and right planes in that triangle. In other words the plane of the hypotenuse is the world of twilight. Naturally this comes and goes at dawn and dusk, but for those imprisoned on it, they never escape from it.
| wraith (n.) |
| 1510s, “ghost,” Scottish, of uncertain origin. Weekley and Century Dictionary suggest Old Norse vorðr “guardian” in the sense of “guardian angel.” Klein points to Gaelic and Irish arrach “specter, apparition.” |
And there is more to the ‘Book of Ishness’. The suffix gives us ish of Engl-ishness
| -ish |
| adjectival word-forming element, Old English -isc “of the nativity or country of,” in later use “of the nature or character of,” from Proto-Germanic suffix *-iska- (cognates: Old Saxon -isk, Old Frisian -sk, Old Norse -iskr, Swedish and Danish -sk, Dutch -sch, Old High German -isc, German -isch, Gothic -isks), cognate with Greek diminutive suffix -iskos. In its oldest forms with altered stem vowel (French, Welsh). The Germanic suffix was borrowed into Italian and Spanish (-esco) and French (-esque). Colloquially attached to hours to denote approximation, 1916. |
| ness (n.) |
| “point of land running into the sea,” obsolete except in place names (Holderness, Dungeness, etc.) and surnames, Old English næs (West Saxon, Northumbrian), nes (Mercian, Kentish), “a promontory,” related to nasu “nose” (from PIE root *nas- “nose”). Cognate with and probably partly from Old Norse nes, Danish næs; also Swedish näs, Middle Dutch nesse. |
We see the symbolic landscape in the ancient imagination and association of a promontory of land with a nose on a face.What are the implications of the two etymologies? That the book is ‘of the character or the country of the nose’? Why would the nose be so important? As stated Tolkien actually maps the geometry to the human face and indeed the human body. The nose has two nostrils, and those two nostrils symbolize the left and right, the opposite and adjacent planes of the triangle but united on the plane of the hypotenuse. In order to begin fully understand it we need to break the word ‘nostril’ into the elements ‘nos-tril’. But that’s for another essay.
Tolkien assigns to the 3 planes of the right-angled triangle the senses of hearing, sight and smell. Hearing is assigned to the plane of the opposite, sight to the adjacent, and smell to the hypotenuse. The triangle is created in the 3 hands sequence of Ilúvatar in the Music of the Ainur. These three planes are the left-hand, Time, the right-hand Space, and the two hands, which are the twilight. Goldberry is created first as the left hand. Bombadil is created second as the right hand. The two hands indicates that the plane of the hypotenuse is the two blended together- twilight. This symbolizes the nose which has two nostrils. Each of those belongs to the female left hand, and the male right hand.
Yes, Goldberry was created first, the female was created first and therefore she is the elder. Bombadil’s claim is spurious and he knows it. That requires a long discussion on the roles of bet and alef in the Talmud, as discussed in the Rabbinnic Bereishit Rabbah or Bereshith Rabbah regarding the opening lines of the Book of Genesis.
The upshot is, is that Bombadil cannot hear without Goldberry, and she cannot see without Bombadil. This is why he asks ‘Can you hear me?’ Goldberry and Bombadil form two halves of a crown- without each other they are lost and they fall into their fallen natures. This is Tolkien and Edith in their marriage. Old Man Willow and the Barrow Wight are the fallen natures of Bombadil and Goldberry. A ‘half a crown’ in Old English money is ‘2 and 6’. This is why the Hobbits met Bombadil on the 26th of September, and this formed my first Prediction of the set of 103 which will appear on this site. And that brings us to Tolkien’s numerology- his other incorporation of mathematics from which his languages and works were created. Their first encounter is a Creation Myth. They function in the world, with the help of Bombadil’s Kingfisher feather in his hat, and Goldberry’s belt of flag lilies. You can see the numbers 2 and 6 paired with 6 and 4 in the courses of the Sun and Moon above. The numbers 2 and 6 symbolize the two united and in harmony. The numbers 4 and 6 symbolize the two disunited and in disharmony. The number 4 in 4 and 6 is actually 2 to the power of 2, incorporating powers from mathematics.
The two nostrils are the two letters R’s in the monogram. The letter R symbolizes ‘wrath’ or ‘roth’. The Floral Alphabet is a rebus, a cipher, each letter being, just as in the Mystic Talmud, the material structures of the World.
You can see that letter R resembling a fiery, angry coloured roaring wave. It is the Atlantean wave, which falls. Hence Rauros, the waterfall. Rauros means ‘roaring spray’. And not coincidentally, the word for lion is rá in Quenya, rhaw in Noldorin and rau in Gnomish. The lion in the Bible is a creature of wrath:
I Peter 5: 8
Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:
To further support the association of roaring and the sounds made by the Devil. In letter #155 to Naomi Mitchison Tolkien talks about the difference between good and bad magic in his works.
|
I do not intend to involve myself in any debate whether ‘magic’ in any sense is real or really possible in the world. But I suppose that, for the purposes of the tale, some would say that there is a latent distinction such as once was called the distinction between magia and goeteia.1 Galadriel speaks of the ‘deceits of the Enemy’. Well enough, but magia could be, was, held good (per se), and goeteia bad. Neither is, in this tale, good or bad (per se), but only by motive or purpose or use. Both sides use both, but with different motives. The supremely bad motive is (for this tale, since it is specially about it) domination of other ‘free’ wills. The Enemy’s operations are by no means all goetic deceits, but ‘magic’ that produces real effects in the physical world. But his magia he uses to bulldoze both people and things, and his goeteia to terrify and subjugate. Their magia the Elves and Gandalf use (sparingly): a magia, producing real results (like fire in a wet faggot) for specific beneficent purposes. Their goetic effects are entirely artistic and not intended to deceive: they never deceive Elves (but may deceive or bewilder unaware Men) since the difference is to them as clear as the difference to us between fiction, painting, and sculpture, and ‘life’. [155] 1. Greek γοητεία (γόης, sorcerer); the English form Goety is defined in the O.E.D. as ‘witchcraft or magic |
Immediately we see the reference to domination and the will which is the behaviour induced in the discords. He even says that ‘this tale’ is specially about that domination. That domination is described as ‘bulldozing’. Obviously the bull is the Enemy.
| bulldoze (v.) |
| by 1880, “intimidate by violence,” from an earlier noun, bulldose “a severe beating or lashing” (1876), said by contemporary sources to be literally “a dose fit for a bull,” a slang word referring to the intimidation beating of black voters (by either blacks or whites) in the chaotic 1876 U.S. presidential election. See bull (n.1) + dose (n.). The bull element in it seems to be connected to that in bull-whip and might be directly from that word. Meaning “use a mechanical ground-clearing caterpillar tractor” is from 1942 (see bulldozer); figurative use in this sense is by 1948. Related: Bulldozed; bulldozing. |
In bulldoze we recall the whip of the Balrog. Regards the bulldozer, in letter 155 Tolkien immediately goes on to talk about machinery:
| The basic motive for magia – quite apart from any philosophic consideration of how it would work – is immediacy: speed, reduction of labour, and reduction also to a minimum (or vanishing point) of the gap between the idea or desire and the result or effect. But the magia may not be easy to come by, and at any rate if you have command of abundant slave-labour or machinery (often only the same thing concealed), it may be as quick or quick enough to push mountains over, wreck forests, or build pyramids by such means. |
We can see the connection with slavery again in bull-whip and bulldoze.
| bull-whip (n.) |
| also bullwhip, “long, thick type of whip ‘used by drovers to intimidate refractory animals‘” [Century Dictionary], 1852, American English, from bull (n.1) + whip (n.). Whips made of bull hide were known in Middle English as bull-rope, bull-sinew, bull-yerde. But in bull-whip (also in 19c. American English bull-whack) the sense is perhaps “whip that can drive a bull,” or bull might be a reference to the size of it. The earliest references (1850s) are in Northern accounts of Southern slavery. As a verb from 1895. |
If we look at bull we see the spelling ‘bul’ in the Dutch and the Germanic stem ‘to roar’.
| bull (n.1) |
|
“male of a bovine animal,” c. 1200, bule, from Old Norse boli “bull, male of the domestic bovine,” perhaps also from an Old English *bula, both from Proto-Germanic *bullon- (source also of Middle Dutch bulle, Dutch bul, German Bulle), perhaps from a Germanic verbal stem meaning “to roar,” which survives in some German dialects and perhaps in the first element of boulder (q.v.). The other possibility [Watkins] is that the Germanic word is from PIE root *bhel- (2) “to blow, swell.” An uncastrated male, reared for breeding, as opposed to a bullock or steer. Extended after 1610s to males of other large animals (elephant, alligator, whale, etc.). Stock market sense “one who seeks to cause a rise in the price of a stock” is from 1714 (compare bear (n.)). Meaning “policeman” attested by 1859. Bull-necked is from 1640s. Figurative phrase totake the bull by the horns “boldly face or grapple with some danger or difficulty” first recorded 1711 (Swift). To be a bull in a china shop, figurative of careless and inappropriately destructive use of force, attested from 1812 and was the title of a popular humorous song in 1820s England. |
And finally we can see the concept of ‘to waver’, to oscillate, vacillate and to TURN in whip:
| whip (v.) |
| mid-13c., wippen “flap violently,” not in Old English, of uncertain origin, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *wipjan “to move back and forth” (source also of Danish vippe “to raise with a swipe,” Middle Dutch, Dutch wippen “to swing,” Old High German wipf “swing, impetus”), from PIE root *weip- “to turn, vacillate, tremble.” “The senses of both [noun and verb] no doubt represent several independent adoptions or formations” [OED]. The cookery sense is from 1670s. Related: Whipped; whipping. Whip snake first recorded 1774, so called for its shape |
It’s here with the ‘tremble’ of the whip we recall the last moments of Gandalf on the bridge:
| The bridge cracked. Right at the Balrog’s feet it broke, and the stone upon which it stood crashed into the gulf, while the rest remained, poised, quivering like a tongue of rock thrust out into emptiness. |
| quiver (v.) |
| “to tremble,” late 15c., perhaps imitative, or possibly an alteration of quaveren (see quaver), or from Old English cwifer- (in cwiferlice “zealously”), which is perhaps related to cwic “alive” (see quick (adj.)). Related: Quivered; quivering. As a noun in this sense from 1715, from the verb. |
And in that we see the connection to the voice, the roar. In other words the whip symbolizes the voice, the deceits of the Enemy. A bulldose in this instance would be a ‘tongue-lashing’. The whip being the tongue of the Enemy. Which brings us back to the dialectic, the conversation, and the war or words in the battle of wills. And we also see the tongue-lashing the errant husband might received from his wrathful wife!
And, as we’re dealing with demons and goeteia, to quote wiki, we can see the left and right handedness which might have influenced a young Tolkien:
|
Goetia or Goëtia is a practice that includes the conjuration of demons. The Ancient Greek word γοητεία (goēteía) means “charm, jugglery, sorcery”,[3] from γόης (góēs) “sorcerer, wizard” (plural: γόητες góētes).[4] The meaning of “sorcerer” is attested in a scholion, or commentary, referring to the Dactyli, a mythical race, stating that according to Pherecydes of Syros and Hellanicus of Lesbos, those to the left are goētes, while those to the right are deliverers from sorcery.[5] The word may be ultimately derived from the verb γοάω “groan, bewail” (goáō). Derivative terms are γοήτευμα “a charm” (goḗteuma, plural γοητεύματα goēteúmata) and γοητεύω “to bewitch, beguile” (goēteúō). Γοητεία was a term for the magic in the Greco-Roman world. Its Latinized form is goëtia; in the 16th century, English adopted it as goecie or goety (and the adjectival form goetic), via French goétie.[citation needed] During the Renaissance, goëtia was sometimes contrasted with magia, as “evil magic” vs. “good magic” or “natural magic”,[6] or sometimes with theurgy.[7] Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, in his Three Books of Occult Philosophy, writes “Now the parts of ceremonial magic are goetia and theurgia. Goetia is unfortunate, by the commerces of unclean spirits made up of the rites of wicked curiosities, unawful charms, and deprecations, and is abandoned and execrated by all laws. |
Johann Weyer argued in his ‘De Praestigiis Daemonum’ (1577) that the beliefs of witches were delusional and that Witch-Trials should be conducted on the basis that witches were suffering from psychological illness, rather than anything else. In the appendix of the De Praestigiis Daemonum is the list of demons known as the ‘Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, or False Monarchy of Demons’. We find that Baëll the principle king under Lucifer speaks with a hoarse voice- the same word that Tolkien uses to describe the voice of the Balrog.
|
Their first and principall king (which is of the power of the east) is called Baëll; who when he is conjured up, appeareth with three heads; the first, like a tode; the second, like a man; the third, like a cat. He speaketh with a hoarse voice, he maketh a man go invisible, he hath under his obedience and rule sixty and six legions of divels. [Weyer, Johann. Pseudomonarchia Daemonum: The False Monarchy of Demons.] |
The moment in the Chamber of Mazarbul:
| There was a rush of hoarse laughter, like the fall of sliding stones into a pit; amid the clamour a deep voice was raised in command. Doom, boom, doom went the drums in the deep. |
And he also uses the same word to describe Boromir’s voice at the West Gate in an exchange which foreshadows the appearance of the Balrog and Gandalf’s fall into the chasm.
| ‘What was the thing, or were there many of them? ‘ ‘I do not know,’ answered Gandalf, ‘but the arms were all guided by one purpose. Something has crept, or has been driven out of dark waters under the mountains. There are older and fouler things than Orcs in the deep places of the world.’ He did not speak aloud his thought that whatever it was that dwelt in the lake, it had seized on Frodo first among all the Company. Boromir muttered under his breath, but the echoing stone magnified the sound to a hoarse whisper that all could hear: `In the deep places of the world! |
In both we see stone symbolism, which we don’t have to time to look at here, but which ultimately references the alchemy, and the stone of the diamond in the geometry; divergent wills. The stone is the stone over the Door blocking it. The reason why there is only one heart in the rock in the illustration of the West Gate: the heart of stone.
| raucous (adj.) |
|
1769, from Latin raucus “hoarse” (also source of French rauque, Spanish ronco, Italian rauco), related to ravus “hoarse,” from PIE echoic base *reu- “make hoarse cries” (source also of Sanskrit rayati “barks,” ravati “roars;” Greek oryesthai “to howl, roar;” Latin racco “a roar;” Old Church Slavonic rjevo “I roar;” Lithuanian rėkti “roar;” Old English rarian “to wail, bellow”). Middle English had rauc in the same sense, from the same source |
Hoarse leads us back to bellow the sound made by a bull via roar. Wail leads us back to the etymology of ‘goeteia’ as ‘lament’ wail’. No less than 8 of the demons in the list are described as speaking with a ‘hoarse’ voice.
Tolkien’s symbolism for the letter R ultimately derives from Owen Barfield’s ‘Poetic Diction’ in which he discusses the word ‘ruin’. Tolkien has a specific stated way of pronunciation, of rolling the ‘r’.
| R represents a trilled r in all positions; the sound was not lost before consonants (as in English part). The Orcs, and some Dwarves, are said to have used a back or uvular r, a sound which the Eldar found distasteful. RH represents a voiceless r (usually derived from older initial sr- ). It was written hr in Quenya. Cf. L. [APPENDIX E WRITING AND SPELLING, The Lord of the Rings] |
To quote Barfield:
|
“English schoolboys are generally taught to translate the Latin verb ‘ruo’ by one of two words, rush or fall. And it does indeed ‘mean’ both these things; but, because it means both a because it also means a great deal more, neither rendering alone is really an adequate equivalent. In the classical contexts themselves it nearly always carries with it a larger sense of swift, disastrous movement – ‘ruit arduus aether’ of a deluge of rain [The Making of Meaning, Poetic Diction] |
The landslide recalls the sliding stones into the pit of the hoarse voice of the Balrog. And we find roaring in the etymology of torrent:
| torrent (n.) |
| “rapid stream,” c. 1600, from Middle French torrent (16c.) and directly from Latin torrentem (nominative torrens) “rushing, roaring” (of streams), also “a rushing stream,” originally as an adjective “roaring, boiling, burning, parching, hot, inflamed,” present participle of torrere “to parch” (from PIE root *ters- “to dry”). Extension to any onrush (of words, feelings, etc.) first recorded 1640s. |
The rush is the rush of the laughter of the voice of the Balrog. Barfield goes on to chart the historical evolution of the meaning and usage of the word ruin in literature to illustrate his theory of how language and meaning have changed through a process of separation and over-rationalization and abstraction. This abstraction has, he argues, distanced the poet and us from the very immediacy of the physicality of the guttural r. When one word in the past could mean many things ‘rush-fall-collapse’, we later developed separate words for each.
| The old, single, living meanings (IV,2) which like the individual, like the races, splits up and so kills, as he grows |
We will see the role of separation again shortly when we look at Vinyar Tengwar 39. And separation leads to wrath. In other words he argues that the connection between the physical body and sound production of the vocal cords, and language and meaning in the mythic past, have been lost.
| in the early stages of those languages with which we are familiar; this meaning has then been traced back to its source in the theocratic, ‘myth-thinking’ period, and it has been shown that the myths, which represent the earliest meanings, were not the arbitrary creations of ‘poets’, but the natural expression of man’s being and consciousness at the time. The primary meanings, as it were given, as it were, by Nature. |
This is a very Tolkienian idea if you have read his essays ‘A Secret Vice’ and ‘Essay on Phonetic Symbolism’. This is the very reason why Tolkien chose the trilled r. In Tolkien’s symbolism the letter R represents the influence of the discords of the Enemy which run like the roaring wave, like the roaring lion of wrath, throughout the entire histories. Imagine if you will the trill oscillating between two notes having the sine wave as a visual metaphor oscillating between up and down motion. Then imagine that the two poles between which it oscillates are Time and Space. And we know from the astronomical diagram above that the Enemy and his discords does indeed oscillate between Sun (Time) and Moon (Space). This is the essence of the symbolic landscape in which the inner spiritual reality ‘rush-fall-collapse’ is manifested in the outer world, the trilling of the tongue. And this meaning and usage of ‘ruo’, ‘ruin’, is charted by Barfield throughout history. In much the same way the letter R runs throughout Tolkien’s histories and finds physical manifestation in Rauros and Orod-ruin and the astrological movements of the Sun and Moon. Barfield writes:
| In Latin, then, the four letters ‘ruin’ never lost the powers to suggest movement. |
It’s no coincidence that Tolkien incorporated the word ruin into the place in his histories where the ancient Enemy, as Sauron, as a continuation of Melkor, is finally overthrown. The discords of Melkor which began when Time and Space were created in the Music of the Ainur, find physical manifestation in Orod-ruin right at the end. And it’s significant that we find these instances in Barfield’s chart of the usage of the word ruin.
|
“And the verb neuter of a waterfall: Ruining from the cliff, the deafening load |
| When the crimson rolling eye Glares ruin! [The Princess, Tennyson] |
This certainly suggests the roving eye of Sauron. And the following very much recalls the Watcher in the Water at the beginning of the Moria sequence:
| …the climbing tentacles Of some sleep-swimming octopus Disturb a ruined temple’s bells And set the deep sea clamorous. [The Sunken City, Edward L. Davison] |
And compare the etymology of torrent above: “roaring, boiling, burning, parching, hot, inflamed,” with Tolkien’s description of the scene in which we encounter the Watcher:
| The dark water boiled, and there was a hideous stench. |
And, we should never fail to check the etymology..
| boil (v.) |
|
early 13c. (intransitive) “to bubble up, be in a state of ebullition,” especially from heat, from Old French bolir “boil, bubble up, ferment, gush” (12c., Modern French bouillir), from Latin bullire “to bubble, seethe,” from PIE *beu- “to swell” (see bull (n.2)). The native word is seethe. Figurative sense, of passions, feelings, etc., “be in an agitated state” is from 1640s. I am impatient, and my blood boyls high. [Thomas Otway, “Alcibiades,” 1675] |
Hmm…so let’s take a look at bull:
| bull (n.2) |
|
“papal edict, highest authoritative document issued by or in the name of a pope,” c. 1300, from Medieval Latin bulla “sealed document” (source of Old French bulle, Italian bulla), originally the word for the seal itself, from Latin bulla “round swelling, knob,” said ultimately to be from Gaulish, from PIE *beu-, a root supposed to have formed a large group of words meaning “much, great, many,” also words associated with swelling, bumps, and blisters (source also of Lithuanian bulė “buttocks,” Middle Dutch puyl “bag,” also possibly Latin bucca “cheek”). |
And just out of curiosity…
| bull (n.1) |
|
“male of a bovine animal,” c. 1200, bule, from Old Norse boli “bull, male of the domestic bovine,” perhaps also from an Old English *bula, both from Proto-Germanic *bullon- (source also of Middle Dutch bulle, Dutch bul, German Bulle), perhaps from a Germanic verbal stem meaning “to roar,” which survives in some German dialects and perhaps in the first element of boulder (q.v.). The other possibility [Watkins] is that the Germanic word is from PIE root *bhel- (2) “to blow, swell.” An uncastrated male, reared for breeding, as opposed to a bullock or steer. Extended after 1610s to males of other large animals (elephant, alligator, whale, etc.). Stock market sense “one who seeks to cause a rise in the price of a stock” is from 1714 (compare bear (n.)). Meaning “policeman” attested by 1859. Bull-necked is from 1640s. Figurative phrase to take the bull by the horns “boldly face or grapple with some danger or difficulty” first recorded 1711 (Swift). To be a bull in a china shop, figurative of careless and inappropriately destructive use of force, attested from 1812 and was the title of a popular humorous song in 1820s England. |
Considering the large bull’s head in the cliff face on the Western gate and the Chamber of Maze-ar-bull, and the bull’s head of page 5, this is very interesting. All of those involve the Enemy, and I’ve already associated the Enemy with the bull. The shared meaning of the two nouns of bull in ‘to swell’ suggests that Tolkien saw a connection between the two and did not consider them to be entirely separate or unrelated. The sound made by a bull is a ‘bellow’. And if you dig a little bit deeper you can find two instances in the Moria passage of the the troll and the horn of Boromir ‘bellowing’:
| Suddenly, and to his own surprise, Frodo felt a hot wrath blaze up in his heart. `The Shire! ‘ he cried, and springing beside Boromir, he stooped, and stabbed with Sting at the hideous foot. There was a bellow, and the foot jerked back |
Remember Boromir’s horn is made from the horn, of what is effectively, a bull and recall the etymology of torrent:
|
It [the Balrog] came to the edge of the fire and the light faded as if a cloud had bent over it. Then with a rush it leaped across the fissure. The flames roared up to greet it, |
| bellow (v.) |
| early 14c., apparently from Old English bylgan “to bellow,” from PIE root *bhel- (4) “to sound, roar.” Originally of animals, especially cows and bulls; used of human beings since c. 1600. Related: Bellowed; bellowing. As a noun, “a loud, deep cry,” from 1763. |
And if we look at roar we find bellow again. Thus a bellow is a roar and roar has been described as the sound made cattle and bulls.
| roar (v.) |
| Old English rarian “roar, wail, lament, bellow, cry,” probably of imitative origin (compare Middle Dutch reeren, German röhren “to roar;” Sanskrit ragati “barks;” Lithuanian rieju, rieti “to scold;” Old Church Slavonic revo “I roar;” Latin raucus “hoarse”). Related: Roared; roaring. |
And ‘hoarse’?..of course.. the chilling moment of the laughter of the Balrog with its most unusual and memorable imagery of falling stones.
| There was a rush of hoarse laughter, like the fall of sliding stones into a pit; amid the clamour a deep voice was raised in command. Doom, boom, doom went the drums in the deep. |
Again we see ‘rush’ from the etymology of torrent: “rushing, roaring” (of streams) also “a rushing stream,” originally as an adjective “roaring, boiling, burning, parching, hot, inflamed,”. The Balrog streams and the orcs pour- all of these are torrent words. This is the sound of the devil, the bull. The sound that bull makes, is the roar, the bellow. This IS the Discords that run through the histories.
And if we look at the etymology of hoarse we can see the connection between the Enemy and the torrent. In the entry for torrent we read: of torrere “to parch” (from PIE root *ters- “to dry”).
| hoarse (adj.) |
| late 14c., hors, earlier hos, from Old English has “hoarse,” from Proto-Germanic *haisa- (source also of Old Saxon hes, Old Norse hass, Dutch hees, Old High German heisi, German heiser “hoarse”), perhaps originally meaning “dried out, rough.” The unetymological -r- is difficult to explain; it is first attested c. 1400, but it may indicate an unrecorded Old English variant *hars. It also appears in a variant form in Middle Dutch. Related: Hoarsely; hoarseness. |
| raucous (adj.) |
| 1769, from Latin raucus “hoarse” (also source of French rauque, Spanish ronco, Italian rauco), related to ravus “hoarse,” from PIE echoic base *reu- “make hoarse cries” (source also of Sanskrit rayati “barks,” ravati “roars;” Greek oryesthai “to howl, roar;” Latin racco “a roar;” Old Church Slavonic rjevo “I roar;” Lithuanian rėkti “roar;” Old English rarian “to wail, bellow”). Middle English had rauc in the same sense, from the same source. |
Tolkien intends that the Balrog, the Devil, has been roaring since the beginning of time.
|
I hear the endless voice of Rauros calling. |
Indeed Tolkien incorporates the whole word ‘ruin’. The Floral Alphabet rebus defines the symbolic meaning of mystical letters. The letters of the word encapsulate the process of falling, both in the microcosmic moment of THE TURN and in the macrocosmic events such as the Akallabêth and Ragnarok. In this way ‘r-u-i-n’ also runs through the history of Tolkien’s world. You can see the very similar colouring of one of the letters n to the letter r. This pairs it with that letter. Both belong to the process of falling, THE TURN and wrath. The blue letter n incorporates the water idea. Imagine the shape of the letter to be a wave r that has broken. We’ll encounter U and I later.
Barfield wrtites:
| Thus, throughout the history of poetry we can discern, reflected at any rate in opinion, a gradual reduction of the inevitable interval between the two moods, which remain nevertheless incompatible in their essential nature; till today this huge change from poetic to appreciative, from creative to contemplative, which the material he is working in – language- has itself been performing in one direction over a period measured in milleniums, flickers with dazzling rapidity in the being of a single poet. Not only from one day or hour to another is there alternation of mood: his whole consciousness oscillates while his pen is poised in the air, and he deliberates an epithet. |
A more complete discussion of how Tolkien incorporated Barfield’s ideas will be covered on this site.
Returning to incense.
Tolkien refers to ‘incense’ a number of times in his letters. Incense of course is used in Catholic religious ritual and involves the nose and the sense of smell. If we look at the etymology we find…
| incense (v.2) |
| “to offer incense, perfume with incense, fumigate (something) with incense,” late 13c., encensen, incensen, from incense (n.) or from Old French encenser (11c.), or directly from Medieval Latin incensare. |
| incense (n.) |
| late 13c., “gum or other substance producing a sweet smell when burned,” from Old French encens (12c.), from Late Latin incensum “burnt incense,” literally “that which is burnt,” noun use of neuter past participle of Latin incendere “set on fire” (see incendiary). Meaning “smoke or perfume of incense” is from late 14c. |
| incense (v.1) |
| early 15c., encensen “to arouse, inspire,” from Old French incenser, from Latin incensare, frequentative of incendere “set on fire,” figuratively “incite, enrage, rouse” (see incendiary). From mid-15c. as “to provoke, anger.” Literal sense “to heat, make (something) hot” is from c. 1500 in English but is rare. |
| incensed (adj.) |
| “full of wrath, inflamed with anger,” 1590s, past-participle adjective from incense (v.1). Earlier it was used in heraldry, in reference to fire-breathing animals (1570s). Distinguished in pronunciation from incensed “perfumed with incense” (1610s), from incense (v.2). |
And ‘to set on fire’, ‘full of wrath’ looks awfully suggestive the letter R in the Floral Alphabet rebus.
To quote the Catholic.org encyclopedia, their entry for incense reads:
|
( Latin thus , Gr. thumiama ), an aromatic substance which is obtained from certain resinous trees and largely employed for purposes of religious worship. The word is also used to signify the smoke or perfume arising from incense when burned. NATURE USE
the grains put into the Paschal candle and
https://www.catholic.org/encyclopedia/view.php?id=6079 |
In other words burning incense is the burning of trees. We know that that in Tolkien’s symbolism is not a good thing. Here the Primary World blurs with the Secondary symbolism of Tolkien’s reflection of it. And we can see the fire in the letter ‘R’ of the Floral Alphabet. We also note that it is associated with the Eastern liturgies. Tolkien employs a simple system- according to his geometry and his incorporation of the principle of ‘Emanation’, that anything associated with the east, or the eastern side or end of any area or location, is more fallen than anything associated with the West, or the western side. This is because anything in the west is closer to the God, or Aman. Put simply, if we turn to God, we turn to the west. If we turn away from God, we turn to the east. This physical expression of the spirit, involves the second phase of the THE TURN which has a physical manifestation (see The ‘Turn in Principle’ and ‘The Turn in Practice’). All things emanated from God, Eru. You can see this relationship between west and east in his illustration ‘The Hall at Bag End’. The two mirrors are on the west and east walls. You can see that the western mirror is straight and reflects true. The eastern mirror is bent and reflects in a twisted way (it reflects at 90 degrees in fact) and you can see the fire in that reflection. One of he trees outside has turned to fire. That fire is the same fire we found in incense, wrath and in the letter R of the Floral Alphabet. And you can see that Bilbo has to TURN to go through the DOOR. Do you see a similarity between these two images? Yes, the tree outside of Bilbo’s door is burning- just like the burning of the trees to produce incense. And what is Bilbo doing? He is burning a tree in his lighting up of his pipe. The burning conifer is one of the two flames in the braziers in ‘Before’.
We also note incense is associated with paganism and the mystical. These mystical interpretations of religion are on the boundary between the well trodden paths of formal doctrine and the potentially dangerous, darker world beyond. This relationship between the two finds expression in the Shire for example. The blurred boundary can be found is the bunt wine of the Brandywine (brandy is burned wine), the Queer and strange Bucklanders, and of course the Old Forest of Bombadil and Goldberry on the eastern edge of the shire. Remember Tolkien saw languages as wines, so burned wine is burned language. And if the language is reality, then the Brandywine symbolizes burned reality. Therefore incense is burned language, which in Tolkien’s world is burned reality. And that describes everything that is on the blurred boundary between what is evil and what is good. Things that are ‘queer’, ‘strange’.
|
I feel the beauty of say Italian or for that matter of modern English (which is very remote from my personal taste): it is more like the appetite for a needed food. Most important, perhaps, after Gothic was the discovery in Exeter College library, when I was supposed to be reading for Honour Mods, of a Finnish Grammar. It was like Letter 163 To W. H. Auden |
And the Old Forest is a dark and somehow threatening place. But importantly it’s not a threatening place in the way that Mordor is either. It’s a place where conventional society and ways flirt with the queer and the strange but do not entirely cross into evil. It’s a place of twilit uncertainty. We can equate these two notions of the well-lit, well defined doctrine of the Church, and the more, mysterious, dangerous mystical interpretations as blending to give the twilight world of the Old Forest. And this is just another manifestation of the third plane of the hypotenuse, of the underlying dialectical geometry of Tolkien.
And to support this, we can see from Tolkien’s letters that clearly incense clearly has its charms.
|
I thought these extracts from a letter I got yesterday would amuse you. I find these letters which I still occasionally get (apart from the smell of incense which fallen man can never quite fail to savour) make me rather sad. What thousands of grains of good human corn must fall on barren stony ground, if such a very small drop of water should be so intoxicating! But I suppose one should be grateful for the grace and fortune that have allowed me to provide even the drop. God bless you beloved. Do you think ‘The Ring’ will come off, and reach the thirsty?
87 To Christopher Tolkien |
We see the association of the savouring of the smell of incense with the fallen nature of man and intoxication, which is of course the effects of wine. And we know that language to Tolkien is wine:
| All the same, I suddenly realized that I am a pure philologist. I like history, and am moved by it, but its finest moments for me are those in which it throws light on words and names! Several people (and I agree) spoke to me of the an with which you made the beady-eyed Attila on his couch almost vividly present. Yet oddly, I find the thing that really thrills my nerves is the one you mentioned casually: atta, attila.1 Without those syllables the whole great drama both of history and legend loses savour for me – or would. I do not know what I mean, because ‘aesthetic’ is always impossible to catch in a net of words. Nobody believes me when I say that my long book is an attempt to create a world in which a form of language agreeable to my personal aesthetic might seem real. But it is true. An enquirer (among many) asked what the L.R. was all about, and whether it was an ‘allegory’. And I said it was an effort to create a situation in which a common greeting would be elen síla lúmenn’ omentieimo,2 and that the phase long antedated the book. |
Old Man Willow is the fallen Tolkien. A creature of pure philology and language which results from the separate from Edith, without which Tolkien falls into evil ways. Equally the Barrow Wight is Edith separated from Tolkien. Both attempt to kill the Hobbits who symbolize Tolkien and Edith’s children.
| 171 To Hugh Brogan [In December 1954, Brogan wrote to Tolkien criticising the archaic narrative style of parts of The Two Towers, especially the chapter ‘The King of the Golden Hall’ ; he called this style ‘Ossianic’, and said he agreed with a critic’s description of it as ‘tushery’. At the time, Tolkien made no reply to this; but when on 18 September 1955 Brogan wrote again, apologising for being ‘impertinent, stupid, or sycophantic’, Tolkien began to draft what follows. In the event he did not send it, but instead wrote a brief note saying that the matter of archaism ‘would take too long to debate’ in a letter and must wait until their next meeting.] [September 1955] Dear Hugh, …. Don’t be disturbed: I have not noticed any impertinence (or sycophancy) in your letters; and anyone so appreciative and so perceptive is entitled to criticism. Anyway, I do not naturally breathe an air of undiluted incense! It was not what you said (last letter but one, not the one that I answered) or your right to say it, that might have called for a reply, if I had the time for it; but the pain that I always feel when anyone – in an age when almost all auctorial manhandling of English is permitted (especially if disruptive) in the name of art or ‘personal expression’ – immediately dismisses out of court deliberate ‘archaism’. |
In other words here Tolkien is equating breathing incense to self-indulgence. And that chimes well with the indulgences of wine and language, and indeed other things, such as sex.
And self-indulgence is echoed here:
| 206 From a letter to Rayner Unwin 8 April 1958 [At the end of March 1958, Tolkien visited Holland at the invitation of the Rotterdam booksellers Voorhoeve en Dietrich; his travelling expenses were paid by Allen & Unwin. He attended a ‘Hobbit Dinner’ at which he gave a speech. One item on the menu was ‘Maggot Soup’, an intended allusion to Farmer Maggot’s mushrooms in The Lord of the Rings.] Since I had the remarkable, and in the event extremely enjoyable, experience in Holland by the generosity of ‘A. and U.’, I think some kind of report would be proper. I have had time to simmer down a bit, and recover some sense of proportion. The incense was thick and very heady; and the kindness overwhelming. My journey was very comfortable, and the reservations magnificent: the outward boat was packed, and the train from L[iverpool] Street went in two pans. |
It is this self-indulgence which leads to the figures of Old Man Willow and The Barrow Wight. Both are manifestations of Tolkien and Edith in their marriage, dominating and silencing the voice of the other, which can lead to the destruction of their marriage and their family. Hence they both try to kill their children. And this situation of dominating wills finds geometric expression in the astrological paths of the Sun and Moon. The Sun dominates during the day. The Moon at night. And this situation is the two back to back letter Rs in the monogram. The letter Rs facing away from one another is Tolkien and Edith turned away from one another, and this is equated with wrath, or roth. You can also see it in the two question marks in ‘Grownupishness’ where the we see the square and the circle. The circle dominates the picture because Edith is dominating Tolkien by forcing her will on him to find his way in the world and support their family -hence the title ‘Grownupishness’. (See Prediction #31 on the homepage). That was essentially the situation when he was separated from her and in order to pursue a marriage with her, he had to submit his will to the marriage. And we have two more references to self-indulgence:
| 207 From a letter to Rayner Unwin 8 April 1958 [Negotiations were proceeding with the American film company. The synopsis of the proposed film of The Lord of the Rings was the work of Morton Grady Zimmerrnan.] Zimmerman – ‘Story-Line’ Of course, I will get busy on this at once, now that Easter is over, and the Dutch incense is dissipated. Thank you for the copy of the Story-line, which I will go through again. |
| 336 From a letter to Sir Patrick Browne 23 May 1972 Being a cult figure in one’s own lifetime I am afraid is not at all pleasant. However I do not find that it tends to puff one up; in my case at any rate it makes me feel extremely small and inadequate. But even the nose of a very modest idol (younger than Chu-Bu and not much older than Sheemish)1 cannot remain entirely untickled by the sweet smell of incense! |
And as ever I’ll just check the etymology of that unusual word ‘tickle’ there…
| tickle (v.) |
|
c. 1300 (implied in tickling) “to touch lightly so as to cause a peculiar and uneasy or thrilling sensation in the nerves,” of uncertain origin, possibly a frequentative form of tick (v.) in its older sense of “to touch.” Some suggest a metathesis of Middle English kittle, which is from a shared Germanic word for “to tickle,” but tickle is attested earlier. The Old English form was tinclian. Meaning “to excite agreeably” (late 14c.) is a translation of Latin titillare. Meaning “to poke or touch so as to excite laughter” is from early 15c.; figurative sense of “to excite, amuse” is attested from 1680s. The noun is recorded from 1801. To tickle (one’s) fancy is from 1640s. Related: Tickler. |
How interesting…to recall Tolkien’s words above in his letter 205 to Christopher:
| Yet oddly, I find the thing that really thrills my nerves is the one you mentioned casually: atta, attila.1 |
That equates the language with incense and the nose, and with self-indulgence; and thereby with wrath. And this is why you should ALWAYS check the etymologies of EVERY word that Tolkien uses. That has been the bedrock of my research for the last fifteen years. In fact the thrill he speaks of goes back to my statement about the word ‘nos-tril’ and rendering it as ‘nos-tril’. But we have to talk more about Owen Barfield’s discussion on ‘ruin’, and the oscillation he describes between the two moods, apprehension and poetic creation, and Tinfang Warble, the thrush at the door of Erebor and the Door. Imagine a trill as an oscillation, the tongue oscillates as does the musical note.
And at this moment I made another prediction. The association of the Balrog with the plane of the hypotenuse is new to me, although the association of wrath with it, is not new to me. The anagram Seth found regarding holding the Balrog’s wings is explained by this understanding of how the Balrog relates to the geometry, the reason why he describes it as spreading its wings from wall to wall, and what it’s wings symbolize.
Tolkien Prediction #59
That the etymology of ‘intensive’ contained the meaning ‘stretched’.
| intensive (adj.) |
|
mid-15c., “intense, fervent, great,” from Old French intensif (14c.) and Medieval Latin intensivus, from Latin intens-, past participle stem of intendere “turn one’s attention; strain, stretch” (see intend). Grammatical meaning “expressing intensity” is from c. 1600; as a noun, “something expressing intensity,” 1813, from the adjective. Alternative intensitive is a malformation. Intensive care attested from 1958. |
| intend (v.) |
|
c. 1300, entenden, “direct one’s attention to, pay attention, give heed,” from Old French entendre, intendre “to direct one’s attention” (in Modern French principally “to hear”), from Latin intendere “turn one’s attention, strain (in quest of something), be zealous,” literally “stretch out, extend,” from in- “toward” (from PIE root *en “in”) + tendere “to stretch,” from PIE root *ten- “to stretch.” Sense of “have as a plan, have in mind or purpose” (late 14c.) was present in Latin. A Germanic word for this was ettle, from Old Norse ætla “to think, conjecture, propose,” from Proto-Germanic *ahta “consideration, attention” (source also of Old English eaht, German acht). Related: Intended; intending. |
This is why I was able to make the prediction.., from Vinyar Tengwar 39, p 10:
| “The examples of ai, au of this origin are not very numerous. They were mostly “intensive”, as in rauko “very terrible creature” (*RUK); taura “very mighty, vast, of unmeasured might or size” (*TUR).” |
To explain..
The plane of the hypotenuse is stretched from the etymology:
| hypotenuse (n.) |
| the side of a right triangle that is opposite the right angle, 1570s, from Late Latin hypotenusa, from Greek hypoteinousa “stretching under” (the right angle), fem. present participle of hypoteinein, from hypo- “under” (see hypo-) + teinein “to stretch,” from PIE root *ten- “to stretch.” Formerly often erroneously hypothenuse. Related: Hypotenusal. |
This plane represents the distance between the male and the female, their relationship which is represented in the geometry of the courses of the Sun and Moon. The male and female are symbolized by the two letter Rs in the monogram. The Rs are back to back indicating divergent wills- that is the man the woman are turned away from each other. That indicates a battle of wills, a desire to dominate and silence the voice of the other. The two vacillate between facing away from one another and facing towards one another at twilight when they are both in the sky together. This battle of wills is characterized by Tolkien as ‘wrath’, ‘roth’. And RAUKO of course is from Valarauko, the Balrog. The Balrog represents wrath. The length of the hypotenuse represents the distance between male and female and thus the state of their relationship. When it is longer they are further apart, which reaches a maximum at midday and midnight. At midday the female Sun is dominant. At midnight the male Moon is. Tolkien uses the word ‘longing’ to describe the need for the male and female to be reunited. That reunification happens at twilight, dawn and dusk, when the distance between them (the length of the hypotenuse) is zero, when they are both in the sky simultaneously. Thus the distance in the geometry as ‘long’ becomes ‘to long for’, to ‘yearn for’.
In addition, the geometry can be seen as a language stem consisting of consonant-vowel-consonant (e.g KET). This is how Feanor describes it in V.T 39:
| “He is reported (by Pengolodh) to have said that “words may be analyzed into their tengwi, but I would rather say that they have one of more chambers, and the vowel is the room in each, and the consonants are the walls. One may live in a space without walls, but not in walls with no space: kt is only a noise, hardly audible in normal speech, but ket may have significance. Our fathers therefore in building words took the vowels and parted them with the consonants as walls; but for them the word-beginning and word-ending were sufficient divisions, though the least that could be allowed. The word-beginning was the stronger, as we see in that vowels at the beginning seldom disappear, whereas those at the end often vanish, having no end-wall to contain them.” |
Tolkien hints at the analogy of the relationship in ‘took the vowels and parted them’. To be parted is to be separated and ‘long for’. And we recall his words in his instructions regarding the pronunciation of the letter R in the appendix to the Lord of the Rings: “R represents a trilled r in all positions; the sound was not lost before consonants (as in English part). ” Again, Tolkien never uses examples arbitrarily. ‘Part’ once gain is a reference to the parting of the Sun and the moon, Edith and Tolkien, through wrath.
The two consonants form the opposite and adjacent sides of the triangle; the two walls in Feanor’s analogy. The vowel is on the hypotenuse between them. Again, this is the because the language is reality, the material structures of the World, and recalls Tolkien’s claim that his language was created via ‘mathematics’. And because of this the word ‘vowel’ can be rendered as ‘vow-el’. A vow to el. El is the star, his wife, Edith, and the vow is the marriage vow. And the sundoma can be represented geometrically as the ray of sunlight, which we see as the diagonal in his illustrations. The diagonal is the hypotenuse. The sundoma lengthens vowels. In other words the position of the sun strains the marriage vow because the Sun is Edith, the female, and the length of the diagonal from her position in the sky, increases the distance between her and the Moon Tolkien. It reaches its maximum when she is at the midday noon position, and the Moon is directly underneath, under the world. Stretch and strain both appear in the etymology of ‘intensive’. The sundoma is also unusually moveable. That is because the sun traverses across the sky across the stem, from one end to the other.
So, in my prediction, I recalled that Tolkien described RAUKO as intensive.
So, in knowing that the two letter Rs represent wrath, and that described the length of the hypotenuse, I was able to draw a link between the wrath and the Balrog on the plane of the hypotenuse, and predict that the word used to describe RUK ‘intensive’, would contain the meaning ‘stretched’.
And there’s more…
The letter ‘A’ is the bull, from its ancient origins. The letter ‘A’ is the Enemy, the devil. We see the bull in the cliff face of the West Gate and in page 5 of the Book of Mazarbul (see above). In V.T 39 the loremasters are confused as to the origins of au and ai. Feanor refers to these as ‘vocalic diphthongs’ which he terms ostime or ohlon. The quote again in full:
| “The examples of ai, au of this origin are not very numerous. They were mostly “intensive”, as in rauko “very terrible creature” (*RUK); taura “very mighty, vast, of unmeasured might or size” (*TUR). Some were “continuative”, as in Vaire “Ever-weaving” (*WIR). The examples of æ, ǫ were fewer, of limited to indubitable cases, such as Q. méla “loving, affectionate”, T. māla (*MEL); Q. kólo “burden”, S. caul “great burden, affliction”, < *kālō (*KOL). On the relation of the name Orome to the Sindarin form Araw (which probably exhibits a similar development of ǫ > Q.ó but T. ā) see note on Valarin [] “ |
In the note, Feanor refers to the prefixing of a to u and i to produce au and ai as ‘vocalic strengthening’.
| “Some of the loremasters were of the opinion that if Feanor’s theory was right the limitation of “vocalic strengthening” to the prefixing of interior a was difficult to understand, and that there should be examples of the addition of i,u: ei, ai, oi, ui from simple e,a,o,u and ou, au, iu from simple o,a,e,i. No certain examples of the addition of u can be adduced..” etc |
The identification of the latter ‘A’ as the Enemy leads back to my brief remark about alef and bet in the Talmudic comments. The loremasters are in disagreement with Feanor’s conclusion as to the origins of au and ai. The origin for this linguistic effect is in the Enemy and the effects of the Enemy and his lies on the Free Peoples, on their spirit. The letter A has attached itself to U and I. U and I is ‘You and I’. And you can see that that refers to Tolkien and Edith in the poems of Lost Play. The devil has gotten into both Tolkien and Edith- the Sun and Moon and the changes to inner spirit manifest outwardly in the language. Another example of the symbolic landscape. Remember my opening remarks about the arrow at the top of the page of the Book of Mazarbul..the page with the Balrog cutout?. The arrow points to a ‘U’ shaped tear. The Balrog cutout is also a tear. And if I’ve said that Edith is the Balrog and Edith is ‘You’ of U and I, then it makes sense that the two should appear on the same page. Indeed the discussion in V.T 39 leading up to the opening quote in this prediction concerns lengthening and vowels. Whenever Tolkien writes about his languages, the examples of the stems that he gives are always carefully chosen. They are not just arbitrarily chosen by him. RUK refers to the Balrog. TUR, Taur refers symbolically to mino-taur, which is of course the bull at the centre of the labyrinth of Moria (Maze-ar-bull) and is also is seen in Minas-Tirith (Minotaur)- which is modelled on the Classical labyrinth. Immediately leading up to this discussion in V.T 39 we see Tolkien writes:
| But Feanor saw that these points did not explain the special position of ai and au in their relation to basic i,u, These have evidently, he said, been strengthened, in a way similar to, say, d > nd, by the prefixing of another element that combined with the i or u : raika in relation to *RIK was *rIk+ā, with ai instead of the simple lengthening as in irikie “has twisted”. |
‘Twisted’. This is precisely the effect that the devil has had on the spirits and the language- which first began in the discord of Melkor in the Music of the Ainur.
| twist (n.) |
|
mid-14c., “flat part of a hinge” (now obsolete), probably from Old English -twist “divided object; fork; rope” (as in mæsttwist “mast rope, stay;” candeltwist “wick”), from Proto-Germanic *twis-, from PIE root *dwo-“two.” Original senses suggest “dividing in two” (source also of cognate Old Norse tvistra “to divide, separate,” Gothic twis- “in two, asunder,” Dutch twist, German zwist “quarrel, discord,” though these senses have no equivalent in English), but later ones are of “combining two into one,” hence the Meaning “thread or cord composed of two or more fibers” is recorded from 1550s. Meaning “act or action of turning on an axis” is attested from 1570s. Sense of “beverage consisting of two or more liquors” is first attested c. 1700. Meaning “thick cord of tobacco” is from 1791. Meaning “curled piece of lemon, etc., used to flavor a drink” is recorded from 1958. Sense of “unexpected plot development” is from 1941. |
Again we see discord which is what I’ve just stated to be the cause of the twisting of the language. Yet another demonstration of why you should always look at the etymologies of every word. And of course, to twist is TO TURN, which forms the basis of all of my 103 predictions to date. The division into two is exactly what the Enemy does and statement above about the ‘parting’ of the Sun from the Moon. So we we recall my see the back to back letter Rs in the monogram as this ‘quarrel, discord’ between the female-left hand-Sun and the male-right hand-Moon, twisted, turned away from one another.
| twist (v.) |
|
c. 1200 (implied in past tense form twaste), “to wring,” from twist (n.). Sense of “to spin two or more strands of yarn into thread” is attested from late 15c. Meaning “to move in a winding fashion” is recorded from 1630s. To twist the lion’s tail was U.S. slang (1895) for “to provoke British feeling” (the lion being the symbol of Britain). To twist (someone’s) arm in the figurative sense of “pressure (to do something)” is from 1945. Related: Twisted; twisting. |
| wring (v.) |
| Old English wringan “press, strain, wring, twist” (class III strong verb; past tense wrang, past participle wrungen), from Proto-Germanic *wreng- (source also of Old English wringen “to wring, press out,” Old Frisian wringa, Middle Dutch wringhen, Dutch wringen “to wring,” Old High German ringan “to move to and fro, to twist,” German ringen “to wrestle”), from *wrengh-, nasalized variant of *wergh- “to turn,” from PIE root *wer- (2) “to turn, bend.” To wring (one’s) hands “press the hands or fingers tightly together (as though wringing)” as an indication of distress or pain is attested from c. 1200. |
And to finish the prediction, speaking of separation and division, the Balrog is a Demon of Might:
| demon (n.) |
|
c. 1200, “an evil spirit, malignant supernatural being, an incubus, a devil,” from Latin daemon “spirit,” from Greek daimōn “deity, divine power; lesser god; guiding spirit, tutelary deity” (sometimes including souls of the dead); “one’s genius, lot, or fortune;” from PIE *dai-mon- “divider, provider” (of fortunes or destinies), from root *da- “to divide.” The malignant sense is because the Greek word was used (with daimonion) in Christian Greek translations and the Vulgate for “god of the heathen, heathen idol” and also for “unclean spirit.” Jewish authors earlier had employed the Greek word in this sense, using it to render shedim “lords, idols” in the Septuagint, and Matthew viii.31 has daimones, translated as deofol in Old English, feend or deuil in Middle English. Another Old English word for this was hellcniht, literally “hell-knight.” The usual ancient Greek sense, “supernatural agent or intelligence lower than a god, ministering spirit” is attested in English from 1560s and is sometimes written daemon or daimon for purposes of distinction. Meaning “destructive or hideous person” is from 1610s; as “an evil agency personified” (rum, etc.) from 1712. The Demon of Socrates (late 14c. in English) was a daimonion, a “divine principle or inward oracle.” His accusers, and later the Church Fathers, however, represented this otherwise. The Demon Star (1895) is Algol (q.v.). |
But what of Tolkien’s example ‘*MEL’, affectionate? If he chooses his examples, why would he choose that one, which seems to be quite at odds with our theme of the Enemy twisting and dividing.
That one requires more work elsewhere.
RONALD T ! I HID NEWS ??
I believe the hidden NEWS in the anagram RONALD T ! I HID NEWS ?? is a reference to the oft misunderstood etymology of the word:
| news (n.) |
| late 14c., “new things,” plural of new (n.) “new thing” (see new (adj.)); after French nouvelles, which was used in Bible translations to render Medieval Latin nova (neuter plural) “news,” literally “new things. The English word was construed as singular at least from the 1560s, but it sometimes still was regarded as plural 17c.-19c. The odd and doubtful construction probably accounts for the absurd folk-etymology (attested by 1640 but originally, and in 18c. usually, in jest-books) that claims it to be an abbreviation of north east south west, as though “information from all quarters of the compass.” |
Which brings us back to my remarks about arrows and the NW arrow in the Balrog cutout. I also believe ‘new things’ is a also a reference to the novel and Tolkien cocking a snoop at the Literary Establishment. And if you consider we have just been speaking about ‘thing’ from ‘nothing more’, ‘new thing’ seems very appropriate.We should also consider the ‘new’ cirth Tolkien said were introduced and appear in the Book of Mazarbul because they are introduced by the Enemy.
My point is I do think you have found something important and I do believe that the anagrams were put there.
I’ve made 103 predictions about details of Tolkien’s works over the last several years, and I know how he works- I know a lot of his methods. And check out the Alvissmæl acrostic of Robert Adams, which I stumbled upon recently. Don’t be put off Priya. There are others out there who are also approaching his work in the same manner for the same reasons. You will get a lot of naysayers and people who will ‘judge a book by its cover’- and not even bother to open it. SAD!
I have no problem whatsoever accepting the veracity and validity of your anagrams. Again, you have made an important find. Robert Adams found the Alvismæl acrostic in the riddles of the Hobbit. See his book ‘The Riddles of the Hobbit’. These have been hidden for decades. I don’t believe the anagrams are primarily about the wings of the Balrog. I’ve sent you (Priya) a couple of emails but undoubtedly they DO reveal that Gandalf can hold on to the wings. Priya hit the nail on the head with this statement:
| “It should be noted that the monogram dots were possibly another aspect of Tolkien’s propensity for coding in that he left an even deeper puzzle than that immediately depicted by just the initials of his name.” |
I’ve made 3 predictions about your findings during the first brief skimming of your book on my blog ‘WindRose’. I’ve sent the author, Priya Seth a couple of emails.
The larger puzzle that Priya suspects in her statements about the 4 dots in the monogram, are the geometry of Tolkien. Tolkien uses his monogram to present the material structures of the world. The Lord of the Rings maps has an enormous monogram hidden in it. His monogram then appears at least 8 more times. The once that Priya found- I was unaware of that. Another that I’ve found since reading her book, because the placement of that monogram has ramifications which can help you predict another place that it will be found, and 7 others that I already knew were there. So that makes 10. His Books were written as 6 books for a reason and it has to do with Tolkien’s number symbolism of 6 and 9, how the two can be confused, which relates to the direction that the narrative moves in and the compass points in the world. Again arrows, orientation and direction. The 10th one is the one which covers the entire map. The number 10 in Tolkien’s number symbolism symbolizes Time and Space and was influenced by Dante’s use of it as symbolizing ‘perfection’.
We can also understand the 6 Books of the Lord of the Rings as the sestet of a sonnet.
| sonnet (n.) |
|
1557 (in title of Surrey’s poems), from Middle French sonnet (1540s) or directly from Italian sonetto, literally “little song,” from Old Provençal sonet “song,” diminutive of son “song, sound,” from Latin sonus “sound” (from PIE root *swen- “to sound”). Originally in English also “any short lyric poem;” precise meaning is from Italian, where Petrarch (14c.) developed a scheme of an eight-line stanza (rhymed abba abba) followed by a six-line stanza (cdecde, the Italian sestet, or cdcdcd, the Sicilian sestet). Shakespeare developed the English Sonnet for his rhyme-poor native tongue: three Sicilian quatrains followed by a heroic couplet (ababcdcdefefgg). The first stanza sets a situation or problem, and the second comments on it or resolves it. |
The etymological definition certainly agrees with the notion of the Music of the Ainur. The earliest sonnets consisted of 14 lines which were split into 8 and 6. The 8 line section was ‘the problem’ and the 6 line section was the solution. The Ring verse can be seen as the problem. In between the two was the TURN. To quote the entry for ‘Volta (literature)’ on wiki:
|
In poetry, the volta, or turn, is a rhetorical shift or dramatic change in thought and/or emotion. Turns are seen in all types of written poetry. The turn in poetry has gone by many names. In “The Poem in Countermotion”, the final chapter of How Does a Poem Mean?, John Ciardi calls the turn a “fulcrum”.[1] In The Poet’s Art, M.L. Rosenthal employs two different terms for different kinds of turns: “gentle modulations, or at the furthest extreme, wrenching turns of emphasis or focus or emotional pitch (torques)”.[2] Hank Lazer primarily refers to the turn as a “swerve”, asking, “Is there a describable lyricism of swerving? For those poems for which the swerve, the turn, the sudden change in direction are integral, can we begin to articulate a precise appreciation? Is there a describable and individualistic lyricism of swerving?”[3] What Leslie Ullman calls the “center” of a poem largely is the poem’s turn.[4] Importance According to poet-critic Phillis Levin, “We could say that for the sonnet, the volta is the seat of its soul.”[7] Additionally, Levin states that “the arrangement of lines into patterns of sound serves a function we could call architectural, for these various acoustical partitions accentuate the element that gives the sonnet its unique force and character: the volta, the ‘turn’ that introduces into the poem a possibility for transformation, like a moment of grace”.[8] Called the volta in sonnets, the turn is a vital part of almost all poems. Poet-critic Ellen Bryant Voigt states, “The sonnet’s volta, or ‘turn’…has become an inherent expectation for most short lyric poems.”[9] Poet-critic T.S. Eliot calls the turn “one of the most important means of poetic effect since Homer.”[10] Kim Addonizio refers to the turn as “[t]he leap from one synapse to another, one thought to a further thought, one level of understanding or questioning to being in the presence of the mystery”.[11] In “Levels and Opposites: Structure in Poetry”, Randall Jarrell says that “a successful poem starts in one position and ends at a very different one, often a contradictory or opposite one; yet there has been no break in the unity of the poem”.[12] Such a transition is executed by the turn. In Veering: A Theory of Literature, Nicholas Royle states, “Nowhere is [the] haphazard and disruptive strangeness of veering perhaps more evident than in the space of literature. Indeed…in a sense this is what literature is.” And one central aspect of Royle’s veering is the turn. Royle states, “‘Veering’ involves contemplating all sorts of turns, funny and otherwise.” Additionally, he notes, “To engage with the verb ‘to veer’ is to find ourselves in Latin, French and other so-called foreign waters. We are already adrift. We must turn and turn about. Besides ‘veer’ itself and other words linked to the French virer, for example, there are all the words related to the Latin verb vertere (‘to turn’)…Then there are the inexhaustible riches of the word ‘turn’ (from the Latin tornare, ‘to turn in a lathe’, from tornus, ‘turner’s wheel’, from Greek tornos, ‘lathe’)…” |
| A turn in a sonnet is called a volta. Volta, (Italian: “turn”) the turn in thought in a sonnet that is often indicated by such initial words as But, Yet, or And yet. A vital part of virtually all sonnets, the volta is most frequently encountered at the end of the octave (first eight lines in Petrarchan or Spenserian sonnets), or the end of the twelfth line in Shakespearean sonnets, but can occur anywhere in the sonnet. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volta_(literature)] |
| volte-face |
| a reversal of opinion, 1819, French (17c.), from Italian volta faccia, literally “turn face,” from volta, imperative of voltare “to turn” (from Vulgar Latin *volvita, from Latin volvere “to roll,” from PIE root *wel- (3) “to turn, revolve”) + faccia (see face). |
|
A turn in a sonnet is called a volta. Volta, (Italian: “turn”) the turn in thought in a sonnet that is often indicated by such initial words as But, Yet, or And yet. A vital part of virtually all sonnets, the volta is most frequently encountered at the end of the octave (first eight lines in Petrarchan or Spenserian sonnets), or the end of the twelfth line in Shakespearean sonnets, but can occur anywhere in the sonnet. The Italian sonnet was created by Giacomo da Lentini, head of the Sicilian School under Frederick II. Guittone d’Arezzo rediscovered it and brought it to Tuscany where he adapted it to his language when he founded the Neo-Sicilian School (1235–1294). He wrote almost 300 sonnets. Other Italian poets of the time, including Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) and Guido Cavalcanti (c. 1250–1300) wrote sonnets, but the most famous early sonneteer was Petrarca (known in English as Petrarch). [http://everysonnet.blogspot.com/2012/11/italian-or-petrarchan-sonnet.html] |
From wikipedia:
|
The structure of a typical Italian sonnet of the time included two parts that together formed a compact form of “argument”. First, the octave, forms the “proposition”, which describes a “problem”, or “question”, followed by a sestet (two tercets), which proposes a “resolution”. Typically, the ninth line initiates what is called the “turn”, or “volta”, which signals the move from proposition to resolution. Even in sonnets that don’t strictly follow the problem/resolution structure, the ninth line still often marks a “turn” by signaling a change in the tone, mood, or stance of the poem. According to poet-critic Eavan Boland, “The original form of the sonnet, the Petrarchan, made a shadow play of eight lines against six. Of all the form’s claims, this may be the most ingenious. The octave sets out the problems, the perceptions, the wishes of the poet. The sestet does something different: it makes a swift, wonderfully compact turn on the hidden meanings of but and yet and wait for a moment. The sestet answers the octave, but neither politely nor smoothly. And this simple engine of proposition and rebuttal has allowed the sonnet over centuries, in the hands of very different poets, to replicate over and over again the magic of inner argument.”[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnet] |
We can regard the Ring verse which appears at the beginning of the Lord of the Rings as the problem, which is followed by the solution provided by the narrative of the 6 books. Tolkien uses ababacca for the Ring Verse. The form used by Tolkien is found in the list of rhyme schemes used in Italian or Petrarchan sonnets, as ababacca cdecde or ababacca cdccdc or ababacca cdcdcd. I have yet to research the means by which Tolkien ‘rhymes’ the 6 books. It’s possible that he doesn’t of course, but I think it’s likely. ‘The TURN’ is a prevalent form in written poetry.
| Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky, [A] Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone, [B] Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die, [A] One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne [B] In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie. [A] One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, [C] One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them, [C] In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie. [A] |
The 8 lines end with the 4 line section which has a symmetry- beginning and ending with ‘In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie’. This symbolizes the Ring which is the Enemy’s offered solution to the problem- the unending circularity, the closed circle as Tolkien referred to it, from which there is no escape. The last 4 lines appear on the Ring naturally which symbolizes the closed circle. The Ring is Space without Time and symbolizes the separation of Space (Tolkien) from time (Edith)- a divorce. Space is simply a circular plane without the upwards movement imparted by Time around which Tolkien wanders- like the Anglo Saxon Wanderer. This is the ruts of the giant wheels around the borders of Tom and Goldberry’s country. And exactly like the ‘bullroarer’. In other words, without Edith, Tolkien goes round in circles- he has no direction in life. The number 4 symbolizes the diamond, which is the stone of alchemy; the heart of stone. This is the wilful Tolkien without Edith. The 4th link in the Chain of Angainor is lead, which symbolizes the bottom, the plumb-bob. Tolkien without Edith goes down to the bottom to where the Dream fish go- Uin the fish. This is where old Man Willow dwells; the willow being Tolkien as a creature of pure language.
The 8 lines themselves
It’s possible that Tolkien chose the ACCA scheme for the last 4 lines because it refers to the Enemy’s solution, the One Ring, which is a problem without the solution of the sestet. And ‘ac’ is the Anglo-Saxon word used for oak’ as we find in the Bosworth-Toller.
We know that the oak is the Enemy. And in ‘acca’ we have a mirror symmetry which reflects the oak on both sides of it. This symbolizes the Enemy seizing both voices in the geometry, which is the complete domination of other wills as Tolkien put it in letter 155.
WELL DEEM, NO FLIGHT IN FALL EH
I also think that the anagram WELL DEEM, NO FLIGHT IN FALL EH. which you argue is not genuine IS genuine.
Firstly, what’s wrong with HE DEEM WELL, NO FLIGHT IN FALL? or FALL IN WELL, HE DEEM NO FLIGHT?
It’s to do with the etymology of the word ‘deem’. Remember everything in Tolkien is etymology.
| deem (v.) |
| Old English deman “to judge, decide on consideration, condemn;, think, judge, hold as an opinion,” from Proto-Germanic *domjanan (source also of Old Frisian dema “to judge,” Old Saxon adomian, Middle Dutch doemen, Old Norse dma, Old High German tuomen, Gothic domjan “to deem, judge”), denominative of *domaz, from PIE root *dhe- “to set, put” (compare doom). Related: Deemed; deeming. Originally “to pronounce judgment” as well as “to form an opinion.” Compare Old English, Middle English deemer “a judge.” The two judges of the Isle of Man were called deemsters in 17c., a title formerly common throughout England and Scotland and preserved in the surname Dempster. |
| doom (n.) |
| Middle English doome, from Old English dom “a law, statute, decree; administration of justice, judgment; justice, equity, righteousness,” from Proto-Germanic *domaz (source also of Old Saxon and Old Frisian dom, Old Norse domr, Old High German tuom “judgment, decree,” Gothic doms “discernment, distinction”), perhaps from PIE root *dhe- “to set, place, put, do” (source also of Sanskrit dhaman- “law,” Greek themis “law,” Lithuanian dome “attention”). |
It’s related to ‘doom’. They both share the same PIE root. If we take Tolkien to intend ‘doom’ in deem, then the word well can be taken to mean a well from which water is drawn, which is a reference to the well room in Moria. Then we have ‘well doom’..a doom related to a well, that being the well through which the Balrog is awakened and that’s why why we hear ‘doom doom’ in the drums. Awakening the Balrog from the well sealed Gandalf’s doom. I’ve realized that the two Rs in your riddle symbolize the well room and the Chamber of Mazarbul (Maze-ar-bull). That’s how the geometry is laid out. They are both to the north of the line of symmetry that runs down the geometry in the Moria passage. That agrees with my understanding and it helped me find the sister set of initials; the 2nd of the 10 monograms I’ve found so far.
Grima says:
| Let your counsellor Gríma keep all things till your return-and I pray that we may see it, though no wise man will deem it hopeful. |
…
Elrond says:
|
`You have done well to come,’ said Elrond. `You will hear today all that you need in order to understand the purposes of the Enemy. There is naught that you can do, other than to resist, with hope or without it. But you do not stand alone. You will learn that your trouble is but part of the trouble of all the western world. The Ring! What shall we do with the Ring, the least of rings, the trifle that Sauron fancies? That is the doom that we must deem. |
In both of those remarks we have references to ‘naught’ (nothing) and counsel which relate back to what I said about ‘nothing more’. We read that ‘doom’ is ‘deemed’. A clear statement of the equivalence of the two words from the PIE root. All of that supports that that anagram WELL DEEM, NO FLIGHT IN FALL EH is part of the puzzle. What part of the puzzle is it? That part is the Ring.
Where is the ring in the monogram? Look at the end of the tail of the letter J. See the blob? That’s a circle. It’s intended to be the ring. It lies at the bottom of the monogram. Heaven is at the top where the flame is. Hell is at the bottom. Hell is the final destination of the Fall. This is why all falls in Tolkien end in water (including Gollum’s – but explanation of that requires knowledge of Tolkien’s incorporation of the Tetramorph in his works, and you can find how water related to the fall of Denethor in my article ‘The Turn in Practice’.). And in addition, you queried the ‘egg’ and you related it possibly to the oval around the monogram. You didn’t know the provenance of that oval in that version of the monogram. Does anybody?? I’ve not look into it- it would be interesting to find out. But, the oval around the monogram does suggest that it might have a Tolkien source. The oval could be the Ring (the intention of the Ring)- that is the ‘Circles of the World’. The Tolkien map of the LorT is a T-O map from the geometry. The O is the Circle of the World surrounding it. And we know that the Doom of Men is to escape them. So we have a link between doom, deem and the Ring, the egg. So how can the circle be both the Ring at the bottom of the J and the circle around the monogram?
Firstly, it doesn’t have to be because Tolkien may not have included the surrounding oval in any of his versions of the monogram. The Ring is at the tail end of the letter J however. The Ring is an attempt to create a prison, an artificial ‘circle of the world’ from which Men cannot escape. The One Ring is actually ‘The Ring of Earth’…the missing fourth ring which no one has ever wondered about it seems..And this is why the Ring has no effect on Bombadil and why he can make the Ring disappear, because Bombadil is ‘Space’ (Goldberry is Time) and Space is a circle, the largest circle possible in the Universe. His circle encompasses Sauron’s. So he can do to the Ring what the Ring does to everyone else. It’s an inversion. And that inversion is the same inversion we see in the little circle in the J and the larger circle in the monogram oval. One is inside the other. And we see this relationship writ large in Boromir’s words:
| ‘Miserable trickster!’ he shouted. `Let me get my hands on you! Now I see your mind. |
The Council of Elrond which decides the fate of the Ring, has many instances of ‘deem’. And in that we see ‘counsel’. On Amon Hen we read:
| `No! no! ‘ cried Frodo. ‘The Council laid it upon me to bear it.’ |
The inside becomes the outside. The invisible makes reality visible. Whether the oval around the monogram is Tolkien’s or not, this relationship is in fact what Tolkien intended. More proof elsewhere.
So, in my opinion the appearance of the words deem with well is strong support that the anagram is genuine. In addition ‘no flight in fall’ is very apt for the Moria scene. Gandalf says just before he falls ‘Fly you fools!’. Fly obviously relates to flight. And we find that the words fly and flight are related to the well because the etymological root of both words extends equally to movement through both air and water.
| fly (v.1) |
|
“to soar through air; move through the air with wings,” Old English fleogan “to fly, take flight, rise into the air” (class II strong verb; past tense fleag, past participle flogen), from Proto-Germanic *fleugan “to fly” (source also of Old Saxon fliogan, Old Frisian fliaga, Middle Dutch vlieghen, Dutch vliegen, Old High German fliogan, German fliegen, Old Norse flügja), from PIE *pleuk-, extended form of root *pleu- “to flow.” Meaning “go at full speed” is from c. 1300. In reference to flags, 1650s. Transitive sense “cause to move or float in air” (as a flag, kite, etc.) is from 1739; sense of “convey through the air” (“Fly Me to the Moon”) is from 1864. Related: Flew; flied (baseball); flown; flying. Slang phrase fly off the handle “lose one’s cool” dates from 1825. |
| fly (v.2) |
| “run away,” Old English fleon, flion “fly from, avoid, escape;” essentially a variant spelling of flee (q.v.). In Old English, this verb and fleogan “soar through the air with wings” (modern fly (v.1)) differed only in their present tense forms and often were confused, then as now. In some Middle English dialects they seem to have merged completely. Distinguished from one another since 14c. in the past tense: flew for fly (v.1), fled for fly (v.2). |
| flight (n.2) |
| “act of fleeing,” c. 1200, flihht, not found in Old English, but presumed to have existed and cognate with Old Saxon fluht, Old Frisian flecht “act of fleeing,” Dutch vlucht, Old High German fluht, German Flucht, Old Norse flotti, Gothic þlauhs, from Proto-Germanic *flugti-, suffixed form of PIE root *pleu- “to flow.” To put (someone or something) to flight “rout, defeat” is from late 14c., the earlier verb form do o’ flight (early 13c.). |
| flight (n.1) |
|
“act of flying,” Old English flyht “a flying, act or power of flying,” from Proto-Germanic *flukhtiz (source also of Dutch vlucht “flight of birds,” Old Norse flugr, Old High German flug, German Flug “flight”), from Proto-Germanic *flugti-, suffixed form of PIE root *pleu- “to flow.” Spelling altered late 14c. from Middle English fliht (see fight (v.)). Sense of “swift motion” is from mid-13c.. Meaning “an instance of flight” is 1785, originally of ballooning. Sense of “a number of things passing through the air together” is from mid-13c. Meaning “series of stairs between landings” is from 1703. Figuratively, “an excursion” of fancy, imagination, etc., from 1660s. Flight-path is from 1908; flight-test (v.) from 1919; flight-simulator from 1947 (originally in rocketry); flight-attendant from 1946. |
| *pleu- |
|
Proto-Indo-European root meaning “to flow.” It forms all or part of: fletcher; fledge; flee; fleet (adj.) “swift;” fleet (n.2) “group of ships under one command;” fleet (v.) “to float, drift; flow, run;” fleeting; flight (n.1) “act of flying;” flight (n.2) “act of fleeing;” flit; float; flood; flotsam; flotilla; flow; flue; flugelhorn; fluster; flutter; fly (v.1) “move through the air with wings;” fly (n.) “winged insect;” fowl; plover; Pluto; plutocracy; pluvial; pneumo-; pneumonia; pneumonic; pulmonary. It is the hypothetical source of/evidence for its existence is provided by: Sanskrit plavate “navigates, swims;” Greek plynein “to wash,” plein “to navigate,” ploein “to float, swim,” plotos “floating, navigable,” pyelos “trough, basin;” Latin plovere “to rain,” pluvius “rainy;” Armenian luanam “I wash;” Old English flowan “to flow;” Old Church Slavonic plovo “to flow, navigate;” Lithuanian pilu, pilti “to pour out,” plauju, plauti “to swim, rinse.” |
Why can’t the Balrog fly?
Because the wings of the Balrog symbolize the two hands, the two voices of female and male. Hands, arms and wings are the same symbol. Tolkien’s entire world is geometry and it is a symbolic landscape. That means that the external world is an incarnation of spiritual realities. The spiritual reality is the real one. Just as the landscape forms the geometry in ‘Eeriness’, and Minas Tirith manifests the maze, and its seven tiers are incarnations of the inner spiritual journey of the Fellowship, so too the wings of the Balrog are incarnations of the left and right sides of the triangle. And this is why the wings of the Balrog can be both substantial and shadow, because they are incarnations of the inner spiritual state and reality of both the character and the narrative. He possibly chose to put the arms, hands, etc on the plane of the hypotenuse because in geometry that plane is sometimes referred to as the arm of the triangle, whereas the opposite and adjacent are referred to as legs. But, as the opposite and the adjacent are described as legs, then it would follow he would assign the arms to the remaining plane. This geometric interpretation of the encounter explains why Tolkien gives both Gandalf and the Balrog a weapon in each hand. They are symbolic of these two hands. The sword is symbolic of the right hand of the male. According to Tolkien’s assignment of opposites in his world to the geometry of the dialectic, the sword is 
typically paired with the shield which is the left hand of the female. Here the sword is paired with the staff of Gandalf and the whip of the Balrog. Both the staff and the whip represent the female left hand, and both symbolize the Tree. The Tree is usually paired with the Tower, the Tower being the male right hand. The characteristics of the Tower are Strength, Might, Greatness, and being Tall and physically imposing. These are all dominant male characteristics and why the Balrog spreads its wings from wall to wall and draws itself up to a great height. As previously stated dominance is exhibited by two aspirations: to be elder and first, and to be higher. In the geometry both equate to being closer to the origin, God, Ilúvatar. (More detailed explanation elsewhere). This is why the Balrog engineers it so that it is in the west when it encounters Gandalf. That’s part of the trickery of the the ‘maze of the bull’, Mazarbul. Being higher, ‘rising up’ is the domination of Sun and Moon. In the courses of the Sun and Moon (see above) when their dominance reaches its peak at noon and midnight, they are both high in the sky while the other is beneath. At that point we can see them has ‘having it all their own way’ and silencing the other. Melkor translates as ‘He Who Arises in Might’. In Quenya Melkor means “mighty arising” or “‘Mighty-rising’, ‘uprising of power'”.
|
large & small |
| Melkor (also Melko) [extract] (Melkor, in older form Melkore, probably means ‘Mighty-rising’, sc. ‘uprising of power’; Melko simply ‘the Mighty One’.)(25) [Morgoth’s Ring, “Part Four. Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth: Glossary”] |
And we see the echo of the Music of the Ainur in the scene on the bridge:
| Some of these thoughts he now wove into his music, and straightway discord arose about him, and many that sang nigh him grew despondent, and their thought was disturbed and their music faltered; but some began to attune their music to his rather than to the thought which they had at first. Then the discord of Melkor spread ever wider, and the melodies which had been heard before foundered in a sea of turbulent sound. But Ilúvatar sat and hearkened until it seemed that about his throne there was a raging storm, as of dark waters that made war one upon another in an endless wrath that would not be assuaged… …But the discord of Melkor rose in uproar and contended with it…And it essayed to drown the other music by the violence of its voice… |
We see the word ‘arose’, arise and the drowning the voice in the water. Boromir raises his horn in reply. We also see the storm and the reference to Gandalf seeming small and alone. The voice of course is the voice in the dialectic which the Balrog seeks to silence. In the underlying dialectic the Balrog symbolizes Edith, and Gandalf is Tolkien. Gandalf is described as alone. This is Tolkien alone in his marriage separated from the conversation. The Balrog has tried to seize both sides of the conversation by rising up and spreading its wings, which echo the two hands of Ilúvatar. Indeed, the Music of the Ainur is where the dialectic is created. Then we see the discord ‘spread ever wider’. Both of these are echoed at the bridge:
| suddenly it drew itself up to a great height, and its wings were spread from wall to wall; but still Gandalf could be seen, glimmering in the gloom; he seemed small, and altogether alone: grey and bent, like a wizened tree before the onset of a storm. |
The discord spreading ever wider is the cause of the widening of the distance between the two planes of the opposite and adjacent as the Music proceeds from the origin. As stated this creates longing. The planes are created when Ilúvatar raises his hands. Again the notion of raising as an act of opposition. The two planes are created by Ilúvatar in this environment of strife. The planes are created in answer and opposition to the discords. The spreading of the wings is an attempt to seize both voices, both left and right hands. It is an attempt to dominate the plane of the hypotenuse. This is why flame comes out of the Balrog’s nostrils. The sense of smell as previously stated, operates on the plane of the hypotenuse. The two nostrils symbolize left and right hands, Sun and Moon, in fact, the two letter Rs in the monogram. We recall from previously that ‘spread’ is found in the etymology of ‘stretch’, which derives from hypo-tenuse, becoming in Tolkien’s word play and incorporation, ‘stretched under the nose’.
The whip is a counterfeit of the tree, the left hand, a twisted version of one. And it echoes the Watcher in the Water which, through the numerology in the narrative, also represents the trees of the houses of the Elves and Dwarves; it having 3 x 7 arms. Those arms coil around the pillars at the West Gate, which symbolize the Two Trees. In this way the counterfeit of the Trees is created. At the bridge, Tolkien is echoing the scene of the discords of Melkor (he does this frequently- see ‘The Turn in Practice‘ because of the TURN), the sequence of the hands of Ilúvatar. The swords clash first. This is the right hand. But the right hand should not come first according to the order of Ilúvatar. And this reversal of ordering reflects the reversal of Gandalf and the Balrog as stated previously. Gandalf should be facing eastwards and the Balrog should be to the east of him, facing westwards. Their positions should be swapped. See ‘The Turn in Practice‘. So at the end of the exchange Gandalf retains the sword in his right hand and the Balrog retains the whip in its left hand. In this we see the intended symmetry. If we trace the order of exchange we see the butterfly rune: 1. right of the balrog, 2. right hand of Gandalf, 3. Gandalf breaks the bridge and his staff in his left hand, 4. the balrog drags him over the edge with its whip. Tolkien uses this method of ‘tracing’ out runes via character movements elsewhere.
After the exchange on the bridge the left wing has gone: the Balrog’s sword and Gandalf’s staff are gone. And this means that the Door is now closed because it requires both left-female and right-male wings to function. Gandalf’s words “You cannot pass” refer to the passage across the bridge of course, which is the passage through the Door we see in ‘Before’ and ‘Afterwards’. Gandalf holding the left wing of the Balrog symbolizes an imposition of his will on the Balrog. The Bridge symbolizes the bridge of connection between the left and the right hand, the lintel above the megalithic Door, the plane of the hypotenuse. The rainbow over the Rauros spray is the same symbol because the two scenes are paired. The destruction of the Bridge by Gandalf is a command, a seizing control of the plane of the hypotenuse, seizing control over the conversation, and breaking the Door. He blocks the Door. Hence ‘You cannot pass’. The act of destroying the bridge simultaneously destroys his staff, and that completes the destruction of the left wing: that being the Balrog’s sword in its left hand and his staff in his left hand. In terms of the underlying symbolism of the narrative, by destroying the bridge, Gandalf destroys the Door, and he has to destroy his staff in order to do this. This is how he sacrifices himself. The Fellowship are already through the Door. But the Balrog is a mighty adversary and continues to try and dominate, and with a final effort it drags Gandalf into the pit with it.
Looking at the butterfly rune in the encounter above. The sequence runs such that the two swords are in opposition. That gives us our right hand diagonal. The colours are important and involve alchemy, the colours of alchemy being red, white and black. Tolkien also uses yellow, giving us four colours. This encounter is the first state in the alchemical transformation which runs through the Lord of the Rings, called ‘the blackening’. The whip and the staff are in also in opposition, as the Tower and the Tree. The Tower is the Tree turned to stone. I’ll cover this enormously important theme elsewhere on this site. Thus in those two diametrically opposed pairs we see the two diagonals in the butterfly rune, dagaz, the Door. So we see that after the destruction of the sword and the staff the left wing is no longer functioning. And this is why Gandalf holds the left wing in the fall according to Seth’s anagram discovery. The inner spiritual dysfunction which silences the left wing, the left voice, manifests in the outer world as the wing becoming dysfunctional. Remember Gandalf’s sword Glamdring has destroyed the Balrog’s sword and then Gandalf destroys his own staff- which naturally destroys the door, the bridge. Thus Gandalf has had victory over both, destroying the left wing. Gandalf holds the left wing which symbolizes domination, overpowering and mastery. We also note that Tolkien describes it as the left wing- MINE HOLE FALL, HELD LEFT WING, indicating he is describing it from Gandalf’s point of view. I said that the Sun is the left hand and is female and that Anor is the sun. I also said that the Balrog was female. Gandalf has already stated his mastery in ‘Wielder of the Flame of Anor’ as revealed previously in the etymology of wield.
| `I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor. You cannot pass. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udûn. Go back to the Shadow! You cannot pass.’ The Balrog made no answer. The fire in it seemed to die, but the darkness grew. |
Recalling the butterfly rune in ‘Before’ and its twin flames, Gandalf represents the male-right hand and as stated the left wing is water and air, and the right wing, the male is earth and fire. The coming of the Balrog is described in terms of water and air.
| The dark figure streaming with fire raced towards them. The orcs yelled and poured over the stone gangways. Then Boromir raised his horn and blew. Loud the challenge rang and bellowed, like the shout of many throats under the cavernous roof. For a moment the orcs quailed and the fiery shadow halted. Then the echoes died as suddenly as a flame blown out by a dark wind, and the enemy advanced again. |
| stream (v.) |
| early 13c., “to flow copiously,” from stream (n.). Transitive sense “discharge in a stream” is from late 14c. Related: Streamed; streaming. Compare German strömen, Dutch stroomen, Danish strömme, all verbs from nouns. |
| stream (n.) |
|
Old English stream “a course of water,” from Proto-Germanic *strauma- (source also of Old Saxon strom, Old Norse straumr, Danish strøm, Swedish ström, Norwegian straum, Old Frisian stram, Dutch stroom, Old High German stroum, German Strom “current, river”), from PIE root *sreu- “to flow.” From early 12c. as “anything issuing from a source and flowing continuously.” Meaning “current in the sea” (as in Gulf Stream) is recorded from late 14c., as is the sense of “steady current in a river.” Stream of consciousness in lit crit first recorded 1930, originally in psychology (1855). Stream of thought is from 1890. |
| race (n.1) |
| “act of running,” c. 1300, from Old Norse ras “running, rush (of water),” cognate with Old English ræs “a running, a rush, a leap, jump; a storming, an attack;” or else a survival of the Old English word with spelling influenced by the Old Norse one. The Norse and Old English words are from Proto-Germanic *res- (source also of Middle Dutch rasen “to rave, rage,” German rasen, Old English raesettan “to rage” (of fire)), from a variant form of PIE *ers- (1) “be in motion” (see err). Originally a northern word, it became general in English c. 1550. Meaning “act of running” is from early 14c. Meaning “contest of speed” first recorded 1510s. |
The orcs are described as pouring and we have already seen the etymology of flight and fly as being related just as much to flowing through water as to air. And the Balrog’s sword is described in similar terms: ‘it sword flew up in molten fragments’.
Gandalf reminds the Balrog that he has the mastery over the fire. This is the conversation. That’s why the fire in it dies. The Sun, is firey and is female but as stated its course in the heavens during the day represents domination. It’s an act of will. And this plays out in the influence of the Enemy crossing to the left hand, the female, as seen above in the astronomical courses of the Sun and Moon. In that the red of the Enemy crosses to the left hand. More correctly though, the Enemy does not cross, it is the left hand swapping places with the right hand in the spiral geometry. Right and left swap because of the change in orientation- and this is the same change we see in the swapping of positions and orientation of facing, of the Balrog and Gandalf on the bridge. Likewise with the Moon at night. Their courses are a relationship and a battle of wills and Tolkien describes the Sun and Moon in just those terms, the Moon pursuing the Sun, etc. Both represent domination because of the discords of Melkor, which were involved in the creation of male-right hand and female-left hand, and the spiraling geometry which created their relationship. The discords created the Battle of the Sexes, which is displayed in a vacillation in the fortunes of male and female. That later becomes incorporated into the Sun and Moon when Ormal and Illuin are made. Ormal and Illuin are manifestations of the two flames in ‘Before’. And likewise later with Telperion and Laurelin and lastly with the Sun and Moon.
In terms of gender roles, we can view it as the Balrog, a female trying to seize both hands, in doing so it takes on the male role too. In the dialectic, it is Edith trying to dominate Tolkien. And this alludes to the subtext of why the characters in the Notion Club Papers have the strange conversation about pants. The subtext and private joke, is who wears the trousers in the relationship! Anything with wings in Tolkien’s symbolism is a force which seeks to command because the two wings symbolize the left and right hands, and symbolizes a seizure of the voices of both in the dialectic. This is why the Eagles appear in the Akallabêth and elsewhere in the Lord of the Rings- as agents of forceful intervention and command. We can see the wings as the two planes of the triangle, the opposite and adjacent. We can see that actually in the symbolic landscape. See link below.
The first alchemical stage of the Blackening takes place in the Misty Mountains. The orcs pour across the bridge, the Balrog’s sword flies up in molten fragments:
| molten (adj.) |
| “melted, in a state of solution,” c. 1300, from archaic strong past participle of Old English meltian, a class III strong verb (see melt (v.)). |
Again, ‘solution’ is etymologically from ‘to divide, split’, the same meaning as the root of ‘demon’ as previously stated. We have alchemy and we have of course the mathematics at work again. We have division at this point. The agent of division in the mathematical language is the alchemy, the alchemist who splits and divides.
| solution (n.) |
| late 14c., “a solving or being solved,” from Old French solucion “division, dissolving; explanation; payment” or directly from Latin solutionem (nominative solutio) “a loosening or unfastening,” noun of action from past participle stem of solvere “to loosen, untie, dissolve,” from PIE *se-lu-, from reflexive pronoun *s(w)e- (see idiom) + root *leu- “to loosen, divide, cut apart.” Meaning “liquid containing a dissolved substance” is first recorded 1590s. |
This division and separation is the warring Balrog and Gandalf, as Edith and Tolkien in the dialectic. The Misty mountains is Ancalagon the Black. This is why the Doors of the West Gate were black and silver and why the blackening takes place here. And in Tolkien’s numerology it also explains why there are 200 steps into Moria inside the doors. It is a multiple of 2. Two is the second link silver in the chain of Angainor, which is the Moon, right-hand, Space. Hence the Moons on the Doors. Ancalagon is the Dragon Níðhöggr who dwells in hell and gnaws at the roots 
of the Tree Yggdrassil. In Tolkien’s mythos the Tree is the Tree of Tales. In the image left we can see the dragon’s head lies at the root of the tree. This would explain the curious positioning and pose of the dragon. The tail is coiling around the tree. Tolkien has created a ‘Tree of Tails’. The tail of the dragon coils 6 times. In Tolkien’s numerology 6 
symbolizes the downward spiral as stated. It also coils anti-clockwise. It’s head faces right on the page, which equates to east. The tree is language. Words have roots, root stems. A stem is a tree trunk. The Enemy gnaws and bites at the language. And this becomes a metaphor for the changes in the language that the works and lies of the Enemy create. And we recall my remarks about the change from Tar to Ar in the Akallabêth. The Enemy is the Alchemist who divides and separates, who bites and splits up the language. He divides according to the 3 phase process of the the TURN, in spirit, physical space, lingual. This is a philologist’s rendition of his mythology. He sees how the language changes over many, many generations, just like Owen Barfield’s r-u-i-n and the three versions of Adunaic in the Akallabêth. And he sees that as the strife in the world and the imperfections of the fallen world. Here’s a general overview of the details of the symbolic landscape: The Symbolic Landscape. All of the geographic features are symbolic. Note, this the notes and ‘explanations’ are in very rough form and it is intended to be for a personal preliminary repository for my research in that area at this point. On the symbolic landscape the jaws of Ancalagon are at the top because the map of the Lord of the Rings has to be turned on its head to be understood. The symbolic landscape was turned on its head at the Akallabêth because of the subjugation of the spirits of the Númenoreans to the worship of the Devil. I said that dominance was exhibited by being elder or on top, higher. The Devil is now on top in the world.
Apart from the geographic shape of the mountains as being the dragon (note the dragon’s tail is the White Mountains), a further link can be found in the name Misty Mountains. Moria, the Black Pit is hell. The place where Níðhöggr dwells is called Niflheim. In Norse mythology, Nástrǫnd (Corpse Shore) is a place in Hel where Níðhöggr lives and chews on corpses. To quote the wiki entry for Niflheim. We can see the equivalence of Hel where Níðhöggr dwells, and Niflheim.
|
In Norse cosmology, Niflheim or Niflheimr (“World of Mist“,[1] literally “Home of Mist”) is a location in which sometimes overlaps with the notions of Niflhel and Hel. The name Niflheimr appears only in two extant sources: Gylfaginning and the much-debated Hrafnagaldr Óðins.
|
Therefore Ancalagon the Black is a symbolic geographic incarnation of Níðhöggr and Hell, Niflheim. We also see the cold at the bottom of the fall into the pit.
| His fire was about me. I was burned. Then we plunged into the deep water and all was dark. Cold it was as the tide of death: almost it froze my heart. |
We are told that the Silverlode rises from the Misty Mountains and it is so cold as to be dangerous.
|
There lies the Mirrormere, and there the River Silverlode rises in its icy springs.’ |
And this supports my assertion that the 200 steps into Moria indicates the West Gate being Space-Moon-Silver, from which the Silver-lode gets its name. You’ll find references to golden describing Rauros. Rauros is the North Gate, Time-Sun-Gold, which is paired with the West Gate as stated previously. Rauros symbolizes the female, specifically the fallen nature of the female. The destructive, wilful, ‘arising’ nature,
| The day came like fire and smoke. Low in the East there were black bars of cloud like the fumes of a great burning. The rising sun lit them from beneath with flames of murky red; but soon it climbed above them into a clear sky. The summit of Tol Brandir was tipped with gold. |
| As they went south the fume of Rauros rose and shimmered before them, a haze of gold. The rush and thunder of the falls shook the windless air…. |
| Sorrowfully they cast loose the funeral boat: there Boromir lay, restful, peaceful, gliding upon the bosom of the flowing water. The stream took him while they held their own boat back with their paddles. He floated by them, and slowly his boat departed, waning to a dark spot against the golden light; and then suddenly it vanished. Rauros roared on unchanging. |
Note the references to bosom and breast suggesting the female symbolism.
| And Rauros, golden Rauros-falls, bore him upon its breast.’ ‘O Boromir! The Tower of Guard shall ever northward gaze To Rauros, golden Rauros-falls, until the end of days.’ |
From the maps on the left I have already said that the map must be turned upside down in order to understand the symbolism. This is a comment on the spiritual state of the world. The inner spiritual state of the Free Peoples is incarnate in the exterior world and its geographic details. In the Downfall we saw She That is Fallen and Man turned to worship Melkor, the Devil. In the conventional view of the map, the Devil is now on top in the landscape. The jaws of the dragon Ancalagon (Níðhöggr) are at the top of the map ending at Carn Dum. If we turn the map on its head we see the symbolism and the true inner spiritual reality. Tolkien’s monogram is superimposed on the map. You can see the letter J of the Misty Mountains more clearly, the oak, the Enemy as stated. (*Proofs required here to connect the letter J with the oak and the Dragon. J for john, John Bull, John Chinaman, the rune Jeran, John, Jack, Jacob (and Esau)). That is superimposed on the letter T whose top bar is formed by the White Mountains to the right and the mountains to the left. The Grey Mountains are the horns of the dragon and correspond to the right pointing horn jutting from the base of the monogram. The two Rs are the two wills of the left and right hand. The four dots imply the diagonal, the hypotenuse, the ray of sunlight. They also function as other things. The blob at the end of the letter J in the monogram corresponds to hell, Carn Dum. It is actually a circle, symbolizing the Ring. Hell is a closed circle.
| As far as we can go back the nobler pan of the human mind is filled with the thoughts of sibb, peace and goodwill, and with the thought of its loss. We shall never recover it, for that is not the way of repentance, which works spirally and not in a closed circle; we may recover something like it, but on a higher plane. Just as (to compare a small thing) the convened urban gets more out of the country than the mere yokel, but he cannot become a real landsman, he is both more and in a way less (less truly earthy anyway). Of course, I suppose that, subject to the permission of God, the whole human race (as each individual) is free not to rise again but to go to perdition and carry out the Fall to its bitter bottom (as each individual can singulariter6). [96 To Christopher Tolkien 20 Northmoor Road, Oxford] |
Now we can see that Níðhöggr is in hell where he gnaws at the roots of the World Tree. The flame of the monogram corresponds to the Paths of the Dead. The Paths of the Dead is the Door which leads to the Afterlife, the Door in ‘Before’ and ‘Afterwards’. In the conventional, wrong, view of the map hell is at the top of the map. Hell has replaced heaven in the spiritual disorientation of Men. The lie is found in the Ring verse, the writing on the One Ring:
| Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky, Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone, Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die, One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie. One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them, In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.[note 1] |
By rhyming these three words, sky, die, lie, we can unravel the insidious deception. The verse when read with the symbolic landscape states that if we travel up to the sky (north on the map) we die. The lie is revealed and its source in ”In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.” Again a pun on ‘lie’. And this agrees with the conventional map where at the top of the map, in the sky we find the jaws of Níðhöggr and hell. But up corresponds to the top of the monogram where the the flame is. This is why Men named the river which issues from the mountains at the Paths of the Dead, Morthond, the Blackroot, but it issues from the White mountains. The White mountains also form part of the dragon. The White mountains correspond to the tail of the dragon which curves from north-south to west-east. The Black of Blackroot refers to Ancalagon the Black in hell. Men have been persuaded by the lies of the Enemy that death does not lead to the Afterlife. Passing through the Paths of the Dead, is the big test of the heart that Aragorn much pass, his rite of passage. He must prevail against the beliefs of the fallen world and have Faith that the paths lead to the Afterlife, even though they are at the bottom of the map in hell (as Men have it), at the Blackroot. Hell is also situated at Orodruin. Frodo’s rite of passage is to hell as fire. We have hell as ice at Carn Dum and hell as fire at Orodruin. With hell as fire at Orodruin, the position of the Door at the Paths of the Dead is still preserved as the root of the World tree because the world actually rotates 90 degrees clockwise during the journey of the Fellowship across Rhovanion. Tolkien incorporates THE TURN at the world scale. The Turn occurs over 3 phases, the West Gate where Gandalf falls, pivoting at the Tongue at Lorien and ending with the fall of Boromir at the North Gate. Thus the pairing of the two gates can be seen and reveals the symmetry around the Tongue. This is a reference to the same ‘trembling’ tongue we saw of the broken bridge of Khazad-dûm. The symmetry centred on grey with black and white to either side. This world turning is part of Tolkien’s incorporation of the Tetramorph from Ezekiel and the Tetragrammaton. There is a second turning event when Frodo fails to relinquish the Ring. More elsewhere on this site. The two hells are connected by the diagonal line running between fire and water. You can see hell as water (ice, cold, wet) in the Bombadil passage where the ‘Men of Carn-Dûm’ and nautical imagery features. This helps explain what I said near the beginning regards the Balrog cutout. The north-west pointing arrow in the cutout point to Carn-Dûm, which is water. Water lies at the bottom of the pit into which Gandalf falls. The lower three pronged arrow is intended to be a trefoil pointing south-west which points to air at the Paths of the Dead. The trefoil with the middle line intact symbolizes the functioning Door, as opposed to the letter ‘Y’ of the two pronged horns of the bull, which symbolize divergent wills and the closed Door. If Air and water are the elements of the left wing, the female, this agrees with my statement that the Balrog is in fact female, Edith. It is only by going through the Paths of the Dead up into the sky that Aragorn can complete the Quest, and indeed restore the female, the Sun to her rightful place once more.
I’ve already stated that The fallen natures of male and female are symbolized by earth and water. These lie below in hell. This is their wilful nature. Repentance, and contriteness are symbolized by fire (the firmament) and and air, sky. These lie above in heaven. Movement between rational planes is upwards towards God, moving from the low to the high, or moving downwards away from God.
If we see Ancalagon the Black as the Misty mountains we complete the chessboard on the symbolic landscape after the chessboard countryside in ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass’. We have Black mountains, the White mountains, and the Grey Mountains in between. More elsewhere.
| If you think it good, and fair (the compliment to The Hobbit is rather high) to maintain the comparison – Looking glass ought to be mentioned. It is much closer in every way…[Letters #15 To Allen & Unwin] |
The Black square is Space. The White square is Time. The Grey square in between is Twilight. And this is why the West Gate is paired with the North Gate. The Two Gates should really be viewed as a single gate, in between which time passes oddly in the Golden Wood. Galadriel symbolizes the left-hand and Celeborn the right hand.The Golden Wood is called as such to symbolize Galadriel’s assertion to dominance, which as we have seen, is a justifiable assertion to reinstate the Sun, She That is Fallen, back to her rightful place.
Regarding Seth’s discovery of the anagram for Bombadil.
Bombadil and Goldberry are created when the geometry is created. They are created when Ilúvatar raises his left and right hands. That does not disagree in any way with your anagram regarding Bombadil being a Maia. Great find! WARN FRODO AND BILBO I BE A MAIA – MR RONALD T. The Ainur sing the Music and Melkor creates the discords in that passage. The significance of Frodo and Bilbo in that anagram is related to Goldberry and his wife 
Edith. Bombadil and Goldberry among other things are Tolkien and Edith. In the Lord of the Rings, in the Fellowship of the 9, Frodo symbolizes Edith. Aragorn symbolizes Tolkien. The male is the square, the female is the circle as we can see from Tolkien’s heraldic devices. Both characters go through journeys which reverse handedness along the lines of the diagonals in the butterfly rune (in grey above). Meaning that Aragorn goes through a journey from the right-hand male to the left-hand female. That involves a journey from earth to air, the sky. An upwards journey. And Frodo goes through a journey from the left-hand female to the right-hand male. That proceeds from water upwards to fire, the firmament. This proceeds through 7 rational planes which are manifested in the outer world as the tiers of Minas Tirith. This can also be seen in dialectic terms as the thesis, antithesis, synthesis. In geometric terms it is a squaring of the circle and a circling of the square simultaneously. Man cannot square the circle. In Tolkien’s geometric symbolism ‘squaring the circle’ describes the domination of Womankind, a theme which underlies everything in his works. It is a process according to God’s divine plan in the Music. The clear correspondence between the image of Hippocrates moons and the heraldic device for Lúthien proved my prediction (Predictions #29 and #31) that Tolkien was using the squaring of the circle in his works. You can find the template for that journey in the passage describing the point where Ilúvatar raises both hands:
| Then again Ilúvatar arose, and the Ainur perceived that his countenance was stern; and he lifted up his right hand, and behold! a third theme grew amid the confusion, and it was unlike the others. For it seemed at first soft and sweet, a mere rippling of gentle sounds in delicate melodies; but it could not be quenched, and it took to itself power and profundity. And it seemed at last that there were two musics progressing at one time before the seat of Ilúvatar, and they were utterly at variance. The one was deep and wide and beautiful, but slow and blended with an immeasurable sorrow, from which its beauty chiefly came. The other had now achieved a unity of its own; but it was loud, and vain, and endlessly repeated; and it had little harmony, but rather a clamorous unison as of many trumpets braying upon a few notes. And it essayed to drown the other music by the violence of its voice, but it seemed that its most triumphant notes were taken by the other and woven into its own solemn pattern. |
The highlighted text describes the journey. Tolkien also uses the same journey for the narrative of Faramir and Boromir. And of course we have the narrative of Eowyn and the Witch-king. See The Turn in Practice.
The warning of WARN FRODO AND BILBO involves the reason why the two arms of the Argonath raise their left hands in ‘warning’ and why Gandalf holds on to the left wing of the Balrog. Bombadil and Goldberry are special characters all round. They ARE the geometry, the exemplars, the opposite and adjacent planes in a right angled triangle which forms Tolkien’s ‘Sacred Geometry’. The hands sequence of Ilúvatar are when the 3 sides of the triangle are created. The two hands, the third chord, creates the third plane, the hypotenuse of that triangle.
Origins of the name Balrog
Today I was sat in the car and an Irish voice came over the radio. I remarked that it was a pleasant brogue. I then recalled Seth’s musings in Chapter.
I’d already had made sense of the symbolism of boots. The poem ‘The Root of the Boot’ and Bombadil’s boots.
To quote Seth:
|
Balrogs were stated to be etymologically derived from: ‘Bal’ meaning evilness and ‘Rog’ meaning demon. The lexicon itself belonged to the language of the Gnomes. Though ‘Gnomish’ was Tolkien’s personal invention; in choosing ‘Bal’ and ‘Rog’ – remarkably appropriate Anglo-Saxon roots are likely to have been heavily influential: balewa, an; m. The baleful or wicked one, Satan; Satanas, Diabolus :– Swá inc se balewa hét as the balw; g. m. n. es; f. re Miserable, wicked; malus, Beo. Th. 1958; B. 977.v bealo. BǼL, es; n. I. fire, flame; ignis, flamma BRÓGA, an; m. A prodigy, monster, trembling, fear, terror, horror, dread; monstrum, tremor, terror, |
All of these are undoubtedly important and relevant. Tolkien almost routinely draws his influences from multiple sources. Take Bombadil for example. I have no problem in accepting most of the influences and explanations for the origins, to be true.
So, I recalled brogues as shoes…I remembered drawing the connection between BRÓGA and brogues when I read Seth’s book. But I had not got around to checking on the etymology.
| brogue (n.) |
| type of Celtic accent, 1705, perhaps from the meaning “rough, stout shoe” (made of rawhide and tied with thongs), of the type worn by rural Irish and Scottish highlanders (1580s), via Gaelic or Irish, from Old Irish broce “shoe.” The footwear was “characteristic of the wilder Irish” [Century Dictionary], thus the noun might mean something like “speech of those who call a shoe a brogue.” Or perhaps it is from Old Irish barrog “a hold” (on the tongue). |
| brogan (n.) |
| type of coarse half-boot, 1846, from Irish and Gaelic brogan, diminutive of brog “shoe” (compare brogue). Related: Brogans. |
We see a number of relevant links here to the Balrog. The tied ‘thongs’, and the thongs of the whip. The references to the wilder’ more firey if you like, people who wear them. Clearly the Balrog is wild. And then we get to the killer link, “Irish barrog “a hold” (on the tongue).” This is exactly what the entire subject of this essay has been about- the silencing of the voice by seizing with the hand. And of course we have the holding of the left wing which symbolizes this ‘holding of the tongue’, the will, the voice. In support of the relevance of thongs of the shoe, Tolkien puns of the the word thong of diphthong an the thongs of the whip. Recall that the whip is intended to be a corruption of the Tree. The Tree is language. In the background narrative to the Fall of the Dwarves 6 diphthongs are new to the language. These diphthongs are from the influence of the Enemy. These 6 diphthongs are the thongs of the whip of the Balrog. This is how the Devil, the Alchemist, changes the language. We note that the number 6 is the spiral down to hell. This agrees with what we said about the trembling tongue, the quivering tongue of the remnants of the bridge, and how it derives from the etymology of the word whip. And note Tolkien tells us that the bridge breaks at its feet: ‘Right at the Balrog’s feet it broke, and the stone upon which it stood crashed into the gulf,’, which links into our current discussion about boots and feet and language.
| In the Table of Values those on the left are, when separated by —, the values of the older Angerthas. Those on the right are the values of the Dwarvish Angerthas Moria.12 The Dwarves of Moria, as can be seen, introduced a number of unsystematic changes in value, as well as certain new cirth: 37, 40, 41, 53, 55, 56. The dislocation in values was due mainly to two causes: (1) the alteration in the values of 34, 35, 54 respectively to h (the clear or glottal beginning of a word with an initial vowel that appeared in Khuzdul), and s; (2) the abandonment of the Nos. 14, 16 for which the Dwarves substituted 29, 30. The consequent use of 12 for r, the invention of 53 for n (and its confusion with 22); the use of 17 as z, to go with 54 in its value s, and the consequent use of 36 as n and the new certh 37 for ng may also be observed. The new 55, 56 were in origin a halved form of 46, and were used for vowels like those heard in English butter, which were frequent in Dwarvish and in the Westron. When weak or evanescent they were often reduced to a mere stroke without a stem. This Angerthas Moria is represented in the tomb-inscription. [The Lord of the Rings, Appendix E, THE CIRTH] |
The 6 new changes refer to the tomb inscription. We have already identified the unexplained details of the symmetrical beginning and ending of the inscription with the Enemy. We see confusion, dislocation, abandonment. All the spiritual effects of the Enemy which result in language changes. See The Turn in Principle and the Turn in Practice. The other changes are to be found in the Book of Mazarbul. This is why Legolas exclaims ‘Ai Ai’ when he sees the Balrog. Apart from its use as an exclamation, ai is the diphthong cited along with au in V.T 39. Ai indicates the corruption of the right hand by the Enemy. Au is the corruption of the left hand. Remember the Enemy is the bull. The letter A is the bull. You and I is Edith and Tolkien. You and I is the letters U and I. The letter A attaching to the letters U and I symbolizes the influence of the Enemy on the left and right hands, Tolkien and Edith in the their marriage, and man and womankind generally of course. And we find that au and ai are two of the diphthongs cited as being in the Book of Mazarbul. Remember I said that Tolkien always chooses his words carefully when writing about his languages?
| butter (n.) |
|
Old English butere “butter, the fatty part of milk,” obtained from cream by churning, general West Germanic (compare Old Frisian, Old High German butera, German Butter, Dutch boter), an early loan-word from Latin butyrum “butter” (source of Italian burro, Old French burre, French beurre), from Greek boutyron. This is apparently “cow-cheese,” from bous “ox, cow” (from PIE root *gwou- “ox, bull, cow”) + tyros “cheese” (from PIE root *teue- “to swell”); but this might be a folk etymology of a Scythian word. The product was used from an early date in India, Iran and northern Europe, but not in ancient Greece and Rome. Herodotus described it (along with cannabis) among the oddities of the Scythians. In old chemistry, applied to certain substances of buttery consistency. Butter-knife attested from 1818. |
The same bull that appears in the cliff face and in the shape of page 5 in the book of ‘Maze-ar-bull’. Here’s the passage from V.T 39 again.
| “The examples of ai, au of this origin are not very numerous. They were mostly “intensive”, as in rauko “very terrible creature” (*RUK); taura “very mighty, vast, of unmeasured might or size” (*TUR). Some were “continuative”, as in Vaire “Ever-weaving” (*WIR). The examples of æ, ǫ were fewer, of limited to indubitable cases, such as Q. méla “loving, affectionate”, T. māla (*MEL); Q. kólo “burden”, S. caul “great burden, affliction”, < *kālō (*KOL). On the relation of the name Orome to the Sindarin form Araw (which probably exhibits a similar development of ǫ > Q.ó but T. ā) see note on Valarin [] “ |
We note ai as being introduced into Vaire ‘Ever weaving’. This is the Tree, which the Balrog’s whips symbolize. And we have already as stated that the introduction of au refers to the Balrog. The attacks of the Enemy are ever and present throughout the histories, the roaring voice of Rauros, ‘continuative’. And note the reference to Araw from the bulls, the kine of Araw.
And here in the Moria passage, we have the Balrog as stated trying to dominate. That translates as ‘trying to seize both voices’ and to take the role of the right hand. Hence the clash of swords which the Balrog initiates. In the clash of swords the Enemy is trying to seize, to hold the right hand, the right wing. It is trying to silence Gandalf. Here, in the confrontation on the bridge, the Balrog IS the right hand because in order to determine the left and right handedness we need to look southwards. If we do, the Balrog is the right hand, Gandalf is the left. For an explanation of why we must orient southwards read ‘The Turn in Practice‘. There are further clues as to the female sex of the Balrog in its name ‘bal’. Not only is Tolkien referencing ‘bal’ as Seth demonstrates, but he has his own personal symbolic rebus in The Floral Alphabet. The letter ‘B’ is female, after bet of the Mystic Talmud. ‘AL’ is the tree in his language, and we note the whip as the tree. AL breaks down further into ‘A’ the Devil and L, Time. Time is the female, Goldberry, Edith.
The Boot symbolism is a philological riddle. I said that Time runs vertically through his world. It also runs eastwards from the west. Travelling upwards is a movement towards God because of the convergent wills implied in the triangle. If Bombadil travels down and to the west, in fact following the course of the Withywindle, he diverges from his wife. It results in separation. Travelling downwards is travelling into the remote past back to the origin, but 
to hell and Níðhöggr. A philologist travels back in time in his studies. Tolkien’s preoccupation with language leads him back to a kind of hell from which he cannot escape because, Tolkien spends too much time on his ‘secret vice’ and neglects his family. It’s self-criticism. The geometry a little too complicated to cover in full here. I’ll be posting a full diagram of how Time and Space interact and proceed on this site. When Gandalf falls into the pit with the Balrog he falls back in Time. The Endless Stair is symbolic of the two spirals that run through Time as stated. Thus at the bottom of the world is the place where Tolkien goes to. This is ‘Down Where the Dream Fish Go’ of the Notion Club Papers. If you look at the symbolic landscape you can clearly see Uin the Whale (The Dream Fish) left. It is going up. But of course if we turn the map on its head, the correct way, it is going down to where hell is, where the bottom of the letter J is in the monogram. Tolkien repeats this symbolic journey in ‘Bombadil ‘Goes Boating. Once you see the fish you cannot unsee it. Rhovanion symbolizes the grey square. The grey square is inundated in water after the Downfall. This is why the Ring of Water, Nenya is kept here with Galadriel and why her water is a mirror. Edith is also represented in the symbolic landscape of Rhovanion. See ‘The Symbolic Landscape‘. Knowing what we know now of the Floral alphabet we can decode the name of Uin. The whale is called Uin because the two letters of U and I symbolize the seizure of both hands by Tolkien. The letter n as noted previously refers to the fall, into water. It’s appropriate that the whale is composed of trees- since this is Tolkien the philologist and trees are language. Both of the two figures of Edith and Tolkien in the landscape have an ‘X’ implied in them. In Uin it is in the words Rhovanion and Mirkwood crossing. This arrangement of naming on maps is bad practice! Tolkien knew this. It’s a hint regarding the symbolic landscape. This ‘X’ symbolizes the two hands being seized by both of them in their wilful behaviours.
| boot (n.1) |
|
“covering for the foot and lower leg,” early 14c., from Old French bote “boot” (12c.), with corresponding words in Provençal, Spanish, and Medieval Latin, all of unknown origin, perhaps from a Germanic source. Originally of riding boots only. From c. 1600 as “fixed external step of a coach.” This later was extended to “low outside compartment used for stowing luggage” (1781) and hence the transferred use, of motor vehicles, in Britain, where American English has trunk (n.1). |
In that humourous poem Tolkien is using a metaphor for a philologist’s work of rooting out the foundation, the lowest root, of a word. It follows naturally that if language is a tree, then roots lie at the bottom of the tree. So we equate the boots with the lowest foundation. The troll’s bottom is the foundation stone past which the philologist cannot proceed any further. The troll symbolizes the Enemy, the Devil. And we know that the Devil as Níðhöggr who dwells at the root gnawing at the words. This gnawing, this destruction of language, and lore, is offered as an explanation of why we cannot proceed further back to the origin, to God and the Garden of Eden ultimately, and why words change over time. To quote On Fairy Stories, ‘the long alchemic processes of time’. He is probably also amusing himself in the idiomatic ‘hitting rock bottom’. Tolkien felt guilty all of his life for spending too much time in economically unprofitable things, ‘useless’ things like his Art and language creation- his ‘Secret Vice’. This is echoed in the rebellious spirit of Bombadil Goes Boating:
|
The old year was turning brown; the West Wind was |
As stated, Bombadil is Tolkien. But Tolkien who, without Edith (Goldberry), tends towards his fallen nature,
pursuing his Secret Vice with no heed for his marriage or children. All of the creatures are in Bombadil Goes Boating are antagonistic with him- or he with them because they symbolize Edith and the world of his peers, etc, who look askant at his wayward, reckless pursuit of his Art. The final outcomes of that wilful pursuit is Old
Man Willow. Old Man Willow is Bombadil-Tolkien as a creature of pure language, of philology, destructive to his family. Note that Tom goes down to the Withywindle. Again, Bombadil goes down the river, “Down by Mithe”, and the Dream Fish Uin goes down to where the dream fish go. Hence why Bombadil is symbolized by Autumn- the time in which leaves fall.
| ‘No names, you tell-tale, or I’ll skin and eat you, babbling in every ear things that don’t concern you! If you tell Willow-man where I’ve gone, I’ll burn you, roast you on a willow-spit. That’ll end your prying!’ |
In Skeats we read in the entry for BOAT: “The original ‘ boat ’ was a stem of a tree;”
The stem is the stem of the World Tree, that being language. The roots lie at the bottom. Going down and ‘boating’ means going back into the roots of words and philology, dropping his work duties, and pursuing his ‘selfish’ Art.
If we look at the etymology of boot in Skeats we find ‘bottom’. The boots are worn at the bottom of a person. Briefly, this whole idea explains why Bombadil’s boots are wet when the rain falls and why he takes them off and puts them in a corner when Goldberry has her washing day. The Washing Day is the waterfall of Rauros- the same symbolism. Tom’s boots symbolize his right handedness, his dominance and mastery. They are Tolkien’s philology boots.
In the entry for BOTTOM we find:
|
B. The word appears also in Celtic; cf. Irish bonn, the sole of the foot; Gaelic bonn, sole, foundation, bottom; W. bonn, stem, base, stock. Der. bottom-less, bottom-ry. From the same root, fund-ament. [Skeat, W. W.. An Etymological Dictionary Of The English Language.] |
From the online etymological dictionary:
| bottom (n.) |
|
Old English botm, bodan “ground, soil, foundation, lowest or deepest part of anything,” from Proto- Meaning “fundamental character, essence” is from 1570s; to get to the bottom of some matter is from |
And in Old Irish bond we arrive back at brogue, brogan, etc. Why would he use Old Irish? He never liked the Irish language. We know that separation and wilfulness lead to wrath. It’s word play on ‘Ire-land’ which is also in the west and features in the Notion Club Papers. And it references ‘wandering’ and going astray, which again characterizes the outing:
| ire (n.) |
|
c. 1300, from Old French ire “anger, wrath, violence” (11c.), from Latin ira “anger, wrath, rage, passion,” from PIE root *eis- (1), forming various words denoting passion (source also of Greek hieros “filled with the divine, holy,” oistros “gadfly,” originally “thing causing madness;” Sanskrit esati “drives on,” yasati “boils;” Avestan aesma “anger;” Lithuanian aistra “violent passion”). Old English irre in a similar sense is unrelated; it is from an adjective irre “wandering, straying, angry,” which is cognate with Old Saxon irri “angry,” Old High German irri “wandering, deranged,” also “angry;” Gothic airzeis “astray,” and Latin errare “wander, go astray, angry” (see err (v.)). |
The west in this instance is related to the separation of Bombadil and Edith because in their specific case, if they are separated Time and Space does not function. Tom’s errand down to the Withywindle observes their anniversary, their original meeting which is a creation myth. The positioning of Old Man Willow and the Wraith at the far west and east ends of their ‘kingdom’ symbolizes the noon and midnight positioning in the astronomical sources of the Sun and Moon. But it is reversed to reflect their fallen natures. That is, the diamond in which they face away from one another. The time of Twilight in the astronomical courses is symbolized by the house at the centre, when they come together, and face one another. Their kingdom is a mise en byme of the World. A symbolic microcosm. The kingdom’s borders are defined by the wheel tracks of the waggons of Ursa Major, which symbolizes Bombadil, which circles around the axis mundi situated at the house.
|
Then deep folds in the ground were discovered unexpectedly, like the ruts of great giant-wheels or wide moats and sunken roads long disused and choked with brambles. These lay usually right across their line of march, and could only be crossed by scrambling down and out again, which was troublesome and difficult with their ponies. Each time they climbed down they found the hollow filled with thick bushes and matted undergrowth, which somehow would not yield to the left, but only gave way when they turned to the right; and they had to go some distance along the bottom before they could find a way up the further bank. Each time they clambered out, the trees seemed deeper and darker; and always to the left and upwards it was most difficult to find a way, and they were forced to the right and downwards. |
We can see Tolkien hinting in his echoing the first scene in the second. He uses the words ruts and hollow in both places. The pot holes filled with rain recall the moats, and sunken roads at the first location. This characterization of Bombadil as the waggon revolving around Polaris is the source of ‘wain’ in Iarwain. For more information see my Bombadil and Goldberry riddle solution on this site.
The Chamber of Mazarbul is another mise en abyme. I said that wilfulness was characterized by two aims: to be eldest and to be higher, on top. Heading westward for Bombadil is heading to where Old Man Willow is at the extreme edge and down. That equates to being eldest. For a more full explanation see ‘The Turn in Practice‘. The leaning alder symbolizes eldest and it is the first tree that Fellowship encounter in the Lord of the Rings and coincidentally it is also leaning.
| After some time they crossed the Water, west of Hobbiton, by a narrow plank-bridge. The stream was there no more than a winding black ribbon, bordered with leaning alder-trees. |
|
The old year was turning brown; the West Wind was |
To lean in Tolkienian symbolism is to veer away from the straight path, to be ‘disinclined’ away from God. To be in the process of turning, or to be susceptible to turning, wavering. We can see the disinclination visually as ‘/’ which has moved away from ‘l’. That visual symbolism is the same as the breaking wave of the letter ‘r’, wrath or roth, as described previously. And we note that the etymology of alda in Old Norse is ‘wave’. The alder tree is symbolic of being the claim to being first, eldest and that is why Tolkien made it the first tree that the Fellowship encounter in the Lord of the Rings.
| alder (n.) |
|
tree related to the birch, Old English alor “alder,” from Proto-Germanic *aliso (source also of Old Norse ölr, Danish elle, Swedish al, Dutch els, German erle), from the ancient PIE name of the tree (source also of Russian olicha, Polish olcha, Latin alnus (French aune), Lithuanian alksnis), from root *el- (2) “red, brown,” used in forming animal and tree names (see elk). The unetymological -d- was added 14c.; the historical form aller survived until 18c. in literary English and persists in dialects, such as Lancashire owler, which is partly from Norse. |
In the first line of the Boating poem we see ‘old’, ‘brown’ and ‘falling’. We see red, brown in the root ‘el’ for alder. These three things symbolize the wilful falling Bombadil. Bombadil’s crown is one of autumn leaves. The year is older in autumn and winter than it is in the time of Goldberry, Spring. This lies at the heart of Bombadil’s spurious claim to being eldest. Of course the beginning of the year is oldest since it came first, and that is Goldberry’s time.
| old (adj.) |
|
Old English ald (Anglian), eald (West Saxon, Kentish) “antique, of ancient origin, belonging to antiquity, primeval; long in existence or use; near the end of the normal span of life; elder, mature, experienced,” from Proto-Germanic *althaz “grown up, adult” (source also of Old Frisian ald, Gothic alþeis, Dutch oud, German alt), originally a past-participle stem of a verb meaning “grow, nourish” (compare Gothic alan “to grow up,” Old Norse ala “to nourish”), from PIE root *al- (2) “to grow, nourish.” The original Old English vowel is preserved in Scots auld, also in alderman. The original comparative and superlative (elder, eldest) are retained in particular uses. The usual PIE root is *sen- (see senior (adj.)). A few Indo-European languages distinguish words for “old” (vs. young) from words for “old” (vs. new), and some have separate words for aged persons as opposed to old things. Latin senex was used of aged living things, mostly persons, while vetus (literally “having many years”) was used of inanimate things. Greek geraios was used mostly of humans; palaios was used mostly of things, of persons only in a derogatory sense. Greek also had arkhaios, literally “belonging to the beginning,” which parallels French ancien, used mostly with reference to things “of former times.” Old English also had fyrn “ancient,” which is related to Old English feor “far, distant” (see far, and compare Gothic fairneis, Old Norse forn “old, of old, of former times,” Old High German firni “old, experienced”). Meaning “of a specified age” (three days old) is from late Old English. Sense of “pertaining to or characteristic of the earlier or earliest of two or more stages of development or periods of time” is from late Old English. As an intensive, “great, high,” mid-15c., now only following another adjective (gay old time, good old Charlie Brown). As a noun, “those who are old,” 12c. Of old “of old times” is from late 14c. |
We see old goes onto become used as an intensive: great, high, which echo my statements about the domineering characteristics in the male and female. One of the names given to Bombadil was ‘forn’, and Bombadil makes the spurious claim to being eldest. Melkor also makes the same claim in the Children of Húrin when he captures Húrin. Again we see wrath, the will, first and mightiest:
|
Then wrath mastered Morgoth, and he said: ‘Yet I may come at you, and all your accursed house; and you shall be broken on my will, Tolkien, J. R. R.. The Children of Húrin (p. 64). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition. |
And we find the element ‘alda’ in Aldarion, Baldor and Aldor and elsewhere with narratives that explore the relationship between right hand and left hand and the battle of wills.
| elder (adj.) |
| “more old,” Old English (Mercian) eldra, comparative of eald, ald (see old); only English survival of umlaut in comparison. Superseded by older since 16c. Elder statesman (1921) originally was a translation of Japanese genro (plural). |
| elder (n.2) |
|
type of berry tree, c. 1400, from earlier ellen, from Old English ellæn, ellærn “elderberry tree,” origin unknown, perhaps related to alder, which at any rate might be the source of the unetymological -d-. Common Germanic, cognates: Old Saxon elora, Middle Low German elre, Old High German elira, German Eller, Erle. Related: Elderberry. |
Skeats has:
| ALDER, a kind of tree. (E) Chaucer has alder, C.T.2923 (Ka. Ta. 2063). *Aldyr-tre or oryelle tre, alnus; Prompt. Parv. p. 9. [The letter d is, however, merely excrescent, exactly as in alder-first, often used for aller-first, or first of all; or as in alder-leifest, used by Shakespeare for aller-leifest. Hence the older form is aller.] …See Fick, L 500, who gives the Lith. and Slavonic forms, and gives aline as the original form of the stem, = √AL, to grow; connected with √AR, to rise. From the same root we have old, ad-ult, elm; cf. Gothe’s ‘erl-king,’ i.e. alder-king. See Elm. |
We see ‘alder-first’. Aller-first means ‘first of all’. Aller-leifest means ‘dearest of all’. And ‘dearest of all’ echoes the contention between alef and bet and indeed the other letters of the alphabet, to be closest and dearest to God. We also note to other important things. The alder is related to the birch. The birch is the elder tree. The birch is the left-hand, the female, beth, ‘She That is Fallen’. The oak is the right-hand, male. The alder (the same thing as the oak, symbolizing the Enemy and the discords) is an imposter, a counterfeit of the birch in this sense. And we see the roots AL and AR. Ar is the same ‘ar’ in Ar-Pharazôn and ‘Maz-ar-bul’. It’s a reference to the Sun, the female, but the sun in its fallen nature. The Sun that devours, the star that guides but errs across the sky. And this is because the Devil passes between right and left hands as we saw in the astronomical course of the Sun and Moon above. But ultimately alder has its origins in Melkor, who is the male. We can see the relationship between the female and the alder at Weathertop. And then I made prediction #61. This prediction proves my point very well. I did a search for alder and in the Lord of the Rings, and I encountered the following description of it:
| It was already night when at last they halted and made their camp under some stunted alder-trees by the shores of the stream |
I knew immediately that this was probably close to Weathertop or at Weathertop. So I scanned the text and found two paragraphs above on the same page:
| ‘I think the best thing is to go as straight eastward from here as we can, to make for the line of hills, not for Weathertop. There we can strike a path I know that runs at their feet; it will bring us to Weathertop from the north and less openly. Then we shall see what we shall see.’ |
I was able to make the prediction because the relationship between the alder, oak and the birch throughout the Lord of the Rings is important. Tolkien incorporates ‘The Battle of the Trees’ between the birch and the oak, in the narrative. The alder symbolizes the oak. As does the fir and the pine. The low point for the birch in the battle comes at the descent from the cliff at the Emyn Muil. This is symbolic of the Downfall of Númenor, of She That is Fallen. She being the birch, the female. And Tolkien not coincidentally uses the same word there to describe the birch there. I knew that Tolkien described the birch at the Emyn Muil as stunted from my previous research surrounding ‘The Battle of the Trees’:
| The cleft was longer and deeper than it seemed. Some way down they found a few gnarled and stunted trees, the first they had seen for days: twisted birch for the most part, with here and there a fir-tree. Many were dead and gaunt, bitten to the core by the eastern winds. Once in milder days there must have been a fair thicket in the ravine, but now, after some fifty yards, the trees came to an end, though old broken stumps straggled on almost to the cliff’s brink. |
As I’ve already stated, Goldberry-Time is weather: water and wind. And Weathertop occupies an important place in the symbolic landscape of Arnor (see the Symbolic Landscape). Weathertop symbolizes the Door with the female in her God ordained position ‘on top’, and therefore the alder was predictably losing in the battle at this point. And again we note the multiple of 5 in ‘fifty yards’- indicating the will. And Sam ties the rope around one of these stumps, a birch, to rescue Frodo.
| OLD, aged, full of years, ancient. (E.) M. E. old, def. form and pl. olde ; Chaucer, C. T. 5240, 10023. – A. S. eald, O. Northumb. old Luke, i. 18. + Du. oud (for old)…The common Teut. type is ALTHA, whence ALDA; Fick, iii. 26. Like the – ultus in Lat. adultus, it is a pp. form from the AL, to nourish, as seen in Goth. alan, to nourish, Lat. alere, to nourish; cf. Goth, m-althan, to grow old. It means ‘well nourished, grown up.’ |
In German names Alda was originally an Old German name meaning old.
Tom later says in the Lord of the Rings:
| Fear no alder black! Heed no hoary willow! |
| hoary (adj.) |
| 1510s, “gray or white with age” (of hair); c. 1600 as “venerable, ancient;” from hoar + -y (2). Related: Hoariness. |
Again we see a reference to old and ancient. And we know that the willow here is a reference to ‘Old Man’ willow. And we have previously established that Tolkien links the old man of Bombadil to the old man of the willow. In this way Tolkien associates the alder with the willow and therefore the alder with Bombadil in some way. As stated Old Man Willow is the wilful fallen Bombadil (Tolkien) who has become a creature of pure language and has become destructive to his family. The alder is a manifestation of Bombadil’s claim to be ‘first of all’. This supports the claim that Bombadil is spuriously claiming to be eldest and first. We know that Old Man Willow is at the Western edge of the Old Forest diametrically opposite to the Barrow Wight at the far eastern end. As such the scene is equivalent in the astronomical geometry to the Moon being on top in the sky at midnight and the Sun underneath. It is of Moon male right-hand dominance. But surely the Moon is naturally in the west if we look southwards and therefore not contrary to the natural order of things. Yes. But, as I state in the Turn in Principle, everything is Arda is the reversal of Ilúvatar’s order, and Bombadil and Goldberry were created before Arda, with the raising of the left and right hands of Ilúvatar. During the course of the Lord of the Rings the world actually turns through two turns of 90 degrees and restores Ilúvatar’s order with the Sun in the north, in the left hand. In other words looking upwards (northwards) and Eastwards is the orientation of Ilúvatar- and that agrees with the diagonal implied by the two sets of four dots in the monogram. The diagonal being a combination of eastward and northward. Therefore the Moon in the west is incorrect, it should be in the east and the Sun should be in the west. And that agrees with Minas Anor and Minas Ithil which have correct positioning. And as a symbol of the Moon being dominant and ‘on top’ or in the west as the sun is sinking. We know that in the Bombadil poem that the west wind is blowing and we also read later:
| “Down by Mithe”, I’ll say, “just as sun is sinking“ Hurry up, hurry up! That’s the time for drinking!’ |
Tom is is errant, he is absconding from his domestic obligations and marriage. He is running away to immerse himself in his art. If languages are like wines to Tolkien, his art is likened to drinking. In mithe we can see this intended meaning.
| From Old English mīþan (“to hide, conceal; keep to oneself, dissemble; conceal oneself, remain concealed; avoid, shun, refrain from”), from Proto-Germanic *mīþaną (“to avoid”), from Proto-Indo-European *meyt- (“to change, switch”). Cognate with Dutch mijden (“to avoid, evade”), German meiden (“to avoid, shun, forbear”). [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mithen] |
| Andreas Möhn has suggested that Mithe means “Place where two streams meet”, derived from Old English mūþ or ġemȳþ “river-mouth, meeting of streams”. Möhn adds that Mithe “is evidently related to ‘mouth’ and probably a derivative surviving in English place-names”.[3] [http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Mithe] |
In the geometry this of course means he is silencing the voice of the left hand. In other words he is speaking without listening; commanding. I said that Tolkien uses the body and the face in a symbolic way. The mouth is at the bottom of the face. The face is symbolic of the material structures of the world. Hell is also at the bottom. This is why we see ‘Isenmouthe’ in Mordor. Tolkien is using word play on ‘eyes and mouth’. Eyes symbolize the male right hand. Therefore eyes and mouth symbolize the absence of the female, the left hand, since the left hand is the ears and listening. And this is why he chose to represent Sauron as a single eye. It can see but it never listens. The ‘Mouth of Sauron’ symbolizes the mouth of the ‘eyes and mouth’. Therefore I would say that both of the above interpretations of mythe are correct since the two stream which meet could easily symbolize the two voices in the dialectic.
| Isengard, Isenmouthe. These names were intended to represent translations into the CS of the Elves (Elvish) names Angrenost and Carach Angren, but ones made at so early a date that at the period of the tale they had become archaic in form and their original meanings were obscured. They can therefore be left unchanged, though translation (of one or both elements in either name) would be suitable, and I think desirable when the LT is a Germanic language, possessing related elements. Isen is an old variant form in E. of iron; gard a Germanic word meaning ‘an enclosure’, especially one round a dwelling or group of buildings; mouthe is a derivative of mouth, representing OE mūtha (from mūth ‘mouth’) ‘an opening’, especially used of the mouths of rivers, but also applied to other openings (not parts of a body). Isengard the ‘iron-court’ was so called because of the great hardness of the stone in that place and in the central tower. The isenmouthe was so called because of the great fence of pointed iron posts that closed the gap leading into Udûn, like teeth in jaws (c.f III 197, 209 [2004 edn, pp. 920,931; Book VI, Chapter 2]). [ J.R.R. Tolkien, “Nomenclature of The Lord of the Rings” in Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull (eds), The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion, p. 772] |
The reference to ‘iron’ symbolizes the iron will of the number 5. This chimes well because the will represents speaking, without listening. And if we look at the etymology of iron, we see power and strength which are both characteristics that the Enemy prizes.
| iron (n.) |
|
Middle English iron, iren, yron, from Old English iren, variant (with rhotacism of -s-) of isen, later form of isern, isærn “the metal iron; an iron weapon or instrument,” from Proto-Germanic *isarn (source also of Old Saxon isarn, Old Frisian isern, Old Norse isarn, Middle Dutch iser, Old High German isarn, German Eisen). This perhaps is an early borrowing of Celtic *isarnon (compare Old Irish iarn, Welsh haiarn), which Watkins suggests is from PIE *is-(e)ro- “powerful, holy,” from PIE *eis “strong” (source also of Sanskrit isirah “vigorous, strong,” Greek ieros “strong”), on the notion of “holy metal” or “strong metal” (in contrast to softer bronze). It was both an adjective and a noun in Old English, but in form it is an adjective. The alternative isen survived into early Middle English as izen. In southern England the Middle English word tended to be ire, yre, with loss of -n, perhaps regarded as an inflection; in the north and Scotland, however, the word tended to be contracted to irn, yrn, still detectable in dialect. |
The reference to holy can be explained by the fact that the wilful seeks to be whole, to be self-completed, like Melkor and Sauron, and the single flame in ‘Wickedness’ (as opposed to the two flames in ‘Before’). That is a characteristic only found in Eru, the One. Thus, it is a way of usurping the authority of God in the relationship, just as the One Ring is a way of replacing Eru the One. They are seeking to ‘become a power’ like the Ainur.
| There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, |
Treebeard says of Saruman:
| ‘I think that I now understand what he is up to. He is plotting to become a Power. He has a mind of metal and wheels; and he does not care for growing things, except as far as they serve him for the moment. |
Remember I said that the diamond, which represents the wilful divergent wills of the left and right hands, can be represented as the numbers 4 and 6? See the astrological paths of the Sun and Moon above. I also said that the 4 of 4 and 6 was really 2 to the power of 2. This raising of the number by itself is a multiplication of itself by itself. That is to be self-completed, to be alone because as we know to go forth and multiply is to procreate. In the Music of the Ainur the Discords of Melkor are described: ‘The other had now achieved a unity of its own;’
The 4 symbolizes the stone, a ‘heart of stone’ and the 4th link of the Chain of Angainor .We know that lead symbolizes the bitter bottom. And we see Bombadil again goes down to the mithe. Going down symbolizes this.
But I also said that to raise oneself up is to be wilful so how do we reconcile going down with going up? We have to remember that all beings within the fallen world of Arda have confused the left and right hands and therefore up with down, and down with up. They have confused their place in God’s order and in their married relationships. This is why Iluin (the Moon in effect) is placed in the north, which is up- and because Ilúvatar faces east, making it the left hand of Ilúvatar, (see The Turn in Practice for more information) and why the map of the Lord of the Rings must be turned on its head.
We can see the mouth symbolism clearly in Tolkien’s early map of Arda. Tolkien fully intended this to be a symbolic map, in the vein of the medieval T-O maps. Why else would he draw such a strange map? The arrangement of the mountains are..well absurd. It’s only when you make the leap of recognizing it as such, that you can begin to decode the symbolism.
The map is intended to be viewed from two directions, facing east and facing west. Eastward is the natural direction of the progress of the Music of the Ainur. Moving eastwards leads further and further away from the origin, God. Ultimately it leads to Ragnarok. Therefore the face is demonic. The mouth is at the bottom of the face. It is gaping like the mouth of hell and indeed we see the same symbolism in the Carach Angren, from which the Mouth of Sauron comes forth. We see the trefoil once again in the tongue. It’s very clear that Tolkien arranged the lettering to visually suggest features, and he used this technique on the map of the Lord of the Rings. The two red arrows indicated represent the two divergent wills of the left and right hand facing away from one another. The eyes are actually an eye and an ear. The ear is on the left looking eastward symbolizing the female left hand. WE can see that Tolkine chose to elongate the shape and suggest a lobe at the bottom. His decision to write Helcar in the centre contrasts with the other which has ‘Ringil’ written outside it. In this way he can preserve the circularity of the ‘eye’. as I’ve already stated the left hand is hearing and the right hand is sight. So you can see that the left and right hands are actually represented on both axes, in both the eyes and in the arrows. This is because the Music of the Ainur actually proceeds along a diagonal. That diagonal we see in the monogram as the line suggested by connecting the two sets of four dots. For more information see The Turn in Practice. The monacle is suggested by the line of the march of the Eldar. The monacle is intended to convey the idea that that eye is ‘hard of seeing’, because it is actually an ear. It is connected with Goldberry-Edith, the left hand through the etymology, but no time to go into it here. Tolkien would later swap the symbolism and swap the places of the ear and eye with the repositioning of Illuin and Ormal.
If we turn the map upside down we see the wizard with the more pleasant, smiling demeanor. The wizard’s hat is pointed and has a conical base formed by the markings indicating the mountains of Valinor. The trefoil points upward and the Straight Road indicated by the middle way leads into the west. The Door is indicated by Taniquetil. The lower arrow heading onto the west however has a more clearly defined angle and is intended to indicate the Door to which the wizard’s hat points in the illustration ‘Eeriness’.The gap in the markings in the east sea suggest a tooth. Tolkien could have easily continued the lines of the sea between the two words ‘east sea’, but conspicuously chose not to. He wanted to suggest a tooth. We should note that the nose in the wizard face is much better formed than in the demonic face. In fact Tolkien intended that the demonic face not have a nose at all. That’s because the nose symbolizes the plane of the hypotenuse, and that plane is where the conversation between the two hands take place and the the Path of the Heart is found. In the devil face there is no conversation, and therefore no Path to God can be found. We can see the the nose in the wizard face is actually divided into two nostrils. The nose is created by the dotted line around Hildórien. The division into nostrils is created by the words ‘Hildórien’. I didn’t attempt a prediction here but I suspected that if I looked up Hildórien I would find references to the nose. On brief scrutiny, there are three references.
The first is the most obvious. We are told that of Nuin finds Hildórien.
| On a time did Nuin wander far to the east of Palisor, and few of his folk went with him, nor did Tu send them ever to those regions on his business, and strange tales were told concerning them; but now4 curiosity overcame Nuin, and journeying far he came to a strange and wonderful place the like of which he had not seen before. A mountain- ous wall rose up before him, and long time he sought a way thereover, till he came upon a passage, and it was very dark and narrow, piercing the great cliff and winding ever down. Now daring greatly he followed this slender way, until suddenly the walls dropped upon either hand and he saw that he had found entrance to a great bowl set in a ring of unbroken hills whose compass he could not determine in the gloom. Suddenly about him them gushed the sweetest odours of the Earth — nor were more lovely fragrances ever upon the airs of Valinor, and he stood drinking in the scents with deep delight, and amid the fragrance of [?evening] flowers came the deep odours that many pines loosen upon the midnight airs. Suddenly afar off down in the dark woods that lay above the valley’s bottom a nightingale sang, and others answered palely afar off, and Nuin well-nigh swooned at the loveliness of that dreaming place, and he knew that he had trespassed upon Murmenalda or the “Vale of Sleep”, where it is ever the time of first quiet dark beneath young stars, and no wind blows |
Again we see the element ‘alda’ in ‘murmenalda’. That’s not a coincidence.
The second is in Nuin’s name in which we find the letters U and I which we know to indicate You and I, the left and right hands. When they appear together they symbolize twilight, when the Sun (You) and the Moon (I) are together. This links back to my prediction above that Fanuidhol would be referred to as grey. That union occurs on the plane of the hypotenuse. Yes, Tolkien’s symbolism runs this deep even into the elements of his language and strokes of the letters themselves.
The third is in the etymology of ‘follow’. We know from the Silmarillion that Hildor means the followers.
| Hildor ‘The Followers’, ‘The Aftercomers’, Elvish name for Men, as the Younger Children of Ilúvatar. [The Silmarillion] … Hildor, since the stem *KHILI ‘follow’ was not current in Sindarin, was rendered by Aphadon, pl. Ephedyn, class-plural Aphadrim, from S aphad- ‘follow’ < *ap-pata ‘walk behind, on a track or path’. [The War of the Jewels] |
| follow (v.) |
|
Middle English folwen, from Old English folgian, fylgian, fylgan “to accompany (especially as a disciple), move in the same direction as; follow after, pursue, move behind in the same direction,” also “obey (a rule or law), conform to, act in accordance with; apply oneself to (a practice, trade, or calling),” from Proto-Germanic *fulgojanan (source also of Old Saxon folgon, Old Frisian folgia, Middle Dutch volghen, Dutch volgen, Old High German folgen, German folgen, Old Norse fylgja “to follow”). Probably originally a compound, *full-gan, with a sense of “full-going,” the sense then shifting to “serve, go with as an attendant” (compare fulfill). Related: Followed; following. Sense of “accept as leader or guide, obey or be subservient to” was in late Old English. Meaning “come after in time” is from c. 1200; meaning “to result from” (as effect from cause) is from c. 1200. Meaning “to keep up with mentally, comprehend” is from 1690s. Intransitive sense “come or go behind” is from mid-13c. To follow one’s nose “go straight on” first attested 1590s. “The full phrase is, ‘Follow your nose, and you are sure to go straight.’ ” [Farmer]. The children’s game follow my leader is attested by that name from 1812 (as follow the leader by 1896). |
By following your nose you do indeed take the Straight road because it is on the plane of the hypotenuse.
We also see more symbolic landscape in the map of Beleriand. You can find the symbolic map of the Lord of the Rings decoded here in ‘The Symbolic Landscape‘. Unlike in the map to The Lord of the Rings, the geography of the symbolic landscape in Beleriand is turned the right way up. It is the event of the Drowning of Númenor which sets the symbolic landscape on it head. However you will note that the head and the mouth is facing west. Arda is here also fallen. Everything created after the discords of Melkor is fallen. The mouth facing west symbolizes that the inhabitants of Middle-Earth are ‘speaking’ facing west, instead of listening. This is a reversal of Eru’s order and indicates a fallen world. For more information regarding the Speaker and the Listener see ‘The Turn in Principle‘ and ‘The Turn in Practice‘.
Bombadil also takes his boots off in another of Tolkien’s poems called ‘Once Upon a Time’. This poem replicates the same symbolism as Tom removing his boots on Goldberry’s Washing Day in The Lord of the Rings. The poem Once Upon a Time is one of the more difficult of Tolkien’s riddles. In that poem both Tom and Goldberry exhibit willful behaviour. For a thorough analysis see (at some point) ‘Once Upon a Time: what are the mysterious Lintips?’.
We see the connection between mithe , to hide’ and hiding:
| I wonder what they have got to hide? |
This is getting extremely long winded….
Buy this book and Robert Adams’. And while you’re at it buy Mahmoud Shelton’s book ‘Alchemy in Middle-Earth’. I found alchemy fifteen years ago in the Akallabêth by chance. Mahmoud’s findings are correct- although I believe Tolkien uses alchemy as a device of change from the discords of Melkor. Finding that started my Tolkien research. Also read Tom Shippey’s ‘Road to Middle-Earth’: a philologist talking about a philologist. These 4 books are the most important books out there on Tolkien (to my knowledge). I would also say read the article by Mark M.Hennelly Jr from almost 40 years ago ‘The Road and the Ring: Solid Geometry in Tolkien’s Middle-earth’.
Great stuff,
Peace.