[davem]

’Here is the heart of Elvendom on earth’

Actually, Lorien is also pretty much in the geographical centre of Middle earth - or at least of the map of Middle earth. I think this is significant. We have reached a ‘centre’, the ‘heart’ of Middle earth, the heart from which everything radiates out, the source of the Otherworld in Lord of the Rings.

The Fellowship cross two rivers - Nimrodel & Celebrant - & enter a world outside Time. A death has preceded this entry, another death will follow, but within this ‘world’ time, & death, the inevitable consequence of our existence in the world of time does not exist:

As soon as he set foot upon the far bank of Silverlode a strange feeling had come upon him, & it deepened as he walked on into the Naith: it seemed to him that he had stepped over a bridge of time into a corner of the Elder Days, & was now walking in a world that was no more. In rivendell there was memory of ancient things; in Lorien the ancient things still lived on in the waking world. Evil had been seen & heard there, sorrow had been known: the Elves feared & distrusted the world outside: wolves were howling on the wood’s borders: but on the land of Lorien no shadow lay...

It seemed to him that he had stepped through a high window that looked on a vanished world. A light was upon it for which his language had no name. ...No blemish or sickness or deformity could be seen in anything that grew upon the earth. On the land of Lorien there was no stain.

On the land of Lorien there is no shadow, no stain, no ‘blemish’ or ‘sickness’ or ‘deformity’:

Frodo felt that he was in a timeless land that did not fade or change or fall into forgetfulness. When he had gone & passed again into the outer world, still Frodo the wanderer from the Shire would walk there, upon the grass among elanor & niphredil in fair Lothlorien.

Lothlorien is the ‘dreamflower’. It is a land that exists primarily in a waking dream, outside time. Yet its as true to say that the outer world is a dream (Frodo does say as much to Merry at the end:

Well here we are, just the four of us that started out together.’ said Merry. ‘We have left all the rest behind, one after another. It seems almost like a dream that has faded.’
‘Not to me,’ said Frodo. ‘To me it feels more like falling asleep again.’

We are in a different time - elvish time, which is not time as we know it, not serial time. Aragorn stands on Cerin Amroth, in two different ‘times’ - he is both in the ‘now’ time he shares with Frodo, & in the ‘past’ time he shared with Arwen. He is perceived by Frodo as he ‘is’: ‘At the hill’s foot Frodo found Aragorn, standing still & silent as a tree’, & also as ‘a young lord tall & fair; & he spoke words in the Elvish tongue to one whom Frodo could not see.’ (yet who can doubt that Arwen is just as present to Aragorn in that ‘moment’ as Frodo is?)

All these Lorien chapters explore the nature of time & our experience of it. Both Frodo & Aragorn will leave Lorien & ‘come there never again as living man (or hobbit), yet they will both remain there forever. Lorien itself will fade from the world & the tides of time will sweep it away, yet it too will remain ‘forever’ (else how could Frodo still walk there, & Aragorn come back - though not as ‘living man’?

From Lorien the outer world can be seen, the outer world may impinge on it, its inhabitants may pass beyond its borders. Yet it is eternally untouched on some deep level. At its ‘centre’, as we will see in the next chapter, is the Mirror of Galadriel, the place where space-time, past-present-future is accessible - almost, we could believe, where space & time (or at least time) originates, comes into being, & where dream & reality, where all potential possible futures have their origin. It is the womb of space, time, being, possibility, of dream & reality, fact & fiction.

It is the ‘heart of Elvendom on earth’.

One other observation for the moment: did anyone else notice the biblical ‘echo’ in Haldir’s statement regarding Southern Mirkwood?:

In the midst upon a stony height stands Dol Guldur, where long the enemy had his dwelling. We fear that now it is inhabited again, & with power [b]sevenfold]/b].

It reminded me of Jesus parable about a demon being cast out of a person:

When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, & findeth none.
Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; & when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept & garnished.

Then goeth he, & taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, & they enter in & dwell there: & the last state of that man is worse than the first.