Quote:
Originally Posted by Gordis
LOL. 
I am no expert on old philosophies. You better google "Four elements" and "Five elements" to learn much more.
I gather Tolkien mostly took into account the European (originally Greek) tradition of Air, Water, Fire, Earth and Aether. Especially considering that the Roman Catholic Church backed it. Japanese-Chinese beliefs were more alien to him, I guess.
As for the stones, it is stated (somewhere) that Nenya had an adamant, Narya a ruby and Vilya a sapphire. Nenya was made of mithril, the rest of gold. Every one of the Seven and the Nine had its own stone, but we are not told which ones. |
That table's the Pratchett-Discworld one right, the one worked out by Wen the Eternally Surpised?
Okay, so the blue and red stones are specifed as being a ruby and sapphire. okay I withdraw the "three diamonds" theroy, though I do feel it is imcumbent of me to make mention of the fact that until reltively recent times (when technology allowed them to be differentiated) stones were usually assigned their identity based soley on color; any stone that was the right red was assumed to be a ruby, the right shades of green a emerlad etc. (this is why the giant stone in the british crown is called the "black prince's ruby", even though it is tecnically a spinel. Actually when someon did a study of the major sizable historic rubies in the crown jewels of europe,
none ) of them turned out to actually be rubies (the few that weren't spinels were garnets) if Middle earth also classifies by color alone than a red diaons would be thought a ruby and a blue one a sapphire. Final fun aside, when the conquistadors first sacked the aztec empire the found in the treasury chuncks of truly incredible emerald (the cream of the mines of Colombia). However at that itme it was believed that emeralds were as hard and tough as diamonds so to test them the conqustadors smashed them with hammers, when the shattered they assumed what they had found was glass and discarded it. (all those fine emeralds you see in cargoes of ships like the
Atocha came later after a conqustador who was actually familar with stones happen to be in a party.