[Pitchwife]

Originally Posted by FlimFlamSam

It is probably no coincidence that Maia is related to Gaia linguistically, even though the term does not appear in Lord of the Rings. The term "The Powers" does.

Like this wasn't exactly the kind of punning on RL languages that Tolkien explicitely denied played any part in his linguistic inventions (I can't cite the exact letter at the moment, but he was answering somebody who had wondered whether Sauron was connected to Greek sauros.)

Originally Posted by FlimFlamSam

The inclusion of Eru as an outside all-knowing God is a corruption to the mythologies of the region from which these elements are derived--namely pict/wode, norse, celtic, anglo-saxon and others.[...]
It does not belong. One of my problems with... other texts, and those that came after.

Only if you think Tolkien's task was to render those mythologies as he found them rather than create something new inspired by them. In other words, you're talking about what he should have written according to your opinion, not what he did write. I'm not always happy myself with Tolkien's attempts to bring his legendarium in accord with his Christian faith, but I think we must accept that this was important to him and include it in our interpretations rather than discard it as a 'corruption' of a 'pure' mythology that isn't there in the texts.

Originally Posted by FlimFlamSam

As an amusing aside; Gandalf is twice obliquely compared to Merlin in Lord of the Rings as aging backwards. Once in Shadow of the Past and once in Voice of Saruman.
In Shadow, he recalls his appearance 90 years previous where his hair was whiter, his beard and eyebrows longer, and his face more lined with care and wisdom. Curious statement, no?

No. Quoted in full, the passage you refer to reads like this:

Gandalf was thinking of a spring, nearly eighty years before, when Bilbo had run out of Bag End without a handkerchief. His hair was perhaps whiter than it had been then, and his beard and eyebrows were perhaps longer, and his face more lined with care and wisdom[...]

(bolding mine)
Quite clearly the comparison is exactly the other way round than you were suggesting.

Originally Posted by FlimFlamSam

The earth themes flowing though the book are strong once you recognize them for what they are. Just look at the level of detail regarding descriptive nature elements in the book if you doubt nature is a heavy authorial theme.

It would indeed be foolish to doubt or deny that nature was highly important to Tolkien, and it has often be said (and justly) that Middle-earth itself is the main character in LotR, while Eru, to the extent that he plays any part at all in the story, is very much kept in the background - a force to be guessed rather than a manifest one. Why that means that we must disregard him and the wider context of the legendarium when talking about LotR is, however, beyond me.

It's not like I don't sympathize to a degree with your championing Gaia, and focussing on the meaning generated by the text over the author's intention is of course a legitimate method of literary criticism; but in general, your arguments look to me like you're bringing your own agenda to the text and trying to make the two agree willy-nilly.

Originally Posted by FlimFlamSam

Keep the ingredients pure.

No. Writing, like cooking, is all about blending ingredients; it's the proportional mixture of the ingredients that makes a book or a meal interesting. Purity is boring.

Originally Posted by blantyr

As for your elemental interpretation, it seems sort of plausible, but hardly the only possible view. I would, for example, associate Radagast with Beasts rather than Earth. I would call Saruman an Artificer, rather than associating him with Man. (And, yes, I am using Ambar Quenta’s perspective on Middle Earth again, but I reject an argument that AQ must be wrong because it was created for role playing. Radagast is a specialist in beasts, while Saruman works with machines and artifacts. In this case, AQ’s system of realms is just more comprehensive and true to Tolkien than an elemental approach.)

Well, Radagast was a Maia of Yavanna Kementári, whose epithet means "Earth-Queen", and Man can be defined as an artificing animal (Homo faber); but in Middle-earth, artificing isn't the sole province of Men - the Noldor were there before, and your interpretation of Radagast and Saruman certainly fits what we're told of them in LotR. (By the way, I don't think everybody ever said that "AQ must be wrong because it was created for role playing" - just that using it as an interpretative approach can be useful in some cases but less useful in others.)

Originally Posted by blantyr

I also just have a gut feeling that Middle Earth and the Arthur mythos are sort of like two different types of oil.

I have a gut feeling that you're in good company there.