The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum - View Single Post - The Balrog as the Loathly Lady from medieval literature.

monks · 10-09-2020, 02:24 PM

Mithadan. Tolkien's number system was influenced by Dante's. And Dante's was just one example of a much wider religious number symbolism- the Bible, folklore, etc, etc. It was personal and has nothing to do with numerology outside of his own system- for e.g. he is not predicting or making statements about anything outside of his own works. But the outside world, Primary world was influential: Dante.

I first realized that numbers to Tolkien were more important than anyone had thought, around the time I predicted that the Hobbits met Bombadil on the 26th of a month. Turns out they met him on the 26th Sep. That was my first real prediction. Why and how did I predict that?

Why? I realized that dates and numbers were important to him and he was using them as symbols. At that time I didn't know anything about Dante's numbers symbolism- but I was aware that there was medieval religious number symbolism. I later realized how influential Dante was on Tolkien. c.f Minas Tirith: City of Purgatory. And I had become aware that he might do something like this. So I made the prediction and looked it up. I was right.

How? See my homepage at the top for other info. Back then I found a source.

East Anglia Personal Recollections and Historical Associations
Author: J. Ewing Ritchie

I believe that Tolkien read this when he was quite young. The link to it is probably via Swallows and Amazons- Arthur Ransome's children's works. Tolkien does mention him in his letters. To Tolkien the 'east' was important and so was anything 'anglia' or 'of the Angles'- - read: English and England as 'Land of the Angles' and geometry angles. See 'Eeriness'. Bombadil represents 'east anglia'- looong explanation needed about geometry. Bear with me. So that's another reason why he might pick that book up.

I was researching the kingfisher in the wind of John Browne and also the bull because I'd formed the idea that Bombadil was bullish or a bull- the bull is the Devil. I knew there was something not quite right about Bombadil..and Goldberry as well. The Ritchie source came up in google. It has this quote from Browne and the reference to John Bull.

'That crystal is nothing else but ice strongly congealed; that a
diamond is softened or broken by the blood of a goat; that bays preserve
from the mischief of lightning and thunder; that the horse hath no gall;
that a kingfisher hanged by the bill showeth where the wind lay; that the
flesh of peacocks corrupteth not;' and so on--questions, it may be, as
pertinent as those learnedly discussed in half-crown magazines at the
present day.

That's another link to that book and linking Bombadil via the east anglia thing and the kingfisher feather. And then I found that John bull is often depicted wearing the same colours of clothing as Bombadil and a wasitcoat. And the character Bernard Barton within that book reminds us in some details of Bombadil.

So, I believe that another source for the character of Bombadil was John Bull and Bernard Barton. There are a few influences on the character as we know.

The half crown is mentioned in the Ritchie source. So I had come to the conclusion before this time that Bombadil and Goldberry were Tolkien and Edith and that they were two halves of one whole (read: man and wife: my other half, my better half). The half crown echoed this idea with the double crown of Egypt in his letters. Its the same symbolism. The asymmetry and imbalance I mentioned above and pretty much everywhere else in my posts is this double crown idea. The idea that one person in the marriage (I also said that his works are all about him and Edith under God- their marriage, the conversation, the dialectic) is wearing both crowns: c.f the two clockwise spirals on the West Gate and the two raised left arms on the North gate. The seizure of the sceptre from Miriel by Ar-Pharazon. Frodo seeing AND hearing on Amon Hen (see above). And I was beginning to formulate the idea that the number 2 represented Bombadil possibly and that the letter M in the Floral Alphabet was Bombadil and Goldberry. The moment where the crown falls down over one eye on Merry?- it's this symbolism.

The half-crown in pre-dec English money is "2 and 6". Bombadil and Goldberry are two halves of one whole. Space and Time (Tolkien and Edith). I wasn't sure who was 2 or who was 6. Then I stumbled upon 'Syx Mynet' in Songs for the Philologists. I made prediction #3. I knew that Tolkien was using puns and I figured that 'mynet' was a pun on 'minute' -since I thought that Goldberry was Time (Sun) and Bombadil was Space (Moon). And of course 6 was one of the numbers in 2 and 6. I asked around for a translation on the mythopeia list thinking it was an original poem of Tolkien's. Turns out it was a translation of an existing rhyme called 'I Love Sixpence'. So I predicted that the rhyme 'I Love Sixpence" would be about a wife. Long shot. I was right. I didn't even read Tolkien's Anglo Saxon poem Syx Mynet..I didn't bother to. I wasn't going to understand it anyway nor any of the other A.S poems in there. Someone pointed out much later that it uses the word 'wif'- I honestly didn't see that. I looked the rhyme up and it was about taking money home to a wife- perfect considering I'd already arrived at the theory that Bombadil and Goldberry were '2 and 6' half crown pre-dec money and the two were Tolkien and Edith. And they live in the 4 farthings as I later realized. Also money.

Then later I discovered the Chain of Angainor. And lo and behold the 2nd and 6th links were silver and gold- perfect- Moon and Sun. And later after that I realized that the Chain of Angainor was the basis of his number system. It took me a few years to work it out. I'm pretty sure right now that the Chain is the Great Chain of Being and that the 7 instruments that appear in the beginning of the Music of the Ainur correspond to these links. I've yet to further pursue that.

Bombadil and Goldberry are fallen without each other. They are fallen because at the time they were 'written' in the Music of the Ainur, the discords of Melkor were present. They are Sun and Moon (at root they are the left and right hands of Ilúvatar) hence the description of the Old Forest passage as 'Celtic twilight' and why the passage begins at twilight and ends at twilight. The passage is dark because there is a very subtle threat- the Hobbits almost get killed twice there. The Hobbits represent their children.

Old Man Willow and the Barrow Wight are incarnations of Bombadil and Goldberry. The two separated from one another and turned to evil. I've written probably over 200 pages and I can make a very convincing case for it all from the etymologies. Bombadil and Goldberry are in conflict from the start. Goldberry is "waiting". etymology: c. 1200, "to watch with hostile intent, lie in wait for, plot against," from Anglo-French and Old North French waitier. It's subtle and underplayed. It's a riddle after all. Goldberry is "my pretty lady" etymology: 'tricky', .to trick'. There are two points in the Old Forest narrative where they reunite: the dance around the table which is the Music of the Spheres, and the point where Bombadil rolls back the stone. The Rising sun behind Bombadil is Goldberry. Her presence and the detail that we are told that Tom is wearing his hat at that moment, symbolizes their unity (see my previous posts on here where I explain the hat and belt). See the letter M in the Floral Alphabet. Old Man Willow is Tolkien the philologist-Artist completely left to his own devices- creating nothing but riddles and Art, turned into of creature of pure language. Language is a tree after all.That would destroy the family- he needs to go out and work and mark exam papers, see I Love Sixpence. Goldberry is the suffocating possessive, materialistic wife- that does not want to let the children leave. He uses the same idea with the Ents and Entwives- their differences. And the same idea again in The Cottage of lost Play poems. It's about the stresses of marriage and remaining faithful even after the green shoots are gone, inevitable separation and the long defeat of life. The wistful memories and growing apart. Young Love, a place you can never get back to.

Tolkien uses the seven planetary metals from the ancient world in the chain. Tilkal is mercury.

Tolkien took the numbers 3, 7 and 8 and 10, 11 from Dante.

1 symbolizes 'the one".

2 and 6 are Moon and Sun, Space and Time.

6 and 9 are the two spirals in his works: Before, West Gate, Wickedness, etc. 6 spirals down to hell. 9 spirals up to heaven.

4 is lead and hell, the bitter bottom.

The number 5 symbolizes the will. Idioamtically 'iron will' as the link is iron.

In Tolkien's system 10 symbolizes Time and Space. To Dante it symbolized perfection.

In Tolkien's system the number 3 symbolizes the TURN- the turn consists of 3 turns: spiritual: physical: language. See prediction #6. And sacred like in Dante's system because it symbolizes the 3 sides of the triangle, the basis of Tolkien's dialectic and geometry (source Plato's The Republic and Timaeus). See above. It also symbolizes the soul because the soul was described as tripartite in The Republic and the world was created from triangles in The Timaeus.

The number 7.
"At the close of the City of God Augustine posits a final, future era of peace and tranquility on earth, a seventh age, which in turn heralds the age of eternal repose in the afterlife. Consequently, 7 symbolizes the fullness or completeness of earthly life. There are the seven days of the week, the seven ages, the seven planets, the seven tones of the Gregorian mode, the seven diurnal canonical hours (lauds, prime, tierce, sext, nones, vespers, compline), and the seven sciences (trivium and quadrivium). The moral structure of Purgatory is based on the traditional opposition between the seven virtues and the seven capital vices. The seven virtues are balanced by the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit and the seven beatitudes. So significant is the mysterious power of 7 that Peter Lombard, at the suggestion of Hugh of St. Victor and Roland of Parma, established in his Sentences that the holy sacraments.."

it continues...just found this about 6 symbolizing Time- which is Goldberry the Sun...

"theologians the number of humanity, the fullness and wholeness of life on earth, and universality. It is the number of man, as the sum of the soul and body (3 + 4), and the number of time, because God created the universe in six days, resting on the seventh. While 6 also symbolizes time, it is traditionally taken to represent the number of distinct historical eras from Adam and Eve to the present." (Dante Encyclopedia (Garland Reference Library of the Humanities) (p. 671). Taylor and Francis.)

The 7 levels of Minas Tirith are the City of God and Dante's Purgatory. The 7th level equates to the end of the journey. The end of life. At the end of life we go through the Door into the Afterlife. From Loss we get Recovery with the number 8. The Door into the Afterlife is symbolized by the rune Dagaz, "Day". Day etymology gives 'lifetime' : Old English dæg "period during which the sun is above the horizon," also "lifetime, definite time of existence,". The Sun symbolizes the day and Edith is the Sun, Time. She is with Tolkien all of his life: lifetime. See also the letter 'M' in the floral alphabet where you can see the daisy on top like the Sun- the 'day's eye' = Edith, Goldberry. Goldberry is described as a flower on the hill. 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." If 'day' is lifetime then the true life begins at death, at the crossing through the megalithic door, from loss into recovery. The day (life) begins at sunset. And that's why Minas Tirith is called Minas Anor, Tower of the Setting Sun. The LoTR is a journey through the 7 levels- just like Dante's Purgatorio. Tolkien has a system of rational planes and spirals up and down between them which he took from the Spindle of Necessity in Plat's The Republic. That journey navigates those. See my homepage.

8 symbolizes resurrection, salvation, redemption to Dante. In Tolkien's system it symbolizes Recovery after Loss- see On Fairy Stories. It's also the octave in Music- the Music of the Spheres, Ainur.

11 symbolizes sin. That includes sexual symbolism in Tolkien's system.

monks

10-09-2020, 02:24 PM	#44
monks Animated Skeleton Join Date: Feb 2013 Posts: 35	Mithadan. Tolkien's number system was influenced by Dante's. And Dante's was just one example of a much wider religious number symbolism- the Bible, folklore, etc, etc. It was personal and has nothing to do with numerology outside of his own system- for e.g. he is not predicting or making statements about anything outside of his own works. But the outside world, Primary world was influential: Dante. I first realized that numbers to Tolkien were more important than anyone had thought, around the time I predicted that the Hobbits met Bombadil on the 26th of a month. Turns out they met him on the 26th Sep. That was my first real prediction. Why and how did I predict that? Why? I realized that dates and numbers were important to him and he was using them as symbols. At that time I didn't know anything about Dante's numbers symbolism- but I was aware that there was medieval religious number symbolism. I later realized how influential Dante was on Tolkien. c.f Minas Tirith: City of Purgatory. And I had become aware that he might do something like this. So I made the prediction and looked it up. I was right. How? See my homepage at the top for other info. Back then I found a source. East Anglia Personal Recollections and Historical Associations Author: J. Ewing Ritchie I believe that Tolkien read this when he was quite young. The link to it is probably via Swallows and Amazons- Arthur Ransome's children's works. Tolkien does mention him in his letters. To Tolkien the 'east' was important and so was anything 'anglia' or 'of the Angles'- - read: English and England as 'Land of the Angles' and geometry angles. See 'Eeriness'. Bombadil represents 'east anglia'- looong explanation needed about geometry. Bear with me. So that's another reason why he might pick that book up. I was researching the kingfisher in the wind of John Browne and also the bull because I'd formed the idea that Bombadil was bullish or a bull- the bull is the Devil. I knew there was something not quite right about Bombadil..and Goldberry as well. The Ritchie source came up in google. It has this quote from Browne and the reference to John Bull. 'That crystal is nothing else but ice strongly congealed; that a diamond is softened or broken by the blood of a goat; that bays preserve from the mischief of lightning and thunder; that the horse hath no gall; that a kingfisher hanged by the bill showeth where the wind lay; that the flesh of peacocks corrupteth not;' and so on--questions, it may be, as pertinent as those learnedly discussed in half-crown magazines at the present day. That's another link to that book and linking Bombadil via the east anglia thing and the kingfisher feather. And then I found that John bull is often depicted wearing the same colours of clothing as Bombadil and a wasitcoat. And the character Bernard Barton within that book reminds us in some details of Bombadil. So, I believe that another source for the character of Bombadil was John Bull and Bernard Barton. There are a few influences on the character as we know. The half crown is mentioned in the Ritchie source. So I had come to the conclusion before this time that Bombadil and Goldberry were Tolkien and Edith and that they were two halves of one whole (read: man and wife: my other half, my better half). The half crown echoed this idea with the double crown of Egypt in his letters. Its the same symbolism. The asymmetry and imbalance I mentioned above and pretty much everywhere else in my posts is this double crown idea. The idea that one person in the marriage (I also said that his works are all about him and Edith under God- their marriage, the conversation, the dialectic) is wearing both crowns: c.f the two clockwise spirals on the West Gate and the two raised left arms on the North gate. The seizure of the sceptre from Miriel by Ar-Pharazon. Frodo seeing AND hearing on Amon Hen (see above). And I was beginning to formulate the idea that the number 2 represented Bombadil possibly and that the letter M in the Floral Alphabet was Bombadil and Goldberry. The moment where the crown falls down over one eye on Merry?- it's this symbolism. The half-crown in pre-dec English money is "2 and 6". Bombadil and Goldberry are two halves of one whole. Space and Time (Tolkien and Edith). I wasn't sure who was 2 or who was 6. Then I stumbled upon 'Syx Mynet' in Songs for the Philologists. I made prediction #3. I knew that Tolkien was using puns and I figured that 'mynet' was a pun on 'minute' -since I thought that Goldberry was Time (Sun) and Bombadil was Space (Moon). And of course 6 was one of the numbers in 2 and 6. I asked around for a translation on the mythopeia list thinking it was an original poem of Tolkien's. Turns out it was a translation of an existing rhyme called 'I Love Sixpence'. So I predicted that the rhyme 'I Love Sixpence" would be about a wife. Long shot. I was right. I didn't even read Tolkien's Anglo Saxon poem Syx Mynet..I didn't bother to. I wasn't going to understand it anyway nor any of the other A.S poems in there. Someone pointed out much later that it uses the word 'wif'- I honestly didn't see that. I looked the rhyme up and it was about taking money home to a wife- perfect considering I'd already arrived at the theory that Bombadil and Goldberry were '2 and 6' half crown pre-dec money and the two were Tolkien and Edith. And they live in the 4 farthings as I later realized. Also money. Then later I discovered the Chain of Angainor. And lo and behold the 2nd and 6th links were silver and gold- perfect- Moon and Sun. And later after that I realized that the Chain of Angainor was the basis of his number system. It took me a few years to work it out. I'm pretty sure right now that the Chain is the Great Chain of Being and that the 7 instruments that appear in the beginning of the Music of the Ainur correspond to these links. I've yet to further pursue that. Bombadil and Goldberry are fallen without each other. They are fallen because at the time they were 'written' in the Music of the Ainur, the discords of Melkor were present. They are Sun and Moon (at root they are the left and right hands of Ilúvatar) hence the description of the Old Forest passage as 'Celtic twilight' and why the passage begins at twilight and ends at twilight. The passage is dark because there is a very subtle threat- the Hobbits almost get killed twice there. The Hobbits represent their children. Old Man Willow and the Barrow Wight are incarnations of Bombadil and Goldberry. The two separated from one another and turned to evil. I've written probably over 200 pages and I can make a very convincing case for it all from the etymologies. Bombadil and Goldberry are in conflict from the start. Goldberry is "waiting". etymology: c. 1200, "to watch with hostile intent, lie in wait for, plot against," from Anglo-French and Old North French waitier. It's subtle and underplayed. It's a riddle after all. Goldberry is "my pretty lady" etymology: 'tricky', .to trick'. There are two points in the Old Forest narrative where they reunite: the dance around the table which is the Music of the Spheres, and the point where Bombadil rolls back the stone. The Rising sun behind Bombadil is Goldberry. Her presence and the detail that we are told that Tom is wearing his hat at that moment, symbolizes their unity (see my previous posts on here where I explain the hat and belt). See the letter M in the Floral Alphabet. Old Man Willow is Tolkien the philologist-Artist completely left to his own devices- creating nothing but riddles and Art, turned into of creature of pure language. Language is a tree after all.That would destroy the family- he needs to go out and work and mark exam papers, see I Love Sixpence. Goldberry is the suffocating possessive, materialistic wife- that does not want to let the children leave. He uses the same idea with the Ents and Entwives- their differences. And the same idea again in The Cottage of lost Play poems. It's about the stresses of marriage and remaining faithful even after the green shoots are gone, inevitable separation and the long defeat of life. The wistful memories and growing apart. Young Love, a place you can never get back to. Tolkien uses the seven planetary metals from the ancient world in the chain. Tilkal is mercury. Tolkien took the numbers 3, 7 and 8 and 10, 11 from Dante. 1 symbolizes 'the one". 2 and 6 are Moon and Sun, Space and Time. 6 and 9 are the two spirals in his works: Before, West Gate, Wickedness, etc. 6 spirals down to hell. 9 spirals up to heaven. 4 is lead and hell, the bitter bottom. The number 5 symbolizes the will. Idioamtically 'iron will' as the link is iron. In Tolkien's system 10 symbolizes Time and Space. To Dante it symbolized perfection. In Tolkien's system the number 3 symbolizes the TURN- the turn consists of 3 turns: spiritual: physical: language. See prediction #6. And sacred like in Dante's system because it symbolizes the 3 sides of the triangle, the basis of Tolkien's dialectic and geometry (source Plato's The Republic and Timaeus). See above. It also symbolizes the soul because the soul was described as tripartite in The Republic and the world was created from triangles in The Timaeus. The number 7. "At the close of the City of God Augustine posits a final, future era of peace and tranquility on earth, a seventh age, which in turn heralds the age of eternal repose in the afterlife. Consequently, 7 symbolizes the fullness or completeness of earthly life. There are the seven days of the week, the seven ages, the seven planets, the seven tones of the Gregorian mode, the seven diurnal canonical hours (lauds, prime, tierce, sext, nones, vespers, compline), and the seven sciences (trivium and quadrivium). The moral structure of Purgatory is based on the traditional opposition between the seven virtues and the seven capital vices. The seven virtues are balanced by the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit and the seven beatitudes. So significant is the mysterious power of 7 that Peter Lombard, at the suggestion of Hugh of St. Victor and Roland of Parma, established in his Sentences that the holy sacraments.." it continues...just found this about 6 symbolizing Time- which is Goldberry the Sun... "theologians the number of humanity, the fullness and wholeness of life on earth, and universality. It is the number of man, as the sum of the soul and body (3 + 4), and the number of time, because God created the universe in six days, resting on the seventh. While 6 also symbolizes time, it is traditionally taken to represent the number of distinct historical eras from Adam and Eve to the present." (Dante Encyclopedia (Garland Reference Library of the Humanities) (p. 671). Taylor and Francis.) The 7 levels of Minas Tirith are the City of God and Dante's Purgatory. The 7th level equates to the end of the journey. The end of life. At the end of life we go through the Door into the Afterlife. From Loss we get Recovery with the number 8. The Door into the Afterlife is symbolized by the rune Dagaz, "Day". Day etymology gives 'lifetime' : Old English dæg "period during which the sun is above the horizon," also "lifetime, definite time of existence,". The Sun symbolizes the day and Edith is the Sun, Time. She is with Tolkien all of his life: lifetime. See also the letter 'M' in the floral alphabet where you can see the daisy on top like the Sun- the 'day's eye' = Edith, Goldberry. Goldberry is described as a flower on the hill. 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." If 'day' is lifetime then the true life begins at death, at the crossing through the megalithic door, from loss into recovery. The day (life) begins at sunset. And that's why Minas Tirith is called Minas Anor, Tower of the Setting Sun. The LoTR is a journey through the 7 levels- just like Dante's Purgatorio. Tolkien has a system of rational planes and spirals up and down between them which he took from the Spindle of Necessity in Plat's The Republic. That journey navigates those. See my homepage. 8 symbolizes resurrection, salvation, redemption to Dante. In Tolkien's system it symbolizes Recovery after Loss- see On Fairy Stories. It's also the octave in Music- the Music of the Spheres, Ainur. 11 symbolizes sin. That includes sexual symbolism in Tolkien's system. monks Last edited by monks; 10-18-2020 at 09:28 AM.