"for it was always there."

[Shelob]

I take what I can from the stories I hear

That's basically where I stand on this discussion.

I've never held a particularly strong belief in any "real" mythology, instead turning to whichever set of stories best helps me deal with the situations I'm facing.

In my bookshelf-mythology, then, Tolkien and his works do play a big part. Not so much because he's built them as an elaborate mythology, but because they're well told stories with situations and lessons applicable to the world I live in.

I don't know if I'd class it as a "rock" of my life though. Certainly it's something that's been with me for longer than I can remember and the works which are my favorites are high (very high) on the list of ones I turn to first on my bookshelf, so maybe that's just a matter of terminology. "Rock" suggests some stable landmark to me, something that can be used to guide decisions and find your way, but which is unchanging in its nature. I see Tolkien's works (and the work of others) maybe more like stars, they help me in navigating but with constellations changing based on time/season/location/etc, and some are fairly regular while others wander in-and-out of influencing me.

"True as opposed to Fact", there's a devil of a question. For this though, not so much confusing as it could be. Do I think they're "Fact", with a capital-F, no (ignoring the issue of the Fact of their existence), I will never find the events they contain in a history book, and I don't expect to. "True", with a captial-T, that's a yes. But True in the sense fairy tales are True, not True in the sense that "the Earth is the center of the universe" was once True. Earth as the center of the universe was dependent upon Facts, new Facts new Truth. Without a foot in the realm of Facts, Tolkien's mythology (any mythology), once deemed True, is always True. I have no doubts, however, that the stories are "true" and "fact" in that they are full of useful lessons, believable characters, and reflect a world which holds up to scrutiny as a world and which can be useful for interpreting our own.


This might be related tangentially to the issue of whether it's "true" or "real". But in the sense of "does it exist outside the world it, itself, creates", I recently read the Space Trilogy by C.S. Lewis and the third book (That Hideous Strength) has at least a couple of references to Numenor. They're quick references, but they're worked into the mythology of Arthur and Merlin and treated as a forgotten part of those stories and history. Even if no one accepts Tolkien's mythology as a part of the Arthur mythos, it is at least "real" enough to someone to have been incorporated into a novel work, something that happens to Greek/etc myths all the time.