The riddle of the hidden images in the West Gate.

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by monks

Tolkien-right-A (alef)-Literature-Space-Bombadil-oak-Ursa Minor-Thor-Sword-Silver-2-....

Edith- left- B (bet)-Language-Time-Goldberry-birch-Ursa Major-Odin-Shield-Gold-6-....

There is an interesting problem with this which I'd like to know if you can address. It is as follows: by making long enough lists, you can eventually split any arbitrary pair to the two sides.

Example 1: Manwe and Varda. Easy - they're Tolkien and Edith, male and female.

Example 2: Legolas and Gimli. Not male and female, obviously. They probably stand next to each other at some point, so we can predict that they are described using at least one of the words "left" and "right". Simple! Or, if we don't like that: Legolas is ancient (TIME), and Gimli eventually goes somewhere no other dwarf has (SPACE).

Example 3: Calmacil (King of Gondor) and rhosc (Noldorin word for 'brown'). Well, the latter is obviously a word in a LANGUAGE, so perhaps Calmacil symbolises LITERATURE? His Gateway article says he was lazy and indolent, and aha! I remember that there's a poem in Songs for the Philologists called "Lit' and Lang'". Sure enough, Lit' is "lazy till she died", amply demonstrating that this is a deep and meaningful pair.

... except it's not, obviously; it's the first two random pages on Tolkien Gateway. But it was trivially easy to conjure up that pairing. If I can do it for two unrelated concepts, how can I claim it's intentional symbolism when I do it for two related concepts?

hS

[monks]

But can you make 99 predictions from your understanding?

Please read my previous posts. I'm not lying- I have better things to do beleive me.

The two sides in the geometry have characteristics...which are exhibited in characters. For e.g. specifically within the Fellowship Merry and Pippin are assigned to Time and Space, the left and right hands. Pippin is the problem child as you can see all the way through. Mischievous and always a bit negative in his views. Merry is more light and breezy. But Merry isn't perfect either. That's why Pippin is involved with the Palantir and throws the stone down the well. The dichotomy also extends to Tree and Tower, and Star and Stone...The Tower is the stone...hence the stone and the palantir. That's why we get the Tree paired with the Mountain in the Hobbit riddle. Living Tree versus dead Tree (mountain/Tower/stone). And that's why Fëanor describes language (V.T 39) as a building with walls and rooms. His psychology is of the right hand alef- overly concerned with primacy, c.f his story. Language is a living tree, not dead stone. And this is why Melkor is described as a mountain that wades in the sea. See list of pairings above in response to Pitchwife.

Gimli and Legolas are paired. Correct. As Merry and Pippin are too.

And here's the twist. It's not as simple as left and right assignments because left and right swap over during the narrative. The narrative is defined by the underlying geometry. And the most thorough expression of that is in the courses of the sun and Moon. The courses of the Sun and Moon describe two spirals around each other- the two trees entwined around one another in the Wedding poem and the two spirals in the essay and in the illustration 'Before' etc. See etymology of 'twine'. When they spiral they alternate each between the left and right hands. And both exhibit characteristics of the left and right hands at that time. In this way both male and female are fallen- and both take turns in dominating the other. Hence the two Rs (wrath) back to back in the monogram. The Sun dominates during the day. The Moon dominates during the night. And that finds geometric expression in 'being on top' -'most high' (as God is described in the Rabinnic commentaries) and being 'eldest'- in the West (being the first to begin the book of Genesis- see the contest between alef and bet: bet won that one -just like the left hand of Ilúvatar is created first in the Music). While the Sun is in the sky the Moon is travelling under. Vice versa for the Night.

That's why Melkor is characterized as 'He Who Arises in Might'. This is the geometric language which incorporates proximity and facing, up/down, east-west (eldest). While both male and female are fallen, in Tolkien's geometry, the ultimate origin of the discords, the strife, in with the male right hand- Melkor. Tolkien being graceful and putting Edith above him and before him. And that agrees with the Loathly Lady theme.

Tolkien models the discords and strife between the two hands on the Rabbinic Commentaries- the Zohar. In that Adam and Eve were originally created as a hermophrodite- and back to back. Therein you see the source of the discords and the letter Rs in the monogram and the orientatiion of the male and female in the cliff face- as an expression of this 'fallen world'. Back to back. And I only found that source after formulating my understanding of the geometry- so I'm not using data to fit the theory. Quite the contrary.

You can read about it on my homepage. The Sun and Moon section though is a work in progress. You'll get a lot from it- you can read about the changing hands of the two spirals- if you're interested.

Regards Lit and Lang. Homophemes. Yes he also puns on Sun and Son and Tower and Taur- Taur being the Tree as stated above. The pun is the homopheme. He got the Sun of the Sun from Haggard's She. The influence of the book is extensive.

You can see the left and right hand pairing in the story of Denethor and his two sons Faramir and Boromir. Denethor confuses left with right. He thinks that Boromir is the right "stern" hand (the sword) because he IS ELDEST. The whole theme that I've stated runs through Tolkien's works (see original link). But Boromir is the SHIELD and the left hand- the female side. And that's what causes his confusion in his assignment of them in their roles in his strategy to fight Sauron. He is confused because just like I said in the Loathly Lady essay, he is looking eastwards- and in that article I said that orientaing westwards enables you to see which way is up down and right and left. See the articles on THE TURN in my reply to Pitchwife.. And btw I make several predictions inline while writing the 2nd essay as you'll see.

And while I'm here..someone else also described Tolkien's world in a similar fashion: a dialectic and a duality of 'solid geometry'. I came across that article in mythlore from nearly 30 years ago last year. Another coincidence..ah ummm. The 'solid geometry' he speaks of is the medieval symbolic landscape I'm proposing. Btw, it was only after reading his essay that I realized that it was a dialectic- that was the correct word for it..and then I went on to find the source: Plato's Republic and Timaeus. Bum tish. Always learning! :-)

https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol9/iss3/1/

monks

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by monks

But can you make 99 predictions from your understanding?

I can make arbitrarily many predictions, especially if I'm allowed to be wrong.

Originally Posted by monks

Please read my previous posts. I'm not lying- I have better things to do beleive me.

Oh, I wasn't accusing you of lying! I think I skimmed over the actual question in my post, which was: how do you weed out the spurious 'connections' between pairs which aren't actually linked? For example, I could name multiple significant mountains - let's say Thangorodrim, Orodruin, Erebor, Gundabad, Taniquetil, Caradhras, Mindolluin. You wouldn't argue that Tolkien made every possible pair of those represent two sides of his triangles - but as I demonstrated, you could easily construct a 'symbolic interpretation' for every random pair. So how do you figure out which ones he was actually connecting? The obvious answer is "because they look connected already", but that's a very circular argument.

I'm also intrigued by your reading habits. You say you've only read LotR two or three times, and Silm once - but you also casually cite Vinyar Tengwar, and knew one of Tom Bombadil's names that only comes up in a single passage (but without knowing who that passage describes as giving him said name). Not really a question here - just a certain amount of bafflement.

hS

hS

[Pitchwife]

Originally Posted by Huinesoron

Example 2: Legolas and Gimli. Not male and female, obviously.

I wouldn't be so categoric about that. It's true that the Red Book refers to Gimli with male pronouns throughout, but we know that Dwarven genders can be difficult to tell apart, what with bearded women and all that. What if Gimli was actually Glóin's daughter and pulled a Dernhelm in order to go on the quest, and Frodo & Co. never discovered her secret? There are, to my knowledge, no scenes in LotR where the members of the Fellowship bathe together or relieve their bladders side by side, and anyway, a lot can be hidden under a beard if it's long and bushy enough.


Also, this could shed a new light on Gimli's veneration of Galadriel: maybe what we've become accustomed to see as chivalric love was actually a gender-confused young Dwarvess looking up to a mature woman who had successfully integrated her male aspect (cf. her mother-name Nerwen 'man-maiden' and her voice, which was 'clear and musical, but deeper than woman's wont'´)!

[Boromir88]

Enter the obligatory post about the motives of the author:

The prime motive was the desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of the readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them. -Foreward to Lord of the Rings

Geometry, of any kind, never amused me and trying to follow what the heck is going on does not sound delightful.

But I am glad you've found something that amuses, delights, excites and moves you in Tolkien's really long story.

[monks]

Have you called the Tolkien police on me yet Pitchwife? lol Tolkien drawed a willy. It's blatant and its there and you can even see the little bollox if you look real close....

Fundamentally the geometry is not about gender in the modern sense of the word. It's not about sex at root. It's the abstract Music of the Spheres.

Clive Kilby actually met Tolkien. And he came to the same conclusions that I did. Tolkien was riddling everyone and he enjoyed it.

Within Tolkien's works, which is based on his marriage with Edith, there is sex- and there's quite a lot of sexual symbolism. It's most obvious point of appearance is in the battle with Shelob. It gets reeeeeallly filthy there Pitchwife. Shelob is the Whore of Babylon and she's got a V_A_G_I_N_A!...with teeth...and she walks on her hands just like Salome and those exotic dancing gypsy girls from the Trollopean East. That's why Tolkien swapped the North and South btw on his drawing of Shelob's Lair. No it wasn't a mistake. It was a hint left to fool the more gullible among us. North and south are inverted like I said apropos Ormal and Illuin and Shelob walking on her hands. She's the inverted Galadriel. 29 predictions about that theme to date. Geee they just keep a comin.

Here they are at the top of Prediction #61 regarding Tolkien's incorporation of the Dance of the Seven Veils.
http://www.thewindrose.net/predictions/prediction-61/

So...Pitch when was the last time you looked up an etymological definition of a word in his tales? Here's a few etymologies for the one obvious 'expert' among us.

cloud (n.)
Old English clud "mass of rock, hill," related to clod.

cloak (n.)
late 13c., "long, loose outer garment without sleeves," from Old North French cloque (Old French cloche, cloke) "traveling cloak," from Medieval Latin clocca "travelers' cape," literally "a bell," so called from the garment's bell-like shape (the word is thus a doublet of clock (n.1)).

Bombadil calls Goldberry this...hmmm whatever could that mean given the riddle of Bombadil and all...ponder ponder...

pretty (adj.)
Old English prættig (West Saxon), pretti (Kentish), *prettig (Mercian) "cunning, skillful, artful, wily, astute," from prætt, *prett "a trick, wile, craft," from Proto-Germanic *pratt- (source also of Old Norse prettr "a trick," prettugr "tricky;" Frisian pret, Middle Dutch perte, Dutch pret "trick, joke," Dutch prettig "sportive, funny," Flemish pertig "brisk, clever"), of unknown origin.

And this is what Gollum calls Frodo just as he decides to take them to Shelob...you can see the part of the quote at the top of my homepage for good reason...

nice (adj.)
late 13c., "foolish, ignorant, frivolous, senseless," from Old French nice (12c.) "careless, clumsy; weak; poor, needy; simple, stupid, silly, foolish," from Latin nescius "ignorant, unaware," literally "not-knowing," from ne- "not" (from PIE root *ne- "not")

Take a real long look at them- you might not see another one for a long, long while.

..oh yes...can you see the Ring of Earth here?

http://www.thewindrose.net/ring_of_earth/

The 'Circle of the World' created as a counterfeit to entrap and enslave and stop all change and silence all other voices because the Enemy fears change- the World is a living breathing thing and the Enemy as we know cannot create anything original. The Enemy can only mock. Yes, the closed circle that Tolkien speaks of in his letters- the ouroborus from which there is no escape up to God. c.f my previous reply.

And the circles of the world...

Here's the geometry which Tolkien uses to create his 'machinery' which he mentions in the Resnik interview speaking about Haggard's 'She'. Tolkien's machinery is the Wheel of Fortune which is a literary answer to Saruman's machinery. Tolkien's machinery restores the Sun, the woman, to her rightful place from the south to the north. And in mythology the Scarab rolled the Sun around its orbit too. Yaknow...round in a circle?

“I suppose as a boy She interested me as much as anything— like the Greek shard of Amynatas, which was the kind of machine by which everything got moving.”

http://www.thewindrose.net/blogs/a-r..._of_galadriel/

And here's how the The Lord of the Rings continues the Akallabêth.

http://www.thewindrose.net/blogs/a-r...on_akallabeth/

This is the 3 x 3 in the Rhyme of Lore which are symbolized by the ships. 3 Turns. Each turn consists of 3 stages (turns)- hence 3 x 3. Go read my essay on THE TURN in which I actually make several predictions on the hoof.

It's all geometry and and it's all a predictable system - 99 predictions to date. Tolkien has a literary device called the Turn, which are wheels within larger wheels- (from Ezekiel)-the Powers in the World..and the largest wheel is the Wheel of Fortune. The circles of the world.

The world in the Lord of the Rings begins turned on its head. It then turns twice 90 degrees during the course of the narrative. It appears that the World is falling over on its head, heading for certain destruction, but the miracle, the Eucatastrophe, is that it turns back the right way up!

Here's the hint from Tolkien with Shelob...

Sam reeled, clutching at the stone. He felt as if the whole dark world was turning upside down.

And this is why the Eagles come and rescue the hobbits- it's the logic of the machinery- the Wheel of Fortune which bears the Eagles from the West into the East. The Eagles move into the north after the crossing of the Rhovanion between planes (see diagram above). So, no more Middle-Earth Taxis I'm afraid Pitch. Tolkien ----> A_M_A_Z_I_N_G.

Do yourself a favour, stop being so gullible, and go read Clive Kilby's book 'Tolkien and the Silmarillion'.

Peace.

[Inziladun]

Threads of this ilk are to me another reminder (if any was required) of the wisdom of Gandalf:

“He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.”

[monks]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

Threads of this ilk are to me another reminder (if any was required) of the wisdom of Gandalf:

Oh that little chestnut. Ha. Tolkien explicitly set riddles (Bombadil) and anagrams- Adam Roberts Acrostic...Priya's anagrams...etc..Seven Rivers anyone?...so how are we supposed to solve them then? By using the Force? lol

Tolkien was dying to tell Kilby...because he was so damn PROUD of what he'd achieved. Tolkien knew he was the "Great Master"- see my reply above. The sexual content possibly held him back...and I think he just wanted to carry on being the only one 'in the know' and let the riddle stand. However having said that, from Kilby's words, I think he may well have told Kilby something after all...or Kilby suspected what it might have involved. He was with him, we weren't - many of the details are lost to us. If he did, Kilby must have made an NDA. See my essay Tolkien's Contrasistency http://www.thewindrose.net/blogs/tol...ontrasistency/

It also feeds into his opinion on Shakespeare too. He believed that he was better than Shakespeare- his inspirations were Dante and Plato. I believe he had a grudging respect of Shakespeare too though. That's where am I at the moment regards Tolkien and Shakespeare.

monks

[monks]

NEW EVIDENCE FOUND. See here.

http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthread.php?p=729150

[monks]

@Huinesoron.

That's cool. I've never read the HOME series...I've read the Book of Lost Tales I and II when I was 15. And Unfinished Tales shortly after.
I have all of Tolkien's works in searchable formats. I've never read any of the V.T stuff from back to back- hardly anything in them at all. I've read V.T 39 though. I've read Smith, Mr Bliss, On fairy Stories, Niggle, Roverandom, not read Farmer Giles as yet...You might say that not reading things counts against me, but I'm still able to make the predictions. That's not to MY credit though. It's to Tolkien's because his system is so damn good and rigorously applied throughout. I only found a way into it by LUCK as I state on my homepage. And he uses the same system in all of them- even Farmer Giles- I know he has from certain details I've encountered in my research, even though I've not read it.

This whole thing about alef and bet I'm talking about. Go see the origins of the letter A. That's the bull in the cliff face. Alef. The Troll bellows in the Chamber of Mazarbul -go see the etymology of bellow. The sound made by a bull. The bull is not something you immediately associate with Tolkien.

Tolkien is the little man in 'A Secret Vice'..and the system he mentions in that- the symphony, the secret grammar- is HIS. Music of the Ainur. He did it all in his head- most of it. The 'Great Master'- Bombadil (Goldberry refers to him as both 'Master' and 'The Master'- and then he refers to her as pretty- see the etymology of pretty in my reply to Pitchwife...all part of the riddle)- the philologist with the private symbolic world, who appears to be barking mad to everyone- speaking nonsense...that's Tolkien. That's why I appear to be mad as well :-D. Kilby covers that in his book - many of Tolkien's friends, C.S Lewis for e.g thought he was baffling even to the point of hilarity.
And if you look at the etymology of vice you'll find links with 'TURNING' and to sex too (moral corruption, vice)- his secret vice is his riddling people, his geometry which turns on two spirals (vise) and the sexual symbolism. I knew about the sexual symbolism before I found the West Gate image. I didn't want to find it frankly- because it's just so out there.

PIE root *weik- (2) "to bend, to wind").

Tolkien (Gandalf) says that Saruman put his hand in a vice. That's because Isengard is the pivot around which the World turns- the Wheel of Fortune- see my reply to Pitchwife.

So Saruman will come to the last pinch of the vice that he has put his hand in.

Regarding Predictions, I've made some errors along the way. I would say 15 in as many years. I admitted an error to Priya Seth only the other day in email (I gave her a bum steer, but not regarding a prediction) and then went on to make a prediction right in front of her regarding the etymology of bronze (prediction #88) from the text surrounding Isengard. I'm careful with my predictions usually- but sometimes I just go with it. Some of the errors were obviously from the process of improving my understanding of how his system works. In the writing of that email to Priya I then budded my writing off because it was becoming book length ..heh...and then made 10 predictions in 48 hours in that (#89-99). That's by far the highest rate I've made- because I'm getting better at them.

But if you want to talk statistics, even if you factored in the errors, you'd still have an astronomically small chance of making those logged from mere chance. In The Lord of the Rings Tolkien attempted what Dante did in his Divine Comedy- well Purgatorio specifically. His insistence on getting the moon phases right for instance. Minas Tirth = blatantly Purgatory...and its plan is the Classical Labyrinth...enter the bull, the minotaur. He has a system which involves planar geometry- which is handedness. Hence why hands feature so much in his works. He set it out in the hands sequence of Ilúvatar. Movement between planes is reflected in the narrative and that movement involves passing through 'the Door' (megalithic) and the Turn. The Turn involves 3 stages which always happen. Hence why I predicted that the word spirit would appear in the Denethor sequence at the first instance of the phrase "The West has failed"- because the turn proceeds SPIRIT -> PHYSICAL -> LANGUAGE. All are reorientations in the same order every time. See The Turn in Practice essay. Shippey said that Denethor says the same phrase 3 times. I knew immediately that that was Denethor's 'turn'. So I honed in on that to actually finally thoroughly analyse in an essay what I'd found ten years before in the Akallabêth.

I can sit and here and talk you through any of the predictions you want. How and why they were made.

monks