Visible souls....

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by lmp

The precedents lie outside Tolkien's legendarium.

But do these precedents lie outside the legendarium? Or are they part of it? The legendarium is a creation, amd that creation came from the mind of one person who held many other creations within his own mind. The idea of an 'earth spirit' may not be explicitly mentioned in Tolkien's work, but it is there nevertheless. Whether by intention or accident, this concept crept in. Yes, we might not recognise Tom as such a figure if we did not know of such figures already, or we might not even recognise him in hindsight, after we have read of such figures and thought "that reminds me of Tom Bombadil". But the fact that many people do recognise this concept tells us that it is entirely possible Tolkien may have reflected this concept in his writing, either consciously or subconsciously; which he did, does not matter if it is there.

Originally Posted by lmp

If people want to export Tom Bombadil to their own mythmaking, they need take no regard for the laws of Ëa. In the meantime, Tolkien's subcreation is clear on this point.

Undoubtedly there are rules, but there are holes in these rules, and the rules came from somewhere, i.e. Tolkien's head, a marvellous attic lumber room of knowledge and dreams. Who can tell why and how he created his world as he did. I suspect that even were he around today we wouldn't get to know even a tiny proportion of the answers to all our questions, so we can only speculate and discuss the possibilities. This is why the laws are not fixed; there is no judge to make the final decision, only a jury.