No Sun or Moon

[littlemanpoet]

Originally Posted by alatar

Not nuts, and nor was the sky different. We looked at what we 'knew' and extrapolated that into 'how the heavens worked.' You looked up at your hut roof, and if you could hang (or even just imagine hanging) a light up there, well then a god, who was pretty much like you but just bigger, older, wiser and with greater powers, hung its lights in its hut called Earth.

How do you know that this is how myths came to be? You see, farflung cultures recorded a Golden Age followed by cataclysms that destroyed the Golden Age. They created rites (sometimes quite gruesome) that recapitulated both Golden Age and the destroying cataclysms so that (1) they would not forget them (2) they might appease the gods and "head off a repetition of the cataclysms" (which by the way always seems to have to do with comets). They intended to remember something that had been lost. If only one culture had done this, we could say that a regional conflagration of some sort occurred. That the same kind of cataclysm is described in farflung cultures, does not merely suggest, but leads a reasonable mind to ask what can be understood from the strange points of agreement from culture to culture.

Originally Posted by alatar

I'm a little intrigued regarding your intended meaning. And not all myths share 'many' features; think that we just interpret them that way.

There is a hermeneutic of comparing myths. One must take the culture's mode of expression as a given, and allow it to say what it says, suspending judgement until comprehension is as complete as it can become. The results, across many different mythologies, are striking in their similarity.

Before we get any further, let me just clarify to the moderators that this bears on Tolkien's legendarium to a great degree in that he picked up on many of these themes, but not all.

Points of similarity:

• a sun god who is the benevolent universal ruler par excellence, who resided at the north pole, and is associated with the planet Saturn
• an anatomically impossible dragon, sometimes bearded, or hairy, flying across the sky, wreaking destruction upon earth
• a comet which is the heart of the dying sun god, which bursts forth into the heavens, and is associated with the planet Venus

These are not the only similarities from culture to culture. Tolkien does not record any comets, but does record the planet Venus, as not having always been in the sky. The universal ruler is in middle earth the evil Morgoth, residing in the northern Angband. What is intruguing to me is that Tolkien turns the "par excellence" of the benevolent deity on its head. Obviously, Tolkien has a number of dragons.

Originally Posted by alatar

Those people way back when did their best to describe what they saw and how it may have worked.

That is a fundamental part of what I'm trying to get across.

Originally Posted by alatar

They might of been completely wrong, but that happens in science today as well.

I'd like to qualify this in this way: they might have been completely wrong that they were gods, but suppose that what they were trying to describe really did occur. There is too much agreement from culture to culture to ignore that something must have happened (except that it is being ignored by and large).

Originally Posted by alatar

While I'm warming up my rant...what really annoys me is when persons want to pick and chose the science they want to believe (which is nuts in itself - believing in the theory of gravity or not does not change the outcome of jumping from a roof). If you think that science today is wrong and the science of 2000-4000 years ago is perfect, well, that's fine with me. Just give up your cell phone and germ theory.

You mis-apprehend what I'm saying. The reason I have a problem with much of modern science is that when confronted with yet more evidence that the paradigm is wrong, our scientists do not question the paradigm; instead they create yet another ad hoc theory that cannot be tested in any lab.

Regarding black holes, according to Einstein's theory of general relativity, a thing cannot exist with an infinite degree of any one aspect of reality, such as gravity. Black holes have, according to theory, infinite gravitational force. So either one or the other is incorrect; yet, modern science is not denying Einstein's theory, nor is it admitting that black holes cannot exist. With good science, either one or the other must be put to rest.

[Aiwendil]

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

That the same kind of cataclysm is described in farflung cultures, does not merely suggest, but leads a reasonable mind to ask what can be understood from the strange points of agreement from culture to culture.

Indeed - and I would say that what can be understood from this are certain facts about the human mind and human society. This explanation is quite viable and does not contradict the preponderance of scientific evidence; whereas an explanation such as "the myths are actually true" does.

a sun god who is the benevolent universal ruler par excellence, who resided at the north pole, and is associated with the planet Saturn
an anatomically impossible dragon, sometimes bearded, or hairy, flying across the sky, wreaking destruction upon earth
a comet which is the heart of the dying sun god, which bursts forth into the heavens, and is associated with the planet Venus

Are you really claiming that these are three points of similarity across all (or most) natural mythologies? I'd have to disagree. Number 1 is true of Egyptian mythology, for example, but certainly not of Greek nor Aztec nor Indian nor even really of Germanic (Odin/Woden is a sky god but not specifically a sun god). I will concede that number 2 is fairly universal - most myths have at least some kind of monster, though not necessarily a flying one. As for number 3 - though I don't doubt that you know of some mythos with this element, I confess I can think of none in which a comet is the heart of the dying sun god.

You mis-apprehend what I'm saying. The reason I have a problem with much of modern science is that when confronted with yet more evidence that the paradigm is wrong, our scientists do not question the paradigm; instead they create yet another ad hoc theory that cannot be tested in any lab.

Though I am admittedly biased, being a scientist myself, I cannot help but think that you have mis-apprehended the nature of the scientific method. When new evidence is presented that contradicts current theories, those theories are rejected in favour of new theories with which the evidence does agree. Sometimes multiple such theories are proposed and must compete with each other. The only criterion for success is that the theory agrees with the evidence. Usually, the new theories that are proposed are modelled very closely on the old, rejected theory - which makes sense if the rejected theory was reasonably succesful. Sometimes, though, when necessary, the whole conceptual framework is rejected and replaced with a new one. General relativity is a perfect example. When the evidence finally built up that Newtonian mechanics was not correct, and that no easy modifications could bring it into line with the data, its whole paradigm of absolute space and forces was rejected.

Regarding black holes, according to Einstein's theory of general relativity, a thing cannot exist with an infinite degree of any one aspect of reality, such as gravity. Black holes have, according to theory, infinite gravitational force. So either one or the other is incorrect; yet, modern science is not denying Einstein's theory, nor is it admitting that black holes cannot exist. With good science, either one or the other must be put to rest.

This is actually a fairly common misconception. As a matter of fact, general relativity has been put to rest in a manner of speaking. We know now that it is not a valid theory for describing phenomena like black holes, where the strength of gravity becomes as powerful as the other forces. The only trouble is we don't yet have a new theory that adequately describes both gravity (which GR does all right at in most cases) and the other forces (which are, on their own, fairly well described by quantum field theories).

[Ibrîniðilpathânezel]

Having long been a student of mythology, I believe that one should consider the definition of "myth." One I personally prefer is stated in the Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend:

Myth: A story, presented as having actually occurred in a previous age, explaining the cosmological and supernatural traditions of a people, their gods, heroes, cultural traits, religious beliefs, etc. The purpose of myth is to explain, and, as Sir G.L. Gomme said, myths explain matters in "the science of a pre-scientific age." Thus myths tell of the creation of man, of animals, of landmarks; they tell why a certain animal has its characteristics (e.g. why the bat is blind or flies only at night), why or how certain natural phenomena came to be (e.g.why the rainbow appears or how the constellation Orion got into the sky), how and why rituals and ceremonies began and why they continue. Not all origin stories are myths, however; the myth must have a religious background in that its principal actor or actors are deities; the stories are thus systematized at least to the extent that they are related to a corpus of other stories in which the given god is the member of a pantheon. Where such interrelation does not occur, and where the gods or demigods do not appear, such stories are properly classified as folktale.

As Tolkien said that his tales were an attempt to create a mythology for England, I feel he succeeded quite well, and that any later attempt to try to make those tales more scientifically accurate was a mistake. The beauty of myth does not lie in its scientific precision, but rather in how it shows the ingenuity of the human mind, striving to understand the world in which it lives, as best it is able. In my humble opinion, of course.

That said, trees play major parts in many myths about the early world (the Tree of Life, the Tree of Knowledge, Yggdrasil, etc.) and there certainly are quite a few myths about the bringing of light and/or fire from the gods to man (Prometheus comes screaming to mind ). I find the Two Trees a clever and elegant blend of such myths. I don't believe Tolkien was the first to invent a tree of light (I'd have to dig up some of my more esoteric mythology texts to check it out, but I seem to recall such tales in some Eastern mythologies), but he may have been the first to use it as a basis for a myth to explain the reality of the sun and moon.

Just my two cents', as ever.

[Lush]

lmp - I strongly suggest that you check out Ken Wilber. You don't have to be into Buddhism to get good stuff out of him. Who knows? You might really like him.

[littlemanpoet]

Originally Posted by Lush

lmp - I strongly suggest that you check out Ken Wilber. You don't have to be into Buddhism to get good stuff out of him. Who knows? You might really like him.

I did check him out before you posted this. His Buddhism doesn't throw me off so much as his promotion of the sciences of supernatural phenomena. Being Christian, I think he is in dangerous waters.

Alatar, I doubt that the recordings of cataclysm go back to prehistoric humanity because (according to my limited knowledge), that which was recorded reveals a rather highly developed understanding and ability to measure the phenomena outside the earth's atmosphere, such as among Babylonians, Mesoamericans, and Egyptians. Additionally, the symbols used for recording these phenomena are quite ideosyncratic to each culture. This suggests that the events occurred within the memory of a culture, but before writing was invented.

Regarding a Golden Age, I have no interest in "going back" either; but I do wish to understand what the ancients meant to convey.

I think science NEEDS to chuck everything and start down a new path.

[alatar]

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

Alatar, I doubt that the recordings of cataclysm go back to prehistoric humanity because (according to my limited knowledge), that which was recorded reveals a rather highly developed understanding and ability to measure the phenomena outside the earth's atmosphere, such as among Babylonians, Mesoamericans, and Egyptians.

Yes and no. Not that I am not amazed by what they did learn and know, but show me one of these cultures that knew of the planet Neptune. And even more interestingly, why didn't the astrologers know of this and other planets, as each of these massive objects surely had some effect on the person's destiny.

Additionally, the symbols used for recording these phenomena are quite ideosyncratic to each culture. This suggests that the events occurred within the memory of a culture, but before writing was invented.

I'm sorry; I'm not sure what (or all) phenomena to which you refer. What would be amazing is a culture that knew nothing of the sun or moon.

Regarding a Golden Age, I have no interest in "going back" either; but I do wish to understand what the ancients meant to convey.

Agreed, but again I think that the message was more psychological than scientific. Some today consider the 1950's the Golden Age as you had drive-in restaurants and cars with fins. Gas was cheap, and everyone wore bobby socks (whatever they were).

I think science NEEDS to chuck everything and start down a new path.

Meaning? Science does this to some extent, but definitely not to the extent you intend. Should we give up the scientific method? Observe, assume, test, refine, repeat?

[littlemanpoet]

Originally Posted by alatar

Yes and no. Not that I am not amazed by what they did learn and know, but show me one of these cultures that knew of the planet Neptune. And even more interestingly, why didn't the astrologers know of this and other planets, as each of these massive objects surely had some effect on the person's destiny.

Neptune is, of course, not visible to the human eye and needed the invention of the telescope. What, in your mind, is the significance of the ancients not knowing about Neptune other than to point out that they didn't have telescopes? As to planetary effect on people's destinies, are you going tongue in cheek? I think astrology in terms of planetary influence on one's destiny is off the mark. But one must wonder why every culture has a tradition of associating disaster with comets? Please, do try to allow yourself to consider that, just maybe, it's not a matter of psychology.

I'm sorry; I'm not sure what (or all) phenomena to which you refer. What would be amazing is a culture that knew nothing of the sun or moon.

Apologies. One such complex of images from culture to culture are: the bearded flying dragon; the hairy flying dragon; the flying hairy witch; (bearded Santa Claus riding from the north pole behind his flying reindeer perhaps being a remnant of this); and these dragons and witch symbols serving in these ancient cultures as the symbol for a comet; and further, this comet symbol being the same symbol used for the planet Venus. Either the mesoamericans in particular really had themselves confused, or they were describing something they were seeing in the sky. (Oh, and we can add to this the Greek mythic legend of Venus being born from the head of Jupiter). These are just some examples.

Agreed, but again I think that the message was more psychological than scientific. Some today consider the 1950's the Golden Age as you had drive-in restaurants and cars with fins. Gas was cheap, and everyone wore bobby socks (whatever they were).

Meaning? Science does this to some extent, but definitely not to the extent you intend. Should we give up the scientific method? Observe, assume, test, refine, repeat?

No, I'm speaking of paradigms. Have you read the work of Thomas Kuhn? Think of the old folk tale of the 7 blind men and the elephant. One of the blind men feels the elephant's leg and concludes that it is a tree, because it feels like a tree. He even goes so far as to discover four trees! And better yet, rounding on one "side" of these four trees, he comes across a very maleable branch, and decides that he has come across a new species of tree.

Try this out: suppose that the magnetic field of the Earth, and gravity, and lightning, and sunspots, and solar wind, and the nodal tapestry of magnetic fields surrounding the sun's "face", are all directly related to each other. What might the mechanism be?

Just thought I'd lay that out there. It seems no clearer answer than that from William Cloud Hicklin will come by way of answer to my original question, and therefore I would have to say that this thread is starting to not be about Tolkien; but you asked the question, so I answered.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Mind you that the Sun-tree and Moon-tree featured in "Valinor", almost the first poem Tolkien wrote containing elements of his later legendarium- 1914 IIRC.

Tolkien's imagination often ran to vignettes or tableaux- scenes intensely visualized which then wound up generating tales. You can still see some of this in the LR. It's characteristic of Tolkien's pre-Somme poems that they depict static scenes- snapshots of an Otherworld which as yet has no history, indeed doesn't appear to move in Time at all (except for the characteristic sense of fading, decay and lost grandeur). It's probably fair to say that "Valinor" and other similar poems like "Habbanan" and "Earendel" predate the mythology, in that they were written without any idea of a narrative or 'historical' context: that was built up around them.

My personal theory is that the idea of the history didn't arise until, and arose because, Tolkien invented a *second* Elvish language, Gnomish/Goldogrin. To a comparative philologist, you coudn't have two related languages, descended through many sound-shifts from a common ancestor, without the populations that spoke them having becaome separated and subjected to different influences. The question immediately presents itself, Why? Tolkien's answer was the 'travail of the Noldoli,' the unwritten Gilfanon's Tale. It was of course characteristic of JRRT to envision an end-state and work towards it, but never get there (vide the Voyages of Earendil).

[alatar]

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

How do you know that this is how myths came to be?

I don't; that was one possible explanation. Another is that, as we all came from Africa, that maybe sometime earlier in time some event did happen that was remembered by the various tribes that eventually populated the world. So in that, maybe we're in agreement.

You see, farflung cultures recorded a Golden Age followed by cataclysms that destroyed the Golden Age. They created rites (sometimes quite gruesome) that recapitulated both Golden Age and the destroying cataclysms so that (1) they would not forget them (2) they might appease the gods and "head off a repetition of the cataclysms" (which by the way always seems to have to do with comets). They intended to remember something that had been lost. If only one culture had done this, we could say that a regional conflagration of some sort occurred. That the same kind of cataclysm is described in farflung cultures, does not merely suggest, but leads a reasonable mind to ask what can be understood from the strange points of agreement from culture to culture.

Again, I think that we agree. Where we may differ is in the event itself. Maybe we should define "Golden Age" that we may know it when we see it. As wonderful as the past may have been, I'm not willing to give up my current life and culture in exchange, as I don't see anything worth the trade. I have indoor plumbing, the ability to travel faster than sound, heat/cooling when I want it and that grail of grails, Google, that knows everything.

There is a hermeneutic of comparing myths. One must take the culture's mode of expression as a given, and allow it to say what it says, suspending judgement until comprehension is as complete as it can become. The results, across many different mythologies, are striking in their similarity.

Again, I would assume that there would be similarities. We're all the same species, came from one place via various migrations, have the same physiology and live in similar environments (i.e. under the sun, need water and food, see the moon, etc). But to say "striking?" I'm not willing to concede that without evidence.

Here's a link to Encyclopedia Mythica that might be helpful.

Before we get any further, let me just clarify to the moderators that this bears on Tolkien's legendarium to a great degree in that he picked up on many of these themes, but not all.

Thanks; I see myself getting censored as I'm not sure I can say what I want and keep on-topic.

Points of similarity:

• a sun god who is the benevolent universal ruler par excellence, who resided at the north pole, and is associated with the planet Saturn
• an anatomically impossible dragon, sometimes bearded, or hairy, flying across the sky, wreaking destruction upon earth
• a comet which is the heart of the dying sun god, which bursts forth into the heavens, and is associated with the planet Venus

Not sure that Scientology has any of those.

These are not the only similarities from culture to culture. Tolkien does not record any comets, but does record the planet Venus, as not having always been in the sky. The universal ruler is in middle earth the evil Morgoth, residing in the northern Angband. What is intruguing to me is that Tolkien turns the "par excellence" of the benevolent deity on its head. Obviously, Tolkien has a number of dragons.

Regarding comets and what people believed about them, I recommend the documentation by Andrew White in Chapter 4 of The War of Science with Theology published in 1896.

You mis-apprehend what I'm saying. The reason I have a problem with much of modern science is that when confronted with yet more evidence that the paradigm is wrong, our scientists do not question the paradigm; instead they create yet another ad hoc theory that cannot be tested in any lab.

I thank Aiwendil for answering this. I would add that maybe the reason for friction between our two ways of seeing things it that from one side, everything that can ever be known already has been recorded, and from the other, we haven't even started knowing anything. I make no assumptions, and state this as tactfully as I can, but do you see it as having to fit observations to what you already 'know?' Science, as stated, sometimes has to throw everything out and start down a new path. It's not comfortable, yet what we want to 'be' and what 'is' are two different things, and wishing earnestly that the world conformed to how we want it to be changes how it works not one wit.

Not that I would want to know that the reason I fell in love with my wife and had four children which I adore is all due to the the Grand Equation of Everything. Even it that existed, it would make my experiences no less enjoyable and real.

Think of what science would be doing to poor Pluto, the Roman god of the dead. I understand that he wasn't named after the planet (or planetoid). In their mythology, he was a pretty important god, managing the dead and all, and with his kidnapping of Proserpina, caused winter. And he was also associated with wealth.

Science would be promoting and demoting him yearly as they decided where his place was. That, to me, is why it was mistaken of Tolkien to rewrite his works to be more scientifically correct. Science can change; a beautiful story with meaning does not have to to be great.

Regarding black holes, according to Einstein's theory of general relativity, a thing cannot exist with an infinite degree of any one aspect of reality, such as gravity. Black holes have, according to theory, infinite gravitational force. So either one or the other is incorrect; yet, modern science is not denying Einstein's theory, nor is it admitting that black holes cannot exist. With good science, either one or the other must be put to rest.

Maybe I was in error saying that General Relativity said thus; any errors are surely mine. But, in regards to the existence of a Black Hole, all I can say is, "and yet it removes..."