Tolkien and Psychedelics

[Morthoron]

Hmmmm...I would have to say that Aldous Huxley and JRR Tolkien are at opposite ends of the literary spectrum as far as how they sought inspiration. I don't see Tolkien, a staid Oxford don, as a Baudelairean hashish-eater (Tolkien's poetry is not evocative enough for a full blown trip, like Coleridge's 'Kublai Khan'). And perhaps the anonymous writer of Beowulf hallucinated due to ergot poisoning after eating some bad rye bread, but Tolkien's inspiration came directly from the Norse, Finnish, Greek and Anglo-Saxon, and bedtimes stories written to delight his children.

Reading about his home life, it would seem a few pints at the Bird and Baby was about all the stimulation Tolkien needed to write his mythos. Jim Morrison he was not.

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

Reading about his home life, it would seem a few pints at the Bird and Baby was about all the stimulation Tolkien needed to write his mythos. Jim Morrison he was not.

Though by today's attitudes towards cigs, booze and stodge, he was quite decadent If Tolkien saw the state of Oxford pubs today he'd be mortified - having to lurk on the pavement for a rushed intake of nicotine instead of actually enjoying a langorous smoke of a cigar or pipe while sitting by the pub fire; being monitored on your intake of beer and hectored to get up and do 50 star jumps in every TV ad break...I think he'd be horrified at the freedoms we have given up.

But in any case, great topic!

Yes, I've noticed a LOT of incidents in Tolkiens writing which have struck me as very 'trippy', and even the demeanour of the Elves themselves suggests they are not quite of this world but somehow exist between two dimensions - which always makes me think of Blake's vision of angels amongst many other 'uncanny' things.

Without being near any biographical tomes to check, I can only offer some notions about Tolkien's own experience... For one thing, Catholicism is a deeply mystical and colourful faith with its saints, icons, incense, ritual etc. so if anything his faith would lead him more towards the 'trippy' (I think I'd prefer to call it visionary, actually) imagery, rather than away from it. And another thing to bear in mind is his interest in dreams and the symbolism of them, something we see reflected in his writing - I have often wondered if he did any of this 'lucid dreaming', if such a thing exists...

Anyway, there's a few things...quite randomly as is appropriate for such a topic

[Faramir Jones]

I agree with this:

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

Though by today's attitudes towards cigs, booze and stodge, he was quite decadent If Tolkien saw the state of Oxford pubs today he'd be mortified - having to lurk on the pavement for a rushed intake of nicotine instead of actually enjoying a langorous smoke of a cigar or pipe while sitting by the pub fire; being monitored on your intake of beer and hectored to get up and do 50 star jumps in every TV ad break...I think he'd be horrified at the freedoms we have given up.

In support I quote the famous hobbit drinking song:

Ho! Ho! Ho! To the bottle I go
To heal my heart and drown my woe.
Rain may fall and wind may blow,
And many miles be still to go
But under a tall tree I will lie,
And let the clouds go sailing by.

Even when reading this as a young teenager in the early 1980s I thought this praise of alcohol somewhat excessive! But we have to remember that Tolkien's Shire, and even the real world he grew up in, are and were quite different from our own. For example, the massive and near-ubiquitous increase in the use of motor transport in the UK and many countries in his lifetime led to the need for regulation, including drink driving laws.

I think the main criticism that could be leveled against Tolkien today would be toleration, indeed encouragement, of obesity! As evidence I give part of the poem 'Perry-the-Winkle', where a kindly troll, grateful that a young hobbit was nice to him, invited him to tea every Thursday, with the following result:

Now Perry-the-Winkle grew so fat
through eating of cramsome bread,
his weskit bust, and never a hat
would sit upon his head;
for Every Thursday he went to tea,
and sat on the kitchen floor,
and smaller the old Troll seemed to be,
as he grew more and more.

What do people think?

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Faramir Jones

What do people think?

I despise political correctness. At the current rate, we'll all eventually be placed in individually-wrapped body condoms, and, safe in our prophylactic cocoons, we will no longer need to touch another human being (as intimacy of any sort causes all sorts of infectious abnormalities). In addition, all books will be burned as decadent and leading to thought; art will be purged as immoral; sex willl be eliminated as gross; alcohol, sugar, salt, tobacco, wood and wood byproducts, meat, vegetables, the sun, the snow, and grass will be banned; and safe in our condoms, eating our non-biotic cellulous mash, free from anything that will trouble our minds or hurt our tender sensibilities, we will blandly float about in our plastic bubbles touching nothing and having nothing touching us.

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

I despise political correctness. At the current rate, we'll all eventually be placed in individually-wrapped body condoms, and, safe in our prophylactic cocoons, we will no longer need to touch another human being (as intimacy of any sort causes all sorts of infectious abnormalities). In addition, all books will be burned as decadent and leading to thought; art will be purged as immoral; sex willl be eliminated as gross; alcohol, sugar, salt, tobacco, wood and wood byproducts, meat, vegetables, the sun, the snow, and grass will be banned; and safe in our condoms, eating our non-biotic cellulous mash, free from anything that will trouble our minds or hurt our tender sensibilities, we will blandly float about in our plastic bubbles touching nothing and having nothing touching us.

Superb!

Funny how the once quirky beliefs of the old hippies - their macrobiotic food, organic lifetsyles, their eco lightbulbs and yoga - have become rules and regulations. Nowadays to rebel you must seek out the last meat pie and chips in England and drink beer...

[Pitchwife]

The same is happening here in Germany: a growing trend to eco health tyranny, purporting to protect us against ourselves. Vaguely reminds me of the horrid things somebody like Gandalf or maybe Galadriel might have done with the Ring: making Good itself seem despisable... Although, let's hand it to Gandalf: he at least wouldn't have banned smoking.
(I write this smoking a cigarette and with a bottle of Salvator (strong Bavarian beer, 7.9 % vol.) next to my computer...)

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow they will all be illegal......


Back to 'dope.' No. Not even a ghost of a prayer. Tolkien was, like, totally a square.

He goes on to say that he brought the original legend of Numenor "into relation with the main mythology."

But was apparently mistaken in his recollection, or expressed himself obscurely. See HME V The Lost Road- the very first Numenor writings were from the start firmly placed within the Silmarillion mythos.

But, 'expressing himself obscurely,' he might just conceivably have meant by 'the main mythology' The Lord of the Rings, which certainly modified the lower end of the Numenor legend.