Imagine no religion

[skip spence]

Originally Posted by Legate of Amon Lanc

..often the characters are crying out words they themselves do not know or understand - now what exactly is this? For me, the immediate thought is - as I have been encountering this subject much - "speaking in tongues" or glossolalia (if you don't know what it is, don't worry or if you are interested, you can look it up, but I don't think it's important here, just easy for guidance for somebody who knows) which is exactly the same kind of stuff - a "prayer in tongues" would be exactly the same sort of thing - yet I fail to grasp how exactly should this be taken: is the prayer in Elvish where the words come to Frodo from some other source still a prayer in the sense of being initiated by Frodo - a will of the one who calls, or is he then just some "channel" - but then again - who is the initiator? Does then for instance Elbereth "call to herself"? Or how does this work?).

Yeah that is odd. I think that Frodo begs for help, and this is his own will at work, but when Elbereth complies, he becomes "a channel" for her, it is she who places the words in his mouth, assists him, gives him the power to resist. Similarly, it is explicitly stated that Ulmo spoke through Tuor in the later Fall Of Gondolin. Bah, I'm sort of drunk, this is too much for me now...