The Balrog as the Loathly Lady from medieval literature.

[Huinesoron]

Prediction 8 & Prediction 6

Once again, I was correct in stating that one of Tolkien's sets of seven would be about rivers. In fact, I was more than correct: both of the remaining sevens are sets of rivers!

Ossiriand has seven named rivers, of which the most significant for this discussion is the southernmost: Adurant, meaning 'doubled course'. Adurant contains the famous island of Tol Galen - a clear reference to the name 'Shimada', meaning 'rice island'. Note that this is only one of the names of Kambei Shimada - a Doubled Course indeed!

Note that Tol Galen is the later home of Beren and Luthien, the most significant couple in Arda's history - and Kambei Shimada was the leader of the Seven Samurai, ie, the most significant.

The Seven Rivers of Gondor are very interesting, because Tolkien provided two conflicting lists of them. This reflects the Seven Samurai's theme regarding who can be considered a true samurai.

The 'Gondorian Samurai' is clearly Gorōbei Katayama; this could have been (but wasn't) predicted from his status as second-in-command of the Seven, just as Gondor becomes the second most important battlefield of the Third Age. His name means 'Five white guardian / Piece of Mountain', and check this out:

• The Seven Rivers arise from the White Mountains - two different parts of Katayama's name!
• Five of the seven rivers empty into Anduin. Note the 'five' in Katayama's name. Note also that one of the rivers, Lefnui, is literally named 'Five'!
• If Katayama is Gondor's samurai, then Lefnui is Katayama's river: it marks the western border of Gondor, thus standing as a guardian. (It also appears on both lists of seven, so don't think I'm trying to cheat here.)

Wow, only Predictions 1-4 to go! I think I'm building a really strong case here. I see you've ignored these in your response - when are you going to see the truth about Tolkien's Method, which is that he just really loved those Seven Samurai?

EDIT:

Prediction 1

The Dwarves. Now, there are no obvious references in the names of the Seven Houses of the Dwarves, other than 'stone > mountain'. So what do we do when our prediction is shown to be wrong? Do we give up? NEVER! Let's dig through etymology!

Aha: beard, appearing in the names of the Longbeards, Firebeards, and Stiffbeards, has another meaning: to openly defy or defeat someone. Tolkien, as a philologist, would know this. The term I've rendered 'guardian' in the names of the Samurai is actually two characters - 'guard soldier'. And what do guards and soldiers do? They defy - they defeat - they beard their enemies! The missing 'third beard' among the Samurai is Katsushirō Okamoto, whose name includes 'victory'.

Prediction 2

The Sons of Feanor! This one had me worried; I got all the way through the list before finding anything, but I should have had more faith! Tolkien buried the reference in the seventh of Feanor's sons, Amras, whose Father-name was 'Last Finwe'. Why is this significant? Because of the obvious connection to the Samurai Shichirōji, whose name includes seven (for this seventh son), and... next. Yes, Shichirōji indicated that there would be more after him, but Tolkien flipped that on its head to show how the house of Feanor was utterly doomed - Telufinwe (Amras) is the LAST - there is no NEXT.

Prediction 3

Ah, the Palantiri. An easy one - Orthanc is a tower namd 'the Cunning Mind', which has a clear symbolic connection to Okamoto, 'book hill'. Okamoto's other name is Katsushirō, and Tolkien made use of this as a pun: 'four white victory' became for white victory - that is, the Palantir was part of the plan for Saruman the White's victory!

Prediction 4

The Beacon-Hills of Gondor. We'll let Okamoto rest for a while rather than using 'hill' again. Instead, lets look at the hill Calenhad, whose name means 'green place'. Is this a reference to 'rice-field island', or to 'rice-field forest'? I'd have to look deeper into the Japanese to figure out which, but it's clearly one of them.

As a bonus: Halifirien, the seventh hill, is named 'Holy Mountain'. Holiness... peace. 'Piece of mountain' is the translation of Katayama - and as I proved just now in Prediction 3, Tolkien made use of puns in his referencing! 'Piece of mountain' becomes 'peace mountain'... perfect.

That concludes the demonstration. It's taken me, what, a day to reach a tenth of your oft-quoted number of predictions? If this was something I actually believed, you can bet I'd be able to surpass it within a month. Because this is numerology, and pareidolia, and if you let it take hold of you it will let you prove anything you want.

Or maybe Tolkien was a really big fan of a Kurosawa movie that hadn't yet come out. Who can say?

hS

[monks]

Originally Posted by Huinesoron

Prediction 8 & Prediction 6



hS

Let's just take the first prediction in isolation.

Tolkien Prediction #71

That Tolkien would refer to Shelob as 'loathly' or loathsome'.

Hardly had Sam hidden the light of the star-glass when she came. A little way ahead and to his left he saw suddenly, issuing from a black hole of shadow under the cliff, the most loathly shape that he had ever beheld, horrible beyond the horror of an evil dream. Most like a spider she was, but huger than the great hunting beasts, and more terrible than they because of the evil purpose in her remorseless eyes.


Why would you or anyone generalize your argument about something that is so specific? Why would you refute that statement of that prediction with a general argument about the nature of predictions? What is the chance of that word being used to describe Shelob? Tell me. And the fact that I included 'loathsome' as the other word is irrelevant because it was made because of the LOATHLY lady theme- the very word which Tolkien used, and he uses it nowhere else in those '600,000' words of the LoTR. You are avoiding the subject. This has nothing to do with the nature of predictions generally -me 'seeing things I want to see' as you are characterizing it. It's about the fact that I made that specific prediction about that specific word occurring in that work to describe that specific character in it.

And I also told you that I'd never heard that word before I encountered the Loathly Lady motif in my research.

So let's deal with the matter in hand instead of avoiding it.

You are avoiding the facts in front of you. And you are avoiding the facts because you don't understand HOW I was able to make that prediction. And I have explained that it was through the forensic study of the etymologies of an enormous number of words in Tolkien's texts and letters over 15 years through which I arrived at my understanding of (among others things) how he incorporates male and female conflict (as I term it left and right handedness in 'the geometry')- the battle of the sexes- which is the subject of the Loathly Lady theme. And just by coincidence that study, that approach, is also something that you have never done.

Do you see the correlation there between not understanding and not thinking it possible and not doing the work and using the method yourself? And it's not like my method is using a crystal ball is it? It's etymology- the very stuff Tolkien lived and breathed and indeed what he told us his works were all about.

That by doing work you have never done, by using an approach that that you (and indeed anyone else) have never used I was able to do something that you can't do, and indeed don't understand. And what's more the efficacy of that method is supported by the Hammond and Scull example. And I make that point. It reveals that my method can give insights into his works that experts don't have, moreover insights into things I have never even seen. And that study of his etymologies revealed an understanding of the relationship of conflict, and indeed specific details of that conflict (the oppression of the female by the male for eg) between male and female which, having encountered the Loathly Lady motif, initiated that prediction.

So let's forget about all of the other predictions and focus on #71 in isolation shall we?

The chances of me being able to make that prediction are EXTREMELY remote. You might expect loathsome- possibly. The odds are not that great for that. But for Loathly it is. It's a very rare archaic word. Moreover I only encountered the word Loathly from the medieval motif, which supports the idea that he used it for Shelob because ...she is the Loathly Lady, or a manifestation of her. And then in addition you have the descriptions about Shelob representing the vagina dentata by others- as I found after I'd made the prediction. The vagina dentata is part of the Loathly Lady motif. So...there you have even more remote probability because clearly other people have identified Shelob with that theme.

And what's more that prediction did not even raise an eyebrow of curiosity from you, never mind acceptance of anything else I've said.

THAT behaviour alone Huinersoron is abnormal because it completely ignores the statistical improbability of that happening. It is YOUR behaviour, not mine, which is abberant or irrational.

And as if that wasn't enough. We can further multiply that irrationality again.

That prediction is regarding the Loathly Lady. And I've also stated that the Balrog is another incarnation of the Loathly Lady motif. And by another remote chance I later discovered that the Loathly Lady is MORE THAN ONCE described in the literature as carrying a multi-thonged whip. Just like the Balrog. I posted the update. And we are actually in that thread. And you knew about the essay before this update. So YOU know about both of those facts.

Now...consider that fact that I arrived at both of those characters being a manifestation of the same thing, via the same method, we can use probability and multiply that chance that I am wrong about my understanding. And we arrive at an even higher statistical improbability. And both of those things, Shelob and the Balrog derive form the same root understanding of the Loathly Lady theme.

So by multiplying that improbability we multiply your irrationality.

And yet there you are behaving in the manner that you are.

The only other thing you can bring to the table is, it was all just a massively improbable chance (and ignore the next 100 predictions waiting to be addressed) or that I'm lying about making that prediction. And to be frank with you, I think the reason why you pointed out that the image I first gave you for the first hidden image (the two female eyes) in the list above, was heavily cropped, was because I was trying to hide something from you- to limit the scope of the possibilities in some way right? And I've just given you the full image and it's actually added more supporting evidence to my initial argument. In addition you made the remark about 'indisputable power' even after me distancing myself from that kind of stuff in this thread. So both of those together suggest to me that you think I'm lying or am suffering from some kind of psychological delusion, ignoring what I'm saying, or any combination thereof. But that's not really the important issue at all here- unless you make it the important issue right?

And yet you still haven't responded to that update on that image of the eyes but posted your bizarre reply.

Again avoidance.

You behaviour IS irrational and it's rooted in the fact that you can't understand the system I'm describing. And if you can't understand the system you have applied your ignorance of that, to every single prediction and contributing piece of evidence. And let's be kind here, the reason why you can't understand the system is because you think my posts are too long and you simply don't have the time to read them or understand them. Well if you don't TAKE the time to read my posts, you'll not be able to understand the system. Obviously. But you still feel justified in your behaviour. So we go round and round in a circle- or rather you do. I'm actually continuing giving you further supporting evidence to avoid that situation and for anyone who might read this thread here or via google.

We can approach each prediction one at a time if you'd like-...shall we try beginning with #71? I already tried that anyway with Predictions #1 and 2..but we can try again.

Those two items: the loathly prediction and the whip update, would at the absolute minimum raise an eyebrow from any rational person. But they didn't. (Indeed the update was described by one lunatic as clickbait.) That is NOT a normal, rational response Huinersoron.

So, in an effort to be constructive, let's try take a few steps back. Let's ignore the system, the other predictions and the images, and any other presumptions we might have made about each other or any misunderstandings..and just concentrate on the statistical improbability of those two facts above regarding the loathly prediction and the multi-thonged whip. And we'll throw in the vagina dentata details too for good measure.

Care to try?

Any time dude.

monks

[Galadriel55]

I was successfully keeping my hands clean until now. But -

Originally Posted by monks

Those two items: the loathly prediction and the whip update, would at the absolute minimum raise an eyebrow from any rational person. But they didn't. (Indeed the update was described by one lunatic as clickbait.) That is NOT a normal, rational response Huinersoron.

monks, are you saying that you're surprised that no one else raised an eyebrow? Let me just follow your logic here.

Premise: A rational person would agree with your claim.
Observation: No one so far agrees with your claim.
Conclusion: All of them are just irrational idiots who refuse to see the truth!

Talking about plausibility, what do you think is more plausible: every single person around you is an idiot, or your premise is incorrect and your claim is in fact NOT something rational people would agree with?

People aren't saying that what you say is completely and absolutely wrong. But it also isn't completely and absolutely right. It's shaky speculation - perhaps entertaining to indulge in, but not something a rational person is willing to accept as absolute truth. I am baffled at how you can accept your conjecture as absolute truth, given that you're not exactly dealing with exact science here.

[monks]

monks, are you saying that you're surprised that no one else raised an eyebrow? Let me just follow your logic here.

Premise: A rational person would agree with your claim.
Observation: No one so far agrees with your claim.
Conclusion: All of them are just irrational idiots who refuse to see the truth!

Talking about plausibility, what do you think is more plausible: every single person around you is an idiot, or your premise is incorrect and your claim is in fact NOT something rational people would agree with?

People aren't saying that what you say is completely and absolutely wrong. But it also isn't completely and absolutely right. It's shaky speculation - perhaps entertaining to indulge in, but not something a rational person is willing to accept as absolute truth. I am baffled at how you can accept your conjecture as absolute truth, given that you're not exactly dealing with exact science here.[/QUOTE]

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Hi, firstly, what's my conjecture? Can we please stick to the post immediately above.

I don't expect it to be accepted as absolute truth. But there is no way that a rational response to those details is to start making broad observations about the nature of predictions (in an aping manner I might add) and inferring that I'm an ego maniac. He's got the time to make those posts and yet he didn't have the time to read my long posts. D'you see what I mean? And I made the point that virtually every link I posted as supporting evidence are pictures so there was no time required. And then instead of following up on my evidence which addressed what he thought about the woman's face he ignored it and went into the ape routine. It was a single click on an image. Regards that, I've actually annotated the image now to help. It is a woman because you can see her hair which veil her eyes. The subject is the dance of the 7 veils.

http://www.thewindrose.net/wickednesswoman/

The two eyes are obvious. The lower eye is her mouth. You can see that he has put a little notch to suggest her nose and the line under the eye-mouth is her chin. The left side of the face is also suggested with pencil marks. You can even see the two eyes to either side of her eye-mouth to be a pair of ear-rings- because this is intended to be a gypsy woman. This is a medieval symbolic landscape (all of his material is)- it's not just riddling. It has a serious purpose and source in the Arthurian Romances.

Anyway...keeping to the post.

In total, the odds of those details above indicating that *I might well be onto something* are too great for that to be a reasonable response. Simply from a probability point of view. And the clickbait response is totally risible yes. As far as I'm concerned he has behaved like an idiot *in that instance*.

What you are essentially saying is how can several (how many?) people 'all' be wrong about something, and I be right? Even when those people probably have not EVEN READ my supporting evidence or clicked on the links. If they haven't read it, then yes they can certainly be wrong. And if 100 people behaved like that, ditto. He's not even read my predictions and he's able to dismiss all 102 made over 15 years in a few days. That's absolutely risible too. 15 years, literally 1000s of etymologies in text and he's banging on about Samurai and thinks he can seriously counter that in two days off the top of his head with no reference to the etymologies in Tolkien's text whatever. Seems legit. It's a complete joke. The Loathly prediction just by itself is very compelling evidence that my reasons for making the prediction are sound. Let's go through each prediction one by one- which is what I intend to do until he is persuaded. If it takes time to accumulate the weight of evidence so be it. Well isn't that the nature of research and new ideas? There is nothing unusual about a position of being right and lots of other people being wrong. It DOES happen. And note it's not about the predictions, it's about proving that the system I'm saying Tolkien has, which makes him predictable, exists.

Here's an illustration of how Huinersoron's mind is working.

Me: "Tolkien has his own personal system of numerology influenced by Dante and it can be found in the Chain of Angainor. Stanza lengths of his poems use it."
Hui: "Numerology is subjective."

In other words he didn't listen to what I said. He had already seized upon 'numerology' as some kind of Dan Brown view of the world. This is..let me repeat...TOLKIEN'S OWN PERSONAL SYSTEM.

I have a friend. He started out being completely unconvinced by every thing I said to him. After 12 months he is totally convinced about everything I'm saying and is now involved in my research. Because I have demonstrated to him the consistency of argument and all of the evidence over a long period. And that's what I'm trying to duplicate here. In my last post to Huinersoron I'm trying to establish a ground zero with a simple starting point of one prediction. And in this case it happens to have developed a little history with the update on the Balrog.

I think the details of my previous post above speak for themselves.

I'm not falling out with anyone- yaknow...but I think this has all spiraled out into a nonsense exchange. :-)

monks

[Huinesoron]

Well, after a busy week I come back to find my behaviour is abnormal (monks post #21), aberrant (#21), irrational (#21), bizarre (#21), an 'ape routine' (#23), and 'like an idiot' (#23). So that's fun. Also that I'm avoiding clicking on an image which I'd already looked at while discussing various parts of the image, and that by continuing the list that I'd already promised to complete, I'm... ooh, all sorts of things.

monks - when you first posted, I went to your website to see what you had. Your predictions page centres on a colour-coded table with no indication I could find of what the colours mean, and no indication of whether you've proven them true or false. The full explanation of them consists of a 200+ page PDF which has no way of skipping to a specific prediction, and is naturally impossible to use on a phone. When you link to things related to your predictions, they are more often than not random pictures with no explanation of what's going on.

Now, it may be that somewhere you have a nice list of separate discussions (such as blog posts) which lay everything out nice and neatly. But you haven't made them intuitively easy to find, and I don't owe you the time to go looking for them. If I'm going to do 'work' for one of my hobbies, it will be 'work' I enjoy - such as, for example, 'proving' Tolkien's love of The Seven Samurai. That was fun. ^_^

(And incidentally, I wasn't inferring you were an egomaniac - I was playacting as one to emphasise the silliness of my theory. Sorry that came out wrong!)

Similarly, no, I cannot just reply to your posts, because your posts are spread so broad. In the one where you said you were going to focus solely on 'Wickedness' and on the Door, you still brought in, what, a dozen different predictions. Once again, I don't owe you the time to dig through and figure out what needs a reply.

And yet, here I am. So: my reply will not cover everything you've said, but will cover whatever pops out to me as important.

1/ I think you're misunderstanding my point about numerology. I'm saying that, whether Tolkien had a system or not, your ability to 'interpret' that system is fundamentally subjective. You can 'predict' things in such a way that they will always be true. I'm not saying you'd do it deliberately! But, for example, your 'seven unveilings' prediction (which your link does nothing to explain) requires you to - subjectively - determine what constitutes an unveiling. I guarantee you I could find something to fit in every single chapter of LotR - but you have predicted 7, and interpreted the book in light of that prediction.

2/ The 'Wickedness' woman: no. The 'hair' comes from beneath the eyes - it's a moustache, if anything, but really it's some quite evocative shading. Could it be symbolically hair? Sure! Just as it could be two opposing forces fighting, or a butterfly's wings, or a giant claw, or or or... it's subjective. You are saying that Tolkien, before Middle-earth was even a twinkle in his eye, already had this system of yours and used it in his private sketchbook. I counter by saying that you're subjectively interpreting the supposed system into his works.

A test for you: here's my deviantArt. Imagine I follow Tolkien's system. Now take a look through my pictures and find the evidence to support that theory. (I'll start you off: there's a diamond of seven women here for the 7 veils, and a string of four Dagazes here.)

3/ Your prediction 71, 'loathly'. Sure, maybe! There's ten 'loath-' words across LotR, and that's the only 'loathly'. It's an unusual word, so going from 'Tolkien described "Her Ladyship" as loathly' to 'he was referring to the Loathly Lady' isn't actually a big leap. Well done on finding that.

But. Several buts, in fact:

• You predicted 'loathly or loathsome'. You were right with the less common word, but you would still be claiming it as true had you found the more common one. The spiders in The Hobbit are 'loathsome'; this now looks less like a miraculous prediction, and more like an easy win that paid off with a bonus.
• Tolkien uses a lot of words to describe Shelob. In that paragraph alone, I count at least 15 distinctive adjectives used of her. You've selected one as relevant to your theory, but had you come in with a completely different theory, you might be just as enthusiastic about 'blotched'.
• Let's assume that loathly Shelob is because of the Loathly Lady. That still does nothing to demonstrate an overarching theme - just that Tolkien knew the phrase (obviously!) and wanted to drop it in - a "low philological jest", if you will. He does that a lot - the most obvious is that Numenor and Eressea are "coincidentally" also named Atlantis and Avalon. That doesn't mean there's a deep Plato theme running through Middle-earth - it just means Tolkien likes references. You think you've found strong links to other parts of the story - but see alllll the previous comments on subjectivity.

4/ Your balrog whips theory reveals something significant. Unfortunately, it's that you're not taking the timeline of Tolkien's writing into account. Balrogs have had whips since 1917's Fall of Gondolin, the first full story of the Legendarium; they weren't given them as part of a theme with Shelob, because there was no Shelob! In fact, at the time the Balrog was written into LotR, there was still no Shelob. Hunt down HoME VII, The Treason of Isengard, and check out 'The Story Foreseen from Lorien' - Tolkien's original plan still had an infiltration of a tower, but that tower was Minas Morgul, and both Sam and Frodo took part! Things like the stone sentinels are in there - but Shelob is not. Tolkien categorically cannot have put the Balrog's whip in as part of a theme with Shelob - because the whip came long before he invented Her Ladyship.

And this is the problem. We know far too much about Tolkien's writing process to treat every word as part of a deliberate plan. Are there references in there? Definitely! Are some of yours actual references Tolkien intended? Almost certainly! But are they part of some larger scheme? To prove that, you'd need to prove from the known timeline of Tolkien's writing that he was actually working to a plan. All your continued talk of etymology attempts to prove is that he could have done it - not that he did.

No doubt I have missed things I wanted to comment on, but this is already a 70 minute post, so you'll have to be content with that.

hS

[William Cloud Hicklin]

This is..let me repeat...TOLKIEN'S OWN PERSONAL SYSTEM

Which is evidenced by which writings of his? Certainly not in anything published to date- perhaps you have privy access to the Bodleian's manuscripts collection?

There is not a single thing in anything known about Tolkien's life or interests which suggests the least interest in numerology or any other occultist mumbo-jumbo (and he deplored those tendencies in Charles Williams).

Apparently my jibe about Foucault and Lot 49 went right over your head- they are both satires of obsessive people who see imaginary patterns in randomness and create great delusional conspiracy theories around them.

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

There is not a single thing in anything known about Tolkien's life or interests which suggests the least interest in numerology or any other occultist mumbo-jumbo (and he deplored those tendencies in Charles Williams).

That's the crux of the matter.

It's all well and good (for some, anyway) to parse the works of a deceased author in search of hidden signs and secret meanings.
With the lack of any evidence that said author ever would have intended to impart such things into his products, it's just the "investigator" reading his own inherent biases and beliefs into them.