Speaker 1: Hey friends, Today I'm going to provide you with one
Speaker 1: of the first videos in the Wisdom of Tolkien, the
Speaker 1: Lord of the Ring study, and so if you're already
Speaker 1: participating in that course, then this will mostly be a
Speaker 1: repeat for you. Now at the time that this is
Speaker 1: being posted, we're only in week two of the study,
Speaker 1: which takes us right up to Rivendell, but before anything
Speaker 1: actually happens there, and so there's still time for you
Speaker 1: to join if you have not already done so, just
Speaker 1: go to patreon dot com slash Mythic Mind and sign
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Speaker 1: we go any further, I want to thank all my
Speaker 1: patrons and my Tier three patrons by name. Now, up
Speaker 1: to this point I have been naming all of my
Speaker 1: Tier two patrons, and I still appreciate you greatly, but
Speaker 1: that list was getting pretty long and that is a
Speaker 1: good problem to have, I suppose, So by name, I
Speaker 1: want to think Mark, Aaron, Avy, Jamie, Mariah, Paul, Tyler,
Speaker 1: and William. And I would also like to particularly highlight
Speaker 1: new patrons over the last couple months of any tier
Speaker 1: and so that's Evy Kroner, Nate, Mariah, and Tyler all
Speaker 1: of my patrons helped me to keep leading studies, producing
Speaker 1: this content and embarking on other ventures as well. If
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Speaker 1: to the Tolkien course and other materials such as the
Speaker 1: Lewis course that we did last summer, go to patreon
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Speaker 1: notes and go ahead and do that today. And I
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Speaker 1: slash Mythic Mind today. Now, I haven't decided for a
Speaker 1: certain but I think that starting next time, I might
Speaker 1: get back to my roots of the show where I
Speaker 1: started with Kirkeguard, and I might get back and start
Speaker 1: a series on Carikeguard's fear and trembling. But we'll see
Speaker 1: what happens. I haven't decided for sure. For now, I'm
Speaker 1: going to bring you a short video on the Inland
Speaker 1: Delay from the Wisdom of Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings.
Speaker 1: There was Eru, the one who in Arta is called
Speaker 1: a louvtar. And he made first the Iinar, the holy
Speaker 1: ones that were the offspring of his thought, and they
Speaker 1: were with him before aught else was made. And he
Speaker 1: spoke to them, propounding to them themes of music. And
Speaker 1: they sang before him, and he was glad. But for
Speaker 1: a long while they sang only each alone, or but
Speaker 1: a few together, while the rest hearkened, for each comprehended
Speaker 1: that only that part of the mind of a louvatar
Speaker 1: from which he came, and in the understanding of their brethren,
Speaker 1: they grew but slowly. Yet ever as they listened, they
Speaker 1: came to deeper understanding, and increased in unison and harmony.
Speaker 1: Then a luvatar said to them, of the theme that
Speaker 1: I have declared to you, I will now that you
Speaker 1: make in harmony together a great music. And since I
Speaker 1: have kindled you with the flame imperishable, ye shall show
Speaker 1: forth your powers in adorning this theme, each with his
Speaker 1: own thoughts and devices, if he will, But I will
Speaker 1: sit and hearken, and be glad that through you great
Speaker 1: beauty has been awakened into song. But now a luvitar
Speaker 1: sat hearkened, and for a great while it seemed good
Speaker 1: to him, for in the music there were no flaws.
Speaker 1: But as the theme progressed, it came to the heart
Speaker 1: of Melchor to interweave matters of his own imaginery that
Speaker 1: were not in the corps, with a theme of Alluviatad,
Speaker 1: for he sought therein to increase the power and glory
Speaker 1: of the part assigned to himself to Melchor. Among the
Speaker 1: Einar had been given the greatest gifts of power and knowledge,
Speaker 1: and he had a share in all the gifts of
Speaker 1: his brethren. He had gone often alone into the void places,
Speaker 1: seeking the imperishable flame, for desire grew hot within him
Speaker 1: to bring into being things of his own. And it
Speaker 1: seemed to him that Aluvatar took no thought for the void,
Speaker 1: and he was impatient of its emptiness. Yet he found
Speaker 1: not the fire, for it is with Louvatar. But being alone,
Speaker 1: he'd begun to conceive thoughts of his own, unlike those
Speaker 1: of his brethren. In the midst of this strife whereat,
Speaker 1: the halls of a Luatar shook, and its shredder ran
Speaker 1: out into the silences. Yet unmoved, a Louvatar erose a
Speaker 1: third time, and his face was terrible to behold. Then
Speaker 1: he raised up both his hands in one chord deeper
Speaker 1: than the abyss, higher than the fermat, piercing as the
Speaker 1: light of the eye of a Luvatar. The music had ceased.
Speaker 1: Then Aluvatar spoke, and he said, mighty hear the ire,
Speaker 1: and mightiest among them is Melchor. But that he may know,
Speaker 1: and all the ire that I am a Luvitar. Those
Speaker 1: things that ye have sung, I will show them forth,
Speaker 1: that ye may see what ye have done. And thou Melchor,
Speaker 1: shalt see that no theme may be played hath not
Speaker 1: its uttermost source in me, Nor can any alter the
Speaker 1: music in my despite for he that attempteth this shall
Speaker 1: prove a mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful,
Speaker 1: which he himself hath not imagined. Then there was unrest
Speaker 1: among the ininre, But a Louvatar called to them and said,
Speaker 1: I know the desire of your minds, that what ye
Speaker 1: have seen should verily be not only in your thought,
Speaker 1: but even as ye yourselves are, and yet other. Therefore
Speaker 1: I say, AA, let these things be, and I will
Speaker 1: send forth into the void the flame imperishable, and it
Speaker 1: shall be at the heart of the world, and the
Speaker 1: world shall be, and those of you that will may
Speaker 1: go down into it. And suddenly the inar saw far
Speaker 1: off a light as it were, a cloud with a
Speaker 1: living heart of flame, and they knew that this was
Speaker 1: no vision only, but that Alluvatar had made a new
Speaker 1: thing aa the world that is now. Those are just
Speaker 1: a few snippets from the Island Today, which we find
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the Silmarillion. Now, if you've never
Speaker 1: read this before, or if you have, then I strongly
Speaker 1: recommend that you give this a read. Honestly, just pick
Speaker 1: up the summarily into yourself a favor if you have
Speaker 1: not already done that. But if you don't have a copy,
Speaker 1: then I am providing a PDF of thelay itself, and
Speaker 1: so make sure that you take a read of that
Speaker 1: get the full context. It is just absolutely beautiful, one
Speaker 1: of my favorite sections of Tolkien's entire legendarium. But let's
Speaker 1: talk about just a few elements here. There are literally
Speaker 1: books that I've been written on just this section on
Speaker 1: thelay that the Creation account, but we're just gonna look
Speaker 1: at some little snippets there laying out some foundational ideas
Speaker 1: for Tolkien's world. For talking story as we start off
Speaker 1: on the Lord of the Rings. So in the beginning
Speaker 1: we have Aero Aluvatar, the one God who created the
Speaker 1: ininor from his thought. But what are the ininor? And
Speaker 1: this could be an important question because it's the kind
Speaker 1: of thing that gets some people to claim that Tolkien
Speaker 1: was promoting some kind of like polytheistic peganism, as if
Speaker 1: he has multiple creator gods. And in a certain sense
Speaker 1: he does, but not in the ultimate sense. And this
Speaker 1: is where we need to disentangle the ideas of creation
Speaker 1: and subcreation. It's very clear that there is one ultimate
Speaker 1: creator God. There is one being that doesn't owe its
Speaker 1: being on anything else, but it independently exists, and this
Speaker 1: is Eru Eluvitar. The ininor who do play a part
Speaker 1: in creation. They play a kind of derivative role in creation,
Speaker 1: or they engage in subcreation. They themselves are creative beings
Speaker 1: and they work with creative realities, namely the creativity that's
Speaker 1: implicit in their own creation, and they use that to
Speaker 1: go about fashioning the world. And so ultimately there's one
Speaker 1: creator God, despite the fact that he does make use
Speaker 1: of intermediaries, and so the ininor should best be understood
Speaker 1: as the heavenly court of God or the ranks of angels,
Speaker 1: which even Scripture sometimes refers to as gods with a
Speaker 1: lowercase gene. In fact, Tolkien himself of being a devout
Speaker 1: Roman Catholic, so that he wanted his mythology to be
Speaker 1: consonant with Christian theology. And so he's not writing allegory.
Speaker 1: He's writing a prehistory for our world, which, as a
Speaker 1: Roman Catholic he sees as a Christian world. And so
Speaker 1: he's trying to write a mythology that is consonant with
Speaker 1: orthodox Christian theology. And so with Tolkien, in the way
Speaker 1: that his whole story, his whole legendarium is framed, we're
Speaker 1: dealing with legends that have been passed down from a
Speaker 1: very pre Christian people, but in a world that anticipates
Speaker 1: Christian revelation. In a nineteen fifty one letter to Milson Waldman,
Speaker 1: Tolkien says, of the valor which are the leading Iinor
Speaker 1: that entered into the world of Arta, the material world
Speaker 1: in which we live. He writes the cycles begin with
Speaker 1: the cosmogonical myth the music of the iinor God, and
Speaker 1: the valor or powers English as gods are revealed x
Speaker 1: latter are as we should say, angelic powers, whose function
Speaker 1: is to exercise delegated authority in their spheres of rule
Speaker 1: and government, not creation, making or remaking. They are divine,
Speaker 1: that is, were originally outside and existed before the making
Speaker 1: of the world. Their power and wisdom is derived from
Speaker 1: their knowledge of the cosmogonical drama, which they perceived first
Speaker 1: as a drama, that is, as in a fashion we
Speaker 1: perceive a story composed by someone else, and later as
Speaker 1: a reality on the side of mere narrative device. This
Speaker 1: is of course, meant to provide beings of the same
Speaker 1: order of beauty, power, and majesty as the gods of
Speaker 1: higher mythology, which can yet be accepted well, shall we say,
Speaker 1: badly by a mind that believes in the blessed Trinity.
Speaker 1: And so Tolkien very much believed that his so called
Speaker 1: gods lowercase g gods or powers, or the holy ones
Speaker 1: were entirely consonant with Christian orthodoxy. Will not explicitly focused
Speaker 1: on them alliance content. He famously said in a nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty three letter to Robert Murray. The Lord of the
Speaker 1: Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work,
Speaker 1: unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. Now
Speaker 1: for one more defense of Talkien's theological orthodoxy as even
Speaker 1: represented within his story, Let's check out this clip from
Speaker 1: a nineteen sixty five BBC interview.
Speaker 2: There's an autumnal quality throughout the whole of The Lord
Speaker 2: of the Rings. There's a sense of continuous change. Each
Speaker 2: character feels himself to be part of a story that's
Speaker 2: forever continuing. In one case, a character says, the story
Speaker 2: is continued, what I seem to have dropped out of it? However,
Speaker 2: everything is declining and it's fading, at least towards the
Speaker 2: end of the third age. Every choice tends to the
Speaker 2: upsetting of some tradition. Now, this seems to me to
Speaker 2: be somewhat like Tennyson's The Old Order changeth, yielding place
Speaker 2: to new and god fulfillms himself in many ways? Where
Speaker 2: is God in The Lord of the Rings?
Speaker 3: You mentioned one sort of is he the one about one?
Speaker 2: Despite the continuous war between evil personified and souron and good,
Speaker 2: you never personalize or personify goodness. Good is there, but
Speaker 2: it's totally abstract. You don't attempt to ascribe any any
Speaker 2: godship to it. Particularly No.
Speaker 3: No, there's in the dualistic mythologies based on no.
Speaker 2: But I mean the whole book is nevertheless nothing but
Speaker 2: the battle between good and evil.
Speaker 3: All that's surprise. Suppose the actually conscious reaction from the
Speaker 3: war from these stuff that I was well on my
Speaker 3: ward end, wars which I didn't believe in at the time,
Speaker 3: I believe in less now.
Speaker 2: If I can take this a bit further, I may
Speaker 2: make my point clearer. In battle, Frodo and Sam call
Speaker 2: on Galadriel or their native country, Gimli calls on the
Speaker 2: ancestors X. If I read your appendices correctly, and the
Speaker 2: men call only on their swords by name, or on
Speaker 2: their kings or lords, I would expect them to call
Speaker 2: on their gods. And yet amid thousands of names, you
Speaker 2: don't name the there it is of any of the
Speaker 2: races you've invented. Why have they know gods? That sut
Speaker 2: to me. I would have thought a story of this
Speaker 2: sort was almost dependent upon an intense belief in some
Speaker 2: theocratic division, some hierarchy there is.
Speaker 3: Indeed, that's where the theoretical hierarchy comes in. The Man
Speaker 3: of the twentieth CENTI master, of course see that you
Speaker 3: must have well, whether you believes them or not. You
Speaker 3: must have gods in a story of this guy, but
Speaker 3: he can't name so believe in gods like thorn Odin, Aphrodity, Zeus,
Speaker 3: snake Canny.
Speaker 2: You can't believe that the men in your story would
Speaker 2: have called on Odin.
Speaker 3: I could't bossibly construct the mythology which had the olympus
Speaker 3: who asked God. Aren't the terms in which the people
Speaker 3: who worshiped those gods believed in. God is supreme, the creator, outside, transcendent.
Speaker 3: But the place of the the gods is taken so
Speaker 3: well taken, I think that it really rikes so difference
Speaker 3: to the ordinary reader is taken by the angelic spirits
Speaker 3: created by God. The creating before particular time sequence which
Speaker 3: we call the worlds is called in there that which
Speaker 3: is that now exists. Those are the battle of the bar.
Speaker 3: It's a construction methodology in which a large part of
Speaker 3: the demiourgic I think has been has been handed over
Speaker 3: two bars who are created there in under the one.
Speaker 3: It's certainly like a much more elaborate and more thought
Speaker 3: out of the C. S. Lewis business when it is
Speaker 3: out of the side of the planet where you have
Speaker 3: a we have a demiogos who's acting command of the
Speaker 3: of the planet Mars. And the idea there was elusive.
Speaker 3: It was originally the one in command of the world
Speaker 3: that he fell, So it was a silent planet, was
Speaker 3: it falled out of that was the idea.
Speaker 2: Well, this is not the same with me, yes, yes,
Speaker 2: So then you have in your theopracy you have an
Speaker 2: ultimate one whom you call and then the vella who
Speaker 2: are considered as living in Vellinore.
Speaker 3: This particular little group of them who are who were
Speaker 3: moved from other parts of university to do this pot
Speaker 3: because they became interested in.
Speaker 1: So with that settled, let's talk about what we see
Speaker 1: in this creation account. Aero creates the ire from his thought,
Speaker 1: and the Inar reflect on the goodness and glory of
Speaker 1: Eru through a majestic song that gains beauty, gains harmony
Speaker 1: as it progresses, which with each of the ininre learning
Speaker 1: from other ininre things about that they know uniquely, that
Speaker 1: they uniquely know about God. And by the way that
Speaker 1: this organization that we have here is very much in
Speaker 1: line with medieval angelology, and we take a look at
Speaker 1: you know, Pseudodionysius, for example, this idea that knowledge of
Speaker 1: God is passed on through the angels, and so we
Speaker 1: have an innumerable line of intermediaries as this knowledge of
Speaker 1: God flows down from the angel's closest to God's presence
Speaker 1: down to those who are most involved with the affairs
Speaker 1: of men. And so it's all part of the great dance,
Speaker 1: as Lewis refers to it, or we could even refer
Speaker 1: to this as the great chain of being. And so
Speaker 1: this is a very traditional, very medieval Christian theology coming
Speaker 1: out here. And by the way, for more on this topic,
Speaker 1: I encourage you to pick up The Flame Imperishable Tolkien
Speaker 1: Saint Thomas and the Metaphysics of Faery, in which Jonathan
Speaker 1: McIntosh really does a good job of laying out the
Speaker 1: connection between the theology and the philosophy of Saint Thomas,
Speaker 1: Aquietness and j. R. Tolkien found especially in the idolind Delay.
Speaker 1: So this is a great text if you want to
Speaker 1: indelve more into this. Well, despite the majesty, the power,
Speaker 1: the beauty of this great harmony, Melchor, the greatest of
Speaker 1: the Ainore becomes discontent with his station and he attempts
Speaker 1: to usurp the authority of Eru by turning the song
Speaker 1: upon himself. Thus we have the primordial conflict in Tolkien's legendarium,
Speaker 1: which proceeds from the very beginning of the Cimarillian although
Speaker 1: at this point we're not actually in the Similarrillian proper,
Speaker 1: but I guess that's not really relevant. So from the
Speaker 1: very beginning of his legendarium all the way up to
Speaker 1: the end of the Lord of the Rings, Melchor who's
Speaker 1: later dubbed Morgoth, is the first villain, but his servant
Speaker 1: Suron would follow in his footsteps, as would all who
Speaker 1: chose the villain's path. Now, what exactly is this conflict
Speaker 1: at the heart of it? Well, Tolkien tells us this
Speaker 1: in his nineteen fifty six notes on W. H. Auden's
Speaker 1: review of The Lord of the Rings. He writes, in
Speaker 1: The Lord of the Rings, the conflict is not basically
Speaker 1: about freedom, though that is naturally involved. It is about
Speaker 1: God and his sole right to divine honor. The Eldar
Speaker 1: and the Newmanorians believed in the One, the True God,
Speaker 1: and held worship of any other person an abomination. Suran
Speaker 1: desired to be a god king and was held to
Speaker 1: be this by his servants. If he had been victorious,
Speaker 1: he would have demanded divine honor from all rational creatures
Speaker 1: in absolute temporal power over the whole world. And so
Speaker 1: there it is. The Lord of the Rings is about
Speaker 1: God and his soul right to divine honor. Melchor sought
Speaker 1: this divine honor for himself. Sauron did the same. The
Speaker 1: heroes of tolkien Legendarium, however, are those who recognize their station,
Speaker 1: and they live for a reality that is above and
Speaker 1: beyond them. This is a world that is set before
Speaker 1: Christian revelation, and so such heroes may not always know
Speaker 1: exactly what they're doing in clear dogmatic terms. Their spirits, however,
Speaker 1: were rightly oriented in this God honoring direction, and in
Speaker 1: the height of Numnorian spirituality, we actually get the closest
Speaker 1: in the Legendarium to an organized religion centered around worship
Speaker 1: of the One True God, and this is portrayed as
Speaker 1: the height of human civilization, which in a significant way
Speaker 1: is actually different than even the Glory of the elves,
Speaker 1: who at their best tend to relate to the Valor
Speaker 1: rather than directly with Eru. That's actually uniquely a human gift.
Speaker 1: It's uniquely a human orientation. Now, this is an idea,
Speaker 1: and really we've laid out a number of ideas that
Speaker 1: we will return to and that we will expand throughout
Speaker 1: and especially at the end of the course. But I
Speaker 1: thought it was important at the beginning of our story
Speaker 1: to begin at the foundation of Tolkien's world building and
Speaker 1: some of the philosophy that lays at the bottom of
Speaker 1: his legendary on But that's it for our short video today.
Speaker 1: I look forward to getting into the next action and
Speaker 1: reading with you until next time. God's been