Buried Treasure!

Somewhere in the US, it would seem.  Excerpts:

...In 1988, Fenn was at the top of his career as an art dealer, with clients including Ralph Lauren, Robert Redford and Suzanne Somers, when he received devastating news: He had advanced kidney cancer. His diagnosis showed he had only a 20 percent chance of surviving the next three years.

So Fenn started to consider his legacy.

He worked on his clue-poem for years, and took his time collecting items to put in the chest. When he felt the treasure was complete and he was strong enough to carry it, he buried it.

"After I hid the treasure I walked back to my car feeling very proud of myself and laughing out loud," he said. "I asked, 'Forrest, did you really do that?' There have never been any regrets. Now it is for the ages and a big part of me in that treasure chest. I felt it go in as I closed the lid for the last time..."

Gandalf, Galadriel, and Cosmic Battle

There are moments in The Hobbit where it suddenly becomes starkly clear that Peter Jackson really gets certain of Tolkien's influences, such as the gathering of the White Council at Rivendell.

Stratford Caldecott writes:

...There is a second way in which the Virgin Mary is present, and that is through her reflections in certain feminine characters, specifically Galadriel and Elbereth.19 Galadriel is one of the pivotal elvish characters: Bearer of one of the three Rings and preserver of the land of Lothlorien, Tolkien himself calls her “unstained” (a word that Catholics normally only use of the Virgin Mary), adding that “she had committed no evil deeds.”20 In another letter he wrote: “I think it is true that I owe much of this character to Christian and Catholic teaching and imagination about Mary.”21

Yet the workings and reworkings of his manuscript reveal an ambiguity, or an evolution, for in earlier drafts Galadriel was a leader in the rebellion of the Elves against the Valar, the world’s angelic guardians. From this rebellion Tolkien obviously later felt the need to absolve her. In the Unfinished Tales, we find a chapter containing the “History of Galadriel and Celeborn,” in which Christopher Tolkien records the “late and partly illegible note” that is “the last writing of my father’s on the subject . . . set down in the last month of his life.” In this revised history, which he intended to incorporate in the next version of The Silmarillion, Galadriel is not at all involved in the rebellion of the Elves but indeed opposed it, and was caught up in the departure from Aman to Middle-earth through no fault of her own. Thus she was morally as well as “physically” equipped to be the elvish leader in Middle-earth of resistance to Sauron. We see here, I think, the pressure of the Marian archetype in Tolkien’s imagination on the development of the character of Galadriel.

Not quite “immaculate” (without sin), then, in the official version, but to the Hobbits in The Lord of the Rings, and even to the Dwarf Gimli (who asks for the parting gift of a hair from her head, which he intends to enshrine within imperishable crystal), Galadriel is nevertheless a vision of wisdom, beauty, and grace, of light untarnished.

Galadriel, however, remains an earthly figure. In Roman Catholic devotion and dogma, Mary, having been assumed into heaven at the end of her earthly life, has long been venerated as Queen of Heaven and “Star of the Sea.” We find this cosmic aspect of the Marian archetype expressed in the person of Galadriel’s own heavenly patroness, Elbereth, Queen of the Stars, who plays the role in Tolkien’s legendarium of transmitting light from the heavenly places. It is to Elbereth that the Elves sing the following invocation:

Snow-white! Snow-white! O Lady clear!
O Queen beyond the Western seas!
O light to us that wander here
Amid the world of woven trees!
O Elbereth! Gilthoniel!
We still remember, we who dwell
In this far land beneath the trees,
Thy Starlight on the Western seas.

Tolkien would have been familiar with one of the most popular Catholic hymns from his childhood, the tone and mood of which are markedly close to those of Tolkien’s song to Elbereth:22

Hail, Queen of Heaven, the ocean star,
Guide of the wand’rer here below:
Thrown on life’s surge, we claim thy care—
Save us from peril and from woe.
Mother of Christ, star of the sea,
Pray for the wanderer, pray for me...

Gandalf--well, perhaps a comparison will make it clear. This is Gandalf striking the Balrog as it falls in the opening of the Two Towers.

Thia is a traditional Catholic icon of Saint Michael.

The imagery and teaching on St. Michael follows in large part from several key passages of Scripture.

“Do not fear, Daniel,” he continued; “from the first day you made up your mind to acquire understanding and humble yourself before God, your prayer was heard. Because of it I started out, but the prince of the kingdom of Persia stood in my way for twenty-one days, until finally Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me. I left him there with the prince of the kingdom of Persia, and came to make you understand what shall happen to your people in the last days; for there is yet a vision concerning those days.” Daniel 10:12-14

So he said, “Do you know why I have come to you? Soon I will return to fight against the prince of Persia, and when I go, the prince of Greece will come; but first I will tell you what is written in the Book of Truth. (No one supports me against them except Michael, your prince." Daniel 10:20-21

“At that time Michael, the great prince who protects your people, will arise. There will be a time of distress such as has not happened from the beginning of nations until then. But at that time your people—everyone whose name is found written in the book—will be delivered." Daniel 12:12

"But even the archangel Michael, when he was disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, did not himself dare to condemn him for slander but said, “The Lord rebuke you!” Jude 1:9

A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was with child and wailed aloud in pain as she labored to give birth. Then another sign appeared in the sky; it was a huge red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on its heads were seven diadems. Its tail swept away a third of the stars in the sky and hurled them down to the earth. Then the dragon stood before the woman about to give birth, to devour her child when she gave birth. She gave birth to a son, a male child, destined to rule all the nations with an iron rod. Her child was caught up to God and his throne. The woman herself fled into the desert where she had a place prepared by God, that there she might be taken care of for twelve hundred and sixty days.

Then war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels battled against the dragon. The dragon and its angels fought back, 8but they did not prevail and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. The huge dragon, the ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, who deceived the whole world, was thrown down to earth, and its angels were thrown down with it. Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:

“Now have salvation and power come, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Anointed. For the accuser of our brothers is cast out, who accuses them before our God day and night. They conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; love for life did not deter them from death. Therefore, rejoice, you heavens, and you who dwell in them. But woe to you, earth and sea, for the Devil has come down to you in great fury, for he knows he has but a short time.”  Revelation 12:1-12

From St. Louis de Montfort's True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Excerpts:

...Every day, from one end of the earth to the other, in the highest heaven and in the lowest abyss, all things preach, all things proclaim the wondrous Virgin Mary. The nine choirs of angels, men and women of every age, rank and religion, both good and evil, even the very devils themselves are compelled by the force of truth, willingly or unwillingly, to call her blessed.

According to St. Bonaventure, all the angels in heaven unceasingly call out to her: "Holy, holy, holy Mary, Virgin Mother of God." They greet her countless times each day with the angelic greeting, "Hail, Mary", while prostrating themselves before her, begging her as a favour to honour them with one of her requests. According to St. Augustine, even St. Michael, though prince of all the heavenly court, is the most eager of all the angels to honour her and lead others to honour her. At all times he awaits the privilege of going at her word to the aid of one of her servants...

Neil Gaiman's Creative Godfathers

Ahem.  Hat tip Leo Partible.  Excerpts:

There are authors with whom one has a personal relationship and authors with whom one does not. There are the ones who change your life and the ones who don’t. That’s just the way of it...

Chesterton and Tolkien and Lewis were, as I’ve said, not the only writers I read between the ages of six and thirteen, but they were the authors I read over and over again; each of them played a part in building me. Without them, I cannot imagine that I would have become a writer, and certainly not a writer of fantastic fiction.

Lord of the Rings in Symphony

with commentary by Howard Shore!

The Anchoress: Benedict Saw It Coming

An interesting collection of this and that.  Excerpts:

...At the dawn of the social revolution, Ratzinger saw all of this, and now he is our Pope, leading us through these first serious labor pains. Who knows if he will be with us through the delivery — I very much doubt it — but seeing him in Peter’s chair at this time reminds us that God has his hand in all things, even in the pastoral weaknesses of the past few decades that have helped us get to this place.

Sir Christopher Lee--A Remarkable Life

Well, holy crud.  In his youth, the man who played Saruman, Count Dooku, Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, and the head of a murderous occultic cult, among a lot of other parts, fought Nazis.  Indeed, he fought Nazis to such a degree that he has expert knowledge of what the sound of someone getting knifed in the back should be.

Would You Like Some Gibbets With That?

So I had occasion to remember the exchange between Theoden and Saruman at the foot of Orthanc recently, which led to Google and the following awesomeness.  Excerpts:

...Memorable invective is a joy forever, whether it be that exchange or Moira’s scornful rejection of Thorfel’s offer to make her his lawfully wedded wife in “The Dark Man.” Churls will complain, as they always do, that words like “elsewhither,” “dotard,” or even “gibbet” itself discriminate against the 21st century reader, render Tolkien’s meaning inaccessible to the great unwashed or the borderline unlettered. Too bad. Howard and Tolkien were master dramatists when they wanted to be (which is why any REH adaptation that doesn’t revel in his dialogue is foredoomed, which is why no Germanic bodybuilder will ever pass muster as Conan), and their kings and malign beings regularly scale rhetorical Himalayas.

Like Mark Finn, I’ve devoured J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels, but one place where she falls down hard without any cushioning is Voldemort’s dialogue. His each and every utterance is from a broken-spined, jaundiced-with-yellow-highlightings copy of The Supervillain’s Phrasebook. In a steelcage deathmatch or Thunderdome showdown to determine Most Hackneyed, I might bet on Voldmember even against the de Camp/Carter Thoth-Amon, who couldn’t verbally intimidate Scooby-Doo. When the worst of the worst achieve true immortality despite being killed deader-than-dead, (not just Dark Lords, a “human” character like Quilp in The Old Curiosity Shop works as an example) it’s often because a language-kindled nimbus of hellfire blackens the edges of every page on which they appear...

Lothlorien Exists!

In Ethiopia.  Behold--church forests!  Cool photos at the original.  Excerpts:

...Followers of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Churches believe they should maintain a home for all of God’s creatures around their places of worship. The result? Forests ringing churches.

There are some 35,000 church forests in Ethiopia, ranging in size from a few acres to 300 hectares. Some churches and their forests may date back to the fourth century, and all are remnants of Ethiopia’s historic Afromontane forests. To their followers, they are a sacred symbol of the garden of Eden — to be loved and cared for, but not worshipped.

Most church forests are concentrated in the northern reaches of the country, especially in the Lake Tana area. Here, most of the Afromontane forests have been cut down to make clearings for agriculture, pastures for livestock and settlements. It is said that if a traveler to the area spies a forest, it surely has a church in the middle. Many also have freshwater springs.

These spiritually-protected woods, also known as coptic forests, comprise a decent chunk of the 5 percent of Ethiopia’s historical forests that are still standing. Massive deforestation has rendered these church forests as true islands — green oases peppering a land laid bare...

Lord of the Rings--From Mordor's Perspective

You know, sometimes, the heroic version of the tale is in fact the true one.  But no--someone decided the bad guys might have been the good guys after all.  Excerpts:

...There's two sides to every story, or to quote a less banal maxim, history is written by the winners. That's the philosophy behind "The Last Ringbearer," a novel set during and after the end of the War of the Ring (the climactic battle at the end of "The Lord of the Rings") and told from the point of view of the losers. The novel was written by Kirill Yeskov, a Russian paleontologist, and published to acclaim in his homeland in 1999...

...one Yisroel Markov posted his English translation of "The Last Ringbearer" as a free download...

...In Yeskov's retelling, the wizard Gandalf is a war-monger intent on crushing the scientific and technological initiative of Mordor and its southern allies because science "destroys the harmony of the world and dries up the souls of men!" He's in cahoots with the elves, who aim to become "masters of the world," and turn Middle-earth into a "bad copy" of their magical homeland across the sea. Barad-dur, also known as the Dark Tower and Sauron's citadel, is, by contrast, described as "that amazing city of alchemists and poets, mechanics and astronomers, philosophers and physicians, the heart of the only civilization in Middle-earth to bet on rational knowledge and bravely pitch its barely adolescent technology against ancient magic."

Because Gandalf refers to Mordor as the "Evil Empire" and is accused of crafting a "Final Solution to the Mordorian problem" by rival wizard Saruman, he obviously serves as an avatar for Russia's 20th-century foes. But the juxtaposition of the willfully feudal and backward "West," happy with "picking lice in its log 'castles'" while Mordor cultivates learning and embraces change, also recalls the clash between Europe in the early Middle Ages and the more sophisticated and learned Muslim empires to the east and south. Sauron passes a "universal literacy law," while the shield maiden Eowyn has been raised illiterate, "like most of Rohan's elite" -- good guys Tolkien based on his beloved Anglo-Saxons...

The inhuman nature of the orcs and Tolkien's depiction of Mordor's human allies as swarthy-skinned outsiders has prompted complaints that his book obscures the moral conundrums of warfare and dabbles in racial demonization. The American critic Edmund Wilson described "The Lord of the Rings" as a children's book that had "somehow got out of hand" and "juvenile trash," in large part for such reasons. Others, like the novelist Michael Moorcock, have attacked Middle-earth as a childishly rose-tinted vision of the Merrie Olde England that never was, as well as willfully blind to the hardships and injustice of preindustrial and feudal societies...

Harumph. Methinks the novel is meant to be a legend, the development of a mythos for England, cause, well, gee, that's what Tolkien said it was supposed to be. And myths are usually fairly black and white. The good are good, and the evil are evil.

Further, there's a deep rooted cynicism at work here. Sometimes, the good are actually, you know, good. And sometimes, that incredible, impossible heroism and remarkable confluence of events? Sometimes it's real. Watch the news long enough--those things pop up.

Poetry for Our Lady of Guadalupe

A time-honored Christian tradition:

This collection of Marian poems honors the Blessed Virgin Mary's appearances at Guadalupe in Tepeyac, a poor area on the periphery of what today is known as Mexico City, Mexico...

In fact, speaking of Marian poetry, Tolkien did a little work in that vein (as explained by Stratford Caldecott, someone who seems to be making a regular appearance on these e-pages):

...In Roman Catholic devotion and dogma, Mary, having been assumed into heaven at the end of her earthly life, has long been venerated as Queen of Heaven and “Star of the Sea.” We find this cosmic aspect of the Marian archetype expressed in the person of Galadriel’s own heavenly patroness, Elbereth, Queen of the Stars, who plays the role in Tolkien’s legendarium of transmitting light from the heavenly places. It is to Elbereth that the Elves sing the following invocation:

Snow-white! Snow-white! O Lady clear!
O Queen beyond the Western seas!
O light to us that wander here
Amid the world of woven trees!
O Elbereth! Gilthoniel!
We still remember, we who dwell
In this far land beneath the trees,
Thy Starlight on the Western seas.

Tolkien would have been familiar with one of the most popular Catholic hymns from his childhood, the tone and mood of which are markedly close to those of Tolkien’s song to Elbereth:22

Hail, Queen of Heaven, the ocean star,
Guide of the wand’rer here below:
Thrown on life’s surge, we claim thy care—
Save us from peril and from woe.
Mother of Christ, star of the sea,
Pray for the wanderer, pray for me...

On Rings, Tolkien, and Curses

A curious set of historical oddities:

Either we have a remarkable coincidence here – Senicianus is a rare name – or we have two halves of a fourth-century story written out on a pair relics from Roman Britain found a couple of hundred miles apart.

Silvanus had lost a ring that had been stolen or lent to Senicianus and Silvanus, in a fine fury, wrote out a curse tablet to bring down the wrath of Nodens (a nasty water-dog divinity) on the ring’s possessor. Senicianus meanwhile didn’t give a damn and got his name inscribed (badly) on the ring’s edge.

Beachcombing concedes that it is not Anna Karenina. But it is one of these rare moments when dark British antiquity becomes human:

‘The blood that warms an English yeoman,
The thoughts that hurt him, they were there...’

This strange soap opera played out through two archaeological objects is surely reason enough to visit an obscure Tudor house – what a shame the original curse stone and the ring could not be exhibited together!

However, there is more. When Mortimer Wheeler was digging at Lydney in 1929 he got in touch with an obscure Oxford don to do some of the linguistic legwork on the name Nodens. (A god that incidentally survives in Welsh legend as Nudd). The name of this obscure don? None other than J. R. R. Tolkien. Anyone who ever thrilled over the Hobbit should now see where this is going.

Tolkien published an appendix to Wheeler’s work and it has been suggested that Wheeler told J.R.R. about a cursed ring and that a story began, already at that early date, to ferment in the scholar’s mind.

One ring to rule them all…

Cast It Into The Fire! Destroy It!

Isildur!

The Three Visions of the Apocalypse

What does it mean that the two great memes of the last 50-70 years or so have included, not just the end of the world, but also stopping the end of the world? We have two avenues of thought. The one embraces it. Apocalypticism is a great hope--the transformative event, the step into the next realm, or simply release from the painful present. Then there's a middle genre--we shunt the end of the world sideways somehow, so that the properly old die but men can continue, can go on much as we have (Lord of the Rings may be in this). Not a proper eschaton, then, but a middle way. Then we've got the sort of mindset epitomized by the quest for eternal youth, the metahumans, the sort who worship the mind melded to the machine as a greatly liberating option. We go beyond ourselves by technology, or in some way gain immortality. Usually this view is still shadowed by the haunting presence of mortality, even if it does demand a lot longer to come and claim us, but we die eventually nonetheless--but we don't permit that to trouble us. We focus on the perpetual pursuit of youth, of life, of adventure, of cheating death and outwitting fate and being smarter than the Lord of all that is, represented by some appropriately God the Father like figure, or god-like figure at least. And we're smart. And we win. The first seems like an overeager Christian view--unhealthy, in a way, a failure of the patient waiting and trust that we're supposed to maintain--almost suicidal, in a way. Overeager for death. The second feels about right. We aim to defeat evil, willing to lose our lives in so doing, and thus have the hope of coming through, evil having been shed from the world and the good going to their proper place, wherever that may be. A harmonious wrapping up. Sorrow and loss, combined with great joy and victory. The proper end comes in its own time--it may be now--but we will have obeyed, will have fought the good fight. The last--this seems to smack of the evil one. The world ender is evil, and must be outsmarted. There is a way out, there must be a way out, there's always a way out! We can take him out, we can do it, we can make this world last forever! Even if it came from him, we'll take it back, we'll claim it, he has no right! Who is he to judge us? And we set ourselves to fight heaven. See Legion for an example of this. And possibly, thinking about it, the most recent Doctor Who called "The End of Time." Where are we, then? What does this indicate, if all three strands are powerfully present in human culture right now? The latter may incline us to fight, not just evil, but God as well since he shall bring about the end--indeed, God the Father is the only one who can. The first may cause us to be reckless and pursue death. The middle--there's Michael O'Brien, and Lewis, and Chesterton, and all of them. Robert Hugh Benson, all the great Christian apocalypticists. I have no idea if this illuminates anything--just got hit by the thought.

The Lifeboats of the World

"Life in the wide world goes on much as it has these past age, full of its own comings and goings, scarcely aware of the existence of hobbits..."

So said Gandalf right before the great race to Mount Doom, right before he discovered the treachery of Saruman and the dire state his enemies had wrought. Similarly, we stand on the edge of a great precipice, made plain by the events of the past year, rumored at and hinted for years before that.> Perhaps Leo XIII saw truly; perhaps the many, many Marian apparitions of the past century have warned accurately; perhaps we stand on the edge of unimaginable times. If we do, then a return to a certain historical institution is in order.

Our current Holy Father took the name Benedict XVI, bringing back memories of an ancient Benedict, one who was a true blessing to the Church and to the world. But for him and the monasteries he founded or inspired, Western Christendom could not have arisen. The immense contributions of the monastic system to human civilization have been mentioned rather less emphatically than they deserve. Like the ancient Benedict, we are confronted with a dramatically corrupt civilization, one that has surrendered to the lures of greed, lust, and a hedonistic materialism that enervates the soul and drags down its adherents in a deathly sloth, ;destroying both Christian and natural virtue. I speak as one who has experienced these temptations--indeed, almost any child of the modern age could say the same.

Like the ancient Benedict, a person watching current events through the eyes of faith can realize that much of what we see is sin punishing sin--that is, when one breaks natural law, natural consequences ensue. When one breaks the fundamental moral laws of economics in the name of profit, the system will break down. These laws run deeper than an imperative to Christian charity or anything demanding supernatural grace. Laws as basic as "give the customer what they pay for," "do not advertise falsely," and so forth have been broken in a systemic way.

The consequences are likewise systemic. The same applies to the breakdown of marriage and the family, to the human relationship with the environment, to the relationships within the Church. Anyone reading of Catholicism before Vatican II and living it after Vatican II will recognize a deep rift between the depth and luminosity of the Catholic mind then and the massive fog of confusion now. There needs to be a restoration of the monasteries as centers for the preservation of learning, for self-sufficiency through crisis, for stable links to the past preparing for the future and living the Christian vocation in the present.

For the love of God and of truth, for the healing of the present society and preparation for what dreams may come, the Church needs the Benedictines and the like to take up once again the ancient call of being life boats for the world following the Barque of Peter.