Tolkien Init.

Tolkien’s Sacred Geometry.

 

Well, Sméagol, the third turn may turn the best. I will come with you.

Tolkien Predictions © Carl Lingard

The following predictions were generated and derived from my theory of Planar Geometry, Rational Planes and Time and Space within Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. The geometry within his works is accompanied by a device called THE TURN. The theory first began to take shape in the autumn of 2005. I arrived at the first ideas regarding the identities of Bombadil and Goldberry as Space and Time in the year after. The ideas were formulated after discovering in 2006 what I believe to be Tolkien’s ‘Rosetta Stone’ in the Akallabêth. That is, a key made by Tolkien intentionally, modeled on the real-world analogue of the same name, which we can use to understand his works at a fundamental level.  It began with a chance conversation in 2005, with my ex-girlfriend about Ancient Egypt, (a subject which she knew a lot about), while I was reading the Akallabêth. I had no desire at all to critique Tolkien’s works. The theory is derived and developed from the ground up from the close and exhaustive study of the etymology of the words of his texts (that is, almost every word), in his essays, correspondences, and the study of his illustrations. Note, I have only ever read The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit twice (cover to cover) in 30 years. The Silmarillion only once. So no close familiarity can be claimed. However, I’ve loved his works all my life. I have been working on my research on and off for over 18 years, but I did not discuss any of it until the last few years. 

To date I have made 105 predictions based on my understanding. Many predictions will be that a specific word will appear in the text at a specific place, or I have predicted the meanings of etymologies of either English words or Elvish words. Some of the predictions involve numbers.

Around 2005 I had concluded that Bombadil and Goldberry were Space and Time. In 2015 I found a source which I believe was influential in shaping the personality of Bombadil, and the relationship of Bombadil and Goldberry. It was from that I deduced that Bombadil and Goldberry were represented by the numbers 2 and 6, from the half-crown coin in pre-decimal English money- which was known as “2 and 6 pence”. I had already encountered the double-crown of Upper and Lower Egypt in his letters, and had also conceived Bombadil and Goldberry to be two halves of one whole: Space and Time. The notion of a ‘half a crown’ in the other sense didn’t seem a huge leap from that. I then had a hunch. I already knew that Tolkien was using numbers in his works from other sources; the Rhyme of Lore being one of them of course, but especially the numbers 6 and 9. I predicted that the hobbits met Bombadil on the 26th of a month. I looked it up. I was correct. They met him on the 26th Sept. That was the first of many examples of Tolkien’s integration of numbers beyond the Rings.

But I still didn’t know who of the pair was 2 or who was 6. After more work I’d concluded that Goldberry was the number 6. Around that time I had also concluded that they were Moon-Silver and Sun-Gold. Indeed that Bombadil and Goldberry were Tolkien and Edith. Something I’d pretty much thought since 2005. I then came across Tolkien’s Anglo-Saxon poem ‘Syx Mynet’ in Songs for the Philologists. Even though I didn’t have a translation of this poem I had a strong hunch that the 6 was a reference to Goldberry and that the word ‘mynet’ was possibly a pun on ‘minute’, Goldberry being Time. I predicted that the poem would either make a reference to ‘a wife’ or a wife would be the subject of the poem. Having then discovered that the poem was simply Tolkien’s  translation into A.S from an existing poem, I looked it up. It was a poem called ‘I Love Sixpence’. I’d never even heard of it. As you can imagine, I was very hopeful because, from the title, it was again dealing with money and clearly it was about the number 6, and Tolkien loved his wife. I was correct. The poem was about a man taking money home to his wife. Perfect.

In Sep. 2018 I accidentally came across the description of the Chain of Angainor. By that time I was beginning to understand Tolkien’s number symbolism and how important it was. I found that the 2nd and 6th links of the Chain are silver and gold. And as I have said I’d already concluded that Bombadil and Goldberry were Moon-Silver and Sun-Gold. Again 2 and 6, agreeing with everything else.

I later noted that the Shire where Bombadil and Goldberry live is comprised of the Four Farthings. Farthings also being pre-decimal English money. I also later found out that when Tolkien met Edith he was 16 and she was 19, hence 6 and 9.

The above sequence of events did not chance out of thin air. I chanced upon the material and made connections while doing other Tolkien research. For more information you can read the Predictions. You can also find a subset of them below.

So,…103 predictions later and here we are…after years of forensic study of his texts and the etymologies of the words within them.

To confront the problem head on. This is what Tolkien said in his letters specifically regarding the nomenclature in The Lord of the Rings and how it was constructed.

I am honoured by the interest that many readers have taken in the nomenclature of The Lord of the Rings; and pleased by it, in so far as it shows that this construction, the product of very considerable thought and labour, has achieved (as I hoped) a verisimilitude, which assists probably in the ‘literary belief in the story as historical. But I remain puzzled, and indeed sometimes irritated, by many of the guesses at the ‘sources’ of the nomenclature, and theories or fancies concerning hidden meanings. These seem to me no more than private amusements, and as such I have no right or power to object to them, though they are, I think, valueless for the elucidation or interpretation of my fiction. If published,* I do object to them, when (as they usually do) they appear to be unauthentic embroideries on my work, throwing light only on the state of mind of their contrivers, not on me or on my actual intention and procedure. Many of them seem to show ignorance or disregard of the clues and information which are provided in notes, renderings, and in the Appendices. Also since linguistic invention is, as an art (or pastime) comparatively rare, it is perhaps not surprising that they show little understanding of the process of how a philologist would go about it.

People usually extend this statement, and other statements by Tolkien to include pretty much every kind of inquiry of every aspect of his works. Tolkien’s issue is to be found in the last line: “they show little understanding of the process of how a philologist would go about it.”

So how would a philologist go about it? By philology of course. Which is? The single most important detail is the etymologies of the words he uses in his works, both in his own languages and in the languages of the Primary World. That’s been my approach from day one. I’m not examining nomenclature here, I’m examining the English language words in the text. But the principle is the same. It’s all philology. It’s by the forensic study of the words that I’ve made, to date, 105 predictions. There are no crystal balls. There is only the hidden meanings of the words on the page. That is, their real meanings. They’re only hidden because you and I are not philologists. It’s that simple. Shortly you’ll see a demonstration of the insights that are made possible by studying the etymologies of the words in his texts, when I look at the passage of the ‘Music of the Ainur’. I just examined all of the etymology of the words in the above quote and I could point out some very interesting things in them regarding puzzles and clues and labyrinths which relate directly to the content later in this essay. That would be a detour right now but try it for yourself.

Here’s a quick demonstration of the point I’ve just made about philology and Tolkien’s works. In ‘J.R.R. Tolkien Artist & Illustrator’ Hammond and Scull describe The Book of Ishness:

“The first drawing in the book was Ei Uchnem, to illustrate the Russian boatmen’s song. But except that it includes a boat on a river – a boat with oars, not towed as on the Volga – it is a very free interpretation. It’s swirling clouds and vibrant shapes recall Van Gogh again, or Munch.”

The drawing has not been published anywhere. If we look at the etymology of the relevant words we discover why he chose to make the alteration.

 

Russia
1530s, from Medieval Latin Russi “the people of Russia,” from Rus, the native name of the people and the country (source of Arabic Rus, Medieval Greek Rhos), originally the name of a group of Swedish merchant/warriors who established themselves around Kiev 9c. and founded the original Russian principality; perhaps from Ruotsi, the Finnish name for “Sweden,” from Old Norse Roþrslandi, “the land of rowing,” old name of Roslagen, where the Finns first encountered the Swedes. This is from Old Norse roðr “steering oar,” from Proto-Germanic *rothra- “rudder,” from PIE *rot-ro-, from root *ere- “to row.”

Derivation from the IE root for “red,” in reference to hair color, is considered less likely. Russian city-states were founded and ruled by Vikings and their descendants. The Russian form of the name, Rossiya, appears to be from Byzantine Greek Rhosia. Russification is from 1842.

Not only does this reveal the underlying reason why he altered it, but it also reveals Tolkien’s underlying working method, and a general approach to how to understand both his writing and his pictures and indeed, the very close link between them. Etymology. Furthermore, if we look at the words to the Boatmen’s Song we find a reference to ‘felling a birch’ and in another translation ‘untwisting the stout birch tree’. Given that the birch was a personal symbol of Philology for Tolkien throughout his life, we can make more comment on Tolkien’s ‘very free interpretation’. And finally we might easily have linked the ‘swirling clouds’ (H&S’s word ‘swirling’ not Tolkien’s admittedly in this case) to the untwisting, or twisting of the birch since swirl gives us ‘to whirl’, Old English hweorfan “to turn”, and twist, via ‘wring’ gives us *wergh- “to turn,” from PIE root *wer- (2) “to turn, bend.” But their words or not, clearly the clouds are (remarkably) turning, whirling right? And now we’re back at my opening statement at the top of the page, The geometry within his works is accompanied by a device called THE TURN. And you’ll also shortly see the connexion between the original sense suggestion of ‘twist’, a “dividing in two” (source also of cognate Old Norse tvistra “to divide, separate,” Gothic twis- “in two, asunder,” Dutch twist, German zwistquarrel, discord,”) and my analysis of the Music of the Ainur in which we find the discords of Melkor, and later the quarrel, strife between the oak and the birch.

And perhaps Hammond and Scull might have doubly spotted it! 😀

scull (n.)
kind of short, light, spoon-bladed oar, mid-14c., of unknown origin. The verb is from 1620s, from the noun. Related: Sculled; sculling.

Without putting too fine a point on it, that’s how we can gain more insight into a picture that we have never seen, than experts who have. Luckily, we get to comment on and critique and above all, learn from Hammond and Scull’s great publications. By “understanding of the process of how a philologist would go about it.” And after 105 predictions I’ll tell you, that with enough analysis of the etymologies, we can extend that to the rest of Tolkien’s works. The hidden meanings are all hidden in the etymologies. They’re the hidden meanings and the kind of critique that Tolkien doesn’t object to.

If you think Tolkien never hid anything in his works, you are very mistaken.

Here’s one instance of Tolkien deliberately misleading people. In the interview with Gueroult he denies that he uses symbols anywhere. Denys Gueroult was a BBC producer responsible for a recorded interview with J.R.R. Tolkien in January 1965, known as An Interview with J.R.R.T.

Gueroult: These are trees that are more than trees because they are symbols of great importance um is there something in your own life in your own background…
05:01
Tolkien: They’re not symbols to me at all, I don’t work in symbols at all, other people can find that they are symbolic they may be symbols in my mind but they’re not symbols to me in my conscious mind at all. I’m entirely stoically minded.
05:12
Gueroult: Well this is true perhaps, but nevertheless you use um the white tree of Minas Tirith as a symbol of lordship of kingship do you not?
05:21
Tolkien: Oh well yes yes an emblem certainly yes
05:25
Gueroult: But not symbolic of anything more than…
05:27
Tolkien: Well what are the leopards of England symbolic of?
05:29
Gueroult: I state I take your point.

Tolkien’s statement that he does not use symbols here is surely false. Is he being pedantic, evasive or simply not telling the truth? I say, at the very least, he is not being consistent, which brings to mind Kilby’s ‘contrasistency’ which we’ll come to shortly. But Tolkien states that “I don’t work in symbols at all” in an interview with the BBC. To take some quotes from his letters regarding his use of symbols:

In 1954, 11 years earlier, in a letter to Robert Murray, Tolkien unequivocally says he uses symbols:

“I might perhaps have made more clear the later remarks in Vol. II (and Vol. III) which refer to or are made by Gandalf, but I have purposely kept all allusions to the highest matters down to mere hints, perceptible only by the most attentive, or kept them under unexplained symbolic forms.” [156 To Robert Murray, SJ. (draft)]

And again here in a letter probably written in 1951, 15 years before the interview:

* Elrond symbolises throughout the ancient wisdom, and his House represents Lore – the preservation in reverent memory of all tradition concerning the good, wise, and beautiful. It is not a scene of action but of reflection. Thus it is a place visited on the way to all deeds, or ‘adventures’. [131 To Milton Waldman]

These are categorical statements which make his statement that he never uses symbols absurd. The whole world knows he uses symbols. It would be absurd to say anything else. And yet he does say that in an interview with the BBC at the height of his fame.

In 1944 he said he uses symbols to his son Christopher.

My own rather sharp memory is probably due to the dislocation of all my childhood ‘pictures’ between 3 and 4 by leaving Africa: I was engaged in a constant attention and adjustment. Some of my actual visual memories I now recognize as beautiful blends of African and English details. …. As for what to try and write: I don’t know. I tried a diary with portraits (some scathing some comic some commendatory) of persons and events seen; but I found it was not my line. So I took to ‘escapism’: or really transforming experience into another form and symbol with Morgoth and Orcs and the Eldalie (representing beauty and grace of life and artefact) and so on; and it has stood me in good stead in many hard years since and I still draw on the conceptions then hammered out. But, of course, there was no time except on leave or in hospital. ….
[73 From a letter to Christopher Tolkien 10 June 1944 (FS 30)]

I hope I’ve proved my point, which is, what Tolkien says in response to enquiries about his works, cannot necessarily be trusted. We’ll encounter this again shortly, with the conclusions Clive Kilby drew. Is Tolkien temporarily befuddled? Is he lying in order to discredit the interview? Are we not understanding something? Is he being mischeivous?

 

The Riddle that is Tolkien.

Clive Kilby spent some intense periods with Tolkien in 1964 during the time Tolkien’s ‘fame was rapidly on the rise’, and the press were beginning to appear at his door. This was a year after the Geuroult interview. Kilby wrote in his book ‘Tolkien and the Silmarillion’:

I asked how he went about inventing the hundreds of names of characters and places, and he said he did it by a “mathematical” system. [Tolkien and the Silmarillion]

Kilby also said that he thought that Tolkien was hiding a lot and that he enjoyed confusing people about his works. Kilby even coined a word to describe Tolkien: ‘contrasistency’. (For a full discussion see ‘Tolkien’s Contrasistency‘.)

“I felt Tolkien was like an iceberg, something to be reckoned with above water in both its brilliance and mass and yet with much more below the surface. In his presence one was aware of a single totality but equally aware of various levels of a kind of consistent inconsistency that was both native-perhaps his genius-and developed, almost deliberate, even enjoyed. The word, if there were one, might be “contrasistency.” If my account of him is sketchy and in itself inconsistent, it has the virtue of reflecting my real impression of the man.

Tolkien was consistently inconsistent, that is, contradictory. What could create a consistent contradiction which he enjoyed? A game. A riddle game with the reader. And Tolkien almost confided in him.

I was perfectly willing simply to listen to what Tolkien had to say rather than insist upon a two-way communication. In due course I discovered his need of a genuinely interested listener. Before we had been long together he said one day that, if I would hold it confidential, he would “put more under my hat” than he had ever told anyone. But as time went on I realized that any discussion of his most deeply private world was simply impossible for him. Indeed, for a period it seemed to me that the very idea generated its contrariety and modified the ordinary generosity of his conversation. As opportunity allowed I encouraged him to speak his deepest feelings, but to no avail. Whatever he might have revealed I have little idea, though I remain certain that he was fundamentally “every inch a man” and a good man at that. [Tolkien and the Silmarillion]

At that moment Tolkien almost confided the truth about the underlying principles of his work: the geometry of his dialectic; the ‘mathematics’ of his system. Below is a small part of what he almost confided in Kilby.

Tolkien’s Origins and Sources.

The extent of the influence of Norse, Anglo-Saxon and Celtic literature is well known in Tolkien scholarship. The extent of the influence of Classical Antiquity is much less appreciated. But the Greeks in particular were clearly an object of interest in Tolkien’s early life at King Edward’s. This is because Tolkien incorporated the more abstract devices of his language invention and narrative construction, the more invisible aspects, from the Platonic ideas.

So where could this view of the Primary World consisting of geometry and planes come from? Where could he have derived such ideas?

The answer is from Classical Antiquity. Principally the Greeks, including Plato and Pythagoras. Dante was also highly influential but Dante too inherited many of his ideas from antiquity. Tolkien based his geometry on some of the ideas that are found in Plato’s ‘The Republic’ and ‘The Timaeus’. Mathematics, geometry and the dialectic are all central ideas in those books. He also incorporated ideas from Plato’s theory of ideal Forms and Emanation.

Tolkien started King Edward’s school in 1900 at the age of 8. Before that time as preparation his mother Mabel instructed him in classical and modern languages; Latin and French. In addition he received private tuition which led to him being accepted at King Edward’s. The most important languages at King Edward’s were Latin and Greek. Tolkien started studying Greek and Old English (Anglo Saxon) at King Edward’s school in Birmingham.

As for the conditioning: I am chiefly aware of the linguistic conditioning. I went to King Edward’s School and spent most of my time learning Latin and Greek; but I also learned English. Not English Literature! Except Shakespeare (which I disliked cordially), the chief contacts with poetry were when one was made to try and translate it into Latin. Not a bad mode of introduction, if a bit casual. I mean something of the English language and its history. I
learned Anglo-Saxon at school (also Gothic, but that was an accident quite unconnected with the curriculum though decisive [Letter 163 To W. H. Auden]

He later went on to study Old English and then study Classics at Oxford before changing to English Language and Literature. By the end of King Edward’s he was clearly interested in the Greek language because he specialized in Greek philology in his Classical Moderations.

I entered Exeter College as Stapledon Exhibitioner in 1911. After taking Classical Moderations in 1913 (in which I specialized in Greek philology) [Letter 7 To the Electors of the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon, University of Oxford]

It was during this period at King Edward’s and later when creating the ‘Book of Ishness’ that he created the foundations of his geometric representation of the World and his languages. He began creating the illustrations which became known collectively as the Book of Ishness around 1911.

Between 1911 and 1915, very early on in his creative journey, J.R.R. Tolkien produced a particularly intriguing and original series of illustrations that he assembled in a notebook entitled “The Book of Ishness”.

A pure product of his imagination, and surprisingly abstract or conceptual for an artist know mainly for his narrative work, he nicknamed them Ishnesses, to underline their, in some sense, visionary nature. Amongst these drawings, some later accompanied the genesis of the “Silmarillion” and his mythological tales, in the years that were to come. [https://www.tolkienestate.com/en/painting/the-book-of-ishness.html]

“Then, my noble friend, geometry will draw the soul toward truth, and create the spirit of philosophy, and raise up that which is now unhappily allowed to fall down.”
[Plato. The Republic.]

To quote the preface to the Penguin edition of The Republic:

The Republic is a large, complex and ambitious work. Along with the Timaeus – a work tied to the Republic in various  ways – it can plausibly claim to be the Platonic masterwork, and has been regarded as such, by Platonists and non- Platonists alike, more or less since it first began to be copied and read some 2,400 years ago. It remains one of the most widely read books in the world

In the Timaeus, the main speaker (one Timaeus of Locri) describes the universe as a rational entity, fashioned by a divinely rational craftsman. In the Republic, Plato’s Socrates describes how we human beings might best be able to realize our own fundamentally rational nature, or at least the best approximation to it that may be available to us. Whereas according to Timaeus the universe as a whole always functions for the best, we humans are endowed – so the Republic repeatedly stresses – with choice, so that whether we realize our potential…[Plato. Republic (Penguin Classics) (Kindle Locations 312-316). Penguin Books Ltd. ]

As the Sub-Creator of his World, Tolkien is the divinely rational craftsman.

NOTE: Before I discovered Tolkien’s source of ‘The Republic’ and the ‘Timaeus’ I had already for at least 3 years, worked out all of the details of the geometry. I am not fitting data to the theory. 

The actual textual evidence of how the geometry works within the narratives can be found in the two essays ‘The Turn in Principle‘ and ‘The Turn in Practice‘. The Turn in Practice analyses the narrative surrounding the Fall of Denethor. The narrative of Denethor was chosen because of Prediction #6 (see ‘Predictions‘). 

England, Angle Land and the ‘Book of Engl-Ishness’.

 

Tolkien’s Planar Dialectic.

The planar geometry is created by Ilúvatar in the Music of the Ainur. The basis of it is the right-angled triangle. The geometry forms the foreshadow of what is to come. Think of the geometry in the Music of the Ainur as a Platonic ideal Form, a paradigm. As a brief layman’s introduction, here’s the wikipedia entry for ‘Theory of Forms’.

The Forms are expounded upon in Plato’s dialogues and general speech, in that every object or quality in reality has a form: dogs, human beings, mountains, colors, courage, love, and goodness.[10] Form answers the question, “What is that?” Plato was going a step further and asking what Form itself is. He supposed that the object was essentially or “really” the Form and that the phenomena were mere shadows mimicking the Form; that is, momentary portrayals of the Form under different circumstances. The problem of universals – how can one thing in general be many things in particular – was solved by presuming that Form was a distinct singular thing but caused plural representations of itself in particular objects.[10] For example, in the dialogue Parmenides, Socrates states: “Nor, again, if a person were to show that all is one by partaking of one, and at the same time many by partaking of many, would that be very astonishing. But if he were to show me that the absolute one was many, or the absolute many one, I should be truly amazed.”[11]:p129 Matter is considered particular in itself. For Plato, forms, such as beauty, are more real than any objects that imitate them. Though the forms are timeless and unchanging, physical things are in a constant change of existence. Where forms are unqualified perfection, physical things are qualified and conditioned.[12]

Plato’s Socrates held that the world of Forms is transcendent to our own world (the world of substances) and also is the essential basis of reality. Super-ordinate to matter, Forms are the most pure of all things. Furthermore, he believed that true knowledge/intelligence is the ability to grasp the world of Forms with one’s mind.[14]A Form is aspatial (transcendent to space) and atemporal (transcendent to time).[15] In the world of Plato, atemporal means that it does not exist within any time period, rather it provides the formal basis for time.[15] It therefore formally grounds beginning, persisting and ending. It is neither eternal in the sense of existing forever, nor mortal, of limited duration. It exists transcendent to time altogether.[16] Forms are aspatial in that they have no spatial dimensions, and thus no orientation in space, nor do they even (like the point) have a location.[17] They are non-physical, but they are not in the mind. Forms are extra-mental (i.e. real in the strictest sense of the word).[18]A Form is an objective “blueprint” of perfection.[19] The Forms are perfect and unchanging representations of objects and qualities. For example, the Form of beauty or the Form of a triangle. For the form of a triangle say there is a triangle drawn on a blackboard. A triangle is a polygon with 3 sides. The triangle as it is on the blackboard is far from perfect. However, it is only the intelligibility of the Form “triangle” that allows us to know the drawing on the chalkboard is a triangle, and the Form “triangle” is perfect and unchanging. It is exactly the same whenever anyone chooses to consider it; however, time only effects the observer and not of the triangle. It follows that the same attributes would exist for the Form of beauty and for all Forms.

This is Tolkien’s ‘blueprint’ of perfection, Ilúvatar’s ‘Design’. This is Tolkien’s Dialectic and ‘Secret Grammar’.

Fig.1

The geometry is a little more complex than this one highlighted triangle as you can see in ‘Eeriness’. ‘Eeriness’ is his early illustration which sets out his planar grammar, his planar dialectic.

Let’s look at one triangle to start with, the bottom one. That triangle corresponds to the triangle in ‘Tolkien’s Dialectic’ above.
In the Music of the Ainur, the 3 hand gestures of Ilúvatar in response to the Discords of Melkor, are the moments when He creates the 3 planes of the bottom triangle.

1. He first raises his left hand. In that moment the ideal Form Time, the opposite plane of the triangle is created.

2. Then he raises his right hand, and the ideal Form Space, the adjacent plane of the triangle is created.

3. Finally he raises both hands and the ideal Form Marriage of Space-Time is created; Desire and the Children, the plane of the hypotenuse.
The Ainur have no part in that final moment because it is a ‘Command’ to be obeyed. When Ilúvatar raises both hands, the conversation of the Music stops. This is the authority exercised by Ilúvatar over his children, the Ainur, ‘the offspring of his thought’.

The Music is a conversation, a dialectic between the left and right hands of God. Tolkien represents the Music geometrically. Consider it to be the Music of the Spheres. Music consists of tension (dissonance) and resolution (consonance). Tolkien represents these geometrically as the distance of the spatial separation of planes. The greater the separation between planes, the greater the dissonance in the Music.

At first the Music becomes more harmonious and in unison. Then it begins to become more discordant. Figure 1. represents the Music from the moment in the Ainulindalë where the Ainur have been gathered together and have achieved harmony with no flaws. That is the point at the top of the triangle labeled ‘the origin’.

But now Ilúvatar sat and hearkened, and for a great while it seemed good to him, for in the music there were no flaws.

Unison and harmony are represented by the convergence of the geometry to a point. The origin (the Door) represents this. The Door in Tolkien’s works often appears as the ‘Megalithic Door’. The increasing discordance after that creates the geometry above.  The two planes of the opposite and adjacent diverge increasingly away from the origin. This divergence is the effect of the discords of Melkor. The discords are created by the will of Melkor.

Then Ilúvatar said to them: ‘Of the theme that I have declared to you, I will now that ye make in harmony together a Great Music. And since I have kindled you with the Flame Imperishable, ye shall show forth your powers in adorning this theme, each with his own thoughts and devices, if he will. But I will sit and hearken, and be glad that through you great beauty has been wakened into song.’

The divergence, the growing apart in the geometry can be found in the etymology of ‘discord’.

discord (n.)
early 13c., descorde, “unfriendly feeling, ill will;” also “dissension, strife,” from Old French descorde (12c.) “disagreement,” from Latin discordia, from discors (genitive discordis) “disagreeing, disagreement,” from dis- “apart” (see dis-) + cor (genitive cordis) “heart,” from PIE root *kerd- “heart.”

Musical sense “want of harmony between two notes sounded together; a combination of notes not in harmony with one another” is from late 14c.

The growing divergence finally comes to a halt when Ilúvatar commands the Music to stop and the plane of the hypotenuse is created. Thus, in the geometry we have separation after divergence.

This separation creates desire or longing to return to unison and harmony: tension which requires resolution. Resolution is achieved by taking the Straight Road to the Door which leads to convergence of the planes of the opposite and adjacent at the origin.

The most obvious illustration of the geometry is his illustration from his ‘Book of Ishness’ ‘Eeriness’. The Wizard in on the Straight Road leading to the Door. The meaning of the two hearts will become apparent. The rest of the geometry will be covered later.

We also find the same triangle at the top of the twin spiralled columns in his illustration ‘Wickedness’ from the ‘Book of Ishness’.

In musical terms we can understand the divergence and the union as tension and resolution. The geometry is an ideal form, the foreshadow of what is to follow. The geometry has the discords within it from the beginning. The shadow in the ‘foreshadow’ is the Enemy, the ‘Shadow’, who we later see in the World.

The diamond shape is another Form you see often in the ‘Book of Ishness’. Its meaning is tied to the triangle and the 4 elements which Tolkien also incorporates. You can find the 4 classical elements in Plato’s works, including the Republic. I’ll discuss the 4 elements later.

The Music of the Heart of the Ainur.

The word ‘discord’ is at root derived from ‘heart’, not music.

discord (n.)
early 13c., descorde, “unfriendly feeling, ill will;” also “dissension, strife,” from Old French descorde (12c.) “disagreement,” from Latin discordia, from discors (genitive discordis) “disagreeing, disagreement,” from dis- “apart” (see dis-) + cor (genitive cordis) “heart,” from PIE root *kerd- “heart.”

Musical sense “want of harmony between two notes sounded together; a combination of notes not in harmony with one another” is from late 14c.

This is why you should ALWAYS look up the etymologies of the words Tolkien uses. You cannot understand Tolkien without first developing a philological love of his works. Here’s the passage from the Music of the Ainur.

But now Ilúvatar sat and hearkened, and for a great while it seemed good to him, for in the music there were no flaws. But as the theme progressed, it came into the heart of Melkor to interweave matters of his own imagining that were not in accord with the theme of Ilúvatar, for he sought therein to increase the power and glory of the part assigned to himself.

Some of these thoughts he now wove into his music, and straightway discord arose about him, and many that sang nigh him grew despondent, and their thought was disturbed and their music faltered;…
But the discord of Melkor rose in uproar and contended with it, and again there was a war of sound more violent than before, until many of the Ainur were dismayed and sang no longer, and Melkor had the mastery.

And you need to look up the etymology of EVERY word he uses…

accord (v.)
early 12c., “come into agreement,” also “agree, be in harmony,” from Old French acorder “agree, be in harmony” (12c.), from Vulgar Latin *accordare “make agree,” literally “be of one heart, bring heart to heart,” from Latin ad “to” (see ad-) + cor (genitive cordis) “heart” (used figuratively for “soul, mind”), from PIE root *kerd- “heart.” Compare concord, discord. Related: Accorded; according.

 

despondent (adj.)
“losing courage, falling into dejection,” 1690s, from Latin despondentem (nominative despondens), present participle of despondere (see despondence). Related: Despondently (1670s).

 

dismay (n.)
c. 1300, dismai, “consternation, fear, sudden or complete loss of courage, terrified amazement,” from dismay (v.) or else from Old French esmai on the same pattern that formed the English verb.

Both despondent and dismay mean losing courage.

courage (n.)
c. 1300, corage, “heart (as the seat of emotions),” hence “spirit, temperament, state or frame of mind,”from Old French corage “heart, innermost feelings; temper” (12c., Modern French courage), from Vulgar Latin *coraticum (source of Italian coraggio, Spanish coraje), from Latin cor “heart” (from PIE root *kerd- “heart”).

Meaning “valor, quality of mind which enables one to meet danger and trouble without fear” is from late 14c. In this sense Old English had ellen, which also meant “zeal, strength.” Words for “heart” also commonly are metaphors for inner strength.

In Middle English, the word was used broadly for “what is in one’s mind or thoughts,” hence “bravery,” but also “wrath, pride, confidence, lustiness,” or any sort of inclination, and it was used in various phrases, such as bold corage “brave heart,” careful corage “sad heart,” fre corage “free will,” wikked corage “evil heart.”

The saddest thing in life is that the best thing in it should be courage. [Robert Frost]

The Music of the Ainur ends with Ilúvatar’s command:

Then he raised up both his hands, and in one chord, deeper than the Abyss, higher than the Firmament, piercing as the light of the eye of Ilúvatar, the Music ceased.

 

chord (n.1)
“related notes in music,” 1590s, ultimately a shortening of accord (or borrowed from a similar development in French) and influenced by corde “string of a musical instrument” (c. 1300), which is Latin chorda “catgut, a string” of a musical instrument (see cord (n.)).

English cord as a shortening of accord is attested from mid-14c.; cord meaning “music” is attested in English from late 14c. The spelling with an -h- is first recorded c. 1600, from further confusion with chord (n.2) and perhaps also classical correction. Originally two notes sounded simultaneously; of three or more from 18c.

We already know that accord is from the PIE root *kerd- “heart.”

And of course “it came into the heart of Melkor to interweave matters of his own imagining that
were not in accord with the theme of Ilúvatar,”.

We also note that in the original draft of the Music of the Ainur in the Book of Lost Tales I Tolkien was even more explicit about his meaning.

Now he would speak propounding to them themes of song and joyous hymn, revealing many of the great and wonderful things that he devised ever in his mind and heart, and now they would make music unto him, and the voices of their instruments rise in splendour about his throne. Upon a time Iluvatar propounded a mighty design of his heart to the Ainur,

In the latest version of the story the emphasis is mostly hidden in etymologies. And you know why?

Because he’s a philologist and we ain’t, and if you can’t be bothered to understand it, why should he be bothered to explain it? He was a very busy man and he rather enjoyed outfoxing you. If you don’t investigate for yourself the real meanings of the words he uses, the philologist’s understanding of English, you’ll never understand the symbolism, and you’ll never see the two hearts hidden in the trees of the symbolic landscape of ‘Eeriness’. And you’ll never see the blatant geometry in that picture either, or connect the hearts of the etymologies in the Music of the Ainur to the geometry in that picture.  That’s because you don’t even understand English. And that’s exactly the point Tolkien made when he dismissed critics, and characterized ‘Lit’ in Lit and Lang, as the oak the Enemy.

So, given that there are two hearts clearly suggested in the geometry of Eeriness and that Ilúvatar is propounding a mighty design that is in his heart, and that one of those hearts in the geometry is Tolkien’s, and Tolkien is the Sub-Creator, it’s certainly likely that the ‘design’ propounded in the Music of the Ainur is the geometry we see in Eeriness. The Path of the Heart leads to the union of the two hearts hidden in the symbolic landscape. The two hearts are the hearts of the Woman and the Man, of Edith and Tolkien. The left and right hands of the Secret Grammar. You can see the right-angled triangle of the dialectic, of Time and Space. The Devil tries to come between them in their marriage.

Now here’s another coincidence. I had stated that The Enemy was trying to separate Time and Space because, as I initially understood it, the One Ring symbolizes Space without Time. It is the closed circle that Tolkien refers to in his statements in his letters ‘We shall never recover it, for that is not the way of repentance, which works spirally and not in a closed circle.’ It symbolizes no hope of repentance or recovery. I’ll cover that later. I arrived at this conclusion because I believed Edith was Time-Goldberry-Sun and Tolkien was Space-Bombadil-Moon, and the geometry was their marriage. Then some 3 years later, I discovered the following statement.

For ’tis said that ere the Great End come Melko shall in some wise contrive a quarrel between Moon and Sun, and Ilinsor shall seek to follow Urwendi through the Gates, and when they are gone the Gates of both East and West will be destroyed, and Urwendi and Ilinsor shall be lost. [The Book of Lost Tales I]

The quarrel is the discords, the Battle of the Sexes. The discords were there at the very beginning since the beginning of Time and Space. This discord runs throughout the entire Histories and echoes in every narrative and character because they are the physical instances, echoes of the ideal Form in the Music of the Ainur. And again we can see the notion of the Devil trying to come between the two in the marriage and causing them to separate in the geometry itself. The diverging planes of the hypotenuse during the discords, represents the two hearts diverging and being split apart. The ‘Great End’ is the separation of Time from Space and the World will literally end. That’s why Bombadil going down every year to get the lilies for Goldberry is so important. Since they are both Time and Space, that act is both a wedding anniversary, and as a personal note of humour for Tolkien, an act which keeps Time and Space together. The two hearts together in the centre at the origin in ‘Eeriness’ represent the re-union of the two, the two hearts coming together again along the planes of the geometry. And, at the time Tolkien created ‘Eeriness’ (probably in 1914) he was at Oxford and forcefully separated from Edith. The hand and arm symbolism begins with Ilúvatar and continues everywhere like ripples in the Stream, like echoes in the Music. Just like a symphony in fact.

I called this Tolkien’s Secret Grammar.

As he said this word the little man’s smile was full of a great delight, as of a poet or painter seeing suddenly the solution of a hitherto clumsy passage. Yet he proved as closed as an oyster. I never gathered any further details of his secret grammar; and military arrangements soon separated us never to meet again (up to now at any rate). But I gathered that this queer creature – ever afterwards a little bashful after inadvertently revealing his secret – cheered and comforted himself in the tedium and squalors of ‘training under canvas’ by composing a language, a personal system and symphony that no one else was to study or to hear. Whether he did this in his head (as only the great masters can), or on paper, I never knew. It is incidentally one of the attractions of this hobby that it needs so little apparatus! How far he ever proceeded in his composition, I never heard.

[Tolkien, J. R. R.. A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Invented Languages (Kindle Location 916). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.]

There IS no little man. There never was. The little man is Tolkien.

He is the great master and he did most of it in his head.

In ‘J.R.R. Tolkien Artist and Illustrator’, Hammond and Scull describe the drawings from the Book of Ishness as ‘odd and inexplicable’.  Odd and inexplicable like Clive Kilby described Tolkien? Odd and inexplicable, just like Tolkien’s mystifying and tangential responses to friends like C.S Lewis?

In point of mystifying circumlocution C.S Lewis compared Tolkien to his own father, whose conversation often contained non sequiturs that first bothered the hearer and then became so outrageous as to be screamingly funny. Tolkien’s deviations from the expected were owing not to preoccupation but rather to his scurry after the quarry across mental fences and quagmires. [Clive Kilby, Tolkien and the Silmarillion]

And coincidentally the drawings in that book are all of an abstract and geometric nature. Tolkien was very secretive about his private symbolism. And, as Clive Kilby stated, took actual enjoyment in perplexing and mystifying people.  It’s only when you make the mental leap that Tolkien was deflecting enquiry on purpose, that you can even begin to understand his work.

The Secret Grammar: The Hands of Ilúvatar.

The hand gestures of Ilúvatar are part of Tolkien’s geometry, his ‘Secret Grammar’ which runs throughout the entirety of his works. Did you ever wonder why characters raise their hands or their arms, or both of their arms? This happens a lot. This is the grammar, Tolkien’s system, that has been hidden under everyone’s noses for over 90 years.

All of the following examples arise from the paradigm, the ideal form of the geometry set out in the Music of the Ainur. The geometry in the Music is the world of Forms, timeless and unchanging. The grammar in the narratives at the creation of the World Eä, exists in the world of physical substance.

 For example:

Then Manwë sat silent, and the thought of Yavanna that she had put into his heart grew and unfolded; and it was beheld by Ilúvatar. Then it seemed to Manwë that the Song rose once more about him, and he heeded now many things therein that though he had heard them he had not heeded before. And at last the Vision was renewed, but it was not now remote, for he was himself within it, and yet he saw that all was upheld by the hand of Ilúvatar; and the hand entered in, and from it came forth many wonders that had until then been hidden from him in the hearts of the Ainur.

Take note of the relationship between hands and heart. We also see it in the story of Melkor and Ungoliant. We see a battle of wills:

Therefore Melkor said to her: ‘Do as I bid; and if thou hunger still when all is done, then I will give thee whatsoever thy lust may demand. Yea, with both hands.’ Lightly he made this vow, as he ever did; and he laughed in his heart. Thus did the great thief set his lure for the lesser.

‘Not so much,’ said Ungoliant. ‘But thou hast a great treasure from Formenos; I will have all that. Yea, with both hands thou shalt give it’.
Then perforce Morgoth surrendered to her the gems that he bore with him, one by one and grudgingly; and she devoured them, and their beauty perished from the world. Huger and darker yet grew Ungoliant, but her lust was unsated. ‘With one hand thou givest,’ she said; ‘with the left only. Open thy right hand.’
In his right hand Morgoth held close the Silmarils, and though they were locked in a crystal casket, they had begun to burn him, and his hand was clenched in pain; but he would not open it ‘Nay!’ he said. ‘Thou hast had thy due.
For with my power that I put into thee thy work was accomplished. I need thee no more. These things thou shalt not have, nor see. I name them unto myself for ever. ‘

Every time in the texts a hand is raised or an arm is raised, Tolkien is making reference to this geometry. Every time Tolkien refers to the hand, he is also referencing this grammar. References to hands, left or right, or both, refer to the original sequence where Ilúvatar raises his hands in the Music. The left or right hand of a character or a reference to the the left or right hand of something, is an echo of this original symbolism. Wings are also included in this symbolism. When a character raises both hands or arms, it is a command, a seizure or demonstration of authority, an act of the will. When a character raises both, the conversation of the dialectic has ended. As such this can symbolize a silencing of the Enemy. Just like in the Music with Ilúvatar. He makes another reference to this scheme in Vinyar Tengwar 39:

At this period the Loremasters did not, of course, know of the Dwarvish iglishmêk, and were still in Aman limited to the examination of the Eldarin dialects and gestures, enlarged by some acquaintance with the language of the Valar (see notes below) 1. They were, however, impressed by the analogy of silent gesture-signs, the component movements of which could be seen; and this much affected their earlier analyses and descriptions of their own language, which thus tended at first to pay more attention to the physical movements made in speaking than to the audible effects, considering the speaker rather than the listener.

Note 1.
And example given by later commentators, probably from iglishmêk, is the slight raising of the forefinger of the right hand followed at once by a similar movement of the forefinger of the left: this meant “I am listening”. But if the two movements were made simultaneously, it meant “listen!”

[Vinyar Tengwar. 39]

In the Music, at the moment of His authority, Ilúvatar is the Speaker and he is commanding ‘listen!”

We see the link between the dialectic and hand gestures in “At this period the Loremasters did not, of course, know of the Dwarvish iglishmêk, and were still in Aman limited to the examination of the Eldarin dialects and gestures, enlarged by some acquaintance with the language of the Valar“. For a deeper analysis of the etymologies of the relevant words see here: (more later)

We see the power of Bombadil demonstrated when he raises his hand.

In his hands he carried on a large leaf as on a tray a small pile of white water-lilies.
‘Help!’ cried Frodo and Sam running towards him with their hands stretched out.
‘Whoa! Whoa! steady there!’ cried the old man, holding up one hand, and they stopped short, as if they had been struck stiff.

Here, after Old Man Willow and the threatening Old Forest, the Enemy is silenced.

But before they could say anything, she sprang lightly up and over the lily-bowls, and ran laughing towards them; and as she ran her gown rustled softly like the wind in the flowering borders of a river.
‘Come dear folk!’ she said, taking Frodo by the hand. ‘Laugh and be merry! I am Goldberry, daughter of the River.’ Then lightly she passed them and closing the door she turned her back to it, with her white arms spread out across it. ‘Let us shut out the night!’ she said. ‘For you are still afraid, perhaps, of mist and tree-shadows and deep water, and untame things. Fear nothing! For tonight you are under the roof of Tom Bombadil.’

Goldberry again later exerts her will and authority at the parting of the hobbits. The next time she appears she appears as the Barrow wight (to complete the symmetry Bombadil appears as Old Man Willow- more elsewhere):

they saw Goldberry, now small and slender like a sunlit flower against the sky: she was standing still watching them, and her hands were stretched out towards them. As they looked she gave a clear call, and lifting up her hand she turned and vanished behind the hill.

Bombadil exerts his commanding will at the barrow. The Enemy is silenced.

There he stood, with his hat in his hand and the wind in his hair, and looked down upon the three hobbits, that had been laid on their backs upon the grass at the west side of the mound. Raising his right hand he said in a clear and commanding voice:

Wake now my merry tads! Wake and hear me calling!
Warm now be heart and limb! The cold stone is fallen;
Dark door is standing wide; dead hand is broken.
Night under Night is flown, and the Gate is open!

To Frodo’s great joy the hobbits stirred, stretched their arms, rubbed their eyes, and then suddenly sprang up. They looked about in amazement, first at Frodo, and then at Tom standing large as life on the barrow-top above them; and then at themselves in their thin white rags, crowned and belted with pale gold, and jingling with trinkets.

We see it at the West Gate when Gandalf tries to command the Doors to open:

Again Gandalf approached the wall, and lifting up his arms he spoke in tones of command and rising wrath. Edro, edro! he cried, and struck the rock with his staff. Open, open! he shouted, and followed it with the same command in every language that had ever been spoken in the West of Middle-earth. Then he threw his staff on the ground, and sat down in silence.

The Balrog stretches its wings from wall to wall.

The Balrog made no answer. The fire in it seemed to die, but the darkness grew. It stepped forward slowly on to the bridge, and suddenly it drew itself up to a great height, and its wings were spread from wall to wall; but still Gandalf could be seen, glimmering in the gloom; he seemed small, and altogether alone: grey and bent, like a wizened tree before the onset of a storm.

The spreading wings echoes the spreads in the Music of the Ainur, “Then the discord of Melkor spread ever wider”. We see the same hand symbolism when Galadriel refuses the Ring:

I say to you, Frodo, that even as I speak to you, I perceive the Dark Lord and know his mind, or all of his mind that concerns the Elves. And he gropes ever to see me and my thought. But still the door is closed! ‘
She lifted up her white arms, and spread out her hands towards the East in a gesture of rejection and denial.

And later twice when Galadriel says farewell to the Fellowship:

Then it seemed to Frodo that she lifted her arms in a final farewell, and far but piercing-clear on the following wind came the sound of her voice singing.

For now the Kindler, Varda, the Queen of the Stars, from Mount Everwhite has uplifted her hands like clouds, and all paths are drowned deep in shadow; and out of a grey country darkness lies on the foaming waves between us, and mist covers the jewels of Calacirya for ever.

Beren loses his hand. Maedhros loses his. Barahir’s hand is cut off. The Followers, Men are named The Heavy-Handed. We see the severed hand in the Barrow. Frodo’s hand is maimed. We have The White Hand of Saruman. The statues of the Argonath raise their hands. I could go on. The list of references to this symbolism is very long indeed. And in the final moments of the War of the Ring, we see the hand symbolism clearly expressing the victory of Good and the defeat of Evil. And again we see the reference to the heart.

As if to his eyes some sudden vision had been given, Gandalf stirred; and he turned, looking back north where the skies were pale and clear. Then he lifted up his hands and cried in a loud voice ringing above the din: The Eagles are coming! And many voices answered crying: The Eagles are coming! The Eagles are coming! The hosts of Mordor looked up and wondered what this sign might mean.

But the Nazgûl turned and fled, and vanished into Mordor’s shadows, hearing a sudden terrible call out of the Dark Tower; and even at that moment all the hosts of Mordor trembled, doubt clutched their hearts, their laughter failed, their hands shook and their limbs were loosed. The Power that drove them on and filled them with hate and fury was wavering, its will was removed from them; and now looking in the eyes of their enemies they saw a deadly light and were afraid.
Then all the Captains of the West cried aloud, for their hearts were filled with a new hope in the midst of darkness. Out from the beleaguered hills knights of Gondor, Riders of Rohan, Dúnedain of the North, close-serried companies, drove against their wavering foes, piercing the press with the thrust of bitter spears. But Gandalf lifted up his arms and called once more in a clear voice:
‘Stand, Men of the West! Stand and wait! This is the hour of doom.’
And even as he spoke the earth rocked beneath their feet. Then rising swiftly up, far above the Towers of the Black Gate, high above the mountains, a vast soaring darkness sprang into the sky, flickering with fire. The earth groaned and quaked. The Towers of the Teeth swayed, tottered, and fell down; the mighty rampart crumbled; the Black Gate was hurled in ruin; and from far away, now dim, now growing, now mounting to the clouds, there came a drumming rumble, a roar, a long echoing roll of ruinous noise.
‘The realm of Sauron is ended!’ said Gandalf. ‘The Ring-bearer has fulfilled his Quest.’ And as the Captains gazed south to the Land of Mordor, it seemed to them that, black against the pall of cloud, there rose a huge shape of shadow, impenetrable, lightning-crowned, filling all the sky. Enormous it reared above the world, and stretched out towards them a vast threatening hand, terrible but impotent: for even as it leaned over them, a great wind took it, and it was all blown away, and passed; and then a hush fell

You have to reverse this cover of course in your head because once you place it face down as when reading the book, the arm reaches the opposite way, to the left, northward towards the Armies at the Morannon Gate. Hence why the red lighting is from the left, from Orodruin. You can also see that Sauron has raised two arms but stretching only one. He is reaching with his right hand. And we also see the raised wings in the symbolism of the design. Wings have the same symbolism as arms. All of these points are significant and part of the grammar.

And we see the same outstretched arm and its association with the will in the ‘Chidren of Hurin’

“Then Morgoth stretching out his long arm towards Dor-lómin cursed Húrin and Morwen and their offspring, saying: ‘Behold! The shadow of my thought shall lie upon them wherever they go, and my hate shall pursue them to the ends of the world.’
But Húrin said: ‘You speak in vain. For you cannot see them, nor govern them from afar: not while you keep this shape, and desire still to be a King visible on earth.’
Then Morgoth turned upon Húrin, and he said: ‘Fool, little among Men, and they are the least of all that speak! Have you seen the Valar, or measured the power of Manwë and Varda? Do you know the reach of their thought? Or do you think, perhaps, that their thought is upon you, and that they may shield you from afar?’
‘I know not,’ said Húrin. ‘Yet so it might be, if they willed. For the Elder King shall not be dethroned while Arda endures.’
‘You say it,’ said Morgoth. ‘I am the Elder King: Melkor, first and mightiest of all the Valar, who was before the world, and made it. The shadow of my purpose lies upon Arda, and all that is in it bends slowly and surely to my will.

And, in a draft, Tolkien hid a giant hand in the symbolic landscape over the Barrow downs. This was intended to suggest the hand in the barrow. Top right is the sketch which prefigures the draft cover for The Return of the King as described above. Middle right is ‘Maddo’, one of the young Michael Tolkien’s ‘imagined bogeys’. Bottom right is a detail from ‘Wickedness’ which is the first time the hand appears in Tolkien’s works. The hand symbol was almost certainly originally derived from “The Hand and the Child”, whose symbolism appears in Beowulf as the torn arm and hand of Grendel.

**************************************************************

So, to return to the 3 planes of the triangle. These 3 planes are:

Left hand Time: Female, later manifested in the Sun.

Right hand Space: Male, later manifested in the Moon.

…and Both hands Desire (Marriage-Twilight-Door). The time of the two lights, the Sun and Moon.

Tolkien also assigns the senses to the planes:

Right-angle (Door): Touch.

Left, opposite: Hearing.

Right, adjacent: Seeing.

Hypotenuse: Smell and the mouth including speaking and taste.

This is Tolkien’s Sacred Geometry. It’s based on his relationship with Edith, later his wife, and their relationship as a couple, under God. At the time of its earliest conception, it is their future envisioned God ordained marriage. The geometry is an ideal Form. The creation of the 3 planes is best described as an idealization of them. In this way we can regard the young idealistic Tolkien as the rational craftsman idealizing both his relationship to Edith, and idealizing both himself and the woman he was in love with. Indeed we can describe his Platonic geometry as ‘an unreal romantic code’ after his words in letter to Michael in which he talks about marriage.

The geometry is a dialectic. The Music is a conversation. At the absolute root, a conversation between Tolkien and his wife under the counsels of God or the Devil. As a Hegelian dialectic we can see the geometry as Thesis (Time), Antithesis (Space), Synthesis (Twilight).

dialectic (adj.)
1640s, “relating to the art of reasoning about probabilities,” from Latin dialecticus, from Greek dialektikos “of conversation, discourse,” from dialektos “discourse, conversation” (see dialect). From 1813 as “of or pertaining to a dialect or dialects.”

We can now see the geometry as a geometric, visual expression of union and separation between the Man and the Woman, Tolkien and, at the time of its creation, his envisioned wife Edith in their relationship. And we also see movement between the two states is possible. The Door leads to union. More generally Woman and Man each represent one side of a duality, which is left and right hand. This grammar can be found in every narrative and in every character.

The Forms are expounded upon in Plato’s dialogues and general speech, in that every object or quality in reality has a form: dogs, human beings, mountains, colors, courage, love, and goodness.[10] Form answers the question, “What is that?” Plato was going a step further and asking what Form itself is. He supposed that the object was essentially or “really” the Form and that the phenomena were mere shadows mimicking the Form; that is, momentary portrayals of the Form under different circumstances. The problem of universals – how can one thing in general be many things in particular – was solved by presuming that Form was a distinct singular thing but caused plural representations of itself in particular objects.[10] For example, in the dialogue Parmenides, Socrates states: “Nor, again, if a person were to show that all is one by partaking of one, and at the same time many by partaking of many, would that be very astonishing. But if he were to show me that the absolute one was many, or the absolute many one, I should be truly amazed.

But why the right-angled triangle you might ask? We’ll look at that later in ‘The Megalithic Door’.

Goldberry is Time. Bombadil is Space.
They are the ‘Circles of the World’.

They were both created (‘written’) at the moment Ilúvatar raises his hands.

Goldberry was created first. She is the left hand, Time. She is Eldest.
Bombadil was created second. He is the right hand, Space.

They are created with the geometry. They are initially platonic ideal forms: Edith and Tolkien. They later manifest in the physical World as The Two Trees and then the Sun and Moon. We know that the Moon desired and pursued the Sun. But Tolkien was going beyond mere personification as male and female. Speaking about the Adûnaic language Christopher Tolkien writes:

Masculine or Feminine are the personifications of natural objects, especially lands and cities, which may have a neuter and a personalized form side by side. Often the ‘personification’ is simply the means of making a proper name from a common noun or adjective: thus anaduni ‘western’, Anadune f. ‘Westernesse’. Abstractions may also be ‘personified’, and regarded as agents: so Agan m. ‘Death’, agan n. ‘death’. In such cases, however, as nilo n. ‘moon’, and ure n. ‘sun’, beside the personalized forms Nilu m. and Uri f., we have not so much mere personification but the naming of real persons, or what the Adunaim regarded as real persons: the guardian spirits of the Moon and the Sun, in fact ‘The Man in the Moon’ and ‘The Lady of the Sun’. [Sauron Defeated]

The real persons are Tolkien and Edith.

Eldest and Most High: Alef and Bet.

One of Tolkien’s other sources are the Rabbinic commentaries on the Talmud. In those commentaries, the letters of the alphabet as ‘the Word’, represent the material structures of the World. In Tolkien’s languages the letters also represent the material structures of the World. His letters and his languages are built from the same geometric principles he used for Time and Space. They are built from the same geometry. Tolkien’s ‘Floral Alphabet’ details the symbolism of the individual ideogrammatic letters. The symbolism in the letters is composed of the elements of colour, planar orientation, design, numerology and specific motifs and features. All of the letters of our latin alphabet also derive ultimately from ideograms (mostly Egyptian). Carpenter’s Biography tells us that Tolkien was exposed to Egyptian hieroglyphs at an early age through Christopher Wiseman.

Tolkien seems to have learnt Esperanto by 1909, as suggested by evidence contained in a small notebook he kept at the time called the ‘Book of Foxrook’. In this notebook the seventeen-year-old Tolkien outlined a secret code consisting of a ‘rune-like phonetic alphabet’ and ‘a sizeable number of ideographic symbols’ which Tolkien called ‘monographs’, each of which represented an entire word (Smith and Wynne 2000, p.30). This ‘Private Scout Code’ (as Tolkien called it) worked, presumably, by using the ‘monographs’ for most words, and the rune-like alphabet (each enclosed in a cartouche) ‘to spell personal names or words for which a monograph was not available’ (ibid., p.31). He appears to have invented a writing system that combines a phonetic alphabet (clearly associated with the sounds of English) and ideographic symbols. [A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Invented Languages]

The intention to be secretive and to deceive is clear in the etymologies of the words ‘fox’ and ‘rook’.

fox (v.)
1660s, “to delude” (perhaps implied in Old English foxung “fox-like wile, craftiness”), from fox (n.). The same notion is implied in Old English verbal noun foxung “fox-like wile, craftiness;” and Middle English had foxerie “wiliness, trickery, deceit.”

 

rook (v.)
“to defraud by cheating” (originally especially in a game), 1590s, from rook (n.1) in some sense (such as “a gull, simpleton,” but this is not attested until 17c.). Related: Rooked; rooking.

 

From the Rabbinic commentaries of the Mystic Talmud, Goldberry is Eve, bet (beth), the letter B, and Bombadil is Adam, alef the letter A. The contention there in the midrash ‘The Alphabet of Rabbi Akiva’, between the letters of the alphabet to be considered by God, ‘The Most High’ to begin the Book of Genesis is why Bombadil claims to be Eldest. But Bet was chosen by God to begin the Book of Genesis. Alef was not happy but was afforded the lesser honour to appear as the first letter of the Ten Commandments. This understanding explains the contradiction that TreeBeard is also said to be eldest. It is the claim itself which is important. It’s source lies in this contest. (See ‘Tolkien and the Zohar’). The contest is between the left hand (bet) and the right hand (alef). In Tolkien’s work, this contestation was created by the Discords of Melkor. Ilúvatar raised his hands in response to the discords. The effects of the discords run throughout the entire Histories. There are two effects. The competing claim of Eldest is the first effect. The other effect is the desire to be raised up highest, towards heaven, the most high. Both derive from the desire to be closest to God, who is the first (eldest) and ‘most high’ (highest). These two contestations constitute the two prime manifestations of the ‘Battle of the Sexes’. The Battle of the Sexes is a battle of wills between left hand, female and right hand, male. The two seek to dominate each other. The ‘will’ is in each of the female and male hands of the Music finding its original influence in the discords, the will of Melkor, which created the two diverging planes. Thus from the very beginning we have the counsel of the Devil imprinted into the Form of the World. These two contestations manifest in the geometry on the two planes of the horizontal and the vertical in the courses of the Sun and Moon. The first effect of being eldest manifests on to the horizontal plane (axis). The second effect of being most high manifests on the vertical plane (axis). I’ll discuss the Sun and Moon later.

The order of creation is important. Order establishes authority. Lore is passed from one generation to the next. Beth, the left hand of the Woman is eldest and given authority to Speak first. When she speaks the right hand is the Listener. And vice versa. But she speaks first.

Planes, Plains and Planets.

“Plato said God geometrizes eternally”
[Convivialium disputationum, liber 8,2, Plutarch] 

When you talk about this subject, nobody thinks that planar geometry or ‘planes’ are important in Tolkien’s works. And yet Tolkien certainly does mention planes a lot. An awful lot. At some point I’ll create a separate page with them, and the amount of evidence is overwhelming. It is undeniably part of an internal construction of how he views the Primary world in his mind. A language. A private symbolism that Kilby and all of Tolkien’s friends, at times, found so confounding. Indeed, Hammond and Scull’s ‘very free interpretation’ he exhibited with the conversations with his friends. And then consider that his Secondary World is also a construction of a world in his mind. If that’s the case, it’s not a great leap to suggest that Tolkien might have reproduced that construction, the ‘planar view’, in his Secondary World, especially considering that, as a Sub-Creator, his Secondary World was an attempt to re-create the Primary World.

In his letters he uses the word plane 19 times. He mentions the word planet 9 times. And his favourite go-to word is ‘plain’, to ‘speak plainly’. Plain is also etymologically derived from plane. From Old French plain “flat, smooth, even” (12c.), from Latin planus “flat, even, level” (from PIE root *pele- (2) “flat; to spread”). He uses it 42 times in his letters. He speaks of planes 5 times in ‘On Fairy Stories’ and planets twice. He refers to planes once in his essay on Beowulf, and planets twice. He mentions planes no less than 15 times in his essay on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I could continue. By this point we really have to start asking ourselves what is this fixation with planes? What the devil have planes got to do with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight? Nobody else has ever critiqued Sir Gawain and even mentioned planes once. I very much doubt anybody has ever referred to planes or planets critiquing Beowulf either. He uses the word plain 20 times in his essay on Beowulf, 9 times in Gawain, 14 times in On Fairy Stories and 3 times in A Secret Vice. And finally there is the strange Notion Club Papers. He uses the word planet 13 times, the word plane twice and plain approx 14 times. Moreover, in the N.C.P Christopher, at one point flags his father’s usage of the word ‘plain’.

“written on the original text DA I, p. 355: ‘For they believed still the lies of Sauron that the world was plain’ [‘flat’; see footnote to p. 392],”
…and later:
‘For in the youth of the world it was a hard saying to men that the Earth was not plain’ *

Christopher says in his note: “(* plain is used in the lost sense ‘flat’; but cf. the later spelling plane of the same word, and the noun plain.)”

In other words he has used the words plain and plane interchangeably in a way in which we would never use the word plain. When you or I or anyone else describe something as plain- you are not referring to it as flat, unless you say it is ‘a plain’ or ‘a plane’. You have to look at the etymology to see that plain did indeed originally, around the year 1300, mean flat, (c. 1300, “flat, smooth,” from Old French plain “flat, smooth, even” (12c.), from Latin planus “flat, even, level” (from PIE root *pele- (2) “flat; to spread”) but people do not ever use the word in that way as Christopher observes. If we look at the etymology of plan we find that plain is a doublet of plan.

plan (n.)
1670s as a technical term in perspective drawing; more generally by 1706 as “the representation of anything drawn on a plane; a drawing, sketch, or diagram of any object,” from French plan “ground plot of a building, map,” literally “plane surface” (mid-16c.), from Latin planum “level or flat surface,” noun use of adjective planus “level, flat” (from PIE root *pele- (2) “flat; to spread”). The notion is of “a drawing on a flat surface.” A doublet of plain via a later, learned French form.

And plan is “literally “plane surface” (mid-16c.)”. In etymology, two or more words in the same language are called doublets or etymological twins or twinlings when they have different phonological forms but the same etymological root. Christopher rationalizes its use as being a ‘lost’ use. In other words he sees it as possibly an intended product of the remote past in which the story is partially set, from the ‘The Lost Road’ as the N.C.P began and was shown to Allen and Unwin in 1937.

My point is you have to look at the etymology to understand that that’s a legitimate use of the word plain- but it’s certainly not been applicable for centuries. But Tolkien was a philologist and he was also a philologist who had a private symbolism and as a matter of course he dealt with the ancient past. Importantly all of his works are set around 5,000 years ago and set in the north-west of Europe, so all of the meanings he chose for his words in the etymologies will be derived from that fact. And he’s also someone who loved to riddle people, to confound them and play games with them. That’s the link I’ve made between Tolkien’s usage of the words plane and plain that I spoke of. That the two words were being used as being essentially the same thing in his mind. And once we know that, we can then potentially multiply Tolkien’s number of references to the concept of ‘plane’ and things planar, in that way. You can no longer dismiss the idea that there is a link or an equivalence between plane and plain and planet when they are used by Tolkien– c.f the abundant use of the word planet in the N.C.P. The words plane and plain are linked via their etymological roots. So is planet. This would explain why Tolkien uses them so much and why he uses them together in such inexplicable ways as in his critique of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight for example. When he uses them he is referencing his internal view, his private symbolism. And then, as I’ve found through exhaustive analysis, we can also extend that to the words ‘plan’ and ‘explain’ which share the same roots with plane, plain and planet. They’re all from latin planus. And not coincidentally the Notion Club Papers has three references to ‘geometry’ in it. This is why the Notion Club Papers is written very often, with such an odd way of expression. It’s because Tolkien is referencing this private symbolism of the geometry and other symbols in the words he uses. It’s because the language he uses serves his system, not a modern audience, and that lies in the etymologies, the hidden meanings of the words right under your nose.

So what of the word planet?

The etymology shows a possible shared root with plane and plain (PIE root *pele- (2) “flat; to spread,”).

planet (n.)
late Old English planete, in old astronomy, “star other than a fixed star; star revolving in an orbit,” from Old French planete (Modern French planète) and directly from Late Latin planeta, from Greek planētēs, from (asteres) planētai “wandering (stars),” from planasthai “to wander,” a word of uncertain etymology.

Perhaps it is from a nasalized form of PIE root *pele- (2) “flat; to spread,” on the notion of  “spread out,” “but the semantics are highly problematic,” according to Beekes, who notes the similarity of meaning to Greek plazein “to make devious, repel, dissuade from the right path, bewilder,” but adds, “it is hard to think of a formal connection.”

So called because they have apparent motion, unlike the “fixed” stars. Originally including also the moon and sun but not the Earth; modern scientific sense of “world that orbits a star” is from 1630s in English. The Greek word is an enlarged form of planes, planetos “who wanders around, wanderer,” also “wandering star, planet,” in medicine “unstable temperature.”

Having already established the equivalence in Tolkien’s use of plain and plane, and the possible cited connection of planet with the same root (PIE root *pele- (2) “flat; to spread) through the nasalized form, we might think that Tolkien may have operated on the basis that there was a shared meaning between planet and plane. And of the word ‘planet’ we know that “The Greek word is an enlarged form of planes, planetos “who wanders around, wanderer,” also “wandering star, planet,”. Tolkien specialized in Greek and took his Classical Moderations in Greek so he would have been aware of that from very early in his life. So, already we have a pretty strong case here for establishing the equivalence in Tolkien’s use between planet and plane, but according to Beekes the semantics are highly problematic so let’s look further.

We already know a wanderer. Gandalf. In the early drafts of the Hobbit Gandalf for the first two-thirds of the story was actually named Bladorthin. John Rateliffe in his book ‘The History of the Hobbit’ writes:

The name Bladorthin is difficult to gloss, and Tolkien never explained its meaning, although it is clearly Gnomish (or perhaps Noldorin). We can best approach its meaning by comparison with other words in Tolkien’s early writings containing the same elements. The first of these, Bladorwen, appears in the Gnomish Lexicon [circa 1917] as the Gnomish equivalent for Palúrien, an early honorific for Yavanna, the goddess of the earth and all growing things. There Bladorwen is glossed as ‘Mother Earth’, as well as ‘the wide earth. The world and all its plants and fruit’ (Parma Eldalamberon XI. 23); related words include blath (‘ floor’), blant (‘ flat, open, expansive, candid’), and bladwen (‘ a plain’). Hence blador probably applies to wide open country.
This guess is reinforced by the second name, Bladorion. In the earliest ‘Annals of Valinor’ and ‘Annals of Beleriand’ (which are associated with the 1930 Quenta, and hence contemporary with the First Phase of The Hobbit), this is the name given to the great grassy plain dividing Thangorodrim from the elven realms to the south…Again the meaning seems to be something close to ‘wide, flat, open country’,

So we find our friend ‘plain’ once again and ‘flat’ and in relation to the name originally given to Gandalf the ‘wanderer’. That links wandering to planes. And if we look at the etymology of flat (from blant above) we again find, unsurprisingly, ‘plain’ and ‘plane’.

flat (adv.)
1550s, “absolutely, downright;” 1570s, “plainly, positively,” from flat (adj.). Flat-out (adv.) “openly, directly” is from 1932, originally in motor racing, picked up in World War II by the airmen; earlier it was a noun meaning “total failure” (1870, U.S. colloquial).

 

flat (adj.)
c. 1300, “stretched out (on a surface), prostrate, lying the whole length on the ground;” mid-14c., “level, all in one plane; even, smooth;” of a roof, “low-pitched,” from Old Norse flatr “flat,” from Proto-Germanic *flata- (source also of Old Saxon flat “flat, shallow,” Old High German flaz “flat, level,” Old High German flezzi “floor”), from PIE root *plat- “to spread.”

Rateliffe goes on to consider the element -thin from Blador-thin.

Finally, -thin is a familiar form: this word-element entered in at the very end of the Lost Tales period [circa 1919– 20] when Thingol replaced the earlier Tinwelint as the name of Tinúviel’s father in the typescript of ‘The Tale of Tinúviel’, the last of the Lost Tales. I have not found a gloss of ‘Thingol’ from this early period, but there is no reason to doubt that it would have been the same as the later Sindarin translation: ‘grey-cloak’, with thin = grey. A second, apparently unrelated, occurrence of this element can be found in the Gnomish Lexicon as a plural indicator; we are told that Qenya silmaril, silmarilli = Gnomish silubrill/ silubrilt, silubrilthin, where it is clear that -thin is a plural suffix equivalent to the English -s (Parma Eldalamberon XI. 67).
Given these various elements, what then is the meaning of Bladorthin? The simplest translation would be ‘the Grey Country’ (blador + thin). Alternatively, if we stress the -or element, this becomes ‘Grey Plains Fay’ or even ‘Grey Master of the Plains’. If we interpret blador less literally and take ‘wide’ in the sense of ‘far and wide’, the name could even be interpreted as ‘Grey Wanderer’ (i.e., one who travels far and wide), thus becoming an early precursor of Gandalf’s Lord of the Rings-era elven name, Mithrandir. 23 In any case, whatever its original meaning the name must have been capable of yielding a meaning appropriate to its re-assigned application to King Bladorthin, perhaps there meaning the ruler over wide (grey?) lands (see pp. 514 & 525).

His interpretation of Bladorthin is ‘Grey Master of the Plains’. So, if Rateliffe has his etymologies correct we can begin to interpret Gandalf to be the ‘Grey Master of the planes’ because plain and plane have an equivalence in Tolkien’s internal symbolism. And we can connect Gandalf the ‘Grey Wanderer’ to planes via the Greek planetos, (an enlarged form of plane), to wander.

So how can we interpret ‘Grey Master of the planes’ or ‘Grey Master of the plains’? Frodo’s lament in Lorien describes Gandalf:

When evening in the Shire was grey
his footsteps on the Hill were heard;
before the dawn he went away
on journey long without a word.From Wilderland to Western shore,
from northern waste to southern hill,
through dragon-lair and hidden door
and darkling woods he walked at will.

Wilderland is Rhovanion and generally ‘the east’ up to the Sea of Rhûn. So we can see a movement in the lines of the poem between the cardinal axes, from east to west, then from north to south. These happen to be Tolkien’s planes in his geometric system. The ordering and direction of them is important which we’ll discover later. We also recall the lines: ‘Not all those who wander are lost’. Gandalf is one who wanders but is not lost. He is the Grey Wanderer yes to the uninitiated, but he is also the Grey Master of the Plains. And speaking of roads and being lost, we are at the moment discussing material from the ‘The Lost Road’ which forms the roots of the N.C.P narrative. Gandalf is clearly the one who can tread the lost road.

So where am I going with this?

The element ‘-thin’ is a very important part of Tolkien’s geometry. Tolkien assigned the English word ‘thin’ to the third plane of his dialectic, to the plane of the hypotenuse. Tolkien assigned the word ‘thin’ to the plane of the hypotenuse because its etymology gives ‘stretch’ just like ‘hypo-tenuse’ gives stretch. The planes of the opposite and adjacent are ‘thick’. So in these two we have the idiomatic ‘thick and thin’ assigned between all 3 planes of the geometry. Tolkien is using the element -thin in his invented languages to reference the English word ‘thin’.
In addition, Tolkien also assigns the planes to a chessboard scheme after the countryside in ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass’. The plane of the opposite is white, the adjacent is black and the hypotenuse is grey. And so we see an equivalence between thin and grey and Gandalf the grey and Blador-thin. Later in the essay, I’ll demonstrate Tolkien’s symbolism of thick and thin which includes a thorough explanation of the Nazgûl, the Ring and its effects, his use of the sense of smell, and blood and water.

*****

And finally ‘The Talkative Planet’ of the Notion Club Papers is the geometry of the dialectic because a dialectic is a conversation and Tolkien assigns the (talkative) characters in the N.C.P each to the planes of his dialectic. In that we can link planet to planes in Tolkien’s private symbolism.

*****

In the N.CP Tolkien talks about planets:

Though they appear on planets and may even seem to our senses to be sometimes resident in them, the precise spatial location of an eldil at any moment presents great problems. They themselves regard space (or ‘Deep Heaven’) as their true habitat, and the planets are to them not closed but merely moving points – perhaps even interruptions – in what we know as the Solar System and they as the Field of Arbol.

Jeremy tells us that ‘Arbol is “Old Solar” for the Sun,’

Therefore the fields of Arbol are the planets in the Solar System around it. And if we look at the etymology of field we see what Tolkien intends:

field (n.)
Old English feld “plain, pasture, open land, cultivated land” (as opposed to woodland), also “a parcel of land marked off and used for pasture or tillage,” probably related to Old English folde “earth, land,” from Proto- Germanic *felthan “flat land” (Cognates: Old Saxon and Old Frisian feld “field,” Old Saxon folda “earth,” Middle Dutch velt, Dutch veld Old High German felt, German Feld “field,” but not found originally outside West Germanic; Swedish fëlt, Danish felt are borrowed from German; Finnish pelto “field” is believed to have been adapted from Proto-Germanic). This is from PIE *pel(e)-tu-, from root *pele- (2) “flat; to spread.” The English spelling with -ie- probably is the work of Anglo-French scribes (compare brief, piece).

So we’ve arrived back at ‘plain’ the ‘wide open country’ of blad-wen and once gain the same root as plain and plane: *pele- (2) “flat; to spread. The fields of Arbol are the planets. So therefore planets can be linked in this way once again to the same root root as plain and plane. Tolkien is clearly intending that planet is a plane in his system. And interestingly we can see the connection between Gandalf who wanders the planes and Ramer’s words:

‘But I’m still wandering. I must go back to the adventure that I promised to tell. Among my few travel-sequences I recall one that seemed to be a long inspection (on several occasions) of a different solar system. So there does appear to be at least one other star with attendant planets.(66) I thought that as I wandered there I came to a little world, of our Earth’s size more or less – though, as you’ll see, size is very difficult to judge; and it was lit by a sun, rather larger than ours, but dimmed.

Here’s where I made prediction #104. That the word attendant (from ‘attendant planets’) would be from the etymological root ‘to stretch’. See [1] below where you’ll see more supporting evidence for the equivalence of planet, plain and plane, and the existence of his system. So, is there a further connection between Ramer and Gandalf? Regarding Ramer we are told:

Part One was ‘The Ramblings of Michael Ramer: Out of the Talkative Planet’, “and this consists of a report in direct speech of the discussions at two successive meetings

And Tolkien initially assigns Ramer to himself and then C.S.L “Beneath Ramer he wrote ‘Self’, but struck it out, then ‘CSL’ and ‘To’, these also being struck out.” Christopher believes that Tolkien started out with equivalences between the characters and members of the Inklings but then discarded the idea. I believe he was wrong about that. So a person who wanders through the planes is Gandalf and here a very similar figure to Gandalf is possibly Tolkien or C.S.L.

Ramer is very puzzling; and here there is no certain identification with one of the Inklings in the list. The various dictionaries of English surnames that I have consulted do not give the name. The only suggestion that I can make is that my father derived it from the dialectal verb rame, with these meanings given in the Oxford English Dictionary: ‘to shout, cry aloud, scream; keep up the same cry, continue repeating the same thing; obtain by persistent asking; repeat, run over’; cf. also the English Dialect Dictionary, ed. Joseph Wright (with which he was very familiar: he called it ‘indispensable’, Letters no. 6), ream verb 3, also raim, rame, etc., which gives similar meanings, and also ‘to talk nonsense, rave’. But this seems far-fetched.

Christopher thinks that it seems far-fetched. I also disagree with Christopher on this point because the two points are connected. We already know that these are the ‘Ramblings of Ramer’ and Ramer wanders around among the fields of Arbol, the planetary planes, planet deriving from planasthai “to wander”. Christopher might have looked at the etymology of ramble where we can connect the notion to ‘talk nonsense’ with ‘to wander around’, seemingly lost to observers.

ramble (v.)
mid-15c., perhaps frequentative of romen “to walk, go” (see roam), perhaps via romblen (late 14c.) “to ramble.” The vowel change perhaps by influence of Middle Dutch rammelen, a derivative of rammen “copulate,” “used of the night wanderings of the amorous cat” [Weekley]. Meaning “to talk or write incoherently” is from 1630s. Related: Rambled; rambling.

So now Tolkien’s intended meaning of Ramer’s surname of to ‘talk or write incoherently’ does not seem so far fetched. Ramer has just told us that he wanders through the fields of Arbol, the planets, which to Tolkien are planes, and the link between him and Gandalf is rather a good one because we’ve established that Gandalf (apparently) also does. And to me at least, the Notion Club Papers certainly reads rather strangely. Part Two is ”The Strange Case of Arundel Lowdham’, after all. And we can draw a further link between Ramer and Gandalf in Tolkien’s illustration ‘Eeriness’ where we see a cat on the back of the wizard who is clearly Gandalf. And the wizard is on the ‘Lost Road’. The same cat perhaps is rammen, ‘to copulate’ in the etymology of ‘roam’. It is, but I don’t have to time to follow that ball of yarn here. And then we can draw a further link between Ramer, ramble and the cat with Gandalf, following the suggested link in the etymology of ‘ramble’ to ‘roam’ where we find ‘wander’ and pilgrim from Latin romerius “a pilgrim”. And we know that Gandalf is the Grey Pilgrim.

roam (v.)
c. 1300, romen, possibly from Old English *ramian “act of wandering about,” which is probably related to aræman “arise, lift up.” There are no certain cognate forms in other Germanic languages, but Barnhart points to Old Norse reimuðr “act of wandering about,” reimast “to haunt.” “Except in late puns, there is no evidence of connexion with the Romance words denoting pilgrims or pilgrimages to Rome ….” [OED], such as Spanish romero “a pilot-fish; a pilgrim;” Old French romier “traveling as a pilgrim; a pilgrim,” from Medieval Latin romerius “a pilgrim” (originally to Rome). Related: Roamed; roamer; roaming.

Wiktionary gives us: Middle Dutch rammen (to night-wander, to copulate), rammelen (to wander about, ramble). Tolkien according to Shippey, often knew better than the O.E.D and as we know he was certainly rather fond of puns, ‘All roads to lead to Rome (roam)’ for example. Either way, we can establish with reasonable certainty the connection with either Old English *ramian “act of wandering about,” or Old Norse reimuðr “act of wandering about,”, or possibly both. The preponderance of evidence points towards the validity of the connection between Gandalf and Ramer and thence to Tolkien. The latter connection though requires more discussion.

And then we can go even further and establish a link, an association of meanings to Rhovanion via the etymologies. Why is Rhovanion relevant? I’ll explain shortly. Rhovanion can be rendered in Tolkien’s private symbolism as ‘rhover’ or ‘rover’, to ‘rove’. Rhovanion is another manifestation of the idea of ‘the lost road’ in Tolkien’s works, hence why we find the timeless Lorien with the Naith and the giant forest-maze of Mirkwood in which Tolkien in the early drafts of The Hobbit, incorporated, what Rateliffe describes as, a ‘Theseus theme’. The sound sense is intended to suggest ‘rover’ from Roverandom- to rove about at random, to be lost, bewildered. Rhovanion is Sindarin for “wilderland” and contains rhovan, with the place-name ending -ion. Wilderland was a Hobbit name. Tolkien made Wilderland based on wilderness but with a side-reference to the verbs wilder, “wander astray” and bewilder. Tolkien marks Rhovanion as Wilderland on the map in the Hobbit. So again, why is this relevant? Because Rhovanion is the grey plane of the hypotenuse in Tolkien’s geometry of ‘The Lord of the Rings’. And we’ve already established a very firm link between grey and wandering and roving which characterizes Rhovanion. And there’s yet another reason why Tolkien would closely associate the meanings of the words planet with plane in his private symbolism. The nose and the sense of smell in his works is assigned to the plane of the hypotenuse in his system- that is, the grey plane, the thin plane (see below). And we’ve just established that planet refers to what appears to be a specific sense of the meaning of plane in his system- that being a plane of wandering, or roving. And as we read, the etymology of ‘planet’ gives ‘wandering’: “Perhaps it is from a nasalized form of PIE root *pele- (2) “flat; to spread,” on the notion of “spread out,”. Therefore Tolkien incorporated planet into his planar system via the ‘nasalized’ connection, the nose. I’m being absolutely serious. Planet in his symbolism specifically refers to the grey, thin plane of the hypotenuse. This convoluted symbolism is why Bombadil speaks nonsense and Ramer raves nonsense. They both refer to Tolkien, the game playing riddling philologist that Kilby had met with an internal scheme that bewildered everyone. Everybody thought (he felt) he was lost, wandering, but not all who wander are lost. We can also establish more supporting evidence of -thin symbolizing the grey plane. We note that the land of Dungortheb was known in The Book of Lost Tales Nan Dumgorthin, the “Land of the Dark Idols”.

idol (n.)
mid-13c., “image of a deity as an object of (pagan) worship,” from Old French idole “idol, graven image, pagan god” (11c.), from Latin idolum “image (mental or physical), form,” especially “apparition, ghost,” but used in Church Latin for “false god, image of a pagan deity as an object of worship.” This is from Greek eidolon “mental image, apparition, phantom,” also “material image, statue,” in Ecclesiastical Greek,” a pagan idol,” from eidos “form, shape; likeness, resemblance” (see -oid). A Greek word for “image,” used in Jewish and early Christian writers for “image of a false god,” hence also “false god.” The Germanic languages tended to form a word for it from the reverse direction, from “god” to “false god,” hence “image of a false god” (compare Old English afgod, Danish afgud, Swedish avgud, Old High German abgot, compounds with af-/ab- “away, away from” (source of off) + god). The older Greek senses sometimes have been used in English. Figurative sense of “something idolized” is first recorded 1560s (in Middle English the figurative sense was “someone who is false or untrustworthy”). Meaning “a person so adored, human object of adoring devotion” is from 1590s.

In that we see another connection to ‘roam’ because of the entry reimast “to haunt.” In addition ghosts are mentioned in the N.C.P by Ramer who describes his mind as wandering which links roam to wander and to Gandalf.

“How can the dreamer distinguish them?” said Ramer. “Well, it seems to me that) all, a wandering mind (if it’s at all like mine) will be much more ‘ interested in having a look at what the other knows than in trying to explain to the stranger the things that are familiar to itself.’ ‘Evidently if the Notion Club could all meet in sleep, they’d find things pretty topsy-turvy,’ said Lowdham. ‘What kind of minds visit you?’ asked Jeremy. ‘Ghosts?’ ‘Well, yes of course, ghosts,’ said Ramer. ‘Not departed human spirits, though; not in my case, as far as I can tell..’.” … ‘Aren’t some of the visitors malicious?’ said Jeremy. ‘Don’t evil minds attack you ever in sleep?’ ‘I expect so,’ said Ramer. ‘They’re always on the watch, asleep or awake. But they work more by deceit than attack.

 

So I’ve established the equivalence of plane, plain and planets within Tolkien’s private symbolism, his geometric system, with ‘planet’ having a specific meaning of the grey plane as opposed to black or white. And this would explain why he uses all of those words so freely it seems, as Hammond and Scull put it, with such ‘free interpretation’, for such varied applications as criticism of Beowulf and Sir Gawain, his ideas about Fairy Stories and within his own Art itself.

Planets, Silent and Talkative.

 

The Megalithic Door.

An overview of the general prevalence of the imagery.

The Right Angle and Dagaz.

But why the right-angled triangle you might ask?

Firstly, I believe, while the 3 planes of the geometry were based on Plato’s scheme, the 3 points of the triangle were based on the tripartite form found in Dante’s Vita Nuova, ‘New Life’.

In the opening chapter or proemio of his book Dante suggests the purpose of the composition he is about to undertake: he will copy from his ‘book of memory’ only those past experiences that belong to the period beginning his ‘new life’- a life made new by the poet’s first meeting with Beatrice and the Lord of Love, who together, with the poet, are the three main characters in the story…His task, then, is to give meaning to that poetry which he composed and to those events which took place after his meeting with Beatrice and ‘Love’…[Dante, Vita Nuova, Mark Musa, Oxford World Classics]

Tolkien’s wedding poem which appears a little later to his creation of his geometry in this way exhibits the same overall tripartite form and symmetry as the Vita Nuova. The poem is 9 lines long which is synonymous with Beatrice. Edith is Tolkien’s Beatrice. The Lord of Love, or ‘Love’, is God. A more thorough analysis can be found here: ‘The Riddle of the Hidden Images in the West Gate Drawing‘.

There are a number of complimentary reasons why Tolkien chose the triangle. The triangle has 3 sides and 3 is the number of the Holy Trinity. Its 3 planes can also represent a dialectic, a conversation. 3 conveniently could symbolize triads such as God, Woman and Man, or Woman, Man and child. The triad is also forms the basis of all Western diatonic music. This is the Music of the Ainur after all.

In the first place, then, as is evident to all, fire and earth and water and air are bodies. And every sort of body possesses solidity, and every solid must necessarily be contained in planes; and every plane rectilinear figure is composed of triangles; and all triangles are originally of two kinds, both of which are made up of one right and two acute angles; one of them has at either end of the base the half of a divided right angle, having equal sides, while in the other the right angle is divided into unequal parts, having unequal sides. These, then, proceeding by a combination of probability with demonstration, we assume to be the original elements of fire and the other bodies; but the principles which are prior to these God only knows, and he of men who is the friend of God. … And next we have to determine what are the four most beautiful bodies which are unlike one another, and of which some are capable of resolution into one another; for having discovered thus much, we shall know the true origin of earth and fire and of the proportionate and intermediate elements. And then we shall not be willing to allow that there are any distinct kinds of visible bodies fairer than these. Wherefore we must endeavour to construct the four forms of bodies which excel in beauty, and then we shall be able to say that we have sufficiently apprehended their nature. Now of the two triangles, the isosceles has one form only; the scalene or unequal-sided has an infinite number. Of the infinite forms we must select the most beautiful, if we are to proceed in due order, and any one who can point out a more beautiful form than ours for the construction of these bodies, shall carry off the palm, not as an enemy, but as a friend. Now, the one which we maintain to be the most beautiful of all the many triangles (and we need not speak of the others) is that of which the double forms a third triangle which is equilateral; the reason of this would be long to tell; he who disproves what we are saying, and shows that we are mistaken, may claim a friendly victory. Then let us choose two triangles, out of which fire and the other elements have been constructed, one isosceles, the other having the square of the longer side equal to three times the square of the lesser side. [Plato. Timaeus and Critias (p. 34). Neeland Media LLC.]

A right-angled triangle is an isosceles triangle. That’s the first of the two triangles nominated by Plato. Tolkien chooses to use the isosceles right triangle, the triangle with angles 45/45/90 degrees. He doesn’t choose to use the second of the two, the scalene triangle. The reason why I’ll come to presently. Tolkien situates the Door at the right angle. The right angle is the Door. If the geometry draws the soul upwards towards truth as we read in The Republic, and the path upwards towards truth is through the Door along the Straight Road, then the right-angled triangle would be a natural choice given the etymology:

right (adj.1)
“morally correct,” Old English riht “just, good, fair; proper, fitting; straight, not bent, direct, erect,” from Proto-Germanic *rehtan (source also of Old Frisian riucht “right,” Old Saxon reht, Middle Dutch and Dutch recht, Old High German reht, German recht, Old Norse rettr, Gothic raihts), from PIE root *reg- “move in a straight line,” also “to rule, to lead straight, to put right” (source also of Greek orektos “stretched out, upright;” Latin rectus “straight, right;” Old Persian rasta- “straight; right,” aršta- “rectitude;” Old Irish recht “law;” Welsh rhaith, Breton reiz “just, righteous, wise”). Compare slang straight (adj.1) “honest, morally upright,” and Latin rectus “right,” literally “straight,” Lithuanian teisus “right, true,” literally “straight.” Greek dikaios “just” (in the moral and legal sense) is from dike “custom.” As an emphatic, meaning “you are right,” it is recorded from 1580s; use as a question meaning “am I not right?” is from 1961. The sense in right whale is “justly entitled to the name.” Right stuff “best human ingredients” is from 1848, popularized by Tom Wolfe’s 1979 book about the first astronauts. Right of way is attested from 1767. Right angle is from late 14c.

Why would Tolkien choose this one and not

The three planes of the triangle in Tolkien’s grammar can be further understood according to Plato. Plato says in the Republic:

If it can, that will presuppose that the soul, too, has some kind of tripartite structure. Is this the case? Socrates sets out to show that it is (even while warning that the methods he and his interlocutors are deploying may be lacking in precision: 435c-d): the soul consists respectively of a rational element, a spirited element, responsible for anger and the like, and an appetitive one, where there reside hunger, thirst, sexual desire, and so on. by each of the three elements in the soul, namely, the reasoning element, the spirited and the appetitive, of the single role appropriate to each: a soul, and a person, will be just if reason rules, if spirit does what spirit properly does (which will include supporting reason in the control of the appetites) and if the appetites perform their proper functions, i.e., of keeping the person fed, watered, and so on. In short, justice turns out to be a sort of health of the soul (444d) – and in that case, Glaucon suggests, [Plato. Republic (Penguin Classics) (Kindle Locations 99-103). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.]

We can divide the 3 planes of the triangle along Plato’s tripartite structure. In Tolkien’s system, the left hand plane of the opposite corresponds to ‘spirit’, the right hand plane of the adjacent to ‘reason’ and the two hands of the hypotenuse to ‘desire’, ‘appetite’.

This representation of the soul would further explain why Tolkien chose a triangle for his geometry. We see the phrase, ‘will be just if reason rules’. In the illustration ‘Wickedness’ above we saw two triangles. These represent two separate souls divided by wickedness. The souls should be ‘as one’ united, like the two hearts at the point of union in ‘Eeriness’. And we see that the rune Dagaz, the butterfly rune, which lies at point of union in Fig 1. of the dialectic, consists of two triangles. The two wings of the butterfly rune dagaz symbolize the two left and right hands. The two triangles face towards one another and are connected at the centre by an ‘X’. Imagine the two triangles in the dagaz rune as two arrow shaped figures facing one another. This symbolizes union because they are TURNED, oriented towards one another. In ‘Wickedness’, the two triangles are not turned to each other. They both face upwards. This is Tolkien’s simple geometric language involving planar orientation, location and the turn.

So, we have two wings of the butterfly as part of the geometry of male and female, right and left hands. Two years after I had conceived of the male and female being the two wings of the rune Dagaz, both forming the geometry of the Door, and after looking at this picture MANY times, I suddenly saw the hidden wings and the sinister figure.

So the Door, Dagaz, the butterfly rune lies between the Sun and the Moon, between Time and Space, down the Straight Road. The corridor in the image ‘Before’ above corresponds to the path that the Wizard is on in ‘Eeriness’. And I’ve said that the earlier incarnations of that same geometry were the Two Trees, precursors to the Sun and Moon. And that’s not the first time Tolkien has hidden images in his pictures. Here’s plate 34 from J.R.R Tolkien Artist & Illustrator, his drawing ‘Undertenishness’ from 1912-13.

In J.R.R Tolkien Artist & Illustrator, Hammond and Scull write:

An exception from this period is the intriguingly titled Undertenishness [34]. It is attractive, not only because it is abundantly coloured like a flower garden in summer, but also because it is symmetrical. and symmetry always satisfies the human soul. The lines at the centre are like a directional arrow, pointing the viewer’s way along a central path. One is invited into the landscape, to walk between the trees and up the hill to see what lies beyond. But stand back and look at carefully at the painting, and it dawns that Tolkien has played a visual trick. The ‘forest’ is also a butterfly, the ‘trees’ in the distance its ‘antennae’ and ‘eyes’. Again we ask, What does it mean?

Hammond and Scull have recognized the visual trick and have seen the butterfly disguised as something else in the image. Tolkien using trickery? He employs this trickery in a number of other drawings. See ‘Prediction 63 . 7 Unveilings‘, Prediction #61 in ‘Predictions‘, and the ‘The Symbolic Landscape‘. You can also find many hidden images in my series of essays ‘The Riddle of the Hidden imagery in the West Gate‘. Tolkien’s work is obsessed with symmetry. It’s everywhere. Because it’s all built on this Sacred Geometry. We can see the Two Trees clearly, early prototypes at this point of what he created later. The important thing is not so much their appearance, as the geometry. The lines down the centre do indeed invite one to walk between the two trees. That line is the Straight Road, between Time and Space that the wizard in ‘Eeriness’ is on. Can you also see that the trees appear to be anthropomorphized having the two outstretched arms of his hidden grammar? Also observe the diamond shapes once again like we find in ‘Wickedness’ and ‘A Northern House‘ from the same period. The title ‘Undertenishness’ is in part a reference to age, to the perfection of a lost childhood with no cares, but it is also a reference to his number system. I’ve already stated that Tolkien had his own system. Dante, like many religious people of the medieval period, considered the number 10 to be sacred. In Tolkien’s number symbolism the number 10 symbolizes Time and Space. ‘Undertenishness’ is a very apt title considering it contains the geometry of Time and Space. You’ll encounter the number 10 again shortly in Gimli’s Chant and the Riddle of Mazarbul. For a more thorough analysis of ‘Undertenishness’ see ‘A Response to Priya Seth’s Breaking the Tolkien Code‘.

Guiding Stars, Dante and Courtly Love.

I’ve stated from the etymology that the ‘right’ in right-angle means ‘just, morally correct’. I’ve also stated that the third plane of the hypotenuse symbolizes Desire. This agrees with Plato as the element of the soul responsible for appetite. And I’ve stated that the hypotenuse is where we find the Straight Road that the wizard in ‘Eeriness’ is on, that leads to the Door. And we also see that in Fig 1. of the Dialectic, at the Door is the star. The star guides the soul towards the Door. If we look at the etymology of desire we find:

desire (n.)
c. 1300, “a craving or yearning; an emotion directed toward attainment or possession of an object; sensual appetite, physical desire, lust,” from Old French desir, from desirer (see desire (v.)). Meaning “that which is longed for” is from mid-14c.

 

desire (v.)
“to wish or long for, express a wish to obtain,” c. 1200, desiren, from Old French desirrer (12c.) “wish, desire, long for,” from Latin desiderare “long for, wish for; demand, expect,” the original sense perhaps being “await what the stars will bring,” from the phrase de sidere “from the stars,” from sidus (genitive sideris) “heavenly body, star, constellation” (but see consider). Related: Desired; desiring.

Skeats in his ‘An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language’ says:

DESIRE
to long for, yearn after. (F., ”L.) In early use. M.E. desyren, desiren, K. Alisaunder, 1 .15 ; P.Plowman, B. xv. 461. [The sb. is in Chaucer, C. T. 1503.] ”O.F. desirer, formerly desirrer (Burguy). ” Lat. desiderare, to long for, esp. to regret, to miss. p. The orig. sense is obscure, perhaps to turn the eyes from the stars,* hence, to miss, regret; but there can be little doubt that, like consider, it is derived from sider-, stem of sidus, a star. See Consider. Der. desire, sb.; desir-able, desirabl-y, desir-able-ness ; desir-ahil-i-ty ; desir-ous, desir-ous-ly. [Skeat, W. W.. An Etymological Dictionary Of The English Language (Kindle Locations 15756-15760). Kindle Edition.]

So desire is from the latin ‘from the stars’, ‘await what the stars will bring’ or ‘to turn the eyes from the stars’, that is, desire is the state when we long for the stars. Tolkien’s incorporation of the guiding star and his geometry certainly suggests that he agrees with this suggested derivation. The influence of Skeats is probable because turning is so important in his geometry and we know that Tolkien would have had access to Skeats from an early age. This is in fact why the star in the box in Smith of Wooten Major is found in the corner of the box. Tolkien felt the need to tell us that. The corner, (and indeed all corners in Tolkien’s narratives) symbolize the right-angle of the geometry.

But in one compartment in the corner he discovered a small star, hardly as big as one of our sixpences, black looking as if it was made of silver but was tarnished. [Tolkien, J. R. R.. Smith of Wootton Major (p. 9). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.]

In ‘The Riddle of the Hidden Images of the West Gate Drawing‘ I begin to make my case for the extensive influence of Dante on Tolkien. There I state that Edith is Tolkien’s Beatrice, and Minas Tirith is Dante’s Purgatory. Moreover Tolkien’s numerology shares many correspondences with Dante’s own. In the Divine Comedy which is the upward journey to the Higher Truths that Plato refers to, Beatrice guides Dante. At the Inferno she weeps for Dante to choose the ‘right path’ out of the woods. Virgil relates how the Virgin Mary’s messenger, St. Lucia, sent Beatrice to instruct Virgil to help Dante rediscover the “Right Path” from the Dark Woods. And we see the Dark Woods that surround the path of the wizard in the illustration ‘Eeriness‘. Virgil says that Beatrice wept as she pleaded, and Virgil eagerly obeyed her instructions and rescued Dante, so they are ready to begin their journey. In the opening diagram of the dialectic, Beatrice-Edith is the guiding star through the Door of the “Right Angle” through which we can turn right or left, up or down to heaven or hell.

I’ve also stated that the hypotenuse symbolizes twilight. That makes sense if the left and right hands are understood to be the Sun and Moon and the Two Trees. Twilight simply means ‘two lights’, the times of dawn and dusk. The Door naturally opens at twilight. That’s why the Door at Erebor in The Hobbit opens at twilight. That’s why the Nazgûl strangely wait all night at Crickhollow for dawn to enter the door. That’s why the Witch-King appears at the Gate of Minas-Tirith to enter the Door at dawn. That’s why the final acts of the fall of Denethor occur at twilight. That’s why the (Megalithic) Door on the spine of the cover illustration for the Hobbit is between the Moon and the Sun. That’s geometrically speaking, at the position of twilight- the Door. That’s the same symmetry in ‘Undertenishness’. That’s why the Old Forest passage begins and ends with dusk and the why entire passage is characterized by a ‘Celtic twilight’- because Bombadil and Goldberry are Moon and Sun, the ‘two lights’. Need I continue?

And did you spot that…?

“hardly as big as one of our sixpences”

Here we are again with sixpences. Recall my introduction regarding my initial set of predictions about money and “2 and 6” and ‘I Love Sixpence’. And it later turns out that the 6th link in the chain of Angainor is gold. The same number I had concluded symbolized Goldberry, the left hand, Edith. And you will also find the sixpence once again in Clive Kilby’s ‘Tolkien and the Silmarillion’.

He told me more than once how his grandfather, I think it was, could write the Lord’s Prayer on a sixpence when he was over ninety.

He told him more than once…and indeed there we have the number 9 too.

I said previously that the divergence of the two planes of the opposite and adjacent create longing, yearning. ‘Thus, in the geometry we have separation after divergence. This separation creates desire or longing to return to unison and harmony: tension which requires resolution. ‘ The longing is created when we have turned away from the stars according to the etymology of ‘desire’. And the star guides the way through the Door upwards to Plato’s higher Truths and ultimately through the Door of the Afterlife to God.

The measure of this divergence between the planes of the opposite and adjacent is clearly the plane of the hypotenuse. I also said that the geometry is the marriage of Tolkien and Edith under God. We can go much further in our understanding of the relationship as geometry. For instance, Tolkien puns on the word ‘longing’ to indicate a parallel between the length of the hypotenuse: how long the hypotenuse is, and how much longing there is between the planes of the opposite and adjacent, Edith and Tolkien. The length of the hypotenuse is a measure of desire, appetite to return to the point of union in the geometry at the origin, the Door. I also said that Tolkien took the 3 planes from Plato: spirit, rational and appetite. We can see the link between longing and appetite in the etymology:

appetite (n.)
c. 1300, “craving for food,” from Anglo-French appetit, Old French apetit “appetite, desire, eagerness” (13c., Modern French appétit), from Latin appetitus “appetite, longing,” literally “desire toward,” from appetitus, past participle of appetere “to long for, desire; strive for, grasp at,” from ad “to” (see ad-) + petere “go to, seek out,” from PIE root *pet- “to rush, to fly.”

Formerly with of or to, now with for. Of other desires or cravings, from late 14c. As an adjective, “characterized by appetite,” OED and Century Dictionary list appetitious (1650s) and appetitual (1610s) as obsolete, but appetitive (1570s) continues.

Again, to reiterate what I said previously: ‘Tolkien represents these [tension and resolution] geometrically as the distance of the spatial separation of planes. The greater the separation between planes, the greater the dissonance in the Music.’ The greater the separation, the greater the length of the hypotenuse. Yearning and longing is salved by union. And we find that union is achieved by following the Straight Road to the Door. In Fig.1. the guiding star is found at the Door. And in the etymology of ‘desire’ we find ‘craving, yearning’, long for, wish for’.

The Turn in Outline.

The 3 hands sequence is a TURN. Tolkien sets out his grammar right from the start.

The TURN proceeds in 3 stages: Spirit:Physical:Language. See ‘The Turn in Principle‘ and ‘The Turn in Practice‘. I first discovered this grammar in 2006. Much later I realized that each of these equates to the 3 planes of the triangle. The biggest hint in the passage is here:

The other had now achieved a unity of its own; but it was loud, and vain, and endlessly repeated; and it had little harmony, but rather a clamorous unison as of many trumpets braying upon a few notes. And it essayed to drown the other music by the violence of its voice, but it seemed that its most triumphant notes were taken by the other and woven into its own solemn pattern.

‘Essay’ is on odd word to use right there. You see that so many times with Tolkien, a curious idiosyncracy. These are signal moments, hints, which I’ve learned to spot very well.

essay (n.)
1590s, “trial, attempt, endeavor,” also “short, discursive literary composition” (first attested in writings of Francis Bacon, probably in imitation of Montaigne), from Middle French essai “trial, attempt, essay” (in Old French from 12c.), from Late Latin exagium “a weighing, a weight,” from Latin exigere “drive out; require, exact; examine, try, test,” from ex “out” (see ex-) + agere “to set in motion, drive” (from PIE root *ag- “to drive, draw out or forth, move”) apparently meaning here “to weigh.” The suggestion is of unpolished writing. Compare assay, also examine.

The last stage of the TURN is language. In the Denethor sequence the third stage of the TURN is characterized by a conversation between Gandalf and Denethor. Both of these qualify as ‘language’, the third stage.

I had established the progression of the TURN back in early 2006. I first discovered it in the Akallabêth by chance. I made a rough analysis of it. Later that year I went on to establish it occurring in another place in the Silmarillion.

All of my research and predictions since that time have been based on this understanding of the geometry and the TURN. In September of 2017 I made Prediction #6. (It’s logged as Prediction #7 in the Summary pdf. I have since re-ordered them based on a more accurate chronology). I was reading Tom Shippey’s ‘J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century’ and I read the following:

It is significant that Denethors most repeated statement – he says it three times, once in V/4 and twice in V/7 – is The West has failed. [Shippey, Tom. J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century]

I knew immediately that that was an instance of the TURN because the turn proceeds through 3 stages and Denethor is turned by the Enemy. I predicted that the passage with the first utterance of ‘The West Has Failed” would make reference to the spirit, because that’s the first stage of the TURN. The prediction reads like this:

“That the first instance where Denethor makes the statement ‘The West has failed’ in the Lord of the Rings would contain the word or reference to ‘spirit’ in the text.” Why? Why do the fools fly? said Denethor. Better to burn sooner than late, for burn we must. Go back to your bonfire! And I? I will go now to my pyre. To my pyre! No tomb for Denethor and Faramir. No tomb! No long slow sleep of death embalmed. We will burn like heathen kings before ever a ship sailed hither from the West. The West has failed. Go back and burn! The messengers without bow or answer turned and fled. Now Denethor stood up and released the fevered hand of Faramir that he had held. He is burning, already burning, he said sadly. The house of his spirit crumbles. Then stepping softly towards Pippin he looked down at him.

 

As you can see, I was right. I’ve only read The Lord of the Rings twice in 35 years or so.

Coincidence? If it’s a coincidence, I have another 103 for you.

Ten years after finding the TURN in the Akallabêth I came across these two paired drawings ‘Before’ and ‘Afterwards’ from the Book of Ishness.

It was only in 2019 that I decided to finally make a full analysis of the TURN. You can read them here: ‘The Turn in Principle‘ and the ‘The Turn in Practice‘. In The Turn in Practice I analyse the text of the entire Denethor sequence applying the geometric principles laid out in the ‘Principles’. During the writing of those you’ll find within the analyses 5 more predictions.

And incidentally in ‘Afterwards’ you can also see the outstretched arms of the figure conforming to the hand/arm symbolism discussed above. And you can see the same geometry in ‘Before’ that we see in ‘Eeriness’. And here we have the Door in the same position as the right angle in ‘Eeriness’.

To quote Hammond and Scull:

What can one make of the drawing Before [30]? Before what? The torches suggest a sacred place, maybe a tomb, but the red and black colours give it a sinister look, and the converging walls make it claustrophobic. Perspective leads the eye helplessly to whatever lies at the end of the murky, lifeless corridor. It has the atmosphere of a Greek tragedy, or brings to mind the night of Duncan’s murder in Macbeth: ‘Now o’er the one half-world / Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse / The curtain’d sleep’. The ‘megalithic’ doorway would later appear in pictures of Nargothrond [57] for ‘The Silmarillion’ and the Elvenking’s gate in The Hobbit [120, 121], and in the Notion Club Papers it is one of the symbols mentioned in Michael Ramer’s dreams.3

To answer the question, ‘Before what?’. Before death. The overall tone is indeed threatening, but the picture ‘Afterwards’ is altogether more peaceful and resplendent. ‘Before’ symbolizes the fear of Death. Afterwards reveals the Truth about death, the Afterlife. For a more thorough analysis of ‘Before’ see ‘A Response to Priya Seth’s Breaking the Tolkien Code‘.

Tolkien paired the two drawings. Why did Tolkien uses the word ‘Afterwards’ and not ‘After’? After would have been a more succinct name: ‘Before’ and ‘After’. The clue is in the etymology of the word ‘afterwards’ and in the symbolism of the pictures.

-ward
adverbial suffix expressing direction, Old English -weard “toward,” literally “turned toward,” sometimes -weardes, with genitive singular ending of neuter adjectives, from Proto-Germanic *werda- (cognates: Old Saxon, Old Frisian -ward, Old Norse -verðr), variant of PIE *werto- “to turn, wind,” from root *wer- (2) “to turn, bend.” The original notion is of “turned toward.”

The relationship between the two images is about the TURN, which occurs by passing through the Door. It is impossible to understand Tolkien without examining the etymologies of every word he uses. Etymology = real meaning.

Everything in Tolkien’s works is built from this geometry. EVERYTHING: the map, the characters, the narrative, his languages, and the evolution of his languages over time. That’s why he is predictable. Even the graphemes of the letters in the language are built from the geometry because the planar space on the page is divided into Time (vertical plane) and Space (horizontal plane) because the letters, the Word, are the material structures of the World, just like in the Mystic Talmud.

So….it’s all ‘mathematical’ (see ‘Tolkien’s Contrasistency‘ regarding Tolkien’s words to Clyde Kilby). Tolkien also uses the mathematical operators: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and powers.

Mirrors and Orientation.

Emanation and Decline.

Ad Orientem.

Orientation in Tolkien’s World.

Time and Space are planes separated by 90 degrees- naturally, as the opposite and adjacent planes of the triangle. Separating Time and Space is the plane of a mirror. In Tolkien’s symbolism, crossing the plane of a mirror involves a turn of 90 degrees. See the TURN above (‘The Turn in Practice‘ and ‘The Turn in Principle‘). For Tolkien’s source for the mirror see the ‘back to back’ arrangement of Adam and Eve in ‘Tolkien and the Zohar‘. (Note I found the source of Tolkien’s geometry years after I had formulated my understanding). Orientation in his world is of fundamental importance because it changes your point of view. It is only by synthesizing those two points of view do we get higher Truth. This is the dialectic. The metaphor of the hands are an expression of differing points of view. For e.g, the expressions ‘one the one hand’ and ‘on the other hand’. Plato’s dialogues themselves are set up as a conversation in this manner.

Goodness and badness are both a matter of the interrelation of different elements in us. But in between these two treatments, of the good soul and constitution on the one hand, and bad souls and bad constitutions on the other,[Plato. Republic (Penguin Classics) (Kindle Locations 455-456).]

 

A TURN represents a change in orientation. If we turn we move from one hand to the other. We can either face toward God or away from Him. If you face toward God you see things as they truly are. The reverse is also true: if you see things the way they really are, you will turn to face God. That is, you will have Faith and believe in God, listen to Him, and follow Him. If you lose Faith you will turn away and begin to see the world in a twisted, bent way. This is ‘to be turned’. This is why we see the straight and the bent mirrors on the walls of Bag End in Tolkien’s illustration. The straight mirror is on the west wall. If you look into it you are facing God in the West. And that’s why it is straight and reflects truly. The bent mirror is on the east wall. If you look into it you are turned away from God and you do not see clearly. Unlike the straight mirror, the bent mirror is not reflecting what is in front of it. Why would you have a bent mirror on your wall anyway I ask? The two very different mirrors are opposite one another for a reason. Like I said, Tolkien hid things. A lot of things.

The concave mirror has certain properties. Depending on the position of the object in relation to the plane of the mirror. It translates (moves) the image on the west-east axis (here) and it also inverts the image- turns it upside down. In other words, it makes the object larger or smaller or inverts it. Both of these transformations are essential to understanding Tolkien’s geometry and both correspond to the two effects of the contest between alef and bet I mentioned previously. Translating the image along the west-east plane equates to the claim to be eldest. Inverting the image equates to the desire to be ‘most high’ on the vertical plane. Both of these transformations are central to the changes in the relationship between the left and right hands of Woman and Man which find geometric expression in the courses of the Sun and Moon. Understanding those transformations requires us to look at the courses of the Sun and Moon which I’ll do shortly. So, this is why he chose the concave mirror.

The landscape in all of Tolkien’s works are symbolic landscapes, after the medieval symbolic landscapes such as in the Arthurian Romances. Tolkien stated in his letters that The Lord of the Rings was a Romance. What that means is the inner spiritual reality is manifested in the exterior landscape. The true reality is spiritual and the World is an incarnation of the spiritual one. Below is the mirror in ‘The Lord of the Rings’. This is the geometry of the Music of the Ainur. The geometry of Ilúvatar. The Mirror of Galadriel is a manifestation of the mirror in the symbolic landscape itself which runs through Rhovanion. In the Mirror of Galadriel we see what is Before, Present, or After because each of these corresponds to the 3 planes of the Sacred geometry. Don’t worry if you don’t understand a lot of the annotations.

In the above image you can see Black, White and Grey, after the chessboard scheme in Lewis Caroll’s ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass’. The White square has the White Mountains. The Grey square has the Grey Mountains. And the Black? The Black square has Ancalagon the Black, the Misty Mountains. See ‘Symbolic Landscape‘. We also see a reference to this chessboard on the floor of Bag End in the previous illustration.

The West Gate and the North Gate are paired. They symbolize Space (Moon) and Time (Sun). They are in fact two faces of the same gate, back to back. The place in between is between Time (white) and Space (black). It is the Twilight grey realm. Think of it to be like Narnia beyond the wardrobe in C.S Lewis’s ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’. In my opening remarks about the geometry, it corresponds to the plane of the hypotenuse, that is, Twilight, the time of two lights when both lights of Sun and Moon are in the sky. Both Gates are the plane of the mirror. But the mirror is flawed. Just like the mirror on the east wall of Bag End. It is a mirror dark.

The Music proceeds away from God. This is to the south and to the east because God is in the West looking east, and above in the sky, in heaven, looking down. This is why the hobbits are steered by some unknown guiding force, southwards and eastwards when they enter the Old Forest because Bombadil and Goldberry are Space and Time.

Each time they clambered out, the trees seemed deeper and darker; and always to the left and upwards it was most difficult to find a way, and they were forced to the right and downwards. After an hour or two they had lost all clear sense of direction, though they knew well enough that they had long ceased to go northward at all. They were being headed off, and were simply following a course chosen for them – eastwards and southwards, into the heart of the Forest and not out of it.

And Bombadil says later…

‘Old knives are long enough as swords for hobbit-people,’ he said. ‘Sharp blades are good to have, if Shire-folk go walking, east, south, or far away into dark and danger.’

Tolkien is giving us a hint here, echoing the preceding quote.

In addition Tolkien originally gave the 6 books the following titles.

Book I, The First Journey or The Ring Sets Out. Book II, The Journey of the Nine Companions or The Ring Goes South. Book III, The Treason of Isengard. Book IV, The Journey of the Ring-Bearers or The Ring Goes East. Book V, The War of the Ring. Book VI, The End of the Third Age.

This flawed mirror is represented in the broken symmetry of the two Gates of West and North. The Gates are the plane of the mirror. All gates in Tolkien symbolize the Door. The Door is comprised of Female and Male in Union. It naturally opens at twilight according to the courses of the two lights, Sun and Moon (Edith and Tolkien). The Door is situated at the top of the right angled triangle. The Door is the right-angle. For the Door to open it requires Man and Woman, the right and left hands, to be in harmony. They are in harmony when they listen to, and then follow, God’s counsel and turn to face one another. They then go through the Door together at which point they face God. You can see the right-angle at the Tongue of Lorien. This is why we find the Naith, the ‘Angle between the waters’ in Lorien. The Angle refers to the right angle, the Door,

So, both Gates are broken planes of the mirror. This is why they exhibit asymmetry. In the West Gate we see Moons on either side of the door symbolism (see Tolkien’s draft drawing for the West Gate, J.R.R Tolkien Artist & Illustrator, p.158). The crescent shapes in the branches of the two trees evolved from the crescent moons in the draft version. Therefore we see two males because the Moon is the right hand-male as stated. But we should see Sun and Moon as per Tolkien’s Two Trees symbolism. If you look very closely at his illustration ‘West Gate of Moria’ you can see that both of the spiral columns to either side of the door turn the same way. They should spiral in opposite directions just like the spirals in his illustrations ‘Before’, in ‘Wickedness’ and in the forms around the columns on the inscription on the Doors. Like the numbers 6 and 9. That was not a mistake. That’s Tolkien leaving a hint. That symbolizes, two moons, two right hands and a missing left hand. And there’s another hint. The exact centre of the stone ripples in the lake lies in line with the left hand tree.

For a study of the symbolism of the West Gate see: ‘The Riddle of the Hidden Images in Tolkiens West Gate Drawing‘.

Similarly, in the Argonath, the North Gate, we see that the two figures are both male and they represent the Moon (Isildur) and the Sun (Anárion). They should be male and female. And they are both raising their left hands and have axes in their right hands. This is the hands of Ilúvatar symbolism from the Music of the Ainur. Anárion (the Sun) should be raising his left hand and Isildur his right. But the Sun shouldn’t even be a male figure in the first place. And did anyone ever notice that Frodo both sees and hears on the Amon Hen, the Hill of Seeing? That’s the same asymmetry. The source of that problem of asymmetry goes back a long way to the beginning of the creation of Arda. Much like the fallen world finds the origins of its problems right back at the start in the Garden of Eden. The asymmetry means it’s a broken mirror. The broken mirror symbolizes the broken relationship between Woman and Man, Eve and Adam, Edith and Tolkien. The ultimate source of the asymmetry is in the discords of Melkor when the geometry of the right and left hands was created. The geometry is the broken relationship.

And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. [Genesis 3:15-16]

And we refer back to the ‘battle of the sexes’.

The Music progresses away from God. The World is fallen. We must walk towards what seems like certain destruction with ‘Northern Courage’. But we must keep our Faith and turn away from the World back towards God.

“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” [1 Corinthians Chap 13 verse 12]

This broken mirror makes an appearance at the West Gate in the form of the Riddle of the Chamber of Mazarbul, which also includes the Book of Mazarbul. The narrative, Gimli’s chant and the details of the book pages are all synchronized together and comprise the riddle. The chant is the key to understanding it.

Regarding the stanza lengths of the poem. Tolkien has his own numerology. The symbolism of the first 7 numbers are laid out in the Chain of Angainor. Tolkien also uses alchemy extensively throughout his works. Alchemy is the device of the Enemy. I first discovered it 15 years ago. Several years later I found Mahmoud Shelton’s very insightful book ‘Alchemy in Middle-Earth’. The Devil seeks to divide and separate. Indeed it is the Discords of Melkor which divided Time from Space and Woman from Man in the first place when the geometry was created in the Music. The reason the 2nd and 5th stanzas of Gimli’s chant are asymmetric is because it is a broken mirror. The two stanzas which represent the broken symmetry are 6 and 4 lines long. If you look at the Chain of Angainor you’ll find that the 6th and 4th links are gold and lead. Those two metals are very much at the heart of alchemy. Here crossing the plane of the mirror turns gold into lead. And Gandalf falls at the West Gate then as its echo, Boromir at the North Gate.

The West and North are two faces of the same gate remember. Every single poem that Tolkien ever wrote in his mythology uses this number symbolism for stanza lengths. He seems rather interested in stanza lengths in his letters when discussing Pearl and Gawain for instance.

At the moment I am engaged on putting into order, with notes and brief preface, my translation of Sir Gawain and of Pearl, before returning to my major work the Silmarillion. The Pearl is another poem in the same MS as Sir Gawain. Neither has any author’s name attached; but I believe (as do most others) that they are by the same person. The Pearl is much the more difficult to translate, largely for metrical reasons ; but being attracted by apparently insoluble metrical problems, I started to render it years ago. Some stanzas were actually broadcast, in the late 1920s.2 I finished it, more or less, before the war; and it disappeared under the weight of the War, and of The Lord of the Rings. The poem is very well-known to mediævalists; but I never agreed to the view of scholars that the metrical form was almost impossibly difficult to write in, and quite impossible to render in modern English. NO scholars (or, nowadays, poets) have any experience in composing themselves in exacting metres. I made up a few stanzas in the metre to show that composition in it was not at any rate ‘impossible’ (though the result might today be thought bad).3 The original Pearl was more difficult: a translator is not free, and this text is very hard in itself, often obscure, partly from the thought and style, and partly from the corruptions of the only surviving MS. As these things interest you, I send you the original stanzas of my own – related inevitably as everything was at one time with my own mythology. I will send you a copy of the Pearl, as soon as I can get a carbon copy made. It has 101 twelve-line stanzas. It is (I think) evidently inspired by the loss in infancy of a little daughter. It is thus in a sense an elegy; but the author uses the then fashionable (it was contemporary with Chaucer) dream-framework, and uses the occasion to discuss his own theological views about salvation. Though not all acceptable to modern taste, it has moments of poignancy; and though it may in our view be absurdly complex in technical form, the poet surmounts his own obstacles on the whole with success. The stanzas have twelve lines, with only three rhymes: an octet of four couplets rhyming a b, and a quartet rhyming b c. In addition each line has internal alliteration (it occasionally but rarely fails in the original; the version is inevitably less rich). And if that is not enough, the poem is divided into fives. Within a five-stanza group the chief word of the last line must be echoed in the first line of the following stanza; the last line of the five-group is echoed at the beginning of the next; and the first line of all is to wind up echoed in the last line of all. But oddly enough there are not 100 stanzas, but 101. In group XV there are six stanzas. It has long been supposed that one of these was an uncancelled revision. But there are also 101 stanzas in Sir Gawain. The number was evidently aimed at, though what its significance was for the author has not been discovered. The grouping by fives also connects the poem with Gawain, where the poet elaborates the significance: the Five Wounds, the Five Joys, the Five virtues, and the Five wits. [238 From a letter to Jane Neave 18 July 1962]

Again, if you think numerology is a bit unbelievable, the medievals had their own religious number symbolism. Dante was one of them who used number symbolism. To him the number 10 represented perfection. Tolkien described Dante as ‘a supreme poet’. He and C.S.Lewis would read Dante to one another.

Dante …. ‘doesn’t attract me. He’s full of spite and malice. I don’t care for his petty relations with petty people in petty cities. ‘ My reference to Dante was outrageous. I do not seriously dream of being measured against Dante, a supreme poet. At one time Lewis and I used to read him to one another. I was for a while a member of the Oxford Dante Society (I think at the proposal of Lewis, who overestimated greatly my scholarship in Dante or Italian generally). It remains true that I found the ‘pettiness’ that I spoke of a sad blemish in places. [294 To Charlotte and Denis Plimmer]

We get a good idea of the medieval mindset which inherited ideas from Classical antiquity if we look at the Dante Encyclopedia:

The fact that the number of circles, terraces, or spheres in the three realms can be counted as nine or ten probably owes to the fact that originally there were ten orders of angels (10 being a perfect number), until Lucifer and the rebellious angels fell, leaving nine orders until man was created to make up the perfect ten (Bonaventure, Sentences 2.9.7). In Conv. 2.5.12 Dante associates the number of the heavens with the angels: Li numeri, li ordini, le gerarchie narrano i cieli mobili, che sono nove, e lo decimo annunzia essa unitade e stabilitade di Dio ( The moving heavens, which are nine, declare the numbers, the orders, and the hierarchies, and the tenth proclaims the very unity and stability of God, Conv. 2.5.12). Because the number 10 symbolizes perfection (lo perfetto numero, the perfect number, VN 29.1) and the law (the Ten Commandments), one beyond, 11, came to signify transgression of the law and hence sin (Augustine, De civ. Dei, 15.20). It appears therefore significant that Dante should present his blueprint of the moral structure of sin in Inf. 11 and expressly give the ninth and tenth pouches of Malebolge at the bottom of Hell circumferences of precisely twenty-two and eleven miles respectively (Inf. 29.9 and Inf. 30.86). If each verse of the poem figures forth the number of sin in its eleven syllables, Christ, whose number is 33, might be said to redeem that sin in each terza rima (33 syllables) through his sacrifice. Numerology is one means by which Dante establishes Hell as the symmetrical inversion of Paradise. Just as all goodness derives from a triune God (the Trinity), so evil, being but a perversion of that goodness, echoes the number 3 in its forms. Dante is attacked by three beasts (lonza, leone, lupa) in the dark wood; three ladies (Mary, Lucy, Beatrice) set his journey into motion; his journey is challenged by a three-headed Cerberus, the three Furies, and a tripartite Geryon; there are three categories of sin, three rivers feeding into Cocytus, three faces of Lucifer, and three arch-traitors. The three attributes of the Deity inscribed on the Gate of Hell” divina potestate, somma sapienza, primo amore ( divine power, highest wisdom, primal love, Inf. 3.5-6)” find their inversion in the negative attributes of Lucifer, the colors of whose three faces symbolize impotence, ignorance, and malice. The symbolism of 3 attaches to Purgatory (the subdivision into three areas; the three steps at St. Peters gate, Purg. 9; the three nights spent there)..etc…[Dante Encyclopedia (Garland Reference Library of the Humanities) (p. 670). Taylor and Francis.]

“Just as all goodness derives from a triune God (the Trinity), so evil, being but a perversion of that goodness, echoes the number 3 in its forms.” This is why we have the 9 Ringwraiths set against the 9 of the Fellowship. This is why we find the importance of the numbers 6 and 9. And indeed why the Enemy creates counterfeits all of the forms of God: Eagles: Dragons, Ents: Trolls, Elves: Orcs, etc. If you think Tolkien never encountered numerology consider that even at a young age he was exposed to codes of all kinds including Animalic which had code and letter equivalence.

I was never fully instructed in it, nor a proper animalic-speaker, but I remember out of the rag-bag of memory that dog nightingale woodpecker forty meant “you are an ass”. Crude (in some ways) in the extreme. There is here, again a rare phenomenon, a complete absence of phonematic invention which at least in embryo is usually an element in all such constructions. Donkey was 40 in the numeral system, whence forty acquired a converse meaning. [A Secret Vice]

 

To reiterate, to Tolkien the number 10 represents Time and Space- that being Edith and himself. Gimli’s chant represents the geometry so we would naturally find Time and Space within it: the first stanza of 10 lines reflected in the last stanza of 10 lines.

For a more thorough analysis of the Chant of Gimli see the two parts of ‘The Riddle of the Hidden Images in Tolkiens West Gate Drawing‘.

The North Gate also has a riddle. The clue to the riddle is in the asymmetry. Boromir’s fall at the North Gate, is an echo of Gandalf’s at the West Gate. Those two falls are foreshadowed by the throwing of the stones of Boromir in the lake and Pippin down the well. Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli deliver their lament for Boromir. All of the characters represent part of the geometry. My solution will be posted on here at a later date.

There are other many other illustrative examples of symmetry. The first time Tolkien’s final form of his monogram appears in his work is in the drawing ‘Eeriness‘ in ‘The Book of Ishness’. It has its characteristic symmetry. Not coincidentally ‘Eeriness’ also has the most obviously explicit example of geometry in his works. I say not coincidentally because there are in fact 10 instances of Tolkien’s monogram in his works. Priya Seth in ‘Breaking the Tolkien Code’ believes she found one. I already knew it was there (with others) when I picked up her book and began to read it. This is why I was able to make the predictions regarding her book as I was scanning it, see Predictions. I don’t agree with her conclusions and some of her argument (that the letters J.R.R.T can be generated from those words describing types of puzzle), but the monogram is certainly there and it is a great book nonetheless. The anagrams refer to the largest riddle in the The Lord of the Rings, namely the Wheel of Fortune. His monogram is actually in both the West and North gates. See ‘A Response to Priya Seth’s Breaking the Tolkien Code‘ and ‘Predictions‘. Hammond and Scull inform us:

“Tolkien removed the three leaves containing topographical art in late 1913 or early 1914, when he seems to have decided to use the book to continue his ‘ishness’ series exclusively. He inscribed the front cover The Book of Ishness, and on the rear cover drew his monogram, curiously in mirror-reverse”. [J.R.R. Tolkien Artist & Illustrator]

Tolkien decided to mark the rear cover with the reversed monogram at the point where he dedicated the book to his abstract drawings. In this we can glean a connection between the abstract nature of the drawings and the monogram and its reversal. Part of the abstract nature of the drawings is clearly geometry and symmetry, which the drawings often incorporate. And we also note that the word that, in his early mythology, Urwendi spoke to open the Gates of Morning in the uttermost east and the Door of Night in the furthest west were the same word, but reversed.

Now the Gates of Morn open also before Urwendi only, and the word she speaks is the same that she utters at the Door of Night, but it is reversed. [Tolkien, Christopher. The Book of Lost Tales 1 (The History of Middle-earth, Book 1): Pt. 1 (p. 216).]

The position and orientation of the doors along the east-west plane determine the direction of the spelling and reading of the word. This is the same idea we find in his reversal of the monogram on the reverse of ‘The Book of Ishness’. In other words the front and back covers correspond to the beginning and the end of the book, to the Gates of Morning and the Doors of Night, which can be seen as existing on an east-west plane, corresponding to the beginning and the end of the day. This echoes my statements about the page and the graphemes of the language itself incorporating the planes of Time and Space. This mirror reversal can also be seen in the events in the 8 points of symmetry above in the Mazarbul riddle. There are a number of references by Tolkien to word reversal in ‘A Secret Vice’, ‘Essay on Phonetic Symbolism’ and we recall Tolkien’s comments in On Fairy Stories.

Of course, fairy-stories are not the only means of recovery, or prophylactic against loss. Humility is enough. And there is (especially for the humble) Mooreeffoc, or Chestertonian Fantasy. Mooreeffoc is a fantastic word, but it could be seen written up in every town in this land. It is Coffee-room, viewed from the inside through a glass door, as it was seen by Dickens on a dark London day; and it was used by Chesterton to denote the queerness of things that have become trite, when they are seen suddenly from a new angle. That kind of fantasy most people would allow to be wholesome enough; and it can never lack for material. But it has, I think, only a limited power; for the reason that recovery of freshness of vision is its only virtue. The word Mooreeffoc may cause you suddenly to realize that England is an utterly alien land, lost either in some remote past age glimpsed by history, or in some strange dim future to be reached only by a time-machine; to see the amazing oddity and interest of its inhabitants and their customs and feeding-habits; but it cannot do more than that: act as a time-telescope focused on one spot.

This is the very same idea of the point made above in the diagram of the mirror geometry of The Lord of the Rings. Point of view depends on orientation. If Urwendi is facing west she speaks the mystic word to open the Doors of Night. If she faces east to open the Gates of Morn she speaks the word in reverse order. Orientation reverses ones perspective, and indeed reality, including language itself.

And here we bump into a classic example of Tolkien’s contrasistency as Clive Kilby put it. When his work was compared to Dodgson’s Alice in Wonderland he wrote:

If you think it good, and fair (the compliment to The Hobbit is rather high) to maintain the comparison – Looking-glass ought to be mentioned. It is much closer in every way. ….

I will address that set of statements in the letter in ‘Tolkien’s Constrasistency’.

So, like I said, Tolkien hid a lot of things in his works. Adam Roberts’s Alvissmæl acrostic is one such thing which was hidden for over 70 years right under everyone’s noses. (See the excellent ‘The Riddles of the Hobbit’.). Priya Seth’s anagrams in her extraordinary ‘Breaking the Tolkien Code’ are also another set of things which lay hidden for over 60 years. As she states in her book, if you take all of the names given to Bombadil…

TOM BOMBADIL IARWAIN BEN-ADAR FORN ORALD

..you can rearrange them into…

WARN FRODO AND BILBO I BE A MAIA – MR RONALD T

All of my insights come from forensic study of the etymology of Tolkien’s words used in his texts and letters. Everything he wrote. I can explain the symbolic meanings of the letters in the Alvismæl riddle and its arrangement. The letter ‘A’ is Space. The letter ‘L’ is Time. They lie at opposite poles of the acrostic, top and bottom. I can also explain the meaning of all of Seth’s anagrams, and the warning to Frodo and Bilbo. Explanations will appear on this site in due course.

THIS is the language Tolkien spoke. It ain’t the English that you think it is.

English (n.1)
“the people of England; the speech of England,” noun use of Old English adjective Englisc (contrasted to Denisc, Frencisce, etc.), “of or pertaining to the Angles,” from Engle (plural) “the Angles,” the name of one of the Germanic groups that overran the island 5c., supposedly so-called because Angul, the land they inhabited on the Jutland coast, was shaped like a fish hook (see angle (n.)). The use of the word in Middle English was reinforced by Anglo-French Engleis. Cognates: Dutch Engelsch, German Englisch, Danish Engelsk, French Anglais (Old French Engelsche), Spanish Inglés, Italian Inglese. Technically “of the Angles,” but Englisc also was used from earliest times without distinction for all the Germanic invaders — Angles, Saxon, Jutes (Bede’s gens Anglorum) — and applied to their group of related languages by Alfred the Great. “The name English for the language is thus older than the name England for the country” [OED]. After 1066, it specifically meant the native population of England (as distinguished from Normans and French occupiers), a distinction which lasted about a generation. But as late as Robert of Gloucester’s “Chronicle” (c. 1300) it still could retain a sense of “Anglian” and be distinguished from “Saxon” (“Þe englisse in þe norþ half, þe saxons bi souþe”).

Angles…geometry huh…’the Land of Angles’…

In the previous diagram do you see the right angle at the Tongue of Lorien, at the point of the turn between the Gates, from one plane to the other? Do you see the right angle is the Door in the diagram of the Tolkien Dialectic (Fig.1)?

This is why we find the Naith in Lorien ‘in the Angle between the waters.’ To quote the esteemed Tom Shippey:

With Pearl in mind, one might easily conclude that the stretch between the two rivers is a sort of earthly Paradise for Frodo and the others, though one still capable of violation and invasion from the outside world. The Naith of Lórien, though, across the second river, is Heaven; the company undergoes a kind of death in getting there, [Shippey, Tom. The Road to Middle-earth: How J. R. R. Tolkien created a new mythology]

Earthly Paradise? Like Eden…where Adam and Eve originated with God? Yes, that’s the same origin that is at the Door in my opening diagram of the dialectic. Shippey has the two rivers as Earthly Paradise and Heaven. I would agree. That agrees with my conception that the two rivers are Space and Time and it also agrees with the characteristics Tolkien assigns to Space and Time. More explanation of those characteristics elsewhere. The two rivers are Space and Time and between Space and Time in my diagram for the Dialectic you find the angle, the Door. As previously stated, Tolkien assigns EVERYTHING in his works to the planes of the geometry because everything echoes the ideal Form created by Ilúvatar in his Design at the outset.

And then Shippey in ‘J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century’ writes:

You have entered the Naith of Lórien, or the Gore, as you would say. We would say neither naith nor gore, but Haldir tries a third word with similar meaning when he says they can walk free till they come nearer the heart of the kingdom, in the Angle between the waters. The names England and English come from the word angle, and the old now-German homeland of the English was the Angle, or corner of land, between the Flensburg Fjord and the River Schlei – just as that of the hobbits was the Angle between the rivers Hoarwell and Loudwater. Frodo feels that he is walking in a world that was no more, that he has stepped over a bridge of time. And perhaps, like the dreamer in Pearl, he has.

I had already arrived and my understanding of the geometry and ‘The Land of Angles’ two years before I read Shippey. And recall Tolkien’s comments above on Mooreeffoc in On Fairy Stories in which he mentions England and angles, and time travel.

Below is ‘Eeriness’ from the ‘Book of Ishness’…and what’s that? Is it a symbolic landscape with geometry with a road leading to a right angle, and two hearts by any chance? Could they be the same two hearts of the Man and Woman, Adam and Eve, Tolkien and Edith?

“That the knowledge at which geometry aims is knowledge of the eternal, and not of aught perishing and transient. That, he replied, may be readily allowed, and is true. Then, my noble friend, geometry will draw the soul toward truth, and create the spirit of philosophy, and raise up that which is now unhappily allowed to fall down.” [Plato. Plato’s Republic]

What you see is the Path of the Heart, The Straight Road between Time and Space which leads to the Door, ultimately leading to the Afterlife. It leads to Higher Truths if the Man and Woman are listening to one another in union under God. Most people think discords are from music. Thy’re not. Tolkien ain’t speaking the same English as you or I.

Sinister and Dexter.

Rational Planes.

In his letters Tolkien refers to ‘plane’ and ‘planet’ 22 times. The word ‘planet’ is derived from plane. The words plain and explain are also derived from that root. He uses the word ‘plain’ 41 times. ‘Plain’ is in fact a favourite go-to word of Tolkien’s. When Tolkien uses a word he doesn’t just throw it on the page.

plane (n.1)
“flat surface,” c. 1600, from Latin planum “flat surface, plane, level, plain,” noun use of neuter of adjective planus “flat, level, even, plain, clear,” from PIE *pla-no- (source also of Lithuanian plonas “thin;” Celtic *lanon “plain;” perhaps also Greek pelanos “sacrificial cake, a mixture offered to the gods, offering (of meal, honey, and oil) poured or spread”), suffixed form of root *pele- (2) “flat; to spread.”

 

plain (adj.)
c. 1300, “flat, smooth,” from Old French plain “flat, smooth, even” (12c.), from Latin planus “flat, even, level” (from PIE root *pele- (2) “flat; to spread”). Sense of “evident” is from, c. 1300; that of “free from obstruction” is early 14c.; meaning “simple, sincere, ordinary” is recorded from late 14c., especially of dress, “unembellished, without decoration.”

In addition to the planar geometry we have rational planes. They’re part of the same system. Rational planes are the same planar reality but replicated above or below it. They can be envisaged as either rungs of a ladder or layers in a cake. They are stacked on top of one another. At the top is Heaven and God. At the bottom is Hell which is everlasting separation from God. Think of it like the structures in Dante’s Divine Comedy. When the left and right hands are in harmony souls can pass through the Door, they can either turn left or right. The TURN is either towards God or away from him. Therefore the direction of the turn moves the characters and the narrative either up towards God to a higher rational plane, or down away from God to a lower rational plane. The higher rational planes are the Higher Truths of the dialectic. We pass through the Door when our hearts are contrite and we repent. All souls are an echo of the fundamental left and right handed geometry laid down in the Music of the Ainur. For example, Boromir is the elder left hand, and Faramir is the younger right hand. Gender is really handedness in the geometry, not sex.

Tolkien argues with C.S Lewis about marriage. The letter remained a draft and was never sent. He refers to ascending to a rational plane. The rational response is contrasted to merely becoming angry.

p. 34. ‘I’d be very angry if the Mohammedans tried to prevent the rest of us from drinking wine.’ Justly so. Let us consider this point alone, at first. Why? Well, if we try to ascend straightaway to a rational plane, and leave behind mere anger with anyone who interferes with our habits (good or bad), the answer is: because the Mohammedans would be guilty of injustice.

I’ve already stated that the Straight Road is the way that the wizard in Eeriness is on and leads to the Door. And that the Door leads to higher and lower rational planes.

We have already seen his statements about repentance, loss and recovery. To reiterate:

As far as we can go back the nobler part of the human mind is filled with the thoughts of sibb, peace and goodwill, and with the thought of its loss. We shall never recover it, for that is not the way of repentance, which works spirally and not in a closed circle; we may recover something like it, but on a higher plane. … Of course, I suppose that, subject to the permission of God, the whole human race (as each individual) is free not to rise again but to go to perdition and carry out the Fall to its bitter bottom (as each individual can singulariter6).

In the editorial notes of Tolkien’s letters we see that singulariter is Latin, ‘singly, separately’. This is a reference to the potential marriage breakdown, of the separation of Edith and Tolkien. Remember Tolkien was arguing with C.S.Lewis about marriage. He speaks of his forced separation during his years at Oxford in his letter to his son Michael in which he again talks about marriage, describing the experience as bitter. The functioning marriage allows for an ascent to a higher rational plane, avoiding separation.

Plato’s Spindle of Necessity.

I discovered Plato’s Spindle of Necessity in The Republic 3 years after I had arrived at the my understanding of his geometric framework. Here’s a help in visualizing the Spindle on the right below.

Now when the spirits which were in the meadow had tarried seven days, on the eighth they were obliged to proceed on their journey, and, on the fourth day after, he said that they came to a place where they could see from above a line of light, straight as a column, extending right through the whole heaven and through the earth, in color resembling the rainbow, only brighter and purer; another day’s journey brought them to the place, and there, in the midst of the light, they saw the ends of the chains of heaven let down from above: for this light is the belt of heaven, and holds together the circle of the universe, like the under-girders of a trireme. From these ends is extended the spindle of Necessity, on which all the revolutions turn. The shaft and hook of this spindle are made of steel, and the whorl is made partly of steel and also partly of other materials. Now the whorl is in form like the whorl used on earth; and the description of it implied that there is one large hollow whorl which is quite scooped out, and into this is fitted another lesser one, and another, and another, and four others, making eight in all, like vessels which fit into one another; the whorls show their edges on the upper side, and on their lower side all together form one continuous whorl. This is pierced by the spindle, which is driven home through the centre of the eighth. The first and outermost whorl has the rim broadest, and the seven inner whorls are narrower, in the following proportions ” the sixth is next to the first in size, the fourth next to the sixth; then comes the eighth; the seventh is fifth, the fifth is sixth, the third is seventh, last and eighth comes the second. The largest (or fixed stars) is spangled, and the seventh (or sun) is brightest; the eighth (or moon) colored by the reflected light of the seventh; the second and fifth (Saturn and Mercury) are in color like one another, and yellower than the preceding; the third (Venus) has the whitest light; the fourth (Mars) is reddish; the sixth (Jupiter) is in whiteness second. Now the whole spindle has the same motion; but, as the whole revolves in one direction, the seven inner circles move slowly in the other, and of these the swiftest is the eighth; next in swiftness are the seventh, sixth, and fifth, which move together; third in swiftness appeared to move according to the law of this reversed motion, the fourth; the third appeared fourth, and the second fifth. The spindle turns on the knees of Necessity; and on the upper surface of each circle is a siren, who goes round with them, hymning a single tone or note. The eight together form one harmony; and round about, at equal intervals, there is another band, three in number, each sitting upon her throne: these are the Fates, daughters of Necessity, who are clothed in white robes and have chaplets upon their heads, Lachesis and Clotho and Atropos, who accompany with their voices the harmony of the sirens ” Lachesis singing of the past, Clotho of the present, Atropos of the future; Clotho from time to time assisting with a touch of her right hand the revolution of the outer circle of the whorl or spindle, and Atropos with her left hand touching and guiding the inner ones, and Lachesis laying hold of either in turn, first with one hand and then with the other. …

And on the twelfth day, as he was lying on the funeral pyre, he returned to life and told them what he had seen in the other world. He said that when his soul left the body he went on a journey with a great company, and that they came to a mysterious place at which there were two openings in the earth; they were near together, and over against them were two other openings in the heaven above. In the intermediate space there were judges seated, who commanded the just, after they had given judgment on them and had bound their sentences in front of them, to ascend by the heavenly way on the right hand; and in like manner the unjust were bidden by them to descend by the lower way on the left hand; these also bore the symbols of their deeds, but fastened on their backs. [Plato. Plato’s Republic]

Note how in Plato’s Spindle of Necessity handedness is linked to direction of turning as suggested in Fig 1. of the dialectic at left. Ascension is by the way on the right hand outer circle which Clotho assists with her right hand. The outer circle turns in one direction. Descent is by the way on the left hand inner whorls which Atropos assists with her left hand. The inner turns in the opposite direction to the outer. Immediately we see definite suggestions of the left and right hands of Ilúvatar and the geometry and we see the link between turning left or right allied to handedness. You can see this indicated in Fig 1. as ‘turn left’ and ‘turn right’. A more full description can be found in ‘The Turn in Principle‘. We also see Ilúvatar’s two hands in the actions of Lachesis. Galadriel’s Mirror reveals the past, the present and the future, just like “Lachesis singing of the past, Clotho of the present, Atropos of the future”. The translation of the Greek uses the word ‘manner’.

manner (n.)
c. 1200, manere, “kind, sort, variety,” from Anglo-French manere, Old French maniere “fashion, method, manner, way; appearance, bearing; custom” (12c., Modern French manière), from Vulgar Latin *manaria (source of Spanish manera, Portuguese maneira, Italian maniera), from fem. of Latin manuarius “belonging to the hand,” from manus “hand” (from PIE root *man- (2) “hand”). The French word also was borrowed by Dutch (manier), German (manier), Swedish (maner). Meaning “customary practice” is from c. 1300. Senses of “way of doing something; a personal habit or way of doing; way of conducting oneself toward others” are from c. 1300. Meaning “specific nature, form, way something happens” is mid-14c. Of literature, art, etc., “way in which a work is made or executed,” from 1660s. Most figurative meanings derive from the original sense “method of handling” which was extended when the word was used to translate Latin modus “method.” Phrase manner of speaking is recorded from 1530s. To the manner born (“Hamlet” I iv.15) sometimes is used incorrectly; it means “accustomed by birth to be subject to the practice,” but the noun is sometimes understood as manor (which formerly also was spelled manner).

The etymology gives us from hand. And since we have linked gender to handedness, we also see the root meaning ‘kind, sort’ in gender:

gender (n.)
c. 1300, “kind, sort, class, a class or kind of persons or things sharing certain traits,” from Old French gendre, genre “kind, species; character; gender” (12c., Modern French genre), from stem of Latin genus (genitive generis) “race, stock, family; kind, rank, order; species,” also “(male or female) sex,” from PIE root *gene- “give birth, beget,” with derivatives referring to procreation and familial and tribal groups. Also used in Latin to translate Aristotle’s Greek grammatical term genos. The grammatical sense is attested in English from late 14c. The unetymological -d- is a phonetic accretion in Old French (compare sound (n.1)). The “male-or-female sex” sense is attested in English from early 15c. As sex (n.) took on erotic qualities in 20c., gender came to be the usual English word for “sex of a human being,” in which use it was at first regarded as colloquial or humorous. Later often in feminist writing with reference to social attributes as much as biological qualities; this sense first attested 1963. Gender-bender is from 1977, popularized from 1980, with reference to pop star David Bowie.

In his planar abstraction into Man and Woman, apart from the commentaries on the Mystic Talmud, Tolkien was also probably also influenced by his early studies of French, Latin and Greek, which all have gender systems. It’s important to state though that the understanding of gender as sex is a modern construct. Tolkien has this to say in his letters:

while Genesis is separated by we do not know how many sad exiled generations from the Fall, but certainly there was an Eden on this very unhappy earth. We all long for it, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most humane, is still soaked with the sense of ‘exile’. If you come to think of it, your (very just) horror at the stupid murder of the hawk, and your obstinate memory of this ‘home’ of yours in an idyllic hour (when often there is an illusion of the stay of time and decay and a sense of gentle peace) – έίθε γενοίμην,5 ‘stands the clock at ten to three, and is there honey still for tea’ – are derived from Eden. As far as we can go back the nobler part of the human mind is filled with the thoughts of sibb, peace and goodwill, and with the thought of its loss. We shall never recover it, for that is not the way of repentance, which works spirally and not in a closed circle; we may recover something like it, but on a higher plane. Just as (to compare a small thing) the convened urban gets more out of the country than the mere yokel, but he cannot become a real landsman, he is both more and in a way less (less truly earthy anyway). Of course, I suppose that, subject to the permission of God, the whole human race (as each individual) is free not to rise again but to go to perdition and carry out the Fall to its bitter bottom (as each individual can singulariter6).

This is the Spindle of Necessity, the spiral. Repentance occurs when we listen to the counsels of God, turn to Him, and when the Man and Woman in the marriage listen to each other. We repent and the The Door to the Higher Truths of the dialectic, the conversation, opens. We pass through it to a higher rational plane. The truth is at the Door, the right angle in the geometry of ‘Eeriness’. To reiterate:

“Then, my noble friend, geometry will draw the soul toward truth, and create the spirit of philosophy, and raise up that which is now unhappily allowed to fall down.” [Plato. Plato’s Republic.]

We can also refuse to repent and turn away from God and the partner in the marriage. This results in a fall, which eventually leads to the ‘bitter bottom’, hell. Eden, is beyond the Door. Eden lies in the past. The Door lies in the past because it is with the Origin, God, from which all History and the Music flows. Ilúvatar said to Melkor after he halted the Music.

And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me

The Man and Woman, the right and left hands return to a perfect union at the origin where the two hearts are one. The Door represents a temporary recovery of it. Lorien symbolizes this Eden, with its ‘illusion of the stay of time and decay and a sense of gentle peace’, but Lorien is an echo of the Eden which cannot be truly recovered in this life. The plane of the mirror into that place, the West Gate and the North Gate are flawed after all. Recovery and Loss, which also appear in Tolkien’s essay ‘On Fairy Stories’, are part of the geometry, reflected in the courses of the Sun and Moon.

Today is 10/05/20. I am continuing writing this essay. One of the methods I use in Tolkien research is to search his works and his letters for his use of words and the context surrounding those words, including other words that appear in that context. Today I searched his letters for the occurrences of the word “necessity”. I found the following letter #89 to Christopher Tolkien in which he actually refers to the goddess ‘Necessity’ and not only describes our world as having an “apparent Anankê” but also of the artistic need to reflect this reality in the sub-creation of Fairy Stories. Tolkien again talks about Truth, about planes of reality and turning.

For it I coined the word ‘eucatastrophe’: the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears (which I argued it is the highest function of fairy-stories to produce). And I was there led to the view that it produces its peculiar effect because it is a sudden glimpse of Truth, your whole nature chained in material cause and effect, the chain of death, feels a sudden relief as if a major limb out of joint had suddenly snapped back. It perceives – if the story has literary ‘truth’ on the second plane (for which see the essay) – that this is indeed how things really do work in the Great World for which our nature is made. And I concluded by saying that the Resurrection was the greatest ‘eucatastrophe’ possible in the greatest Fairy Story – and produces that essential emotion: Christian joy which produces tears because it is qualitatively so like sorrow, because it comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one, reconciled, as selfishness and altruism are lost in Love. Of course I do not mean that the Gospels tell what is only a fairy-story; but I do mean very strongly that they do tell a fairy-story: the greatest. Man the story-teller would have to be redeemed in a manner consonant with his nature: by a moving story. But since the author if it is the supreme Artist and the Author of Reality, this one was also made to Be, to be true on the Primary Plane. So that in the Primary Miracle (the Resurrection) and the lesser Christian miracles too though less, you have not only that sudden glimpse of the truth behind the apparent Anankê [2] of our world, but a glimpse that is actually a ray of light through the very chinks of the universe about us. [2]. Greek νάγκη, ‘necessity, constraint’.

Another enormous coincidence considering everything in that letter and my model of his geometry presented here. Here I believe he must be referring to his essay On Fairy Stories.

The sudden glimpse of Truth produces the eucatastrophe, which is ‘the happy turn’. And Tolkien says that this is “indeed how things really do work in the Great World for which our nature is made” and he describes God as the ‘supreme artist’ and ‘Author of Reality’. In this we can see how the secondary plane of the literary work, in his opinion, the Fairy Story should strive to reflect or reproduce this Truth as ‘literary truth’. And finally we see that Tolkien refers to the happy turn in the Primary Plane, as the result from sudden glimpse of the higher Truth “behind the apparent Anankê [2] of our world”. The editor notes Anankê to mean ‘Necessity, constraint’.

From wikipedia:

In ancient Greek religion, Ananke (/əˈnæŋk/; Greek: Ἀνάγκη, from the common noun ἀνάγκη, “force, constraint, necessity”) is the personification of inevitability, compulsion and necessity. She is customarily depicted as holding a spindle. One of the Protogenoi or Greek primordial deities, the births of Ananke and her brother and consort, Chronos (the personification of Time, not to be confused with the Titan Cronus) were thought to mark the division between the eon of Chaos and the beginning of the cosmos…. Her Roman counterpart is Necessitas (“necessity”). “Ananke” is derived from the common Ancient Greek noun ἀνάγκη (Ionic: ἀναγκαίη anankaiē), meaning “force, constraint or necessity.” The common noun itself is of uncertain etymology.[7] Homer refers to her being as necessity, often abstracted in modern translation (ἀναγκαίη πολεμίζειν, “ιt is necessary to fight”) or force (ἐξ ἀνάγκης, “by force”).[8] In Ancient Greek literature the word is also used meaning “fate” or “destiny” (ἀνάγκη δαιμόνων, “fate by the daemons or by the gods”), and by extension “compulsion or torture by a superior.”[9] She appears often in poetry, as Simonides does: “Even the gods dont fight against ananke”.[10] … In the Timaeus, Plato has the character Timaeus (not Socrates) argue that in the creation of the universe, there is a uniting of opposing elements, intellect (‘nous’) and necessity (‘ananke’). Elsewhere, Plato blends abstraction with his own myth making: “For this ordered world (cosmos) is of a mixed birth: it is the offspring of a union of Necessity and Intellect. Intellect prevailing over Necessity by persuading (from Peitho, goddess of persuasion) it to direct most of the things that come to be toward what is best, and the result of this subjugation of Necessity to wise persuasion is the initial formation of the universe”

And I have stated that Tolkien built the geometry of his world on the mathematics and geometry found in The Republic. Necessity is Anankê. In other words we have a very clear parallel drawn here between the Anankê of this world and the Anankê of the secondary truth of his own sub-creation.

We see a reference to the Spindle of Necessity described in The Republic, in The Lord of the Rings, at the Council of Elrond.

`Yet all the Elves are willing to endure this chance,’ said Glorfindel ‘if by it the power of Sauron may be broken, and the fear of his dominion be taken away for ever.’ ‘Thus we return once more to the destroying of the Ring,’ said Erestor, `and yet we come no nearer. What strength have we for the finding of the Fire in which it was made? That is the path of despair. Of folly I would say, if the long wisdom of Elrond did not forbid me.’ ‘Despair, or folly?’ said Gandalf. `It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not. It is wisdom to recognize necessity, when all other courses have been weighed, though as folly it may appear to those who cling to false hope. Well, let folly be our cloak, a veil before the eyes of the Enemy! For he is very wise, and weighs all things to a nicety in the scales of his malice. But the only measure that he knows is desire, desire for power; and so he judges all hearts. Into his heart the thought will not enter that any will refuse it, that having the Ring we may seek to destroy it. If we seek this, we shall put him out of reckoning.’ ‘At least for a while,’ said Elrond. `The road must be trod, but it will be very hard. And neither strength nor wisdom will carry us far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.’ ‘Very well, very well, Master Elrond!’ said Bilbo suddenly. ‘Say no more! It is plain enough what you are pointing at.

The road of the Quest is the road of the soul through life which travels up through the Spindle of Necessity. ‘This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong.’ This very much echoes the sentiments in Plato’s The Republic. The wheels of the world which are moved by ‘small hands’ are the whorls of the spindle which are moved by the hands of Clotho, Atropos and Lachesis. Small hands move the wheels through their deeds because they must- out of necessity. The great are here Sauron and also Elrond and Gandalf. Bilbo refers to Elrond as ‘Master’ at this moment because Tolkien is drawing the distinction between the great and the small hands of the hobbits.

master (n.)
late Old English mægester “a man having control or authority over a place; a teacher or tutor of children,” from Latin magister (n.) “chief, head, director, teacher” (source of Old French maistre, French maître, Spanish and Italian maestro, Portuguese mestre, Dutch meester, German Meister), contrastive adjective (“he who is greater”) from magis (adv.) “more,” from PIE *mag-yos-, comparative of root *meg- “great.” The form was influenced in Middle English by Old French cognate maistre. From late 12c. as “man eminently or perfectly skilled in something,” also “one who is chief teacher of another (in religion, philosophy, etc.), religious instructor, spiritual guide.” Sense of “master workman or craftsman, workman who is qualified to teach apprentices and carry on a trade on his own account” is from c. 1300. The meaning “one charged with the care, direction, oversight, and control of some office, business, etc.” is from mid-13c.; specifically as “official custodian of certain animals kept for sport” early 15c. (maister of þe herte houndes; the phrase master of the hounds is attested by 1708). As a title of the head or presiding officer of an institution, late 14c.; as “captain of a merchant vessel” early 14c. In the broadest sense, “one who has power to control, use, or dispose (of something or some quality) at will,” from mid-14c. Also from mid-14c. as “one who employs another or others in his service” (in which sense the correlative word was servant, man, or apprentice); also “owner of a living creature” (dog, horse), also in ancient contexts of slaves; paired with slave in the legal language of the American colonies by 1705 in Virginia. In academic sense “one who has received a specific degree” (translating Medieval Latin magister) it is attested from mid-13c., originally “one who has received a degree conveying authority to teach in the universities;” master’s degree, originally a degree giving one authority to teach in a university, is from late 14c. Also used in Middle English of dominant women. From 1530s as “male head of a household.” As a title or term of respect or rank, mid-14c. As a title prefixed to the name of a young gentleman or boy of the better class not old enough to be called Mr., short for young master (late 16c.). Sense of “chess player of the highest class at national or international level” is by 1894. Meaning “original of a recording” is by 1904.

Clotho, Atropos and Lachesis are the ‘great’ who point at the wheels- touch them and move them with their hands: ‘It is plain enough what you are pointing at. ‘ In Tolkien’s geometry, the circles, the wheels in the Spindle are the rational planes. And we can see that the word ‘plain’ is used here as a hint:

plain (adj.)
c. 1300, “flat, smooth,” from Old French plain “flat, smooth, even” (12c.), from Latin planus “flat, even, level” (from PIE root *pele- (2) “flat; to spread”). Sense of “evident” is from, c. 1300; that of “free from obstruction” is early 14c.; meaning “simple, sincere, ordinary” is recorded from late 14c., especially of dress, “unembellished, without decoration.”

 

plane (n.1)
“flat surface,” c. 1600, from Latin planum “flat surface, plane, level, plain,” noun use of neuter of adjective planus “flat, level, even, plain, clear,” from PIE *pla-no- (source also of Lithuanian plonas “thin;” Celtic *lanon “plain;” perhaps also Greek pelanos “sacrificial cake, a mixture offered to the gods, offering (of meal, honey, and oil) poured or spread”), suffixed form of root *pele- (2) “flat; to spread.” Introduced (perhaps by influence of French plan in this sense) to differentiate the geometrical senses from plain, which in mid-16c. English also meant “geometric plane.” Figurative sense is attested from 1850. As an adjective from 1660s.

Tolkien’s works as stated, are a medieval symbolic landscape much like in the Arthurian Romances. The narrative of The Lord of the Rings moves through 7 rational planes. Those rational planes are inner spiritual states which find incarnation in the exterior physical world as the City of Minas Tirith and its 7 levels. The soul of the individual and the City State it lives in are paralleled by Plato in the Republic and are both governed by the same geometric principles. ‘So if there are five types of cities, individuals souls will come arranged in five different ways too.’ The city is the soul writ large. Just like the City of Purgatory from Dante’s Divine Comedy in fact which Minas Tirith resembles exactly because, like Dante’s, Tolkien’s world is also a symbolic landscape. And The Lord of the Rings is in fact Tolkien’s ‘Purgatoria’. This outer manifestation of the inner spiritual reality is the medieval symbolic landscape found in Dante, the Arthurian Romances, and elsewhere. Tolkien refers to the Lord of the Rings as a Romance. ‘My work is not a ‘novel’, but an ‘heroic romance’ a much older and quite different variety of literature.’ [Letter #329 From a letter to Peter Szabó Szentmihályi (draft)]

If the individual soul resembles the City, then in Plato’s account in The Republic, it would make sense that the soul of Aragorn would resemble Minas Tirith, the city that he is destined to rule.

Then were done with this regime too, I said, the one [553a] people call oligarchy, and ruled on the basis of property qualifications. Next lets consider the origins of the individual resembling it, and what hes like when hes emerged. Yes, absolutely, he said. Well, doesnt the change from timocratic to oligarchic man take place essentially like this? Like how? When the timocratic man has a son, the son at first emulates his father and follows in his footsteps; and then he sees him suddenly wrecked by his city, like a ship on a reef, and being [553b] thrown overboard with all his possessions. [Plato. Republic (Penguin Classics). Penguin Books Ltd.]

The great keel of the ship of Minas Tirith is clearly recalled here. What’s more in his letters, when talking about marriage and relations, Tolkien refers to the man and the woman, the subject of his geometry, as ‘companions in shipwreck’. Therefore we see that the narrative of The Lord of the Rings is the inner spiritual journey of Aragorn, which is incarnate in the exterior landscape. The City of Minas Tirith is the soul of Aragorn and Arwen, Tolkien and Edith, the ‘companions in shipwreck’.

In The Lord of the Rings there are a number of different journeys incorporating the same ascension through 7 rational planes. One of the spiritual journeys that the soul goes through is the Dance of the Seven Veils. Each ascension of the 7 rational planes is accompanied by an unveiling. In the Council of Elrond, immediately before we see the references to Necessity and the mechanics of the Spindle, this unveiling is referenced by Tolkien: ‘Well, let folly be our cloak, a veil before the eyes of the Enemy!’

To date I have made the 29 predictions surrounding the narrative of the Seven Veils. You can read the outline of the narrative and a list of the associated predictions here in 7 Unveilings.

Before moving on we need to address the following statement.

There is in our Western culture the romantic chivalric tradition still strong, though as a product of Christendom (yet by no means the same as Christian ethics) the times are inimical to it. It idealizes ‘love’ ” and as far as it goes can be very good, since it takes in far more than physical pleasure, and enjoins if not purity, at least fidelity, and so self-denial, ‘service’, courtesy, honour, and courage. Its weakness is, of course, that it began as an artificial courtly game, a way of enjoying love for its own sake without reference to (and indeed contrary to) matrimony. Its centre was not God, but imaginary Deities, Love and the Lady. It still tends to make the Lady a kind of guiding star or divinity – of the old-fashioned ‘his divinity’ = the woman he loves – the object or reason of noble conduct. This is, of course, false and at best make-believe. The woman is another fallen human-being with a soul in peril. But combined and harmonized with religion (as long ago it was, producing much of that beautiful devotion to Our Lady that has been God’s way of refining so much our gross manly natures and emotions, and also of warming and colouring our hard, bitter, religion) it can be very noble. Then it produces what I suppose is still felt, among those who retain even vestigiary Christianity, to be the highest ideal of love between man and woman. Yet I still think it has dangers. It is not wholly true, and it is not perfectly ‘theocentric’. It takes, or at any rate has in the past taken, the young man’s eye off women as they are, as companions in shipwreck not guiding stars. (One result is for observation of the actual to make the young man turn cynical.) To forget their desires, needs and temptations. It inculcates exaggerated notions of ‘true love’, as a fire from without, a permanent exaltation, unrelated to age, childbearing, and plain life, and unrelated to will and purpose. (One result of that is to make young folk look for a ‘love’ that will keep them always nice and warm in a cold world, without any effort of theirs; and the incurably romantic go on looking even in the squalor of the divorce courts). Women really have not much part in all this, though

The stars that guide through the Door in Tolkien’s works are female figures. Tolkien is referring to Dante (the romantic chivalric tradition) here in this letter and his devotion to Beatrice as his muse, even after her death and the event of his own marriage and children. This recalls my correlation between the 3 points of the triangle and the three figures in the Vita Nuova, of Dante, Beatrice and the Lord of Love. Tolkien was hugely influenced by Dante. Stars are very important in the Divine Comedy. In the Paradiso Canto IV we read that the soul seeks to return to the stars. The higher Truths towards which the soul ascends.

Again for doubting furnish thee occasion Souls seeming to return unto the stars, According to the sentiment of Plato. … That which Timaeus argues of the soul Doth not resemble that which here is seen, Because it seems that as he speaks he thinks. He says the soul unto its star returns, Believing it to have been severed thence Whenever nature gave it as a form.

By ‘theocentric’ we can see that the triangle of the dialectic is theocentric because it places God at the centre, the top point at the Door, the origin. God is the origin. The imaginary deity Tolkien speaks of is the Lord of Love of Dante. Tolkien is making the point that this conception replaces God in the true Christian sense that he understands it, with the ‘divinity’ of the guiding star, the Muse, and also, for the more Christian, by Our Lady, the Virgin Mary. In other words, he is talking about the association by the Christian man of the woman with the Virgin Mary. Tolkien did this himself as he referred to Edith as Mary. And he created his geometry when he was pursuing the marriage with Edith. At that time, it was the ‘unreal romantic code’ which I’ve argued is a reference to the geometry and the ideal forms and ‘the incurably romantic’ here in this letter. His reference to the unreal romantic code is about the time he created his Book of Ishness and the geometry.

However, trouble arose: and I had to choose between disobeying and grieving (or deceiving) a guardian who had been a father to me, more than most real fathers, but without any obligation, and ‘dropping’ the loveaffair until I was 21. I don’t regret my decision, though it was very hard on my lover.But that was not my fault. She was perfectly free and under no vow to me, and I should have had no just complaint (except according to the unreal romantic code) if she had got married to someone else.

In the above letter Tolkien is speaking as the more tempered, mature man who has been married many years and had a family and giving advice to his son Micheal. Any parent would not want his son to repeat any mistakes of his own, including the ‘turning cynical’. At the time that he created the geometry he had his mind firmly fixed on Edith, his prospective wife. She was his guiding star, his Beatrice. Much of the creation of the geometry was in her absence which he very keenly felt, even to the point of almost having a bad breakdown as he put it. The ‘observation of the actual’ is the experience that Tolkien gained later after the period of creating his geometry of ideal forms, the ‘idealization’ of love he speaks of. He goes on to say: ‘But the ‘real soul-mate’ is the one you are actually married to.’ In other words he distinguishes between before being married and after being married via ‘actual’. This ‘actual’ corresponds metaphorically in his own Secondary Creation, to the real world which is the World that is realized after the ideal forms of the geometry are created in the Music of the Ainur and the Vision. That’s the point at which the Powers go into the World, ‘Eä, the World that Is’, and have much work to do.

But when the Valar entered into Eä they were at first astounded and at a loss, for it was as if naught was yet made which they had seen in vision, and all was but on point to begin and yet unshaped, and it was dark. For the Great Music had been but the growth and flowering of thought in the Tuneless Halls, and the Vision only a foreshowing; but now they had entered in at the beginning of Time, and the Valar perceived that the World had been but foreshadowed and foresung, and they must achieve it. So began their great labours in wastes unmeasured and unexplored, and in ages uncounted and forgotten, until in the Deeps of Time and in the midst of the vast halls of Eä there came to be that hour and that place where was made the habitation of the Children of Ilúvatar. And in this work the chief part was taken by Manwë and Aulë and Ulmo; but Melkor too was there from the first, and he meddled in all that was done, turning it if he might to his own desires and purposes; and he kindled great fires.

The thought and the foreshowing of the ideal forms of the Music and the Vision are contrasted with the actual real World where work and labour is done. That work is Tolkien’s own going into the World as we’ll see in the next section which occurred after his geometry was created and fixed. And if we look at the etymology of the word ‘actual’ we see this supported.

actual (adj.)
early 14c., “pertaining to acts or an action;” late 14c. in the broader sense of “real, existing” (as opposed to potential, ideal, etc.); from Old French actuel “now existing, up to date” (13c.), from Late Latin actualis “active, pertaining to action,” adjectival form of Latin actus “a doing” (from PIE root *ag- “to drive, draw out or forth, move”).

The relation between doing, actual and work can be found in his letter #153 To Peter Hastings (draft).

‘God has not used that device in any of the creations of which we have knowledge, and it seems to me to be stepping beyond the position of a sub-creator to produce it as an actual working thing, because a sub-creator, when dealing with the relations between creator and created, should use those channels which he knows the creator to have used already…..

In Tolkien’s actual Secondary World both man and woman are fallen, as we see in the tale of Aldarion and Erendis for example and the character of Galadriel. That fallen nature is shared through the vehicle of the contest between alef and bet the swapping of the hands in the course of the Sun and Moon and the subsequent Battle of the Sexes. The origin of the discords however remained with Melkor, the male and the right hand. That remained fixed. And the restoration of the woman to her rightful place, the Loathly Lady to the Lovely Lady, the central theme of his works. The cynicism he speaks of is a reference to some of the very private sexual content which was the result of a young, bitter and frustrated man, at university surrounded by females and people coupling, while he was forcefully deprived of his wife to be.

The 3 Fates and Danuin, Ranuin, Fanuin.

In an early conceptioon of his mythology, Tolkien based the characters Danuin, Ranuin, Fanuin on the Greek Moiria, the three sisters Clotho, Atropos and Lachesis. In Plato’s Republic the Three Fates are daughters of Ananke (Necessity).

The Fates were a common motif in European polytheism, most frequently represented as a group of three mythological goddesses (although their number differed in certain eras and cultures). They were often depicted as weavers of a tapestry on a loom, with the tapestry dictating the destinies of humans. Moirai are the Fates of Greek mythology who control the Threads of Fate Norns[6][7] are the Fates of Norse mythology, also related to other female deities in Germanic paganism In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the Moirai (mɔɪr, r“lots, destinies, apportioners”), often known in English as the Fates (Latin: Fata), Moirae, were the white-robed incarnations of destiny; their Roman equivalent was the Parcae (euphemistically the “sparing ones”), and there are other equivalents in cultures that descend from the Proto-Indo-European culture. Their number became fixed at three: Clotho (“spinner”), Lachesis (“allotter”) and Atropos (“the unturnable”, a metaphor for death). They controlled the mother thread of life of every mortal from birth to death. They were independent, at the helm of necessity, directed fate, and watched that the fate assigned to every being by eternal laws might take its course without obstruction. Both gods and men had to submit to them, although Zeus’s relationship with them is a matter of debate: some sources say he can command them (as Zeus Moiragetes “leader of the Fates”), while others suggest he was also bound to the Moirai’s dictates.[3]

Danuin, Ranuin, Fanuin were ‘three aged men’, described in the Book of Lost Tales I: ‘Now those men were of strange aspect, seeming aged beyond count albeit of strength untamed.’ The aged men arrive at the time when the Valar, the Gods, have found themselves incapable of mastering the courses of the Sun and the Moon and the other astronomical bodies.

We see the prevalence of hand symbolism throughout the passage. The control over the course of the Sun and Moon are very much at the hands of the Valar.

Long was this indeed the manner of the ships guidance, and long was it after those days that the Gods grew afraid once more for the Sun and Moon because of certain tidings of those days, which perchance may after be told; and because of their fear a new and strange thing befell. Now the manner of this mayhap I may tell before I make an end; and it is called The Weaving of the Days and Months and of the Years. For know that even as the great Gods sat in conclave pondering how they might fetter the lamps of heaven ever to their hand and guide their goings even as a charioteer doth guide his galloping horses, behold three aged men stood before them and saluted Manwë.

Again we see ‘manner’, which we already know has its etymological root in hand. We see that the word (may)hap is ‘fate’ from its etymology. In ‘manner of this mayhap’ we have a direct link between the hand and fate, which describes exactly the actions of Clotho, Atropos and Lachesis on the Spindle of Necessity.

hap (n.)
c. 1200, “chance, a person’s luck, fortune, fate;” also “unforeseen occurrence,” from Old Norse happ “chance, good luck,” from Proto-Germanic *hap- (source of Old English gehæp “convenient, fit”), from PIE *kob- “to suit, fit, succeed” (source also of Sanskrit kob “good omen; congratulations, good wishes,” Old Irish cob “victory,” Norwegian heppa “lucky, favorable, propitious,” Old Church Slavonic kobu “fate, foreboding, omen”). Meaning “good fortune” in English is from early 13c. Old Norse seems to have had the word only in positive senses.

The charioteer guides the horses through his hands on the reins. Thus we can see supporting evidence that Tolkien’s courses of the Sun and Moon above, is modeled on the Spindle of Necessity, in the way that I have suggested.

Moreover the hands of the three aged men are significant and instrumental in exactly the same manner as the hands of the three sisters in The Republic in controlling the whorls in the Spindle of Necessity.

Firstly we can infer that to each of Manwë’s hands the slender cord of the Sun and the stout rope of the Moon are laid.

Then going unto Sári and to Rána in turn Fanuin moved his hands as though he were making fast a great rope to each of those vessels; but when all was done he said to Manwë: “Lo, O Súlimo Lord of the Gods, the work is wrought and the ships of light are set in the unbreakable fetters of time, which neither ye, nor they, may ever break, nor may they escape therefrom, albeit these fetters are invisible to all beings that Ilúvatar has made; for nonetheless are they the strongest of things.” Then suddenly behold Danuin and Ranuin stood beside him, and Danuin going to Manwë placed in his hand a slender cord, but Manwë saw it not. “Herewith,” said Danuin, “O Manwë Súlimo, canst thou govern the goings and comings of the Sun, and never may she be brought beyond the guidance of your hand, and such is the virtue of this cord that the goings and returnings of the Sun shall be accounted the most timely and inevitable of all things on Earth.” Thereafter did Ranuin in like manner, and behold Manwë felt a stout rope within his palm invisible. “Herewith,” said Ranuin, “shalt thou hold and steer the wayward Moon, as well as may be, and so great is the virtue of the ‘thong of Ranuin’ that even the fickle and untimely Moon shall be a measure of time to Elves and Men.” Lastly did Fanuin bid bear his mighty cable’s end to Manwë, and Manwë touched it, and it was made fast to a great rock upon Taniquetil (that is called therefore Gonlath), and Fanuin said: “Now doth this mightiest cable hold both the Moon and Sun in tow; and herewith mayest thou coordinate their motions and interweave their fates; for the rope of Fanuin is the Rope of Years, and Urwendi issuing through the Door of Night shall wind it all tangled with the daycord’s slender meshes, round and about the Earth until the Great End come—and so shall all the world and the dwellers within it, both Gods and Elves and Men, and all the creatures that go and the things that have roots thereon, be bound about in the bonds of Time.”

[Tolkien, Christopher. The Book of Lost Tales 1 (The History of Middle-earth, Book 1): Pt. 1 (p. 219). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.]

Tolkien again uses the word ‘manner’- “Thereafter did Ranuin in like manner” to Danuin, set the rope in Manwë’s hand, just like the slender cord. Tolkien uses the word manner to imply that each was placed in one hand. This agrees with the charioteer analogy. Thus we have a direct link between the Sun and the moon and their courses and the function of the hands to turn this way and that in opposite directions  in the Spindle of Necessity. In other words the Sun and Moon have contrary motion. There is no mention that Manwe held in his hand the third cable. He uses the word touch. The etymology gives no sense of hand necessarily, merely to be in contact with or contiguous to.

touch (v.)
late 13c., “make deliberate physical contact with,” from Old French tochier “to touch, hit, knock; mention, deal with” (11c., Modern French toucher), from Vulgar Latin *toccare “to knock, strike” as a bell (source also of Spanish tocar, Italian toccare), perhaps of imitative origin. Related: Touched; touching.

From c. 1300 in the transitive sense “bring into physical contact,” also “pertain to.” Other senses attested from 14c. are “perceive by physical contact, examine by sense of touch,” also “be or come into physical contact with; come to rest on; border on, be contiguous with;” also “use the sense of touch,” and “mention, describe.” From early 14c. as “affect or move mentally or emotionally,” with notion of to “touch” the heart or mind. Also from early 14c. as “have sexual contact with.” Meaning “to get or borrow money” first recorded 1760.

Then we see the notion of the courses of the Sun and Moon being “interweaved”.

“Now doth this mightiest cable hold both the Moon and Sun in tow; and herewith mayest thou coordinate their motions and interweave their fates; for the rope of Fanuin is the Rope of Years, and Urwendi issuing through the Door of Night shall wind it all tangled with the daycord’s slender meshes, round and about the Earth until the Great End come—and so shall all the world and the dwellers within it, both Gods and Elves and Men, and all the creatures that go and the things that have roots thereon, be bound about in the bonds of Time.” [ibid]

This interweaving of the fates of the Sun and Moon recalls the wedding poem and the two trees ‘utterly entwined’ which we’ll see in the next section. We can compare the above passage to the passage in The Republic:

All the souls had now chosen their lives, and they went in the order of their choice to Lachesis, who sent with them the genius whom they had severally chosen, to be the guardian of their lives and the fulfiller of the choice: this genius led the souls first to Clotho, and drew them within the revolution of the spindle impelled by her hand, thus ratifying the destiny of each; and then, when they were fastened to this, carried them to Atropos, who spun the threads and made them irreversible, whence without turning round they passed beneath the throne of Necessity;

Plato. Plato’s Republic . Musaicum Books. Kindle Edition.

Tolkien writes “Long was this indeed the manner of the ships guidance”. We have the “ship of the Moon” and the “galleon of the Sun”. In the description of the spindle of Necessity in The Republic we read:

they saw the ends of the chains of heaven let down from above: for this light is the belt of heaven, and holds together the circle of the universe, like the under-girders of a trireme. From these ends is extended the spindle of Necessity, on which all the revolutions turn.

Plato. Plato’s Republic . Musaicum Books. Kindle Edition.

I’ve established that the fates of the Sun and Moon in the early version of his mythology are held in the two hands of Manwë, the left and right hands. This is evidence to support a link between the Sun and the Moon and the two hands of Ilúvatar. The two hands of Ilúvatar form the fundamental establishment of the duality, the dialectic. All of the dualities, the sun and moon, the Two trees, etc are incarnations of this.

To be continued…

Sun and Moon.

The courses of the Sun and Moon are ‘the music of the spheres’, that is, the geometric demonstration of the Music in the left and right hands of Woman and Man. To understand the diagram on the left imagine the courses of the Sun and Moon revolving around Arda. You have a flat circle essentially of Arda with the Sun and Moon tracing their courses around the perimeter. If you then have the first circular plane in the fig.2. diagram above. Then we can extend that simple model by stepping through the days on the ‘Time’ axis upwards. This produces the rational planes model of fig.2.

Happy War: the Battle of the Sexes.

The Door and The Stone.

 

The 3 planes of the Dialectic.

Through thick and thin blood is thicker than water.

Opposite: Spirit.

Adjacent: Rational.

Hypotenuse: Appetite. (Thin and Stretched).

Twilight.

The Ring.

The Nazgûl.

Spiders.

The Gaze.

To be continued…

Necessity of Love.

In another example, Tolkien describes the decision of the Ainur to go into the World, Eä, to result in containment and being bounded by the World from ‘the necessity of their love’.

And suddenly the Ainur saw afar off a light, as it were a cloud with a living heart of flame; and they knew that this was no vision only, but that Ilúvatar had made a new thing: Eä, the World that Is. Thus it came to pass that of the Ainur some abode still with Ilúvatar beyond the confines of the World; but others, and among them many of the greatest and most fair, took the leave of Ilúvatar and descended into it. But this condition Ilúvatar made, or it is the necessity of their love, that their power should thenceforward be contained and bounded in the World, to be within it for ever, until it is complete, so that they are its life and it is theirs. And therefore they are named the Valar, the Powers of the World.

Tolkien casts his betrothal and commitment to Edith, and his later duties of work to Edith as ‘necessity’. Necessity was originally imposed by Friar Francis in their enforced separation. Necessity is the necessity to go into the world to become self-sufficient, to becomes and adult, and support his family.

He used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary. Its a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door, he used to say. You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to. Do you realize that this is the very path that goes through Mirkwood, and that if you let it, it might take you to the Lonely Mountain or even further and to worse places? He used to say that on the path outside the front door at Bag End, especially after he had been out for a long walk. [The Lord of the Rings, Book I, Chapter 3 Three is Company]

We can see the young Tolkien being swept off his feet in his illustration ‘Grownupishness’.

The title suggests the conflict, the rites of passage into adult life, the necessity to do what is right. His feet do not touch the ground, and there is a great sense of panic and confusion and trepidation in the picture. Again we see geometry: squares and circles, symmetry and hand symbolism, and the chessboard of The Hall at Bag End. This is the ‘going out the door’ that Bilbo must do in that picture. Hammond and Scull write:

“This strange amalgam of an elongated, tonsured head with blank eyes, shoes, circles, squares, exclamation and question marks, and two long-fingered hands…Tolkien had himself ‘grown-up’ on his twenty-first birthday only a few months before he made the drawing”.

The figure also incorporates the stereotypical image of the ‘friar’ with his tonsured pate. The imposition of Friar Francis’s will on him is very evident. The square and the circle feature in this drawing. The circle is the female (Edith) and the square is the male (Tolkien). Here the circle dominates. Again we have the hand symbolism of Ilúvatar’s hands. The two raised hands are the command of final authority of Friar Francis and the demands of Tolkien’s faith and obligation. Tolkien is in submission to what necessity requires, his duty to his future wife Edith.

Tonsure (/ˈtɒnʃər/) is the practice of cutting or shaving some or all of the hair on the scalp as a sign of religious devotion or humility. The term originates from the Latin word tōnsūra (meaning “clipping” or “shearing”[1]) and referred to a specific practice in medieval Catholicism, abandoned by papal order in 1972. Tonsure can also refer to the secular practice of shaving all or part of the scalp to show support or sympathy, or to designate mourning. Current usage more generally refers to cutting or shaving for monks, devotees, or mystics of any religion as a symbol of their renunciation of worldly fashion and esteem. [Wikipedia, Tonsure.]

 

tonsure (n.)
late 14c., “shaving of the head or part of it,” especially as a religious rite, from Anglo-French tonsure (mid-14c.), Old French tonsure “ecclesiastical tonsure; sheep-shearing” (14c.), from Latin tonsura “a shearing, clipping,” from tonsus, past participle of tondere “to shear, shave, clip, crop,” from PIE *tend-, from root *tem- “to cut.” The verb is attested from 1706 (implied in tonsured). Related: Tonsuring.

As a sheep that is shorn Tolkien’s has very much subsumed into the flock under the will of the Shepherd. Tolkien here is blind and sightless because he is being dominated by his obligation to Edith, the circle, which Friar Francis imposes. Recall that Tolkien assigns the sense of sight to the male, right hand. He is powerless here. Tolkien is ‘well-wrapped up’, he has been turned.

wrap (v.)
early 14c., wrappen, “to wind (something around something else), cover (something), conceal; bind up, swaddle; fold (something) up or back on itself,” of uncertain origin, perhaps via Scandinavian (compare Danish dialectal vravle “to wind”), from PIE *werp- “to turn, wind,” from root *wer- (2) “to turn, bend.” Or perhaps a variant of lap (v.2). To wrap up “put an end to” is from 1926. Related: Wrapped; wrapping. Wrapping paper is from 1715.

And as Edith, the circle is dominating here, we see a proposed PIE root ‘wrap’ in the etymology of ‘wife’.

wife (n.)
Middle English wif, wyf, from Old English wif (neuter) “woman, female, lady,” also, but not especially, “wife,” from Proto-Germanic *wīfa- (source also of Old Saxon, Old Frisian wif, Old Norse vif, Danish and Swedish viv, Middle Dutch, Dutch wijf, Old High German wib, German Weib), of uncertain origin and disputed etymology, not found in Gothic. Apparently felt as inadequate in its basic sense, leading to the more distinctive formation wifman (source of woman). Dutch wijf now means, in slang, “girl, babe,” having softened somewhat from earlier sense of “bitch.” The Modern German cognate (Weib) also tends to be slighting or derogatory; Middle High German wip in early medieval times was “woman, female person,” vrouwe (Frau) being retained for “woman of gentle birth, lady;” but from c. 1200 wip “took on a common, almost vulgar tone that restricted its usage in certain circles” and largely has been displaced by Frau. The more usual Indo-European word is represented in English by queen/quean. Words for “woman” also double for “wife” in some languages. Some proposed PIE roots for wife include *weip- “to twist, turn, wrap,” perhaps with sense of “veiled person” (see vibrate); and more recently *ghwibh-, a proposed root meaning “shame,” also “pudenda,” but the only examples of it would be the Germanic words and Tocharian (a lost IE language of central Asia) kwipe, kip “female pudenda.” The modern sense of “female spouse” began as a specialized sense in Old English; the general sense of “woman” is preserved in midwife, old wives’ tale, etc. Middle English sense of “mistress of a household” survives in housewife; and the later restricted sense of “tradeswoman of humble rank” in fishwife. By 1883 as “passive partner in a homosexual couple.” Wife-swapping is attested from 1954.

Indeed Hammond and Scull compare the pairing of ‘Before’ and ‘Afterwards’ in which we see Tolkien’s most explicit rendition of the TURN, with the two paired drawings of ‘Undertenishness’ and ‘Grownupishness’ by virtue that they both share the same page and are thematically related. And of course, in the illustration ‘The Hall at Bag-End’ Bilbo must turn on his chessboard floor to go through his door. And we see the two question marks in Grownupishness visually suggesting the antennae in the butterfly of Undertenishness’. But this is definitely not a butterfly. It is intended to suggest the spider, which entraps flies, the dots at the bottom of the question marks are eyes, 6 exclamation marks comprising the legs and the circles the bulbous body. The straight Road in the centre has now become an exclamation mark. For more discussion of the dominant female as the spider see Prediction #61.

See Prediction #31 below and #28. For a more detailed analysis of Grownupishness see Prediction #38.

This ‘going into the world’ is paralleled by the Ainur going into Arda as the Valar. Tolkien fell in love with Edith and the Valar are described as having fallen in love with the vision. And by necessity they must be constrained to stay within it.

I fell in love with your mother at the approximate age of 18. Quite genuinely, as has been shown…However, trouble arose: and I had to choose between disobeying and grieving (or deceiving) a guardian who had been a father to me, more than most real fathers, but without any obligation, and ‘dropping’ the loveaffair until I was 21. [43 From a letter to Michael Tolkien 6-8 March 1941]

 

Many of the Ainur did enter into it, and must bide in it till the End, being involved in Time, the series of events that complete it. These were the Valar, and their lesser attendants. They were those who had ‘fallen in love’ with the vision, and no doubt, were those who had played the most ‘sub-creative’ (or as we might say ‘artistic’) part in the Music. [212 Draft of a continuation of the above letter (not sent)]

The parallel between Tolkien entering into adulthood and the Valar entering into Arda is further evinced in that the Valar find that they have nothing but work to do.

Thus it came to pass that of the Ainur some abode still with Ilúvatar beyond the confines of the World; but others, and among them many of the greatest and most fair, took the leave of Ilúvatar and descended into it. But this condition Ilúvatar made, or it is the necessity of their love, that their power should thenceforward be contained and bounded in the World, to be within it for ever, until it is complete, so that they are its life and it is theirs. And therefore they are named the Valar, the Powers of the World. But when the Valar entered into Eä they were at first astounded and at a loss, for it was as if naught was yet made which they had seen in vision, and all was but on point to begin and yet unshaped, and it was dark. For the Great Music had been but the growth and flowering of thought in the Tuneless Halls, and the Vision only a foreshowing; but now they had entered in at the beginning of Time, and the Valar perceived that the World had been but foreshadowed and foresung, and they must achieve it. So began their great labours in wastes unmeasured and unexplored, and in ages uncounted and forgotten, until in the Deeps of Time and in the midst of the vast halls of Eä there came to be that hour and that place where was made the habitation of the Children of Ilúvatar.

And if we look at the etymology of ‘astound’ we find a reference to the loss of the senses, of hearing through astonish. In ‘Grownupishness’ we see the loss of sight, because as stated, Tolkien assigns the sense of sight to the male, right hand.

astound (v.)
mid-15c., from Middle English astouned, astoned (c. 1300), past participle of astonen, astonien “to stun” (see astonish), with more of the original sense of Vulgar Latin *extonare. The unusual form is perhaps because the past participle was so much more common it came to be taken for the infinitive, or/and by the same pattern which produced round (v.) from round (adj.), or by the intrusion of an unetymological -d as in sound (n.1). Related: Astounded; astounding.

 

astonish (v.)
c. 1300, astonien, “to stun, strike senseless,” from Old French estoner “to stun, daze, deafen, astound,” from Vulgar Latin *extonare, from Latin ex “out” (see ex-) + tonare “to thunder” (see thunder (n.)); so, literally “to leave someone thunderstruck.” The modern form (influenced by English verbs in -ish, such as distinguish, diminish) is attested from 1520s. The meaning “amaze, shock with wonder” is from 1610s. No wonder is thogh that she were astoned [Chaucer, “Clerk’s Tale”]

Astounded, stunned and astonished describe the impression from Grownupishness quite well.

In passing we might also observe the fact that the cited reference to ‘astoned’ in Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale’ is from the moment in the tale where the Marquis asks Griselda, the poor peasant girl, to marry him. Tolkien asked Edith to marry him on his 21st birthday, a few months before he made the drawing. Tolkien is actually punning on the word ‘stone’ in his attachment of symbolism to the word astoned. To be astounded, astonished in this sense is to be turned to stone. In this case it is not Edith by association with Griselda, but himself who is turned to stone. Tolkien actually uses the word astonied twice in The Book of Lost Tales I. A fact I only discovered months after writing the rest of this essay and making the prediction below. “Then those Elves were utterly dazed and astonied by the splendour of the light,”

daze (v.)
late 14c., dasen, “be stunned; make bewildered,” perhaps from Old Norse *dasa (compare dasask “to become weary,” with reflexive suffix -sk). Or perhaps from Middle Dutch dasen “act silly.” Perhaps originally “to make weary with cold” (a sense in English from c. 1400), which is the sense of Icelandic dasask (from the Old Norse word). Related: Dazed.

We recall the stone trolls in The Hobbit. It was here that I predicted that Tolkien had used the word to describe the trolls at the moment they were turned to stone. I didn’t make this one but look, Tolkien doesn’t actually describe their faces but he does say the following, and interestingly focuses on ‘family history’:

‘We will come and look at them,’ said Strider, picking up a stick. Frodo said nothing, but Sam looked scared. The sun was now high, … Strider walked forward unconcernedly. ‘Get up, old stone!’ he said, and broke his stick upon the stooping troll. Nothing happened. There was a gasp of astonishment from the hobbits, and then even Frodo laughed. ‘Well!’ he said. ‘We are forgetting our family history! … ‘You are forgetting not only your family history, but all you ever knew about trolls,’ said Strider. [The Lord of the Rings, Chapter 12, Flight to the Ford]

And we can draw a direct link between being turned to stone, the effects of the female, the Sun, and the word astound.

Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.’ The change in the wizard’s voice was astounding. Suddenly it became menacing, powerful, harsh as stone. A shadow seemed to pass over the high sun,

In other words the change of his voice is astounding and described as becoming harsh as stone. The Sun, who I have stated is the female, Edith, can have the power to turn to stone. This is the dominant female, who in the Battle of the Sexes, dominates the Moon, the male, during the day. And Tolkien is being dominated in ‘Grownupishness’, and indeed his duties and obligations to her, his labours, remain throughout his life. Their desire to dominate each other in the marriage originates in the discords of the Enemy in the Music. The reference to ‘the high sun’ is a reference to the second of the contests between alef and bet, that being the desire to be ‘most high’ as stated previously, but in this instance the Enemy is higher yet indicating the effects of the discords on the will.

This is Tolkien in later life in 1937:

At the moment I am suffering like Mr Baggins from a touch of ‘staggerment‘, and I hope I am not taking myself too seriously. But I must confess that your letter has aroused in me a faint hope. I mean, I begin to wonder whether duty and desire may not (perhaps) in future go more closely together. I have spent nearly all the vacation times of seventeen years examining, and doing things of that sort, driven by immediate financial necessity (mainly medical and educational). Writing stories in prose or verse has been stolen, often guiltily, from time already mortgaged, and has been broken and ineffective. I may perhaps now do what I much desire to do, and not fail of financial duty. Perhaps!*…The professor of Byzantine Greek4 bought a copy, ‘because first editions of “Alice” are now very valuable’. * Not that ‘examining’ is very profitable. Quite small sales would surpass it. £100 requires nearly as much labour as a full-sized novel. [17 To Stanley Unwin, Chairman of Allen & Unwin] [Letter #17 To Stanley Unwin, Chairman of Allen & Unwin]

He speaks of ‘staggerment’. And if we look at the etymology of ‘stagger’ we reveal the connection between Necessity, Bilbo and Tolkien, and family duty. It also reveals the conflict between desire, the appetites, and duty. Aragorn strikes the troll with a stick remember:

stagger (v.)
mid-15c., “walk unsteadily, reel” (intransitive), altered from stakeren (early 14c.), from a Scandinavian source (compare Old Danish stagra, Old Norse stakra “to push, shove, cause to reel,” also “to stumble, stagger,” perhaps literally “hit with a stick,” from Proto-Germanic *stakon- “a stake,” from PIE *steg- (1) “pole, stick.” Cognate with Dutch staggelen “to stagger,” German staggeln “to stammer.” Transitive sense of “bewilder, amaze” first recorded 1550s; that of “arrange in a zig-zag pattern” is from 1856. Related: Staggered; staggering.

In ‘Grownupishness’ Tolkien certainly does not have his feet set squarely on the ground. At this moment he is going to have to hurriedly ‘find his feet’. Tolkien is experiencing Bilbo’s ‘staggerment’, unsure on his feet. And we find another connection in the etymology of the word ‘troll’.

troll (v.)
late 14c., “to go about, stroll,” later (early 15c.) “roll from side to side, trundle,” probably from Old French troller, a hunting term, “wander, to go in quest of game without purpose” (Modern French trôler), from a Germanic source (compare Old High German trollen “to walk with short steps”), from Proto-Germanic *truzlanan. Sense of “sing in a full, rolling voice” (first attested 1570s) and that of “fish with a moving line” (c. 1600) both are extended technical uses from the general sense of “roll, trundle,” the former from “sing in the manner of a catch or round,” the latter perhaps confused with trail or trawl. Figurative sense of “to lure on as with a moving bait, entice, allure” is from 1560s. Meaning “to cruise in search of sexual encounters” is recorded from 1967, originally in homosexual slang.

This symbolism of the boots is repeated with Bombadil. Bombadil is the ‘nonsense’ talking philologist and language inventor, who gets lost in his own world of private symbolism which Kilby speaks of. In the home of Bombadil and Goldberry, the boots of Bombadil symbolize his power: stomping around bombastically doing what he likes as ‘the Master’. The moment that Bombadil takes his boots off to take care of the hobbits is the moment when Goldberry abandons her domestic duties on her ‘Washing Day’. Her ‘washing day’ is a domestic tiff between Goldberry-Edith and Bombadil-Tolkien. Tolkien is left to take care of the hobbits who represent their children. He has to take his boots off, which renders him to play a more submissive role to the domestic situation. I will post my Bombadil research on here at a later date.

The symbolism lies in ‘the root of the boot’ poem- not coincidentally featuring the troll. The philologist has to ‘get to the bottom of things’ which to the philologist, is the bottom of the stone troll. Tom, who’s leg is left game, is Tom Bombadil, that is Tolkien as the nonsense speaking philologist and riddle maker. I don’t have time to go into the analysis here.

For Tolkien boots symbolize his ‘mastery’ and expertise in the world. And in searching for an online copy of the ‘root of the boot’ poem I stumbled upon Priya Seth’s article ‘Tudor, Elizabethan and Jacobean Connections‘ in which she has identified a potential source of Tolkien’s use of the boots symbolism: “bootless – Shakespeare, King Lear, The Two Noble Kinsmen (meaning: useless)”. Bootless means useless, which agrees with my analysis. The connection between bootless, usefulness and philology is of course via Tolkien’s ‘The Root of the Boot’ from ‘Songs for the Philologists’. At which point we see the further connection between staggerment and trolls. Mark. T. Hooker in The Hobbitonian Anthology observes that bootless meant ‘useless’:

Tom’s leg is game, since home he came, And his bootless foot is lasting lame. To appreciate this joke, one has to know that bootless can mean both “without a piece of footwear” and “without any use.” The second use is clearly visible in Shakespeare’s King Henry the Sixth, part 3, act ii, a scene iii (A field of battle) when George enters and says: Our hap is loss, our hope but sad despair; Our ranks are broke, and ruin follows us: What counsel give you? Whither shall we fly? To which Edward replies: Bootless is flight, they follow us with wings; and weak we are and connot shun pursuit.

Thus we can draw a parallel between the Valar entering into Eä and discovering rather disappointingly after the Music and the Vision that they have much labour ahead of them, and Tolkien going into adulthood under the pain of Necessity. We can draw a parallel between his time at school and university, all of his learning in languages and his language inventions and literary creations, his early times with Edith -(the unreal romantic code) and the learning and instruction at the feet of Ilúvatar in both the Music of the Ainur and the Vision.

Below, on the left, Fig.2. is an illustration of my model of how Tolkien’s geometry incorporates rational planes and the courses of the Sun and Moon, who are Edith-Time and Tolkien-Space. The details of this was included in my Bombadil riddle solution which was posted on the Mythopoeic Society FaceBook page in 2017. I have since refined my understanding and the model. Previously there was only one spiral. That was formed by Time (Goldberry) and Space (Bombadil) interacting with one another. I later realized that it was the two hands of Ilúvatar, which manifest later as two spirals of the Sun and Moon: Time interacting with Space, and Space interacting with Time. I discovered the image on the right today, three years after. As you can see it bears uncanny similarities. In addition, also consider that I have already described Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos as equating to the 3 sides of the triangle, the 3 hand gestures of Ilúvatar.

Reason is the means by which we oppose Necessity, Fate. Hence why climbing towards the Truth is achieved through the ascension of rational planes. According to Plato’s The Republic, we achieve this through reason, which includes arithmetic.

I mean, as I was saying, that arithmetic has a very great and elevating effect, compelling the soul to reason about abstract number, and rebelling against the introduction of visible or tangible objects into the argument. You know how steadily the masters of the art repel and ridicule anyone who attempts to divide absolute unity when he is calculating, and if you divide, they multiply, taking care that one shall continue one and not become lost in fractions. That is very true. Now, suppose a person were to say to them: O my friends, what are these wonderful numbers about which you are reasoning, in which, as you say, there is a unity such as you demand, and each unit is equal, invariable, indivisible ” what would they answer? They would answer, as I should conceive, that they were speaking of those numbers which can only be realized in thought. Then you see that this knowledge may be truly called necessary, necessitating as it clearly does the use of the pure intelligence in the attainment of pure truth?

We can see the clear link between arithmetic, reason and rational planes in the etymologies.

arithmetic (n.)
“art of computation, the most elementary branch of mathematics,” mid-13c., arsmetike, from Old French arsmetique (12c.), from Latin arithmetica, from Greek arithmetike (tekhnē) “(the) counting (art),” fem. of arithmetikos “of or for reckoning, arithmetical,” from arithmos “number, counting, amount,” from PIE *erei-dhmo-, suffixed variant form of root *re- “to reason, count.” The form arsmetrik was based on folk-etymology derivation from Medieval Latin ars metrica; the spelling was corrected early 16c. in English (though arsmetry is attested from 1590s) and French. The native formation in Old English was tælcræft, literally “tell-craft.”

 

rational (adj.)
late 14c., “pertaining to reason;” mid-15c., “endowed with reason,” from Old French racionel and directly from Latin rationalis “of or belonging to reason, reasonable,” from ratio (genitive rationis) “reckoning, calculation, reason” (see ratio).

 

reason (v.)
early 14c., resunmen, “to question (someone),” also “to challenge,” from Old French raisoner “speak, discuss; argue; address; speak to,” from Late Latin rationare “to discourse,” from ratio “reckoning, understanding, motive, cause,” from ratus, past participle of reri “to reckon, think,” from PIE root *re- “to reason, count.” Intransitive sense of “to think in a logical manner” is from 1590s; transitive sense of “employ reasoning (with someone)” is from 1847. Related: Reasoned; reasoning.

As I have previously stated at the opening, Tolkien also uses the mathematical operators of multiplication, division, addition, subtraction, and powers. In this way his work, being mathematical, can be further seen as a rational system. Indeed I’ll leave a hint here as to the role of of multiplication and division in drawing attention to the lines from The Republic above. I have previously stated that Tolkien is the great master he speaks of in ‘A Secret Vice’:

You know how steadily the masters of the art repel and ridicule anyone who attempts to divide absolute unity when he is calculating, and if you divide, they multiply, taking care that one shall continue one and not become lost in fractions.

To be extremely brief, expanding more generally from the mathematical sense in the above conversation, multiplication brings unity and division brings disunity. God said to Noah: “And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein.” [Genesis 9: 7]. Tolkien incorporated this notion into his mathematics. But multiplication only brings unity briefly. Division never brings unity. Division is the process of the discords of Melkor in the Music of the Ainur. The diverging planes of the opposite and adjacent are geometric expressions of this inner spiritual antagonism which separates and divides. In this way the division and strife in the world, God’s judgement on Adam and Eve and the battle of the Sexes, has a geometric reality. That geometric reality from the Platonic Form of the Music of the Ainur, can be found in the courses of the Sun and Moon which I’ll explain shortly.

fraction (n.)
late 14c., originally in the mathematical sense, from Anglo-French fraccioun (Old French fraccion, “a breaking,” 12c., Modern French fraction) and directly from Late Latin fractionem (nominative fractio) “a breaking,” especially into pieces, in Medieval Latin “a fragment, portion,” noun of action from past participle stem of Latin frangere “to break (something) in pieces, shatter, fracture,” from Proto-Italic *frang-, from a nasalized variant of PIE root *bhreg- “to break.” Meaning “a breaking or dividing” in English is from early 15c.; sense of “broken off piece, fragment,” is from c. 1600.

And again we can draw a very sound connection between the Devil as the divider, and Ancient Greek.

demon (n.)
c. 1200, “an evil spirit, malignant supernatural being, an incubus, a devil,” from Latin daemon “spirit,” from Greek daimōn “deity, divine power; lesser god; guiding spirit, tutelary deity” (sometimes including souls of the dead); “one’s genius, lot, or fortune;” from PIE *dai-mon- “divider, provider” (of fortunes or destinies), from root *da- “to divide.” The malignant sense is because the Greek word was used (with daimonion) in Christian Greek translations and the Vulgate for “god of the heathen, heathen idol” and also for “unclean spirit.” Jewish authors earlier had employed the Greek word in this sense, using it to render shedim “lords, idols” in the Septuagint, and Matthew viii.31 has daimones, translated as deofol in Old English, feend or deuil in Middle English. Another Old English word for this was hellcniht, literally “hell-knight.” The usual ancient Greek sense, “supernatural agent or intelligence lower than a god, ministering spirit” is attested in English from 1560s and is sometimes written daemon or daimon for purposes of distinction. Meaning “destructive or hideous person” is from 1610s; as “an evil agency personified” (rum, etc.) from 1712. The Demon of Socrates (late 14c. in English) was a daimonion, a “divine principle or inward oracle.” His accusers, and later the Church Fathers, however, represented this otherwise. The Demon Star (1895) is Algol (q.v.).

However, while Plato speculates on other etymologies of daimon in Cratylus, Tolkien incorporated the demon as a divider, a force of evil because of his inherited Catholic Faith from the Church Fathers. Moreover, and more importantly for Tolkien regarding his sub-creation, the etymology of the word finds its root in ‘divide’.

Multiplication, can be seen in the geometry at the Door, the origin where the two planes of the triangle cross producing the latin ‘X’. Multiplication of course is indicated by the ‘x’ character. It’s a simple visual metaphor. Imagine the two lines are the left and right hands of Woman and Man proceeding backwards towards the origin along the two planes of the opposite and adjacent. This is the point where we find the two hearts in ‘Eeriness’. The rune Dagaz symbolizes this, the Door. The rune gifu ‘gift’ also does. Gifu is given the ‘X’ shape. The rune symbolizes the Gift of Mortality to Men. This is the Door through which we pass, both on our way upwards towards God through rational planes, and ultimately on our final passing into the Afterlife. The Afterlife will bring a permanent re-union back to Eden with God. The association of gifu with the Door dagaz can be seen in Tolkien’s cover illustration of the Hobbit. In the design Tolkien aligns the gifu rune at the bottom with the Door at the top of the spine. I also stated previously that multiplication only brought union temporarily. The continuation of the two lines past the crossing point in the X shape, indicate a move towards division and separation once again. This reflects the story of the ups and downs of life and of relationships: vacillations between separation, unity. This can be best observed in the course of the Sun and Moon. Final everlasting union is only reached in the Afterlife. The union also symbolizes sexual intercourse. Sex is part of a healthy God ordained Marriage after all. Hence, ‘go forth and multiply’. The two lines can be regarded as two braids in a twine. The word ‘multi-ply’ gives us to join and to plait.

ply (v.1)
“work with, use,” late 14c., shortened form of applien “join to, apply” (see apply). The core of this is Latin plicare “to lay, fold, twist,” from Proto-Italic *plekt-, from PIE root *plek- “to plait.” Sense of “travel regularly” is first 1803, perhaps from earlier sense “steer a course” (1550s). Related: Plied; plies; plying.

This multiplication and braiding together is Tolkien’s intended meaning in his wedding poem. We see his reference to the the Two Trees, which are the precursors of the Sun and Moon- they being the left and right hand of Edith and Tolkien, and we see the equivalence of the Two Trees with the two hearts in the geometry. The planted hearts are the two hearts in ‘Eeriness’.

Lo! Young we are and yet have stood like planted hearts in the great Sun of Love so long (as two fair trees in woodland or in open dale stand utterly entwined and breathe the airs and suck the very light together) that we have become as one, deep rooted in the soil of Life and tangled in the sweet growth.

 

twine (n.)
“strong thread made from twisted strands,” Old English twin “double thread,” from Proto-Germanic *twiznaz “double thread, twisted thread” (source also of Dutch twijn, Low German twern, German zwirn “twine, thread”), from PIE root *dwo- “two.”

We can regard ‘the Great Sun of Love’ to be the real light of Day provided by the sun in the Plato’s cave metaphor. We can also regard the two entwined trees to be the two columns we saw earlier in the illustrations ‘Before’ and ‘Wickedness’ and indeed on the West Gate of Moria. These are represented by the two numbers 6 and 9. These refer to the left-handed and right-handed turns in the Spindle of Necessity.

The most illuminating comments on the Music are to be found in his draft letter #212 to Rhona Beare:

The Valar or ‘powers, rulers’ were the first ‘creation’: rational spirits or minds without incarnation, created before the physical world. (Strictly these spirits were called Ainur, the Valar being only those from among them who entered the world after its making, and the name is properly applied only to the great among them, who take the imaginative but not the theological place of ‘gods’.) The Ainur took part in the making of the world as ‘sub-creators’: in various degrees, after this fashion. They interpreted according to their powers, and completed in detail, the Design propounded to them by the One. This was propounded first in musical or abstract form, and then in an ‘historical vision’. In the first interpretation, the vast Music of the Ainur, Melkor introduced alterations, not interpretations of the mind of the One, and great discord arose. The One then presented this ‘Music’, including the apparent discords, as a visible ‘history’. At this stage it had still only a validity, to which the validity of a ‘story’ among ourselves may be compared: it ‘exists’ in the mind of the teller, and derivatively in the minds of hearers, but not on the same plane as teller or hearers. When the One (the Teller) said Let it Be,* then the Tale became History, on the same plane as the hearers; and these could, if they desired, enter into it. Many of the Ainur did enter into it, and must bide in it till the End, being involved in Time, the series of events that complete it. These were the Valar, and their lesser attendants. They were those who had ‘fallen in love’ with the vision, and no doubt, were those who had played the most ‘sub-creative’ (or as we might say ‘artistic’) part in the Music. It was because of their love of Eä, and because of the part they had played in its making, that they wished to, and could, incarnate themselves in visible physical forms, though these were comparable to our clothes (in so far as our clothes are a personal expression) not to our bodies. Their forms were thus expressions of their persons, powers, and loves. They need not be anthropomorphic (Yavanna wife of Aulë would, for instance, appear in the form of a great Tree.) But the ‘habitual’ shapes of the Valar, when visible or clothed, were anthropomorphic, because of their intense concern with Elves and Men. Elves and Men were called the ‘children of God’, because they were, so to speak, a private addition to the Design, by the Creator, and one in which the Valar had no part. (Their ‘themes’ were introduced into the Music by the One, when the discords of Melkor arose.) The Valar knew that they would appear, and the great ones knew when and how (though not precisely), but they knew little of their nature, and their foresight, derived from their pre-knowledge of the Design, was imperfect or failed in the matter of the deeds of the Children. The uncorrupted Valar, therefore, yearned for the Children before they came and loved them afterwards, as creatures ‘other’ than themselves, independent of them and their artistry, ‘children’ as being weaker and more ignorant than the Valar, but of equal lineage (deriving being direct from the One); even though under their authority as rulers of Arda. The corrupted, as was Melkor/Morgoth and his followers (of whom Sauron was one of the chief) saw in them the ideal material for subjects and slaves, to whom they could become masters and ‘gods’, envying the Children, and secretly hating them, in proportion as they became rebels against the One (and Manwë his Lieutenant in Eä). In this mythical ‘prehistory’ immortality, strictly longevity co-extensive with the life of Arda, was part of the given nature of the Elves; beyond the End nothing was revealed. Mortality, that is a short life-span having no relation to the life of Arda, is spoken of as the given nature of Men: the Elves called it the Gift of Ilúvatar (God). But it must be remembered that mythically these tales are Elf-centred,‡ not anthropocentric, and Men only appear in them, at what must be a point long after * Hence the Elves called the World, the Universe, Eä – It Is. It is the view of the Myth that in (say) Elves and Men ‘sex’ is only an expression in physical or biological terms of a difference of nature in the ‘spirit’, not the ultimate cause of the difference between femininity and masculinity. ‡ In narrative, as soon as the matter becomes ‘storial’ and not mythical, being in fact human literature, the centre of interest must shift to Men (and their relations with Elves or other creatures), we cannot write stories about Elves,

His interest in rational entities and rationality echoes what I’ve said regarding his sources in Plato. Similarly, the distinction between the ideal Form and the physical incarnation of the World.

Tolkien describes the Music of the Ainur as a ‘musical or abstract form’. The geometry is certainly abstract, as are the drawings in the Book of Ishness, and Tolkien even uses the word ‘form’. The etymology of abstract is revealing as we’re talking here about a ‘secret grammar’. We might also draw a link to the drawings of the Book of Ishness and trahere “to draw,” in the etymology.

abstract (adj.)
late 14c., originally in grammar (in reference to certain nouns that do not name concrete things), from Latin abstractus “drawn away,” past participle of abstrahere “to drag away, detach, pull away, divert;” also figuratively, from assimilated form of ab “off, away from” (see ab-) + trahere “to draw,” from PIE root *tragh- “to draw, drag, move” (see tract (n.1)). The meaning in philosophy, “withdrawn or separated from material objects or practical matters” (opposed to concrete) is from mid-15c. That of “difficult to understand, abstruse” is from c. 1400. In the fine arts, “characterized by lack of representational qualities” by 1914; it had been a term in music at least since 1877. Abstract expressionism as an American-based uninhibited approach to art exemplified by Jackson Pollock is from 1952, but the term itself had been used in the 1920s of Kandinsky and others. Oswald Herzog, in an article on “Der Abstrakte Expressionismus” (Sturm, heft 50, 1919) gives us a statement which with equal felicity may be applied to the artistic attitude of the Dadaists. “Abstract Expressionism is perfect Expressionism,” he writes. “It is pure creation. It casts spiritual processes into a corporeal mould. It does not borrow objects from the real world; it creates its own objects …. The abstract reveals the will of the artist; it becomes expression. …” [William A. Drake, “The Life and Deeds of Dada,” 1922] Then, that art we have called “abstract” for want of any possible descriptive term, with which we have been patient, and, even, appreciative, getting high stimulation by the new Guggenheim “non-objective” Art Museum, is reflected in our examples of “surrealism,” “dadaism,” and what-not, to assert our acquaintance in every art, fine or other. [Report of the Art Reference Department of Pratt Institute Free Library for year ending June 30, 1937]

We also see Tolkien describes the One as ‘The Teller’. And we saw in the etymology of the word arithmetic that the native formation in Old English was tælcræft, literally “tell-craft.” Tolkien as the rational craftsman of The Republic. You can also find the exploration of teller as both counter and tale teller, in my solution to the Bombadil riddle of 2017.

Tolkien’s world is a symbolic landscape. The geometry of the illustration ‘Eeriness’ is hidden within the landscape. It is the landscape because the inner spiritual reality is the real one, and the outer one is a manifestation, an incarnation of it. Minas Tirith is the outer physical manifestation of the narrative of The Lord of the Rings. The narrative is an inner spiritual journey through 7 rational planes towards the higher truths at the top towards God. He modeled it after Dante’s Purgatorio. Indeed the whole notion of the symbolic landscape can be seen in the Divine Comedy. There are 3 journeys each comprising 7 rational planes within the Lord of the Rings. Tolkien incorporates Dante’s 7 Deadly Sins into the spiritual journey of The Lord of the Rings. The plane of Wrath encompasses the Moria section. The 2nd journey incorporates the Battle of the Trees. The 3rd journey is the Dance of the 7 veils.

Dante makes reference to the Moira, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos three times:

And said my Teacher: “If thou note the marks Which this one bears, and which the Angel traces Well shalt thou see he with the good must reign. But because she who spinneth day and night

For him had not yet drawn the distaff off, Which Clotho lays for each one and compact, His soul, which is they sister and my own, In coming upwards could not come alone,

By reason that it sees not in our fashion. Whence I was drawn out the ample throat Of Hell to be his guide… [Purgatorio XXI.25-27. Longfellow.]

The Battle of the Trees is cast as a Battle of the Sexes, the battle between the left and right hands of the Woman and Man. As I said, all of his works are made from the same fundamental geometry and relationship. The Battle of the Sexes manifests as Tolkien’s own nod to the The Battle of the Trees which is found in the Cad Goddeu a medieval Welsh poem preserved in the 14th-century manuscript known as the Book of Taliesin. Left and right hands are bet and alef, B and A. These are the birch, Philology and the oak, Literature, after Tolkien’s A and B scheme. In The Lord of the Rings the battle is principally between the birch and the oak. The oak seeks to prevent the birch from completing the spiritual journey. Again, more information will appear on this site at a later date.

The third journey through the 7 rational planes is The Dance of the Seven Veils which was inspired by Haggard’s ‘She’, and the Whore of Babylon in the Book of Revelation.

Theory in Practice Part I.

So, let’s take a look at the theory in practice, here applied to the cover illustrations Tolkien made for The Hobbit.

Here’s another example of the mirror symmetry. The plane of the mirror runs down the spine of the book. Again, we must reverse the left-rightness because the book is reversed when face down opened to read. The Megalithic Door is the rune Dagaz. We see the two are in line alone the spine. We also note that the rune gifu is also lined up with the Door and Dagaz- at least an attempt has been made.

What does this symbolism mean? Dagaz is the Door (see Tolkien’s illustrations ‘Before’ and ‘Afterwards’ above). In ‘Before’ we see a passage and in the Hobbit cover we see a long road, both leading to the door. We know what the road is from the Road poems: ‘the road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began’. The road is life. The door is clearly birth into this life. At the end of our life we have another door (to complete the symmetry) which is death, which we see in ‘Before’. The door symmetry parallels the Gates of Morn and the Doors of Night.

At the end of the journey in The Hobbit, Bilbo sings.

Roads go ever ever on, Over rock and under tree, By caves where never sun has shone, By streams that never find the sea; Over snow by winter sown, And through the merry flowers of June, Over grass and over stone, And under mountains in the moon.

Roads go ever ever on Under cloud and under star, Yet feet that wandering have gone Turn at last to home afar. Eyes that fire and sword have seen And horror in the halls of stone Look at last on meadows green And trees and hills they long have known.

The caves where Sun has never shone is a reference to a number of things including, at root, a reference to Plato’s cave. The sun is the ‘Great Sun of Love’ in his wedding poem which reveals higher truths after leaving the cave. The Anglo-Saxon rune poem for dagaz reads:

Day, the glorious light of the Creator, is sent by the Lord; it is beloved of men, a source of hope and happiness to rich and poor, and of service to all.

In all of the versions of the walking song there are references to a turn.

Yet feet that wandering have gone Turn at last to home afar. …

A turn is implied here at a junction of paths:

Pursuing it with eager feet, Until it joins some larger way Where many paths and errands meet. … But I at last with weary feet Will turn towards the lighted inn, My evening-rest and sleep to meet. … Still round the corner there may wait A new road or a secret gate,

We saw the turn in ‘Before ‘ and ‘Afterwards’ through the Megalithic Door. But why does Tolkien use the dagaz rune for this symbolism? The d rune (ᛞ) is called dæg “day” in the Anglo-Saxon rune poem. This rune is also part of the Elder Futhark, with a reconstructed Proto-Germanic name *dagaz. And if we look at the etymology of the word ‘day’ we find:

day (n.)
Old English dæg “period during which the sun is above the horizon,” also “lifetime, definite time of existence,” from Proto-Germanic *dages- “day” (source also of Old Saxon, Middle Dutch, Dutch dag, Old Frisian di, dei, Old High German tag, German Tag, Old Norse dagr, Gothic dags), according to Watkins, from PIE root *agh- “a day.” He adds that the Germanic initial d- is “of obscure origin.” But Boutkan says it is from PIE root *dhegh- “to burn” (see fever). Not considered to be related to Latin dies (which is from PIE root *dyeu- “to shine”). Meaning originally, in English, “the daylight hours;” it expanded to mean “the 24-hour period” in late Anglo-Saxon times. The day formerly began at sunset, hence Old English Wodnesniht was what we would call “Tuesday night.” Names of the weekdays were not regularly capitalized in English until 17c. From late 12c. as “a time period as distinguished from other time periods.” Day-by-day “daily” is from late 14c.; all day “all the time” is from late 14c. Day off “day away from work” is attested from 1883; day-tripper first recorded 1897. The days in nowadays, etc. is a relic of the Old English and Middle English use of the adverbial genitive.

Dagaz signifies day, which is a lifetime or a period of existence. This is the road that goes ever on and on. The road of life. Dagaz is ‘Day’ and Edith-Goldberry is the Sun, the ‘Day’s Eye’and we can see why, from our discussion of Grownupishness and Necessity as it affected Tolkien’s life, his duties and obligations to her, his labours, remain throughout his life. The road that goes ever on leads down from the door and we pass through the door of death at the end: the Gates of Morn and the Doors of Night. Each day, the Sun passes through the Gates of Morn and into the Doors of Night, which parallels the passage of life. Therefore each day begins and ends with the door. This agrees with the theory: that the door opens at twilight: dawn and dusk. We also see that the day formerly began at sunset. If sunset is at the Doors of Night in the west, then life begins at sunset. And this would explain Tolkien’s preoccupation with the west and with the setting sun. Therefore, the true life is the Afterlife, which would agree with Tolkien’s religious beliefs and the notion that the true reality is the inner spiritual one which is eternal, and the outer reality is an incarnation of this: the symbolic landscape. We see the ‘After-life’ in the picture ‘After-wards’ after the turn through the door. We also see the rune gifu which I believe Tolkien intends to line up with dagaz and the door. Gifu is the name for the g-rune ᚷ· in the Anglo-Saxon rune poem, meaning gift or generosity. The rune poem reads:

Generosity brings credit and honour, which support ones dignity; it furnishes help and subsistence to all broken men who are devoid of aught else.

Tolkien wrote that death was the gift given to mortal Men. That would explain why gifu is associated with the door, since the door leads ultimately to the Afterlife.

The doom of the Elves is to be immortal, to love the beauty of the world, to bring it to full flower with their gifts of delicacy and perfection, to last while it lasts, never leaving it even when ‘slain’, but returning – and yet, when the Followers come, to teach them, and make way for them, to ‘fade’ as the Followers grow and absorb the life from which both proceed. The Doom (or the Gift) of Men is mortality, freedom from the circles of the world. Since the point of view of the whole cycle is the Elvish, mortality is not explained mythically: it is a mystery of God of which no more is known than that ‘what God has purposed for Men is hidden’: a grief and an envy to the immortal Elves.

We see the Circles of the World in the courses of the Sun and Moon and in the Spindle of Necessity.

To either side of the plane of the mirror we see the Sun and the Moon. And I have drawn a triangle over the mountain. The triangle corresponds to the triangle in ‘Eeriness’. The arrow corresponds to the Straight Road, the Path of the Heart, through the Door. The planes of the opposite and adjacent correspond to the Sun and the Moon. We can see hints of the geometric reality in Tolkien’s stylized forms of mountains, both in the Hobbit dust jacket and in many other drawings.

The door opens when left-hand and right-hand are in harmony, that being the Sun-female and the Moon-male. This lies naturally along the plane of the mirror, the spine of the book, which is where the door is. This occurs naturally at twilight, and this is why the door to the Lonely Mountain opens at twilight.

“Stand by the grey stone when the thrush knocks,” read Elrond, “and the setting sun with the last light of Durin’s Day will shine upon the key-hole.” … “The first day of the dwarves’ New Year,” said Thorin, “is as all should know the first, day of the last moon of Autumn on the threshold of Winter. We still call it Durin’s Day when the last moon of Autumn and the sun are in the sky together.

Tolkien writes in his letters: “The presence of the sun and moon in the sky together refers to the magic attaching to the door.”
We also see the Sun and Moon to either side of Taniquetil (middle illustration).

If we look at the walking songs in ‘The Lord of the Rings’, the first appearance

In the chapter ‘Three is Company’. Frodo sings:

The Road goes ever on and on Down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, And I must follow, if I can, Pursuing it with weary feet, Until it joins some larger way, Where many paths and errands meet. And whither then? I cannot say.

Then we see that the joining of ‘some larger way’ does indeed infer a junction at which they turn.

The sun had gone down red behind the hills at their backs, and evening was coming on before they came back to the road at the end of the long level over which it had run straight for some miles. At that point it bent left and went down into the lowlands of the Yale making for Stock; but a lane branched right, winding through a wood of ancient oak-trees on its way to Woodhall. That is the way for us, said Frodo.

 

Upon the hearth the fire is red, Beneath the roof there is a bed; But not yet weary are our feet, Still round the corner we may meet A sudden tree or standing stone That none have seen but we alone. Tree and flower and leaf and grass, Let them pass! Let them pass! Hill and water under sky, Pass them by! Pass them by! Still round the corner there may wait A new road or a secret gate, And though we pass them by today, Tomorrow we may come this way And take the hidden paths that run Towards the Moon or to the Sun. Apple, thorn, and nut and sloe, Let them go! Let them go! Sand and stone and pool and dell, Fare you well! Fare you well! Home is behind, the world ahead, And there are many paths to tread Until the stars are all alight. Then world behind and home ahead, Well wander back to home and bed. Mist and twilight, cloud and shade, Away shall fade Away shall fade!:Fire and lamp” and must and `read, And then to bed! And then to bed!

I have labelled the two thorn runes of Thror and Thrain as ‘axes’. Tolkien employs the rune to symbolize an axe. The axe symbolizes; the cutting down of the Tree, the tree of life. Tolkien also puns on the word axe to mean an axis. This is the hint he leaves in the Statues of the North Gate. Both figures of Sun and Moon carry an axe in their right hand.

to be continued…

[1] Prediction #104. That the word attend would have its etymological roots in ‘to stretch’.

attend (v.)
c. 1300, “be subject to” (obsolete); early 14c., “direct one’s mind or energies” (archaic), from Old French atendre “to expect, wait for, pay attention” (12c., Modern French attendre) and directly from Latin attendere “give heed to,” literally “to stretch toward,” from ad “to, toward” (see ad-) + tendere “stretch,” from PIE root *ten- “to stretch.” The notion is of “stretching” one’s mind toward something. Sense of “take care of, wait upon” is from mid-14c.; that of “endeavor to do” is from c. 1400. Meaning “to pay attention” is from early 15c.; that of “accompany and render service to” (someone) is from mid-15c., as is that of “be in attendance.” Meaning “to accompany or follow as a consequent” is from 1610s. Related: Attended; attending.

I was able to make the prediction because I had just established that planets were grey planes. And I’ve already stated that the grey plane is the hypotenuse, the ‘thin’ plane. And I already knew from my understanding of Tolkien’s geometry and system that both hypotenuse and thin shared a root with ‘to stretch’. And I also know after 15 year and over a hundred predictions that Tolkien never uses a word without knowing its etymology. In Tolkien’s system the plane of the hypotenuse is also associated with stretch:

hypotenuse (n.)
the side of a right triangle that is opposite the right angle, 1570s, from Late Latin hypotenusa, from Greek hypoteinousa “stretching under” (the right angle), fem. present participle of hypoteinein, from hypo- “under” (see hypo-) + teinein “to stretch,” from PIE root *ten- “to stretch.” Formerly often erroneously hypothenuse. Related: Hypotenusal.

And you will also find it in the etymology of thin too.

thin (adj.)
Old English þynne “narrow, lean, scanty, not dense; fluid, tenuous; weak, poor,” from Proto- Germanic *thunni “thin” (source also of West Frisian ten, Middle Low German dunne, Middle Dutch dunne, Dutch dun, Old High German dunni, German dünn, Old Norse þunnr, Swedish tunn, Danish tynd), from PIE *tnu- “stretched, stretched out” (hence “thin”), from root *ten- “to stretch” (source also of Latin tenuis “thin, slender”). These our actors … were all Spirits, and Are melted into Ayre, into thin Ayre. [Shakespeare, “The Tempest,” IV.i.150, 1610] “Loose or sparse,” hence “easily seen through,” with figurative extensions. Related: Thinly; thinness. Thin-skinned is attested from 1590s; the figurative sense of “touchy” is from 1670s.

So we have more supporting evidence that planets are planes -specifically the grey plane, the hypotenuse in his system.