Tolkien Prediction #63 ‘That a door would be forced on the Moria side of the geometry.’
This might not seem like much of a prediction but it is based on the Door symbolism of the 7 unveilings and Galadriel. The 4th instance is at Galadriel’s Mirror:
`And I’d not mind a glimpse of what’s going on at home,’ he said in an aside to Frodo. ‘It seems a terrible long time that I’ve been away. But there, like as not I’ll only see the stars, or something that I
won’t understand.’
‘Like as not,’ said the Lady with a gentle laugh. `But come, you shall look and see what you may.
Do not touch the water! ‘
Sam climbed up on the foot of the pedestal and leaned over the basin. The water looked hard and
dark. Stars were reflected in it.
`There’s only stars, as I thought,’ he said. Then he gave a low gasp, for the stars went out. As if a dark veil had been withdrawn, the Mirror grew grey, and then clear. There was sun shining, and the
branches of trees were waving and tossing in the wind.
…
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.
The Door she speaks of is her and her mind. Indeed it is all womankind and She That is Fallen. Galadriel is ‘She’ and Shelob is She That is Fallen. Galadriel is dominant over Celeborn which is why the Moon disappears during their time in Lothlorien. The West Gate and the North Gate are paired. They represent the same plane of a mirror. This plane is the Door into the twilit realm of Lothlorien and Rhovanion. The Enemy is trying to break through the Door by force. This has a sexual dimension- the Enemy is the male trying to force the woman into subjection, usurp her just like Ar-Pharazon seized Miriel’s sceptre and throne. Therefore we should see a forcing of the Door at the West Gate. And we know that we do in the Chamber of Mazarbul. Indeed we see two. Both the west and east doors are forced. This is because the Chamber is a mise-en-abyme of the world (see elsewhere for an analysis). The east and west doors in the chamber are the West and North gates. See previous prediction for the geometry. The Enemy tries to take the Ring from Frodo in the Chamber. This is echoed at the North Gate when Boromir tries to forcefully take the Ring from Frodo.
The Door symbolism consists of two hands. And the etymology of the word door reveals that a door was originally in two halves- like a saloon door.
| door (n.) |
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“movable barrier, commonly on hinges, for closing a passage into a building, room, or other enclosure,” c. 1200, a Middle English merger of two Old English words, both with the general sense of “door, gate”: dor (neuter; plural doru) “large door, gate,” and duru (fem., plural dura) “door, gate, wicket.” The difference (no longer felt in Old English) was that the former came from a singular form, the latter from a plural.
Both are from Proto-Germanic *dur-, plural *dures (source also of Old Saxon duru, Old Norse dyrr, Danish dr, Old Frisian dure, dore, dure, Old High German turi, German Tr). This is from PIE root *dhwer- “door, doorway.”
Middle English had both dure and dor; the form dore predominated by 16c. but was supplanted later by door. The oldest forms of the word in IE languages frequently are dual or plural, leading to speculation that houses of the original Indo-Europeans had doors with two swinging halves.
Figurative sense of “means of opportunity or facility for” was in Old English. Phrase from door to door “from house to house” is from c. 1300; as an adjective, in reference to sales, by 1902.
A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of. [Ogden Nash]
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Each half is one side of the geometry. Each side is one hand or one wing, both symbolizes male and female in balance. For the Door to properly function it requires that both male and female sides are listening to one another and are in balance. The forcing of the Door is accompanied by ‘piercing’ imagery. To pierce is to seize the situation with both hands and silence the other in the dialectic and force the Door. Hence why Tolkien refers to females raising both hands no less than three times in the Rhovanion sequence.
1. 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.
2. Even as they gazed, the Silverlode passed out into the currents of the Great River, and their boats turned and began to speed southwards. Soon the white form of the Lady was small and distant. She shone like a window of glass upon a far hill in the westering sun, or as a remote lake seen from a mountain: a crystal fallen in the lap of the land. 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.
3. 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. Now lost, lost to those from the East is Valimar!
Later we see more evidence of the piercing imagery and the sexual imagery:
| the drag of the Ring that made him cower and stoop as he walked. The Eye: that horrible growing sense of a hostile will that strove with great power to pierce all shadows of cloud, and earth, and flesh, and to see you: to pin you under its deadly gaze, naked, immovable. So thin, so frail and thin, the veils were become that still warded it off. Frodo knew just where the present habitation and heart of that will now was: as certainly as a man can tell the direction of the sun with his eyes shut. He was facing it, and its potency beat upon his brow. |