Tolkien Prediction #6. 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.
This prediction was generated from my theory of Tolkien’s systematic (and predictable) use of rational planes, geometry and language change. While reading Tom Shippey’s ‘Tolkien: Author of the Century’ I read about Denethor and Théoden and how they were linked as characters according to Shippey. From his remarks I had a strong hunch that the Denethor pyre sequence incorporated one of my theories: a narrative device for the movement between rational planes called the TURN. I was able to predict the appearance in the first instance of the sequence of three.
What’s more, do you think it’s a coincidence that the name Denethor is almost an anagram of Théoden? And that Denethor contains the word ‘thor’ and Théoden contains ‘oden’? Given the background and sources for Tolkien’s areas of expertise and life-long interests, I think that’s very significant. It agrees with the rationale I’m putting forward. In fact I’d argue that the two words are in fact anagrams, not just near anagrams, but you have to consider what the symbolic relation is between the accent over the ‘e’ of Théoden and the letter ‘r’ (in Denethor) in the Floral Alphabet cipher. [The letter r is in fact the Atlantean wave, the slippery slope to ruin, wrath. The leaning accent is a visual embodiment of this]. The two letter Rs back to back in his monogram symbolize wrath because the letters in his alphabets represent the material structures of the World. See my comments on the Floral Alphabet cipher.