| “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 and the Silmarillion] |
I just finished reading a remarkable book. Clyde Kilby’s “Tolkien and the Silmarillion”. Apart from Tolkien’s published letters, of all of the books I’ve read, I think this book is quite possibly the most revealing about Tolkien the man. Put simply, this is a book which finally tells me what I already suspected, indeed what I already knew. And that is, Tolkien was hiding a lot from, not just his readership, but from everyone around him, including his closest friends and family. He had to be, given what I’ve discovered over the last fifteen years and my over 100 predictions generated from that understanding. And I was for number of years of the opinion that he got enjoyment from the game he played. It’s my opinion that Tolkien was obsessed by his world. He devoted a lot more time to it than people imagine, particularly in his thought. I decided to read Kilby’s book after I read Priya Seth’s excellent ‘Breaking the Tolkien Code’. That book also reveals the extent to which Tolkien was hiding things. While reading her book I had a moment of validation.
| Early grounding in geometry, taught by his aunt, led to paintings and drawings that displayed a mathematical sense of proportion and scale. When it came to the legendarium, Clyde Kilby asked how he had invented the hundreds of names and places. The reply was: “… he did it by a ‘mathematical’ system.” (my emphasis) – Tolkien and The Silmarillion, Clyde Kilby, First Meeting.
Seth, Priya. Breaking the Tolkien Code (pp. 158-159). Kindle Edition. |
If you read my opening statement on this site here you’ll see that I already knew that Tolkien had based his entire language construction on geometry, and that his whole world was based on it too. Historically, geometry belongs to the field of mathematics. Over the last 12 months I’ve also realized that he’s using the multiplication and division operators actually applied through the geometry. These operators alter the language. Regarding the construction of the language and the world using geometry, the one would follow the other naturally since the letters in his world were the material structures of the World. Meaning? I knew that Tolkien had incorporated Time and Space into his construction of the letters. Time and Space are mapped to the vertical and horizontal axes, of north, west, south, and east. And this is why maps became the vehicle for his language transmission. Moreover the maps are symbolic landscapes because the reality of his world is letters. They are the substance of it. It’s a philologist’s world created from language- literally. And that’s why Seth concluded the existence of his initials J.R.R.T hidden in ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and why I was able to predict their appearance during my hasty scanning of the book. And there are 9 more instances in his world that I found. The initials in the West Gate are paired with the initials in the North gate. The entire world is built on his initials and finally there are 7 more in the narrative; one for each of the 7 tiers of Minas-Tirith. The number 10 has special significance to Tolkien. He has his own personal numerology. It symbolized perfection in Dante’s numerology. In Tolkien’s it symbolizes Time and Space.
Kilby says.
| I asked how he went about inventing the hundreds of names and characters and places, and he said he did it by a “mathematical” system. He meant, I think, that his inventions, including his Elvish languages, arose not simply out of imagination but from his professional knowledge of the origin and growth of languages themselves and particularly from his experience in the worlds of Nordic, Teutonic and Celtic mythology.” |
Kilby was wrong in his supposition. The closest language in the world to Tolkien’s developed languages from geometry, was Esperanto because of it’s formal, logical methods of construction.
Tolkien was just in the throes of becoming famous when Kilby arrived in September 1964. “His fame was then rapidly on the rise and he had been forced to escape his public whenever he could”. He had kept his secrets hidden since the period leading up to his creation of the Book of Ishness in 1914. By that point he had kept them hidden for 50 years. Half a century and more. Even from the Inklings and his closest friends and family,
| Actually he told one of his closest friends that he had the whole world of his mythic world in his mind as early as 1906. He told me that he writing the Silmarillion (doubtless yet untitled) about 1910, and he wrote me that the story, meaning possibly the account as a whole, began in 1916-17 “and has been with me ever since”. |
I believe Tolkien felt very tempted to reveal his secrets because of his success which provided him with a much needed validation and confidence as a writer and artist, and a salve for the guilt of spending so much time on them. He was naturally also very proud of his work and wanted the world to know how fiendishly clever it all was. His enthusiasm was no doubt beginning to overflow. I think he was somewhat torn between “art or cash” as he later put it.
| Sir, – I need no persuasion: I am as susceptible as a dragon to flattery, and would gladly show off my diamond waistcoat, and even discuss its sources, since the Habit (more inquisitive than the Hobbit) has not only professed to admire it, but has also asked where I got it from. But would not that be rather unfair to the research students? To save them trouble is to rob them of any excuse for existing. However, with regard to the Habit’s principal question there is no danger: I do not remember anything about the name and inception of the hero. I could guess, of course, but the guesses would have no more authority than those of future researchers, and I leave the game to them. [Letter 25 To the editor of the ‘Observer’] |
The diamond (in the waistcoat) is a reference to the geometry as you can see in A Response to Priya Seth’s ‘Breaking the Tolkien Code’. It appears first in the illustrations form the Book of Ishness, ‘Undertnishness’ and in ‘Wickedness’. Recall what I said about the number 10 previously. Time and Space. He’s playing the game here. His success had meant that surely it was all worth the time and sacrifice of greater scholarly achievements after all. During his time with Kilby he was tempted to reveal his secrets. Kilby writes quite rightly:
| At King Edward’s School in Birmingham, which he entered in 1903 at the age of eleven, he was introduced to Chaucer and Anglo-Saxon. One reason he was not a top scholar there was because much of his time was spent in private investigations of Gothic, Anglo-Saxon and Welsh as well as early attempts to invent a language of his own. |
And we know that that continued on throughout his life. He said that he began writing the Hobbit while bored of marking exam papers.
So he had entered into King Edward’s in 1903 and by 1906 he claims he had his mythology in place in his mind. There was something that he was studying at that school that gave him the ideas for his mythology and languages. What we might ask? The answer is ‘Anglo-Saxon’. King Edward’s is where he got his ideas regarding Time and Space and geometry.
In the opening pages Kilby writes.
| He told me, surprisingly, that he and his good friend C.S.Lewis had long before agreed to do narratives dealing with space and time. Lewis wrote Out of the Silent Planet and Prerelandra and thus fulfilled his apart of the plan to write on space, but Tolkien said he had never embarked on a story about time. |
This he told Kilby in the first day of his meeting, in that afternoon they spent together talking of the Silmarillion. Kilby was surprised. He doesn’t say why. Does the detail even seem relevant? Kilby didn’t know how relevant it was. It alluded to Tolkien’s secret which began at King Edward’s.
But how does Time and Space, and geometry connect with Anglo-Saxon in a prodigiously gifted and creative boy’s mind?
| Anglo- |
| word-forming element meaning “of or pertaining to England or the English (including the English inhabitants of North America and other places); of England and,” from Medieval Latin Anglo-, combining form of Angli “the English” (see Angle). |
| England (n.) |
| Old English Engla land, literally “the land of the Angles” (see English (n.1)), used alongside Angelcynn “the English race,” which, with other forms, shows Anglo-Saxon persistence in thinking in terms of tribes rather than place. By late Old English times both words had come to be used with a clear sense of place, not people; a Dane, Canute, is first to call himself “King of England.” By the 14c. the name was being used in reference to the entire island of Great Britain and to the land of the Celtic Britons before the Anglo-Saxon conquest. The loss of one of the duplicate syllables is a case of haplology. |
| 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”). … when Scots & others are likely to be within earshot, Britain & British should be inserted as tokens, but no more, of what is really meant [Fowler] |
Anglo. England. English. Angles. Geometry. Now recall what I said about Time and Space being mapped to the vertical and horizontal axes in the world, and on the page. The Book of Ishness is full of abstract geometry. For e.g see his illustration ‘Eeriness’ left. Do you see how the very geography of the world is the geometry? This is the medieval symbolic landscape of the Arthurian Romances. It is the world of ‘Taliessin through Logres’ of the Inkling Charles Williams. It is also the world of the mystic Talmud and the rabbinic commentaries of the Midrash and the ideograms of the Egyptian hieroglyphs. All of the letters in the latin alphabet, our English alphabet derive originally from ideograms. The Book of Ishness was given such an odd name because it referred to ‘Englishness’. Engl-ishness. The Book of Englishness..the book of angle-ishness. The Book of a world and a language based on geometry. For more details read ‘A Response to Priya Seth’s ‘Breaking the Tolkien Code‘. Tolkien stated he was proudly English and we know that he said “I am in fact a Hobbit (in all but size)” and that Hobbits were English and that the Shire was England.
| A good many readers believe that the Shire is England or a portion of England, and this Tolkien confirmed when I once asked him if there were Hobbits in the earlier ages. He plainly answered that there were none because Hobbits were English, a remark which both confirms geographical delineations and has wide temporal implications. ibid |
Tolkien mentioned Time and Space on the first meeting that afternoon. It surprised Kilby, perhaps in part, because clearly it didn’t seem relevant. It was one of those tangential and inscrutable turns of thought from Tolkien’s inner world of his “private symbolism” as Tom Shippey puts it (The Road to Middle-Earth), which was so characteristic of him.
Kilby opens in the book with his general observation which he later expanded upon:
| Another item of correspondence had to do with my sending him copies of feature articles which from time to time came to my attention. I eventually found that such things so displeased him it was just as well not to send them at all. Reporters, he assured me, always got things wrong. Actually Tolkien was not the sort of person, if indeed anyone is, who could be captured in the oversimplification of the feature article. This was especially true of articles which emphasized him as a cult-figure and something more or less human. This attitude may have been why Tolkien managed so remarkably to keep the events of his actual life hidden from the public” |
I believe that Tolkien was on the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder spectrum. Call it what you will, he was a perfectionist. It was part of his genius. You don’t become a world expert in your field by not having incredibly high standards and attention to detail.
He later goes on to say:
| 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 had a need. He talked all the time to Kilby and Kilby eventually stopped talking and just listened most of the time. He had a need because he’d hidden all of the details of his work all of his life- for over half a century and now he had an enthusiastic audience. Tolkien’s statement ‘put more under my hat’ hints at the nature of his secret. Kilby clearly remembered Tolkien’s words. From his account Kilby had a lot of intense moments in his company. To take a sample of some of the passages he describes:
| As his talk grew in enthusiasm, he would sometimes come very close to me and put his face almost against mine, as though to make sure the point of some remark was completely understood. One had the feeling that he had thought considerably about whatever opinion he was expressing and simply wanted to state it accurately….Coming over to me, he illustrated his concern by putting his torso almost against mine and, pulling back his fist, insisted that the reader must feel the very sword-thrust into the dragon….Once his doctor prescribed a collar for cervical muscular spasm. When I arrived he grabbed it, put it around his neck, stuck his face into mine and asked how I would like to wear that in the summer heat. |
So what do I mean that Tolkien was hinting at the nature of the secret?
The full answer will have to be left for another much longer essay, but part of the answer is right here on this page. See ‘Eeriness’ above. The wizard has a hat. Tolkien is the wizard in the geometry. In sharing his secret, Kilby would also become an initiate into becoming a wizard too. An initiate into the secrets of his geometry. The second part of it- which is really just a facet of the first is to be found in perhaps Tolkien’s most surprising statement of all to Kilby.
| “I was invited to dinner with some of the faculty at Christ Church and afterwards one member asked me if the Silmarillion had a any sex, in the modern sense, in it. Next day I mentioned this to Tolkien and, to my surprise, he said that he had written a couple of sex stories, though he did not volunteer to show them to me. Readers of the Lord of the Rings know of the moving account of love between Arwen and Aragorn, and when the Silmarillion is published we shall have others of the same sort, but they are vastly different from what we call sex stories today.” [Tolkien and the Silmarillion, Clive Kilby] |
Tolkien was not lying. And this is part of the secret he had been hiding for decades but which he just couldn’t bring himself to share with Kilby. The entirety of his works is based on his marriage with Edith under God. Tolkien and Edith are the geometry. They are Time and Space. Edith is Time, Tolkien is Space. We don’t know for certain if Kilby was reproducing Tolkien’s exact word “couple”. Tolkien might have said “two stories”. But knowing what I know of Tolkien, Kilby is more than likely reproducing what Tolkien said. And looking at the etymology of any word will always help us out with supporting evidence. His marriage is the ‘couple’ that Tolkien referred to. He is not referring to two stories. He is cryptically referring to the two stories of himself and Edith, as a couple.
| couple (n.) |
| late 13c., “two of the same kind or class connected or considered together,” especially “a man and a woman associated together by marriage or love,” from Old French cople “married couple, lovers” (12c., Modern French couple), from Latin copula “tie, connection,” from PIE *ko-ap-, from *ko(m)- “together” + *ap- “to take, reach.”
From mid-14c. as “that which unites two.” In electricity, “pair of connected plates of different metals used for creating a current,” from 1863. |
| couple (v.) |
| c. 1200, “to link or connect, as one thing with another,” from Old French copler “to couple, join together,” from cople (see couple (n.)). Meaning “unite in marriage” is from mid-14c.; that of “embrace sexually, copulate” is from c. 1400. Related: Coupled; coupling. |
| copulate (v.) |
| early 15c., “to join” (transitive), from Latin copulatus, past participle of copulare “join together, couple, bind, link, unite,” from copula “band, tie, link,” from PIE *ko-ap-, from *ko(m)- “together” (see com-) + *ap- (1) “to take, reach” (see apt). Intransitive sense “to unite sexually” is attested from 1630s. Related: Copulated; copulating. |
They both form the opposite and adjacent sides of a right angled triangle which you see in ‘Eeriness’. The triangle is created in the Music of the Ainur when Ilúvatar raises his hands in opposition to Melkor’s discords. It is here that Ilúvatar creates the geometry. He creates Time and Space. He creates Time when he raises his left hand. He creates Space when he raises his right hand. He creates the third plane of the hypotenuse of the triangle when he raises both hands. The third plane is twilight, the mixing of the two where conflict and resolution between Edith-Time and Tolkien-Space occurs. This is the plane where the battle of the sexes and where resolution to conflict in sexual union occurs. This coming together is symbolized by the two hearts in Eeriness. The entirety of his works are about the conflict and resolution between left and right hands- which serves as a metaphor for their relationship. Bombadil and Goldberry are Space and Time and also are Tolkien and Edith. This is where they are created, in the Music of the Ainur. Goldberry is the left hand and Bombadil is the right hand. And you will notice that Goldberry is created first. Bombadil’s claim to being eldest is a false one and Bombadil knows it. And this is why we have the confusion and apparent contradiction in TreeBeard being also eldest. Neither are. It is the claim itself which is important and forms part of the conflict between left and right hands. When Tolkien met Edith she was 19, he was 16. Tolkien incorporated the two numbers 6 and 9 into the geometry as oppositional but complimentary forces, much like yin and yang. They represent a left-hand anticlockwise spiral and a right-hand clockwise spiral.
And Tolkien and Edith are also the Moon and Sun. Goldberry is the Sun and Bombadil is the Moon. So what’s going on here? How can all of those statements be true? They are all true because Tolkien’s World is a dialectic. It is a conversation between Edith and Tolkien under God.
| 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.” |
| dialectic (n.) |
| 1580s, earlier dialatik (late 14c.), “critical examination of the truth of an opinion, formal reason and logic applied to rhetoric and refutation,” from Old French dialectique (12c.) and directly from Latin dialectica, from Greek dialektike (techne) “(art of) philosophical discussion or discourse,” fem. of dialektikos “of conversation, discourse,” from dialektos “discourse, conversation” (see dialect).
Originally synonymous with logic; in modern philosophy refined by Kant (“the theory of false argumentation leading to contradictions and fallacies), then by Hegel, who made it mean “process of resolving or merging contradictions in character to attain higher truths.” Used generally in 20c. Marxism for “evolution by means of contradictions.” Related: Dialectics. |
The two sides of the triangle, the opposite and adjacent form a duality. That duality is the basis for everything in the world. Every single characteristic in his world can be mapped, (or assigned) to the planes of the triangle. From years of research into this, this is why I take Tolkien’s word in Kilby’s quote, to be ‘couple’ and not ‘two’. Because the couple and coupling in the etymology above, ‘to unite, to tie together’ applies to everything in his works- every single story- because everything is built on this geometry. Therefore we can talk about the left hand being Edith-Left-Time-Sun-Goldberry-etc and the right hand being Tolkien-Right-Space-Moon-Bombadil-etc. Every single character in his works is assigned to one of these planes and are but reflections of this conflict, the discords of Melkor. The hypotenuse has a special function. The Nazgȗl and spiders live on the hypotenuse. Gollum is in a process of being split between Time and Space, a process of schizophrenia. Hence Slinker and Stinker. That process would have ultimately bound him to the plane of the hypotenuse when he became a Ring-wraith.
We see the numbers 6 and 9 symbolized in Tolkien’s wedding poem. The two trees that are utterly entwined and entangled are one manifestation of the two spirals.
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. |
You can see the hearts in the two hearts in the picture ‘Eeriness’ above. The first signs of sex in Tolkien can be found in his drawing ‘Xanadu’of 1913 which falls under the illustrations which Tolkien collected together and labelled ‘Early Ishnesses’. He was 21 in his last year as an undergraduate at Oxford when he made it. He incorporates his geometry into that drawing too. This battle of the sexes can be found in Tolkien’s choice in his drafts of Smith and Wooten Major for the name of Alf. We read in the notes to Smith of Wooten Major.
| On page three, for the only time, the first Cook bids farewell to “Edwy”, with Edwy then crossed out and Alf written in above. It seems clear that the decision to associate the Apprentice with Fairy by name must therefore have been made some time after the entire draft was written out. The name Edwy never appears again, and was obviously only briefly considered before being replaced. An Edwy (or Eadwig; the name means “happy war”) was king of Wessex from 955 to 959, but since it is unlikely that Tolkien intended reference to Edwy of Wessex, [Tolkien, J. R. R.. Smith of Wootton Major (p. 210)] |
I disagree, Tolkien did choose the name Eadwig as a reference to the king of Wessex because Alf is a reference to alef, alpha and the river Alf in the Xanadu poem. He chose it because ‘happy war’ describes the battle of the sexes in the marriage. It is a war as a battle but it is also a happy one because it is their marriage. This links Smith of Wooten Major with the poem Kubla Khan and indeed into his recurring consistent symbolic and geometric framework. A more thorough discussion will be found on this site. The notes continue with
| he may have meant the name to be a variant of Edwyn or Edwin from Anglo-Saxon Eadwine, “bliss-friend” or “happiness-friend”. This name, together with its variations Edwin and Audoin, figures significantly in Tolkien’s two unfinished time-travel stories about the Fall of Númenor, The Lost Road and The Notion Club Papers. ibid |
And we see that we arrive not coincidentally at a link in the name with a story about Time travel. But didn’t Tolkien say to Kilby that he never wrote a story about Time travel? He specifically said to Kilby according to Kilby that he didn’t “embark” on a story about time-travel. He said he never started one, not that he didn’t finish it. He said that not long before his death, post-dating the Notion Club Papers. Is this yet another example of Tolkien’s contrasistency? Who said the Notion Club Papers is a story about Time travel? Why, Tolkien himself the year before he met Kilby to his son Michael:
| It was planned years before, when we decided to divide: he was to do space-travel and I time-travel. My book was never finished,2 but some of it (the Númenórean-Atlantis theme) got into my trilogy eventually. [252 From a letter to Michael Tolkien (draft) [Not dated; November or December 1963]] |
It is another example of Tolkien’s contrasistency. I offer a potential insight into the nature of what produces this apparent contrasistency. It relies on, in Shippey’s words, Tolkien’s private symbolism which he almost divulged the details of to Kilby. Tolkien said to Kilby that he never even embarked on a story about Time travel. The Notion Club Papers is a story in which he incorporated his ideas about Space and Time. It’s not just about time travel, it’s also about space travel because the two are inextricably and inseparably bound up in his works from about 1906. Tolkien assigns two of his characters in his geometric symbolism to Space and Time. And a third to the hypotenuse. So, technically and pedantically we might agree with Tolkien’s statement that he never started a story about time-travel, because in the context of what he said regards his agreement with C.S Lewis, the two were to be separated between himself and Lewis. Tolkien wrote about both, not just time. Tolkien was never going to allocate the time to write a story solely about time-travel because it would require a setting outside of his mythology, and since his time was massively constrained as it was, he was never going to do it. We can attribute him agreeing to embark on it as ‘letter written, never meaning to send’, as just one of those things you say in moments of enthusiastic conversation. The ideas that went into The Notion Club Papers also made their way into the Moria sequence in the Lord of the Rings and the riddle of the Book of Mazarbul. Details of the implementation of the ideas in the Moria sequence later made a limited appearance into the frozen lake scene in Smith of Wooten Major published in 1967.
An analysis of the Xanadu drawing will appear on this site shortly. For more information on the above see A Response to Priya Seth’s Breaking the Tolkien Code.
Yes dear reader, I am as surprised as you are. But the discovery of the statement from Tolkien about sex from Kilby was the statement I had been waiting to find. Not that I actually had much hope to be honest. So I was very surprised but validated again too. I’ve written a large amount. Probably 2000 pages, most of which is forensic etymological study of his texts. That’s been over the last 15 years. I need to emphasize that my understanding is built on the study of the etymologies, not on looking at his illustrations. The inclusion of the illustrations only came towards the middle of my research when I realized that they were also part of his rationale. I slowly realized over many years just how visual Tolkien’s framework was. Geometry is after all a visual language. I started to realize that sex was involved about 3 years ago (2017). My crest was a little fallen, to borrow a Tolkien phrase, because I thought it would create a real barrier to accepting my findings, if it was misunderstood. But my predictions bear out the validity and accuracy of my conclusions. And this leads me to a curious observation. To reiterate, Kilby said that:
| 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. |
That was not long into the first afternoon they had spent together. And we also know that Tolkien said he had written “a couple of sex stories”. So Kilby goes away and thinks a lot about his encounter with Tolkien. He then later writes his book. Do you think that Kilby suspected that there was some kind of sexual content or subtext or symbolism in this private world? No? Read the last sentence again from that quote. “Every inch a man”. What a strange comment to make. Why would Tolkien being “a man”, and a “man’s man” which those words certainly suggest, be relevant? Remember he spent a lot of time with Tolkien and he even coined a word to describe his behaviour: “contrasistency”. Tolkien did a lot of talking and much of it was very intense. Most of the details are lost to us, the reader. Did Kilby form a suspicion or a sub-consciously link the details? Or did Tolkien actually confide in him after all but Kilby kept the details confidential? If so, was he playing Tolkien’s game here with the hint? And then we have his assurance that Tolkien is a “good man” immediately after his “every inch a man” remark. Why would Tolkien’s morals be in question? Was it because he made the link between his private and “deepest feelings” and the sex stories? Why would he feel the need to assure us or himself that Tolkien is a “good man”? Because he kept his deepest feelings private? Why would that have any bearing on whether he was a good man or not…unless they involved sex perhaps? Was Kilby quoting Tolkien in some way? We also know that Kilby states that Tolkien’s contrasistency was deliberate and even enjoyed. Kilby clearly found that Tolkien was mischievous. And knowing that, Kilby could have also linked that mischievousness to a possible hidden sexual content. If that was the case, that would fall under the banner of bawdiness. And we know from other sources that Tolkien and his male friends were capable of being bawdy. Obviously a result of not just natural male red-bloodedness, but also the content of the literature in their professional and personal reading material. See the entry on bawdiness in the homepage, Tolkien init.
The phrase ‘every inch’ dates from the 15th century meaning ‘in every respect’, and at its origin really has no sexual connotations at all, so it could simply be a coincidence. My conclusion is that Kilby might have made the leap, incorporating other things which he experienced during his acquaintance which we don’t know about and arrived at a hint of a suspicion let’s say. But we will simply never know. The important information is Tolkien’s remark that he had written sex stories (in the modern sense- meaning sexual intercourse as opposed to simply gender) and that he was keeping a lot of things secret, and actively enjoying it- according to Kilby in the opening quote in this essay. We recall:
| a kind of consistent inconsistency that was both native-perhaps his genius-and developed, almost deliberate, even enjoyed. |
A consistent inconsistency that is deliberate and enjoyed is a game of deception. And that makes a lot of sense because Tolkien invented a lot of riddles, set riddles and also hid anagrams. This game might be filed under ‘characteristic deviousness’ and ‘obsessive playing with words’, two phrases Tom Shippey used to describe Tolkien in ‘The Road to Middle-earth’. We see the Alvismæl riddle revealed by Adam Roberts and we see Seth’s anagram from all of the names given to Bombadil by him. Bombadil was explicitly called an enigma, a riddle by Tolkien.
WARN FRODO AND BILBO I BE A MAIA – MR RONALD T
There is no way on earth that that anagram is a coincidence. Seth has clearly discovered something very important there. The most important thing she has discovered is that Tolkien was creating anagrams and he had kept them all secret. He even wrote an essay called ‘A Secret Vice’. What is the vice? We are told that it is is language invention. My research has shown me that it isn’t simply that. Kilby described Tolkien as an actor and we get a strong sense that he is toying with Kilby:
| Much of the time there was about him the atmosphere of the actor, yet without any sense of the jack-a-dandy. His conversation bore about it a steady parturiency, like a sort of grass that sends out runners to root in every direction. One often felt that his words could not pour out fast enough- there was a sense of the galloping on of all his ideas at once, along with kaleiodoscopic facial changes. In fact, I have never known anyone who so successfully meshed facial and oral expression. … His penetrating eyes took possession of his hearer and his eyebrows lifted instantly to express a point made or the beginning of an idea to be lassoed, tied down and branded on the spot, or lowered to concentrate while conveying the assurance that behind those eyes something nimble and many-faceted was taking shape and would momentarily erupt. But it also seems to me that at times there was a passing enjoyment over what he was keeping back in the very moment of the eruption. …And always there was an expression of both pose and genuineness revealed like a double exposure. |
This enjoyment is why Tolkien ‘surprisingly’ mentioned Time and Space to Kilby that first afternoon and why he told him he had written a ‘couple ‘ of sex stories but would never reveal anything further.
So, returning to the dialectic. I said that his world was created literally from letters. For the last 5 years I’ve been aware of a duality between the letters A and B. At first I didn’t understand it as literally the letters A and B in the alphabet, only as a duality symbolized by those two things. It began with recognition of the duality of the oak and the birch as the two schemes of Tolkien’s.
| ‘Oak’ had a special meaning for Tolkien, pointed out by Christopher Tolkien in his footnote to Shadow, p. 145.* In his early career as Professor at the University of Leeds, Tolkien had devised a system of splitting the curriculum of English studies into two separate groups or ‘schemes’, the ‘A-scheme’ and the ‘B-scheme’. The ‘A-scheme was for students of literature, the B-scheme for the philologists. Tolkien clearly liked this system, and tried unsuccessfully to introduce it to Oxford in 1930 with similar nomenclature (see ‘OES’, p. 780). But in his private symbolism ‘A’ was represented by the Old English rune-name ác, ‘oak’, ‘B’ by Old English beorc, ‘birch’. Oaks were critics and birches philologists, and Tolkien made the point perfectly clear in Songs for the Philologists, [The Road to Middle-earth] |
Kilby states”Looking out of his window at a birch in the front yard, he declared it to be his totem tree”.
That then sat alongside another duality which was the Tower and the Tree, or the two homophemes Taur and Tower. The living tree and the dead stone tree. The Tower is also the Mountain. That duality is evident in the mountain riddle in the Hobbit. The duality then extended to other things like the Sun and Moon and the Two Trees. I was happy to accept that all of these things sat side by side. Clearly Tolkien had the duality of the Free Peoples versus the Enemy and this would explain why so many things have counterfeits, Ents, Trolls, Eagles, Dragons, Elves, Orcs etc. And that would explain the recurring theme of duality. At root Good versus Evil. About 8 months ago I chanced upon an excellent essay that appeared in Mythlore. The duality was noticed nearly 40 years ago by Mark M. Hennelly Jr. He even referred to the duality as ‘geometry’. ‘The Road and the Ring: Solid Geometry in Tolkien’s Middle-earth’. All the while my understanding of the geometry was slowly coming together. Then I went on to identify the left and right hands of Ilúvatar as the source of the duality and the geometry. The hands sequence being the creation of the three sides of the triangle. The hands sequence is actually the first instance of the TURN (see The Turn in Principle and The Turn in Practice).
I recently found the source that I believe Tolkien used to base his duality on. His source is the commentaries on the mystic Talmud, both the Midrash and the Zohar. It has a surprisingly large number of correspondences to my research. (You can read the brief summary post in “Tolkien and the Zohar“). Fundamentally, Tolkien and Edith, the right and left hands of Ilúvatar are alef and bet from the commentaries who both contend (along with all of the other letters in the alphabet) to be the first letter in the Book of Genesis. They contend to have a special place in Creation. This is the root of the claim to being eldest, coming first. The theme occurs a number of times in his works, including in the story of Denethor and his two sons. See The Turn in Practice. Both alef and bet are granted special consideration and place by God. And they are of course the letters A and B of the alphabet. So if the entire world is based on this duality of alef and bet, and all of his characters and phenomena can be assigned to the planes of the geometry, of A, B and C (which is really A x B), then you can begin to see how the world itself is built of letters. It’s an ancient conception of the world which has been lost to the modern world. All of the latin letters in our alpha bet were originally ideograms. For example, the letter A was originally the ox, the bull. The letters were real things in the world and conversely the real things in the world were letters. And the Midrash and Zohar are full of this conception of the World as the letters, the “Word” being the material structures of the World.
So now we can extend our understanding of the geometry to Edith-bet-Left-Time-Sun-Goldberry-Birch-Tree, etc and the right hand being Tolkien-alef-Right-Space-Moon-Bombadil-Oak-Tower, etc. It turns out we can concatenate everything to these planes including shield and sword, hearing and sight, outside and inside, etc. Predictions #34 and #51 were involved in the identification of the duality of inside and outside.
There are a number of other statements by Kilby which very much underscore his feelings that the Professor was hiding something, playing with his audience, and capable of saying things that were not true, and being inconsistent.
| I became convinced that Professor Tolkien was suffering in an accentuated way, because of his genius, from some of the inner conflicts belonging to us all. I found that he had a real measure of “insecurity”. |
Regards the influence of George MacDonald.
| One antipathy struck me oddly. Though elsewhere he has spoken of George Macdonald with real appreciation, at the time I visited Tolkien he was making frequent wholesale attacks on him. A friend of mine who is well versed in Macdonald and also fond of Tolkien suggests that the dislike of MacDonald may have arisen partly to throw people off the scent of his deep indebtedness. Whatever the real explanation, I think that the indebtedness is clear…. |
He also made strange contradictory attacks on the character Sam Gamgee.
| A similar antipathy of Tolkien’s was for one of his own characters, Sam Gamgee. I have never known a reader who did not on the whole find Sam a person to be admired. Yet Tolkien spoke to me about Sam as “vulgar” and “despicable,” and in a letter to Vera Chapman he described Sam as sententious and cocksure.”He was the youngest son of a stupid and conceited old peasant. Together with his loyal master-servant attitude, and his (personal love for Frodo, he retains a touch of contempt of his kind moderated to tolerant pity) for motives above their reach.” |
Regarding Smith of Wooten Major we get a sense of almost of exasperation from Kilby:
| He staunchly denied it had any autobiographical meaning. It was, he said, originally intended as “just a story about a cake”. But it still occurred to me that at the beginning Old Noakes may represent MacDonald. … There is no doubt doubt in my mind that, whatever this story may satirically say of MacDonald, and in spite of Tolkien’s several severe attacks on him in my presence, Tolkien was as I have already said, clearly indebted to Macdonald. |
Tom Shippey discusses Smith and whether it can be considered allegory in The Road to Middle-earth. We again see a contrasistency, a vacillation:
| Against taking Smith allegorically, we have Tolkien’s own endorsement, Letters, p. 388, of a review by Roger Lancelyn Green which stated firmly that the meaning of Smith should be left alone: ‘To seek for the meaning is to cut open the ball in search of its bounce’. This can be backed up by Tolkien’s own stated dislike of allegory, discussed above, and indeed by an even firmer statement of his own specifically about Smith, ‘This short tale is not “allegory”’. That would seem to settle the matter (for in cases like this I would scorn to fall back on the well-known critical get-out, ‘‘you cannot trust what an author says about his own work’) – if Tolkien had not gone on immediately to add ‘though it is capable of course of allegorical interpretation at certain points’. Tolkien furthermore gave a lead for any such allegorical interpretation by saying, ‘The Great Hall is evidently in a way an “allegory” of the village church; the Master Cook with his house adjacent, and his office that is not hereditary … is plainly the Parson and the priesthood’. Tolkien’s own surviving commentary on his own story, from which these statements, cited by Dr Flieger, are taken is indeed, again according to Dr Flieger, ‘a running argument with himself on the question of whether the story is or is not an allegory’ as open. [Shippey, Tom. The Road to Middle-earth]. |
Noakes is actually the oak, because of as Shippey describes the process of nunnation.
| ‘Nokes’ contains two clues as to its meaning. One is reinforced by the names of Smith’s wife and son and daughter, Nell and Nan and Ned, all of them marked by ‘nunnation’, the English habit of putting an ‘n’ in front of a word, and especially a name,…In Nokes’s case one can go further and observe place-names, as for instance Noke – a town in Oxfordshire not far from Brill – whose name is known to have been derived from Old English æt þam ácum, ‘at the oaks’. This became in Middle English *atten okes, and in Modern English, by mistake, ‘at Noke’ or ‘at Nokes’. There is no doubt that Tolkien knew all this, for there is a character called ‘old Noakes’ in the Shire, and Tolkien commented on his name, giving very much the explanation above, in his ‘Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings’, written probably in the late 1950s. Tolkien there wrote off the meaning of ‘Noakes’ as ‘unimportant’, as indeed it is for The Lord of the Rings, but it would be entirely characteristic of him to remember an unimportant philological point and turn it into an important one later. [Shippey, Tom. The Road to Middle-earth] |
Shippey then goes on to cite the other piece of evidence as to the symbolism of Noakes as Tolkien’s A and B scheme of oak and birch and the special significance of the oak mentioned by Christopher Tolkien.
Noakes is indeed symbolic of the oak, of ‘Literature’. In this story we also have exactly the same geometry and system that Tolkien uses in all of his works. So I’m saying that contrary to belief, Smith of the Wooten Major is very much part of Tolkien’s Middle-earth mythology. All of his works are, including Mister Bliss and The Father Christmas Letters because they all share the same fundamental Time and Space geometry and private symbolism that was created in 1906. They all exist within Time and Space, within Eä and within Middle-earth because Middle-earth is Earth. They are all based fundamentally on Edith and himself because as I’ve stated, they are Time and Space, the geometry. We might regard the stories as simply existing at a different time to the events of the core mythology. I have already mentioned Alf in relation to his illustration ‘Xanadu’. The N that is added to Noakes in 1967 is the same ‘N’ we see over-emphasized in the illustration ‘EeriNess’ (see left) in 1914. This is because, as I have stated, Tolkien maps everything to geometry. Part of that geometry is the axes of N,E,S,W and you guessed it, N stands for North. North aligns with the Enemy, the oak. And the north is where Melkor resided throughout the Silmarillion. So hold on…does that make Tolkien the Enemy?!
Yes, Tolkien is the oak, alef and his wife Edith, his better half, is the birch, bet. But it’s not as simple as that. Both are fallen. The Enemy begins in the right hand, with Tolkien, but the Sun and the Moon alternate between the right hand and left hands according to their courses. The discords that were created during the Music of the Ainur lies in the right hand. The discords created the very bifurcation of the two planes symbolizing Time and Space and very courses of the Sun and Moon, everything is created at that moment. He and his wife alternate through the cycles of Night and Day as the discordant force in the World. And remember the World is Time and Space and Time and Space are Edith and Tolkien, their marriage. This is Tolkien’s very private world that he didn’t want to reveal. It is only at twilight, at dawn and dusk that the discords are resolved and harmony and union are found. That involves sexual congress. This is the Battle of the Sexes as stated. And this is why the Old Forest passage has a Celtic twilight feel, because Bombadil and Goldberry are Tolkien-Moon and Goldberry-Sun.
| twilight (n.) |
| “light from the sky when the sun is below the horizon at morning and evening,” late 14c. (twilighting), a compound of twi- + light (n.) Cognate with Middle Flemish twilicht, Dutch tweelicht (16c.), Middle High German twelicht, German zwielicht. Exact connotation of twi- in this word is unclear, but it appears to refer to “half” light, rather than the fact that twilight occurs twice a day. Compare also Sanskrit samdhya “twilight,” literally “a holding together, junction,” Middle High German zwischerliecht, literally “tweenlight.” Originally and most commonly in English with reference to evening twilight but occasionally used of morning twilight (a sense first attested mid-15c.). Figurative extension recorded from c. 1600.
Twilight zone is from 1901 in a literal sense, a part of the sky lit by twilight; from 1909 in extended senses in references to topics or cases where authority or behavior is unclear. In the 1909 novel “In the Twilight Zone,” the reference is to mulatto heritage. “She was in the twilight zone between the races where each might claim her ….” The U.S. TV series of that name is from 1959. |
| twi- |
| word-forming element meaning “two, twice, double, in two ways,” from Old English twi- “two, in two ways, twice, double,” from Proto-Germanic *twi- (source also of Old Frisian twi-, Old Norse tvi-, Dutch twee-, Old High German zwi-, German zwei-), from PIE *dwis (source also of Sanskrit dvi-, Greek di-, Old Latin dvi-, Latin bi-, Lithuanian dvi-), from root *dwo- “two.” Cognate with bi-. Older instances of it include Middle English twinter “two years old” (c. 1400, of cattle, sheep, etc.), reduced from Old English twi-wintre, and Old English twispræc “double or deceitful speech. |
It is the time of the two lights of the Sun and Moon. And we can also regard it as two halves of a whole. Edith being Tolkien’s other half. This connects to my first two Predictions regarding the identities of Bombadil and Goldberry being derived from the half crown in old UK money, and their numbers in Tolkien’s private symbolism being 2 and 6. The British coin of half a crown was the equivalent of two shillings and a sixpence. Bombadil and Goldberry share a crown, half crown each. Without each other they cannot function. If Tolkien and Edith are separated then Time and Space will cease to function. In other words, their whole World will fall apart. The Enemy seeks to separate them. It’s a metaphor for their married life. And I predicted from this that the hobbits met Bombadil on the 26th of a month because Tolkien operates using numerology in everything. That’s another thing we can add to evidence supporting Tolkien’s statement ‘he did it by a ‘mathematical’ system.” I will post my full Bombadil riddle solution on this site. And we can also see in our mind’s eye the glint in Tolkien’s eye when he imparts the following hint repeatedly to Kilby:
| 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. |
We have two numbers, 6 and 9. The same two numbers I said that he incorporated into his geometry. He told Kilby this more than once and Kilby felt the need to tell us that Tolkien told him more than once. Obviously he felt it was somehow significant. Why is this significant? Because 9 and 6 are the two numbers relating to Time and Space. The other two are 1 and 0. He was dropping hints regards other things he was telling Kilby. He was putting one thing next to another in the conversation without explicitly explaining the connection.
| Perhaps I can best give an idea of our sessions together by a seriatim record of one of them. But, first I should say that what went on was hardly a conversation. One of my friends had been told by C.S. Lewis that one might ask Tolkien questions but one would not necessarily get the answers expected. One might find him talking on an entirely different topic, to which he had seen a relationship lost to the questioner. I soon found this to be true. |
This was classic Tolkien because the connexions were all hidden in his private symbolism. He does the very same thing in his writings too.
And what do we read immediately before this quote?
| He also had the mastery of various forms of handwriting. Once he sat down and wrote my name in thirteenth century script. His interest in medieval literature and life was more than a profession- it was love. |
In other words Tolkien dropped the hint regarding 6 and 9 when he was writing the script or when they were talking about it. This leads me back to my point about the letters of his languages, the very strokes of the pen being bound up with Time and Space. Time is the vertical axis on the page and in the world and Space is the horizontal.
| Well, I have talked quite long enough about my own follies. The thing is to finish the thing as devised and then let it be judged. But forgive me! It is written in my life-blood, such as that is, thick or thin; and I can no other. I fear it must stand or fall as it substantially is. It would be idle to pretend that I do not greatly desire publication, since a solitary art is no art; nor that I have not a pleasure in praise, with as little vanity as fallen man can manage (he has not much more share in his writings than in his children of the body, but it is something to have a function); yet the chief thing is to complete one’s work, as far as completion has any real sense. [109 To Sir Stanley Unwin] |
It was here while writing this that I made prediction #62. The strokes of the pen in calligraphy can be characterized
as thick or thin. We see that in the tengwar. I predicted that the diagonal lines in writing would be referred to as “thin”.
| On the flat under-side Frodo saw some scratches: ‘There seems to be a stroke, a dot, and three more strokes,’ he said. ‘The stroke on the left might be a G-rune with thin branches,’ said Strider. … It would also show that he was in a hurry and danger was at hand, so that he had no time or did not dare to write anything longer or plainer. |
The diagonal lines in the rune are here referred to as thin.
Thick and thin are also assigned to the geometry of the triangle. In this we see yet another of Tolkien’s dualities. But 
not quite in the same way. Thick symbolizes Time and Space, the opposite and adjacent planes. Thin symbolizes the hypotenuse. So in thick and thin we have all three sides of his ‘sacred geometry’. The pairing derives from the idiomatic “blood is thicker than water”. In this symbolism water is thin, blood is thick. The diagram left is how Tolkien implements alchemy and the Great Work in The Lord of the Rings as the personal journeys of the male and female components of Aragorn and Frodo. The map of the Lords of the Rings and indeed all of his maps, is a symbolic landscape. Those journeys lead to the alchemical marriage of Sun (Frodo-Edith) and Moon (Aragorn-Tolkien). In the Lord of the Rings the world has been turned on its head after the Downfall. Air is placed at the Paths of the Dead, the Door to Afterlife to heaven. Water lies in hell (as ice) at Carn-Dûm. Water leads to the fall in water (as all of Tolkien’s falls end in water, even Gollum’s- explanation elsewhere). Tolkien chose water probably because of his recurring Atlantis Dream and the idea in mythologies of the Primeval Ocean with which the Music of the Ainur begins with. Blood symbolizes kinship and family and lies in the air upwards at the Paths of the Dead.
| blood (n.) |
| Old English blod “blood, fluid which circulates in the arteries and veins,” from Proto-Germanic *blodam “blood” (source also of Old Frisian blod, Old Saxon blôd, Old Norse bloð, Middle Dutch bloet, Dutch bloed, Old High German bluot, German Blut, Gothic bloþ), according to some sources from PIE *bhlo-to-, perhaps meaning “to swell, gush, spurt,” or “that which bursts out” (compare Gothic bloþ “blood,” bloma “flower”), from suffixed form of root *bhel- (3) “to thrive, bloom.” But Boutkan finds no certain IE etymology and assumes a non-IE origin.
There seems to have been an avoidance in Germanic, perhaps from taboo, of other PIE words for “blood,” such as *esen- (source of poetic Greek ear, Old Latin aser, Sanskrit asrk, Hittite eshar); also *krew-, which seems to have had a sense of “blood outside the body, gore from a wound” (source of Latin cruour “blood from a wound,” Greek kreas “meat”), but which came to mean simply “blood” in the Balto-Slavic group and some other languages. Inheritance and relationship senses (also found in Latin sanguis, Greek haima) emerged in English by mid-13c. Meanings “person of one’s family, race, kindred; offspring, one who inherits the blood of another” are late 14c. As the fluid of life (and the presumed seat of the passions), blood has stood for “temper of mind, natural disposition” since c. 1300 and been given many figurative extensions. Slang meaning “hot spark, a man of fire” [Johnson] is from 1560s. Blood pressure attested from 1862. Blood money is from 1530s; originally money paid for causing the death of another. Blood type is from 1928. That there were different types of human blood was discovered c. 1900 during early experiments in transfusion. To get blood from a stone “do the impossible” is from 1660s. Expression blood is thicker than water attested by 1803, in reference to family ties of those separated by distance. New (or fresh) blood, in reference to new members of an organization or group, especially ones bringing new ideas and fresh vigor or strength, is from 1880. |
Blood finds its PIE root in thrive, bloom which has a Gothic equivalent ‘bloma’. Tolkien’s poem ‘Flower of the Trees’, ‘Bogma Bloma’ is clearly relevant because it is one of the birch poems. Bogma Bloma celebrates the birch as the defier of wind and lightning. Twice we are told that the birch rules the mountain.
| Evening grows dark with clouds, the lightning flashes, the fine leaves fly free, but firm and faithful the white birch stands bare and waits, ruling the mountain. [Shippey, Tom. The Road to Middle-earth: How J. R. R. Tolkien created a new mythology.] |
We recall that the mountain is the dead tree, the tower. Naturally ‘getting blood from a stone’ would be impossible. In terms of the symbolic map, blood symbolizes life, the Door of the Paths of the Dead up in the sky. Water symbolizes the fall. Water is both sky (clouds) and water.
Thin refers to the hypotenuse. The hypotenuse is the path, the way to go in life which we see the wizard on. The path as we can see in that picture proceeds from the bottom towards the top which is where the Door is. The top is the sky, heaven. The top is the element Air which we see is blood. At the bottom earth. We have a Earth and Sky or heaven. That is symbolized by the NE-SW diagonal in the diagram, the ‘Z’ diagonal’. Earth is down to hell.
The opposite to that is the ‘N’ diagonal. That’s the letter ‘N’ we see in ‘EeriNess’. That diagonal forms the base of the triangle in ‘Eeriness’. At the top left of that diagonal we have Carn-Dûm which is hell as ice. That is water in the 4 elements. At the bottom right of the diagonal we have Orodruin, which is hell as fire. The N diagonal therefore represents fire and ice. Being on that diagonal is the diagonal that the story follows in The Lord of the Rings. There appears to be no hope at all. We can also understand it as ‘between the devil and the deep blue sea’ or between wrack and ruin. The N diagonal trapped in a twilight realm. The Ring stretches you and makes you thinner until you become bound solely to the plane of the hypotenuse, a wraith.
So now we have…
Edith-bet-Left-Time-Sun-Goldberry-Birch-Tree-Philology-hearing-shield-outside-thick, etc
..and the right hand being..
Tolkien-alef-Right-Space-Moon-Bombadil-Oak-Tower-Literature-sight-sword-inside-thick, etc.
So the discords lie in the right hand as the oak. Look at ‘Eeriness’. Note the threatening tree on the right side of the page and the welcoming trees on the left. The wizard is connected to the trees on the hill on the left via the visual clue of the shared light on them. This is classic Tolkien and how he hints using different methods, one being visual clues. We can read the picture as the wayward wizard, Tolkien, must get back to Eden, to his perfect union with his wife. In the image north is up, the oak is in the east and the birch is in the west. This very much aligns with the whole scheme of the light of Aman which developed later. Clearly the scheme was in place by this time.
For more information on 6 and 9 see ‘The Turn in Principle‘ and A Response to Priya Seth’s ‘Breaking the Tolkien Code’.
Tolkien’s inscrutability lay also in his humour. “Sometimes his wit was so close to both humour and reality that is was impossible to decide which he meant.” Discussion of Tolkien’s humour is a very important point to make. Tolkien could very easily hide under your nose in plain sight many things in his humour. It reminds one of the saying ‘the truth often comes out in a joke”. Humour is a very useful tool for saying things that you would never say, and that might for Tolkien, include his private symbolism and secrets.
Kilby notes other contrasistencies.
| In a telephone conversation with Tolkien, Mr. Henry Resnick asked what was east of Rhun and south of Harad, to which Tolkien replied, “Rhun is the Elvish word for east. Asia, China, Japan, and all the things which people in the West regard as far away, And south of Harad is Africas, the hot countries.” Then Mr, Resnick asked, “That makes Middle-earth Europe, doesn’t it?” To which Tolkien replied, “Yes, of course – Northwestern Europe…where my imagination comes from.”17 Not long afterwards, when I mentioned this interview to Tolkien, he denied ever having said these things. Yet later, when in my own efforts to get the geography of the Silmarillion straight I asked Tolkien where Numenor was, he promptly responded, “In the middle of the Atlantic.” Is this another instance of the Professor’s “contrasistency,” or is there a logical explanation? He is reported to have said specifically that Mordor “would be roughly in the Balkans.”18 All this thrusts upon us not simply geography but European history, and the allegorical framework which Tolkien so vociferously denied. |
Here Tolkien drops a subtle hint as to the relationship between orientation and proximity. Tolkien’s world operates along the principles of Emanation: The closer to God the origin, the more perfect, and conversely, the further from God, the less perfect. God is in the West, with the light of Aman. Therefore anything in the east (China and Japan are mentioned) is far way and more imperfect than its counterpart in the west. It’s not a cultural judgement in any way, simply a logical outcome of the geometry and Emanation which mirrors the thoughts in the middle-ages regarding the location of Paradise in the East and the levant. Therefore we have a link between spirituality and physical orientation and location. And this is how the TURN proceeds, through the spirit through physical orientation, through language utterance and evolution. The turn being the geometric means of the spiritual journey navigating up closer to God in heaven or down to hell. See ‘The Turn in Principle‘ and ‘The Turn in Practice‘. And we have the oak in the east according to my summary of the symbolism of ‘Eeriness’. The Enemy is in the East. But isn’t the Enemy also in the north? Yes, and the explanation will have to wait for a more thorough discussion. There are two axes at work.
Take a look at the monogram in ‘Eeriness’. Do you see the suggestion of a Chinese figure? There is also a Chinese looking fish with a beard in his illustration ‘The Merking’s Palace’. Tolkien mentioned a China man’s beard in his letters and Sam’s words when he pulls the rope at the Emyn Muil cliff face are ‘noodles’. There are more references, including one to Japanese in his “Essay on Phonetic Symbolism” and they are all related and belong to the same symbolism.
The whole idea of the importance of physical orientation and proximity was part of Tolkien’s conception of the Faerian drama and would explain his odd theatrical behaviour with Kilby. “Much of the time there was about him the atmosphere of the actor”. Tolkien behaved almost as if he and Kilby were on a stage.
| While he talked he stood up and walked about or else sat in his cot. Like C.S Lewis, when I visited him some years earlier. Tolkien continually fiddled with his pipe but actually smoked little. As his talk grew in enthusiasm, he would sometimes come very close to me and put his face almost against mine, as though to make sure the point of some remark was completely understood …He was happy with what he considered his histrionic talents, saying he had done some stage work in earlier life. He had the script of a British Broadcasting Corporation dramatization of The Lord of the Rings, thought it badly done, that he could have acted better than some who took part, but that the BBC had refused him the chance. Those who have heard the Caedmon phonograph records in which he reads from the Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and Tom Bombadil know the dramatic quality he sought after. One is also impressed with the melodic beauty of his reading of Elvish and also the recorded Gregorian-chant character of a longer Elvish poem sung by William Elvin to the music of Donald Swann. When I was with him he once began to read me a passage in Elvish, then stopped, came up close and placing the manuscript before me said that Elvish ought not to be read but sung and then chanted it in a slow and lovely intonation. |
The geometry of Time and Space is described by the courses of the Sun (Edith-Time) and the Moon (Tolkien-Space). The ever changing courses are their relationship. This is why the Moon is described as pursuing the Sun when they are created.
The two oscillate between being far apart and distant at noon and midnight and close together at twilight when they are both briefly in the sky together. We can see this as at noon the Sun is directly overhead and the Moon is directly underneath the Earth. And vice versa at midnight. As previously stated this distancing is because of the will to dominate each other in the relationship. Because of how the mechanics of the Turn proceed this physical distance translates into emotional distance from each other in their relationship. Physical distance equates to emotional distance. Indeed, more correctly, it is the spiritual distance which leads to the physical distance. The two are closest at twilight. This astronomical dance is the stage of the fearian drama and we see it played out by Goldberry and Bombadil around the table as Time-Sun and Moon-Space, Edith and Tolkien. And their orientation towards each other is central. They, as Sun and Moon, oscillate between facing away from each other and facing towards each other at twilight. This might very well explain Tolkien’s repeat coming up close suddenly to Kilby and putting his body and face right close to his. It’s quite possible that Tolkien was talking about something which moved him to act out the geometry and symbolism of the Fearian Drama. We can see the connexion between distance and the courses of the Sun and Moon supported by Tolkien’s inclusion of ‘Asia as anything far away “Asia, China, Japan”).
| Asia |
| c. 1300, from Latin Asia, from Greek Asia, speculated to be from Akkadian asu “to go out, to rise,” in reference to the sun, thus “the land of the sunrise.” Used by the early Greeks of what later was known as Asia Minor; by Pliny of the whole continent. |
Moreover in that same passage that Kilby mentions Tolkien coming over and imitating the sword-thrust, he mentions Tom Bombadil.
The determination of facing develops from the importance of orientation in his works. It is fundamentally important. Turning to and away from God. The importance of physical orientation in history has been well documented. Medieval maps drawn with east at the top. Pilgrimages: there and back again. Churches built aligned along the east-west axis. People Buried with their heads in the east. Turning to Mecca to pray. Criminals buried with their heads at their feet. The list is very long. The only obvious appearance of this is in The Lord of the Rings is when Faramir turns to the West.
| Before they ate, Faramir and all his men turned and faced west in a moment of silence. Faramir signed to Frodo and Sam that they should do likewise. ‘So we always do.’ he said, as they sat down: `we look towards Númenor that was, and beyond to Elvenhome that is, and to that which is beyond Elvenhome and will ever be. Have you no such custom at meat? ‘ [The Lord of the Rings, The Window on the West] |
The foundations of Tolkien’s implementations of it are laid in the mystic Talmud, in the Zohar. I had already determined the geometry and the facing of the Sun and Moon some two years before discovering what I firmly believe to be the original source of his ideas regarding the left and right hands as male and female.
Kilby mentions two other occasions where he saw what he terms as Tolkien’s contrasistency:
Tolkien’s preoccupation with a legal wrangle with Ace books interfered, so he told Kilby, with the completion of the Silmarillion.
| One of the deeply puzzling aspects of Tolkien comes to light in this circumstance, perhaps another case of “contrasistency”. I failed to understand why he could not see instantly that the Ace edition need not usurp even one day of his time. It was a purely legal matter and only needed to be handed over to the lawyer. |
The other is regarding his statements about the appearance of religion in his works and allegory.
| It is true that the word “God” never appears in any of Tolkien’s stories, not even in Leaf by Niggle where some Christian implications are overwhelming, including a conversation between God and Christ. We recall Tolkien’s insistence that his story had no allegorical meaning, religious or otherwise, but contrariwise, at a later time he spoke of invocations to Elbereth Gilthoniel and added, “These and other references to religion in the Lord of the Rings are frequently overlooked.”21 It seems to be another case of Tolkien’s “contrasistency.” |
We also have his statements on Dante and Charles Williams which are puzzling.
Everyone has their opinions about Tolkien. Many have read him, fewer have studied him. And even fewer have actually met him. The two people that had met Tolkien in this essay are Tom Shippey and Clyde Kilby. Tom Shippey said that he was devious and Kilby said pretty much the same thing and having spent much longer in his company, even coined a word to describe the very puzzling and contradictory man. Kilby said he thought he was hiding things and was enjoying the game of it. Shippey questioned the veracity of Tolkien’s words.
Roberts found the Alvismael acrostic and Seth found several anagrams, which led her to believe that Tolkien had hidden his initials in his works. That agreed with my findings some years before. I had found to date 9 sets of initials. All of which have been hidden for many decades. Do you think it’s a coincidence that two separate and independent people had believed to have found Tolkien’s initials hidden in his works in such a way? And then there’s Mahmoud Shelton’s book ‘Alchemy in Middle-earth’. I first discovered alchemy in Tolkien’s works 15 years ago in the Akallabeth and the Adunaic language. My understanding of alchemy has enabled a number of my predictions. That’s another instance of two people who have never met arriving at the same set of observations. I was very uncomfortable with it at the time because I knew almost nothing about Tolkien. I hadn’t even read his letters. I termed it ‘linguistic alchemy’. I then accidentally came across this about a year later in ‘On Fairy Stories’.
| Of course, I do not deny, for I feel strongly, the fascination of the desire to unravel the intricately knotted and ramified history of the branches on the Tree of Tales. It is closely connected with the philologists’ study of the tangled skein of Language, of which I know some small pieces. But even with regard to language it seems to me that the essential quality and aptitudes of a given language in a living monument is both more important to seize and far more difficult to make explicit than its linear history. So with regard to fairy stories, I feel that it is more interesting, and also in its way more difficult, to consider what they are, what they have become for us, and what values the long alchemic processes of time have produced in them. |
That was the eureka moment. My gut instinct had been right. And that’s what we witness in Kilby’s book. His gut instinct. And we see it in Seth’s book too. I found Shelton’s book about 5 years ago. It’s one of the most important books on Tolkien, but hardly anyone knows about it. When I showed it to an established Tolkien scholar he remarked that it didn’t look valuable because the publisher was not very reputable. Such moments are living proof that we should never judge a book by its cover. C.S Lewis knew that which is why he stopped collecting collectors’ editions of books and started buying cheap paperbacks. The alchemy is bound up with the geometry and Tolkien’s personal numerology. Alchemy is not a thing of God in his works. It results from the discords of Melkor. It does not conflict with his Catholic Faith in any way.
I have tried to lay the foundation for the unravelling of the Gordian Knot that is Tolkien. Seth opened her book ‘Breaking the Tolkien Code’ in the same manner. We’re clearly both keenly aware of the weight of the existing consensus in Tolkien scholarship, a community which I feel has become an establishment. The burden of proof is heavy. The first dawning light of that process is to make the mental leap that Tolkien was deceptive about his work. Plain and simple. Tolkien was a riddler and Kilby just happened to catch him at a time when Tolkien’s pulse was quickening from the rising wave of fame. His enthusiasm almost got the better of him, and boiled over into confiding some deep secret. A secret that he never even told members of the Inklings or his family. That was probably the closest we ever got to Tolkien spilling the beans. And Kilby wasn’t bogged down then by the decades of received and conventional thinking about Tolkien that has accumulated since. Kilby’s gut feelings were put down on paper with no moderation to try and agree with any images that existed of Tolkien. At the time ‘Tolkien and the Silmarillion’ was published we knew nothing about Tolkien’s works or mythology beyond The Hobbit. Christopher Tolkien hadn’t published a single thing about his father’s works until nearly 20 years later. Kilby was the right man there at the right time and it’s one of the most important books ever written on Tolkien.
The only way to unravel Tolkien is to read Tolkien. The only way to read Tolkien is to read philology. And that requires that we look at the etymology of every single word he ever wrote and probably most of the words he ever spoke. Etymology by its nature is hidden to the non-philologist and this is where the real truth about Tolkien can be found, right under your nose on the page. Never judge a book by its cover. Likewise for words.
| cloud (n.) |
| Old English clud “mass of rock, hill,” related to clod.
The modern sense “rain-cloud, mass of evaporated water visible and suspended in the sky” is a metaphoric extension that begins to appear c. 1300 in southern texts, based on similarity of cumulus clouds and rock masses. The usual Old English word for “cloud” was weolcan (see welkin). In Middle English, skie also originally meant “cloud.” The last entry for cloud in the original rock mass sense in Middle English Compendium is from c. 1475. The four fundamental types of cloud classification (cirrus, cumulus, stratus, nimbus) were proposed by British amateur meteorologist Luke Howard (1772-1864) in 1802. Meaning “cloud-like mass of smoke or dust” is from late 14c. Figuratively, as something that obscures, darkens, threatens, or casts a shadow, from c. 1300; hence under a cloud (c. 1500). In the clouds “removed from earthly things; obscure, fanciful, unreal” is from 1640s. Cloud-compeller translates (poetically) Greek nephelegereta, a Homeric epithet of Zeus. |