GANDALF, MITHRAS AND THE STAIR OF ENLIGHTENMENT.
The symbol of the ray of the sun appears in esoteric and ancient religious doctrines. In Ernest Highbarger’s The Gates of Dreams, he writes of the Pharoah in the Pyramid Texts:
“In these religious documents the deceased Pharaoh is frequently said to be “among the Imperishable Stars,” or it is stated that he “ascends and lifts himself to the sky […] This concept of the Pharaoh as a star or as the sun was ultimately generalized so that all the glorious dead were called “the Imperishable Ones,” “the eternal stars” and they were localized in the northern quarter of the sky, probably being identified with the circumpolar stars.”
He continues:
“He must first enter the double-door (or gate) of the sky […] Through the door the ascent upward was then made. […] In the oblique rays of the sun, the Egyptians saw a stairway leading to the sky by the help of which the Pharaoh could mount thither. This was called the “arm of the sunbeams.” A rope ladder likewise often mentioned, whose strands were made from the hide of the “sky-bull” or “sky-cow.”4 As the Pharoah ascended to the sky, his journey through the double-gate was vividly portrayed in the Pyramid Texts” (Highbarger pp.10-11).
This agrees with, as related previously, that the etymology of the word “door” originally suggested a double door. Expert in Mithraic studies Franz Cumont asks, “How did souls rise to the stars?” and answers:
“It may be said that originally they made use of every method of locomotion: they ascended to heaven on foot, on horseback, in carriages, and they even had recourse to aviation. Among the ancient Egyptians the firmament was conceived as being so close to the mountains of the earth that it was possible to climb up to it with the aid of a ladder. Although the stars had been relegated to an infinite distance in space, the ladder still survived in Roman paganism as an amulet and as a symbol. Many people continued to place in tombs a small bronze ladder which recalled the naive beliefs of distant ages; and in the mysteries of Mithra a ladder of seven steps, made of seven different metals, still symbolised the passage of the soul across the planetary spheres” (Cumont 84).
We know that the star lies at the Door in Eeriness and the road is also a mountain leading upwards. The wizard in his pilgrimage is rising upwards to the star. Therefore Tolkien’s symbolism reflects this conception communicated by Cumont. As has been noted previously by Mahmoud Shelton, Gandalf’s name “Mithrandir” meaning “Grey Pilgrim”, has the element “mith” found in “Mithras” (Shelton 2). That name was given by the Elves, and the Elves are the children of the stars, and those who are also most obviously able to see the straight road given their lineage, history and connection to lore, and the only race able to do so after the Downfall. If the straight road in Eeriness is also a mountain with Eden at the top, and the Before image depicts the same geometry as Eeriness with its straight road leading towards the door, then the Turn in the Before and Afterwards sequence occurs at the top of the mountain. Eeriness itself suggests this via Tolkien’s visual linking of the two whited areas at the wizard’s feet and at the top-left corner. If we regard the whited area to be sunlight, echoing Bilbo in the ray of sunlight in the east mirror in The Hall at Bag-End, then we can regard the wizard to be in a ray (beam) of sunlight, and we have previously identified those images all to be using the same geometry and “grammar”. Following the path in Before leads to the Door and thence a turn of 90 degrees in Afterwards. This conception of seven steps agrees with the climb of a hill for seven years in the Black Bull of Norroway which Tolkien quotes in On Fairy Stories. That also leads to a turn— to remind ourselves:
“In such stories when the sudden “turn” comes we get a piercing glimpse of joy, and heart’s desire, that for a moment passes outside the frame, rends indeed the very web of story, and lets a gleam come through.
“Seven long years I served for thee,
The glassy hill I clamb for thee,
The bluidy shirt I wrang for thee,
And wilt thou not wauken and turn to me?”
He heard and turned to her” (OFS 76).
I have also said that the geometry comprises a mirror, hence “glassy”.
We also saw the ladder in Conversation with Smaug leading between the two thorn runes on the urn and pointing at the left arch, which I argued was the path that Thorin takes. That arch is a Turn at the Door we see in Afterwards. Therefore the ladder can be considered to be pointing up the mountain, the triangular heap of the hoard of Smaug, to the star of the Arkenstone visible at the top, Thorin’s destiny, leading to the Door and turning to the left arch.
The mountain therefore is Minas Tirith, fashioned after Dante’s Mount Purgatorio. It has seven levels or we might say it is a ladder of seven rungs. The seven different metals of the ladder appear in Tolkien’s Chain of Angainor and these agree with the seven metals of the planets in alchemy. Therefore we can regard the curved lines suggested around the mountain in Eeriness to in fact be a spiral of seven levels. This makes sense given that the ancients believed that the outer ring in the cosmological model was the realm of the fixed stars with the inner rings leading to them being the planets. The eighth level of the fixed stars would lie above the seventh level at the top of the mountain. This would be at the location of the Door in Eeriness and the star in Conversation with Smaug. I would suggest that the “limb out of joint” is the arm of the oak in Eeriness and Tol Sirion and that this represents the celestial pole which as an aetiological explanation of the 23.5 degree celestial pole, was knocked out of kilter in ancient myths. On Tolkien’s monogram, if you draw a line between the two sets of 4 dots, it gives exactly 23.5 degrees. The questions surrounding its provenance and the implications of this will be explored elsewhere.
In The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries in reference to the “mystery of Mithras”, David Ulansey writes:
“For in the latter there is a symbol of the two orbits in heaven, the one being that of the fixed stars and the other that asigned to the planets, and of the soul’s passage through these. The symbol is this. There is a ladder with seven gates and at its top and eighth gate […] Origen’s planetary “ladder with seven gates” appears to be connected with the seven levels of Mythraic initiation […] mentioned in one of the letters of the church father Jerome, as symbols for these initiatory stages are found associated with the symbols of the seven planets in mosaics found in a mithraeum at Ostia” (Ulansey pp.18-19).
St. Jerome has been suggested as one possible model for Tolkien’s assumed role as the ficticious interpreter and editor of the material which becomes the Red Book of Westmarch, that is, The Lord of the Rings. Gergely Nagy summarizes this, pointing us to Jason Fisher’s essay:
“Many critics (among them, Shippey, Flieger, Anne C. Petty, and Jason Fisher) have pointed out the importance of the editor of the Finnish Kalevala, Elias Lönnrot, for the “Silmarillion” (see ch. 18); but other such role models have also been suggested. St Jerome made “an entirely fresh translation of the Bible from what were then believed to be the earliest extant texts in their original languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek)”” (Nagy 112).
In Lóthlorien we also see the phenomenon of the ladder or “rope ladder” which we would expect to find if it represents the centre, the top of the mountain, the location of the Earthly Paradise, “the heart of Elvendom” at the heart in Eeriness. This eighth rung appears as the “flet”, the “talan” in the Mallorn trees and the grey elven ropes with which the hobbits climb up. Jesus’s words in Mathew about the camel passing through the eye of a needle to get into heaven seem appropriate if we consider that the word “camel” is actually considered to be a mistranslation of “rope”. The original Greek word in the Bible is kámilos, which means “rope” or “cable”. The lattice gate of the Cottage of Lost Play with its lattice windows is echoed in the “pavilion among the trees”, a reference to the butterfly as previously noted, created for the hobbits by the Elves, and the two concentric rings of trees in Cerin Amroth of the World Soul. Moreover we’re told that on the flet where the pavilion is created “on one side was there a light plaited screen” (LotR 2.VI.344). “Plait” gives the noun: ““interlaced strands of hair,”“, and the verb: ““to braid or weave (something),”“, a lattice. This agrees with the hair of the trees at the centre of Eeriness which we identified to be interwoven just as the hair of “You and I” in the Cottage of lost Play poems. This higher rung is also repeated in Cerin Amroth which we’ve identified to represent the World Soul.
Tolkien draws our attention to the numbers seven and eight in the moment the hobbits first ascend the flet of the tree before they reach the Nimrodel. The flet in the Mallorn trees in Cerin Amroth represents the eight gate. Haldir asks how many of the Fellowship are here. Aragorn replies “eight” and lists them. Haldir responds:
“All then is well. But you have yet spoken only of seven.’
`The eighth is a dwarf,’ said Legolas.
`A dwarf! ‘ said Haldir. `That is not well” (LotR 2.VI.343).
Shelton writes of LotR and Gandalf in Moria:
“Here is a depiction of the stages of the alchemical work known respectively as that of “blackening” or death, followed by that of “whitening”. Yet with his appearance as the White, Gandalf is specifically called “Mithrandir” […] Now the solar cult of Mithra, arising from ancient Persia, enacted a death and resurrection in its initiatory rituals, which were moreover carried out in grottos. A strange iconographic figure belonging to Mithraism is that of its Aeon, a winged, lion-headed man with a sword, whose legs are bound by a serpent. All of these elements are present in Gandalf’s confrontation with the Balrog in the cavern of Moria: the demon is winged, with a mane and sword, whose whip recalls the serpent in its binding of Gandalf’s knees. […] The “resurrected” Mithrandir unveils himself upon a rock, whereas Mithra was said to have been born from a rock; indeed, in his resurrected form, he answers only to Mithrandir, while affirming “I was Gandalf.”” (Shelton 2).
In speaking of “Mithraic Kronos of Florence” Cumont writes:
“At the pinnacle of the divine hierarchy and at the origin of things, the Mithraic theology, the heir of that of the Zervanitic Magi, placed boundless Time. Sometimes they would call it Αἰών or Sæculum, Κρόνος [Kronos] or Saturnus; but these appellations were conventional and contingent, for he was considered ineffable, bereft alike of name, sex, and passions. In imitation of his Oriental prototype, he was represented in the likeness of a human monster with the head of a lion and his body enveloped by a serpent.[…] He bears the scepter and the bolts of divine sovereignty and holds in each hand a key as the monarch of the heavens whose portals he opens. His wings are symbolic of the rapidity of his flight. The reptile whose sinuous folds enwrap him, typifies the tortuous course of the Sun on the ecliptic; the signs of the zodiac engraved on his body and the emblems of the seasons that accompany them, are meant to represent the celestial and terrestrial phenomena that signalize the eternal flight of the years” (Mysteries Of Mithra 79).
The Zervanitic Magi of the Zoroastrians recalls Gandalf certainly. Gandalf as Odin also opens gates. Apropos of “Mithraic Kronos of Florence”, Tolkien stated that “Minas Tirith, 600 miles south, is at about the latitude of Florence” (Letters #294, 528).
The image of a serpent coiling around the tree appears in Tolkien’s illustration Three 
Dragons. In fig.1.7.1 (left) we can see that both Mithras and the dragon have six coils. “This leontocephalous figure is entirely nude, the body being entwined six times by a serpent” (The Mysteries of Mithra 70). The sixth link in the chain of Angainor is gold whose planet is the Sun. This agrees with the statement that the snake in the mithraic imagery represents the “tortuous course of the Sun along the ecliptic”.
On the stone next to the figure we can see the Caduceus of Hermes which incorporates the twin serpents which appear as the two spirals in Tolkien’s works. The middle “golden rod” is surely the ray of sunlight, indicating the “straight road”. We can see in the coiled dragon illustration that Tolkien suggests the cardinal axes via the grey lines emanating from the tree along the ground, suggesting the tree itself is the axis mundi. Odin, who we’ve established to be Tolkien, was a hermetic figure and Tolkien played Hermes in Aristophanes’s Peace in his final year at King Edwards.
Tolkien creates the Mithraic imagery from a composite of features of both Gandalf and the Balrog. Just before the battle with the Balrog on the bridge Gandalf is described as “grey and bent, like a wizened tree before the onset of a storm” (LotR 2.V.330). Of course as Shelton points out Gandalf is dragged into the abyss by the coils of the Balrog’s flaming whip around him. Gandalf tells us that he is the Wielder of the Flame of Anor. “Wield”: “Old English weldan (Mercian), wieldan, wealdan (West Saxon) “have power over, compel, tame, subdue” […] Old High German waltan, German walten “to rule, govern”“. Ulansey describes Mithras as controlling the celestial pole and having power, mastery, over the sun:
“Mithras sol invictus. When Mithras is referred to as the unconquered sun, one naturally becomes curious as to whether of not there is also a conquered sun. And here, of course, Mithraic iconography gives us an absolutely explicit answer: all of those scenes depicting the sun god kneeling before Mithras or otherwise submitting to him make it abundantly clear that it is the sun itself who is actually the conquered sun. Mithras, therefore, becomes the unconquered sun by conquering the sun. He accomplishes this deed (…) by means of the power represented by the symbol of the celestial pole which he holds in his hand in the “investment” scenes, a power which consists in his ability to shift the position of the celestial pole by moving the cosmic structure and which clearly makes him more powerful than the sun. And so we may say that Mithras is entitled to be called “sun” insofar as he has taken over the role of kosmokrator formerly exercised by the sun itself” (Ulansey 110).
Mithras, Gandalf, as had been suggested, being able to shift the position of the celestial pole would explain why the two sets of 4 dots in Tolkien’s monogram are at 23.5 degrees. On the face of it, we certainly might say that there is no evidence of Tolkien implementing precession anywhere in his mythos. But as we’ve hopefully seen here, certain things, which are not revealed anywhere in his documents, have been hidden in plain sight before the eyes of his unsuspecting friends and audience for over eighty years.
In his essay Sigelwara Land Tolkien rendered “Sigelwara” as “Black Sun” (“sigel”, sun) and a demon of the complexion of black soot, the Balrog—the blackening of the heat of the sun. We are also invited to regard the Balrog as representing the phenomenon of the “black sun”, something which his been itself blackened. We recall Shelton’s astute observation that this episode can be considered to be the “blackening” stage in the alchemical process of the Great Work. In the bridge scene the Balrog might certainly represent the conquered sun.
We have defined the Straight road, the path of the wizard in Eeriness as a bridge, that of C connecting A and B in the dialectic. At the Door in Before, which shares the same grammar as Eeriness, etc, we see a winged figure. We can regard this figure as representing the composite mithraic imagery, the soul which crosses the bridge, which in Eeriness is the wizard, and something else which is oppositional to that crossing. This episode in fact describes the Chinvat bridge of the Zoroastrians. The soul encounters judgement on the bridge. What the soul perceives, what it meets, is dependent on the righteousness of the soul. Therefore what is perceived and encountered on the outside is determined by the inner state of the soul inside. This is “as within so without”, a symbolic landscape which casts the inner soul as the real reality determining the exterior reality. This explains the ambivalent nature of the winged figure in Before. It describes our attitude to death and the Afterlife itself which either remains true to its faith in the Afterlife or which is in a state of fear, described in the effects of Melkor’s discords as “death without hope” (BoLT 55) engendered by the Enemy. In Afterwards the soul turns left but we can surely equally turn right, and these directions equate to the two spirals on the left and right in Before, and the two hands of Ilúvatar in the Music of the Ainur.
“The Chinvat Bridge ([…] “bridge of judgement” or “beam-shaped bridge”)[1] or the Bridge of the Requiter[2] in Zoroastrianism is the sifting bridge,[3] which separates the world of the living from the world of the dead. All souls must cross the bridge upon death. The bridge is guarded by two four-eyed dogs, described in the Videvdat (Vendidad) 13,9 as ‘spâna pəšu.pâna’ (“two bridge-guarding dogs”).[4][5]
The Bridge’s appearance varies depending on the observer’s asha, or righteousness. As related in the text known as the Bundahishn, if a person has been wicked, the bridge will appear narrow and the demon Chinnaphapast will emerge[6] and drag their soul into the druj-demana (the House of Lies), a place of eternal punishment and suffering similar to the concept of Hell.[7] If a person’s good thoughts, words and deeds in life are many, the bridge will be wide enough to cross, and the Daena, a spirit representing revelation, will appear and lead the soul into Garo Demana (the House of Song). Those souls that successfully cross the bridge are united with Ahura Mazda.
Often, the Chinvat Bridge is identified with the rainbow, or with the Milky Way galaxy, such as in Professor C.P. Tiele’s “History of Religion ” (“Chinvat Bridge”).
The bridge is described as “beam-shaped” which agrees with the hypothesis that this bridge is the beam of light of the ray of the Sun, and the beam of a tree limb in Tolkien’s imagery.
“Beam”: “Old English beam, “living tree,” but by late 10c. also “rafter, post, ship’s timber,” from Proto-Germanic *baumaz “tree” (source also of Old Frisian bam “tree, gallows, beam,” Middle Dutch boom […] The meaning “ray of light” developed in Old English, probably because beam was used by Bede to render Latin columna (lucis), the Biblical “pillar of fire.””
There are other instances of this same phenomenon. The mountain with a spiral road to the summit appears again in Numenor’s Holy mountain, the Meneltarma, the “pillar of heaven”:
“Near to the centre of the Mittalmar stood the tall mountain called Meneltarma, Pillar of the Heavens, sacred to the worship of Eru Ilúvatar. Though the lower slopes of the mountain were gentle and grass-covered, it grew ever steeper, and towards the summit it could not be scaled; but a winding spiral road was made upon it, beginning at its foot upon the south, and ending below the lip of the summit upon the north”(Unfinished Tales [U.T.] 166).
It same phenomena also appear at Orthanc, “Mount Fang”. At the top of the Númenórean built Orthanc we know that there are etched “strange signs”. Tolkien draws a pentagram over the pinnacle Orthanc in his draft dust-jacket design for The Two Towers (A&I 181), the same star shape as the island of Númenor. Of Orthanc’s construction we read:
“The shafts ran down by many slopes and spiral stairs to caverns far under […] Between [the horns of the pinnacle] was a narrow space, and there upon a floor of polished stone, written with strange signs, a man might stand five hundred feet above the plain”(LotR 3.VIII.554).
Tolkien links the star pentagram in his drawing with his description that wise men watch the stars from the top of the tower, the place of “strange signs”:
“A strong place and wonderful was Isengard, and long it had been beautiful; and there great lords had dwelt, the wardens of Gondor upon the West, and wise men that watched the stars”(LotR 3.VIII.555).
Gandalf is captured and recounts:
`They took me and they set me alone on the pinnacle of Orthanc, in the place where Saruman was accustomed to watch the stars. There is no descent save by a narrow stair of many thousand steps, and the valley below seems far away”(LotR 2.II.260).
The inference of a spiral stair is suggested by both this stair and the spiral stairs down to caverns underneath Orthanc, which is further suggested in the winding vapour which appears at the destruction of Isengard. Indeed Tolkien suggests a coiling snake in the “hiss” of the steams, a dragon in the “gusts of fire”, and the “pillar of fire”, a tall peak of firey cloud:
“Great white steams hissed up. Smoke rose in billows. There were explosions and gusts of fire. One great coil of vapour went whirling up, twisting round and round Orthanc, until it looked like a tall peak of cloud, fiery underneath and moonlit above”(LotR 3.X.571).
The great cloud is described as like a “rainbow”:
“The fogs slowly gathered together and steamed up into a huge umbrella of cloud: it must have been a mile high. In the evening there was a great rainbow over the eastern hills”(LotR 3.X.572).
Much as Lothlórien is described to be an island surrounded by a sea of perils. Both the Meneltarma and Orthanc are overthrown by a deluge.
Tolkien also describes the bridge of Khazad-dûm as arched (like a rainbow). Some have suggested that evidence points to the Chinvat bridge being vertical which agrees with the Bede’s “pillar of fire”. Tolkien describes the bridge of Khazad-dûm as the “narrow way”, “‘Over the bridge!’ cried Gandalf, recalling his strength. ‘Fly! This is a foe beyond any of you. I must hold the narrow way” (TLotR 2.V.331). This suggests perhaps that the soul of Gandalf has been found to be unrighteous, but Gandalf is positioned where the winged figure appears in Before as the judge. This composite imagery and oppositional character of both Gandalf and the Balrog being two halves of the same mithraic iconography, supports the hypothesis that the bridge crosses the plane of a miror. The winged figure presents the soul with a mirror unto itself. There are many points of evidence in the text to support this and indeed a more clear interpretation of the roles and the process of the narrative of the Fall of Gandalf, but we have no time to pursue it here.
We can understand the entire passage of the narrative from the West Gate to the Tongue in Lórien, to the centre, in terms of Mountain and Tree symbolism simultaneously. This passage is the passage up the mountain in Eeriness, over the bridge, the Chinvat Bridge, which is also the “beam” of a tree, a ray, or pillar of light, turning at the centre, the Tongue of Lórien, the Door.
“They followed him as he stepped lightly up the grass-clad slopes. Though he walked and breathed, and about him living leaves and flowers […] Haldir had gone on and was now climbing to the high flet. As Frodo prepared to follow him, he laid his hand upon the tree beside the ladder: never before had he been so suddenly and so keenly aware of the feel and texture of a tree’s skin and of the life within it. He felt a delight in wood and the touch of it, neither as forester nor as carpenter; it was the delight of the living tree itself.
We can refine our understanding that “You and I” of the Cottage of Lost Play represents the two at the centre, while “You and me”, represent the two having left the centre and drifted apart. The abiding unity in some distance time and place has been lost, becoming a cycle of loss and recovery, a recovery which Sam and the Fellowship experience in Lóthlorien, the centre. The centre is a place back in time, “west of the Moon, east of the Sun”, a place in memory and a place of Song just like the “House of Memory” and very reminiscent of the heavenly Garo Demana, “House of Song” across the Chinvat bridge, encompassing the bridge of time in Moria, and the “bridge of time” leading to Lóthlorien.
“Vairë blessed the door and lintel of the hall and gave the key to Rúmil, making him once again the Doorward, and to Littleheart was given the hammer of his gong. Then Lindo said, as he said each year:
‘Lift up your voices, O Pipers of the Shore, and ye Elves of Kôr sing aloud; and all ye Noldoli and hidden fairies of the world dance ye and sing, sing and dance O little children of Men that the House of Memory resound with your voices…’
Then was sung a song of ancient days that the Eldar made when they dwelt beneath the wing of Manwë and sang on the great road from Kôr to the city of the Gods” (BoLT 1 pp. 239-230).
Tolkien describes the bridge as a “span”, “Gandalf stood in the middle of the span”(LotR 2.V.330). If this bridge is the “Path of Dreams” in Undertenishness and Eeriness which the wizard is on and which, in the TLoR, leads to the Dream Flower of Lóthlorien, then it is also the path in Before. To remind us, the “heart of Elvendom” is the heart at the centre of Eeriness. We’ve already identified this road to be “lifetime”- one’s path in life towards the Door of Death, to the Afterlife. This macrocosmic description of life is repeated in microcosm when the soul passes through the door to a higher rational plane, indicated by the seven spirals on the mountain. And we recall that Shippey says that crossing the rivers at the Naith is like a death:
“The ‘Naith’ of Lórien, though, across the second river, is Heaven; the company undergoes a kind of death in getting there” (TRtMe 6.246).
Tolkien refers to one’s “lifetime” as a “span” many times in the LotR. When Elrond gives the Ring of Barahir to Aragorn, which we’ve established refers to the two spirals, which are in fact the “slender bridge”, we read:
“”Here is the ring of Barahir,” he said, “the token of our kinship from afar; and here also are the shards of Narsil. With these you may yet do great deeds; for I foretell that the span of your life shall be greater than the measure of Men, unless evil befalls you or you fail at the test. But the test will be hard and long””(LotR Appendix A.V.1057).
At Aragorn’s death we read of Arwen and Aragorn:
“‘As Queen of Elves and Men she dwelt with Aragorn for six-score years in great glory and bliss; yet at last he felt the approach of old age and knew that the span of his life-days was drawing to an end, long though it had been”(LotR Appendix A.V.1062).
The Balrog is repeatedly told “You cannot pass”(LotR 2.V.330), —it does not pass the test. An evil befalls Gandalf on the bridge in the form of the Balrog. The bridge is described as a “span”.
“‘Deep is the abyss that is spanned by Durin’s Bridge, and none has measured it”(LotR 3.V.501).
It is also described as a “narrow way”.
“`The Bridge is near. It is dangerous and narrow.’ […] I must hold the narrow way”(LotR 2.V.pp.329-330).
And as a “slender bridge”:
“Suddenly Frodo saw before him a black chasm. At the end of the hall the floor vanished and fell to an unknown depth. The outer door could only be reached by a slender bridge of stone”(LotR 2.V.329).
The bridge represents the “narrow way” of the Bible, which represents one’s path in life.
“Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: mt.7.14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it”(THB, mt.7.13-14.).
Apropos of the beam “drawing” the soul across the bridge, the narrow way, through the Door to higher truths, we find that the adjective “strait” gives: “Latin strictus, past participle of stringere (2) “bind or draw tight”“. The “angle between the waters” to Lóthlorien is also described as a “slender bridge”, that is, the rope bridge the Elves make over the Celebrant: “When this slender bridge had been made”(LotR 2.VI.346).
Consider my suggestion that the geometry in Eeriness was inspired by the “Land of the Angles” or “Engla land” or “Ængla land” (“Angle Land”) and in AotC Shippey equates Lóthlorien to the ancient England of Aelfwine from Tolkien’s “Lost Road” mythology. We compare the etymology of the “Angle”:
“it is thought to derive from the name of the area they originally inhabited, the Angeln peninsula, which is on the Baltic Sea coast of Schleswig-Holstein.[…] It originated from the Germanic root for “narrow” (compare German and Dutch eng = “narrow”), meaning “the Narrow [Water]”, i.e., the Schlei estuary; the root would be *h₂enǵʰ, “tight”(“Angles_(tribe)”).
This is echoed by the etymology of the noun “strait” which gives: “by late 14c. in reference to a narrow passage of water connecting two larger bodies; from Anglo-French estreit, estrait “narrow part, pass, defile, narrow passage of water“.
We can verify that the bridge to each higher rational plane is but a microcosm of the macrocosmic bridge of the “lifetime” leading to the Afterlife in Before (and Afterwards), in the final words of Aragorn, which again speaks of a test, the “final test”.
“‘ “So it seems,” he said. “But let us not be overthrown at the final test, who of old renounced the Shadow and the Ring. In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory, Farewell!””(LotR Appendix A.V.1063).
Again, if the beam of sunlight “draws” the soul upwards (consider Aragorn’s words, “drawing to an end”) through the door to Higher Truths, and this path is the bridge, the path representing the lifetime in Before, Eeriness, indeed the Straight road, it shouldn’t surprise us that the etymology of the word “span” agrees with this, “span”: ““from Proto-Germanic *spannan, from PIE root *(s)pen- “to draw, stretch, spin.”” And “draw” and “spin” supports the association of this spiral path journey with the Spindle of Necessity who are the “spinners of the years”.
Finally, the Elves believed the Great Pattern was a river.
“In all this we have not considered the Great Pattern, or the Major Patterns: to which we refer when we speak of kinds, or families, or descent. Men often liken these things to Trees with branches; the Eldar liken them rather to Rivers, proceeding from a spring to their outflow into the Sea. Now some hold that as the matters of Eä proceed from a single erma (if this indeed be true), so the life of living things comes from one beginning or Ermenië” (TNoMe 256).
If Lóthlorien is to be regarded as “west of the Moon, east of the Sun” and Elves understand Time to be a river, it’s worth noting that if we trace the course of their journey up the river Anduin back to Lóthlorien, we pass between Minas Ithil the Tower of the Rising Moon to the east, and Minas Tirith the Tower of the Setting Sun to the west. The Anduin, “Time”, therefore flows back to the hidden Lóthlorien west of the Moon and east of the Sun. Thus it is writ large on the LotR map and also appears in his “Walking poem”.
“they rode gently down into the beginning of the trees as afternoon was wearing away.
‘If that isn’t the very tree you hid behind when the Black Rider first showed up, Mr. Frodo!’ said Sam pointing to the left. ‘It seems like a dream now.’
It was evening, and the stars were glimmering in the eastern sky as they passed the ruined oak and turned and went on down the hill between the hazel-thickets. Sam was silent, deep in his memories. Presently he became aware that Frodo was singing softly to himself, singing the old walking-song, but the words were not quite the same.
Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate
And though I oft have passed them by
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun.
And as if in answer, from down below, coming up the road out of the valley, voices sang:
A! Elbereth Gilthoniel!
silivren penna míriel
o menel aglar elenath,
Gilthoniel, A! Elbereth!
We still remember, we who dwell
In this far land beneath the trees
The starlight on the Western Seas“(LotR 6.IX.1028).
The passage and the poems reiterate all of the symbolism of the Turn and passing the Door, the coming up and down a hill to that centre and the memory of a time of peace and rest which inspires singing, for example, of Lóthlorien the “Dream Flower”. It supports all of our hypothesis, including the detail that the hobbits took shelter inside the oak when they first encountered it. This represents the inner and outer relationship between the oak and the birch holding hands in the hands in Eeriness, the two rings of the World Soul. The first time they saw it they were travelling “there”, the second time they are outside it and require no shelter, they are travelling “back again”.
