Tolkien Predictions © Carl Lingard
The following predictions were generated and derived from my theory of Geometry, Rational Planes and Time and Space within Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. The geometry within his works is accompanied by a device called THE TURN. The theory first began to take shape 15 years ago in the autumn of 2005. I arrived at the first ideas regarding the identities of Bombadil and Goldberry as Space and Time in the year after. The ideas were formulated after discovering in 2006 what I believe to be Tolkien’s ‘Rosetta Stone’ in the Akallabêth. That is, a key made by Tolkien intentionally, modeled on the real-world analogue of the same name, which we can use to understand his works at a fundamental level. It began with a chance conversation in 2005, with my ex-girlfriend about Ancient Egypt, (a subject which she knew a lot about), while I was reading the Akallabêth. I had no desire at all to critique Tolkien’s works. The theory is derived and developed from the ground up from the close and exhaustive study of the etymology of the words of his texts (that is, almost every word), in his essays, correspondences, and the study of his illustrations. Note, I have only ever read The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit twice (cover to cover) in 30 years. The Silmarillion only once. So no close familiarity can be claimed. However, I’ve loved his works all my life. I have been working on my research on and off for over 15 years, but I did not discuss any of it until the last few years.
To date I have made 100 predictions based on my understanding. Many predictions will be that a specific word will appear in the text at a specific place, or I have predicted the meanings of etymologies of either English words or Elvish words. Some of the predictions involve numbers.
Around 2005 I had concluded that Bombadil and Goldberry were Space and Time. In 2015 I found a source which I believe was influential in shaping the personality of Bombadil, and the relationship of Bombadil and Goldberry. It was from that I deduced that Bombadil and Goldberry were represented by the numbers 2 and 6, from the half-crown coin in pre-decimal English money- which was known as “2 and 6 pence”. I had already encountered the double-crown of Upper and Lower Egypt in his letters, and had also conceived Bombadil and Goldberry to be two halves of one whole: Space and Time. The notion of a ‘half a crown’ in the other sense didn’t seem a huge leap from that. I then had a hunch. I already knew that Tolkien was using numbers in his works from other sources; the Rhyme of Lore being one of them of course, but especially the numbers 6 and 9. I predicted that the hobbits met Bombadil on the 26th of a month. I looked it up. I was correct. They met him on the 26th Sept. That was the first of many examples of Tolkien’s integration of numbers beyond the Rings.
But I still didn’t know who of the pair was 2 or who was 6. After more work I’d concluded that Goldberry was the number 6. Around that time I had also concluded that they were Moon-Silver and Sun-Gold. Indeed that Bombadil and Goldberry were Tolkien and Edith. Something I’d pretty much thought since 2005. I then came across Tolkien’s Anglo-Saxon poem ‘Syx Mynet’ in Songs for the Philologists. Even though I didn’t have a translation of this poem I had a strong hunch that the 6 was a reference to Goldberry and that the word ‘mynet’ was possibly a pun on ‘minute’, Goldberry being Time. I predicted that the poem would either make a reference to ‘a wife’ or a wife would be the subject of the poem. Having then discovered that the poem was simply Tolkien’s translation into A.S from an existing poem, I looked it up. It was a poem called ‘I Love Sixpence’. I’d never even heard of it. As you can imagine, I was very hopeful because, from the title, it was again dealing with money and clearly it was about the number 6, and Tolkien loved his wife. I was correct. The poem was about a man taking money home to his wife. Perfect.
In Sep. 2018 I accidentally came across the description of the Chain of Angainor. By that time I was beginning to understand Tolkien’s number symbolism and how important it was. I found that the 2nd and 6th links of the Chain are silver and gold. And as I have said I’d already concluded that Bombadil and Goldberry were Moon-Silver and Sun-Gold. Again 2 and 6, agreeing with everything else.
I later noted that the Shire where Bombadil and Goldberry live is comprised of the Four Farthings. Farthings also being pre-decimal English money. I also later found out that when Tolkien met Edith he was 16 and she was 19, hence 6 and 9.
The above sequence of events did not chance out of thin air. I chanced upon the material and made connections while doing other Tolkien research. For more information you can read the Predictions. You can also find a subset of them below.
So,…98 predictions later and here we are…after years of forensic study of his texts and the etymologies of the words within them.
Predictions Summary.
To be clear, a ‘prediction’ is a situation where I will predict the appearance of something, often a word at a specific place in his texts, or the meaning of a word in either the etymology of English or Tolkien’s own etymologies, and then go and seek it and prove it to be true. All predictions are without any fore-knowledge and are enabled through the understanding of Tolkien’s private symbolism, which includes his system of geometry and mathematics. A small number of the ‘predictions’ should be filed under ‘validations’ rather than predictions. They are coloured blue in the table below. A validation is really a prediction that something is the case, but I have not specified where to look for it (I don’t know where to look for it) and have not made a specific search to verify it, but it has been verified later in my research. For example, back in late 2005, the first prediction began as the expression ‘linguistic alchemy’ which I was using in my writing to describe the process of change in Tolkien’s Adûnaic language. I then, about 6 months later in 2006, found that Tolkien described in ‘On Fairy Stories’ the changes in language as ‘the long alchemic process of time’. I coined the expression because the changes I had identified were specifically relating to ideas found in alchemy, not merely to describe any kind of change. I was very uncomfortable with the expression in the beginning because it didn’t sit well with my perception I had of Tolkien at that time. Yellow coloured predictions are related to Tolkien’s numerology which finds its root in the Chain of Angainor and was influenced by Dante and medieval thought.
The predictions summary are the predictions made as they were first logged, both in documents collected on my hard drive, and on my FaceBook page, over the last 5 years. They are necessarily brief. I have made an effort to try and date them approximately. The older the prediction, the more approximate the dating will likely be. Some will be difficult to understand and cryptic, even, on occasion, to the point of being ‘unintelligible’, because of the depth of argument and supporting evidence required to decipher Tolkien’s very secretive, private symbolism. Nonetheless, they will serve as a good introduction to the nature of the predictions and the subjects they cover. Prediction #3 as it was previously logged, was the first, chronologically speaking, so has been moved to number 1. Prediction #4 was voided after being proved incorrect. One of the predictions regarding the Stone of Erech was deleted because it duplicated another previous one. The prediction was not made twice, it was only logged twice. The author having forgotten that he had previously logged it. Logging predictions can be a distraction to research and cover a number of years. The in-depth predictions below are a longer term work-in-progress, which will seek to explain them more thoroughly.
As I’ve stated elsewhere, these predictions don’t demonstrate my abilities as some kind of sooth-sayer. They demonstrate Tolkien’s considerable accomplishments. One of those being, his obsessively rigorous and self-consistent system which he described to Clyde Kilby as ‘mathematical’ (see ‘Tolkien’s Contrasistency‘). Tolkien used the term ‘mathematical’ to describe how he had created all of the names in his books. By the time I had read Kilby’s ‘Tolkien and the Silmarillion’ I had already been long conversant with Tolkien’s geometry and mathematics, having made close to 60 predictions already. That was another moment of ‘validation’- although I chose not to log that one here. We know that his whole world was created as a vehicle for his languages, not the other way around. And so, as it happens, it follows that his entire world and narratives are mathematical and systematic. His system, includes not only the world and the map and the narrative and its structures, it also includes his language creation and the evolution of those languages over time. In summary, it’s all built on planar geometry, but also includes the mathematical operators such as division and multiplication, powers, and his own numerology. His works are extremely structured. Tolkien has a system and he is predictable. Tolkien refers to this system in ‘A Secret Vice’ under the guise of a supposed ‘little man ‘ he once met.
| As he said this word the little man’s smile was full of a great delight, as of a poet or painter seeing suddenly the solution of a hitherto clumsy passage. Yet he proved as closed as an oyster. I never gathered any further details of his secret grammar; and military arrangements soon separated us never to meet again (up to now at any rate). But I gathered that this queer creature – ever afterwards a little bashful after inadvertently revealing his secret – cheered and comforted himself in the tedium and squalors of ‘training under canvas’ by composing a language, a personal system and symphony that no one else was to study or to hear. Whether he did this in his head (as only the great masters can), or on paper, I never knew. It is incidentally one of the attractions of this hobby that it needs so little apparatus! How far he ever proceeded in his composition, I never heard. [Tolkien, J. R. R.. A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Invented Languages] |
The ‘little man’ never existed. That little man is Tolkien himself. Tolkien is the ‘Great Master’.
Tolkien_Predictions_Updated_110121
Predictions in-depth.
| [2006] | [2015] | [2015] | [2016] | [31/08/17] |
| [01/09/17] | [02/09/17] | [03/09/17] | [03/09/17] | [03/10/17]
10. Discord water. |
| [09/10/17]
11. Rippling chord. |
[16/01/18]
12. Lintips from ‘Tin’. |
[27/01/18]
13. Pons asinorum. |
[01/05/18]
14. 7 ‘hammer’. |
[09/05/18]
15. 6 ‘spring’. |
| [29/06/18]
16. 3 ‘wrath’. |
[05/08/18]
17. Pippin ‘finger’. |
[05/08/18]
18. Pippin apple. |
[24/08/18]
19. Celebrimbor 5th son. |
[06/09/18]
20. Celebrimbor torment. |
| [23/09/18]
21. Mazarbul ‘show’. |
[10/10/18]
22. Erech stone 6. |
[11/10/18]
23. 3 eagles. |
[12/10/18] | [12/10/18]
25. 7 veils. |
| [21/08/18]
26. 7 stars captured. |
[21/09/18]
27. 2 and 6, silver and gold. |
[14/10/18]
28. Square and circle. |
[24/11/18]
29. Squaring the circle. |
[26/11/18]
30. ‘Gone door’. |
| [08/12/18]
31. Isildur AR. |
[10/12/18]
32. Inside ‘i’. |
[17/04/19]
33. ‘Galion’ from galleon. |
[20/04/19]
34. ‘Way’ ‘weg’. |
[23/04/19]
35. Númenor 5th ruler. |
| [09/06/19]
36. Cirth rune ‘ng’. |
[10/07/19]
37. Balrog sword. |
[12/07/19]
38. Bombadil window. |
[25/07/19]
39. Lindir sleep theme. |
[25/07/19]
40. ‘Manner’ from hand. |
| [28/07/19]
41. ‘Janitor’ from Janus. |
[02/09/19]
42. ‘Her’ from hir. |
[06/09/19]
43. Shelob’s ‘delight’. |
[06/09/19]
44. ‘Cried’ Cracks of Doom. |
45. 3 eagles, trefoil. |
| [07/10/19]
46 Tar-Calion. |
[27/10/19]
47. Noon silence. |
[05/11/19]
48. Ring of Water is Adamant. |
[18/11/19]
49. Outer, inner mountains. |
[21/11/19]
50. ‘South’ from sud. |
| [24/11/19]
51. Handedness geometry. V.T.49. |
[07/12/20]
52. Arvedui’s death = ‘perish’. |
[08/12/19]
53. Shelob = ‘abominable’. |
[29/12/20]
54. Priya Seth. 4th letter = ‘T’. |
[29/12/20]
55. Priya Seth. Letter ‘J’. |
| [29/12/20]
56. Priya Seth. ‘Waggon’ from wegh. |
[21/01/20]
57. ‘Intensive’ from stretched. |
[24/01/20]
58. ‘Fanuidhol’ = grey. |
[09/03/20]
59. ‘Relations’ in Letter #43. |
[05/04/20]
60. Diagonal lines = ‘thin’. |
| [03/04/20]
61. 7 Unveilings. |
[06/04/20] | [11/04/20]
63. Force a Door. |
[12/04/20] | [12/04/20] |
| [15/04/20]
66. Gasp, gape. |
[21/04/20]
67. dóm in Sundóma. |
[28/04/20]
68. Tarot Suits. |
[17/05/20]
69. Butterflies at twilight. |
[26/05/20]
70. ‘Spread’ at the Mirror scene. |
| [27/05/20]
71. Shelob ‘loathly’. |
[28/05/20]
72. Eye of 8 arms. |
[28/05/20]
73. Shelob =’foul’. |
[28/05/20]
74. Quiver, quaver. |
[28/05/20]
75. 3 legs. |
| [29/05/20]
76. Thrihyrne.
|
[10/06/20]
77. Diamond “in” circle.
|
[11/06/20]
78. Laidly Worm, 7 “laids”.
|
[11/06/20 ]
79. 7 and 9 mounds. |
[12/06/20 ]
80. Gimli = 4th instance.
|
| [14/06/20]
81. Tinbone Thinbone = 3rd stanza. |
[15/06/20]
82. Mr Bliss marriage of Day and Knight. |
[17/06/20]
83. Dwarves name = ‘Forn’. |
[24/06/20]
84. Haggard’s ‘She’, ‘Lion’. |
[24/06/20]
85. 3 phials against Shelob. |
| [25/06/20]
86. 4 x ‘sprays’. |
[25/06/20]
87. 3 or 4 x ‘purple’. |
[27/06/20]
88. Tin in bronze. |
[28/06/20]
89. Moria: 5 x iron. |
[28/06/20]
90. Moria: 1 x copper. |
| [28/06/20]
91. Moria: ‘fly’, ‘flying’ instances = 7. |
[28/06/20]
92. Moria: ‘fly’ and ‘flying’ alternate.
|
[28/07/20]
93. Moria: ‘fly’: Frodo. |
[28/0720]
94. Moria: ‘fly’: Aragorn, Gandalf, Boromir. |
[28/06/20]
95. Moria: ‘foul’. |
| [28/06/20]
96. Moria: 5th instance of ‘lead’.
|
[01/07/20]
97. Moria: ‘gold’ = 6 instances. |
[01/07/20]
98. Argonath ‘frowning’. |
[01/07/20]
99. Moria: 4th instance of ‘mithril’. |
[19/07/20]
100. Gold in ‘Maglor’. |
| [21/07/20]
101. ‘pale’ = grey. |
[25/07/20]
102. ‘Attentive’ = root ‘to stretch’ |
[25/08/20]
103. 4 instances of ‘brandish’ |
[06/10/20]
104. ‘Attend’ = root ‘to stretch’. |
[07/01/21]
105. 5 instances of ‘willow’. |