Saturday, 22 February 2025

Frodo claims the power of The Ring on the slopes of Mount Doom, rather than beside the Cracks of Doom

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It has been insightfully suggested by "Mikke" that the moment when Frodo claimed for himself the power of the One Ring actually h...
12 comments:
Monday, 10 February 2025

The Voyage of Éarendel the Evening Star - For me, Tolkien's first good poem

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The Voyage of Éarendel the Evening Star   First version - dated 24 September 1914   JRR Tolkien was 22 years old.  Éarendel sprang up from t...
4 comments:
Tuesday, 28 January 2025

Where now the horse and the rider? For Tolkien, death (and "entropy") is more fundamentally tragic than evil

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" Where now the horse and the rider? " is a poem of the Riders of Rohan, recited by Aragorn in The Two Towers, as he approaches Ed...
2 comments:
Sunday, 26 January 2025

Charles Williams and Magic

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From Charles Williams 's point of view; the most relevant aspect of magical societies (in the Golden Dawn tradition*) was that training ...
8 comments:
Saturday, 18 January 2025

The Most Reluctant Convert (2021) - Max McLean in a short movie about CS Lewis's conversion

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Lastnight we watched " The most reluctant convert " a short (90 minute) movie about CS Lewis's life and conversion - written-...
Sunday, 5 January 2025

What is our civilization's equivalent Age of Middle Earth?

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The Tree of Woe author ("ToW"), who has commented here - and who I respect as a thoughtful (but IMO very over-optimistic!) reactio...
7 comments:
Monday, 16 December 2024

Only Frodo and Sam, of all the Fellowship, could sufficiently resist the corrupting/ confusing power of The One Ring

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On my latest slow read-through of Lord of the Rings; I noticed for the first time, a very clear and striking depiction of the way that the O...
4 comments:
Sunday, 3 November 2024

The Notion Club as a Magical Society - implications for Tolkien's attitudes to magic in the modern world

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In the years since I first encountered The Notion Club Papers (NCPs) I have read much about some of the groupings that constituted White (Ch...
6 comments:
Tuesday, 8 October 2024

History of Middle Earth free online

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For those of you who have not yet tried reading Tolkien's posthumously published works, you can find the twelve volumes of The History o...
2 comments:
Sunday, 22 September 2024

CS Lewis on immortality

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Like many people in the past decades, I owe a significant debt to CS Lewis as an agent of my conversion to Christianity. Lewis is more than...
Thursday, 5 September 2024

JRR Tolkien Letters on audiobook, performed by Samuel West

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I reviewed the new edition of JRR Tolkien's selected letters earlier this year; and I saw at the time that the whole thing was also ava...
1 comment:
Sunday, 18 August 2024

JRR Tolkien did not finish and publish The Silmarillion because the motivational aspect of his genius had dwindled

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It is an interesting question why JRR Tolkien did not finish and publish The Silmarillion; despite that The Lord of the Rings was published ...
12 comments:
Monday, 12 August 2024

Frodo in the tower of Cirith Ungol - The ultimate hopeless situation?

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When the Lord of the Rings begins, we see almost everything from Frodo's perspective, through Frodo's eyes. But after as Frodo and S...
Sunday, 28 July 2024

A "Postal Map" of The Shire by Tom Maringer, 1991

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  Another reproduction of this map is at my BC's Notion s blog - according to what I can glean, the map was part of a kind-of role play...
Friday, 26 July 2024

Whatever happened to Folco Boffin?

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When The Lord of the Rings begins, it seems as if Folco Boffin is destined for a role as a significant minor character among the Hobbit ...
4 comments:
Saturday, 20 July 2024

When Gandalf was beardless...

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A young Gandalf, perhaps?   From "The Istari" [i.e. "the wizards") chapter of Unfinished Tales (1982) we know that Gand...
3 comments:
Thursday, 27 June 2024

Tolkien plus something-else made me a Romantic

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Before reading JRR Tolkien's Hobbit and  The Lord of the Rings at age 13, my attitude was that of a mainstream, down to earth, science ...
Saturday, 22 June 2024

Charles Williams's false ideal of the mathematical impersonality of love

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Mrs. Anstruther opened her eyes and met Pauline's. She smiled. "My dear," she said, "I've been meaning to ask you som...
2 comments:
Wednesday, 22 May 2024

Why the evil of the One Ring cannot for long be resisted by anyone At All

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It is striking that the possession of the One Ring is rejected by even the most good and most powerful characters of The Lord of the Rings. ...
10 comments:
Tuesday, 7 May 2024

What did Sauron do with the three recovered Dwarf Rings?

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Apparently, Sauron reclaimed three of the seven dwarf rings (the other four seem to have been destroyed by dragon fire). Sauron later offere...
Tuesday, 30 April 2024

Nicol Williamson's abridged audio Hobbit (1974)

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There are (officially) only two (!) complete recorded readings of The Hobbit (Rob Inglis and Andy Serkis) - all the rest have cuts, thereby ...
5 comments: