Sunday, 30 March 2025

Frodo is the only "intellectual" among Hobbits

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As I was reading through Lord of the Rings this time; it struck me that Frodo's conversation with Faramir about the history of Men (in T...
2 comments:
Wednesday, 12 March 2025

Instead of a Dark Lord...

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  I nstead of a Dark Lord, you would have A Cat!  Beautiful and terrible as the dawn! T empestuous as the sea, and stronger than the foundat...
1 comment:
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...