Elves, Fairies and Neutral Angels

[Priya]

Hello Ephtariat

I don’t have all of my books handy at the moment - but looking it up on the Internet, the extension to your quote is “... the holy fairies and immortal elves”. So at times, Tolkien did clearly distinguish between faires (fays) and elves - even at the early stages of his mythology’s development. I also seem to remember that he did the same in OFS which is around the inception time of TLotR.

If my memory is sound - I don’t believe Fimi in her book brought Tom/Goldberry into consideration as potential fay beings. That was disappointing for me - because their abilities seem to be beyond mankind’s or elven-kind, and would be worthy of comment.

The term ‘Maia’ didn’t appear in Tolkien’s vocabulary until after TLotR was completed* c. 1949 and laid aside. I seem to recall it first cropped-up in the early 1950’s. So I’m still of the opinion that our merry couple were initially conceived as ‘fay’ beings within the mythology, and consistent with The Creatures of the Earth.

But what I’m trying to do is steer the direction of the conversation, if you don’t mind, towards Tom/Goldberry specifically. Indeed, towards them having being conceived of as ‘divine’, thus ‘angelic’, and largely ‘neutral’ over the centuries because of their affinity and love of nature - in a manner consistent with the depiction of some fays specified early on in the mythology.

Perhaps, we are both converging on this?

In any case, their deeper, more sophisticated, tie-in to ‘angelicness’ of our real-world, is being exposed by me currently in Chrysophylax Dives’s ‘Bombadil’ thread.

As to ‘Elves’, it is mankind who has confused them with fairies. And that might have intentionally (on Tolkien’s part) been reflected by Frodo who saw her, as I recall, as an “elf-queen”, while she called him an “elf-friend”.

Perhaps Tolkien, in effect, provide us with the source of the confusion!

...

“Faërie is not a geographical place but a state of mind.”

I am not of the same opinion - and if you continue to follow the Bombadil thread - I will eventually provide evidence that I hope changes your view!



* Of course there were some amendments made prior to publication

[Ephtariat]

@Chrysophylax Dives Reception history of Enochic Book of Watchers. The author doesn't think the Genesis narrative itself necessarily depicts the Watchers or giants as evil.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

@Chrysophylax Dives in another post brought the attention upon the apocryphal narrative of the Watchers, or angels lusting after human women. The account is found in the Book of Enoch and is founded on Genesis 6.

A quibble with the second sentence (in which I have added the emphasis). Presenting the Book of Enoch narrative of the Watchers as 'founded' on Genesis 6 suggests that Genesis 6 came first, and to it was added the story of the Watchers told in the apocryphal Book of Enoch. This is a misleading frame.

Genesis 6 is the story of Noah but begins with a difficult to understand introduction that tells of the wickedness on the face of the Earth. What is being said about the 'sons of God' and the 'daughters of man' is utterly obscure.

The Book of Enoch tale of the Watchers is in fact 'founded' on the earlier (lost) Book of Noah (as demonstrated by R.H. Charles around 1906) and reveals the meaning of the obscure lines of Genesis 6. Charles seems to have been correct over a century ago when he took the tradition of the Watchers as mainstream among the Jews of the Second Temple period (the era that concludes with Jesus and the destruction of the Temple by the Romans).

The thing is, it is not that certain when these biblical texts were set down in the canonical form that we have them today. For all we know, the original text of Genesis 6 was once intelligible because it spelled out what is today helpfully spelled out only in the Book of Enoch. In turbulent political times (it was always turbulent political times), some key sentences may have been cut by scribes who wished to surpress the story of the Watchers. In other words, the tale of the Watchers is just the bit of the story that is missing if you wish to make sense of Genesis 6:4.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

And just to spell out what is at stake: responsibility for messing up the world. So far as I can make out, the tale of the Watchers is a story told in 'historical times' (literate times) that invokes an earlier mythical epoch to explain the nature of the world we live in. In this myth it is not our fault that the world is fallen, it is the fault of the angels.

The basic fact about the world that we live in, as it appeared to the Jews of the Second Temple period, was that every step you take, pesky immaterial demons plague you. Anything from locusts and boils and deaths in the family and invasions by large empire down to stubbing your toe or forgetting your handbag at the hairdresser - you can bet on it, the demons have been messing with you.

The Watchers story explains who the demons are. It goes back to the primordial generations between Adam and Eve and Noah and his three sons, when these angels who were supposed to be watching over humanity instead went and debauched the human women - and the daughters of Eve conceived the giants (who are mentioned in Scripture).

This is a proper introduction to the story of Noah because it explains what the Flood was all about. It was God getting rid of the giants, who were becoming a total menace and making human life pretty much intolerable.

So the Flood was a good thing because it got rid of the giants. But when the giants died their souls remained trapped in this world. They are the demons that still plague us.

So basically the Jews of the Second Temple period saw the world as fallen, but they did not think that the fall was our fault. Nothing to do with Adam and Eve and the serpent; it was all about the angels seducing the daughters of Eve - an embarassing affair in the distant mythical past that has unfortunately left the kind of consequences that, even today may I say, we are all too well aware - plagues, wars, Amazon ROP...

[Chrysophylax Dives]

It's not like he was a Neo-Pagan in the 1920s-1930s who then converted to Catholicism. He, and his mythology, were Catholic all along.

Here is a nub statement. I am absolutely certain it may be debated within the confines of the plaza DEI. But we must all recognize that we tread thorny ground.

Chrysophylax Dives - I hope you don’t mind me omitting conversation about Beowulf - at least for the moment!

Priya, I don't mind at all! I apologize that I keep returning to 'Beowulf'. In this case, I do so because Tolkien holds up the Anglo-Saxon poem as composed by a Christian who made a story of heathen days. He does not because he need not spell out that by Christian he means Catholic. So when Tolkien writes about 'Beowulf' he is is writing about a similar case - a poet who lived more than one thousand years ago who also made a pagan mythology, and in doing so - Tolkien liked to think - did not lose his soul to the Devil.

So this distinction between eternity and immortality that I keep talking about is borrowed from Tolkien's discussions of the Beowulf-poet; it is, if you will, a practical principle by which a Christian may mess around with heathen mythology while remaining true to the Church, whose good tidings about Eternity are unknown within the world of the poem, as the Incarnation is an event that has yet to happen. Nor is the distinction so very difficult to picture.



The distinction between immortality and eternity is derived by Tolkien from Plato's Timaeus and is no more than an embracing of the sphere, the holy shape of ancient Greek philosophy, or at least of Plato. When you conceive of the universe as a great sphere, as did the Greeks and the newly converted Anglo-Saxon tribes, then the stars are all equidistant from Earth at the center of the sphere, and beyond the sphere is God and Eternity.

Of course, it gets complicated because the Beowulf-poet is picturing heroes under the sky who do not know that the sky is a dome and beyond is God and heaven - they still believe that the world is a flat disc... So Priya you have good reason to avoid the Beowulf if you do not wish to step into the matter of Númenor. But Ephtariat the whole matter of Númenor and the making the flat world round and the hiding of the Straight Road arises because Tolkien is engaging with all those bits of Beowulf that you don't like. And while it is fair enough that you do not like them, what Tolkien and the Anglo-Saxon poet before him demonstrate is that there is more than one way that a Catholic may conceive of the Elves.

Priya - reading your December post three or four up I see more clearly where you are coming from on Tom and Goldberry as angels. What you were saying about the history of Tolkien's mythology and those beings who were already before the world was made is a point well taken.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

In the late 1910’s and early 1920’s he [Tolkien] invented a bunch of beings who accompanied the ‘gods’ to the planet. An enlightening early statement, depicting the function of some of them is found in BoLT I.

“About them fared a great host who are the sprites of trees and woods, of dale and forest and
mountain-side, or those that sing amid the grass at morning and chant among the standing corn at eve. These are the Nermir and the Tavari, Nandini and Orossi, brownies, fays, pixies, leprawns, and what else are they not called, for their number is very great: yet they must not be confused with the Eldar, for they were born before the world and are older than its oldest, and are not of it, but laugh at it much, for they had not somewhat to do with its making, so that it is for the most part a play for them; ...”.

... So what I see is that many of these creatures - because of their love of the natural world - were, as it were, “neutral” by default. In other words ‘angelic beings’ who were generally disinterested in getting involved in the affairs of the Children of God, but instead preferred to ‘watch’ and enjoy the earthly drama.

So, Priya, that makes a lot of sense of Bombadil and Goldberry. (I added the emphases)

Just to clarify that you are above employing 'neutral' in a way that fits your thesis, but is not the sense meant by Ephtariat. He is concerned with a notion that is actually explained somewhere in the Home volumes. If I recall right, it is said to be a feudal idea of angels who had rebelled against God because their feudal overlords in heavan had rebelled, but really had no choice themselves in the matter.

[Priya]

Hello Chrysophylax Dives

Just to clarify that you are above employing 'neutral' in a way that fits your thesis, but is not the sense meant by Ephtariat. He is concerned with a notion that is actually explained somewhere in the Home volumes. If I recall right, it is said to be a feudal idea of angels who had rebelled against God because their feudal overlords in heavan had rebelled, but really had no choice themselves in the matter.

Is there any room in the mythology for ‘angelic beings’ who entered the World unwillingly? Any who were kicked out of the Timeless Halls without a hearing?

As I cited per your Bombadil thread (11 Dec 2023), which Tolkien probably knew:

“St. Michael fought Lucifer and his companions. He overcame the rebel angels and drove them to hell. Ten orders of angels were created, the tenth of which went to perdition. Good and evil angels cause dreams and the nightmare. Out-cast angels are elves in the woods and on the downs, …”.
– The Early South-English Legendary c. 1280-1290, 45. Michael, C. Horstmann translation, 1887 (my underlined emphasis)

Even though medieval literature exists documenting “Out-cast angels” did Tolkien believe that a neutral bunch got thrown out with the rebels? Could God have been seemingly unjust? Does evidence exist that Tolkien accepted dystheism?

In my opinion, Tolkien appears to have sifted the evidence and captured what he felt most appropriate to him - for his mythology. He didn’t believe it all. Legends/folklore contained a kernel of truth - but generally just a kernel. Would he or anyone else really believe that St. Peter ejected the Welsh from heaven?

‘… St Peter, instructed to find a cure for the din and chatter which disturbed the celestial mansions, went outside the Gates and cried caws bobi, and slammed the Gates to again before the Welshmen that had surged out discovered that this was a trap without cheese.’ - Note 1 to Letter #241

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Priya, on neutral angels and Tolkien, the reference is Sauron Defeated, pp. 261-265 (Notion Club Papers). On page 261 begins Tolkien's poem 'The Death of St. Brendan', which is attributed to one of the Oxford dons of the Notion Club, and followed by a discussion between the Notion Club members of the relationship of this poem to a medieval version of Brendan's story that (if I recall correctly) Tolkien has revised and reworked to make his own version - in other words: Tolkien's poem performs some heavy editing on the medieval poem to make it fit Tolkien's mythology. Here are the 'neutral angels' (of Eph.'s thesis) in the donnish discussion, though they are not named as such, and appear only here in Tolkien's writings, so far as I know.

And the Tree in St. Brendan was covered with white birds that were fallen angels. The one really interesting idea in the whole thing, I thought: they were angels that lived in a kind of limbo, because they were only lesser spirits that followed Satan only as their feudal overlord, and had no real part, by will or design, in the Great Rebellion. But you make them a third fair race.’

‘And that bit about the “round world” and the “old road”,’ said Jeremy, ‘where did you get that from?’
i don’t know,’ said Frankley. Ít came in the writing. I got a fleeting picture, but it’s faded now.’

[Chrysophylax Dives]

In my opinion, Tolkien appears to have sifted the evidence and captured what he felt most appropriate to him - for his mythology. He didn’t believe it all. Legends/folklore contained a kernel of truth - but generally just a kernel.

Hello Priya,
As the Brendan poem illustrates, as well as sifting and capturing, Tolkien was also quite happy to add and alter to fit his own mythology. My own opinion on this - of course - steps out of my reading of 'Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics', where Tolkien unearths some of the ways in which the Anglo-Saxon author sifted and captured the stories that were old and ancient already more than one thousand years ago. I am not saying that Tolkien simply adopted the historical schema of the unnamed poet, and on reflection it is clear that he had no choice but to revise it in certain ways. But I do take this as a starting-point for how Tolkien considered the likely histories of tales and legends and myths, both within primary and secondary worlds.

The Anglo-Saxon author of Beowulf, says Tolkien, plainly holds “that true, or truer, knowledge was possessed in ancient days (when men were not deceived by the Devil).”

The poet pictures the characters of the poem, like Beowulf and Hrothgar, as knowing “of the one God and Creator, though not of heaven, for that was lost” (M&C 46). Meanwhile, Tolkien reveals that the poet has captured the historical moment when knowledge of what was beyond the western ocean, the shoreless sea, was in the process of being lost.

Forgetting as a principle of history may seem odd and possibly trivial. But it seems to me that notions of progress, of advance, are deeply embedded in our notions of Time, especially with regard to scientific knowledge. We can hardly doubt that since the days when the heathen tribes of the North believed the world a flat-disc, astronomy has come a very long way! Personally, as I have begun to get my head around what Tolkien says about the Anglo-Saxon poet's sense of history, I've begun to appreciate both 'Beowulf' and all of Tolkien's own stories as an antidote to an inherited, deeply entrenched, yet false fantasy that today is wealthier than yesterday, and tomorrow will be even better.

Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.

[Priya]

Hello Chrysophylax Dives

As the Brendan poem illustrates, as well as sifting and capturing, Tolkien was also quite happy to add and alter to fit his own mythology.

I absolutely agree! It is Tolkien himself who introduces the idea that the white birds are not angels but ‘elves’ (symbolically, metaphorically or disguised perhaps). His poem Imram (see the comments of Norma Roche in her article in Mythlore Volume 17 No. 4, 1991: Sailing West: Tolkien, the Saint Brendan Story, and the Idea of Paradise in the West) identifies/makes the island of these birds the last vestige of Numenor (the peak of Meneltarma). But I think, as you seem to have grasped, he in a way suggested a different truth behind Brendan’s account by purposely knitting in the “fair kindred”. Indeed then, one might infer Tolkien rejected the concept of the unwitting angel who followed Melkor into the World blindly and purely because of an underling status in ‘heaven’. To my mind, The Notion Club Papers does not provide the best evidence for affirming or denying the presence of such apocryphal neutral angels, in his mythology.

Nevertheless, I believe there is room in for angelic beings in Arda neither aligned to Melkor or the Valar - but off on their own. Ungoliant and Bombadil are probably two nameable examples.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

To my mind, The Notion Club Papers does not provide the best evidence for affirming or denying the presence of such apocryphal neutral angels, in his mythology.

Nevertheless, I believe there is room in for angelic beings in Arda neither aligned to Melkor or the Valar - but off on their own. Ungoliant and Bombadil are probably two nameable examples.

Hello Priya,

1. On the SD St Brendan poem: yes, I think we agree in the reading.

2. Would you be kind enough to elaborate on what (if any) you take to be the relationship of the Notion Club Papers to the mythology?

3. What I have been disagreeing with is Ephtariat's identification of Elves with angels, neutral or otherwise. Your quotations in this thread have amply demonstrated how some beings of the mythology might indeed be named angels. I had not noticed these quotations before and they are quite sufficient to convince me that Bombadil is one such being.

4. Thank you on the miracles. The making of the Dwarves is an interesting one.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

In reviewing this thread it seems to me that:

(a) Priya sets out the criteria that really matter - the textual evidence of Tolkien's writings, presented biographically.

(b) Ephtariat and I are arguing about an idea in the primary world - an idea about angels that (see OP) touches on the (notorious) Genesis 6:4. In theory, the argument should not be more difficult because we also have recourse to Tolkien's texts.

(c) On the discussion between Ephtariat and myself that touches on Genesis 6:4 we hit an issue of canon its original - or at least earlier form: Ephtariat stands within orthodox Catholic canon and so deems the text of Genesis sacred and the Book of Enoch outside the canon; surveying this ground as a historian, I deem the Book of Enoch to record an original (or early) tradition that appears to have been cut out of the biblical text.

(d) Ephtariat presumably holds his position in part because Tolkien was Catholic and a Catholic must hold Ephtariat's position on canon. I reply that Tolkien was a scholar and that in the early years of the twentieth century the hottest philological show in town was R.H. Charles, Dean of St. Pauls Cathedral and leading light of the British Academy, translating the Book of Enoch and unveiling the lost tradition of the Watchers and, in general, showing how late Second Temple Judaism was a missing link, in terms of the development of religious thought, between the Old and the New Testaments. So Catholic or no, one simply could not be a British philologist in the 1930s without thinking quite hard about the Book of Enoch and the historicity of the Bible.

(e) Whatever Tolkien thought and did with the tradition of the Watchers, it is only one element in the great work that made his mythology.

(f) As I am at heart a subversive punk, I find the Watchers tradition really neat. Charles showed that it was mainstream Jewish belief in the couple of centuries before Jesus, but that the rabbis then supressed the tradition. Charles suggests that they did so because the tradition had become associated with the new Christian sect. But then a couple of centuries later, Augustine and other Church Fathers supress the tradition within Christianity, it seems because it had become too associated with the Gnostic heretics. So today an orthodox Jew and an orthodox Catholic share the same reading of Genesis 6:4 (it is about human-human sexual intercourse) and both have forgotten that in the distant past their respective religions embraced a different reading (angel-human intercourse).

(g) It is not hard to see why the philological discovery of an ancient Jewish tradition of angel-human intercourse generating giants might interest Tolkien and even, by way of some original and heavy editing of his own, be transformed into something like Beren and Luthien - which is what Ephtariat and I both suspect, only we perceive polar opposite roads to this final product. The whole point of the OP, as I read it, was to suggest that the medieval tradition of 'neutral angels' provides an orthodox road from Genesis 6:4 to Beren and Luthien, without any need to consider the traditions of human-monster unions, which Ephtariat does not like.

(h) Ephtariat's methodology is faulty. As stated in (a), the only criteria that ultimately count are Tolkien's own writings. Therefore the road must begin with Tolkien's only discussion of Genesis 6:4, which turns out to be the beating heart of the famous British Academy lecture, 'Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics'. Here Tolkien considers the progeny of the biblical Cain and the Anglo-Saxon poet's vision of Necromancy as the breeding of monsters, and in doing so shines a light upon some potent traditions of the ancient North concerning what goes on in the wastelands and what exiles get up to in the dark. This is the road to take, not some medieval tradition about 'neutral angels' that gets a passing consideration in the Notion Club Papers.

[Rivvy Elf]

I think Tolkien makes it clear that fairies and his elves are not the same because his published story, the Hobbit, was published before this essay.

“If Fairies really exist - independently of Men - then very few of our fairy-stories have any relation to them:”

This then undermines his entire mythos and his goal of making his translation the Red Book of Westmarch a legitimate mythology.

He is referring to the fairies and elves outside the Red Book of Westmarch.

There is enough info in Morgoth’s Ring and the Nature of Middle Earth to show how he was differentiating himself on the topic. Enough that I fail to understand why these two sources aren’t being referred to and countered by the proponent of the “elves are angels” argument.

There is a literal Watcher in the Water, however. Perhaps that should be brought up. That being I feel could have relevant ties.

In terms of angels sleeping with humans, I see more relevance in the Melian and Thingol romance and the nightmare Morgoth/Luthien inferred monster-human pairing that Tolkien literally speculated in the Silmarillion about.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

There is a literal Watcher in the Water, however. Perhaps that should be brought up. That being I feel could have relevant ties.

There are also the Silent Watchers of Minas Morgul and the Two Watchers at the entrance to the tower of Cirith Ungol.

The Watch is one of only two Shire public services, the other (as you know) is the Postal Service (Prologue). (Gandalf, apparently, has little faith in the Hobbit Watch, for he tells Frodo that there "has never been a day when the Shire has not been guarded by watchful eyes"; Shadow of the Past).

When Samwise Gamgee faces Shelob he cries: A tiro nin, Fanuilos! Tolkien's translation: 'Look towards (watch over) me, Fanuilos!' (Road Goes Ever On). The Quenya root tir 'to look at (towards), watch, watch over', gives us Tirion 'Watch-tower', also Elostirion, and also palantír - usually translated 'Those that watch from afar'.

Nothing cannot be twisted by Sauron to evil purpose, and LotR is a story of a magic Ring by which the Eye of the Necromancer can pierce cloud, shadow, and flesh, pin you naked, and see all of you and so control you. And the Watchers of the Water, Minas Morgul, and Cirith Ungol are perversions of the watch that is the 'public service' performed by the likes of the Shire Mayor, Gandalf, the Dúnedain Rangers, and Elbereth.

What does a Hobbit do once she has climbed all the stairs to the very top of a tower? A Hobbit climbs to the top of a tower to watch the stars, or the sea, or perhaps to sing (Guide to Stairs). A tower is to watch. Watching is a good way to use your eyes, when done right. And in Tolkien's world the right watch is the original sight. The Eye of Sauron that looks out from the Dark Tower is a counterfeit, a corruption, a twisted perversion of the imagination of a Hobbit who looks out from a high tower and watches the view.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

The Watcher by the Threshold, and other tales, John Buchan (1902). This collection includes 'No-man's Land', the tale of an Oxford scholar of northern antiquities who holidays in the remote Highlands of Scotland and is taken captive by the hidden folk - a sort of tribe of hairy Gollums who are the indigenous population of the British Isles.

[Silky Gooseness]

Interesting parallels here between true sight and control - I wonder, too, if seeing so deeply has connections to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. According to this, seeing evil is a terrible thing

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Interesting parallels here between true sight and control - I wonder, too, if seeing so deeply has connections to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. According to this, seeing evil is a terrible thing

1. Could you please elaborate on the seeing evil as a terrible thing?

2. The tree of knowledge must have something to do with it, if only because the Fall is always in Tolkien's mind. On the level of intuition, however, with the Book of Genesis I tend to start with the mention of the light that is before the making of the Sun and Moon and step from there into Tolkien's various conceptions of the light of Valinor. The return of the Stone of Elendil that was in the western Elf-tower in the last ship in which Frodo sails into the uttermost West is the drawing to a close of a mythological era in which that primordial light could be seen in our world. But that is on the level of pure speculation.

3. Re. the tree of knowledge, there is a third kind of seeing that maybe is more relevant. There is indeed an opposition of, so to speak, 'the Elbereth watch' versus 'the Sauron look'. But there is also the point of view of the ordinary Hobbit, who sees the visible world but not the invisible realm of myth - and respectable Hobbits are quite happy with this division. But Frodo, and Sam, come to see 'with a keen eye', as Galadriel puts it, which is to say that they see the invisible realm, with the veil gradually removed until nothing stands between Frodo and the wheel of fire, as he puts it. From the point of view of the Hobbit reader of the Red Book, this is the sight that I think is relevant to 'knowledge' and to the eating of forbidden fruit.

[Rivvy Elf]

I see the tree of knowledge as of dual nature. With every good there is an evil. However with every evil there is a good.

With those lenses one can reconcile that the marring of Arda is a good thing in the long run.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Yeah, there is a very deep ambiguity in the biblical story, no? Eve and Adam broke the only commandment of God given to them - they did wrong, and were punished. And yet by doing wrong they became human, or fully human. And if we today were given the choice of uneating, and losing knowledge of nakedness and of good and evil, and so returning to the Garden of Eden, I guess many of us would decline.

And the story itself has God declare that by eating the forbidden fruit the two humans have become more like God, which one would assume to be an improvement. After all, God is said to have created Adam in the divine image.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

I've long suspected that Elves are those 'humans' who did not eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and therefore were not prohibited from eating from the Tree of Life. They are us who made the other choice. I think that fits with Elves not quite having free will as we do, or at least unable to ally with the darkness as Men can do. But I put this out as just a thought because I am aware of no evidence to back it up and I have a feeling I am the only one who thinks of Elves as our relatives who did not eat from the Tree of Knowledge (they still Fall, of course, only in a different way).

[Chrysophylax Dives]

On the Watchers in the Book of Enoch and J.R.R. Tolkien's 'secondary world'

The ancient story tells of angels who were tasked by God with guarding - watching over - humanity, angels who fell because of their lust - they took human women as wives, and the women gave birth to the giants (Hebrew: nephalim), who became such a menace that God sent the Flood to destroy them.

The context of Tolkien's interest in this ancient tradition. The crowning achievement of British philology was the unveiling and interpretation of the Second Temple Jewish tradition of the Watchers either side of World War One. What consensus academic opinion liked to think was that 'R.H. Charles had wrested the sceptre of higher criticism from Germany', and had done so by restoring a lost tradition of the ancient Jews. That notion of restoration is, in my opinion, the guiding principle of Tolkien's philological practice: he invents and imagines, but always he wishes to restore that which was lost and forgotten. Reading Charles illuminates Tolkien's professional practice.

We can trace, or at least possibly discern, Tolkien pondering the tradition in different places, and in different ways. The differences are the point. We must take the story of the Watchers step by step. Here is the first.

The tale of angelic fall gives a model of non-fallen angelic activity, namely watching over or guarding creation, or at least the 'children of God' who are born inside the creation. In the world of LotR (I do not speak for any other story), we have Elbereth (hidden) on the mountain of Valinor, watching over Elves and Men, we have the Rangers watching the Shire and the Hobbits with their own Watch. So the remnant of Numenor and the Hobbits of the Shire appear to reiterate the task assigned the angels - it appears to be a universal principle of good, in the world of LotR, to watch over others.

Step 2 introduces corruption. At first sight, Tolkien simply hides the forbidden lust and all sexual dimensions of the tradition.

Sauron the Necromancer = the Eye in the Dark Tower = an inversion, perversion, twisting of the true Watch. The Fall of the angels, which likewise is reiterated among mortals, remains on the dimension of vision. No sex is visible, nor it seems needed. Sauron is not seeking mortal maidens to debauch. It seems Tolkien has simply emasculated the Watchers of the ancient story, replacing their lust for mortal women with a magical geometry of straight-sighted vision.

Step 3 returns the sex but in hidden guise, with skeletons in the family closet exposing the workings of necromancy through lies and deceit. This step is obviously the one most of us wish to explore - but here the road is through the Beowulf-poet's reading of Genesis 6:4.

[Silky Gooseness]

Sorry, didn’t word that very clearly! I meant, I think, that an evil that is observant is more dangerous: the “Watcher” in the Water, the Eye of Sauron, as a counter to the benevolent Looking that Frodo invokes in “a tiro nin”. The Eye of Sauron is an elevated gaze (back to Towers again: a Babel-reference and seeking knowledge/power above one’s station, linking back to the Tree of Knowledge perhaps? but that’s eaten from, not climbed) but the Watcher, on the other hand, is submerged. Both it and the watchers at Minas Morgul appear to have intelligence but in a way that isn’t really clarified.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

I need a while to digest that. At present I can only consider the distinction between the watcher in the water and the watcher up the tower from the point of view of my concrete experience the other day: as I ran up a path in the rain a dog must have been watching me, and as I ran onto the street it ran up from behind and bit me in the back of the leg. At that point I turned around and saw a creature that appeared to have some intelligence, because rather than savage me some more it had backed off and was waiting to see what I did. So it was a watcher, a guard; only out of its patch. But I don't get much further than that because I don't really care about the stupid dog - I care about my leg and not getting rabies.

Please, for the love of a thousand scorpions, do not read the above as analogy of anything. Rather than an omen, I take it that my immediate life experience does not illuminate, and is not illuminated by, the literary stories by Tolkien that we are discussing. And I'm more focused on my foot than either the view from the tower or the water atm - have to go and have another 3 rabies shots!

Btw, you can read what happens after the crossroads here. Bonus points for getting the literary reference of the title without googling. This one I dedicated to my son.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Sorry, didn’t word that very clearly! I meant, I think, that an evil that is observant is more dangerous: the “Watcher” in the Water, the Eye of Sauron, as a counter to the benevolent Looking that Frodo invokes in “a tiro nin”. The Eye of Sauron is an elevated gaze (back to Towers again: a Babel-reference and seeking knowledge/power above one’s station, linking back to the Tree of Knowledge perhaps? but that’s eaten from, not climbed) but the Watcher, on the other hand, is submerged. Both it and the watchers at Minas Morgul appear to have intelligence but in a way that isn’t really clarified.

The thing is, my dear Goose, the treasure is within your parentheses, and we do not have ground rules clear. We just all of us worked through, with the direction of Priya, that the Incarnation is not to be found in Tolkien's stories, but the Book of Genesis seems to me something else again. What I think we need is a sense of how Tolkien might have read the narrative, the whole story, of the first ten and some generations - the first age of humanity and the prologue to the second (the next ten generations) as recounted in the Bible. What is this story that starts with a Tree and concludes with a Tower? What was the story that Tolkien was reading in these ancient, mysterious sentences? My intuition is that we may discern a reflection, of sorts, in his own stories.

[Rivvy Elf]

Tolkien created his own version on the fall of man. It’s the Athrabeth Finrod Ah Andreth. Tolkien even wrote a commentary on it (which is hilarious when I think about it). The Tale of Adanel is the middle earth version of eating from tree of knowledge by trying to take shortcuts in pursuing knowledge through trusting in Melkor.

Read that and you’ll find out.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Tolkien created his own version on the fall of man. It’s the Athrabeth Finrod Ah Andreth. Tolkien even wrote a commentary on it (which is hilarious when I think about it). The Tale of Adanel is the middle earth version of eating from tree of knowledge by trying to take shortcuts in pursuing knowledge through trusting in Melkor.

Why is a commentary hilarious? I tend to focus on 'The Fall of Númenor' as Tolkien's version of the second Fall of Man. I should read again the story of the Voice that is not listend to. I'm not sure what it adds to the picture beyond one fundamental contrast that it suggests with the very idea of the Voice. It seems to me that Tolkien differentiates his stories of the Elves, and so of the Men of the West, the Elf-friends in the north-west of the ancient world, from the stories of the Bible by means of (a) sacred geometry; (b) mode of apprehension of the sacred. The world of the Bible has heaven above, and God speaks. The world of the invented mythology of Tolkien looks not up but to the West, and the light of Valinor is seen.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

The Tale of Adanel strikes me as a bit bland. God is the voice of a parent or educator, and the children prefer listening to the icecream man; God gets annoyed, gives a lecture, and leaves them to it. It may be the bare bones, but all the juice is evaporated. Where is the prohibition, the temptation, the sudden and unexpected sight of nakedness, the passage of blame from man to woman to serpent? This is a dry kernel, but the fruit has long ago been extracted.

I think people get confused, first and foremost on history - they forget that this is all meant to have happened ages before the Incarnation told of in the Gospels. Tolkien is working an early Anglo-Saxon tradition, in which some of the newly converted English resolved to rescue their venerated but heathen ancestors from an eternity of hellfire. The concern is Christian, but the Christian poet is worried about heathen ancestors who had not heard the Gospels, and so the whole vision is resolutely pagan, resolved to discover some redemption solely within the heathen myths of old.

Also people get confused on the up/down and North-west/South-east dichotomies. Valinor is not a heathen version of heaven. Valinor is a Christian's conception of a heathen myth that is compatible with a heaven unknown to those who hold the myth; Valinor is like the Garden of Eden, not heaven.

Primarily, though, people get confused on the Trees. If the Silmarillion stories are told from an Elvish point of view then they are imagined as stories told by a people who do not have a traumatic memory of the Tree of Knowledge, as do we. They have their own Fall, and it is related (lust again) but different (jewels not knowledge of the other), and the mortal Fall as recounted in the stories is that of the nation of Elf-friends who, like burglars in a jewelers or kids in a candyshop, put their hands on what is for their eyes only - it is very close to the Fall of the Book of Genesis, in some ways, but ultimately what is lusted after is immortal life; the Numenorean Elf-friends become jealous of their friends and want to be Elves. So we have a second mortal Fall, which arises in consequence of our exile from Eden and amounts to an attempt to get our hands on the fruit of the Tree of Life - the mortals, second time around, are falling into the Elvish patterns, so to speak.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Watching, observing, looking connects with 'reading', as discussed on another thread. The word is very old English and predates literacy, and was used in reference to the reading of a riddle or a situation, in the latter case expressed as 'rede' or counsel. So with the discussion of Aragorn with Legolas and Gimli reading the signs as they pursue Merry, Pippin and the Orcs, what is underlined is how adroitly the Ranger reads the signs. It is never enough to see, a watcher must read what is seen. Hence a watcher must manifest some signs of intelligence (however pondlike), and is not a mere machine, like say a burglar alarm.

On the Watcher sumberged in the Water, I am not sure what to make. I guess it is scary because it is a hidden watcher? But the water is a whole thing, and a bit beyond me. @Saranna has gone off on a holiday, but when she comes back she might say something.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

A really interesting read - and something I hadn’t really thought about before! I would have presumed, on the strength of Hobbits preferring rounded and gentle shapes (such as in their doors), that they might have been inclined (lol) to go for slopes and ramps, rather than stairs; but presumably ladders will be required for fruiting etc, and stairs are a not-so-unnatural progression from there.

Goose, I am happy you are commenting on this thread. Above is your first comment on the Guide to Stairs. I copied and pasted and added the emphasis because it illustrates why I am happy that we appear to be talking on these matters again. It may be just me, but when you speak about the stories I usually find much more than I expected, and possibly much more than you intended. Now I have in my mind an image of ladders and fruiting within the Gates of Eden. The question is which Tree?

I can do courtesy and civility.