Looking for those of the Tolkien Religion!

I do not agree that the Valar (or Maiar) were angelic in concept. IMO they were pagan deities in concept and angelic only in the revision.

Tolkien - consciously or not - embedded elements of various Indo-european and Semitic myths (and probably a few more) in his invented mythology and the Valar originally resemble the Germanic/Nordic Aesir more closely than anything else. Any observative reader will find parallels galore between the Eddic poems (and Snorri's account thereof) and the Lost Tales.

Also Letter #142 should be seen in context. Isolating a single sentence (I am glad that GtG at least added the 2nd sentence as well which is usually all too readily omitted) to prove that The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work may be effective, but will hardly cover the "truth" about that issue. With context I mean not only the entire letter and the relationship of Tolkien with the person it was addressed to, but also the totality of Tolkien's Legendarium as well as other statements of Tolkien regarding the same issue. Then there might be a fair chance to come a little closer to Tolkien's 'sub-creation' in its full complexity, as it developed throughout his lifetime.

For anyone interested in more "ammunition" that LotR is fundamentally Catholic Pearce's and Birzer's books may come in handy. For anyone interested in a more balanced and objective approach, Shippey's or Flieger's books may prove good resources for further information...

Rangerdave said:

Eru was the creator of Arda, true. But Master Tolkien was the Creator of Eru. This means that the creation cycle in a Eru based mythology is backwards.

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Its always people who give a name to "God". And an atheist would tell you that its always people who create God.

Snaga said:

Its always people who give a name to "God". And an atheist would tell you that its always people who create God.

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You say its always people who give a name to God, but obviously this statement would be impossible to know completely. Assuming that God is completely sovereign it might in the end appear that he was named by humans but he actually named himself working through a human. (wow read it a couple times i swear it make sense.)

If Tolkiens mythology is real then how come we see no evidence of him believing it?

faila said:

If Tolkiens mythology is real then how come we see no evidence of him believing it?

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Not only did he not believe it, he attempted to completely rewrite it to fit in with modern cosmogonic theory (see HoME 10). He sent the changes to friends for comment, and they said they preferred the original, so I suspect the changes were abandoned.

Having said that, Tolkien retrospectively believed that he had a divine helping hand in the writing of The Lord of the Rings.

Didn't Tolkien state somewhere that all the stuff he wrote was fiction? How can you follow a relgion that has no truth to it at all?

Paul said:

Didn't Tolkien state somewhere that all the stuff he wrote was fiction? How can you follow a relgion that has no truth to it at all?

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Ask Ron L Hubbard (deceased?)

Eledhwen said:

Not only did he not believe it, he attempted to completely rewrite it to fit in with modern cosmogonic theory (see HoME 10).

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Did he really ever attempt to completely rewrite it (=the mythology)?

I am aware that he attempted to replace the "flat earth" version of the Ainulindalë with a "round earth" version and eventually refrained from that, probably mostly because of Mrs Katherine Farrer's response (regardless of the fact that he gave it another try lateron). But as Christopher mentions, this probably would have been a "devastating surgery" for Tolkien's mythology as a whole.

After all the Two Trees and their captured light in the Silmarils are those elements which represent the factual and methaphorical core of his mythology (at least of the first age), to abandon these would indeed have meant to rewrite the entire legendarium, but I cannot see that Tolkien ever made any serious attempts of such an enormous task.

Didn't he really believe in the mythology he created himself?

From H.Carpenter's biography of J.R.R.Tolkien:

Once more he refers to his own mythology. His eyes fix on some distant object, and he seems to have forgotten that I am there.... but the mind (T's) is far away, roaming the plains and the mountains of Middle-earth

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He says that he has to clear up an apparent contradiction in a passage of the LotR that has been pointed out in a letter from a reader.... He explains it all in great detail, talking about his book not as a work of fiction, but as a chronicle of actual events; he seems to see himself not as an author who has made a slight error that must now be corrected or explained away, but as a historian who must cast light on an obscurity in a historical document.

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I stand corrected of sloppy posting, Walter.

I meant to only say that the Cosmogenesis was rewritten.

Lhun's observations are interesting. Tolkien often 'went to find out' what people had asked him. I assumed it was because he gained so much additional inspiration from the nomenclature he devised. I think he believed in his religion for Middle-earth, but not for this world. To transfer Iluvatar et al to the modern world would be folly, as they are real only in Middle-earth.

Eledhwen said:

Ask Ron L Hubbard (deceased?)

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he did it for the money i think..........and isnt it L. Ron hubbard? He made mass amounts of money off his cult. (Edit: but he did write some great science fiction, though not as great as Robert A. heinlen or Larry Niven but still good)

I liked the Heinlein stuff.

The point is, though, that Tolkien created a much more interesting 'religion', but did not even contemplate exporting it into the real world, considering the one he already practiced to be the Real Thing.

Did Tolkien actually create a "religion" for his legendarium? And did he really consider the one he practiced the real thing?

I mean all we have is a little bit of information that would support such a point of view and a little bit of information that would be able to question this.

Can one be real sure about anyone elses religion to make statements in such a "matter-of-factly" way?

Scio me nihil scire...

Rangerdave said:

I find the concept of a faith based on the writings of Master Tolkien to be bit flawed from the very begining.

Eru was the creator of Arda, true. But Master Tolkien was the Creator of Eru. This means that the creation cycle in a Eru based mythology is backwards. Instead of the more usual Supreme Being>Cosmos>Man hierachy, you have instead a more complex Man(Tolkien)>Cosmos>Supreme Being equation. Very hard to follow.

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I don't see the sense in this. One could say that Tolkien was merely a medium through whom the whole mythology was conveyed to the rest of the world, whether the professor would agree with that or not. And what you say about the creation cycle being backwards, that could easily be said of Christianity (and other religions? I don't know them well enough to tell), in the sense that the men who wrote the Bible were also the creators of it, and of God. The fact that Christianity is 2000+ years old, and therefore drastically older than any would-be Tolkien religion, does not render the latter any less believable in my eyes. Faith is not based on proof, as much as it is based on 'blind' belief.

Walter said:

Did Tolkien actually create a "religion" for his legendarium? And did he really consider the one he practiced the real thing?

I mean all we have is a little bit of information that would support such a point of view and a little bit of information that would be able to question this.

Can one be real sure about anyone elses religion to make statements in such a "matter-of-factly" way?

Scio me nihil scire...

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Tolkien was a Roman Catholic. He practiced his religion, professing daily devotions; he confessed catholicism in his letters and evangelised (notably CS Lewis).

Added to this, I am also a practicing Christian, and it takes one to know one, so to speak .

Eledhwen said:

Tolkien was a Roman Catholic. He practiced his religion, professing daily devotions; he confessed catholicism in his letters and evangelised (notably CS Lewis).

Added to this, I am also a practicing Christian, and it takes one to know one, so to speak .

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I envy you, honestly...

I wull't I war a wengerl mehr katholisch, do war des åll's ganz leicht, I gangat jeden Sunndoch in die Kirch'n, tat meine Sündn beichtn (und warat's los)...
'I wish I were a little more Catholic, then all would be quite easy, I would go to church each sunday and confess my sins (and would be rid of them)'
Song lyrics: H.v.Goisern, prose translation ChW

'I wish I were a little more Catholic, then all would be quite easy, I would go to church each sunday and confess my sins (and would be rid of them)'

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One can confess your sins without going to church or being a Catholick, of course.

And getting "rid of" your sins? Well you can repent of your sins, but get rid of them? You cannot get rid of something you have already done.

Inderjit S said:

One can confess your sins without going to church or being a Catholick, of course.

And getting "rid of" your sins? Well you can repent of your sins, but get rid of them? You cannot get rid of something you have already done.

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But why then does the priest say "Ego te absolvo..." when one is done confessing?

Inderjit S said:

....you can repent of your sins, but get rid of them? You cannot get rid of something you have already done.

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Confession, better known now as Reconciliation, does just that for you.

Inderjit S said:

One can confess your sins without going to church or being a Catholick, of course.

And getting "rid of" your sins? Well you can repent of your sins, but get rid of them? You cannot get rid of something you have already done.

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I must say that you do basically get rid of your sins....you may have a punishment on this earth, but once confessed their no eternal punishment...so basically its gotten rid of. (note: Im not a catholic...so my beliefs are different in some areas)
Back on subject:
When the apostles and the writers of the word of God wrote their books they would of admitted and known that they were writing truth. Tolkien said his work was fiction, and never believed in it. Why would a god choose to work through someone who didnt believe in him? THe whole belief in a relgion that the person who created it didnt believe seems slightly wierd.

But why then does the priest say "Ego te absolvo..." when one is done confessing?

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Well....I don't really know much about the Christian confessional procedure to comment. I think (personally) that it isn't a matter of getting rid your sins, but it is a matter of realising you have sinned and that it is wrong. I think you should work it out yourself and that you do not need to go to a priest to get rid of them, so to speak.

A lot of people may also misinterpret the nature of confessionals. They may just go there and (in their hearts) not really repent of their sins and think that if they just go to the priest and tell him about their sins and put on a act of repentance then that would be o.k.

For example, if we were to take, say, literature as an example, do you really think 'The Prince' from Lampedusa's 'The Leopard' or Oskar's mother from 'The Tin Drum' truly repented of their sins or do you think they just went to confessional to make themselves feel better? Admittedly these are fictional accounts, but I'm sure something like what I'm describing happens in real life.

And imagine confessing to a corrupt priest? There are and were some corrupt priests. Isn't it a bit paradoxical that your "path" to god is somebody who is immoral?

Not that I'm taking a bash at Christianity or repentance. I'm just airing my rather silly views on the topic.

And sorry about my spelling of 'CatholicK' reading Don Quixote has messed up my c/k's