Tolkien, World War Two, Irish Neutrality & Rohan, and England's Mysterious Uffington White Horse

[Naga_Fireball]

I found the 3rd disc in the Lord of the Rings collection in a box of discs tonight and soon found myself wondering what was represented by Rohan if LotR was intended as an interpretation of Hitler's ascendancy and the resultant European politics, as seen from the perspective of the British Isles, perhaps to Tolkien, his Shire.

Some scholars point out the correlation between Mirkwood of Middle Earth, as depicted in The Hobbit, and Germany's famously beautiful and haunted Black Forest. I enjoyed my brief visits to Germany very much and would of course not mind seeing it again.

Anyhow, Mirkwood/Black Forest is important because the strange Necromancer whom Gandalf encounters there (i forget his name) sorta correlates with the rise of new dictatorships, which did happen all over Europe during the war. And Gandalf is tangled up in this covertly, sort of like the Biblical Michael contending with Lucifer (17 days?) in Babylon if I remember the story correctly.


Paradise Lost


Gandalf fighting the Balrog in Moria

Anyhow, in LotR 3, The Return of the King, Gandalf is seen dispatching either Pippin or Merry (lol memory fail) up to light an otherwise well guarded signal fire, using a little known cliff route in order to access the brazier, setting off a Romanesque series of mountaintop signal fires, eventually reaching Rohan from the city of Minas Tirith as night turns to day.


a wallpaper inspired by lotr signal fires

This metaphor was also used in LotR 2, The Two Towers, when Gandalf, accompanied by 300 mounted Rohirrim, saves the day at the failing Battle of Helm's Deep, where the besieged Rohirrim civilians are vastly outnumbered by the traitor wizard Saruman's half orc Uruk Hai warriors. He rides over the crest of the basin precisely as dawn breaks.


Artist's depiction of Rohirrim banner, Wikipedia


The mysterious bronze age Uffington White Horse, located in England, most visible aerially


Monument placed in Ireland during the war to announce the nation's neutrality to overpassing bombers

Wikipedia

The Uffington White Horse is a highly stylised prehistoric hill figure, 110 m (360 ft) long, formed from deep trenches filled with crushed white chalk. The figure is situated on the upper slopes of White Horse Hill in the English civil parish of Uffington (in the county of Oxfordshire, historically Berkshire), some 8 km (5 mi) south of the town of Faringdon and a similar distance west of the town of Wantage; or 2.5 km (1.6 mi) south of Uffington. The hill forms a part of the scarp of the Berkshire Downs and overlooks the Vale of White Horse to the north. Best views of the figure are obtained from the air, or from directly across the Vale, particularly around the villages of Great Coxwell, Longcot and Fernham. The site is owned and managed by the National Trust and is a Scheduled Ancient Monument.[1] The Guardian stated in 2003 that "for more than 3,000 years, the Uffington White Horse has been jealously guarded as a masterpiece of minimalist art."[2] It has also inspired the creation of other white horse hill figures.[3]

...

Similarly in LOTR 2, Rohan is neutral but allows safe passage to the commando party comprised of Legolas, Aragorn, and Gimli.

In my opinion, the final battle for Minas Tirith in LotR 3, Return of the King, depicts Ireland, formerly neutral, coming to England's aid at last, symbolizing the establishment of covert aerodromes in Ireland supporting the British cause.

Whether or not we understand the beginnings of the war, or the many paths that chaos could have taken but did not, it is comforting to see that some of our great writers saw the outcome, from a much sadder, older, wiser perspective, as a good thing.

But of course, the bearers of the Ring could not rest on this corporeal earth unless they passed into the West, much like the myths of Egypt. Until death they were haunted by the terrible, supernatural power of the evil ring.

For the rest of the surviving world, the nightmare in Europe was beginning to be over. The wounds may take as long to heal as the pyramids of Egypt remain standing.

The bible says we are all of one blood.
True, some may bear traces of lineage from other realms or even be altogether alien, like Gandalf was. However, we all strive for life together.

And it really is a beautiful metaphor when Eowynn rides out to face the Nazgul who killed her father. The white horses facing the terrible unknown of the war machine.

May you ride forever on grasses green, may the dawn greet you with kindness and hope. May the night be gentle and swift as an arrow in the dark.

May we all meet again.



Edit

When Aragorn confronts the King of the Dead under the Mountain and contests his worthiness for the throne & safe passage, before reaching the battlefield with the forces of Rohan, Tolkien makes a very interesting statement about divine right having to do most with the king or queen expectant who sincerely above all cares for the people and faces death on their behalf.

The king of the dead is cursed to live in the darkness of infamy because he failed to stand up and defend Gondor when it could have made a decisive and significant, pre-emptive difference, in the war.

Edit2

Gandalf seems to play the role of herald of the moon goddess, or Morrigan, the Irish goddess of war.
Note that he often disappears for long periods of time and inevitably returns. Also he is a reminder of the return of the day, ie Aragorn or the ideal human king.


artist Mary Fairburn's beautiful depiction of Gandalf reflects Nordic engravings

He is also depicted riding the most powerful and fastest horse in middle earth, associating him further with the Nordic deity Odin and perhaps in some aspect, Hermes or Apollo.

The Ents obviously are the earth spirits worshipped by all of these Druidic groups taking the form of the various trees, with whom Gandalf enjoys a special relationship as the Hanged God, Odin and Christ metaphor.




P.s. in the end of the ring quest when the eagles rescue Sam and Frodo from the side of Mount Doom, it seems to represent the Allied forces freeing the surviving prisoners from concentration camp. Gollum probably represents some flaw in human nature that by chance influenced the outcome for good. Ie the fall of certain dictators and SS type organizations.


P.p.s. if you caught the Tail end of the Uffington White Horse story from Wikipedia, you will note the estimated age of 3000 years, also... most visible aerially.

What does this suggest to you?


The Wild Hunt, a Prehistoric Accounting of Early Flight?

Sluagh

In Irish and Scottish folklore, the Sluagh (Irish pronunciation: [sɫuə], Scottish Gaelic: [slˠ̪uaɣ], modern Irish spelling Slua, English: "horde, crowd") were the spirits of the restless dead. Sometimes they were seen as sinners, or generally evil people who were welcome in neither heaven nor hell, nor in the Otherworld, who had also been rejected by the Celtic deities and by the earth itself. Whichever the underlying belief, they are almost always depicted as troublesome and destructive. They were seen to fly in groups like flocks of birds, coming from the west, and were known to try to enter the house of a dying person in an effort to carry the soul away with them. West-facing windows were sometimes kept closed to keep them out. Some consider the Sluagh to also carry with them the souls of innocent people who were kidnapped by these destructive spirits.

Lewis Spence writes in 'The Magic Arts in Celtic Britain':[1]

"In the Western Isles of Scotland the Sluagh, or fairy host, was regarded as composed of the souls of the dead flying through the air, and the feast of the dead at Hallowe'en was likewise the festival of the fairies."

Baron von Richthofen, the Red Baron of World War One Infamy


Japanese women bidding a final farewell to Kamikaze warriors in WWII


Tolkien's ultimately aerially mounted Nazgul ringwraiths do bear a striking resemblance to the Irish Sluagh, the Wild Hunt, which in lotr takes form in Sauron's hunt for the ring and its bearer. The Irish believed that these errant spirits flew in from the west, and were not necessarily under their own control.

Sort of like pilots...


Edit:

Those of you familiar with The Lay of Beleriand and The Silmarillion will recollect the downfall of Numenor, an Atlantis-like land of mythical times, perhaps possessed of forbidden technology as the corrupted sorcerers of Numenor. Listening to Sauron's lies, their actions led to the ultimate destruction of their island homeland.

[Naga_Fireball]

Image to reflect the commentary on the downfall of Numenor, from Tolkien Gateway:




John Howe

[Naga_Fireball]

One must scour the whole page, but this stood out to me:

Contemporary warfare

The Lord of the Rings was crucially influenced by Tolkien's experiences during World War I and his son's during World War II.[citation needed]

After the publication of The Lord of the Rings these influences led to speculation that the One Ring was an allegory for the nuclear bomb.[74] Tolkien, however, repeatedly insisted that his works were not an allegory of any kind.[75] He states in the foreword to The Lord of the Rings that he disliked allegories and that the story was not one.[76] Instead he preferred what he termed "applicability", the freedom of the reader to interpret the work in the light of his or her own life and times.[76] Tolkien had already completed most of the book, including the ending in its entirety, before the first nuclear bombs were made known to the world at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

Bedeviled, a book by Lewis/Tolkien scholar Colin Duriez, discusses in more depth how the World Wars and concepts of evil and suffering influenced the writings of Tolkien and his literary group, the Inklings.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R ... influences" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Naga_Fireball]

Pretty much, there are traces of so many cultural and spiritual influences in Tolkiens work that not even Tolkien could sufficiently answer the question of where It came from.

[Naga_Fireball]

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/19/health/my ... ets-syria/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The White Helmets: 'The most dangerous job in the world'
Updated 4:51 AM ET, Thu January 19, 2017


...

The fall of Aleppo marked the end of a lengthy chapter for volunteer organization Syria Civil Defence. Known around the world as the "White Helmets," Syria Civil Defence have found countless admirers for their humanitarian mission, delving into the ruins of Aleppo and other Syrian cities, and retrieving survivors in the face of remarkable danger.

...

"Being a White Helmet is Syria has been called the most dangerous job in the world," says Gorani, who chose the organization as her heroes. "There is nothing more dangerous than running towards a building that has become a pile of rubble."
The host, who met Raed Saleh, head of the White Helmets, describes the ever-present danger of "double taps" -- secondary bombs sent down with the explicit purpose of attacking first responders. White Helmet volunteers throw themselves in to this environment with the full knowledge they might be the next victims of a civil war which has already cost at least 470,000 lives through 2015, according to estimates from the Syrian Center for Policy Research.


...

On the side of humanity
It wasn't always this way for these men and women.
"They used to be tailors and electricians, bakers and civilians, leading pretty ordinary lives in Syria, with all the issues the country had before," says Gorani. "They were thrust into this new world of death, horror and destruction."

Now White Helmets are so attuned to warzones they can tell the difference between aircraft models just by the tone of their engines.

...




Note: please look at the 24 photo image gallery and tell me what you think of the eyes of these heroes. It is so eerie, you can tell from their eyes, they have seen so much suffering yet remain so full of hope. They look like angels.

[Naga_Fireball]

In the sexuality thread I accidentally put in general forum today, I used the emblem of the Trojan Horse to accentuate a story that included elements of homosexuality and also, childhood repression.

But afterward, while reading Wikipedia entry on the Trojan Horse, i realized that much of the passage was obviously something with which Tolkien was intimately familiar:

Odysseus's plan called for one man to remain outside the horse; he would act as though the Greeks had abandoned him, leaving the horse as a gift for the Trojans.

An inscription was engraved on the horse reading: "For their return home, the Greeks dedicate this offering to Athena". Then they burned their tents and left to Tenedos by night.

Greek soldier Sinon was "abandoned", and was to signal to the Greeks by lighting a beacon.[2]

In Virgil's poem, Sinon, the only volunteer for the role, successfully convinces the Trojans that he has been left behind and that the Greeks are gone.

Sinon tells the Trojans that the Horse is an offering to the goddess Athena, meant to atone for the previous desecration of her temple at Troy by the Greeks, and ensure a safe journey home for the Greek fleet.

Sinon tells the Trojans that the Horse was built to be too large for them to take it into their city and gain the favor of Athena for themselves.

The beacon and the abandoned Greek soldier are clearly mirrored by Gandalf sending the hobbit up to light the signal beacon in Minas Tirith.

Remember that fate "abandons" one of the Hobbits to his very sudden commitment to the Steward of Gondor. He is temporarily separated from the other members of the fellowship by his oath to Denethor.

Yet when this Hobbit and Gandalf intervene to prevent the premature cremation of Denethor's less favored son, Faramir, it sort of mirrors the manner in which the Trojan Horse entering Troy decided the war for Greece in the ancient story.