[Guinevere]

I'll just add some quotes from Tolkien's letters to this topic.<BR>from letter 131(written ca 1951):<P> <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>"Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary "real" world" <HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>and in another letter (142, written 1953) to a friend who was a priest, he even wrote:<P> <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>"The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like "religion", to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism." <HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>I think this is why LotR appeals to so many people, also people who would be put off by direct religious allusions.