Quote:
Originally Posted by garm
"I've been doing a good spot of research on this--have wondered about it for awhile. There is a story that both Tolkien and CS Lewis were briefly members of the Order of the Golden Dawn, but were kicked out for being inept. "
Don't keep us in suspense -  - where does this information come from?
As for the Priory of Sion - there was a TV programme on Channel 4 a few years ago, when the movie of Dan Brown's first book came out (blessed if I can remember the name now). The whole Priory of Sion thing was shown to be a hoax, perpetrated by some guys in France. It's all rubbish, really. |
Right. Thanks for pointing that out so that I didn't have to! The
Prieuré de Sion or
Priory of Sion was invented in the 1950s by a chap called Pierre Plantard who fabricated a nine hundred year history for his phony organisation.
The notion that both Tolkien and Lewis were members of the Order of the Golden Dawn seems a bit far-fetched. Lewis I can imagine might have been interested during his agnostic/aetheist phase, but Tolkien? Charles Williams, who was also a member of the Inklings, is really the most likely suspect.
On the other hand, Tolkien does seem to have considered some beliefs that seem to have been of a Gnostic nature. The basis of
The Lost Road and
The Notion Club Papers is the idea that ancient memories can be retrieved by modern people - in this case memories of Numenor. Tolkien himself seems to have believed that his own Middle Earth writings were in some way a recollection or reconstruction of actual events.
However, it is one thing to dabble in Pagan or Gnostic traditions in order to write a work of fantasy but it is quite another thing to practise such traditions in your day to day life! Tolkien was a practising Catholic and this would be quite incompatible with him actually being a Gnostic, a Witch, a Master of the Occult, a Satanist or whatever else he is being accused of.
Note that the accusation comes from people who believe that
The Lord Of The Rings and the
Chronicles of Narnia are occult books! An example of this sort of thing can be found here, if you can bear to read it:
http://www.tldm.org/News8/JRRTolkien...wis.Narnia.htm
Note that there is no actual proof, just suppositions and circular reasoning. Tolkien wrote many letters, a selection of which have been published, and there is nothing in them to indicate anything other than normal Catholic practise. The logic seems to be "Tolkien wrote an occult book (LOTR) and he spent a lot of time on it so therefore he was an occultist". The reasoning fails if you don't accept the initial premise, for which there is no proof.
Also the article I've linked to has numerous factual errors, such as:
"Tolkiens [sic] occult stories were first published in the 1950's. It is interesting to note that Tolkien took 12 years to write his occult stories and he released them in the 13th year. He was a true occultist and the devil was pleased and blessed his work!"
Although it did take Tolkien approximately 12 years to write
The Lord of The Rings, it most certainly wasn't published in the "13th year"! It took about four years for the book to be published once it was completed. Besides, there is no significance to the timing since Tolkien had already published
The Hobbit and had expended decades trying to bring
The Silmarillion into a publishable form.
Also the claim (in that article) that "a Witch" revealed the information that Lewis and Tolkien were members of the
Golden Dawn is hard to believe. Where did this Witch obtain the information? The
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was disbanded in 1970 and all of the members are probably dead - so how could anyone now have detailed credible knowledge of such a secret society?
Incidentally, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was an offshoot of the
Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, which most certainly does still exist and even has a website:
http://sria.info/index.php?option=co...=42&Itemid=238
The notion that such groups (related to Freemasonry) engage in occult activities is largely held by the kinds of Christians who believe that every word of the Bible is literally true, and that it contains all the knowledge that you actually need. Such people are dedicated to attacking any work of fiction with spiritual themes that has a large following.