[monks]

@Huinesoron.

That's cool. I've never read the HOME series...I've read the Book of Lost Tales I and II when I was 15. And Unfinished Tales shortly after.
I have all of Tolkien's works in searchable formats. I've never read any of the V.T stuff from back to back- hardly anything in them at all. I've read V.T 39 though. I've read Smith, Mr Bliss, On fairy Stories, Niggle, Roverandom, not read Farmer Giles as yet...You might say that not reading things counts against me, but I'm still able to make the predictions. That's not to MY credit though. It's to Tolkien's because his system is so damn good and rigorously applied throughout. I only found a way into it by LUCK as I state on my homepage. And he uses the same system in all of them- even Farmer Giles- I know he has from certain details I've encountered in my research, even though I've not read it.

This whole thing about alef and bet I'm talking about. Go see the origins of the letter A. That's the bull in the cliff face. Alef. The Troll bellows in the Chamber of Mazarbul -go see the etymology of bellow. The sound made by a bull. The bull is not something you immediately associate with Tolkien.

Tolkien is the little man in 'A Secret Vice'..and the system he mentions in that- the symphony, the secret grammar- is HIS. Music of the Ainur. He did it all in his head- most of it. The 'Great Master'- Bombadil (Goldberry refers to him as both 'Master' and 'The Master'- and then he refers to her as pretty- see the etymology of pretty in my reply to Pitchwife...all part of the riddle)- the philologist with the private symbolic world, who appears to be barking mad to everyone- speaking nonsense...that's Tolkien. That's why I appear to be mad as well :-D. Kilby covers that in his book - many of Tolkien's friends, C.S Lewis for e.g thought he was baffling even to the point of hilarity.
And if you look at the etymology of vice you'll find links with 'TURNING' and to sex too (moral corruption, vice)- his secret vice is his riddling people, his geometry which turns on two spirals (vise) and the sexual symbolism. I knew about the sexual symbolism before I found the West Gate image. I didn't want to find it frankly- because it's just so out there.

PIE root *weik- (2) "to bend, to wind").

Tolkien (Gandalf) says that Saruman put his hand in a vice. That's because Isengard is the pivot around which the World turns- the Wheel of Fortune- see my reply to Pitchwife.

So Saruman will come to the last pinch of the vice that he has put his hand in.

Regarding Predictions, I've made some errors along the way. I would say 15 in as many years. I admitted an error to Priya Seth only the other day in email (I gave her a bum steer, but not regarding a prediction) and then went on to make a prediction right in front of her regarding the etymology of bronze (prediction #88) from the text surrounding Isengard. I'm careful with my predictions usually- but sometimes I just go with it. Some of the errors were obviously from the process of improving my understanding of how his system works. In the writing of that email to Priya I then budded my writing off because it was becoming book length ..heh...and then made 10 predictions in 48 hours in that (#89-99). That's by far the highest rate I've made- because I'm getting better at them.

But if you want to talk statistics, even if you factored in the errors, you'd still have an astronomically small chance of making those logged from mere chance. In The Lord of the Rings Tolkien attempted what Dante did in his Divine Comedy- well Purgatorio specifically. His insistence on getting the moon phases right for instance. Minas Tirth = blatantly Purgatory...and its plan is the Classical Labyrinth...enter the bull, the minotaur. He has a system which involves planar geometry- which is handedness. Hence why hands feature so much in his works. He set it out in the hands sequence of Ilúvatar. Movement between planes is reflected in the narrative and that movement involves passing through 'the Door' (megalithic) and the Turn. The Turn involves 3 stages which always happen. Hence why I predicted that the word spirit would appear in the Denethor sequence at the first instance of the phrase "The West has failed"- because the turn proceeds SPIRIT -> PHYSICAL -> LANGUAGE. All are reorientations in the same order every time. See The Turn in Practice essay. Shippey said that Denethor says the same phrase 3 times. I knew immediately that that was Denethor's 'turn'. So I honed in on that to actually finally thoroughly analyse in an essay what I'd found ten years before in the Akallabêth.

I can sit and here and talk you through any of the predictions you want. How and why they were made.

monks