[monks]

Sorry multiple posts here...

Regards 'wif'. I'd not read the poem. I only saw the title. That was enough. The A.S poems in there- I've at best scanned a few of them. I've not read any of them because I don't understand Anglo Saxon. I asked on the Yahoo(?) boards of the Mythopoeic Society what the poem was about and both Jason Fisher and John Rateliff in private correspondence offered to translate it for me. Neither came through with one. I think they were too busy. John certainly was at the time. I told Jason in email that I thought it involved Goldberry- (which I believed to be Tolkien's wife).

The fact that I was asking for one publicly is fairly good proof of what I'm saying. I was told on the boards that it was a translation of a poem, not an original poem 'I Love Sixpence'. I then looked it up and saw the content. I mean, are you suggesting I'm lying? Seriously? I'd spend 15 years of my life on and off constructing an elaborate hoax? I leave the riddles to Tolkien. I get accused of all kinds of things. haha But very good point. I'd not spotted that!

The number 6 is the downward spiral which is what Goldberry symbolizes. If you want me to elaborate I can. The letter 'M' in the Floral Alphabet rebus symbolizes Bombadil and Goldberry. Goldberry is the 'day's eye' (daisy) which you see at the top of it. Day's Eye of course is the Sun. The letter can be seen as two uprights with a downward pointing arrow in the middle- as I said arrows are very important in his works. Bombadil is the two upright legs to either side, hence 2. And we see 6 leaves in that letter M- the same leaves that appear in Galadriel's lament. Galadriel representing Womankind, Goldberry, Edith. `Ah! like gold fall the leaves in the wind, long years numberless as the wings of trees!
That's one of the sources of the reasoning behind the second prediction. The downward spiral is the Music. It progresses seemingly to a certain fall. Death and ultimately Ragnarok. However the 6 becomes a 9 through the Eucatastrophe. The Loathly Lady becomes the Lovely Lady. The narrative device Tolkien uses to turn from 6 to 9 is THE TURN and the Wheel of Fortune. It's all over my website. Here's the turn going through the Door:-

http://www.thewindrose.net/hello-wor...eafterwards-2/

The world in fact turns twice during the course of the Lord of the Rings. It's Tolkien's implementation of the Wheel of Fortune. That's what Seth's anagrams are about. The 'hidden trails' is the hunt- the 3 hunters. I told her in email. Here's the hint, the anagrams are hints and pertain to the hunt, the 'hidden trails' (HIDDEN TRAILS ! NOW ??) and the Wheel of Fortune:

hint (n.)
c. 1600 (Shakespeare), "an indirect suggestion intended to be caught by the knowing," apparently from obsolete hent, from Middle English hinten "to tell, inform" (c. 1400), from Old English hentan "to seize," from Proto-Germanic *hantijan (source also of Gothic hinþan "to seize"), related to hunt (v.). OED dates the sense "small piece of practical information" to 1777.

The hand is the instrument of the will in the world. And each is also represented by the heart. As I say everything is assigned to the planes of the dialectic. Hands, hearts, wills, etc, etc. So male and female both have a heart, a will, and a hand- the instrument of their will within the world. Hence the two hearts in Eeriness. This links into the seizure of the hands I'm talking about and the same holding of the left wing by Gandalf in the anagram. The two hands/arms/wings symbolism represents the replacement of the other's will in the relationship, the silencing of the other voice as I've said. Grasping with both hands like Denethor "he bowed and laid himself on the table, clasping the palantír with both hands upon his breast." The seizure is an act of the spirit, the mind, the will. Physical acts of seizure are expressions of an underlying true inner spiritual reality (that's how the TURN proceeds: spirit->physical->language), but they are acts of desire to possess or are acts of conflict. To grasp with the hands is an extension of to seize, grasp with the mind. The dichotomy can be summed up as 'to behold with the eye' and to 'hold with the hand'. That's why Tolkien refers to Fëanor in terms of the hand and mind of Fëanor ("the unimaginable hand and mind of Fëanor at their work"), which invites the comparison to the idiom 'hand and eye'. In other words Tolkien is inferring via the comparison that Fëanor doesn't want to simply behold with his eyes (mind), he wants to hold with his hand, to possess. He makes the error of trying to possess the light of the Trees by imprisoning them in the Silmarils. (That's why the letter A in the floral alphabet has the gold in the middle- that's the imprisoned light). That's the root of his flawed 'alef' psychology, which leads to everything else. It's self-critique and a cautionary tale to Tolkien himself about the dangers of the pursuit of Art to the detriment of one's family and God. That leads to Old Man Willow (see previous post above). You can see the hand symbolism in the section on my homepage. That links the will, the hand and hearts together. And if we look at the Fëanor quote in full we find:

Even now my heart desires to test my will upon it, to see if I could not wrench it from him and turn it where I would-to look across the wide seas of water and of time to Tirion the Fair, and perceive the unimaginable hand and mind of Fëanor at their work,

If two wills are expressed as the two planes of the opposite and adjacent in the dialectic, moving between one and the other requires a turn of 90 degrees: the two differing perspectives and points of view. Hence why you would wrench (variant of *werg- "to turn" (source also of Latin vergere "to turn, tend toward"), from root *wer- (2) "to turn, bend.") it from him in a battle of wills. That's the same battle of wills in the battle of the sexes.

To root this in the framework of the relationship which the Sacred Geometry represents, Tolkien is referencing 'to have and to hold' from the marriage vows. It's a narrative device for differentiating between two behaviours within the partners in the marriage. And this symbolism of grasping with the hand and the mind, is why Bombadil says he cannot be caught- because nobody has solved the riddle and understood him- Tolkien. No one has grasped what he is doing.

None has ever caught him yet, for Tom, he is the master:
His songs are stronger songs, and his feet are faster.

catch (v.)
c. 1200, "to take, capture," from Anglo-French or Old North French cachier "catch, capture" (animals) (Old French chacier "hunt, pursue, drive (animals)," Modern French chasser "to hunt;" making it a doublet of chase (v.)), from Vulgar Latin *captiare "try to seize, chase" (also source of Spanish cazar, Italian cacciare), from Latin captare "to take, hold," frequentative of capere "to take, hold," from PIE root *kap- "to grasp."

Its senses in early Middle English also included "chase, hunt," which later went with chase (v.). Of sleep, etc., from early 14c.; of infections from 1540s; of fire from 1734 (compare Greek apto "fasten, grasp, touch," also "light, kindle, set on fire, catch on fire"). Related: Catched (obsolete); catching; caught.

As I've already said Tolkien is the Great Master in A Secret Vice. He is the little man. No one has caught Tolkien because no one has grasped what is going on. Kilby definitely knew something was afoot...and Tolkien almost confided in him as the story goes.

And here's the best hint we get about the Wheel of Fortune and the Higher Powers which begins with the Moria sequence which includes the Fall of Gandalf:

I think the way in which Gandalf's return is presented is a defect, and one other critic, as much under the spell as yourself, curiously used the same expression:'cheating'. That is partly due to the ever-present compulsions of narrative technique . He must return at that point, and such explanations of his survival as are explicitly set out must be given there – but the narrative is urgent, and must not be held up for elaborate discussions involving the whole 'mythological' setting. It is a little impeded even so, though I have severely cut G's account of himself. I might perhaps have made more clear the later remarks in Vol. II (and Vol. III) which refer to or are made by Gandalf, but I have purposely kept all allusions to the highest matters down to mere hints, perceptible only by the most attentive, or kept them under unexplained symbolic forms. So God and the 'angelic' gods, the Lords or Powers of the West, only peep through in such places as Gandalf's conversation with Frodo: 'behind that there was something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker's' ; or in Faramir's Númenórean grace at dinner. (156 To Robert Murray, SJ. (draft))

That 'something else' at work is the geometry (act of orientation of Faramir's 'grace' turning to the West) and the Wheel of Fortune involving the higher powers. I can explain in more detail if you want. Here's a start. http://www.thewindrose.net/blogs/a-r...on_akallabeth/
The compulsions of narrative technique refer to the geometry and the narrative machinery which he refers to in the Resnik interview. The machinery is the turning Wheel of Fortune- and in fact wheels within wheels (the Tetramorph of Ezekiel which appears later in Insular Art and elsewhere).

“I suppose as a boy She interested me as much as anything— like the Greek shard of Amynatas, which was the kind of machine by which everything got moving.”

From 'She'...

It happens, how you will see in the accompanying manuscript (which together with the Scarab, the ‘Royal Son of the Sun,’ and the original sherd, I am sending to you by hand), that my ward, or rather my adopted son Leo Vincey and myself have recently passed through a real African adventure, of a nature so much more marvellous than the one which you describe, that to tell the truth I am almost ashamed to submit it to you lest you should disbelieve my tale.

The machinery turns the world and rolls the Sun back to her rightful place in the north. In myth the scarab beetle rolled the Sun around. Hence the scarab reference here. You see 3 turns there in the diagram. That's the origin of Frodo's 'the third turn may turn the best' which you'll find for that reason at the top of my homepage. The TURN itself also consists of 3 turns. See my essays on the Turn. So you have turns within turns, wheels within wheels. The Rhyme of Lore counts three times three for that reason. The 9 ships symbolize this. I chose to analyse the Denethor sequence in the 2nd of those essays (The Turn in Practice) because of Prediction #6. "That the first instance where Denethor makes the statement 'The West has failed' in the Lord of the Rings would contain the word or reference to 'spirit' in the text." And we see the Greek reference- the Spindle of Necessity- the Greeks were very influential in his works.
The 4 cardinal compass points are the Powers, the figures of the Tetramorph. Seth's anagram is about North, East, South, West, N,E,W,S. Her anagram "RONALD T ! I HID NEWS ??" He hid the Powers in the compass points. Saruman tries to create a similar machinery- a counterfeit out of wheels- in his case machine wheels, as opposed to the literary wheels of Tolkien's, and he is said to want to becomes 'a power'. The spiraling smoke around Isengard during its fall is a reference to the Spindle of Necessity- the machinery that Tolkien has created.

"There is the tragedy and despair of all machinery laid bare. Unlike art which is content to create a new secondary world in the mind, it attempts to actualize desire, and so to create power in this World; and that cannot really be done with any real satisfaction. Labour-saving machinery only creates endless and worse labour. And in addition to this fundamental disability of a creature, is added the Fall, which makes our devices not only fail of their desire but turn to new and horrible evil. So we come inevitably from Daedalus and Icarus to the Giant Bomber. It is not an advance in wisdom! This terrible truth, glimpsed long ago by Sam Butler, sticks out so plainly and is so horrifyingly exhibited in our time, with its even worse menace for the future, that it seems almost a world wide mental disease that only a tiny minority perceive it. Even if people have ever heard the legends (which is getting rarer) they have no inkling of their portent. How could a maker of motorbikes name his product Ixion cycles! Ixion, who was bound for ever in hell on a perpetually revolving wheel! " [Letter #75 To Christopher Tolkien]

And if you look back at that quote where Tolkien is addressing the criticism of Gandalf's return as 'cheating' you can see his private hidden reference to the hunt which drives the Wheel of Fortune: "He must return at that point, and such explanations of his survival as are explicitly set out must be given there – but the narrative is urgent, and must not be held up for elaborate discussions involving the whole 'mythological' setting."

Urgent from Urge:

urge (v.)
1550s, from Latin urgere "to press hard, push forward, force, drive, compel, stimulate," perhaps [de Vaan] from a PIE root *urgh- "to tie, bind" (source also of Lithuanian veržti "tie, fasten, squeeze," vargas "need, distress," vergas "slave;" Old Church Slavonic vragu "enemy;" Gothic wrikan "persecute," Old English wrecan "drive, hunt, pursue"), via a notion of "to weigh down on," hence "to insist, impel." The other possibility is that the PIE root is *ureg- "to follow a track." Related: Urged; urging

So, I guess this thread is the 'elaborate discussion'. And it's not a conspiracy folks. It's just philology.

I'll leave the explanation there.

From the anagram 'hidden trails':-

trail (v.)
c. 1300, "to hang down loosely and flow behind" (of a gown, sleeve, etc.), from Old French trailler "to tow; pick up the scent of a quarry," ultimately from Vulgar Latin *tragulare "to drag," from Latin tragula "dragnet, javelin thrown by a strap," probably related to trahere "to pull" (see tract (n.1)). Transitive sense of "to tow or pull along the ground" is from c. 1400. The meaning "follow the trail of" (an animal, etc.) is first recorded late 14c. Meaning "to lag behind" is from 1957. Related: Trailed; trailing.

That's the gown of the Lady in the cliff face on the West Gate and the place where the hunt begins. The Enemy hunts Frodo (who represents the female side of the Aragorn-Frodo Quest pairing). In other words Frodo represents Edith, the left hand. The reference to Frodo being skewered like a boar is also from the Loathly Lady literature. She is described as a boar. There are 3 instances of the word trail in the Moria sequence. I provide a clear definition of what the sequence is in my essay. The first is the chain trailing down into the well pit. The second is the elf-letters trailing off in a scrawl. The last is the black smoke trailing out of the East Gate. All 3 symbolize the hunt. The chain is from the etymology a snare, trap. (from a PIE root *kat- "to twist, twine" (source also of Latin cassis "hunting net, snare"). It's actually a reference to the Chain of Angainor. The scrawl of the elf-letters is 'they are coming'. The hunt begins. The Book events are replayed in the present. See my analysis of the 8 points of symmetry in the Moria sequence. Quick eyeball of them here. In this way the trail in the elf letters refers to their current predicament of the Fellowship too. The smoke issuing out of the East Gate is the hunt continuing- as if the smoke is following, trailing them.

And he got the idea from Haggard's 'She' and the Scarab which in myth, rolls the Sun around. In Tolkien's world the sun (Goldberry) is rolled from the south to the north via the TURN. The Loathly Lady is restored to her rightful place at the top in the north and becomes the Lovely Lady. It's all about his marriage and makes a comment on the treatment of women in the World (-the fate of his mother) and the Virgin Mary. 'She That is Fallen' of the Akallabêth is fundamentally Womankind. The Downfall of Numenor is only the latest episode in the dislocation of Womankind in the Battle of the Sexes. The first is the misplacement of Illuin in the north.

So regarding my statements about the letter M, the letters in the Floral Alphabet as I've said are the material structures of the World just like in the mystic Talmud and our own ideogrammatic Egyptian source for our alphabet. Yes, it's very abstract stuff, but it helped drive the predictions nonetheless. A snip from my homepage:

"One of Tolkien’s other sources are the Rabbinic commentaries on the Talmud. In those commentaries, the letters of the alphabet as ‘the Word’, represent the material structures of the World. In Tolkien’s languages the letters also represent the material structures of the World. His letters and his languages are built from the same geometric principles he used for Time and Space. They are built from the same geometry. Tolkien’s ‘Floral Alphabet’ details the symbolism of the individual ideogrammatic letters. The symbolism in the letters is composed of the elements of colour, planar orientation, design, numerology and specific motifs and features. All of the letters of our latin alphabet also derive ultimately from ideograms (mostly Egyptian).

From A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Invented Languages...

Tolkien seems to have learnt Esperanto by 1909, as suggested by evidence contained in a small notebook he kept at the time called the ‘Book of Foxrook’. In this notebook the seventeen-year-old Tolkien outlined a secret code consisting of a ‘rune-like phonetic alphabet’ and ‘a sizeable number of ideographic symbols’ which Tolkien called ‘monographs’, each of which represented an entire word (Smith and Wynne 2000, p.30). This ‘Private Scout Code’ (as Tolkien called it) worked, presumably, by using the ‘monographs’ for most words, and the rune-like alphabet (each enclosed in a cartouche) ‘to spell personal names or words for which a monograph was not available’ (ibid., p.31). He appears to have invented a writing system that combines a phonetic alphabet (clearly associated with the sounds of English) and ideographic symbols.

The intention to be secretive and to deceive is clear in the etymologies of the words ‘fox’ and ‘rook’."

fox (v.)
1660s, “to delude” (perhaps implied in Old English foxung “fox-like wile, craftiness”), from fox (n.). The same notion is implied in Old English verbal noun foxung “fox-like wile, craftiness;” and Middle English had foxerie “wiliness, trickery, deceit.”


rook (v.)
“to defraud by cheating” (originally especially in a game), 1590s, from rook (n.1) in some sense (such as “a gull, simpleton,” but this is not attested until 17c.). Related: Rooked; rooking.

In other words this all supports my claim that the Floral Alphabet is a rebus. Tolkien being deceptive and playing riddle games?? Never! And then you have his ideogrammatic rebus letter to Friar Francis from France. Francis...France..any connection there yathink? It also states in his Biography that he encountered hieroglyphics at a young age as I said in my previous post. The whole homophemes thing in Lit and Lang is basically a pointer to the fact that critics who don't apply philology to their craft- or at least to critiquing Tolkien, and writers who don't use philology are from the Lit camp. The oak camp. Those people who don't desire dragons. And that's why you need to examine the philology of his words if you really want to understand and appreciate both language and Tolkien.


Angainor. The principle characteristic is that the links are those planetary (etymological root = plane) metals from the Ancient world...I'll return shortly after a cuppa...

ok I'm back......

Tolkien developed his own number system from an early age.

Tilkal is mercury. It's not named but that's what it is. Mercury symbolizes the twin spirals I've mentioned. It's from the Caduceus of Hermes (Mercury). And that relates to the Spindle of Necessity via handedness and direction if you read my homepage. Tolkien was heavily influenced by Dante's numbers. Number symbolism- it's absolutely everywhere in Tolkien's reading material. The Bible. Folklore and myth. Dante. The ancients. In Tolkien's system 7 moves 8 to complete the octave. It's the Music of the Ainur after all. The 'Music of the Spheres'. 7 moves to a higher rational plane. It also moves to a higher state via a movement through 7 rational planes. The states are Loss and Recovery from On Fairy Stories. 8 brings recovery- rebirth. That's why mercury Tilkal, as the twin spirals is present in all of the 7 links.

"Behold, Aule now gathered six metals, copper, silver, tin, lead, iron, and gold, and taking a portion of each made with his magic a seventh which he named therefore tilkal, and this had all the properties of the six and many of its own. It's colour was bright green or red..."[BoLT I]

It binds all of the 7 planes together- as stated 'planet' etymology from 'plane'. The final rebirth-recovery comes in death, the Afterlife at which point we pass through the door. Mercury is symbolized in his works by the Rowan tree. Quicksilver, Quickbeam, who was a rowan tree. 'Rowan' is from 'red' (PIE root *reudh- "red, ruddy," in reference to the berries.) I did do some research on the rowan in The Lord of the Rings a couple of years ago now which linked it to both the colours red and green (those being the colours of the two spirals of left and right hands which you see in the Numenorean carpet)..will have to dig it out. Off the top of my head...the Rowan has green leaves and red berries and is a hermaphrodite, meaning each flower contains both male and female reproductive parts. This would symbolize the hermaphrodite of Adam and Eve from the Rabbinnic commentaries which Tolkien uses to create the geometry of right and left- the two spirals of the two trees 'utterly entwined', Hermes, Quicksilver, Mercury. The Rabbinic commentaries actually describe Adam and Eve as a 'hermaphrodite' at their first creation. In other words that supports the claim that the rowan symbolizes both sides of the geometry. I'm inclined to think that it symbolizes the seizure of both hands, hence 'quick' by the male or female or both. It may well symbolize the male seizing both hands which leads into the whole symbolism of chain (see etymology) and the hunt. The hunt is started by the Enemy, the male, right hand, the bull which is at the North point on the compass. The bull hunts the female who is at the bottom in the South represented by the Man (Mankind) in the Tetramorph. I'll have a rummage later...

And number symbolism...at the end of On Fairy Stories Tolkien chooses to finish with this...

“Seven long years I served for thee,
The glassy hill I clamb for thee,
The bluidy shirt I wrang for thee,
And wilt thou not wauken and turn to me?”

He heard and turned to her.

Ah the Turn again...and the number 7...

In Plato's Republic the soul is considered to be a triangle. The City State likewise. It's people reflect its nature. You can see the divided state of Minas Tirith as the diamond shape in my analysis of The TURN, the two triangles back to back as stated.
http://www.thewindrose.net/research/

You can see the two triangle souls of the two spirals in the picture Wickedness.

Btw I wrote those essays on the turn BEFORE I found Tolkien's source in Plato. So I had no idea that Plato described the City state or the soul as triangles. In fact I didn't even know that triangles appeared in The Republic. That's why I don't reference Plato in the discussion in that essay at all! Minas Tirith is the soul of Aragorn and Arwen of Tolkien and Edith incarnate. Their journey (made by Aragorn and Frodo) is through the 7 rational planes. The inner spirit is incarnated in the exterior world. It is a medieval symbolic landscape. Minas Tirith is Dante's Purgatory. The Lord of the Rings is Tolkien's Purgatorio. The 7 levels of the City are the 7 rational planes I've mentioned. The journey echoes Tolkien's enforced separation from Edith by Friar Francis: purgatory. Their Romance. Friar Francis is symbolized by Elrond withholding consent. That leads us back to 'Necessity' and Tolkien's impending struggle to support his family and make the change into adult life etc. c.f 'Grownupshiness'. It also reveals the link between the Ring of Barahir and the two spirals, and two trees utterly entwined of Tolkien and Edith via the heirloom.

Tolkien's wedding poem. 9 lines. The upward spiral. You can find my first stab at analysis here:
http://www.thewindrose.net/blogs/the...logy_and_Dante

I believe it was probably modeled on Dante's Vita Nouva 'New Life'- his new life with Edith. The rebirth after the purgatory of their separation. Beatrice obviously would equate to Edith. Dante was 'the supreme poet'.Tolkien was very interested in stanza lengths of poems. See Letter #238 to Jane Neave. See my homepage.

The two spirals occurs in the Ring of Barahir- the two snakes. One upholding, the other devouring. 9 and 6. Gandalf and the Balrog on the endless Stair = 9 and 6. Good and Evil battling through Time and the Histories. It's actually symbolic of him and Edith- 6 and 9, the Battle of the Sexes and the contest between alef and bet from the Rabbinnic commentaries. Sun and Moon, birch and oak, Lang and Lit, left and right, etc ,etc. The stairs symbolize an endless series of falls. Steps and stairs also symbolic. The mechanics of the Spindle of Necessity and turning turning turning are all there in that epic struggle. Stairs are symbolic? That's why Tolkien insisted on the little detail that the Tower of Orthanc had 27 steps because they symbolize the kings in the Line of Kings of the Akallabêth.(The full compliment of rulers since they all need to be included). The Line of Kings charts a fall, a long decline through many falls. Each generation is a fall. Indeed each generation throughout his entire histories is a fall, hence The Endless Stair. The understanding of that relation is how I was able to make prediction #31.

The two spirals are symbolized by the colours green and red. The two colours appear in the Floral Alphabet. Red being the Enemy, the letter 'A' - oh and look the diamond shapes in the letter. diamond = division, separation.

http://www.thewindrose.net/floralalphabet/

The yellow inside the letter symbolizes the light trapped within the Silmarils. More elsewhere.

The letter A was originally a bull's head -hence why the bull features in the imagery of the West Gate. And it's alef of course- again the contest between alef and bet. That's why the chain turns red when it touches Melkor. You can see the colours in the Numenorean Carpet which is a 'Carpet page' from Insular Art- geometric symbolism. Red and green spirals.

http://www.thewindrose.net/blogs/a-r...cofthespheres/

And guess what...? I found the reference to the chain turning red AFTER I'd formulated that red and green represented these spirals and that the Devil was the red one, the right hand. I dunno..they just keep a comin....

The other wave on the left side of that carpet is the ripple on the water of the West Gate Pool. That's a manifestation of that symbolism. That led to Prediction #11.

A snip form my homepage:

We get a good idea of the medieval mindset which inherited ideas from Classical antiquity if we look at the Dante Encyclopedia:

The fact that the number of circles, terraces, or spheres in the three realms can be counted as nine or ten probably
owes to the fact that originally there were ten orders of angels (10 being a perfect number), until Lucifer and the
rebellious angels fell, leaving nine orders until man was created to make up the perfect ten (Bonaventure, Sentences
2.9.7). In Conv. 2.5.12 Dante associates the number of the heavens with the angels: Li numeri, li ordini, le
gerarchie narrano i cieli mobili, che sono nove, e lo decimo annunzia essa unitade e stabilitade di Dio (“ The
moving heavens, which are nine, declare the numbers, the orders, and the hierarchies, and the tenth proclaims the
very unity and stability of God,” Conv. 2.5.12). Because the number 10 symbolizes perfection (lo perfetto numero,
“the perfect number,” VN 29.1) and the law (the Ten Commandments), one beyond, 11, came to signify transgression of
the law and hence sin (Augustine, De civ. Dei, 15.20). It appears therefore significant that Dante should present
his blueprint of the moral structure of sin in Inf. 11 and expressly give the ninth and tenth pouches of Malebolge
at the bottom of Hell circumferences of precisely twenty-two and eleven miles respectively (Inf. 29.9 and Inf.
30.86). If each verse of the poem figures forth the number of sin in its eleven syllables, Christ, whose number is
33, might be said to redeem that sin in each terza rima (33 syllables) through his sacrifice.
Numerology is one means by which Dante establishes Hell as the symmetrical inversion of Paradise. Just as all
goodness derives from a triune God (the Trinity), so evil, being but a perversion of that goodness, echoes the
number 3 in its forms. Dante is attacked by three beasts (lonza, leone, lupa) in the dark wood; three ladies (Mary,
Lucy, Beatrice) set his journey into motion; his journey is challenged by a three-headed Cerberus, the three Furies,
and a tripartite Geryon; there are three categories of sin, three rivers feeding into Cocytus, three faces of
Lucifer, and three arch-traitors. The three attributes of the Deity inscribed on the Gate of Hell— divina potestate,
somma sapienza, primo amore (“ divine power, highest wisdom, primal love,” Inf. 3.5– 6)— find their inversion in the
negative attributes of Lucifer, the colors of whose three faces symbolize impotence, ignorance, and malice. The
symbolism of 3 attaches to Purgatory (the subdivision into three areas; the three steps at St. Peter’s gate, Purg.
9; the three nights spent there)..etc…[Dante Encyclopedia (Garland Reference Library of the Humanities) (p. 670).
Taylor and Francis.]

“Just as all goodness derives from a triune God (the Trinity), so evil, being but a perversion of that goodness,
echoes the number 3 in its forms.”

This is why we have the Nine Ringwraiths set against the Nine of the Fellowship. This is why we find the importance
of the numbers 6 and 9. And indeed why the Enemy creates counterfeits all of the forms of God: Eagles: Dragons,
Ents: Trolls, Elves: Orcs, etc.

If you think Tolkien never encountered numerology consider that even at a young age he was exposed to codes of all
kinds including Animalic which had code and letter equivalence.

I was never fully instructed in it, nor a proper animalic-speaker, but I remember out of the rag-bag of memory that
dog nightingale woodpecker forty meant “you are an ***”. Crude (in some ways) in the extreme. There is here, again a
rare phenomenon, a complete absence of phonematic invention which at least in embryo is usually an element in all
such constructions. Donkey was 40 in the numeral system, whence forty acquired a converse meaning. [A Secret Vice]

See the entry for 'Alchemy' and the classical planets. Tolkien rearranges his to his own scheme.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_planet

And that's why we see the stanza lengths of 6 and 4 symbolizing a change from gold to lead in the Moria sequence and Gimli's chant: 6 and 4 are the gold and lead links in the Chain. Lots of supporting argument in Part II of the Hidden imagery in the West Gate- including a breakdown of the 8 points of symmetry in the mirror sequence.

http://www.thewindrose.net/blogs/the...awing-part-ii/

Predictions so far relating to Tolkien's numerology based on my understanding of the Chain of Angainor

14. 7 'hammer'.
16. 3 'wrath'.
63. Force a Door.
64. 'Curse' at West Gate.
89. Moria: 5 x iron.
90. Moria: 1 x copper.
91. Moria: 'fly', 'flying' instances = 7.
92. Moria: 'fly' and 'flying' alternate.
93. 'fly': Frodo.
94.*'fly': Aragorn, Gandalf, Boromir.
95.* Moria: 'foul'.
96.* Moria: 5th instance of 'lead'.
97. Moria: 'gold' = 6 instances.
98. Argonath 'frowning'.
99. Moria: 4th instance of 'mithril'.
100. Gold in ‘Maglor’.

That's just relating to the Moria sequence. There are many others logged here, flagged as yellow:
http://www.thewindrose.net/predictions/

Tolkien has modeled his work on Dante and Plato principally. Predictions? Tolkien has a system. He is predictable.

Thanks for reading. :-)

p.s btw I just this second made prediction #102 that the word 'attentive' would be from 'to stretch'.

time 16:50 GMT 25/07/20.

attend (v.)
c. 1300, "be subject to" (obsolete); early 14c., "direct one's mind or energies" (archaic), from Old French atendre "to expect, wait for, pay attention" (12c., Modern French attendre) and directly from Latin attendere "give heed to," literally "to stretch toward," from ad "to, toward" (see ad-) + tendere "stretch," from PIE root *ten- "to stretch." The notion is of "stretching" one's mind toward something.

Sense of "take care of, wait upon" is from mid-14c.; that of "endeavor to do" is from c. 1400. Meaning "to pay attention" is from early 15c.; that of "accompany and render service to" (someone) is from mid-15c., as is that of "be in attendance." Meaning "to accompany or follow as a consequent" is from 1610s. Related: Attended; attending.

-because of Tolkien's use of the word in the letter quote regarding hints above.

"but I have purposely kept all allusions to the highest matters down to mere hints, perceptible only by the most attentive, or kept them under unexplained symbolic forms."

How did I do that? Well it has to do with the little man in the camp under canvas in the essay A secret Vice. As I already said. The little man IS TOLKIEN.

"esconced in a tent, overhearing 'a little man' who was composing a language sotto voce" according to Fimi and Higgins...Tolkien's words: training under canvas..the plane of the hypotenuse is indicated by 'to stretch' -see my homepage. Imagine the tent as a triangle and a pun on 'a tent-ive'. lol Yep, that's the 'almost obsessive word games' Shippey mentions. The bottom plane is the 'under canvas'.

hypotenuse (n.)
the side of a right triangle that is opposite the right angle, 1570s, from Late Latin hypotenusa, from Greek hypoteinousa "stretching under" (the right angle), fem. present participle of hypoteinein, from hypo- "under" (see hypo-) + teinein "to stretch," from PIE root *ten- "to stretch." Formerly often erroneously hypothenuse. Related: Hypotenusal.

And the hypotenuse is where the Spindle of Necessity manifests. The hypotenuse is also alluded to in the ray of sunlight in his images as I've said -hence why he says in that letter regarding the Higher Powers "So God and the 'angelic' gods, the Lords or Powers of the West, only peep through in such places as Gandalf's conversation with Frodo: 'behind that there was something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker's'". The ray of sun peeping through giving us a glimpse (hint) of the Great Sun of Love from his wedding poem: God and the light of Day (Higher Truths) from Plato's cave metaphor. This recalls my previous post above and the letter #89 and the 'Light of God': 'sudden glimpse of the truth behind the apparent Anankê'.

The hypotenuse lies between Time and Space (opposite and adjacent planes) - the road the wizard is on in Eeriness, it is West of the Moon, East of the Sun. I'll elaborate much more on my website in my predictions pdf.