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Old 01-20-2010, 02:30 PM   #10
Legate of Amon Lanc
A Voice That Gainsayeth
 
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Legate of Amon Lanc is spying on the Black Gate.Legate of Amon Lanc is spying on the Black Gate.Legate of Amon Lanc is spying on the Black Gate.Legate of Amon Lanc is spying on the Black Gate.Legate of Amon Lanc is spying on the Black Gate.Legate of Amon Lanc is spying on the Black Gate.
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Originally Posted by skip spence View Post
In Cirith Ungol and at the brink of despair, Frodo remembers his phial and basically prays for Elbereth, the Lightgiver, to deliver him, wouldn't you say?
Certainly. And I think basically all the cries to Elbereth are some form of "prayer", basically every time somebody calls "Elbereth! Gilthoniel!" - Weathertop, Shelob's Lair, the weird moment when getting past the gate with the Silent Watchers and so on - it is something like that. It would be interesting to judge how much it is a) a prayer (as opposed to "spell" - but in these cases it somehow is both and it does not violate the fact that prayer is turning to somebody, but not manipulating somebody - i.e. not "magic"), b) a conscious prayer (often the characters are crying out words they themselves do not know or understand - now what exactly is this? For me, the immediate thought is - as I have been encountering this subject much - "speaking in tongues" or glossolalia (if you don't know what it is, don't worry or if you are interested, you can look it up, but I don't think it's important here, just easy for guidance for somebody who knows) which is exactly the same kind of stuff - a "prayer in tongues" would be exactly the same sort of thing - yet I fail to grasp how exactly should this be taken: is the prayer in Elvish where the words come to Frodo from some other source still a prayer in the sense of being initiated by Frodo - a will of the one who calls, or is he then just some "channel" - but then again - who is the initiator? Does then for instance Elbereth "call to herself"? Or how does this work?).

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And how about the Pukel Men and their ominous statues? Isn't this a form of religiousness that isn't related to the "true" nature of divinity in Middle Earth?
Well, but are the statues not just portrayal of the Pukel-Men themselves? At least as far as I know - the tale of Aghan the Drugh was about "magic" of the statues, I would say, that was a sort of "Golem", but otherwise I think the statues didn't have any religious connotations, not any more than some random statue of Elendil or whatever?

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And thirdly, temples... Temples are always bad, aren't they? Why do you think this is?
Quite, which is interesting. Various ideas come to mind, maybe just for now, one idea - since temple is often understood as the place of dwelling of a deity, but the deities are of course dwelling in quite well defined concrete places in Arda, then possibly the only thing a temple is good for is mischief. But that's just a very random idea, it would be interesting to think of that deeper. I would like to read some other suggestions myself...

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Legate, there is a text in one of the HoME volumes, think it is X, where a post LotR Tolkien tries to tie in his sub-creation to the Christian tradition, much in the same way he tries to tie in his world with modern scientific knowledge, for instance that life could not have existed prior to the Sun and so on. Read that one?
Actually, not really and not yet. There is a lot that I would like to read, basically all the HoME, I have read only very little as I also don't have them all and only some two years ago I got the chance to get to read at least some of them, as they are not generally available in my home country. I have heard some rumours. Well, another thing to put on my "to-read" schedule
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"Should the story say 'he ate bread,' the dramatic producer can only show 'a piece of bread' according to his taste or fancy, but the hearer of the story will think of bread in general and picture it in some form of his own." -On Fairy-Stories
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