[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by TheMisfortuneTeller

Now, Tolkien could have written this scene differently, from an animist perspective, in which case the Balrog on one side of the door and Gandalf on the other side of the door each get down upon their respective knees imploring their respective invisible deity-spooks (Melkor or Iluvatar, respectively) to either open or shut the damned door for them. But Tolkien didn't write the scene that way, for which considerate mercy I have always felt profoundly grateful.

I don't think the actions of angelic spirits should be taken into account in this debate. Neither Gandalf nor the Balrog would have had any need for "prayer" in that circumstance. Being "divine" spirits of the Maia themselves, they were not of the Children of Ilúvatar, and had their own inherent powers. Elves and Men in fact reverenced the Maia in that respect, such as Ossë and Uinen.

Originally Posted by TheMisfortuneTeller

As Frazer puts it, the belief in Magic precedes and underlies the later belief in Animism (essentially, magicians pushed into the invisible background to make room for the intercessor-middleman-priest). "This universal faith, this truly Catholic creed, is a belief in the efficacy of magic. While religious systems differ not only in different countries, but in the same country in different ages, the system of sympathetic magic remains everywhere and at all times substantially alike in its principles and practice. Among the ignorant and superstitious classes of modern Europe it is very much what it was thousands of years ago in Egypt and India, and what it now is among the lowest savages surviving in the remotest corners of the world."

And all that is Frazer's opinion. Really, I don't see how that is relevant, unless one can show that Tolkien thought along the same lines.

Originally Posted by TheMisfortuneTeller

Tolkien's magical mythology appeals to the deeper and more universal levels of the human psyche which persist stubbornly throughout human history regardless of the transient local dominance of various animist factions.

Yet Tolkien did say:

The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously so in the revision.

Letter 142

The fact that the works do enjoy such popularity may have many reasons, but I don't think one can say a conscious rejection of religion was part of it.