[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by monks

You are accusing me of having an ego? heh. You need to go and read the responses I've had to my posts. There are a lot of very closed minds in the Tolkien Community.

I think you're having an old argument with someone else here. Boro neither said nor implied that you were egotistical; he said you were falling into logical fallacies like appeal to authority (eg 'this agrees with Priya Seth's anagram, so you KNOW it's true!'). As for 'the Tolkien Community': the Downs is a very small, very quiet corner of the internet, and you've made less than 20 posts here. You've not had 'a lot' of people reply to you, and you don't have enough evidence to say 'very closed minds' - just 'they haven't agreed with me'. Again, I think this is an argument you're making against some other community.

Originally Posted by monks

And guess what? Virtually not a single jack man one of them has ever looked up an etymological definition of a single word in all of his books in their whole life.

That is a wild assumption. Personally I have access to the OED through my library system, and use it all the time - for fun, usually, though I did have to do it for work once ("Why is ferrous chloride called copperas when it doesn't contain copper?" Because it's green, is the rather silly answer.)

Originally Posted by monks

Here's one example off the top of my head of how the experts have not used the right approach to truly understanding Tolkien. Hammond and Scull. Loads and loads of great things done for Tolkien and the Community. Respect right? But when it comes to literary criticism of Tolkien they don't have a clue. In their book Artist & Illustrator they comment on an image in the Book of Ishness. [&c &c]

If you'll take some advice, I'd say you're more likely to get positive reactions by sticking to etymologies (for now) than by posting about numerology. We all know Tolkien was a philologist - I'd wager most of the Downs recall the phrase "low philological jest", even if they can't remember what Tolkien was referring to (the name of Smaug; I had to look it up, though). Drawing out hidden etymological details may lead you down blind alleys sometimes ("'Ring' comes from words that also meant a circle of people, so that's why Tolkien had a Fellowship!!!"), but you can at least support them with specific data. Numerology is... well, to be polite, we'll say 'very subjective'.

A brief example: let's say I conclude for whatever reason that Tolkien's use of the number 7 is because he loved the movie The Seven Samurai. I've not even looked yet, but I Predict(TM) that I can 'prove' this with every instance of 7 in Tolkien.

• Seven Rings - given to the dwarves. Dwarves are a noted warrior race from the mountains. Samurai are noted warriors from Japan, which is basically a string of mountains in the sea.
• Seven Fathers/Houses of the Dwarves - same thing.
• Seven Palantiri - By the War of the Ring, only three of the Palantiri survive. By the end of the film, only three of the samurai survive.
• Seven sons of Feanor - warriors again, obviously. The sons of Feanor are orphans - there's a whole thing in the film about one of the samurai being an orphan. The sons of Feanor burn all sorts of things, including 'enemy' settlements - the samurai open Part Two by burning an enemy camp. There's even multiple samurai dying to kill an enemy leader, just like how Celegorm kills and is killed by Dior in Doriath.
• Seven stars - The Seven Samurai is noted as an influence on Star Wars. Just like Tolkien to put multiple layers into his references, eh? Sure, he was dead by that point, but why let that stop him?

All this, without ever even seeing the film! I must be onto something here, right? There's just so many links!

... to a film that came out after LotR was written. Your theories are more historically plausible than this (they could hardly be less!), but this is basically how they sound. My advice would be to post about your (possible) discoveries in the etymology, and put a link to your site in your signature ("For more details on my theories about The Turn and Tolkien's use of numbers, see..."). That way, people who are interested can easily find it, but you won't have to spend every thread listening to "Tolkien wasn't a numerologist/numerology is nonsense".

Originally Posted by monks

Huinesoron's response is sane. He has disagreed but not become abusive or dismissive. He will actually engage (as far as he feels he can or has time) and not just dismiss outright.

I wouldn't put too much stock in my habit of 'engaging' with things I think are wrong. It's a personality flaw of mine.

Originally Posted by monks

The Book [&c]

There's a thread for that! The Downs likes to keep its threads at least vaguely on topic, so replies like this are best suited for the original thread.

hS