Imagine no religion

[TheMisfortuneTeller]

Originally Posted by skip spence

This isn't my subject but looking at our cultural history I imagine it's very hard to find a single human civilization or even tribe who hasn't got any religious beliefs, symbols, rituals, superstitions etc they share and find meaning in (obviously discounting modern secular states or where religion is officially shunned or forbidden like in the communist states).

Very hard, indeed, to find contemporary hunter-gatherer societies not exterminated by "the more advanced" animist civilizations. Hard, but not impossible. Hence, from Chapter IV of The Golden Bough: a Study in Magic and Religion, by Sir James George Frazer (http://www.bartleby.com/196/9.html):

"... among the aborigines of Australia, the rudest savages as to whom we possess accurate information, magic is universally practiced, whereas religion in the sense of a propitiation or conciliation of the higher powers seems to be nearly unknown. Roughly speaking, all men in Australia are magicians, but not one is a priest; everybody fancies he can influence his fellows or the course of nature by sympathetic magic, but nobody dreams of propitiating gods by prayer and sacrifice."

Originally Posted by skip spence

Yet in Middle Earth, among the peoples described in LotR, there hardly a sign of religiousness of any kind and no-one makes any reference to any divinity or lesser spirits, direct or indirect. Well, there's Faramir looking West before eating, but that's it, to my knowledge.

As a few other commentators have noted, Tolkien does include a few animist-sounding references to unseen spirits -- like the "Valar," etc. -- at various points in The Lord of the Rings, but nothing more significant than someone exclaiming "Holy Sh*t!" at the sudden appearance of a rampaging elephant (or Oliphaunt). More significantly, Tolkien does not follow up these exclamations with any detailed description of the supporting social institutions and ritual indoctrination that one would expect to permeate any overtly "religious" culture. Rather, we get numerous and significant episodes of "good" Magic versus "bad" Magic (i.e., Sorcery). For example:

They groped their way down the long flight of steps, and then looked back; but they could see nothing, except high above them the faint glimmer of the wizard's staff. He seemed to be still standing on guard by the closed door. ... Frodo thought he could hear the voice of Gandalf above, muttering words that ran down the sloping roof with a sighing echo. ...

Suddenly at the top of the stair there was a stab of white light. ... Gandalf came flying down the steps and fell to the ground in the midst of the Company.

"Well, well! That's over!" said the wizard struggling to his feet. "I have done all that I could. But I have met my match, and have nearly been destroyed." ...

... "What happened away up there at the door?" [Gimli] asked. "Did you meet the beater of the drums?"

"I do not know," answered Gandalf. "But I found myself suddenly faced by something that I have not met before. I could think of nothing to do but to try and put a shutting-spell on the door. I know many; but to do things of that kind rightly requires time, and even then the door can be broken by strength."

... "Then something came into the chamber -- I felt it through the door, and the orcs themselves were afraid and fell silent. It laid hold of the iron ring, and then it perceived me and my spell."

"What it was I cannot guess, but I have never felt such a challenge. The counter-spell was terrible. It nearly broke me. For an instant the door left my control and began to open! I had to speak a word of command. That proved too great a strain. The door burst to pieces. Something dark as a cloud was blocking out all the light inside, and I was thrown backwards down the stairs. All the wall gave way, and the roof of the chamber as well, I think."

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.

Originally Posted by skip spence

Why do you think this is?

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."

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.