Imagine no religion

[Pitchwife]

Originally Posted by skip spence

I repped that post in my half-slumber, Groin, as I thought it was well written. A bit too good was my second thought. You didn't actually write it, did you?

That makes two of us. Anyway, while Groin's points as such weren't actually new to me, he presented them well and gave some good examples of how exactly the religious symbolism was 'absorbed into the narrative', which is quite enough to make his post repworthy for me.
If I may take the Marian associations a little further (and maybe into not quite uncontroversial territory - WARNING: purely personal statement coming!):
There has been much debate on these Downs about the influence of both Tolkien's Catholic faith and his infatuation with pagan mythologies on the shaping of his Legendarium; and it just occured to me that, whether he was consciously aware of this or not, his devotion to Our Lady may be one of the points where the two influences are most easily reconciled - as in the figure of Mary (not the meek virgin and handmaiden, but the Queen of Heaven and ocean star, to use Groin's lovely quote) much of the best of ancient pagan Goddess worship has been absorbed into Christianity. Or to rephrase it from the opposite perspective: Tolkien's worship of Mary (and its reflections in the characters of Galadriel and Elbereth) is something that makes his (or any) Catholicism palatable to unregenerate heathens like myself. However much we may disagree about the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, we can both bow our knees to Our Lady (and who's to say we don't actually mean the same person?)...