The Hobbit Movie Forum

[Gandalfs Beard]

Please don't feel bad about introducing the donatism vs catolicism point . I had never heard that before and I found it enlightening.

When you mentioned Susan, I think you were touching on the similar point you were making about Tolkien. Neither of them knew how to handle adult women. Before he met Joy Gresham, Lewis seems to operate under the assumption that adult women were all into makeup and clothes and had little interest in intellectual pursuits. This all changed when he met Joy. Had he written Narnia then I think he would have changed Susan's fate. I wish I could remember where I read this, but I am fairly certain in one of his later letters Lewis himself expresses these regrets. But without that letter I have no other supporting evidence.

As to original sin: I think the sin was not necessarily mankinds. When humans encountered the ice age, they must have felt it as rejection by Mother Earth. It seemed like an "expulsion from the garden." It became necessary to discover the secrets of fire (Prometheus) and to learn from the tree of knowledge. And you are right' we are all seeking each other's and Nature's Approval. Ritual evolved out of seeking the approval of the spirits of the Eaten into seeking the approval of the Gods, to finally the approval of God. And you are Soooo Right in pointing out how this stultified into organized religion in all it's exclusivity. Though I think exclusivity arose with Monotheism. The secret hand shakes and such arose as secret societies were formed in response to The Church and it's exclusive rule.

Tolkien and Lewis were both seriously conflicted by suffering (if only they had turned to Buddhism ). Their own suffering and others. Their are a number of reasons of the cooling of their close friendship (what friendships don't endure such trials). Theology was only one reason, and by most indications, not necessarily the primary one. After Lewis met Joy, he would insist on bringing her to Inkling meetings (a no-no) and I think Tolkien resented jealously her coming between him and Lewis. And as you say, there were the disputes over literary pursuits. I think people may make a bit too much of all these disputes as it seems they still maintained a relationship though it was rockier.

Your thoughts on Tolkien and the feminine echo my own. As I said about Lewis, Tolkien was unsure of how to deal with women (that crusty bachelor he). But he still saw the necessity of balance in Faerieland. It took Rowling ultimately to achieve the goal he and Lewis sought. Just as the Medievals thought Christ fulfilled Pagan Desires, so does the Feminine fulfill Christian Desires.

Uuuhh!! Not sure where to go from here so I'll stop for now .

Gandalfs Beard

[Otto's World]

Oh, talk more about suffering, please.

Or maybe just nuisance and irritation and pleasure. I love how the Hobbit has so much about Bilbo being scared or uncomfortable and wishing he were at home frying bacon and hearing the tea kettle begin to sing. It makes me want to make some toast and jam.

[Gandalfs Beard]

I'll come back to this topic this evening. I must make an attempt to alleviate my families suffering and seek new employment now .

Gandalfs Beard

[Gandalfs Beard]

I will eventually talk about "suffering," but at the moment I'd like to address a point from Tolkien's essay.

Tolkien is making a point regarding the "willing suspension of disbelief" as something adults do when condescending to something "childish." I hadn't quite thought of it in that way before. Rather, Tolkien suggests, one willingly believes in the story itself as a "subcreation." A secondary aspect of the primary world. Terence McKenna is fond of discussing the "Imaginal Realm;" a very real place that is adjunct to the so-called primary or real world. I am particularly fond of this notion, and I see that McKenna and Tolkien are largely talking about the same thing. Hence-forth I shall no longer say that I am "suspending disbelief." Rather, I shall indicate by my enjoyment of a fantastic piece of fiction, that I am a willing particapant in it's reality.

This is directly applicable to discussions of whether places like Middle-Earth and Narnia are actually "real" places that one could visit. There is the one notion that through the parallel worlds theory of physics (which I believe is correct) all possible worlds exist in infinite multiple universes. But there is also a "hidden" realm directly connected to our own universe. A realm our imaginations inhabit, and wherein, as Tolkien and McKenna suggest, reside other very real entities. These could be Nature Spirits unshackled from their own physical restraints, Jungian archetypes given form and free reign to follow their own independent desires, extraterrestrials attempting to communicate across time and space through the direct link of the imaginal realm, or even independent entities that only exist in the imaginal realm yet occasionally attempt to break through into the "real" world such as Gods and Goddesses or Demons and Angelic beings or "fairy" creatures unconnected to physical Nature. The multiverse of possibilities breaks wide open with such a worldview as Tolkien's and McKenna's and I dare say CSLewis's too.

Gandalfs Beard

[Otto's World]

Well, I think we at least talk as if we already believe what you describe. Dante "created" a structured world and a means of salvation that we all kind of take as "real," or at least we speak that way, and need to be reminded that much of what is in Dante is not in scripture. Saint Augustine did the same thing by trying to interpret the Bible or make the "overview" of it clear to the world, so that a lot of the way we understand the Bible comes from Augustine's interpretation and his metaphor of the City of God and the City of Man. In this one humanities course I knew about, the instructors were constantly telling students that their beliefs were really "false." Or they would shock students by showing them that this or that religious image is not anywhere in the Bible. So we have to be taught that there are layers of human imagination that make up what we see as reality, and that it does not all come from the source that we think (the Bible as the only source of revealed truth). Maybe those layers of human imagination represent reality too.

It may very well be real in the sense that it resembles a place or a reality that we will all experience some day and that we are in a sense experiencing now. I mean, the Bible is supposed to represent "revealed" truth. God speaking to people who then tell stories about God and then these are written down. But who says that God can't also play "muse" to the poets and "reveal" a "reality" through them? Milton writes as though this is true. I mean he explicitly calls upon the divine Muse meaning that the Muse is the Holy Spirit who will inspire his imagination. Dante at least acts as though his hell, purgatory, and paradise are realities that have been revealed to him in a dream. AND...most writers who reveal their methods say that they don't feel as though they are creating or producing; they feel rather that they are listening or discovering or basically taking dictation from this source that communicates through them.Anne Lamott describes it as holding the lantern while "the kid" digs for "the stuff." "The kid" is the part of the artist who plays and puts the rational mind to sleep a little bit. Stephen King talks about "the boys in the basement" who do all of his work. Or he's got this muse who is ugly and smokes a cigar and who is in control. He can beg him or encourage him. Or rather he has to "show up" at the desk on a regular basis in order to make it more likely that he will be there to catch what his muse or his "boys in the basement" come up with.

I haven't read McKenna, so i don't know if this is the mechanism he is talking about at all. It probably is not. But maybe there's a bridge to make to connect them.

[Gandalfs Beard]

I seem to have lost a post to the Gremlins Otto's World that was a follow up to the last post. It may shed some light on this discussion and address some of your points, so I will attempt to re-create:

I started by saying: I think I disagree with Tolkien that Art (Fantasy) is to be distinguished from Dreaming or Madness/ Hallucination. I imagine that if he and McKenna could converse Tolkien might be persuaded otherwise. Fantasy is created from the imagination with conscious (but also subconscious) intent. Dreaming and Hallucination are expressions of the subconscious imagination, considered spontaneous and uncontrollable. Yet Dreaming and Hallucination may be entered into with full awareness (consciousness), as through Lucid Dreaming, and as through paying attention to the distinction between the hallucinatory image and the "Real" World upon which it is superimposed. So Fantasy and Dreaming/Hallucination are both expressions of the "imaginal realm" in their own right.

So I think Tolkien might come into agreement on this if only the opportunity existed to converse with him.

And to add to this in light of your last post: Visions of the Prophets, often considered Madmen can be seen then as messages from this other "hidden" realm. And the Muse, related to Sophia (the personification of Divine Wisdom) by the Gnostics, is the ambassador to Poets and Alchemists, Artists and Musicians from this other realm. Inspiring us to ever greater heights of Creation in the hope of Transformation of the "Real World" into a realm wherein the imagination becomes real and the real becomes the imagination.

Yeah, I know it's a little paradoxical. But if you "muse" upon this for a while I guarantee it will all make sense. Your intellectual instincts are generally unerring Otto's World.

Gandalfs Beard

P.S. McKenna speculates on the nature of the mechanism as you describe -- but he also delves into notions of the Shamanistic ingestion of psychotrropic substances and the role of media, traditional (art, poetry, music, books) and electronic (TV, the Internet) as a kind of Feedback loop that is both inspired by and inspires The Muse.

[Otto's World]

I think I drank too much coffee yesterday, because I've been awake since about 3 AM....thinking about this stuff. I should spread my musings over different threads though, because some thoughts are about this multiple realities idea, and some--a lot--are about men and women, because I'm listening to That Hideous Strength and I'm trying to read Charles Williams's Figure of Beatrice...the operative word there is "trying." Not only that, but I've got a beautiful teenage daughter who is being introduced to all of this man-woman stuff, and I kind of wish she had more zits or less of a bosom or duck feet or that she was not so conspicuously awesome...I don't know. Something to slow down this process, because there aren't enough boys around here who read The Silmarillion. Beren, would you please move to our town? C. S. Lewis says, in his forward to That Hideous Strength, that he is exploring or dramatizing the ideas he discusses in his book The Abolition of Man. I know what that book is about: it is about a whole generation of people growing up without reading The Silmarillion, or The Faerie Queene or Dante or Tennyson or William Morris--fairy tales, people!! People who get their morality from sterile intellectual conclusions but who do not have hearts or "chests." By having a "chest," he means, I guess, like the Tin Man, or what the Tin Man wants (and already has)...having a "chest" means having that internal tuning fork that sings in response to beauty. Gentility, civility, chivalry deep down to your toes, so that even if your animal self wants to do something selfish or something that will injure the integrity of another person, your internal tuning fork won't let you, because it would almost make you sick to your stomach to disobey it. It's a visceral form of self-control. All of this belongs in the Feminism thread. The Figure of Beatrice connects to it, because Williams is saying that, for Dante, his infatuation with Beatrice started his internal tuning fork singing, and that this love keeps him yearning and searching and feeling like he's closer and closer to "home" whenever he gets "warmer" (as opposed to "colder" as in the "hot/cold" game)--which is the process that leads him closer to the Source of All Beauty.

[Otto's World]

So also while I was thinking at 3 AM, I thought about the idea of us all being sub-creators and potentially creating new worlds, and it reminded me of the bit in Voyage of the Dawn Treader where they sail into "The Land Where Dreams Come True." Remember that? And first they think, "Oh, wouldn't that be lovely?" But then the guy they pull aboard says, "No! You don't understand!! THINK about it. What kinds of things do you really DREAM about?" And then they all got horrified thinking about their nightmares and weird troubling dreams. And the guy that they rescue is almost insane and he wants to die or ANYTHING except to stay in this place where his dreams become real.

You know, and think about some of the imaginary products Stephen King comes up with, and how would you like to really BE in one of his books? (whip out the wand) Ridiculous!

[Gandalfs Beard]

No Kidding Otto's World, I couldn't sleep either. Tried a vic and a soma...just made me space out and think more

Indeed the imaginal realm isn't all flower fairies and super-kittens. One really needs to be prepared to delve into those regions ( beyond merely reading about them). But in the Realm of Fairy (the same place really) , We have as much power as any entities we might find there. The Nightmare on Elm Street movies are one of the few horror films I can tolerate. It's really all about dreaming and finding your dream powers. Sort of like...erm...Exactly like Neo in the Matrix. Once we realize we're in the "matrix" we can access all our hidden power. The trick is being aware of which "realm" one is actually engaging when one is immersed.

One way to be prepared to face your nightmares is a mirror meditation. After a while the image of your face begins to morph (and you will often see your "aura" too). First ones face will shift through all sorts of horrid forms as various "dark" aspects of the self are revealed. If you don't allow yourself to become frightened (just keep repeating"it's all in my head") and keep watching, all your inner demons melt away. Everything becomes brighter, your aura shines like a halo and the Angelic faces within show themselves. Well there is a bit more to this I should tell you before trying it. I actually hadn't planned to pass on these practical techniques just yet. That's what I get for writing in this state of mind. Don't try this without further information. It can be a very frightening experience to the unprepared, but it works. No matter what, once accomplished your nightmares may still occur--but they are no longer frightening. The illusion has been stripped away. You see that it is only various aspects of the Self.

Anyway,sorry for veering off into this--but they were all right on the Dawn Treader once they realized the truth of this.

Yeeesh....see what groggy gets me. I'll talk to you later before I dig myself in deeper.

Gandalfs Beard

P.S.These things are so "entangled" as Tolkien might say, I am not sure it is entirely possible to separate out what belongs in the Feminism thread.

[Gandalfs Beard]

I was just reading the bit of Tolkien's essay wherein he discusses the relative unsuccess of Drama (stage play) and Pantomime in conveying Fantasy. I really had a good laugh. He is so right. I can only imagine that he might have been pleased that film-making technology had advanced beyond "men dressing up as talking animals" and "bufoonery." Finally we have a medium that can do Fantasy justice.

His points are so apt. I recall the BBC versions of Narnia. They reminded me of puppet shows and pantomime, taking me right out of the story. It was interesting to note that Tolkien felt similarly about such things. I think Tolkien would have really liked how TLOTR films turned out -- no "bufoonery" or "pantomime." And Peter Jackson truly resolved the distinctions between "Drama" and "Fantasy" as Tolkien described them. Truly we have now come to the point of "Faerian Drama" as Tolkien calls it. Man, I wish he had been alive to see this dream fulfilled.

Gandalfs Beard