One of the things one notices (going through LOTR, or any good work of art, for that matter), is that there is a constant recapitulation process occurring. That is, each of the adventures along the way, in miniature, sum up the overall story arc. So while you are worried in the backdrop about Sauron squashing everyone in the black, annihilating pits of Doom, you are forced to pause and chew your nails over the Barrow Wights. Gandalf himself had this to say:
“That was touch and go: perhaps the most dangerous moment of all.”
Will the Hobbits wake up in time?
But first I had to lay another Tolkien technique on you, and you have just experienced it: reassurance and foreshadowing of a good ending. It's very noticeable and simple in The Hobbit: look for it in Bilbo's recurrent thoughts of his cozy, safe home and wish to be there, followed by the phrase "Not for the last time." Another such touch is a bit more carefully hidden: while the company is in the eagle's eyrie we learn that the dwarves will get their gold (as they will eventually give some of it to the eagles) and also that there's going to be a splendid battle, if we keep reading. This eyrie scene is very interesting, and I will return to it later in the context of Tom Bombadil. Source
We know, do we not, going into Easter, that Good Friday’s suffering will give way to the Eastern morning? Pause for a moment, and ask, Why do we know? How?
Because we believe? Yes and no…
Not merely just that (although yes, Faith is enough) - there is something more. (And maybe more than just one thing, more). Christians have a sense that the Universe is structured that way. Christ recapitulates something that you find, even in Nature. When the caterpillar spins a cocoon, and emerges a butterfly, we are less surprised than we might be, partly because, deep down, we know it has to be this way - it was, it will be…therefore, it IS. This is the logic of the Greater to the Lesser and the Lesser to the Greater, which criss-cross and shoot through the Middle Earth (Middling Things, which is to say, here and now, for us), like the light from stained glass windows in a Gothic cathedral. There is no “Excluded Middle” from the rule of Christ.
This gives a pause…Why do both these logical arguments work, since they are opposites? From the Greater to the Lesser, and the Lesser to the Greater? Jesus used this way of thinking, too: He who is not against me, is with me (Luke 9:50)…He who is not with me, is against me (Matt. 12:30). How can both be true???
Well…if the Universe is structured like the Cross (Reality is a Cross), which is also a Holon, and a Holon in which each part is a microcosm of the whole, & yet the Whole is greater than the sum of the parts…then it could work that way.
Then, we have an explanation for why inverted logic (Lesser to Greater) actually works: every level of reality has a corresponding level above it, and below it, to which it is related in a common way (the Logos).
So, too, do we have a reason to think that skillful literary foreshadowing and narrative can “mirror” Reality faithfully enough to confess, Nature and History is a Book, and the Truth is Stranger than Fiction. Yet some Fiction…can be True.
'Eh, what?' said Tom sitting up, and his eyes glinting in the gloom. 'Don't you know my name yet? That's the only answer. Tell me, who are you, alone, yourself and nameless?'
This critic makes a case that Tom Bombadil is a stand in for the Reader.
First, as previously stated, I believe that J.R.R. Tolkien has given us a riddle in Tom Bombadil that can be solved; the solution is that Tom (or Goldberry, depending on gender) is the reader, and that The House of Bombadil is meant to be a safe place for the reader in Middle Earth.
Like Tom, the reader is not affected by the Ring, terrible implement of evil though it is, and can make it disappear and reappear at will (simply by stopping reading and then restarting). The reader can also see Frodo whenever the hobbit puts the Ring on. However, the reader cannot change the story line, or "alter the Ring itself, nor break its power over others," as Gandalf put it. The reader's knowledge, like Tom's, fails East of the Shire, because that part of the story hasn't been told yet. And, this being written for an audience in the kinder, gentler days that weren't so very long ago, it is certain that the reader would stop reading and close the book in disgust if Sauron won... and to a character in the book, that would certainly look like Night falling.
Well, there it is. I think J.R.R. Tolkien was a skilled writer who used many techniques to bring his readers into his stories. He knew that gaining their trust was vital, as without it they could not suspend their disbelief in the sort of fantastic creations he intended to put before them. He did this by addressing them on a child's level, even when they were adults, and always making them feel secure. It worked quite well. Tom Bombadil and Goldberry likely are intended to be both gatekeepers and reader avatars, and the House of Bombadil the reader's safe place in Middle Earth where the reader can feel comfortable at a subconscious level even when the story moves to Mordor and beyond, and the main characters are changed so dramatically.
I will go even farther. Who is the Reader? If the reader can identify with Tom Bombadil, then when they return to their state (closing the book), they carry that Primordial State back with them, & it awakens an answer.
The primordial state is Unfallen Humanity. We can, if we read attentively enough, awaken a layer in the deeper soul, which corresponds with Tom Bombadil. Over us, the Ring can have no power, in this world, as in Middle Earth.
Here is Peter Leithart discussing the Quadriga, the Patristic method of reading Scripture, to penetrate down into deeper (and therefore higher) meanings of Scripture. So it isn’t crazy to think/read this way. It’s normal. It used to be Traditional, in the Christian Church.
Luther’s criticism of Origen of Alexandria’s use of allegory led to a basic rejection of the spiritual sense of Scripture after the Reformation, at least among Protestantism theologians. “Luther’s attack on Origen’s use of allegory (de Servo Arbitrio) became decisive not only for the Reformers in general, but for Protestantism ever since.”[26] Practically speaking, though, Luther’s critique did not completely end the use of allegory because “in actual practice various forms of figurative interpretation continued to be practiced by the Reformers…even when they stressed the primacy of the literal sense.”[27] In the last 150 years with the emergence of the so-called ‘history of religions’ school, followed by the ascendance of the historical-critical method of exegesis, the literal sense became the primary and ‘proper’ way to view Scripture among most Protestant theologians and many Roman Catholic theologians as well
I wish that we Reform the Reformation, by extending it and making it consistent - Luther’s ploughman can know, and understand, all four levels of meaning of Scripture, not just the perspicacious, literal one. For the spiritual is not denied to even the convenience store clerk, if they are willing.
Reading Scripture (or any profound work of art, arguing from Greater to Lesser - like LOTR) in this way, develops an Interior Castle within the person. This is the inner Jerusalem, which mirrors the one above.
“But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.” - Galatians 4:26
While we may not conquer the riddle of the Sphinx, we can parse that of the Stone Lion. (Here’s an English example of this problem).
You understand from In Media Res: Shī-shì shí shī shǐ cannot be understood, except through Experience and Life. Then, the “true Myth” has enough material to begin to create something that answers inside of us, the “Readers” of God’s text. And pay attention to the “accent”. It helps. Do educated people acquaint themselves with the Bible, any longer? As part of the accoutrement of a civilized person?
Meanwhile, people got to “fake it”.
“I’ve certainly felt guilty about that. But guilt for those less privileged and those who experience the prejudice from which I’m protected isn’t enough. Acknowledgement is the first step in hopefully using your privilege to realise a more equitable society. I’m trying to find ways to deconstruct that hierarchy as opposed to just enjoying the privilege and acknowledging the guilt.”
Such as? “I’m keen to develop as an activist and involve myself in charities and organisations. And with my acting, it’s important that the projects I do have a sociopolitical impact. I try to be conscious about the message. As a white, straight, middle-class male, I’m aware of things I take for granted.”
Is he? Are people aware that our entire Civilization is beginning to circle the toilet at the speed of light, even the much-vaunted-and-holy-and indivisible “Market”? Is Political Activism possibly a substitute (ersatz) for real, self-knowledge of the inner worlds? Many great spiritual thinkers have remarked it is so. Or can you just Bootstrap your way up out of the quandaries and binaries with more charity, activism, and messaging?
Real men tread the Paths of the Dead. Even when they leave behind a beautiful, noble, love-struck young woman who worships them. When the powers of Evil are exalted, the powers of Good go underground, to upend the problem. Yertle the Turtle proves that it is so. And he wasn’t that strong or wise.
King Aragorn is incorruptible, un-distractable, and indomitable. It took awhile to train him up that way, but looks like he is not going to “stumble on the last step”.
‘Receive it, lord!’ he said: ‘in earnest of other things that shall be given back. But if I may counsel you in the use of your own, do not use it — yet! Be wary!’
‘When have I been hasty or unwary, who have waited and prepared for so many long years?’ said Aragorn.
‘Never yet. Do not then stumble at the end of the road,’ answered Gandalf.
Only the will of Aragorn holds even the fell-handed Dunedain (and Gimli) to pass through that dark, cavernous way, where they are “hosted” by a company of the unquiet dead, enemies of Gondor and the Good, men who (when called to fight Sauron) declined the call, & were cursed by Isildur.
Aragorn is beyond hope, and therefore, beyond Fear. But what he senses and sees is that when Hope perished, you move forward, not backward, and enter the regions of Love, which endures forever, and cannot perish.
Sometimes, Love Harrows Hell, and leads a Host of the Dead to wage war upon Evil. A strange mask, indeed.
Can the Reader recognize their own inner King Aragorn?
Gandalf? Frodo? Tom Bombadil? If you can, even to a little degree (and why else would you “like” the LOTR), to that degree, you are a true Gnostic. Saint Clement nailed it, a long time ago:
As, then, philosophy has been brought into evil repute by pride and self-conceit, so also gnosis by false gnosis called by the same name; of which the apostle writing says “O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding the profane and vain babblings and oppositions of science (gnosis) falsely so called; which some professing, have erred concerning the faith” (I Time. 6:20-21). Convicted by this utterance, the heretics reject the Epistles to Timothy. Well, then, if the Lord is the truth, and wisdom, and power of God, as in truth He is, it is shown that the real Gnostic is he that knows Him and His Father by Him. For his sentiments are the same with him who said: “The lips of the righteous known high things.” (Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies, Stromata II, II; translated W. Wilson, Edinburgh, 1869, vol.2, p.33). Source
St. Paul uses the word Gnosis - it is part of the result of Pistis (Faith). There is Gnosis falsely-so-called, which implies there is a real Gnosis. Satan cannot create, only distort - like Sauron.
But Gandalf-Frodo-Aragorn (and others) are real, regardless. And they have to stand forth, in the soul. They do stand forth. In a sense, there is no “should” or “ought”. As we are refined, more and more, more and more do they shine, and we shine with them.
It is all “in the art of the process” - and because there is no neutral standpoint outside of the Holon (we are a holon, too), Faith is not only obligatory, but exists. It is. You can be rational with your religion, and religious about your rationality. But in either case (or if you do both, and try to move even higher), you start with Faith. Man is Faith, embodied, and called to go further, in order to become a Son of Adam, and Daughter of Eve. Without Faith, we could not even be.
Without true Faith, no real Gnosis is possible, and this is what our I “Is”. Which also describes the Pyramid Scheme that Western Civilization has become, in every respect. When it falls, great shall the fall thereof be.
The path of the Just, however, is blessed:
"The powers of soul (thinking, feeling, and willing) acknowledge the self and its revelation, conscience, as its 'Lord' - except in the case of madness, moral idiocy, or intoxication. Likewise the self acknowledges as its Lord the God who transcends the self; and it acknowledges His revelation, which stands above the individual conscience as the "conscience of consciences". This, which towers above the individual, human self and its conscience, and is experienced and recognized as such, is worshiped by the self and the powers of soul subordinate to it as holy. For what is holy to the self is that which on the one hand is not foreign to its true nature, and yet on the other hand is experienced as towering above it, as standing higher." (Covenant of the Heart, pt. II ch. 2)