Tolkien Chapter 3 - Agni, The Secret Fire

God and the Occult...

                                    Nicholas Roerich. Agni Yoga. Diptych. Right part. 1928

   John Michael Greer has pointed out that Tolkien was absolutely familiar with Theosophy, during his youth. So he would have known of the doctrine of Agni, or the Secret Fire. 

No, I don’t know for a fact that Tolkien was influenced by The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, but when I first read the book some years ago I was struck forcefully by just how many of the key themes of the earliest phases of Tolkien’s great legendarium can be found in its pages. Tolkien was certainly powerfully influenced in later years by the books he read in youth—for example, the scene in The Fellowship of the Ring where Frodo is imprisoned by the barrow-wight is influenced, almost to the point of unconscious plagiarism, by a comparable scene in Walter de la Mare’s 1910 fantasy The Three Mulla-Mulgars—and we know, thanks to the labors of his son Christopher, that the themes I’ve described were major influences from the earliest sketches Tolkien wrote to his last writings on Middle-earth. What makes this especially fascinating to me is that Tolkien, devout Roman Catholic that he was in later life, was profoundly influenced by the Theosophical alternative history. From a timeline divided into numbered ages—the Third Age of Middle-earth would fit quite comfortably into the historical cycles Blavatsky described—to an Atlantis-story that is Blavatskian through and through, dominated by the conflict between a majority that worshiped the power of evil and a minority that fled the doomed continent at the last moment, Middle-earth is a creation of the Theosophical century. “I am a servant of the Secret Fire,” Gandalf says at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm; that term is nowhere defined in Tolkien’s papers, but any well-read Theosophist knows what it means. It seems likely that during his younger years, before middle age brought its traditional conservatism, Tolkien fed his imagination with scraps of Theosophical literature.

   This term (the Secret Fire or Agni) was borrowed by Helena Blavatsky for Theosophy from the much older Hindu tradition. Agni was the god of Fire, one of the main deities in India. Agni had already become a term with more inner meaning, detached from external manifestation among demigods: Boris Mouravieff referenced it in his work on Gnosis, and connects it with the Holy Spirit. 

King of Heavens, Comforter Spirit of Truth, Omnipresent, All Filling, Treasure of Saints, Dispenser of Life, Come and abide in us, Purify us from all pollution And save our souls, O good one! Translated from old Slavonic, with author's italics. The author notes that this concept of the Holy Spirit is represented in the form of Fire (Acts ii: 3) and is analogous to Agni in Hinduism. We should also note that in Greek the terms spirit and air are homonyms (pneuma), as are the terms spirit and breath (doukh) in old Slavonic. (page 92, Gnosis)

   Although the occult influences of the Inklings is offensive and scandalous to the average evangelical American or traditional Catholic, the Inklings were all cultured and well-educated enough to have encountered and interacted with their cultural milieu and Zeitgeist. As such, it was unavoidable that they deal with common doctrines, common among their contemporary class. Frank L. Baum's Wizard of Oz falls into the same category. In this sense, a well-heeled, up-to-date intellectual who happens to be a "red-hot Christian Platonist" (eg., CS Lewis, John Michael Greer's description of him) is very much in the same existential situation that Christendom is in collectively, when one considers spiritual and even physical archaeology. For example, when the Augustinian mission succeeded in converting southern England, they deliberately built churches upon old Celtic pagan sites, or Anglo-Saxon temple sites. The ground would have been purified and re-consecrated, but the geographically favorable sites had already been identified by the pagans. And so that's where the Churches were going up. Tolkien would have given no more thought to baptizing and re-consecrating a Theosophical term, than St. Augustine of Britain gave to approving the location of new Christian churches on the old pagan holy sites. 

   A Christian intellectual inevitably does the same thing with the living ideas in circulation in his age, as our missionaries did in the Dark Ages. The goal was not to obliterate Evil, but to sublimate, purify, and baptize it. You cut with the grain of the wood. The worldly influence or idea represents (in some way) a "favorable site" - it has just been done in the wrong way, and/or consecrated to false ends. Tolkien was no exception to this rule, and comes in for the same banal, utterly predictable, and vapid but venomous criticism. If you don't like the idea of "co-opting" paganism, think of it as conquering, crushing, and occupying it! 

   Now it doesn't help that Tolkien's powerful mythos became a favorite in the 1960s, with neo-pagan groups. These groups used his imaginative work as the basis for new belief and ritual. 

The Silmarillíon also inspired occultists of various sorts to construct Tolkien-based rituals. In 1990, Gareth Knight, a farnous British occultist, published The Magical World of the Inklings in which he claimed that Tolkien had obtained secret knowledge from the so-called akashic records - the place where all spiritual knowledge is stored according to Theosophy - and that he had worked this secret knowledge into his books (Knight 1990, 130). The book also included a very elaborate visualization ritual composed by Vivienne Jones, "The Voyage West", in which four humans, the Elf Glorfindel, and Melian the Maia sail by "the Straight Road" to Tol Eressca where they are welcomed by Queen Galadriel. There, they make a "Rainbow Bridge" through which healing energy can flow into Middleearth. A few years later, in North Carolina, Vincent Bridges of the Fifth Way Mystery School constructed a "High Elvish Working", based on the pentagram rituals used by cererponial magicians. This ritual was performed at various þagan festivals, circulated in print among pagans in the United'States and New Zealand, and was later published online. Both of these rituals inspired the rituals of later Tolkien spirituality groups. Link

Such is the strange fate of great artists, that they fulfill the words of the Saviour, in the condemnations which this brings: 

Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Matthew 5:11

No one ever said these slanders would necessarily be thrown from outside the walls of the Church, and what worse could be thrown at a man, than to revile him as a betrayer of the Gospel?  The Pharisees within the Christian religion, and the scribal faction, and the party of the Sadducees of the Church, are accusing Tolkien of being un-Christian, and perhaps even anti-Christian. The argument is that by very virtue of his association with Theosophical influence and ideas, his entire oeuvre is a fatal compromise with the world.  

Secondly, Tolkien’s extensive cosmology, created outside the bounds of Genesis and other books of the Bible, reflects in many ways the esoteric understanding of Gnosticism, the ancient enemy of biblical Christianity, to the delight and approval of most modern-day gnostics...Presented below, for your further edification, are some pertinent excerpts from Davidsen’s English summary of his dissertation which should offer enough specific information to prove the need for caution in promoting Tolkien’s works for its religious content. Perhaps it will provide the American Christian community with a much-needed wake-up call to be more diligent in not compromising the pure gospel and our biblical distinctives by yoking ourselves with unbelievers in a common, intemperate pursuit for fantasy and myth that ultimately strays from orthodox Christianity. Link

                Some would have us believe this grave is that of a very un-Christian man 

   It is better to be called a Gnostic than a Satanist, but still very dire, a strong and dirty aspersion. This kind of attack is common among evangelicals, not uncommon among Catholics, and (apparently) fairly standard even for the Orthodox. The "Fourth Church" of Pentecostalism and associated movements in the Global South are even more hostile. The Harry Potter controversy in Christian circles, in modern times, is pretty standard stuff, and representative also of the discussion around Tolkien, although no one ever accused or praised Tolkien for being a revolutionary. Perhaps it is time to change that, but from a different direction. 

   What, exactly, is "The Secret Fire"? Is it possible to unpack Tolkien's imagination, in a way that lets us perfectly see through these base and baseless accusations, to not only know the Secret Fire, but understand why the confusion arose in the first place? Can we gather, more closely, around that Fire, and thereby see more clearly? Can we rise above and beyond the talking heads, the inquisitors, the fan-boys, and the snobs, and see what Tolkien was really doing? I believe that there is such a way, and that we are particularly well suited for it during this time. It is simply a matter of putting the pieces together, and meditating on what it must ineluctably mean. Additionally, the evangelical and Puritanical Zeitgeist of our own day has become more extreme, and also more weak. By entering into Tolkien's work, we can see farther, clearer, and more safely. We can actually see what is going on. The proof is in the pudding. 

   The author does not take seriously the idea that Tolkien was not an authentic and deeply Christian man, or artist. If we enter very deeply into Tolkien's roots, ignoring the objections (for now), one sees how these things "must come to pass" and what Tolkien the artist aimed at. That is, it is by taking Tolkien seriously, that we gain a real understanding of both his merits and faults, and those of his opponents. What we lose in fear and slander and ignorance, we gain in explanatory power, vision, and intensity. The best rebuff and refutation of his critics, and the perfect revenge, is to dive deeply into Tolkien's work. 

   Now, more than ever, that is possible. The scholarship on Tolkien has become breathtaking. I have already cited some of the important steps of that work, including Verlyn Flieger's book, Splintered Light, Logos and Language in Tolkien's World. What is lacking is more work like Flieger's book, with its unitary comprehension of depth and height in the art object. We need more in that same, deep vein. Luckily, we have lately been given such a groundbreaking book. It is The Flame Imperishable: Tolkien, Saint Thomas, and the Metaphysics of Faerie.  What Flieger did in her day (1983), MacIntosh is doing in ours. Scholarship and insight at this level, puts the reader in a position to begin to immanently and transcendently comprehend Tolkien, by going far beyond former understanding. They provide a jumping off point into creative discovery and exploration, and are themselves the product of such on the part of the author. 

   We may denote The Secret Fire by the cognate Agni. Is this objectionable or problematic? The biggest (and in the end, perhaps the only) material objection to Tolkien's "dabbling" is that God (in the views of traditional orthodox Christianity) is the exact opposite of what could be called "the occult". Tolkien (on this view) gives lip service to God, but weaves in occult themes to his Objet d'art. For the opposing camp, this is absolutely unforgivable, and is seen as putting old putrid wine in new infected wineskins, obviously the literary equivalent of blasphemy or worse. Traditional theology considers it sacrilege, blasphemy, and perhaps even witchcraft, to dabble in what they term "the occult". The occult compromises anything that is "invisible", unless it is God, the soul, and perhaps a few angels. 

   This outlook, I am afraid to have to say, is a bogey-man, the literary equivalent of what Carl Jung called Projecting the Shadow. In the first place, that which is "occult" is simply hidden, or concealed. The sun is occulted during an eclipse, or the moon. Occult blood in one's stool is not blood from witchcraft, it is blood you cannot see with the naked eye. I realize that the term is meant to encapsulate a negative evaluation, but in this case, the given Christian definition of the occult, is itself occulted. What (if anything) does this word really mean? It is similar to the term "racist" or "racism" - it can only mean, by this point, something that is "super-double-plus-evil", since the connotation of being hidden or invisible is itself used in the Greek New Testament and applied to the Christian mysteries. None other than the Apostle and Saint Paul has this to say: 

For I would that ye knew what great conflict I have for you, and for them at Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh; 2 That their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ; 3 In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. 4 And this I say, lest any man should beguile you with enticing words. 5 For though I be absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the spirit, joying and beholding your order, and the stedfastness of your faith in Christ. 6 As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: 7 Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. 8 Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. 9 For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. Colossians 2:1-9

   The mystery is the Mystereion. Isn't the mystery, then, "Occult"? It is hidden, it is invisible, it is concealed as a mystery. The word is not a fluke, it is very common in the New Testament, and is cognate with "initiation". For that matter, God is the most occult of all occult objects, and that because He is an "object that is not an object", the great "I Am", the Being and the Fountain of all Being. His humanity is fully revealed in Christ, and yet that humanity is fully "mysterioned" in His Godhood. In the language of the mystics, which carries a precise theological analogy because of the Incarnation, God is never more fully revealed than when concealed, and never more concealed, than when revealed. The God-manhood and man-Godhood are united in the Christ, Jesus the Lord. And this, precisely, is the way Saint Paul discusses this mystery, in his epistles. God is the Alpha and the Omega, and by implication, also everything in between. 

For nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest; neither any thing hid, that shall not be known and come abroad. Luke 8:17

   To oppose God and "the occult", by their supposed instrinsic nature, is to treat of God as an object among other objects (something entirely not hidden), and to deny to God His ongoing mystery. There can be no question of accepting the implicit premise, connatural among so many "orthodox Christians", that the invisible and the hidden and the mysterious, all belong to Satan. Or that the occult is a sure mark of his power. To do this is to accept an instrinsic form of practical atheism. Under this rubric, God becomes synonymous with our own human, natural understanding, or even limited to our empirical senses. This is neither Orthodox, nor traditional, nor Christian. Special pleading about the perspicacity of Revelation in Scripture and the person of Christ, notwithstanding, if divorced in antithesis from mystery (or whatever term you prefer), transforms rationalistic Perspicacity into practical atheism. 

   This is precisely the sequence of thought we have seen most fully exhibited in the West, from nominalism and legalism, into fundamentalism and enlightenment, to Deism and full rationalism, and finally to practical and then official atheism. So if one wishes to object to Tolkien's use of the Secret Fire from occult Theosophy, by making one's position indistinguishable from practical atheism, I must gladly side with Tolkien. There can be no successful opposition to Agni, the sacred Flame, the manifestation of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps it would be well, to pause and consider this warning from Scripture: 

31:Διὰ τοῦτο λέγω ὑμῖν, Πᾶσα ἁμαρτία καὶ βλασφημία ἀφεθήσεται τοῖς ἀνθρώποις· ἡ δὲ τοῦ πνεύματος βλασφημία οὐκ ἀφεθήσεται τοῖς ἀνθρώποις.32:Καὶ ὃς ἂν εἴπῃ λόγον κατὰ τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, ἀφεθήσεται αὐτῷ· ὃς δ᾿ ἂν εἴπῃ κατὰ τοῦ πνεύματος τοῦ ἁγίου, οὐκ ἀφεθήσεται αὐτῷ, οὔτε ἐν τούτῳ τῷ αἰῶνι οὔτε ἐν τῷ μέλλοντι.

31:Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men.32:And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come. Matthew 12:31-32

   Shouldn't this give one pause, before judging the inner heart of a man, an artist, a fellow human being? And wasn't Christ accused of having power over Beelzebub, because He served Beelzebub? The doctrine (or mystery) of the Secret Fire is not some "occult" term, but a synonym for the full-orbed experience of the Holy Spirit. 

                                  The Birmingham Oratory - unofficial teacher of Tolkien

Here is the language of the Holy Spirit, in the form of the writing of Tolkien's life:  

What is less well-known is how much a part the Birmingham Oratory, founded by Blessed John Henry Newman in 1849, played in Tolkien’s early life....With this in mind, she left instructions for her sons be made wards of the Birmingham Oratory with a Father Francis Xavier Morgan named as the two boys’ legal guardian...Before leaving for France, the recently married couple visited the Oratory, spending their last night together at a hotel, The Plough & Harrow Hotel, which still stands adjacent to the Oratory... “Out of the darkness of my life… I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament . . . There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth…” Link

   We can let Macintosh explicate Agni/Secret Fire, in both Biblical and theological terms, from here on out. He develops the theme, and adds to it, that Flieger opened with Splintered Light. It should not have had to have been opened, nor a defense of Tolkien made in this regard, but such is the fate of the course of the Light.    

Tolkien characerized The Lord of the Rings as a story basically 'about God and His sole right  to divine honour' (Letter, 243)...God can be 'simultaneously absent, and never named'  (Letter 253)....it is a radically theological reckoning of being which he shares with St. Thomas that allows Tolkien in his fiction to be paradoxically everywhere and nowhere silent about God. (page 29, The Flame Imperishable)

   A seemingly simple and deceptively harmless thesis! From this innocuous salvo, Macintosh proceeds to make good on his claim, and in the process revealing what Tolkien himself was up to. Because it is only a view of such a Being, an "the-only-possible Being", self-subsisting, and in whom the creatures subsist, that Tolkien's world could be generated. The proof of that involved (as Tolkien well knew) the implicit going on to show (in fact) that this was true of not merely the fantasy sub-Creation, but the real world. It was in the act of the Art form, that this mutual re-inforcement of the Fantastic World with our own was made perfectly lucid. For in the transference of the imagination from author to work, and the return of it, in reader to collective imagination, the thought becomes inevitable: Is there something similar happening in all of Reality, itself? Why else is this kind of Art, so moving? Where, if not from this fact, derives its power? 

   Though the analogy was ever so weak, and ever so humble, if there is even a tiny spark or thread that bridges the Creator and the Creation, then this (in fact, and in faith) is the Divine. 

That we call Divine, which is present in even the smallest part, and which cannot be overwhelmed by (even) the greatest part. - Bonaventura

   Although there are no "other words in art" (Alan Bennett), what these ideas get at is something surprising about the nature of Reality, "Itself". The only kind of living God that we could possibly care about (or could help us, the creatures), is exactly the living God, the I AM THAT I AM. There could be no objectification of such a God, no question of His existence "out there", which would turn Him into an It and an Object among Others. Although there might be a manifested form of God "out there" as a condescension to our weakness, the living God would be where Tradition has always argued He was - at the heart of the world, the heart of the creatures, the heart of the Cosmos. And what does the "heart" mean? Yet, again, neither "inside" nor "outside" the Cosmos, since the Cosmos Iself, in ensemble and in particular, individual, concrete Being, was the manifestation of the one, true God. It is for this reason that He rightly wears the crown title of "Lord". Were He only "in the heart" (as if the interior were "somewhere" deep inside), then this would objectify God, and make Him so small, we would need and succed with a microscope to see Him. To say He is the "interior" of Being and all beings, is to say that 

the delegated, secondary, or intermediate agency of angels and Valar is not something that displaces the Creator's immediate casality, as though creaturely secondary causality was something that "intervened" between him and his effects in such a way as to place his agency at a further level of remove. As we have already seen in his Thomistic view of the "being of God in things," for Tolkien, following St. Thomas, the interaction of divne and creaturely causality is not a zero-sum game, as though God's line of action operated on the same plane and therefore in competeition with his creatures, even if his causal power should always infinitely transcend theirs. p. 62, TFI

   In the old language of the Westminster Confession (which had largely lost the powerful metaphysic behind the language) God's primary Cause (God as Cause) "does not overthrow secondary Causes, but rather, establishes them". This is the dry, scholiastical language, and we need not restrict ourselves to its limitations. To understand the "inner meaning" of it, is to no longer absolutely require its literal or restrictive sense, except as an entry point. There may be other entry points, for instance. As CS Lewis once put it, "it's higher up, and further in". This cannot happen, if you amputate mystery from one's worship and knowledge of God. A fully illuminated God would be a trophy, a relic, and a museum piece. Anything but the living God. 

   Macintosh is so sound upon this point, that it is almost sufficient just to quote in extenso from his work. 

As the Creative activity or power of Iluvatar that is simultaneously "with" and "within" him and yet "sent forth" from him, the Flame Imperishable is, as Tolkien writes in his commentary on the Arthrabeth, "in some sense distinct from" Iluvatar (MR, 335, 345). Tolkien here implies the presence of "distinction" or difference within the Creator, while at the same time implying another "sense" in which the Flame Imperishable is in fact not distinct from but is the same as or identical with Iluvatar. p.69, TFI

   This creative Power is the Holy Spirit, Agni, the Flame Imperishable. 

As (Ralph) Wood himself goes on to admit, the Flame Imperishable by which Iluvatar creates the world is none other than his "own Spirit" with which he has "imbued the entire cosmos". p69 TFI

   The very thing that establishes Tolkien's "orthodoxy" (that God is active in the fantastics powers like the Valar) implies that the Creation "participates" the Being of God, through union as creatures with the Creator. It is this "Old Testament ambiguity" (p68, TFI) which not only "allows, but implies" a Trinitarian interpretation of God, which also implies a Gnostic reading of the Trinity, vis-a-vis the Creator-creature distinction. If God is somehow "in" the world, reconciling it to Himself, but this "inside" is read not as purely distinct from the Creation, then we are right back in the doghouse with the "orthodox" Christians. If the inside of the world is simultaneously "most highly itself" and also "very God of very God", so that "God is the heart of the heart" (St. Augustine), then the charge of Gnosticism will come flying out.

   I do not claim to know a single definition of Gnosticism, nor will I elect to directly defend a form of Christian Gnosis, as Nicholas Berdyaev attempts in his Destiny of Man. Instead, I will ask the "orthodox traditional Christian" one question. If the Creator-Creature distinction is absolute, then what primal Nothing did God create the creatures from? It is a highly inconvenient metaphysical commonplace that if God created the world from a pre-existent nothingness, as if it were an object totally external to Himself, so that God was therefore primally and absolutely external from us (the creature), then there would be two co-eternal principles. One would be Good, the other Evil. One would be Being, the other Chaos and anti-Being. We would then be Manichean heretics, and not Christians. This is precisely the Manichean heresy. It was rejected, and so-termed as heresy, because if Evil (and creatureliness from that Nothingness) was co-eternal with God, then God could not be truly Good, but merely one option of a binary. One might as well choose to will the Evil, as the Good. Yes, even God Himself could choose to surrender to Evil, or try to, although He could not manage it, since the war between Good and Evil is what is Eternal, and not the Light, Love, and Life of original goodness. 

             Saint Augustine narrowly escaped being a Manichean bishop, officially...

   Tragically for their side of the "debate", there is no coherent response possible to this question, which could reconcile an absolute Creator-Creature distinction, since there can be only one Being, the living God. There can be no Life apart from God. No Being, neither. No Light, and no Love. It follows from this that creatures themselves, qua creatures, are still (yet) manifestations of God. A creature is a being that appears most evidently as not-God (privation of God's Being), yet remains at its heart, most surely as is-God, or origin/destiny-God. A creature could not even have a "heart", were its origin and destiny outside of God. It is the in between (the "Middle Earth") where things appear otherwise. God tells His story with the old literary device of in media res. A creature could be defined as God "in between". A "creature" is a "Middle Earth" or "Midgard". 

      You have to look harder in the Christian Tradition, but this teaching is there. It is much plainer, but not essentially any different, in the Bhagavad-Gita. 

Those who know not the Divine lodged in the human body, are ignorant of it because they are grossly subject to this mechanism of Prakriti, helplessly subject to its mental limitations and acquiescent in them, and dwell in an Asuric nature that deludes with desire and bewilders with egoism the will and the intelligence, mohinım prakrtim sritah¯ .. For the Purushottama within is not readily manifest to any and every being; he conceals himself in a thick cloud of darkness or a bright cloud of light, utterly he envelops and wraps himself in his Yogamaya. “All this world,” says the Gita, “because it is bewildered by the three states of being determined by the modes of Nature, fails to recognise me, for this my divine Maya of the modes of Nature is hard to get beyond; those cross beyond it who approach Me; but those who dwell in the Asuric nature of being, have their knowledge reft from them by Maya". Link

   Tolkien accepted a form of Christian Gnosis, at least at some level, since Iluvatar is this kind of God. This is how Iluvatar can be everywhere absent, and yet always and most deeply present of all that is present, at the same time. The Creator-creature distinction is the disguise of God. Macintosh shows how this teaching existed in Thomas Aquinas in more than just an implicit way, and it is plausible that this was its "origin" for Tolkien. As Catholic, his intellectual heritage and roots surely reached towards Aquinas, as Macintosh has demonstrated conclusively. That debate, after Flieger and Macintosh have done their work, is terminated. One could name many others in the Christian Tradition, as well, who held these ideas: Eckhardt, Erigena, the German Mystics, etc. It has always been in the mystical tradition of Christianity. It has been, practically, the whole of it. 

   All of this discussion may seem far afield from the novels of a quaint English Don, who spoke of sub-Creation and sang of hobbits and the Rohirrim. Yet the conclusion from LOTR (and Tolkien's commentaries, works, and letters) is clear - The Secret Fire is God Himself. It is not occult or magic, though we might perhaps argue that God Himself is even the magic, as He is everything else, as well. Evil can have no real existence, either in Eternity before Time, or Eternity, after it. Nor can it forever torment and dominate Creation. It is the opposite of the Secret Fire. It is, one is tempted to say, the Shadow. 

   Agni or the Spirit, Iluvatar Himself, provides the sacrifice that is required to save the world, which Tolkien defines as the eucatastrophe.  

                                 Eucatastrophe at the end of The Lord of the Rings. (Ted Nasmith)

The best-known and most fully realized eucatastrophe in Tolkien's work occurs in the climax of The Lord of the Rings. Though victory seems assured for Sauron, the One Ring is permanently destroyed as a result of Gollum's waylaying of Frodo at Mount Doom.[10] Frodo essentially fails his impossible quest at its very end, claiming the Ring for himself – however, at this moment, Gollum suddenly appears, steals the ring, and in his ecstatic gloating falls into the fire. If not for Frodo's previous mercy in sparing Gollum's life (a great risk owing to Gollum's obvious treachery, met with bitter protest by Sam), and if not for the Ring's own corruptive influence on Gollum, Sauron would surely have reclaimed it. Thus, Evil is inadvertently and unforeseeably defeated through a small act of kindness and through its own corruptive machinations. Another example of eucatastrophe is the recurring role of the eagles as unexpected rescuers throughout Tolkien's writing. While their role has been described as that of a deus ex machina,[11] Tolkien described Bilbo's "eucatastrophic emotion" at the eagles' appearance in The Hobbit as one of the key moments of the book.[12]

In his 1947 lecture On Fairy Stories, Tolkien makes explicit his doctrine on this. 

I would venture to say that approaching the Christian Story from this direction, it has long been my feeling (a joyous feeling) that God redeemed the corrupt making-creatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature. The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels ... and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man's history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation.

   In artistic form, he made this argument to CS Lewis as well, in his poem on Myth, written for CS Lewis. Man, as a sub-creator, had the inalienable (God-given) right to imitate his creator. 

The heart of man is not compound of lies, but draws some wisdom from the only Wise, and still recalls him. Though now long estranged, man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed. Disgraced he may be, yet is not dethroned, and keeps the rags of lordship one he owned, his world-dominion by creative act: not his to worship the great Artefact. man, sub-creator, the refracted light through whom is splintered from a single White to many hues, and endlessly combined in living shapes that move from mind to mind. Though all the crannies of the world we filled with elves and goblins, though we dared to build gods and their houses out of dark and light, and sow the seed of dragons, 'twas our right (used or misused). The right has not decayed. We make still by the law in which were made
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   It turns out, Man's sub-creative power is God Himself, The Secret Fire, which dwells with man, inhabiting the clay vessels, but not "as though" He was external to them or "locatable" in some sort of secret recess that could be pried open. God dwells with us in such a way that sub-Creation is in some sense, no different from Creation. This was why Frodo saved Middle Earth "alone", and yet, only Iluvatar did that, "alone", as it were (Frodo failed). Frodo is Iluvatar by grace, not by nature. And others were, also, though they had a much smaller role. 

   It needs to be said that there is always a "reserve" potential in God. Humans will never be God by nature, but only grace. That is why we are "sub-creators", not Iluvatar Himself. But this distinction is not to be taken in such a way as to imply that there is any ultimate ontological separation (in the Secret Fire of Love) between the Creator, and His creature. In God, there is no separation or Fall or absolute distinction, for the "two become one flesh", but without losing their individual identity. 

   In this Vision (which we think Tolkien shared, in a very English and Catholic way), Ontology cannot be done without Eschatology. Every doctrine, in fact, in Christianity, is to be viewed in an eschatalogical light. This was Nicholas Berdyaev's life work, and ongoing argument, particularly brought out in his The Beginning and the End. In this understanding, The Secret Fire is another name for God's ongoing creative participation in the common task of perfecting the world. The New Testament calls this The Heavenly Jerusalem Above, or the Kingdom of God. 

   We are finally in a position to define precisely what The Secret Fire means. If it is Iluvatar Himself, it means whatever the Divine Author wishes it to mean. The Holy Spirit (Agni) blows where He wills, and Who can say to Him, What doest Thou? One serves the Secret Fire, one does not master it by domination, or even by definition. The Secret Fire would be creativity itself, freedom itself, independence itself, in a mode which reunited God-as-potential with God-in-actuality. It is the revivification and recreation of a Creation that has too long been subject to the Fall. It is the "Thing of all Things", and yet "No-Thing" at all, but rather the occulted Flame at the heart of the world, God Himself, revealing more and more of Himself in the true nature of His creatures. It is God illuminated and Nature transfigured. 

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are forerunners of those on Mount Tabor at the Transfiguration