LOTR spirituality

[PlayTheGame]

A cool thing i found in LOTR mythology:

At the beginning, when nothing exists yet,

Eru Iluvatar (the one God) creates the Ainur, deities that make music with him to create the universe. Melkor is the strongest of the Ainur.

all Ainur follow the lead of Eru, they play the music as he commands. Except for Melkor, he wants to rebel against Eru and create his own music. This makes the music imperfect and thus the imperfect world is born. 

Melkor thinks he is able to go against Eru and is therefore strong, and separate from Eru. But Eru reveals to him that Melkors rebellion was part of his plan after all, and that the world is perfect after all. There is no way for Melkor to go against Eru, for that is only part of Eru’s plan.

Seems to be quite a good allegory how ego&devilry relates to God. 

[Raptorsin7]

@PlayTheGame I love LOTR. Favorite movies ever.

[Nahm]

@PlayTheGame Nice! 

[Yog]

It sounds like old school norwegian black metal band story.  

Tolkien was a master at capturing these archetypal stories, a lot of human wisdom in them. 

 Reading the works of Jung and Campbell, along with x10 marathons of LOTR is a valid spiritual retreat.

[Yiceorenil]

The best movies ever.

[Vynce]

I knew about the deep Silmarillion lore already some time ago and wondered if Tolkien was enlightened to tell his story about the nature of his fiction similar to how our actual reality functions. 

Some serious genius this man.

[Eternal Unity]

Awesome! Love LOTR and Tolkien.

[peanutspathtotruth]

6 hours ago, Vynce said:

I knew about the deep Silmarillion lore already some time ago and wondered if Tolkien was enlightened to tell his story about the nature of his fiction similar to how our actual reality functions. 

Some serious genius this man.

I wondered that, too. It's very easy to interpret a story as coming from a deeper intention than it actually does, I used to do this a lot. And it's beautiful to interpret the story itself as a deep spiritual metaphor, even better! But projecting that onto the creator as if he must understand what he is writing is one further step of guessing. These analogies are found plenty in the art of storytelling, and Tolkien was a master at understanding this art at its core. So yeah, hard to say, but I'd intuitively say no.

Still best story I ever read, and the movies are equally as masterful - I still can't fully fathom how geniusly creative we can be, even on this plain "human" level. He, writing this story for over 30 years and Jackson being a magician of cinema who seriously adapted this shit in the best way anyone could have expected. The behind the scenes are as magic as the movies themselves, doesn't take away anything, even adds more amazement.  

[Vynce]

@peanutspathtotruth you're probably right. Tolkien also re-used a lot of stories and pictures from mostly middle-northern European mythology. 

This phenomena of someone telling partial truth can be dangerous if this someone is not a fictional author. Especially in self-help circles, teachers can have a deep understanding about some topics and talk with the same seriousness about other topics, which they don't understand the slightest. 

I have fallen into that trap a lot in the past. I hope this fallacy is diminished here at Actualized.org 

[peanutspathtotruth]

43 minutes ago, Vynce said:

Especially in self-help circles, teachers can have a deep understanding about some topics and talk with the same seriousness about other topics, which they don't understand the slightest. 

I have fallen into that trap a lot in the past. I hope this fallacy is diminished here at Actualized.org 

Yes, that's a really good point! Even when the words are the same, you smell if it's just intellectually understood -> in yourself and in teachers.

[Yiceorenil]

Tolkien is really a brilliant writer. Before watching the Lord of the Rings movie, I wasn't really interested in reading his stories. Although the printed version of the film has long existed. I don't know why, but it didn't appeal to me at all. And finally, after watching the movie and spending enough time on the forum https://www.thetolkienforum.com/wiki/Minas-Morgul, I was so impressed that I decided to read the books.
Later, of course, I found out about the full version of the film. It is very long and very steep.
There is not much difference between a book and a movie, but reading a story is still perceived differently. The book focuses more on the details. Who hasn't watched the movie yet? Run to watch it.

Edited July 18, 2021 by Yiceorenil