Nope, Tolkien was not a warlock (nor a promoter of them)

How to Convince a Christian that Lord of the Rings Isn’t Full of Forbidden Witchcraft
Tolkien Lore | 29 April 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olLVvspENVE

I think I am dealing, in large part with people who do need to take this into account.

Not sure they will.

I'm probably also dealing with people who pretend I'm delusional because I'm a Creationist, AronRa will consider that as "Harry Potter" and me reading Tolkien will confirm that suspicion, and some people who are "Catholic" but way friendlier with Putin than with Kent Hovind, which is backward, will definitely push this among Christians who ought to support me.

Thousand thanks for taking the trouble!

Recently I basically had to motivate how his conlangs are not glossolalia, which could be a sign of demonic possession.

Tolkien Lore

@TolkienLorePodcast

Why is speaking in tongues the most misunderstood gift of the Holy Spirit?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@hglundahl

@TolkienLorePodcast Also a good question.

0:42 Already intrigued.

I was actually warned against Harry Potter by a Catholic priest or bishop (if the latter it was Mgr Williamson) who stated that JRRT and CSL are OK, while he had asked exorcists that some stuff in HP is too realistic (could be used as kind of a manual).

Chociewitka Odola

@Chociewitka

You mean some occult sources are copied too verbatim in it, as as Rowling did not believe in magic, she was not bothered enough to get it distorted enough not to be repeatable? Then again the Grimm tales do contain some ancient spells too - but maybe without the details how to perform them...

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Chociewitka The guy whom I read back in the 90's claimed an exorcist had claimed the general spirit of some of the especially curses was too realistic, and could at least get someone part of the way to performing black magic.

Not sure what part of Grimm would be doing that.

Titus Castiglione

@TitusCastiglione1503

@hglundahl I’d want more proof of that claim from that priest before I’d believe it.

Chociewitka Odola

@hglundahl well there were some part of the so called "Folk-belief" in the Grimm tales there, but only parts, one could not really reconstruct the whole... But the magic the evil queens perform do often involve rudimental description of spells and rituals, e.g. blood spells

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@TitusCastiglione1503 Look it up in Mitteilungsblatt der Priesterbruderschaft Sankt Pius X some time from 1996 or 1997 and trace him.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Chociewitka "do often involve rudimental description of spells"

Very rudimentary, I think before the tales came across the collectors, I suppose either priests would have told the guys what parts they couldn't tell, or they would have omitted things on gut feeling, in the cases there was some real life background in spells.

Compared to that, the scene before Moria gates is simply trying to recall or reconstruct a password ...

5:08 St. Thomas Aquinas is fairly clear, angels do have power over matter, not internal structure, that's God's domain, but movements and that would involve those that would light a fire.

The problem with this route is that this type of Evangelicals is usually not very open to St. Thomas Aquinas either. A Fundie who is, like Jonathan Sarfati, isn't likely to be this level of anti-Catholic or anti-Tolkien.

8:47 Necromancy is not just any communication with the dead.

If we go to the Greek, necros + manteia suggests soothsaying by means of that dead. That is certainly forbidden.

Neither the actual direct wording in (I think Leviticus, anyway in) the books of Moses, nor the Catholic interpretation thereof will buy that Maria Simma was committing necromancy, when asking a soul from Purgatory what he or she needed (the answer was three Masses).

11:55 Intercepting here.

The problem with this argument is, a Wiccan, at least fairly early on, would normally consider she is doing white magic, and avoiding and shunning everything that's black magic.

And obviously, there are stories from ex-Wiccans who came to see that this subtlety was deceptive. White magic is as forbidden and hateful to God as black magic, because either way "you tap into the spiritual realm" (as they would say) in a way not authorised by God.

Now, Catholic moral theology would basically agree. It's not the same degree of mortal sin, but it is still mortally sinful. And the interesting thing is that Tolkien speculated that this is some type of rule that did not always belong to the natural law.

For instance, not marrying siblings very certainly does belong to the natural law now, and as certainly did not belong to the natural law when Cain and Seth each married their sister and so on for other sons of Adam and Eve, except if some married nieces instead. To Tolkien and to CSL, see That Hideous Strength, there is a similar thing about magic : it has become more dangerous to the soul and therefore less close to licit or nearly licit. It is now completely illicit, but previously wasn't so.

Tolkien could have stated that Jacob did what amounted to magic on the instruction of God, when it came to the colouring of offspring. However, the Catholic commentator would state that "it was not the sin of magic because God instructed" — and Tolkien would presumably reply, if God so instructed, it was because similar things in magic were not as sinful back then.

Obviously, Silmarillion and Lord of the Rings are set thousands of years before Jacob.

Plus Tolkien could speculate that for unfallen man (to which Eldar are kind of a parallel, since not all of elvenkind fell in diverse ways, not all were Avari, not all followed Feanor etc) it would have been far less dangerous and therefore licit.

Or, other possibility, events leaving traces in the "atmosphere" of a non-physical type, or words having an impact on the "atmosphere" and from there on the physical, Tolkien could have speculated those things were actually real, but not accessible to fallen man, so a fallen man who thinks he's using that could only do so by demonic help, which would then not apply to elves or angelic beings.

IndianaBones

@rikk319

The thing is, Gandalf as a maia (angel) was not a human being, so did the prescriptions in Leviticus apply to him as a direct representative of Eru (God)? Anything Gandalf did that could be considered "magic" was most likely done through divine will or as a direct servant of God.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@rikk319 I'd agree this was Tolkien's vision about Gandalf.

I was referring to the distinction "white" and "black" magic. Not specifically to Gandalf.

14:21 Not sure if it is really possible to prolong one's life with dark magic.

Unless heart transplants count as such.

In the Yngling dynasty (descending from Odin, an actual necromancer, pretending himself to be one of three creator gods) one man prolongs his life for ten lifespans by killing successive sons to prolong his own life by human sacrifice (to his stepancestor Odin). Or, tenth time over, if it was not eleventh, his Swedish subjects have enough of it, sacrifice him to Odin and hail his son as a king. That kind of behaviour is one indication to me, that line started in some very dark way. Like a real man falsely passing himself off as a god, or sth.

However, technically, I think this would have been impossible, unless demons got a chance to perform heart transplant each time.

15:27 "just writing a fun story for his kids"

True about The Hobbit, not true about Lord of the Rings. When it comes to Gandalf, ultimately, I think he owes lots to St. Raphael in the Book of Tobit.

Which obviously, some Evangelicals would think that makes it even worse.

Tolkien Lore

Wasn’t I specifically referring to The Hobbit when I said that?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@TolkienLorePodcast You are right, at 15:01 / 15:03 you were.

My bad. A weakness of mine when listening.

Tolkien Lore

@hglundahl that’s ok, when I was editing I realized I forgot to even complete my thought about JK Rowling

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@TolkienLorePodcast well, happens, but less often when one is writing and by default edits before publication, because one does the html for line breaks manually.

16:48 "dragons, trolls"

Dinosaurs, nephelim.

Edward Weaver

@edwardweaver6869

A lot of modern historians believe humans have been digging up Dinosaur bones for a long time; we just kind of misinterpreted them as weird stuff like dragons.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@edwardweaver6869 I've noticed.

The problem is, lots of traditions involve meeting such critters live, rather than just finding bones of them.

Dating dinos to "65 000 000 years ago" is reconstruction, taking dragons as things we have met in a not too far off past is tradition.

I generally prefer tradition over reconstruction.

19:20 Depends on which season.

By now there are seasons of Star Trek where characters have spiritual symbiotes, which sounds really like "familiar spirit" ....

The discussion is kind of interesting.

When I was in my heighday writing a fan fiction involving both CSL and JRRT characters, I concluded, The Lost Road can't involve true time travel to real past times because it contradicts Biblical history (JRRT was obviously alive at a point when Catholic clergy in the West started getting too loose on this one), but God creating Narnia is fine, since pretending He couldn't would go against the condemnation of thesis 34 in Bishop Tempier's Syllabus.

However, since then there is a problem with Narnia too.

Not with reading, since I can't deny both works have helped to deepen my faith, and keep me in the faith, but in writing on same premisses.

To CSL, Aslan is a "parallel incarnation" of God the Son, in another universe. The problem is stating there could be another universe for which the Incarnation in Nazareth / Bethlehem weren't valid.

That's not all. I tried to get around that by pushing instead the narrative that in the world of Narnia, Jesus, in a human body, is present under the accidents of the body of a talking lion. Catholic theology, no problem. The problem is, this approach contradicts the words in CSL's actual books, most notably the dialogue between Aslan and Bree in HHB. So, I got stuck.

19:30 Some people would argue, if you ever meet an elf or an alien, you are automatically, 100 % sure, dealing with a demon.

20:06 The witch craze is not Medieval.

If you could take an i-phone to 1300 and to 1500, but you wanted to know which one was safer, 1300 is the bet.

Titus Castiglione

Yeah the height of witchhuntjng is far more Early Modern than anything medieval.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@TitusCastiglione1503 Plus, the beginning is Late Medieval.

I think there was a gruesome aftermath of sudden cold and bad harvest in which some resorted to cannibalism and witch craft in the 1310's and then the story stuck even after the crimes had ceased or sth.

"Great Famine of 1315–1317: A famine and pestilence sweeps over Europe, and exacts so frightful a toll of human life that the phenomenon is to be regarded as one of the most impressive features of the period. It covers almost the whole of Northern Europe; the current territory of Ireland, England, France, Netherlands, Germany and Poland. The adverse weather conditions, the ensuing crop failures, and the sharp rise in food prices cause an acute shortage of food that will last for two years. The famine causes millions of deaths (according to estimates, around 10 to 25% of the urban population dies)."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1315

26:26 "Without even paying attention to the Silmarillion."

Did you know some Russian Orthodox have tried to argue Tolkien's work is Gnostic, therefore heretic, because they looked at Ainulindale?

Now, the key point here is "creation by someone other than God" ...

That priest and Aquinas agree this could not happen. However, Aquinas would have said, if God granted me to create or shape creation in some way, this would still not be me creating, this would be God creating, because God was the one giving actual being to the thing I had thought up.

Here is the point, Tolkien absolutely does NOT violate that, good Thomist as he is.

But to some of those guys Tolkien and Aquinas are both offlimits.

Tolkien Lore

Some people just can’t be happy I guess lol.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@TolkienLorePodcast Could be it.

Or leave others happy.

Sophie Jones

@sophiejones3554

True, though "this is heresy" and "this is witchcraft" are two distinct arguments. The Orthodox Church also has conceptions of witchcraft, which are different from Catholic-derived Western ideas of "witchcraft". Heresy is Christianity, but warped: witchcraft is "against Christianity" (according to people who are not me). The two things got somewhat conflated in Continental Europe because witch hunters used laws against heresy to condemn witches. However, in England they very much remained seperate as heresy was not illegal, and thus witches were accused of treason instead (because the King is head of the church, any practice condemned by the Church of England is treason: but incorrect belief is not punished, in general English law does not ever punish ideas or speech only actions).

I will say that a LOT of the Silm hate in Russia really has to do with politics, the theological arguments against it are mostly just excuses. You can pretty much make a theological argument against ANYTHING including the Bible itself. The Venn diagram of Russian pro-democracy advocates and Tolkiendil is just a circle. This is a connection that goes all the way back to the Soviet era: Tolkien was one of the few western writers that the Soviets liked, so Lord of the Rings was often used as a legitimate diguise for more subversive activity. A lot of the most famous artists who draw Silmarillion-themed work are Russian, and many of them are now in exile. So it's unsurprising that the church is now coming out with theological arguments against LotR.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@sophiejones3554 Thank you.

That was informative.

26:49 If Evangelicals make an accusation against Catholics, and Tolkien was one, count on some Orthodox to pick up the accusation with some decades' delay!

Recall the kind of "Trail of Blood" stuff that used to be mainstream with Protestants back when Book of Martyrs was an accepted Anglican reference?

Well, the Russian Orthodox have copied that one too. Read up on Peter the Aleut, if you are interested. Yes, they bona fide do consider him a martyr for the rejection of azymes.

Some Protestant considered Hochhuth's play really revealing? Serbs are all into promoting Avro Manhattan's take on Jasenovac, as sth Stepinac and Pius XII would have wanted.

So, Evangelicals making Tolkien a mouthpiece of Illuminati, who had asked them for permission if he could reveal the Runes, back when John Todd said so? Yes, you have Orthodox who pretend Ainulindale is Gnostic. A priest actually took down an essay on it, after I had refuted it, but I can't pretend to be sure all laymen or clergy outside that online publication have bought it.