Galadriel Archives - Rest and Trust

October 21, 2023April 25, 2024

Who is Father Time in C.S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair?

Who is Father Time in C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia?

When someone asked Augustine, “What is time?” he answered, “When you don’t ask, I know. When you ask, I don’t.”

We all know what time is, and yet it’s hard to say what it is.

To understand time, the Greeks personified chronological time as Chronos/Khronos (Χρόνος), who later was mixed with a Titan Cronus – the one who devours his own children. And this conflation is quite understandable since we are all born into this world in chronological time and, eventually, chronological time will consume us.

The Romans called Chronos Father Time. Chronos, the chronological time, gives life and takes it away. That’s why the Romans associated Chronos with Saturn, the god of the underworld.

The first time we meet Father Time in C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia is in The Silver Chair. He is a bearded giant asleep in the underworld. He is the largest of all giants.

“Who’s that?” asked Puddleglum…

“That is old Father Time, who once was a King in Overland,” said the Warden. “And now he has sunk down into the Deep Realm and lies dreaming of all the things that are done in the upper world. Many sink down, and few return to the sunlit lands. They say he will wake at the end of the world.”

Father Time is sleeping. When I first read that years ago, something stirred in me and I thought,

“Hm… we don’t yet know time for what it is. We only know the Time that sleeps. I wonder what it’s going to be like when it awakens?”

March 28, 2023November 4, 2023

The Magic of Lothlórien – How Tolkien Used Vertical Speech to Allure us into the Silence Around Words

The magic of Lothlórien in The Lord of the Rings is a fine example of how the Inklings use the power of vertical speech.

Quoting Max Picard from The Worlds of Silence, Peter Kreeft said that in modern writing, words have lost their vertical static quality:

The architecture of the Hebrew language is vertical. Each word sinks down vertically, column-wise, into the sentence. In language today we have lost the static quality of the ancient tongues. The sentence has become dynamic; every word in every sentence speeds on quickly to the next … each word comes more from the preceding word than from the silence and moves on more to the next word in front of it than to the silence.

In modern writing, words are used primarily as communication tools. People use words to get their message across. This type of speech is message-driven, not meaning-driven.

You look for words just to move the reader along as quickly as possible from one word to the next horizontally. Words are whips to get the reader going.

The Inklings use words vertically, not horizontally.

For them, each word is alive. Each word speaks through a particular sound shape – and needs to be heard.

When you “hear” the word’s speech, the curtain of the world is drawn for a second or two and you see… what the words dimly point to.

The Inklings use words to allure the reader to the silence around the words – not to get the message across. As Treebeard said:

You must understand, young Hobbit, it takes a long time to say anything in Old Entish. And we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say.

To use words vertically means to find words that make the reader spellbound for a second or two. Preferably longer.

The right words are inspired by Mercury himself – they descend from heaven like fire and become “proper names” in the mouth of the herald.

Like a piercing line of poetry, they make you stop breathing the air of the world and plunge into a meditative reverie as you breathe in the fragrance from beyond the walls of the world.

Tolkien’s description of the magic of Lothlórien is a case in point.

How does Tolkien describe Lothlórien?

Just like Tom Bombadil, Lothlórien could easily have been left out of the plot. Linearly speaking, nothing “happened” there except that the fellowship felt the magic of Lothlórien and got some rest.

Technically, the chapter about Lothlórien is just as extraneous as the chapter on Tom Bombadil.

But it’s a fine example of vertical speech that introduces the reader to the perilous realm of Faerie.

The effect of entering the realm of the Lady is such that all the company feels the presence of some inexplicable magic.

For some, it is a delight. For some, it is torment.

Tolkien seems to suggest that the whole land was Galadriel’s mirror – not just the stone mirror itself. As the fellowship walked through the enchanted wood, they saw their secret thoughts and desires revealed as if in a mirror.

Some liked it; some hated it. But they couldn’t hide from it.

They stepped into a land of the Last Judgement unfolding 24/7.

December 6, 2022March 17, 2023

Why Did Arda Become Round, or How Was Sauron Made by the One Ring?

Why did Arda become round? Originally, it was flat. It was made round only after the fall of Numenor.

Its roundness was its curse. The consequence of leaving the “Straight Way.”

Thus in after days, what by the voyages of ships, what by lore and starcraft, the kings of Men knew that the world was indeed made round…

Is there any significance in this roundness?

Deceived by Sauron, the Numenorians craved immortality. They rejected the strange gifts of Iluvatar given to Men – the gifts of mortality – the ability to leave the Circles of the world through letting go.

The Númenóreans began to murmur, at first in their hearts, and then in open words, against the doom of Men…

Why did Arda become round?

The downfall of Numenor led to the reshaping of Arda. Around the year 3319 of the Second Age, the world was changed. It became round. A circle. A ring.

Like a ring, the world became closed upon itself. Thus ended Men’s desperate search for immortality. It ended in creating bad infinity, the non-stop repetition of the same, a rat race of life, never coming to the destination.

People were still trying to find the Straight Way to the Blessed Realm but soon found that all roads were now bent. There was no longer a Straight Way to the blessed realm geographically. All roads were going in circles.

Their great mariners would still search for the Isle of Meneltarma because many believed that from the summit of the Meneltarma, the Pillar of Heaven, one could still see a glimpse of the Deathless shores.

But they found it not. And those that sailed far came only to the new lands, and found them like to the old lands, and subject to death. And those that sailed furthest set but a girdle… and they said: ‘All roads are now bent.’

With bad infinity, no matter where you go, you come to where you started – to the old lands, subject to death. It is the curse of the Ring.

October 18, 2022October 10, 2023

Who is Tulkas? The “Expecto Patronum” of Tolkien’s Universe to Fight Off the “Darkness of Unlight”

Who is Tulkas in The Silmarillion? What is the symbolism behind this myth?

C.S. Lewis once defined a good myth like this:

The narrative is more of a net whereby we catch something else.

The story itself may be quite ordinary – a sculptor carved a lady out of a block of stone, and it became alive (Pygmalion and Galatea).

Persephone was kidnapped by Hades, and her mother Demeter prevented all plants from growing until Hades was commanded to let her go for some months out of the year.

There’s nothing extraordinary in the story itself. Yet, we feel there’s something behind it.

Elizabeth Browning put it like this:

Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes; the rest sit round and pluck blackberries.

It’s how we choose to look at the common bushes that determines whether we see them burning.

According to G.K. Chesterton, such is the function of our imagination:

The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange.

And such is the function of mythopoetry – a genre that allows us to look at ordinary things through the eyes of Faerie and discover a world of extraordinary meanings behind them.

The key to entering Faerie is inside each and every one.

In Owen Barfield’s philosophy, this change of lens happens when a person allows their state of consciousness to be shifted by a line of poetry. And then they follow the call ringing through “this verse that lifts the curse” and enters the perilous realm of Faerie.

The cosmogonic myths of Tolkien’s The Silmarillion are of the same nature – they are an invitation to enter through the door of the external story and into the invisible realm behind the story, which is the land of Meaning.

One such myth is the myth of Tulkas the Valiant.

How did Tulkas beat Melkor?

Greatest in strength and deeds of prowess is Tulkas, who is surnamed Astaldo, the Valiant. He came last to Arda, to aid the Valar in the first battles with Melkor. He delights in wrestling and in contests of strength… he is tireless. His hair and beard are golden, and his flesh ruddy.

Who is Tulkas? Why did he come to Arda last to aid the Valar in their battles with Melkor? And most importantly, why was Melkor so afraid of him?

So came Tulkas the Strong, whose anger passes like a mighty wind, scattering cloud and darkness before it; and Melkor fled before his wrath and his laughter, and forsook Arda, and there was peace for a long age.

Of all the Valar, Melkor hated Tulkas the most.

There’s a spiritual and mythical significance to this. Tulkas is hated with bitter hatred because he represents the laughter of Iluvatar in the Great Music.

September 3, 2022March 28, 2023

Amazon’s The Rings of Power Review – An Alternative Way to Begin the Series

I wasn’t planning to write a review on Amazon’s The Rings of Power, but my son asked me a question I couldn’t ignore.

And thus there awoke in the world the Two Trees of Valinor. Of all things which Yavanna made they have most renown, and about their fate all the tales of the Elder Days are woven.

As we finished watching the first episode of The Rings of Power last night, my son asked me after a pause:

“What do you think?”

“Don’t know yet,” I answered, “not too bad, I suppose, but I hoped there would be much more Tolkien in it.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, “there’s Galadriel, Elrond, Sauron, hobbits. What else?”

“Hm…” I scratched my head, “I guess to have more Tolkien there you need to start the tale how he started the tale.”

“Do you mean with the creation of Arda?” he pressed.

“No, with Music. The Music. The world of Tolkien began in Music.”

“So, how would you have started the series?” he finally asked.

I smiled.

“Let me think,” I said, and there was silence in the room for about half an hour broken only by the chirping of a cricket outside.

And silence was over all the world in that hour, nor was there any other sound save the chanting of Yavanna.

Finally, I broke the silence.

“All the tales of Elder Days are woven around the fate of the Two Trees. Do you have any idea why?”

He shook his head.

“Imagine Galadriel and her brother Finrod sitting by a murmuring brook at twilight. He asks her: ‘Do you know how Elves came about?’

‘No.’

The camera zooms in, and we see the following scenes unfold in Galadriel’s big blue eyes as she listens to Finrod’s tale.

‘By the starlit mere of Cuivienen, Water of Awakening, the Elves rose from the sleep of Iluvatar; and while they dwelt yet silent by Cuivienen their eyes beheld first of all things the stars of heaven. Therefore they have ever loved the starlight, and have revered Varda Elentari above all the Valar.’

Galadriel sees in her mind’s eye the mere of Cuivienen and then looks up and suddenly sees Varda walking among the heavenly hosts.

‘Who is it?’ she asks her brother in amazement.

‘Varda, the spouse of Manwe, the chief of the Valar.’

‘Who are the Valar?’