Tolkien's System and Secret Grammar. Prediction #1.

[monks]

Tolkien's System and Secret Grammar. Prediction #1.

Hi, I'll be posting my predictions on here over the coming months. Tolkien has a system and he is predictable. You can ask me any questions at any time about any of them and I'll be happy to explain how I arrived at them. Fight me

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Tolkien Prediction #1. From my offered solution to the Bombadil-Goldberry riddle I had a little moment where the penny dropped and I thought "Ahhhhh...I bet the hobbits met him [Tom Bombadil] on the 26th of a month...". I looked it up and yes, they met him on the 26th Sept. I've found Tolkien uses numerology a lot.

Solution:
Tom = Space, Tolkien, the number 2.
Goldberry = Time, Edith, the number 6.
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Tolkien has a system. It is predictable. The 'little man' in 'A Secret Vice' is Tolkien. The 'Great Master' with his 'personal system and symphony' is Tolkien. It is Tolkien's 'secret grammar'. The Music (of the Ainur) is Tolkien's 'symphony'.

Here's some background from my homepage- how I was able to make that prediction, and to date, 98 others.

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To date I have made 99 predictions based on my understanding. Many predictions will be that a specific word will appear in the text at a specific place, or I have predicted the meanings of etymologies of either English words or Elvish words. Some of the predictions involve numbers.

Around 2005 I had concluded that Bombadil and Goldberry were Space and Time. In 2015 I found a source which I believe was influential in shaping the personality of Bombadil, and the relationship of Bombadil and Goldberry. It was from that I deduced that Bombadil and Goldberry were represented by the numbers 2 and 6, from the half-crown coin in pre-decimal English money- which was known as “2 and 6 pence”. I had already encountered the double-crown of Upper and Lower Egypt in his letters, and had also conceived Bombadil and Goldberry to be two halves of one whole: Space and Time. The notion of a ‘half a crown’ in the other sense didn’t seem a huge leap from that. I then had a hunch. I already knew that Tolkien was using numbers in his works from other sources; the Rhyme of Lore being one of them of course, but especially the numbers 6 and 9. I predicted that the hobbits met Bombadil on the 26th of a month. I looked it up. I was correct. They met him on the 26th Sept. That was the first of many examples of Tolkien’s integration of numbers beyond the Rings.

But I still didn’t know who of the pair was 2 or who was 6. After more work I’d concluded that Goldberry was the number 6. Around that time I had also concluded that they were Moon-Silver and Sun-Gold. Indeed that Bombadil and Goldberry were Tolkien and Edith. Something I’d pretty much thought since 2005. I then came across Tolkien’s Anglo-Saxon poem ‘Syx Mynet’ in Songs for the Philologists. Even though I didn’t have a translation of this poem I had a strong hunch that the 6 was a reference to Goldberry and that the word ‘mynet’ was possibly a pun on ‘minute’, Goldberry being Time. I predicted that the poem would either make a reference to ‘a wife’ or a wife would be the subject of the poem. Having then discovered that the poem was simply Tolkien’s translation into A.S from an existing poem, I looked it up. It was a poem called ‘I Love Sixpence’. I’d never even heard of it. As you can imagine, I was very hopeful because, from the title, it was again dealing with money and clearly it was about the number 6, and Tolkien loved his wife. I was correct. The poem was about a man taking money home to his wife. Perfect.

In Sep. 2018 I accidentally came across the description of the Chain of Angainor. By that time I was beginning to understand Tolkien’s number symbolism and how important it was. I found that the 2nd and 6th links of the Chain are silver and gold. And as I have said I’d already concluded that Bombadil and Goldberry were Moon-Silver and Sun-Gold. Again 2 and 6, agreeing with everything else.

I later noted that the Shire where Bombadil and Goldberry live is comprised of the Four Farthings. Farthings also being pre-decimal English money. I also later found out that when Tolkien met Edith he was 16 and she was 19, hence 6 and 9.

The above sequence of events did not chance out of thin air. I chanced upon the material and made connections while doing other Tolkien research. For more information you can read the Predictions over here http://www.thewindrose.net/.

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[Inziladun]

Assuming any of this is factual (a fairly large assumption), I truly cannot see the value of such study. Does knowing (or believing one knows) these things enhance enjoyment of the works themselves? For me the answer is a clear no. Why spend so much time and effort looking for "hidden" things that have no effect on what is really important, the story?

[Morthoron]

“He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.”

[Pitchwife]

Zil, you're underestimating the gratification inherent in believing oneself to be in possession of a hidden truth which the unwashed masses are ignorant of. Who cares for the story (except us unenlightened heathens)? The source is irrelevant - if it weren't Tolkien it would be the Bible or the Tibetan Book of the Dead or the Maya Calendar or whatever.

[Huinesoron]

I had a whole analysis of this written up, mentioning the fact that 'Syx Mynet' contains the word 'wif' in plain text (and rhymed with 'lif'), highlighting the point where monks claims to have concluded after 2015 something they already thought in 2005, and noting that they've clearly not read the description of Angainor very well, since it makes it clear that the links are all alloys. But in fact, the argument is so weak that I only need two points from it. If the argument is that Tolkien symbolised himself with Silver-Moon-Bombadil-2, and Edith with Gold-Sun-Goldberry-6, then:

-What are we to make of the fact that sixpence (explicitly linked to Goldberry by monks) is famously a silver coin?

-Why, if Tolkien used 6 and 9 because of his and Edith's ages when they met, did he use 6 to represent Edith, rather than himself? And why did he have the Hobbits meet Tom on the 6th, and leave on the 9th?

It is trivially simple to string together pairs of concepts, provided you ignore the discrepancies that show up. Expecting Tolkien not to immediately think 'silver sixpence' - a coin he would have used in daily life - is a huge example of that.

hS

[mindil]

The essential flaw in all this tangled symbolism and numerology is that the type of people who write with lots of secret symbols invariably write undramatic, unexciting narratives. And vice versa.

I can't imagine Monks writing a gripping story - satire, perhaps, but not a full-flown humanistic drama like LoTR.

And in reverse, I can't imagine JRRT ever writing the kind of posts that Monks writes. All T's detailed linguistics and genealogies and time-tables had a much more immediate, real, urgent flavor than Monks' verbal equations.

So, in short, JRRT couldn't insert Monks-style symbolism even if he wanted to. And if he had, the resulting book wouldn't have have this sort of fan-following.

[mindil]

Mind you, if Monks wrote LoTR it might be a delightful book for certain types. It might have a certain loyal clan. I might even like it myself, being a numbers fan sometimes. But it would never have come out in the slightest like LoTR.