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11-15-2012, 01:45 PM | #1 |
Haunting Spirit
Join Date: Dec 2011
Posts: 72
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Worship (in the time of the LOTR)
In the era around the time of the Lord of the Rings, would the Elves/Men/Dwarves/Hobbits and so on have worshiped Illuvatar, or the Valar, as one would worship a God or God(s) now? By the time of the LOTR, would anyone but the Elves and possibly lore masters know of the Creation of Arda? Who would Hobbits, for example, see as their deity?
Basically I'm asking if "religion" or "cults" of any sort, or any sort of sense of the divine, would've existed in Third Age Middle Earth? Would the men of Gondor worship a certain Valar, or their own "man made" Gods, in utmost essence the Valar but with man made twists on whose those Gods were? And what of the Dwarves, and Hobbits? |
11-15-2012, 02:50 PM | #2 |
Shade of Carn Dûm
Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: Washington, D. C., USA
Posts: 299
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The only sense of "worship" that I immediately recall from the text of Lord of the Rings were the "moment of silence" that Frodo and Sam shared with Faramir and company in Ithilien, and possibly, Aragorn's coronation (in having Gandalf, as a representative of Valinor, place the crown on his head.) I don't recall any mention, at least directly in the text, of the dwarves worship of Aule, their creator/sub-creator. Gimli was rather close-mouthed about his own culture, but was no doubt well educated in this matter by Dwarf standards.
Frodo could speak and, presumably, read Sindarin and appears to have had at least a halting grasp of Quenya. This seems to me to be equivalent of a medieval nobleman learning Latin, Greek and Hebrew to read the Bible in It's original language. He and Bilbo would have been the best educated among the hobbits in matters of faith, but none of the hobbits seemed to be surprised by the act of faith represented by Frodo and Bilbo sailing into the west, never to return, which tells me that they knew something about the Valar and the Undying Lands, at least, and perhaps Iluvatar. I don't have Letters, but I think Tolkien deliberately avoided any overt displays of religious ritual, though I can't recall the reason. Being a devout Catholic, he probably did not want to risk any perception of satirizing the Sacrament of Mass by adapting it into a subcreated fiction, though I don't know that for sure.
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11-15-2012, 03:31 PM | #3 | |
A Voice That Gainsayeth
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: In that far land beyond the Sea
Posts: 7,431
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Basically what radagastly had said.
Quote:
The only thing I recall about Valar-worship, or straightforward Valar-worship, is the Dwarven reverence of Aulë (or Mahal, as they call him) as their maker. There are of course things like praise to Elbereth otherwise, however once again, it seems to me that Tolkien is very careful about making this a god-worship. At most, it might resemble, say, Catholic prayers to saints. (There are all those talks about the parallels of praise to Elbereth and Catholic prayers to Virgin Mary.)
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"Should the story say 'he ate bread,' the dramatic producer can only show 'a piece of bread' according to his taste or fancy, but the hearer of the story will think of bread in general and picture it in some form of his own." -On Fairy-Stories |
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