: Anyway, I've provided a link to the essay below. The page has a navigational table which lets you look around their site.

: I have no doubt that, when I get a chance to look at the essay with a fresh perspective, I'll cringe at various items and realize I should have/could have included yet more information, and so on. :)

: Nonetheless, I hope people find it to be useful and inspirational for new discussions, both here and elsewhere.

Very nice job! I agree with you for the most part, though I would have been interested in how Tolkien's religious and philosophical views may have been intertwined with his creation.

One obvious indication is the admonition not to speak to the dead who might lie or at the least blend truth with falsehoods, or tell only a selective version of the truth (as Sauron himself often did), to shake the confidence of those who listened. The Bible pointedly condemns magic, witchcraft and sorcery and association with "unclean spirits".

Mostly today people recall that witches were to be put to death and the terrible excesses of this injunction in the Inquisition and later in Salem, MA.

But for the most part, it appears that Tolkien remains within Biblical bounds so as not to compromise his own ethics. Even the creation of Middle-Earth and its universe does not contradict the Biblical creation - it merely adds details that may or may not be true.

And that may be why he found it difficult to find the right word to decribe what it was that the Elves did that Sam called "magic". Clearly it wasn't magic to them. Making a rope that untied itself upon command was no more unusual to the Elves as making a common rope is to us. It was inherent in their nature. If we believe that the material world is merely a shadow of a larger reality and that the Elves were closer to reality than we are, then it shouldn't be surprising that some of that insight spilled over into their physical lives. But Tolkien didn't want to call what the Elves did "miracles" either, and yet I am tempted to say that the power the Elves manifested was closer to the miraculous than to the magical. Magic in many cases implies deception or counterfeiting (as in the creation of orcs). And by miracle I mean supernatural events displaying the will of God (Eru). The two views of whether Eru works within the bounds of natural law, but in ways beyond our understanding, or if He suspends His laws to intervene in the afairs of mortals, is a topic for another time. But generally the case for supernatural occurrances (whether we call them miracles or magic), fall into the broad classification of Ontological and Cosmological arguments about the existence of God and the universe and "ultimate reality".

My point (finally) is that there is a correlation between Tolkien's Christian beliefs (and Western Philosophy) and his sub-creation of Middle-Earth. Tolkien was very careful NOT to include "religion" in The Lord of the Rings, nor was he "preachy" about morals and ethics. And yet his folks did have morals and ethics, but so do most of the human race.

I better stop right here before I get into a whole new territory.

Let me know if you agree or disagree.

Goodgulf