June 29, 2002

Hey? What Happened?
Kalimac the Green

This suddenly seems to have become a discussion on wars and religion, not Tolkien. Anyways... since you seem to want to talk about religion, I would like to point out that Tolkien actually set out to create a "religion" of sorts in his Middle Earth. What he was trying to do was create a mythology for England, complete with a bunch of gods (the Valar were even called gods in the Lost Tales) to control the elements, and a "creation myth" (The Music of the Ainur). If you ask me, I think the Valar correspond much more closely with the Greek and Roman gods and goddesess than with anything mentioned earlier. Theres an earth goddess, a god of the underworld, a sea god, a wind god..... I could go on and on. Any hints of Christianity I think were just reflections of Tolkiens personal beliefs: if you're going to create a religion, it should be something that you yourself could believe in. Anyways, i think this topic has been done to death, and unless someone has something to say that has not already been said, it should be dropped lest we stray any farther from the topic of Tolkien. There must some other little minor problem with the movie that hasn't yet been discussed! :-D