The Book Of THoTH

By Sol

The recent amazing film rendition of the great Lord of the Rings saga has captivated the imagination of people throughout nearly our entire world. This is already a third generation inspired by this work, and it has been very gratifying to experience it much more powerfully now, through this new transformative medium.

A great deal has been written about the mythological origins of this epic, and the historical symbolic significance of many of its notions and characters. The very concept of the Nine Companions who formed the Fellowship of the Ring should sound immediately familiar to a researcher of the esoteric. Many other symbolic and arcane references are given in the story, some greatly amplified even beyond Tolkien's original meaning, through the incredibly talented effort of director Peter Jackson and the screenwriters.

Leaving the specific symbolism aside for the moment though, there is one important aspect of the tale which has largely escaped wide public notice, most likely because it's not very pleasant to think about. Yet the particular parallel which is being drawn is possibly the most significant part of this work's underlying message.

On the face of it, Good and Evil appear to be very sharply and clearly defined in the story. The "bad guys" are the forces led by Sauron and Saruman, consisting of several types of creatures who can all be broadly labeled as "Orcs". Their opposition is composed mostly of a race called "Men", aided by some other beings, like elves, hobbits, and a dwarf. These are making a joint last stand to prevent Evil from taking over their entire world, called "Middle Earth".

Of the many creatures and races populating Middle Earth, we as viewers today would of course tend to identify ourselves with the Race of Men. After all, we belong to that race ourselves, don’t we? And yet "the men" pictured in the film obviously inhabit a very different realm than ours. The pristine simplicity of its life and ideology really is reminiscent of many scenes from our history. But the vast variety of strictly mythical folk endowed by various "magical" abilities, indicates that no clear comparison can be made with our world. Perhaps this really was "us" in some long-ago prehistoric and forgotten age, but it is certainly not our reality today.

No, our behavior today, and in fact for untold generations, resembles not that of the Men of Middle Earth, but that of an altogether different creature form this epic. The Orc. It’s a shocking realization which takes a while to sink in and fully appreciate. And it is the most vital message for us today from this work.

Historically, we humans are said to have evolved by struggling against various elements of Nature, its inconvenient climate, its dangerous animals, or unpredictable uproars. We’ve always treated Nature as subservient to our needs and molded it to suit us - damming rivers to make dry land, then cutting down forests to build dwellings on the "reclaimed" portions, and quarrying minerals to make these dwellings stronger and the building methods more effective.

For a very long time this did not matter, because our numbers were relatively small. But since time immemorial, our existence has also been based on Proliferation and Growth. The commandment "be fruitful and multiply" has been faithfully observed since our earliest days by nearly every single society all over the globe. And when population reached unbearable limits in any given place, the only solution was to expand further outwards, subduing yet another part of Nature.

This process has been best described, curiously enough, by the cruel Agent Smith in another important recent film saga, "The Matrix":
"Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet, you are a plague."

Interestingly, the character of Smith was played by the same actor who portrayed the Elven leader Elrond in the "Lord of the Rings", the wisest of Elves and a tireless champion of Men. Many avowed fans of the two series were deeply upset by the casting of Hugo Weaving in both roles. We’ve already gotten used to him as the utterly sinister Agent Smith who hated humanity, and it was difficult to reconcile that with Elrond’s incessant goodwill towards mankind.

Yet this apparent incongruity can be settled if we realize that, strange as it may seem, the message of both characters is essentially the same on many counts! The above, for example, could easily have been something Elrond may have said. Except for one big difference - had he said it, Elrond would’ve been describing the behavior pattern of the Orcs, not of Men.

The Orcs of Middle Earth are shown waging a war on all of Creation which lies outside their own lands. They expand mercilessly and destroy everything in their path. They disrespect and detest any life form which differs from them. Their main desire seems to be to have everything look exactly like their own disgusting cities, where they presumably can "rule". And to that end they continuously create others like themselves, so that these can in turn go out and destroy still more.

Nowhere is this better shown than in the story of Saruman’s city, Isengard. When we are introduced to it in the first film, "The Fellowship of the Ring", it starts out as a green and lovely vale, overgrown with trees and crossed with quiet walkways and boulevards. Yet from the moment Saruman turns "evil", the scene changes dramatically. His first and foremost command to his underlings is to tear down the entire forest, and use it for fueling the engines to build an army of Orcs for conquest.

We see the land around Isengard quickly transformed, as trees are uprooted and burned or dissolved into slime by the thousands, and deep caverns are dug into the earth, where the fires never stop burning to keep producing the army and its weaponry. A good look at the area is given from the vantage point of Gandalf’s imprisonment on top of the tower, who gazes upon what seems like a celebration of wanton destruction, to the insatiable glee of the Orcs as each new tree is torn down and thrown into the never-ceasing fire.

Painful as it is to admit, but the scene Gandalf observes is in fact very reminiscent of many industrial zones from oil or coal producing regions in 19th Century Europe and America. The stories describe rivers of mud, oil, and garbage flowing through the streets of towns like Titusville and Pithole in northwest Pennsylvania, where the oil industry was born soon after the Civil War. The industrial zones of England looked even bleaker, and prompted the poet William Blake to describe them half a century earlier in his immortal "Jerusalem" as "these dark Satanic mills".

The following old photo of the Triumph oil-field in Bradford, Pennsylvania, serves to illustrate the point well. Note that the wooden derricks look strangely similar to the bizarre Orc constructions around Isenberg.

 

 

William Blake worshiped Nature and its gifts as evidence of God’s creation and goodwill, and utterly loathed the money-hungry industries who sought to despoil it. His ideas and imagery were well known to J.R.R. Tolkien when he wrote his epic in the 1940’s.

The Nazi menace had undeniably been a major influence in Tolkien’s description of the battle of Good and Evil. But his protagonists are the mythical folk of English legends, creatures whom Blake had also loved. These "little people" have forever opposed the destruction caused to their habitats by human industry. And so it stands to reason as highly likely that Tolkien actually meant to satirize industry’s "Satanic mills" by the behavior of the Orcs towards Nature in his books. And director Jackson seems to have caught this intention well, by depicting their machinery to resemble the early oil rigs.

When we see the city of Isengard again towards the middle of the second film, "The Two Towers", the entire area around it has acquired the grey and lifeless appearance of a lunar landscape, yet the fires that power the production wheels around the tower continue to burn. The scene is witnessed by Treebeard leader of the Ents, the huge walking trees who are the ageless guardians of the big forest.

This is a most important turning point in the entire epic, because the desolation causes the tree guardians to finally decide to wage war on Saruman and his Orcs. Prior to that, Treebeard complained a great deal about the on-going destruction, but was not willing to do anything about it. But having seen the extent of it with his own eyes, he decides to muster his fellow Ents to attack the evil city of Isengard, to silence its factories and stop the killing of his friends, the trees.

The Orcs prove no match against the stern determination of the ancient giants, and the evil city quickly falls under their onslaught. What is left of the Orc army is later devoured by the forest itself, as they flee from another battle.

The actual depiction of Isengard’s fall is, in my opinion, the most beautiful sequence of the entire series. Initially, the Ents appear to be getting overwhelmed by the sheer vast numbers of their Orc enemies. But then one of them does a very simple thing – he breaks the dam which was holding the big river at bay up the mountain, its controlled fall powering yet more machinery. The released water instantly floods the entire valley, extinguishing the fires, drowning the Orcs with all their devices, and filling the filthy cavity of their factories. The huge Ents grip the ground and stand firm against the current, not harmed by it.

This amazing scene of Pure Evil being washed away by the doubly purifying force of the river is shown towards the end of "The Two Towers". In the background we hear the voice-over of the most significant monologue the Hobbit Sam Gumjee gives throughout the adventure. It is the Monologue of Hope, which spurrs his companion Frodo on to continue on the last and most difficult leg of their journey into Mordor.

The action switches several times during Sam’s inspiring speech, as he talks about stories of heroes and their deeds, and what makes them special. And this is what he says when we see the waters rushing around Saruman’s tower in Isengard and drowning the Orc city: “Darkness has passed. A new day will come! And when the sun shines, it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why.�

These beautiful lines of hope are taken nearly verbatim from Tolkien’s book, but by combining them with the scene of the destruction of Isengard, Peter Jackson undeniably intended to send a doubly powerful message here. Its intensity is such that it is absorbed by most viewers on a strictly subliminal level, as few are consciously aware of the horrifying parallel which is being in fact drawn here between the Orc civilization and our own.

But the underlying point is that as adults we should understand the meaning of those folk-tales we had read when we young. These tales described Evil as personified by beings bent on destroying Nature and the beautiful things which live in it. And Nature itself, represented by its Forests, Rivers, and the “little people� who are their spirit guardians – arises to shake off the menace.

In our real world here on Earth it is us humans, who are waging an incessant war on Nature. With each passing day we demolish more of its beauty, killing its animals, tearing down its forests, saturating its waters and air with filth and disease. Our civilization has become Evil in its proliferation, leveling everything in its path, just like the Orcs did.

And Tolkien’s immortal message to us, brought to nearly every home now and greatly amplified through the magic of moving pictures, is that the Earth itself, Gaia, is not going to stand for it. It is going to Rise up its waters and rocks, and wage a Big War against us, and then we shall see how pitifully weak against it we really are. Our cities and all our works will be leveled by its power with the same ease as that river drowned Isengard. Beware, we have been warned.