The Barrow-Daggers (also known as the daggers of Westron) were forged in Cardolan, one of the three realms that Arnor broke into after the death of King Arthor. Cardolan included the Old Forest, Eregion, the Barrow Downs, and the South Downs. The daggers were found in the Barrow Downs, which contained the grave of Cardolan's last prince who died in the war against the Witch King. While the blades are named 'daggers of Westron' (referring to Numenor), this name indicates that the knowledge used to create them came from Numenor rather than that they were actually forged there.
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Answering Your Tolkien Questions Episode 160: Where Were the Barrow Blades Forged?
Added:[music] [music] [music] Hello, hello, hello everyone. My name is John Sierra and I'm a Tolken scholar.
And what that essentially means is that I study the works of JRR Tolken and I have for quite a lot of years and I pass on the knowledge, wisdom and insights that I gained through study of Tolken's work to you in the form of answering your questions. Uh we have a bit to talk about today before we get started with anything and it has a lot to do with Kora which is the main vehicle by which I answer questions. That's where I I started to um not started to be a token scholar. That's where I started to actually share the knowledge. It wasn't just studying, you know, just for my own benefit and enjoying it and and learning as much as I can. uh but also in a in a sense I guess teaching or or not not in the form of instruction [music] but in the form of the you know the very uh oldest style of teaching there is the sharing of knowledge and um and I I once had a conversation with a lady by the name of Lexi Woo who was um she used to work for core she no longer works there now but she um she I we were talking about this YouTube channel because I started the YouTube channel uh based on my Corora work and as a way to reach even more people and uh do it, you know, in a sort of a comfortable sort of way uh for people who don't want to read too much and they want to hear my voice instead, you know, and they want some uh something to put on while they go about their day and such. and I thought it would be fun to have a YouTube channel and it has been a great success uh thanks to you guys coming by all the time and uh putting up with all of my nonsense. But I remember um I I told her that when I you know doing the YouTube wasn't my way of going away from Kora but in trying to bring people from Kora to somewhere else but also bring people from somewhere else to Kora because in every video I've said you can uh answer you you can ask me questions and I'll answer them on Kora and then of course I'll read them here. And um you know I always said uh oh it's the site where you could sort of um you know ask any sort of question and have people with relevant knowledge or wisdom uh or education or experience answer you and that that has been true. However, there's a lot that's changed and and she told me at the time that she prefers or at least internally not just her they prefer to refer to it as a knowledge sharing platform.
Uh which I liked and I started adopting saying that in the videos I would say oh core is a knowledge sharing platform where you can do this this and this and whatever and uh that is you know that has been true. It has all been all about sharing knowledge. However, um unfortunately things are shifting over at Quora and not in a good direction in an actually a very negative direction because uh they have come more and more to rely on generative AI. Now you guys know my feelings about generative AI. I've made it quite clear that I think it's the devilry of Eisenard. As a matter of fact, I made an entire video just about how you can't use generative AI in token studies. And it's interesting because it was based off of a study that I did uh late last year. Uh Matt assisted me with that. And then uh you know, of course, I wrote out my findings and I made them into a video for you guys. And uh that was a pretty fun video. But it was interesting how I was sitting on it for a while and I was basically waiting for a week where I just didn't feel up to doing a typical video and then I could quickly sort of put that together since I already had it written and everything. All I needed to do was sit there and record it and uh there you have it, you know. So, I waited for a week where not so much like I didn't feel like doing a video of answering questions where I didn't feel like writing so much and I had something that I had already written um and that came out at a time where um just like a week before that uh or maybe maybe a week or two before that I had handled a question where people asked me do you use AI in any of your research and I was just like no definitely not absolutely not. Um because aside from the fact that I'm against it for all the reasons that for example Tolken would be against it and many people are uh for the environmental impact and for what it's doing to our minds and our imaginations.
It's also just really bad. It's often times completely wrong. Now AI generative AI because there's other kinds of AI generative AI and and Kora have had a you know they've gotten handinhand for quite some time. There were a lot of questions that are written by AI. And when I was complaining about how terrible how terribly written these questions were, the reaction from the people that I knew that worked at Kora was, "Well, uh, could you tell us more information?" And you know, and I got sucked into this situation where I was compiling all of these AI questions that I would see and writing down what was wrong with them and how terrible they were and why they were terrible. Um, and in relation to questions that I would get uh that would get generated um based on things that I've written recently or based on comments that people have left.
But it was all sort of mish mashed and jumbled together in this really haphazard way. And you would get these weird questions like what did Gandalf mean when he said and then it would be some quote that's not from the Lord of the Rings was not something that Gandalf said or that any character said and then they would say to and then the name of another character that never shared a scene with Gandalf or whatever like you know like Sauron or something you know um what did he mean by that? And I and I would say, well, nobody would ask that because that's not a line from the book.
It's not a line from the movie. It's it doesn't make sense, you know. Um, and but what I realized after a while is that they were using me to improve the AI in that sense. And I I realize, wait a minute, why am I making this better when my goal is to just not have it there? You know, I don't want it there.
I don't want to be asked questions by robots who are mish mashing things together. I want to be asked questions by real people who are curious and uh inquisitive and or maybe just a little confused by something and to help people. In other words, I'm not helping anybody by answering an AI question. So, you know, I told them after a while, I said, I'm no longer going to feed the beast, so to speak. I'm I'm not going to give any more feedback about the the AI questions. I'm just going to uh ignore them. And [music] uh I I will say that that endeavor was successful to a certain extent being that I I was getting so many of these questions that it was starting to drown out the real people um in my request queue. And I told them that, you know, it's getting hard to, you know, get to the real questions when I'm I, you know, I'll there'll be like I'll wake up and there'll be like 15 questions and five of them are from real people and 10 of them are complete nonsense. [music] Um, and I have to check each one to make sure is this a real person? Because sometimes they they are like real questions and sometimes the questions that you think a are AI are not. you know, they're just somebody who might not have the firmst grasp of English, so the words are a little jumbled about, you know. Anyway, not to get too far off topic, um I did get them to make one major change on Quora that I think was a very positive change is that they reduced the output of uh these these prompt generator questions. uh they reduce the amount of them by half by 50%. So that means that there is half the amount of AI generated questions being pumped out there. And um you know seeing that as a success and realizing that that's probably as far as I'm going to be able to go with it. Uh I decided to find all of the accounts that generate these questions and just completely block them so I don't see them anymore. And I got to tell you, it really cleaned up my feed. It really made reading Kora a lot better and everything. But recently, and I brought this up in last week's episode just a little bit, and um on the most recent Council of Tolken, me and uh Sid and Matt talked about it uh because there are these accounts out there uh that are made by Quora that answer questions.
Now, they had teased having AI answers in the past where they would have some sort of like little widget where if you ask a question, there would be the answers from all the real people that answered you and then there would sort of be this widget with an AI answer that was like clearly marked as AI. And at some point, they got rid of that because they think people didn't like it obviously because all the information is very faulty. But this is different because these accounts seem like real accounts and the answers seem like they're real answers until you look at them. Not the answers themselves, but the accounts where it says that it's an AI account that is run by Kora. And I thought, is that real? So I I asked them, "Is this real?" And they're like, "Yes, this is real." And um I was like, "Wow, I can't believe you guys are doing that. That's that's insanity. It's it's the devilry of Eisenuard, you and and I shared with them a lot of feedback that I had about what I think about this especially since one of them which uh Matt mentioned it on the council it's called fever index but he calls it fever index bot or fib because all it does is fib and it's started to answer questions about token each of these eight accounts uh sort of has its own like uh style I guess and this one's like the pop culture one [music] so because token is it's a lot of things it's arts and it's literature and entertainment. It's also pop [music] culture. Um, it answers questions about token and the answers are really bad. Like, they're insanely bad, but they're getting good feedback because it's a lot of words and people think when you speak in an authoritative tone, like you really know what you're talking about, um, it it must be right, you know? So, they think, "Oh, this is great information when all of it's wrong." Because AI doesn't know how to say, "I don't know." AI doesn't know how to tell you uh you're not going to like the answer, but here it is. You know what I mean? And we've had that where we've had questions where I'm like, well, I don't really know because Tolken never said it, but here I'll give you my best guess. And that's not to be taken as authoritative that that is the only answer. That is just my answer. Um sometimes it is authoritative because it came from Tolken. Um but a lot of times it didn't. His work is unfinished. He died with so much of it left unfinished and that's why I'm here really. So, um I I voiced my displeasure over several days and I had made a post about this on the Grey Havens warning people about this account and telling them that it's, you know, not a real person. [music] And uh I got a lot of comments that I screenshotted and I shared with the core leadership sha leadership uh staff and they were very sort of well if you don't like it you could you know block it and then you won't see it anymore. And I said that's not really my concern. I know that I can block an account. My concern is that this thing is spewing out thousands of answers a day.
Thousands a day. Um it's so much of the pie that you have at this point eight accounts um are making up a really big chunk of Quora and it's drowning out every other voice.
The information is faulty and they kept talking about all their fact uh their their what do they call the factchecking uh stages and everything and that's why they're you know they want to give the best content. I said, "If you want best content, you have to incentivize writers with talent, real flesh and blood people with minds and hearts and bodies [music] and everything to write on your platform, not to just gunk it up with a bunch of slop and that AI can only create slop." And I proved that with the video that I had done, which I did show them, I don't know if they watched it, but I showed it to them that said, "Here, this is me talking about this for for 80 minutes, and it's a very real thing." Um, you know, and I I realize that they're not going to change their mind because the CEO of Kora is a really sort of like young fellow who uh thinks that all this stuff is the future and he thinks it's the greatest thing ever and he's going to make a lot of money. Um, and I have to say that my goal with them in arguing and debating over this has been to get them to at the very least have a disclaimer on these answers. If you look at any sort of AI uh bot out there, it will always have a disclaimer on it saying, you know, this is generated by AI. AI can make errors. If you look at any of them, it'll say that and [music] to have this just presented as uh you know um almost like a person. Uh I said, you know, like with Tolken, okay, so maybe somebody thinks something wrong about Gandalf or whatever. That's not the big deal, but there are a lot of questions on there about, you know, things that could make somebody very unsafe. There's a lot of health stuff.
Somebody can get a very bad answer. And they were sort of like I can get that from a person, too. And I'm like, yeah.
and then that's that person's fault.
Well, when it's an AI, it's whoever hosts it. That's you guys, you know. So, you could just have this thing doing its thing and it could be out there causing people to become injured or hurt or or even lose their lives and you could face, you know, very real legal consequences for I was like, please, I'm begging you, talk to a lawyer about this. Get your legal team on it. Um, put a disclaimer on it. even before you do that. And of course they haven't, you know, so like this whole thing has sort of soured me a little bit on Kora. Now [music] I can't I can't just like completely step away from it because right now almost all of the questions come through on Quora. There are some that come through on YouTube and that's great. I love that. But um almost all of the content and the views and everything comes through on Quora. Um, when when a video does well for me and gets like 2,000 views, 3,000 views, that's pretty great. And it it makes money and everything. On Quora, an answer getting 3,000 views is just a normal thing, you know what I mean? And sometimes it's a lot higher than that. So, there are a lot more eyes on my content on Kora than there are on my content on YouTube. It's just that the way that it's distributed, the fact that I've been on there a lot longer and I'm more established there.
[music] And you know, if I was to completely cut it off and just say we're only going to do it through YouTube or if I set up a website or anything, it's still going to like greatly diminish the way that people could get in touch with me. So, the reason that I'm doing this intro and talking about this is that instead of abandoning Kora, um, let's make our voices heard and make it better. So, what I would like everybody to do, if you have a Kora account, if you've ever sent me questions on Kora or interacted with me on Kora, there's a bug. Um, why, you know, like why does it want to be in my face? What's so interesting right here? There's nothing interesting right here. This is tiny little gnat.
Anyway, make your voice be heard.
Contact them. If you see these AI answers, um, they're always by an account that's like two words mushed together, like fever index. It's one word, fever index. Um, if you see this, whether you're getting in a digest, whatever, download it, report it, contact them, tell them you don't want to leave a comment saying, "We don't want AI answers. We come here to have real people answer our questions. That's the entire point of sharing knowledge because at this point they're coming to the point where they're not going to be a knowledge sharing platform. They're going to be an information spewing platform. There's a big difference between just spewing and regurgitating information that may or may not be correct and sharing knowledge and wisdom and experience and and education is the other one I usually throw in there. I've talked about this long enough. Let's let's let's read a little poetry to uh get our minds maybe into a better place. I have here volume two of the collected poems of JRR Tolken uh which is this lovely three volume set that Christina Skull and Wayne G Hammond uh put out like a year or so ago and Hammond and Skull have been very accomplished Holen scholars for quite some time and putting together like all of his um poetry is is pretty amazing and you're not only getting every single one of his poems many of which have never been published but you're getting every version of them and a lot of commentary on it as well. So this is the uh this is the second volume here. I believe this is from actually I think this is the first volume.
This the no [music] this is the this is the second volume 1919 to 1931. That is the second volume. Okay. And I'm going to read here uh poem 67 which is [music] the gold. It has a few titles. It started as the golden dragon and then it was Turin son of Hurin and Gloran the dragon and then it was the children of Hurin and there's also winter comes to narr.
Uh this ran from [music] the writing of 1921 to 1925. Now I bet you didn't know that there was a poetic version of the children of Huda and of course there was a poetic version of nearly the entire silia known as the lays of Bolyriian.
um which includes the lay of lethian which is the poetic version of Bon and Lutheian. Uh but this is every version of the poetic version of the children of Hurin which is really interesting [music] here. So, um, I'm going to read you this first version here.
And we're going to flow into the second version because basically the first version is lines 51 to 104 and the second version actually starts at line 175 and goes to line 247.
Um, so you know, they're trying their best to sort of string it together, all the fragments and everything. But here we go. Let's do this.
Is it Dless Hurin Quoth, stout, steelhanded, who stands before me? A captive living as a coward might be knowest thou my name, or needs be told, what hope he has, who is hailed to Anbond, the bale most bitter, the Balro's torment. I know and I hate for that knowledge I fought thee by fear unfathered nor fear I now said Thallon there and a thing of Morgoth on the mouth smote him but Morgoth smiled fear when thou feast and the flames lick thee and the whips of the balrogs thy white flesh brand yet way canst win and thou [music] wishest still to lessen thy lot of lingering woe Go question the captives of the oursed people I have taken, and tell me where Turgon is hid, how with fire and death they may find him soon, where he lurketh lost and lands forgot. Thou must fain thee a friend faithful in anguish, and their inmost hearts thus open and search. Then if true thou tellst thy triple bonds, I will bid men unbind that abroad thou fair in my service to search secret places following the footsteps of those foes of the gods.
Build not thy hopes so high, oh Bowier, I am no tool for thy evil treasons.
Torment was sweeter than a traitorous stain. If torment be sweet, treasurers leave.
The hordes of a hundred hundred ages.
The gems and jewels of the jealous gods are mine. And a me shall I meet thee thence yay wealth to glut the worm of greed.
Can not learn of thy love and thou lookst on a foe. Oh barbler unbed. Pray no longer of the things thou hast thieved from the three kindreds. In hate I hold thee and thy heists in scorn.
Boldly thou bravest me thy boast rewarded in mirth caught Morgoth to me now the deeds and thy aid I ask not but anger thee not if little they like thee yay look thereon helpless to hinder or thy hand to raise then was thrust to Thangorodrim that mountain that meets the misty skies and high or the hills that he sees blackly bruised shooting on the borders of the north. To a stool of stone on its steepest peak they bound him in bonds and unbreakable chain and the lord of woe their laughing stood.
Then cursed him forever and his kin and seed with a doom of dread of death and horror. There the mighty man unmoved set. But a veil but unveiled was his vision that he viewed upon all earthly things with eyes enchanted that fell on his folk a fiend's torment.
So moving on to the second part and Morgoth second version. I will beat men unbind thee said Morgoth and thy body comfort. Go follow their footsteps with fire and steel. With thy sword go search the sweetened secret dwellings. When in triumph victorious thou returnest hither. I have hordes unthought of. But hur and thalian suffered no longer silent wordless replened teeth in clinging pain. Oh a cursed king cried and wavering. Thy hopes build not so high boware. No too lai for thy treasonous vile who trrist or troth.
Ever true holdest seek traitors elsewhere. Then return answer. Morgoth amazed his mood hiding. Nay madness holds thee. Thy mind wanders. My measurless hordes and mountains high. My place is secret piled uncounted age long unopened. Elf in silver and gold in the gloom. There pale the gems and jewels once jealous warded in the mansions of the gods who mourn them yet are mine.
And amid I will meet thee thence of wealth [music] to glot the worm of greed. Then hurin hanging in hate answered not learn of thy lore when thou lookst on a foe. Oh, bowier unless pray no pray no longer of the things thou thieved from the three kindreds and hate I hold thee. Thou art humbled indeed and thy might is diminished if thy murderous hope and cruel counselss and a captive sad must wait on a weak and weary man. To the hosts of hell his head then he turned. Let thy foul banners go forth to battle, ye balrogs and orcs. Let your black legions go seek the sweeping sword of Turgon.
Through the dismal dales, you shall be driven wailing like startled starlings from the stooks of wheat. Minions miserable of master base. Your doomed dread ye dire disaster. The tide shall turn, your triumph brief, and victory shall vanish. I view a far the wrath of the gods aroused in anger. Then tumultoke at tempest wild in rage roaring that rocked the walls consuming madness seized on Morgoth. Yet with lowered voice and learing mouth thus thally and he threatened darkly. Thou has said it.
See how my swift purpose shall mark to his mark and marred of thee. Nor thy aid be asked over weaning mortal mightless I command thee gaze on my deeds of powerly proven yet if little they like thee thou must look thereon helpless to hinder or thy hand to raise and thy lidless eyes lit with anguish shall not shut forever shorn of slumber like the gods shall gaze their grim tearless on the might of Morgoth and the meat he deals to fool Fools who refuse filthy gracious toangorod was the thallion born that mountain that meets the misty skies. On high over the hills at Heathlam seas blackly brooding on the borders of the north. There stretched on the stone of steepest peak in bonds unbreakable they bound him living. There the lord of woe and laughter stood and cursed him forever and his kindred all that should walk and wander and wo's shadow to a doom of death and dreadful end. There the mighty man unmoved sat but unveiled was his vision that he viewed afar with eyes enchanted all earthly things and the weird of woe woven darkly that fell on his folk a fiend's torment you know. So there there's more to it.
There's there's Morwin's choice and then there is an uh Tin Nagthon and uh then it goes actually to excerpts from the laser that uh have to do with the children of Huran. So it's really interesting. Um so you can see how the second version it it it sort of eclipses the first in its detail and everything. But what's really interesting is that, you know, you read the Sylmerelion and you read the the novel version, the children of Hurin, there's not this much dialogue. Uh, so the poems were were much more detailed in terms of what they were saying. And it's really interesting because if you like I said, if you've read uh if you've read it in Unfinished Tales or or if you've read it in children of Hurin, this section of course where Hurin is with Morgoth and he's sort of taken from place to place. He's put on a mountain of dead bodies. He's put on Tangor. uh he's put on this chair and made to see all the terrible things that are going to happen to his children over the next 30 years. Um what's really interesting uh about all that is um what Morgoth was asking in in the pros version was just tell me where Gondolin is.
And to was unsure about how exactly Morgoth was going to find exactly where it was. [music] And because he wrote one version where Huran actually did eventually lead him to it, but um accidentally because eventually he he freed him because his children were were dead and there was nothing more that he could torture him with. And Putin sort of became this very bitter old man. and he did reunite with his wife, but then she died. and you know um he went around you know taking revenge on some of the people that from his perspective wronged his son like um the Perry dwarf who did wrong Turin but he was sort of like justified in doing so which Hurin didn't know because Hurin was only shown the things that would torture him all the bad things happening to his son and not necessarily the way that his son sort of facilitated those bad things with his attitude or with his actions or anything like that. Uh what's really interesting though is um you know that was sort of the way that Tolken wrote how would Morgoth find Gondolind for the story the the fall of Gondlin to happen and it was supposed to be well Hurin called out in friendship to one of the elves and that led him there. Um, and then of course there's the story in the fall of Gondolind where it was Ael the dark elf's son Magglin who um wished to wed uh his cousin and then she didn't want him and then he goes to Morgo and I think that there's room for both of these stories to work together. one the Huran thing would have told him the basic region where it was um but not the exact location and then Mlin told him the exact location of where it was and that led to the invasion of Gondolind of course um one thing that's in there is it mentions that when when Hurin or thethalion as he's called because he's hurenthalion uh when he started speaking in the first version there that he was smacked across across the mouth by one of uh a thrral of Morgoth. [music] Um and eventually that became I believe it was one of the Balrogs that smacked him across the mouth in that scene in the in the book version. Um and it's interesting because they mentioned orcs and they mentioned balrogs. Uh but they just said it was some thr and it makes it seem like it might have been actually been a person like a mortal man especially since he says [music] if you do what I want I'll have men free you and everything. But what's interesting is that he's not just asking him where is Gondolind, he wants him to become a spy and infiltrate Gondolin for him. And instead of using threats of and all that and the fact that he has them captive, he he's using bribery, which Morgoth has been known to do. It's what he did with Angolans. And he's saying, "I have so much treasure that I took from the Valor, uh, and I'm going to give some of it to you if you just do this thing for me. I need you to go in there and and, uh, you know, find Turgon and and be his friend and then tell me what's going on there." He basically wanted him to become like Sauron, which is really interesting. It didn't quite make it into the Sylmerelion uh, or or Unfinished Tales or or, you know, just the book version, the children of Hutterin, but it's always cool to have these different versions that look on things like slightly differently. It doesn't change the story all that much, but it definitely makes Moros's ambitions seem a bit different there. Anyway, um I've gone on enough about this AI stuff and uh we read a poem uh two two different versions of it at least. That was really fun. We're going to get to your questions. I believe I have like eight or nine uh I have nine questions to get through. So, let's uh start with the first one. But first, I normally do this at the beginning of the video, but I forgot to because I was doing my different intro.
I'm going to tell you if you want to ask me a question. You can ask it right here on YouTube, you do it in the comments section or you can go to the community uh just click the community button on my channel, leave a post there. Um or you can ask on Kora. Kora is full of generative AI slot, but you can still ask me questions there. There's a link to my Kora in the description as well as my Kora space which is called the Grey Havens. And no AI is allowed on the Grey Havens. anybody that posts sayi stuff there, we take it off. We don't do that anymore. We don't allow it. Anyway, let's uh move on to your first question.
Our [music] first question comes in by the request of Jordan Ashworth who asks me uh when Gandalf sees Bilbo wearing the ring would he be able to see him in the spirit world since he is a mayar? I don't recall this being mentioned and Gandalf sees him wear it at least once at Bilbo's birthday. If Glorfindel existed in both worlds being from Valinor, does that mean a Lauren would have been too or was it part of the restraints of his mortal body in Middle Earth? Um, so no, actually Gandalf cannot see a person that is wearing the one ring unless that person happens to be [music] Sauron. Uh, there's a lot of confusion about this, especially about elves, I think, and admire spirits that exist in two realms. I I hope I can clear up some of the confusion here.
This is something that I found a lot of people are very deeply confused on. Uh, even myself was deeply confused on until I just kept reading more and more and eventually realized what was going on.
First, it is true that elves, for example, live in both worlds. What this mean, how what this means, however, is not what a lot of people think it means.
Elves have two parts to them. There's the body part and there's the soul part.
And though both of those parts are equally them. Now, the same can be true of mortals. However, we we have bodies, we have souls, and they are both equally us. However, we don't live in the spirit realm as we are not in touch with it as the elves are. In other words, our souls exist in the spirit world and our body exists in the what we what you might call the corporal world, but our minds and our perceptions are very grounded in the corporal world. That doesn't mean that elves can see spirits. However, the Sylmerelion actually tells us that the specific reason that the Aor, which are Tolken's angelic spirits, that's inclusive of the Valor and the Mayar, that the reason that they took physical form specifically was so that they could be seen by the children of Alvatar, which is inclusive of the elves and the men. Now, let me briefly state that yes, those bodies that the Valor had were physical. They're real. They existed.
They could be touched. They took up space. However, they weren't part of them. That is why the analogy the token uses is Raymond or simply clothes. You are likely wearing clothes right now. I mean, more power to you if you're not, but it's very likely that most of you, as you're hearing this, are wearing clothes. Your clothes are real. They are physical. They can be touched. They can be damaged. They take up space. They have what Tolken refers to as shape and hue, but they are not part of you. And this is important in understanding the difference between incarnate and having a body. Now, there was this one I I don't even want to say fool of a tuk. Uh it was his blockheaded brace girdle from hard bottle uh that was on Kora that started yelling at me in the comment section saying that Sauron was you know I said that Sauron was never an incarnate and that's what he was yelling about and he pointed out all these different times that Sauron had a body.
Um and I told him well that yeah of course but that's not what incarnate means. And he insisted that that is what it means. and even broke it down to its actual meaning. Bound to flesh. He thought existing in a body means you are bound to it, but you are not bound to your clothes. You could take your clothes off, you could put them back on, you could put different clothes on. You could go naked and not suffer any loss of self. Perhaps you'd suffer a loss of dignity, but you wouldn't lose a sense of self uh depending on the situation.
Bound though means that you can't leave it. We're all bound to our bodies. We can't swap our bodies. We can make changes to our bodies through various means, but we don't leave our bodies until we die. And that might not all seem very relevant to the question, but trust me, it is. So, let's examine a scene in the Lord of the Rings, the very end of book one, where Frodo finally makes it to Rivendell. Broto starts to see things as the Nausegoul do. His friends are becoming blurry shadows that are hard to differentiate. The Nausegoul themselves are not invisible. He can see their features. Um the world is darker and Glorfindel is this bright point of light. And this has led to so many misunderstandings among readers because people think that all of this is how it is all the time uh when you're [music] wearing the one ring. But Froto is not wearing the one ring at this point.
Furthermore, Bilbo uh he wore the ring for months at a time and he was around elves and he was around Gandalf and he never saw them as brilliant points of light. There are three differing perspectives at play.
How people see, how wraiths see, and how spirits see. Now people generally only see the corporal world what is known as the seen world while the spiritual aspect is the unseen.
Spirits exist in the unseen but they can be seen if they wear physical clothes and they have no issue seeing the corporal world either. Wraiths are a little different. Wraiths exist in the unseen and they can only be seen by taking Raymond, but in a more literal sense. They don't wear a body. They literally put a cloak on and then all you see is the cloak. Uh the Naz Ghoul are essentially dead men who are bound to this world and they so they don't have the ability to take the final stage of dying and then they can't leave the world. So they are to put it in very simple terms ghosts.
Now ghost in this case or wraith as Tolken calls it is [music] not the same thing as a spirit which includes the angelic, the demonic and the elemental.
They are men and their bodies are gone.
They don't see with eyes long gone.
Their perception is limited. They are not of the world of the living nor can they fully die. So to give themselves a faximile of shape into who they wear cloaks, the one ring draws a person's physical form into this wraith world.
They can be interacted with, but they cannot be seen. While in this ghostly realm, they are not wraiths, but they still exist in both worlds. They're just unseen. Froto starts slipping into this wraith world without usage of the ring due to the fact that he was stabbed by a mortal blade. This is turning him into what Tolken referred to as a lesser wraith where he will become an undead servant of the witch king and thus the thr of a thr. Elron manages to save him from this fade. Uh though Gandalf has this wizard's eye, he perceives it just a little bit of transparency around Froto's shoulder, not something that anyone else would notice. That being said, Gandalf himself is incarnate. The wizard's eye allows him to see subtleties that others would miss, but he cannot see the unseen. The same can be said for the other wizards, as well as the Balrog. Sauron, though, he's not an incarnate. He's still fully in his spirit form. He's just wearing people clothes. So when he wears the ring, he doesn't become unseen. Gandalf would still be able to see him. Gandalf's perception is heightened [music] due to his abilities. He can see much further than say Aragorn can or Legolas can. He can see the subtle change in Froto's shoulder.
He might be able to sense things that are unseen, but he doesn't literally see the unseen. Bilbo snuck up on him in The Hobbit just as much as he snuck up on Thoren. Bombadil, let's talk about him very briefly. Bombadil is an example of a spirit. He's not a but he is a spirit nonetheless and he sees Froto playing his day while he's wearing the ring. But he doesn't have issues differentiating the others. Blindol now he's [snorts] a bit of an outlier. He's not a spirit and yet in the wraith world he's this blinding point of light. [music] Um this is due to two facts, not just one but two. The first is that he is uh the type of elf that is very rare in Middle Earth. The high elves who once beheld the light of Valinor. Galadriel is of the same kin and depending on which version of the backstory you believe her husband Kelliborn uh perhaps also. Now Frodo never wore the ring around Galadriel. So that's untested. Um Glorindel is also though uniquely empowered by Mane. That's the second and more important thing I think. While it is possible that wraiths may specifically see the high elves of the west as points of light, I do believe that there are enough indications that Glorfindel is unique and that we don't get a lot of information about his perception. Gandalf though, it's a lot easier to understand Gandalf than it is to understand Gfindel. And as an in incarnate with access to a portion of his angelic power, he has greater perception than the elves, but it is not wraith perception. Uh nor does he show any indication of seeing the unseen. One may argue that, you know, while when Bilbo snuck up on him, he was busy arguing with Thoren, maybe he wasn't looking in Bilbo's direction. Okay. But when Bilbo lost consciousness during the Battle of Five Armies, he was wearing the ring and everyone including Gandalf was looking for him and he was not found until he woke up and took the ring off.
So my conclusion here would be that the only person that Gandalf would be able to see wearing the ring would be Sauron or Tom Bombadil. Let's move on to the next question.
Our next question comes in by the request of an e Hansen who asks, "Where was the dagger forged uh that Mary used to stab the witch king?" That's a little I see.
I think you're asking where was the where was the dagger that Mary used to stab the witch king forged. Um, so these daggers, which all four hobbits had at one point, are popularly known as the barrel blades due to the fact that they were found in a barrel, but they are also known as daggers of westernness. So westernness pretty much means Numor, but that doesn't mean that the blade that Mary used was forged in Numor. The men of Gondor and the men of Arnor a lot of times still consider themselves to be men of Numor, even if they've never been there or they were born after it was gone. Um, and it is possible that the knowledge that they used to create the blades was something that came from Numor, hence the name. The blades were forged in the realm of Cardellon, uh, which is one of the three states that Arnor broke into after the heirs of King Yandor, um, with his eldest, you know, becoming King Arthodine, uh, King of Arthodine and then the other two creating these realms called Cardellon and Rudau. there was, you know, this big succession crisis. Uh, so they decided to split up the realm and this worked out though the three realms were sometimes at odds and eventually they all fell. When the wars against the witch king happened, Rudar was mostly under his thrum and it was Arthodine and Cardellan that were fighting him. Now geographically the Shire and Buckland are in Arthodine as well as Brie land but Brie itself is only just barely north of the border of Cardellan which is something that was actually pointed out by Tom Bombadil in the book. Uh Cardolan includes the old forest and Amansul and the Barrow Downs and the South Downs and the region of Minhirth and the forest of Erin.
By the time of these wars, Cardellan seemingly no longer had a king, but there was a prince. Uh, meaning that it may have somewhat been reabsorbed into Arthodine as sort of a vassel state or a principality.
The tomb that the Barowite drags the hobbits into would apparently contain the grave of Cardolan's last prince, who died in that war. Now, it's unknown how many of these blades were in the tombs, but Bombadel took four of them because there there were four hobbits. Froto's sword, dagger, to him, it's a sword because he's little. It didn't last very long. The Witch King broke it with a spell at the fort of Bruinan and uh he would soon receive Sting as a replacement. Sam's sword wound up in the hands of the enemy, though snatched from the mouth of Sauron by Gandalf and returned to Sam. Mary of course famously used his on the witch king uh making the wraith vulnerable and allowing Aayowan to kill him. Uh though the sword did crumble into dust after that. Uh Pippen also managed to kill an Olai with his uh and later on he referred to the his sword [music] as trollbane. Now unfortunately we don't know enough about Cardellan's makeup during that time period to give you an exact location where the daggers were likely forged.
>> [music] >> Toki never told us what was the chief city of Cardellon. We know that during the war the prince was held up in the Barrow Downs, but that was likely a strategic point and not so much that you know where he would keep his fortress.
So there you have it. All right, let's move on to the next question.
Okay, our next question comes in by the request of I hope I'm saying the first name right. Uh, Otellio Garcia, who asks me, "If pole arms were the primary melee weapons, [music] why were heroic figures historical or fictional? For example, Tolken's characters almost always portrayed wielding swords." So, I I got asked this uh this was directed at me.
It's not really a Tolken question, but the name was dropped. he's mentioned and the answer is actually really simple and it is something that I just happen to know so why not right and I'll talk about some token stuff of course swords are very popular in fantasy literature just about every book in the fantasy literature genre is going to feature swords in some way uh sometimes they have very fancy names they have magic powers [music] in the Hobbit the swords uh Orcrist which means goblin cleaver and glamring which means fauxhammer were rather very prominent as examples of magical swords from the lost kingdom of Gondolind used by Thoren and Gand And the Hobbit, respectively. Also featured was a blade that would be sort of a just short dagger for an elf, but a nice size sword for Bilbo. He names it Sting. The Lord of the Rings also makes a big deal about Narsil. Narciss means red and white flame. That was a name of a sword that Alendial used in his battle against Sauron, which was broken when he fell on it. Uh, and that it was reforged and renamed Andural, which is flame of the west, which was a symbol of the reunification of the two realms, uh, the two bloodlines and the return of the king. However, Tolken's characters do not always use swords. Uh, the dwarves tended to favor axes and bows. Thoren was a bit of an outlier using a sword.
Actually, Duran was the most famous dwarf of all time. He used an axe. His weapon was simply known as Duran's axe.
It was actually a really uh priceless historical artifact for the dwarves. And we talked about that not too long ago about Duran's axe being found in Moria.
The elves also used other weapons. Uh, most famously the high king of the Nulor elves, Iranian Gilgalid, used a spear called Egos. Uh, Morgoth used a spear and he used a hammer. Sauron didn't even use weapons. He just swatted and grabbed with his with his hands. However, there are many more important swords in Tolken's backstory, such as Garang and Ringul and Anguriel. In real life, swords were not super common in combat.
Polearmed weapons such as spears and howls were very common. These weapons were favored because they could both be used while mounted on a horse and they would also could be used against someone who is mounted on a horse [music] and it could also be uh you know um you just I'm sorry something that you could use to keep somebody away from you as well. So it sort of keeps your opponent at at a distance and that was very good. Um, swords were less [music] common due to a lot of reasons, but the main thing is that they were considered ridiculously expensive to create. Spears could be made in a lot less time and at a fraction of the cost.
They had good utility as well. To be considered a knight, uh, you had to have a horse and you had to have a suit of armor, uh, which is all ridiculously expensive stuff. If if you had have a sword on top of that, that would just basically make you incredibly wealthy.
In the east, let's different culture.
Let's go there. The East Japanese swords, they were known as katana. Uh they were mostly ceremonial. Uh they mean they they were real swords, but they were just carried by um mostly these rich landowners like the samurai.
But the samurai mostly preferred to use bows in actual combat because it was safer and it was considered in Japan a great feat to be an archer with a notoriety. Over time though, in both of these cultures, swords started to become very romanticized. In Japan, it was a mixture of the Bushidito code and sword makers such as Miiamoto Masashi being incredibly skilled and making swords that were just incredible works of art.
And then there were samurai who were just not very good at archery so that they would write poems about what great swordsmen they were. Uh, and that sort of got the ball rolling. Now, in Europe, it was it was very simple. Swords were owned by the wealthy and the wealthy used them as status symbols. So they became romanticized. So let's talk about the Welsh legend of Kovich.
In modern English, that's Excalibur.
And and this [music] was big. This helped the whole sword thing just go into full swing. The romantization of swords. In many of the matter of Britain tales about King Arthur, there are just so many mentions of spears and lances and none of those spears or lances.
They're mentioned so many times. They don't have names though. They're not important. U in the tales about Arthur that I read when I was a boy, he goes through so many spears of ash and so many other knights carry and use these ash spears, but they're just weapons.
They're part of the knight's overall kit. [music] They're not something that would be romanticized. They wouldn't be given a name. But the moment that there's a sword that's stuck in an anvil, sometimes it's a stone, and that this sword decides who is the rightful king of of Britain, suddenly a sword is more than a weapon. It's more than a symbol of wealth. It's like a symbol of divine providence and and and goodness. So similarly, when we meet Aragorn, he's this dirty He goes by Strider. Um and some of the hobbits, most notably Sam, do not immediately trust him.
Everything changes when Abbergorn draws his sword. It's broken. His comment to Sam is well, it isn't very good like this, but he still comes off as majestic and important. Just a brief glimpse of the king that he would become. Swords being broken and reforged is is a common metaphor in fiction. Even Excalibur got broken and mended in some of the tales.
Even amongst the fellowship, only Gandalf and Aragorn have [music] important swords. Orir has a sword as well. The book mentions his shield and his horn a lot more than it [music] mentions his sword. Gimley has an axe.
You know, the hobbits have daggers.
Legololis has a knife and a bow. But note that the Roheri, they all use spears. Theodin, he had a sword. Of course, he's the king. Of course, he has a sword, but it's mostly symbolic of him as king. Theodin feels weak. He feels old. He feels ineffectual. Gandalf tells him, "Your fingers would remember their strength if they gripped your sword." So he's like, "Well, where is my sword?"
And it's brought to him and he holds it and he feels important and he feels vigorous again. But when he's riding out to battle against the Witch King, his chosen weapon is a spear. And he only switches to the sword once the spear shatters. In the real world uh time period that people think of swords as being common, they were not. but they were very expensive status [music] symbols and they were not often used in real battles. They were impractical against armor and they were difficult to use when you're on top of a horse.
However, due to their grand expense and their inherent beauty um as well as the great skill that goes into making a sword, they were heavily romanticized in historical poetry and tales. The Lord of the Ring um [music] and Tolken's greater body is no different. He referred to it as faint history, not the actual events, but close enough. All right, let's move on to the next question.
[music] Our next question comes in by the request of Danny Linder, who asks, "Did Saramon bet everything on getting the one ring? Did he have a viable plan B?"
Oh, nearly all of Saramon's actions were actually both plan A and plan B at the same time. Saramon got the idea that he could get the one ring. What he planned to do with it is sort of a mess. He tells Gandalf, "Well, together we could use the one ring to overthrow Sauron and fulfill our task." And then Gandalf says, "Well, hey, look, man. A ring can only be on one hand at a time. So, who is this? We Saran knows that's correct.
He has no plans to share that power with Gandalf or or with anybody, but he has a very correct assumption that Gandalf knows the whereabouts of the one ring and that it's tied up with the Shire.
Sauron pretty much knows the same information. It's a little bit more specific. The hobbit carrying the ring is named Baggins. Now, his information is actually out of date because that's Bilbo. But the fact that Bilbo gave it to his younger cousin whose last name is Baggins means that well it might as well be Froto too. So this is why in the two towers we get three coalitions of orcs attacking the fellowship. One is from Sauron, one is from Saramon, and then there's a third that's from Moria. The Moria orcs are not particularly important in the story. They're mostly just looking for revenge. But the black Uruks of Mordor and the Urukai of Eisenard both have similar orders.
Capture, do not harm or spoil in any way. Only Gishnak seems to know the actual reason and he's looking for the ring. And Pippen perceives correctly that while he talks about bringing a bat to Sauron, he's looking for the ring. He wants it for himself. Saramon might be infinitely more intelligent and more wise and crafty than Gishnak was, but he's of the same mind. He wants it for himself. Nobody wants the ring to not use it. Denear speaks of keeping it in a vault, but he gives himself an out of well, I might use it in an emergency. He says Boramir would have brought him a mighty gift, but Gandalf corrects him.
Boramir would have taken it for his own, and Denear would not have recognized his son. Even Gandalf said on a few occasions that he did not trust himself with such a thing. In Unfinished Tales, Aragorn discovers a secret room in Orthank where Saraman had a few important items, including effects that could have only have come from Meilder's remains. Less interesting, but more troubling than that, is a spot of honor that Aragon thought must have been for the one ring. The idea that Saramon thought that he could keep the ring in a secret room unheated is just delusional.
He would have been obsessed over it. He would not want it out of his sight, and he certainly would not hand it to Sauron, even if he told Sauron that he would. Getting the ring was 100% his plan A. But he goes ahead without it.
Sauron did not wait for the ring to attack Rohan, nor did he need it to do so. Sauron's plan in attacking Rohan is seemingly for Sauron's benefit. If Rohan is crushed, they cannot [music] assist Gondor and then both nations fall.
Sauron comes to believe that the ring is in Minist. And he attacks sooner than he ought to have. And Rohan shows up because of Sauron's failure, basically making Sauron persona nongrada to Sauron. Not that Sauron ever trusted the wizard, but he thought he could use him to trouble his enemies. In Solomon's [music] rantings to Gandalf, he mentioned using the ring, but also mentioned getting into the enemy's good graces, pretending to join Sauron so they could manipulate him and turn his power towards good. Gandalf, of course, he declines. Sauron has two plans, and he exercises them, or I should say, he executes the them both at the same time.
He's sucking up to Sauron, pretending to be the evil wizard. And considering that, you know, this meant not only a military attack on Rohan, but the slaughter of innocents that made him actually evil, as you can't do terrible things and expect nice results, while also trying to get the ring so he could overthrow Sauron. If he had gotten the ring, perhaps before striking at Rohan, committing atrocities, this wouldn't have been much better. However, Gandalf said it best early on. He didn't trust himself with the ring because he would find a use for it. He would have great need of such power to do good. And in using an evil implement with only one function, the domination of others, he would do evil and become like Sauron.
Sauron doesn't actually think of himself as the bad guy. Sauron doesn't think of himself as the bad guy. They both think that they're doing what they must for the greater good. In the case of Saramon, it's defeating Sauron. And in the case of Sauron, it's eradicating chaos. So even if Saramon's plan A succeeded and he never needed to attack Rohan and burn the Westful and such, he was still deep in a mire of evil. He had already been creating Urukai. He had already been wrecking all the nature in Eisenard.
having the ring. Even if he did cast down Sauron with it, he would just become the new Lord of the Rings, Sauron the Black. So, yes, Saramon had a plan B. Uh, but he didn't wait for plan A to fail. He just executed both plans simultaneously, perhaps to his detriment. Uh, his plan C was pathetically ruining the Shire's petty revenge and and cursing out Galadriel and all that got him was killed. There you have it. All right, let's move on to the next question.
Our next question comes in by the request of Victor Bailey, who asks, "What is the purpose of Sauron?" He wants to control, but has no real need for it since he's not corporal and has no real connection to the real world. He seems like an antagonist without a believable purpose.
Sorry, I don't mean to laugh. [laughter] It's funny. I'm sorry. Let's get the idea of Sauron not being corporal and cast that into the fire. We actually went over this earlier in the video, but let's just go over that briefly again.
It's based on nothing. Uh it's not true and it's not relevant either. Uh the idea that Sauron is not corporal is not based on anything. He is very much a corpal being for nearly all of the events of the Lord of the Rings. Corpal only means having a physical presence, a body. It doesn't mean the same as incarnate, which would suggest not only having a body, but being bound to it. Uh Sauron can abandon his body at will. He could go invisible as a spirit. He can make a new one or even change the one that he's using currently without abandoning it. Sa uh Sauron had a body.
A firsthand account of seeing what Sauron looks like came firsthand from Gollum. I'm going to read you this [music] brief a brief moment uh from the chapter the black gate is closed.
Tales out of the south. Gollum went on again about the tall men with the shining eyes in their houses like hills of stone and the silver crown of their king and his white tree. Wonderful [music] tales. They built very tall towers and one they raised with silver white and in it there was a stone like the moon and round it were a great white walls. Oh yes, there were many tales about the tower of the moon. That would be minus eel that eilder the son of a lendiel said Frodo. It was a sealer who cut the finger of the enemy. Yes, he has only four on the black hand, but they are enough and G said Sal Gollum shuddering. And he hated Elderish city.
What does he not hate? said Froto. But what has the tower of the moon have to do with us? So Sauron had a body. He had fingers on a black hand that he used to torture Gollum because his [music] touch burned like fire. And he was even missing the finger that his sealed cut off. Now let's say just for a moment that he was indeed not corporal just a ghost right what would that have to do with his desire for control realistically what does that mean you are correct Saodon deeply desires control and you question well why does he need control and you're basing that on the fact that he's somehow not physically present in the world to it I would answer flippantly by describing in very long detail with etmologies if I felt very spicy and describe the difference between wanting something and needing something. I won't go that far, but Sauron desires control as a way to do what his purpose actually is, which is to stop chaos and promote order. He is going about it the wrong way. Of course, he sees freedom and free will as being chaotic while not stopping to question if that's true, if his own free will is chaotic. Um so this sounds honestly uh as a bit of you know projection I think and a little bit of the idea of self as default which is an issue that you think well the way I think is the way that everybody thinks if you were an angelic spirit you wouldn't see the purpose of controlling others therefore no one would and therefore Sauron's motive is not believable the fact that Sauron desires control is actually enough and we are even told why of Of course, this doesn't matter because you're not meant to sympathize with Sauron. You don't need to understand his motives. Uh in the Lord of the Rings, he's an unseen character, save for, you know, the fall of Sauron scene. And the only line of dialogue that he has in the book is relayed by Pippen. Uh Sauron is an unseen villain is the choice here because the book's title references him, but the book is not about the cause, it's about the effect. The Lord of the Rings is about what the heroes do to stop him. One can reveal his motives through other books and apply that to increase one's enjoyment of the Lord of the Rings, but it's only through understanding which specific actions he takes. Uh, the enjoyment of the book isn't Sauron, it's Froto, it's Sam, it's Aragon, it's Gimly, it's Gandalf, even that weird elf guy, you know the one.
Let's move on to a better question.
Our [music] next question comes in by the request of Bambarrow. That's a cool name, by the way. Bamarrow asks, "Is there an in universe reason uh the orcs of Mordor speak to each other in Westerron rather than the black speech, or is black speech reserved for specific things [music] such as black magic?" Um, this is sort of actually two questions in one, but they're they're very interesting and they are related to each other. There's also multiple answers and that's fun. Um, first let's address the second question. Uh, let's talk about the black speech. Black speech is a language that Sauron himself created and it was his idea to have one unified language that all the forces of darkness could use. It was pretty much a failure.
The adoption rate was pretty low. The black speech is sort of like this high orcish based on v various orcish tongues but elevated. The issue is twofold. Uh it is not suitable. It's not needed. Orcs don't want their speech to be elevated if they wish that they would do it. Uh speaking fancy is very much not in the personality of a great many orcs. Aside from this, uh though different orcs had different languages, uh because there's never really a unified orc culture other than just Morgoth, they do indeed already all know the Westeron language.
Westeron's called the common speech for good reason. It has the highest adoption rate of any language in Tolken's work.
Everybody can speak it at least in the third age they could. U some cultures like the hobbits have it as their only language. Of course, Hobbit Westerron would have been more rustic than spoken in other places. Uh it would still be the same language. When we hear orcs speak in the Return of the King, it's very unlikely that they're speaking the common speech. However, the primary two orcs there are Shagrat and Gorbach. They know each other and although they, you know, snipe at each other, they make pluns to go off on their own at some point. They're having a private conversation and they so they likely share a language, so they're probably speaking whatever orcish dialect that they were most familiar with. However, all of their dialect is heard by Sam while he's wearing the one ring, which allows you to understand all manner of evil speech. Even Bilbo was able to understand spiders in Mirkwood when he was wearing the ring. In the two towers, however, we have orcs who are definitely speaking by Straw and their speech is easily understood by Mary, uh, who is not in possession of the one ring.
Pippen manages [music] to converse with Gishnach. He was pretending that he had the ring, but he didn't. Now, in the case of Gishnock talking to Pippen, of course, he would use the language that the hobbit spoke um because he wanted, you know, Pippen to understand him. But all of the orc talk that Mary and Pippen heard uh when they were talking to each other and arguing with each other would have absolutely been Westerron. The company of orcs that are transporting [music] Mary and Pippen are from three places. Uh they come from some come from Mordor, some come from Eisenard, some come from Moria. They probably don't all have a single orcish dialect that they all speak. But Westeron is a very easy language that everybody knows. So they default to that which illustrates the failure of black speech. It was never going to replace Westerron, uh, which was a language that the orcs already knew. The black speech wound up being only spoken amongst the very higher circles of Sauron's [music] forces. He probably used it himself to issue orders to like the Witch King or the Mouth or Gothmog or any of the other highranking disciples that he had. But when it came to interpersonal communication, there was no practical reason for the orc foot soldiers to learn this language, much less to use it constantly. So there you have it. All right, let's move on to the next question.
>> [music] >> Uh, the next question comes in by the request of Chewy Bedista, who asks, "If someone witnessed Morgoth flee into the outer darkness, what would they see happening?" Um, so I assume here that the event that you're talking about was what took place after the war of wrath.
Uh, and then I would say that this event did not take place in the way that the elves thought.
Melor is unable to flee to the outer darkness. He is earthbound by tokens onwards. Now, [music] this is not a natural state for the valor, but one that can happen under certain circumstances. Uh we talked about this not super long ago actually. The valor can traverse the skies and what is beyond the skies [music] if they wish.
One such example of this was Tolkus. Uh he entered into creation at the same time as all the others, but he didn't come down to earth himself [music] until he heard the sounds of a fight. He came down. He beats the snot out of Melor. He marries Nessa. He takes a long nap and then he stays. Due to Tolkus coming down to Earth at this later date, it's often believed by casual readers that he didn't enter into creation until that portion, but that's incorrect. All of the entered into creation at the same time. He just didn't dwell on the planet until something happened that interested him. Now, one thing that we have to understand about the Sylmerelion, it's three things. The first thing is it's unfinished. Tolken never finished writing uh the Sylmerelion, though he got close to finishing it a few times.
He would then he would make some change that was deep enough to necessitate revising the entire text, and he would largely just start from square one. The second thing about the Sylmerelion is that it's the Elvish account of events.
In some cases, it's said to be more accurate than the mortal account, the Book of Lost Tales, but it's still not the truth.
It was written with various biases and surmised by the elves and then it was translated by Hobbit who may have inserted his own biases and and he may have made errors. The last thing to consider is that many of the events in the Sylmerelion not directly witnessed by an elf are actually parable. In Morgoth's ring tooken goes over a destructive yet necessary that's his words largecale change to the legendarium. The world was always round.
It was never flat. The sun and the moon are celestial bodies that were created at the same time as the earth. The two lamps, the two trees, they never existed. Most of what the elves wrote is just their religion. It's parables meant to teach very important lessons, but not necessarily the true historical events.
Um, that's not to say that he totally toned down the ideas. I mean, he also had the idea that Melor's fortress may have actually been on the moon rather than somewhere in the north of Bolyrian.
Um, regardless, none of those ideas made it into his stories and maybe they never would have. Um, he might have decided that the elves would keep their account and they might have even known that it was not the true historical events, but they understood the parable, while later readers would assume that this was really how it all happened. What this brings us to is the idea of Melor going into the void. [music] Uh the fate that he was consigned to after the war of wrath. What the elves wrote was that after his defeat by Aonwa, Melor was chained and brought back to Valinor where he was then ejected from the world by the Valor. The elves believe that he might return at some point, triggering an event called the Digor Digaroth, which is the battle of battles, in which case he will be cast down to the earth by Arendel. And then he will be fought by Tolkus and Ayana and the revive spirit of Turin Turbar, who will finally kill Melor for good, triggering the end of the world and the birth of a new one.
Tolken, though told us that this was partly parable and partly the elves just not understanding the actual events that transpired. Melor is as as I pointed out before earthbound. He cannot go to the outer darkness. Uh nor can the valor really just chuck someone out of the world. The doors of the night are meant to be metaphorical, not a literal physical portal to the outside. What Tolken tells us is that as Melor wasn't incarnate and had been since he destroyed the two trees or technically just before doing that uh he was simply taken to a location outside the undying lands and executed by the valor. They would not do this on their own land because they wouldn't spill blood there. But uh it was most certainly not in Middle Earth.
So it might have been either you like some uninhabited island or perhaps the uninhabited continent Hanar. Either way, Tolken frames the Elvish belief of Melor being cast into the outer darkness by the Valor as being a misunderstanding with them confusing the void with the state of not existing within the world.
Uh because he's of the Eor, he must exist somewhere. So if he's not in the world, he must be in the outer darkness.
Therefore, what the Valor did was send him there. That is the basic logic that could explain this misunderstanding.
Now, pivoting over to the idea of him returning, Token explained that it is possible, though not in the exact way that the elves wrote. They believe that Melor would just eventually find his way back to the world and start up his nonsense again. But what Tolken proposed is that the bits of him that are left in Middle Earth, what Tolken referred to metaphorically as Morgoth's ring, would retain both his wisdom and his temperament and eventually would sort of coalesce into a second Morgoth. Either way, Melor was not actually tossed out of the world as the elves believe.
[music] So what a witness would see would be an execution rather than a banishment.
whatever remnant of his spirit that is left behind because Tolken stated that incarnate spirits are harmed by their bodily death uh may have been cast out but that undead that that naked spirit not undead spirit that naked spirit form is not visible to the children of Louisvatar so you would actually see nothing so there you have it even if you saw his spirit going you wouldn't see his spirit because spirits you can't see them all right uh let's move on to the next Our [music] next question comes in by the request of Dylan of Pine who asks uh which is your favorite set design from each of the Lord of the Rings films made by Peter Jackson. This is why I didn't mention where I am. By the way, I'm in Hobbiton.
This is the movie set. Um it's actually a shot from the movie. This is where uh somebody who traveled to New Zealand um took this picture because you you could go to New Zealand and you can see Hobbiton there. Um it's a fun question.
It's pretty easy to think of and a lot lighter. So I thought I'll put this in there. I'll tell you my picks obviously for Fellowship of the Ring. My favorite set is the all of the exterior shots of the Shire. So I saw the Fellowship of the Ring. I was a young man uh in my early 20s and I was incredibly excited to see my favorite book being put into film and live action. I had some reservations of course. Uh this this was, you know, it was in the internet age. Uh but it was long before there were, you know, sites like YouTube and everybody had fast internet. So I wasn't really seeing a lot of trailers. It wasn't common to see trailers unless you were at the movie theater. Sometimes you saw the TV spots. Uh, so what I had to seen of the film was very little actually of what it actually looked like before I went to see it. So when I did go to see the Fellowship of the Ring, um, you know, the first thing that I thought was very very impressive was the Shire. That was the first thing that they showed that I was like, "Wow." You know, the intro, you know, with Sauron, Forging the Rings, and all it's all very exciting and everything, but the first time that I was like, "Wow," was when they showed the Shire. It looked exactly like I thought it should. Now, I have to say though, exterior shots, I said exterior shots because the interior of Bag End is I felt it was too small. Uh, yeah, Hobbits are small, but Bag End is this vast manner. Gandalf should be able to stand comfortably without, you know, bonking his head. I cannot fault how the town of Hobbiton itself looked. It was just amazing. The two towers, uh, I would have to say it was actually Fangorn Forest, I think, is my favorite set. Um, we didn't get to see the old forest in [music] the first movie. They skipped that part. We're going to get that in a new movie, apparently. And of course, we did get to see Loth Laurian, but Fangorn would have been sort of like what I would imagine the old forest to sort of be like, this old growth forest that's not inhabited by elves. Uh, it would be different from Loth Laurian.
And I felt like they really nailed it. I really like the way the Fangorn forest looked. And then for the return of the king, my favorite set is Mina Terth. uh they captured the look and the architecture of the white city magnificently.
Uh [music] Mus felt huge. I mean even if the streets of the city might have seemed a little bit cramped, the fact that they managed to get it so close to what Tolken described um and on such a scale I think it was very impressive. I think that's definitely my favorite set of return.
I I can't just mention Hobbiton again because they go to Hobbiton at the end.
Grey Havens were fantastic, too, but we didn't get to see much of that. All right, we have one more question to get to, so let's get to that now. Let's go to your last question.
Our final question uh comes in by the request of Goodacre Outdoors, who asks um is the trust in faith for events to work out a grander theme that involves Louvatar? I really like this question.
Um, I think that Tolken would tell you in this instance, perhaps with a knowing smile, that you've made a good application.
Um, I have noted on several occasions that characters in Tolken's work that operate on faith tend to succeed.
Gandalf is the prime example. He knows when to speak, but he also knows when to listen. And sometimes what he's listening to are his own urges and his own feelings, which he trusts. Gandalf is aware of his nature. He knows he's an angel. uh he doesn't necessarily remember what it feels like to be an angel and that's meant to put him more in tune with people uh which is something that he succeeded at greatly.
Often times you hear Gandalf say things that are backed up not only by only his his intuition and his knowledge. Bilbo was meant to find the ring. Froto was meant to receive the ring. Froto was meant to carry the ring to Mount Doom.
Gllum had some sort of part to play in the end. And these all turned out to not only be correct but the only way that things could have gone and been successful. We also see the theme of faith in Numador as there is a rift between the faithless who turn away from Aluvatar, turn away from the Valar, turn away from their friendship with the elves and the faithful who wind up persecuted but led by Alendial uh are spared the most devastating effects of the Aalabth and they make their way to Middle Earth. Tur just gets a feeling that it would be a good idea to follow some swans and it kicks off most of the events that transpired in Middle Earth.
We see the opposite as well. Turin believes the words of a dragon over his own gut and Fendulus dies, further consigning Turin to Morgoth's curse. The elves believe that she could have lifted him out of the curse, but it of course didn't happen that way. Of course, faith can get you in trouble. Uh the entire curse happened because Turin's father Hurin rebuked the devil to his face. It was very brave but it did cause a lot of suffering. Tolken, however, never at any point set out to write theology. He said as much in a letter that he wrote to Peter Hastings. I'm going to read you just a little brief bit of letter 153.
Reincarnation may be bad theology, but surely rather than metaphysics as applied to humanity in my legendarium, especially the downfall of Numor, which lies immediately behind the Lord of the Rings, is based on my view that men are essentially mortal and must not try to become immortal in the flesh. But I do not see how even in the primary world any theologian or philosopher unless very much better informed about the ice the relation of spirit and body than I am or I believe anybody can be could deny the possibility of reincarnation as a mode of existence prescribed for certain kind of rational incarnate creatures. So Tolken then goes on a bit to talk about Elvish and Manish biology and how he sees the races as physically the same, but then circles back to the nature of his work, saying the following. Its purpose, though, is still largely literary, and if you don't boggle at the term didactic, though he never sent this letter. His response was to Hastings accusing him of bad theology due to including reincarnation because Hastings said God never used that. Token said a lot of things in response to that. He doesn't care. So what uh he might not have you God may not have used reincarnation but he might yet still.
But the most important thing is that you know though he's a Catholic and he's writing a story that has Catholic undertones, he is not under any obligation to have every aspect of his myth be compatible with a Catholic religion. Otherwise, he might as well not even write about Alvatar and the music of the eye and just say read your Bible for the backstory. Tolken is in kinder terms saying relax it's a story.
However, as his son Christopher once noted, while his father did not write allegory in his legendarium, people will see his thoughts in there. Going over the term that Tolken used, didactic.
There is some overlap between didactic and allegorical. You might even, if you're feeling like it, make a ven diagram if you wish, but there are differences. Didactic means in most instances designed to teach a [music] moral lesson. Allegorical, however, means that it is designed to teach a moral, spiritual or political lesson by usage of symbolism. In other words, in an allegory, the lesson is hidden, while in didactic literature, it is in plain view. Tolken's one allegoral ta allegorical tale, which is not in the legendarium, Leaf by Neagle, does contain a lot, including his personal thoughts on theological points through symbology. The Lord of the Rings though just tells us to trust Gandalf. Uh to have faith in Gandalf because whenever he follows his own faith, he's correct.
And we have to remember Gandalf made mistakes. At several points, he allows Saramon to override his instincts, most notably about the one right. Saramon told him it's lost. And he chose to believe Saramon. putting aside his own feelings about the possibility that Bilbo had it. These stumbling blocks are plainly stating that no one's perfect, not even Gandalf, and that even the best of us can get tripped up in these sort of matters. However, Tolken was very against the idea of allegory for one simple reason. It's the interpretation of the author with no wiggle room left for the reader. Tolken was more straightforward. Here are the lessons with some very plain examples. Apply it as you may. So, one could state quite easily that Tolken told us on many occasions to trust in faith and that good will come from it. But you could also state that he told us to listen to the wise or that he told us to trust our instincts over the voices of others. Um, [music] all three of these are not mutually exclusive. They they can be together, but they are not the same lesson and they can be applied in different ways. All three of them could be true or only one of them could be true for any given individual. But Louis Vuitar is not so involved. He said early on how it was all going to work out. He knows how it ends. He rarely gets involved with events within the world unless he's asked to. Like the Aalibth Tolken once stated that it was because of Louisvatar that Gollum and the one ring were destroyed together. This doesn't mean that he poked his finger down into the world and nudged the little guy into Sauron's forge. It means that due to the lessons of the faithful Valla, imparted to Gandalf, imparted to Frodo, Gollum was both pied and shown mercy, and therefore he was there to fall into the fire with the ring. A less patient person might not have exercised mercy and might not have pied Gollum.
Even Froto said he couldn't pity Gollum.
And then Gandalf simply said, "You haven't seen him." When he had seen him, he recalls Gandalf's words, "And now he's the Gandalf, and Sam is the Froto, so to speak." Froto and Sam have every reason to kill or to abandon Gollum. He attacked them with malicious attempt on more than one occasion. But Froto remembered the words that Gandalf has said to him, "You can deal out death to those that deserve it, but can you give life to those who deserve it?" With this in mind, the theme of faith is even stronger. Not that being faithful will cause God to step in and do something for you, but that you can do great things yourself. Aluvatar said there is no theme that does not originate in him.
He was speaking to the great evil Melor, but it applies to Gollum just as much.
Gandalf had faith that Gollum has a part to play and he didn't know whether it was going to be a good thing or a bad thing, but he knew that he had to let it happen and that Froto gets the memo. He gets it a little bit late, but he gets it in time. That's really important.
That was our last question. We're going to head on to the quiz review. And this is fun because we started quizzes based on the Sylmerelion.
So, let's go to that.
Okay. So, let's let's review the quizzes. So we did a a week of quizzes based on the first chapter of this silene which is known as the anolindala which is music of the angels [music] or literally the music of the holy ones. Um yeah so let's see how you guys did. Uh you guys did pretty good on a lot of the Lord of the Rings quizzes. Uh it got a little iffy during the appendices but that's okay. Not everybody has really poured over the appendices. I understand that. Let's see how you did. I haven't really looked at the results of these [music] at all. I'm going to be just as surprised as you are. So, here's the first one. Which of these did Alvatar or God create first? So, 6% of you said elves. That's good. Uh, obviously, he created the elves before [music] um well, or at least he had the elves awaken before any of the other races, but he didn't create them first out of the ones that I mentioned. The angels, that's actually the correct answer. The Inor were the first things that he created. Uh 33% [music] of you got that right. 35% of you said the timeless halls. Now, we never actually get told of how he creates the timeless halls. And just because they're called the timeless halls, by the way, doesn't mean that they were always there, like he was always there. Um it just means that they existed. They exist outside of time. Time [music] started when the universe started. Um and 26% of you thought it was the universe, but actually no, it was the angels. And um it's literally like I think the first line of the sylmerelion of first he made the eor. Um in the book of lost tales is actually a little bit more detailed and tells you that he sang them into existence which I think is really cool.
But there you have it. We read that last week didn't we? The the either last week or the week before. I think last week was children heard. But the last time I read um the book of lost tales part one.
We did that section the music of the holy ones. All right here's our next question. Uh, which character other than Alvatar is the first to have spoken dialogue in the Sylmerelion? Now, this is one of the things I feel that you might think you know it, but you, you know, it's it's actually pretty tricky.
So, uh, the first answer was Manway. 26% of you thought it was Mane. Not correct.
Melor, this was the big one. 48% of you went for it. There is a lot of Aluvatar speaking to Melor, but there's not a lot of Melor speaking.
As a matter of fact, he doesn't even have any lines in this chapter. Uh 11% said Varda and 16% of you got it right.
It was actually Olmo. Um we hear about things that Manway thinks and things that Melor thinks, but they don't have spoken dialogue right away.
Elmo is actually the first character to have spoken dialogue other than Illuvatar. Speaking to Uvatar, it's when Olivar talks about the things that Melor has added to the schematics for the world, the music, and saying he he made some parts of the the world very very cold to sort of a ridiculous degree. But look, he's also created snow, which is really beautiful. And also because it is the sort of the uh coalescence of water which you find to be very fair and and air which Mane finds to be very fair. It has brought you two together closer as friends. And then Elmo was like, "Wow, that's so amazing. I'm going to go find Manane right now and we're going to go hang out." He doesn't say exactly that, but that's pretty much what he says.
Okay, here's our next one. Um, why did the elves call the greatest of the Eor valor or the powers? So, Tum, let's see.
Because they were powerful. Seems like the obvious choice, right? 23% of you went for that. It's usually not so obvious as that. Because it is their it is their power bound to the earth that keeps the world alive. That is the correct answer. 71% of you got it. An overwhelming majority. That is really good. You guys really nailed this one.
Uh the Valor insisted on being called that. Only 1% of you went for that. and Melor gave him the idea. 6% of you went for that. So there you go. Um 71%.
That's really I don't think we've seen like a 70% majority like that. 71% in this case in quite a while. Very very good. Uh who was dominant in the three three the three themes in order? So basically who had the loudest voice in the first theme, the second theme and the third theme. So the first is Melor Manwaye Oluvatar.
20% of you got that right. That is correct. Uh Ouvatar Melor Manway. 46% of you said that. Melor uvatar then Mane. 5% of you got that. And then Louisvar Manway Melor 29% of you. So in the first theme it was like Melor sort of drowning everybody out with his atonal discord and themes and everybody sort of got swept up on it and then it created this canophony but that it kind of worked which was what Ovatar's whole point was. So it the first theme was like mostly Melor adding to the beauty of the music while trying to ruin it.
Now, in the second theme, we're told that Mane takes it upon himself to really fight against his brother and to really have the loudest and most dominant voice and he succeeds in that.
But then in the third one, it's Aluvatar and that's where he creates his children, the men and the elves. Um, the Eor didn't even understand the music at that point. They didn't get it. It was a little bit beyond them, you know. Um, so there you have it. 20%. I mean, it was kind of like a a tossup, I think, if you don't remember exactly.
Uh, which of these phrases most simply describes the first physical form that Melor took? [music] Uh, for dark lord, 14% of you went for that one. He did take a dark lord form, but that was much later. Uh, lightning crowned cloud. 37% of you got that. That actually described Sauron. And that was not from the silver. It's from the Lord of the Rings.
[music] Uh TW that was the plurality there actually. 22% of you said icy mountains spewing spo smoke. That was what h that was the true one. He was like a basically a big icy volcano uh walking through the world trying to wreck as as much stuff as he could. And then a fair elf. 27% of you uh went for that. He would have that sort of form, but it was not the first form that he took.
Okay, here's our next one. Which of these instruments is not mentioned as the Eor sounding leg? Uh, so it says, you know, they had voices like this and this and this and this. I'm a list four instruments. Which one was not mentioned in the Londale? Uh, 9% of you went for harp. Nope, that's in the book. Uh, 25% of you went for pipes. Nope, they mentioned pipes. A shocking large amount. 53% of majority said organ. No, organs weren't mentioned. Uh 13% of you got it right. Flutes. They did not mention flutes. Uh he did mention trumpets as well and ve and loots. So it was yeah harps, pipes, [music] organs, trumpets, ve flutes, and many many voices. That's what the music of the Eor uh was made out of.
And here's our final one. Uh not not final one ever, but final one from this week. Of course, we're going to [music] move on to the Vaquenta now. Uh how was it decided which angels were men and which were women? I hope you guys did really well on this because this is a really easy one. Uh, let's see. The bodies they created determine this.
Incorrect and only 3% of you went for that. Their thoughts determine this and they made their bodies to match their thoughts. That is the correct answer at 74%.
H, I knew that was an easy one. I'm not as impressed as I was with the uh the other one, the uh why were they called the valor? Because that one I thought was a little harder. This one that was at least a little tricky. This one is real easy. So, I'm I'm impressed, but I was more impressed with the other one.
Uh, it was utterly random. Uh, 4% of you went for that. And they are genderless.
And they only make gendered bodies to relate to the elves. That's 19% of you went for that. It's not true. They do have gender. You have to remember that gender is a is is a is what you feel.
So, they express it by making a body.
So, they had their thoughts in their head. Uh, even before they had bodies, before they came into the world, they knew Mane, Melor, Omo, they're they're guys, you know, Varda, Nessa, Viraa. They didn't even have these names yet cuz these are el names the elves gave to them. They um they wouldn't have been speaking Qua, you know, they would have been speaking.
They would have been using the Asan Kenta, the telepathy, but they knew that those were women. And when they saw their first vision of what the children of the Lutar would look like, they thought, "Oh, wow. You can visually see which are the men and which are the women. So, we're going to create bodies like that so that they can understand what we are in our in our hearts and minds." So, that's what happened there.
Anyway, guys, uh it's the end of the video. Subscribe if you haven't already.
Leave me a comment. Hit the like button, hype button if you see it. That does help me out. Somebody actually posted on my community page. Uh I didn't answer them uh because I usually just leave that just for questions, but thank you for posting. They posted a screenshot of after they hit the hype button and it gives you the this you know hyping this video helped this creator. So it does do something. It really does help out. So if you happen if you're on mobile, happen to see the hype button after you hit like, hit the like button. Leave me a comment. Even if it's just to say hi, it's engagement. It's important. I'll respond to you most likely and send me some questions. Um, contact core, let them know you don't want answers written by generative AI, you want answers written by real people.
See you guys next week.
[music] >> [music]
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