The Hall of Fire

Voronwë the Faithful wrote:Then what is the point of having Leviticus as part of the Bible?

Perhaps the point is the same as the point of still having the text of the 18th Amendment as part of modern copies of the US Constitution even though it has been superceded by first section of the 21st Amendment.

And even if they were really in Sauron's direct service, the Fellowship may not have been their target specifically. Rather, they may have been appointed to ambush any elves, dwarves, Dúnedain, or other enemies of Mordor that happened to pass that way.

PHOENIX — Gov. Jan Brewer on Friday signed a follow-on bill approved by Arizona legislators that make revisions to the state's sweeping law against illegal immigration — changes she says should quell concerns that the measure will lead to racial profiling. The changes include one strengthening restr...

Biblbo's song in this chapter, "I sit beside the fire and think", is one of my favorite bits of Tolkien poetry. Reading back over it today got me to thinking about all of the changes that have taken place in the world in just my lifetime. Many of the homes in the rural community where I gr...

A few more thoughts that occured to me as I reread the chapter: Were Merry and Pippen really irate at Sam just because he sneaked into the council or because he sneaked into the council without them? If Elrond's original plan to send Merry and Pippin to warn the Shire of the coming danger had been f...

I wonder if there is any significance to the fact that Tolkien, being Catholic, chose December 25th as the date of the Fellowship's departure from Rivendell.

From The Silmarillion Chapter 2: Aforetime it was held among the Elves in Middle-earth that dying the Dwarves returned to the earth and the stone of which they were made; yet that is not their own belief. For they say that Aulë the Maker, whom they call Mahal, cares for them, and gathers them to Man...

Nearly all societies condemn murder, but they vary greatly in their definitions of exactly what type(s) of killing constitute murder.

Having finally found the time to read Arda Reconstructed in its entirety, I find that I must now update my list of the most Essential works in my Middle Earth reference library as follows: The History of Middle Earth 1-12 ~ Christopher Tolkien The Letters of JRR Tolkien ~ Humphrey Carpenter & Ch...

"Tolkien suggests that the two Bombadil poems were written by hobbits in Buckland, and show that the Bucklanders knew Bombadil, though, no doubt, they had as little understanding of his powers as the Shire-Folk had of Gandalf's: both were regarded as benevolent persons, mysterious maybe and un...

The version of the council given in The Treason of Isengard also contains a brief (presumably rejected) account of a meeting between Gandalf and Tom Bombadil: Gandalf in his reply to Elrond's question about Bombadil 'Do you know him, Gandalf?' now says: 'Yes. And I went to him at once, naturally, as...

There are twelve named persons attending the council. Attendees: Gandalf, Frodo, Bilbo, Elrond, Glorfindel, Erestor, Galdor, Gloin, Gimli, Strider, Legolas and Boromir. That is: one wizard, two hobbits, five named elves (one from Mirkwood, one from the Grey Havens, three from Rivendell), two dwarve...

From the Ainulindalë : Then Ilúvatar spoke, and he said: 'Mighty are the Ainur, and mightiest among them is Melkor; but that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Ilúvatar, those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see what ye have done. And thou, Melkor, shalt see that...

In the published book, Old Man Willow seems to be simply a malevolent tree (possibly a huorn?); but in earlier versions of the text, he is actually an evil spirit (Possibly a fallen maia?) who is trapped in the body of an ancient tree. From HoME vol. 6: Amongst his talk there was here and there much...

ArathornJax wrote: Gandalf also foreshadows here what will happen to Frodo; "Not to evil I think. He may become like a glass filled with a clear light for eyes to see that can."

If Tolkien had followed through with that idea, Frodo could have ended up almost like a living Phial of Galadriel.

Not all he seems; and yet, at the same time, much more than he seems.

...it is clear that he already had invented some of the stone's property's because in the text that he inserted in the Farewell to Lórien chapter states "'All growing things that you look at through this,' she said, 'you willsee as they were in their youth and in their spring. It is gift that ...

But wasn't the UT Elessar material written after the publication of LOTR?

Do we have any evidence that the Elessar story as such even existed at the time when this chapter was written?

What is the significance of Aragorn's insistance that Bilbo include a referece to a green stone in his song Eärendil?

Was this green stone supposed to be the Legendary Elessar which is described in Unfinished Tales, a forshadowing of Aragorn's own royal name "Elf Stone", or perhaps both?

Another point of interest in this chapter is Bilbo's "Song of Eärendil". This was actually a rather drastic reworking of Tolkien's existing poem "Errantry" which had already been published years earlier in the Oxford Journal in 1933. A somewhat different version of "Errantry...