Tolkien: Maker of Middle Earth?
Anne Maria Clarke explores Tolkien's Imaginal Realm
Part Two
J.R.R Tolkien is almost universally regarded as the Maker of Middle Earth and yet he would not have bestowed such a title upon himself. He regarded himself more as a honoured guest within the region rather than it's creator.
The realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all mannerof beasts and birds are found there; shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril; both joy and sorrow as sharp as swords. In that realm a man may, perhaps, count himself fortunate to have wandered, but its very richness and strangeness tie the tongue of a traveller who would report them. And while he is there it is dangerous for him to ask too many
questions, lest the gates should be shut and the keys be lost.
Tolkien: Essay on Fairy-stories
Looked at in this way fairy – stories clearly open a door into another realm and those who pass through, even for a moment, step beyond their time and maybe, even beyond time itself.
Yet what is this realm, this mysterious other dimension ...far away and ever near – and who are the characters that inhabit it?
Tolkien named it Faerie, a realm of power he said and fantasy is the means of entering it. Carl Jung, the Swiss analyst called it the collective unconscious, to be reached via his notion of active imagination, whilst Henry Corban, the Suffi inspired French philosopher called it the imaginal or mundus imaginalis reached in prayer and meditation.
A philologist, a psychiatrist and a philosopher yet quite clearly visionary artists too, drawn through powerful experience, deep into the transpersonal, into the mystic.
Yet what is this realm, this mysterious other dimension ...far away and ever near – and who are the characters that inhabit it?
Tolkien named it Faerie, a realm of power he said and fantasy is the means of entering it. Carl Jung, the Swiss analyst called it the collective unconscious, to be reached via his notion of active imagination, whilst Henry Corban, the Suffi inspired French philosopher called it the imaginal or mundus imaginalis reached in prayer and meditation.
A philologist, a psychiatrist and a philosopher yet quite clearly visionary artists too, drawn through powerful experience, deep into the transpersonal, into the mystic.
They arose in my mind as 'given' things,
Tolkien wrote to his son Christopher about his tales,
and as they came, separately, so too the links grew. An absorbing, though continually interrupted labour. Yet always I had the sense of recording what was already 'there', somewhere: not of inventing.
J.R.R.Tolkien: Letters
He regarded the resulting tales and paintings as a combination of inspiration and invention based upon his travels and discoveries within the realm. The intersection between the two he regarded as a fusion field of sorts within which the magic of his creations, or sub- creations as he preferred to say, occurred. Always he had the sense of being guided in his endeavours by something greater than himself. His task as he saw it was to stay attuned to that power so that the reader or viewer of the paintings might experience these things as intended.
Writing to W.H, Auden he repeated what he had said to his son.
Writing to W.H, Auden he repeated what he had said to his son.
I dare say something had been going on in the 'unciousness'
for some time and that accounts for my feelings throughout that I was not inventing but recording...imperfectly...and had at times to wait for what really happened to come through.
J.R.R. Tolkien: Letters
In Carl Jung's exquisite, hand written Red Book ( published 2009) that looks more like a medieval illuminated manuscript than a work of recent times, he recounts deeply personal visions and encounters with apparently autonomous aspects of the collective and transpersonal akin to those encountered by Tolkien.
When he began setting these things down around 1915 he was at a stage of his life when he felt he had lost contact with his soul and had set out to re-discover it.
When he began setting these things down around 1915 he was at a stage of his life when he felt he had lost contact with his soul and had set out to re-discover it.
My soul, where are you? Do you hear me?
I speak. I call you
Are you there?
Much to his surprise and initial consternation, he was met with a reply.
Several characters appeared and spoke most notably a wise old man, a spirit guide of sorts, named Philemon, who had appeared in Ovid's Metamorphosis and in Geothe's Faust, a character not unlike Tolkien's Gandalf.
Later Jung said.
Several characters appeared and spoke most notably a wise old man, a spirit guide of sorts, named Philemon, who had appeared in Ovid's Metamorphosis and in Geothe's Faust, a character not unlike Tolkien's Gandalf.
Later Jung said.
[Philemon] was simply a superior knowledge, and he taught me psychological objectivity and the actuality of the soul. He formulated and expressed everything which I had never thought.
He deemed Philemon and other such characters to be aspects within the psyche, which he could produce but which could also produce themselves, as having their own life. They were for him therefore both psychological and metaphysical and set the scene if you like for his theory of the collective unconscious, a vast realm he explained,
replete with archetypes and active principles that interacted between that source and human consciousness.
crystalinks.com
Of these brief years between 1913 and 1916 Jung writes
The years when I pursued the inner images, were the most important time of my life. Everything else is to be derived from this. Everything later was merely the outer classification, scientific elaboration and integration into life. But the numinous beginning that contained everything was then.
Carl Jung: on the Red Book
In allowing such phenonema to speak: says James Hillman the American post Jungian analyst, Jung shifted the field of inquiry funementally away from the empirical toward what might be apprehended - rightly in Hillman's view - as poetic and phenomenological.
Poetry is the only appropriate language for matters of the psyche, he says, the only language - save music and the sacred arts capable of rendering the mystery of the soul.
Poetry is the only appropriate language for matters of the psyche, he says, the only language - save music and the sacred arts capable of rendering the mystery of the soul.
Henry Corbin - Mundus Imaginalis
Between the last degree of time and the first degree of eternity....
This beautiful quotation that I've heard many times on the lips of my editor & teacher Hazel Marshall, introduced me to the sublime ideas of Henry Corbin and his notion of the mundus imaginalis, the realm seemingly to close to Faerie and even aspects of Jung's great collective.
Here he is writing about storytelling within the Suffi tradition in which stories, open doors to the imaginal realm and become initiations for teller and listener alike.
Here he is writing about storytelling within the Suffi tradition in which stories, open doors to the imaginal realm and become initiations for teller and listener alike.
The mystical recital says what cannot be said or make itself known ....in any other way.... for the mystic does not recount a story, he is that story...but it is story that breaks visible history, since it is the passage to that which is hidden from the appearences of this world. The mystic is the object of this meta-historic story because it is in him that it takes place and this is why he is at the same time his agent, the actor and active subject.
Henry Corbin
Else where Cobin quotes the Suffi wisdom tradition in which it is held that,
The reciter, the deed recited and the hero of the recital are one sole and single reality and this takes place in every being, according to the measure of each being.
Corbin's Suffi storyteller, Jung and Tolkien have all clearly attuned to something of a much higher order, like maybe Dante did in the Divine Comedy, or William Blake and the English Romantics in their own visionary outpourings.
Joseph Campbell, the great mythographer is quite clear about how such offerings comes into being. They are glimpsed from above he says by those highly attuned souls who then render their experiences into poetic form.
Joseph Campbell, the great mythographer is quite clear about how such offerings comes into being. They are glimpsed from above he says by those highly attuned souls who then render their experiences into poetic form.
The visionary experiences of both Jung and Tolkien took place over relatively short periods of time when for both men writes Dr Lance S. Owens, the doors to the other realms were blown wide open. It is a testement to the sanity of both men that they were not overwhelmed by the flood of experience. Both men we know spent the rest of their lives attempting to work through and integrate the material generated during these intensely creative years.
Humility
The thresholds of such realms are not always easy to cross. All the more reason then to enlist the help of a guide. Myth, legend and fairytale are replete with guardian characters, not unlike Philemon, Gandalf and Virgil. Often a ritual cleansing must be undertaken before access to the mysteries may be gained. We must remove our shoes so to speak, shift our focus away from our everyday consciousness, as these aventurers have clearly done before us.
Yet humility is the quality most required in such endeavours and reverence too. It is not to be assumed that one might pass there and back again merely at will. For this is sacred ground, as Corbin reveals and sometimes we might not be able to match its frequency. We are spiritual beings of course - yet we are flesh and blood creatures too.....and so it is not always easy. The perils and pitfalls of hubris are ever present in such endeavours and so humility is our only true safeguard.
Humility
The thresholds of such realms are not always easy to cross. All the more reason then to enlist the help of a guide. Myth, legend and fairytale are replete with guardian characters, not unlike Philemon, Gandalf and Virgil. Often a ritual cleansing must be undertaken before access to the mysteries may be gained. We must remove our shoes so to speak, shift our focus away from our everyday consciousness, as these aventurers have clearly done before us.
Yet humility is the quality most required in such endeavours and reverence too. It is not to be assumed that one might pass there and back again merely at will. For this is sacred ground, as Corbin reveals and sometimes we might not be able to match its frequency. We are spiritual beings of course - yet we are flesh and blood creatures too.....and so it is not always easy. The perils and pitfalls of hubris are ever present in such endeavours and so humility is our only true safeguard.
Grace
Only ever by grace did Tolkien believe he was admitted to Faerie – only ever by grace had he come and gone since he was a young man in the trenches of World War One, when he had first begun to set things down to accompany the Elven languages he was developing – and later as he convalesced back in England with his beloved Edith looking after him – what wondrous light filled days they must have been – paradoxically – for they existed hand in hand with great grief and loss – and yet the comings and goings went on and on - and it must have seemed as if they would go on forever – but it was not to be – and eventually the light dimmed and his excursions became fewer and fewer until at last they were no more.
Then there was only the memory of what had been.
Much later, toward the end of his life, the short tale of Smith of Wootten Major came to him and he set it down in earnest. It was to be the last tale he wrote before his death in 1973. Some say it's auto – biographical in a way. Who knows! It certainly concerns the adventures of one such soul, the Smith's son, fortunate to come and go between Faerie and the everyday world by means of a fay-star discovered in a children's party cake – and it concerns the necessity too, many years later of giving up that star so that another might know its magic.
I will not spoil the tale for those who have not yet encountered it but I will tell a little of it's wonders; for at the end of all his travels, Star Brow, as he became known, not only has his memories - but the gift of a Living Flower also, a keepsake given to him by a beautiful Elven maiden with whom he once danced in the Vale of Evermorn. He did not know it at the time but she was the Fairy Queen herself, the anima mundi if you like, Soul of the World.
Then there was only the memory of what had been.
Much later, toward the end of his life, the short tale of Smith of Wootten Major came to him and he set it down in earnest. It was to be the last tale he wrote before his death in 1973. Some say it's auto – biographical in a way. Who knows! It certainly concerns the adventures of one such soul, the Smith's son, fortunate to come and go between Faerie and the everyday world by means of a fay-star discovered in a children's party cake – and it concerns the necessity too, many years later of giving up that star so that another might know its magic.
I will not spoil the tale for those who have not yet encountered it but I will tell a little of it's wonders; for at the end of all his travels, Star Brow, as he became known, not only has his memories - but the gift of a Living Flower also, a keepsake given to him by a beautiful Elven maiden with whom he once danced in the Vale of Evermorn. He did not know it at the time but she was the Fairy Queen herself, the anima mundi if you like, Soul of the World.
The flower did not wither nor grow dim; and they kept it as a sercet and a treasure. The smith made a little casket with a key for it, and there it lay and was handed down for many generations in his kin; and those who inherited the key would at times open the casket and look long at the Living Flower, till the casket closed again: the time of it's shutting was not theirs to choose.
Tolkien: Smith of Wootton Major
Grace you see: only ever by Grace.
So have a mind to the words of this great man if ever you should wander in the deep, deep realms of Faery – and savour it whilst you can - lest the gates should be shut and the keys be lost.
Much love
Anne Maria Clarke
x x x
So have a mind to the words of this great man if ever you should wander in the deep, deep realms of Faery – and savour it whilst you can - lest the gates should be shut and the keys be lost.
Much love
Anne Maria Clarke
x x x
See also: Tolkien: On Fairy-Stories
Anne Maria Clarke explores
Tolkien's Master Class
http://www.annemariaclarke.net/blog/tolkien-m…
References
J.R.R. Tolkien:
On Fairy-Stories
Letters
Smith of Wootten Major
Dr Lance S. Owens: Tolkien: An Imaginative Life
https://youtu.be/SuDJ2JzfBT8
Carl Jung: The Red Book
James Hillman - The Red Book: Jung and the Profoundly Personal
https://youtu.be/CBQWN0fL430
Carl Gustav Jung and The Red Book," an all-day symposium, features presentations by prominent Jungian scholars.
https://youtu.be/SAURpBfGA1I
Becca Tarnas:The Back of Beyond: The Red Books of C.G. Jung and J.R.R. Tolkien
PhD Defense by Becca S. Tarnas
https://youtu.be/3soOYajHUBM
Henry Corbin: Mundus Imaginalis John Carey -
The Role of the Grail in Henry Corbin's Thought
https://youtu.be/6dgzeVOUe7M
J.R.R. Tolkien:
On Fairy-Stories
Letters
Smith of Wootten Major
Dr Lance S. Owens: Tolkien: An Imaginative Life
https://youtu.be/SuDJ2JzfBT8
Carl Jung: The Red Book
James Hillman - The Red Book: Jung and the Profoundly Personal
https://youtu.be/CBQWN0fL430
Carl Gustav Jung and The Red Book," an all-day symposium, features presentations by prominent Jungian scholars.
https://youtu.be/SAURpBfGA1I
Becca Tarnas:The Back of Beyond: The Red Books of C.G. Jung and J.R.R. Tolkien
PhD Defense by Becca S. Tarnas
https://youtu.be/3soOYajHUBM
Henry Corbin: Mundus Imaginalis John Carey -
The Role of the Grail in Henry Corbin's Thought
https://youtu.be/6dgzeVOUe7M
