“I Summon You to The Stone of Erech!” On the Breaking of Oaths and The Authority of The Heir of Isildur.

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The Return of the King by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 769-773

The Dead who follow Aragorn and the Grey Company along the Paths of the Dead clearly have power. We saw that in the last piece on this blog as we followed Gimli’s journey along that dark way and felt his fear, a fear that at last has him “crawling like a beast on the ground”. And it is this power that Aragorn will call upon to aid him in the cleaning of the land of Gondor from all the servants of Sauron.

When Isildur made this people swear loyalty to him as king and overlord, long ago, it was his authority and power that they feared. It was at the Stone of Erech, in a remote valley of Gondor, that the Oath was sworn at the ending of the Second Age, but that oath was broken because they feared and had worshipped Sauron for long years before the coming of Elendil and the Númenoreans to Middle-earth.

The keeping of oaths is a matter of great importance in Tolkien’s legendarium, as is their breaking also. So important is it that when Gimli speaks of swearing an oath to stay with Frodo until the end of his journey, Elrond replies:

“Let him not vow to walk in the dark, who has not seen the nightfall.” (Fellowship p. 274)

Gimli’s words are not a light affair. For a dwarf, the swearing of an oath is a matter of sacred importance; and perhaps that is why Elrond does not permit one on this occasion. He knows that none can foresee the nature of the journey that lies ahead. If Gimli had been bound by an oath to follow Frodo at the breaking of the Fellowship at Parth Galen, then he could not have followed Merry and Pippin across the plains of Rohan and his following of Frodo and Sam would have been to little or no purpose. Worse still it would almost certainly have been a hindrance to Frodo and Sam’s secret journey across Mordor. We might also note the irony in Elrond’s words about vows to walk in the dark after we thought about Gimli’s dark journey in the last piece. While Gimli is right to speak of how sworn words can “strengthen quaking heart”, Elrond is right too to aver that an oath rashly made can break a heart just as easily as it can strengthen it. It is best that he keeps Gimli from that trial. Best too, for the ultimate outcome of the Quest.

But what of the oath first made at the Stone of Erech to Isildur by the mountain people? That was not an oath made in friendship but through fear. There is no difference between them in their essence. Perhaps that is the reason why Jesus warns against the making of oaths in the Sermon of the Mount. Their spiritual power is such that we should fear it and never take it lightly. So, the oath to protect a constitution, or to speak the truth in a court of law, is not merely a form of words, a convenience to be observed merely as a matter of custom, but has a spiritual power that will be enforced in the court of heaven, and therefore should be feared.

The Dead who are summoned to the Stone of Erech know that power. They have endured it through long years without rest. Now, at last, comes the one who has the authority both to enforce their obedience to the oath and to declare the oath fulfilled at last.

“The hour has come at last. Now I go to Pelargir upon Anduin, and ye shall come after me. And when all this land is clean of the servants of Sauron, I will hold the oath fulfilled, and ye shall have peace and depart for ever. For I am Elessar, Isildur’s heir of Gondor.”

The same power that has held that mountain people in a state of unrest through long years now has power to free them also. Aragorn speaks with authority, but that authority does not lie within himself but has been granted to him. He is a man under divine authority and it is with that authority that he now speaks.

“Here is a Thing Unheard of! An Elf Will Go Underground and a Dwarf Dare Not!” Gimli’s Secret and Very Personal Dark Journey.

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The Return of the King by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 768-771

As Aragorn and his company arrive at the “evil door” to the Paths of the Dead, I am taking a little time to reflect on some of the Dark Journeys of The Lord of the Rings, journeys that as I wrote last time, have a rich literary and cultural history.

This week I want to write about the dark journey of Gimli, son of Glóin, of the Dwarf kingdom of Erebor. Of all the company that pass through the evil door with Aragorn, it is through Gimli that Tolkien chooses to tell this part of the story. He rarely makes this choice usually choosing one of the hobbits if possible. Indeed, the only other occasion that comes to mind in which Gimli is the chosen vehicle for the telling of the story is in his first interaction with Galadriel when he expected enmity but encountered love. That moment changed his life. Does this one?

We read of how Aragorn led the way through the door and of how both his men and their horses followed him. We read of how Arod, the horse from the plains of Rohan who has carried both Legolas and Gimli on their journeys through that land, is afraid to follow, but how Legolas, the elf from the Woodland Realm, is able to calm his fear and lead him into the dark; and then we read this.

“And there stood Gimli the Dwarf left all alone.”

Gimli is not left alone because no-one cared about him, but because everyone assumed that Gimli, the son of a people for whom caves and mines were his natural milieu, was all right, that Gimli would be following on behind. But Gimli is not all right.

“His knees shook, and he was wroth with himself. ‘Here is a thing unheard of!’ he said. ‘An Elf will go underground and a Dwarf dare not!’ With that he plunged in. But it seemed to him that he dragged his feet like lead over the threshold; and at once a blindness came upon him, even upon Gimli Glóin’s son who had walked unafraid in many deep places of the world.”

And indeed, we remember how it was Gimli, of all the members of the Fellowship, who welcomed and embraced the journey through Moria and whose enthusiasm comforted even Gandalf in that dark place. There he was a strength to his companions. Here he is the straggler in the rear.

And soon we learn what it is he fears. It is the company of the Dead who soon fall in behind him, and because he is at the rear it is Gimli who is most aware of them.

“Nothing assailed the company nor withstood their passage, and yet steadily fear grew on the Dwarf as he went on: most of all because he knew there could be no turning back; all the paths behind were thronged by an unseen host that followed in the dark.”

Tolkien tells us of Gimli’s fear but he never tells us why he was afraid. This is largely, I think, because he knows of his own experience that when we are gripped by fear our experience is exactly that. Something comes and takes hold of us, something for a while at least that is too great for us to resist. At such a time we are unable to engage in any kind of reflection. We are rendered incapable of asking ourself a question like:

“I wonder why I feel this way?”

Indeed, for all who have known the effect upon us of an overpowering feeling such as fear, the thought that we might be able to engage in reflection at such a time is almost laughable. And for Gimli this feeling is so overpowering precisely because it is so unexpected. He is used to going underground, even living there.

Of course, it is Gimli’s encounter with the Dead that is knew to him, and I wonder if we learn something of his character, and his fundamental response to both life and death that we learn later in the story at the wedding feast of Aragorn and Arwen in Minas Tirith. There, Gimli and Éomer engage in a little chivalrous disagreement about which of the ladies at the feast is the most beautiful. For Éomer the choice is Arwen, but for Gimli it is Galadriel. And Gimli ends the dispute with these words.

“You have chosen the Evening; but my love is given to the Morning. And my heart forebodes that soon it will pass away for ever.” (Return p.953)

Here we learn a fundamental disposition of Gimli’s heart. And here we learn why he might fear, perhaps in a manner of which he is largely unaware, of anything that speaks of the night, as does the army of the Dead. And before we judge him for such a fear, we might examine our own hearts to see the fears that lie within. Both those fears of which we are aware and which we might fight with all our strength; but also those fears of which we may be unaware, that might take us unawares as they do here with Gimli. Of course, we do not know what fears they might be but if we know that they lurk within us, we might be more gentle with ourselves when they appear, and more gentle with others who are overcome by their own fear.

“This is An Evil Door”. Some Thoughts on The Dark Journeys of The Lord of the Rings as Aragorn and his Company Enter The Paths of the Dead.

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The Return of the King by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 768-773

“This is an evil door,” said Halbarad, “and my death lies beyond it. I will dare to pass it nonetheless; but no horse will enter.”

Aragorn and his company have arrived at the door to the Paths of the Dead and every heart, unless it be the heart of Aragorn himself, and Legolas perhaps, falls under a dread at this haunted place. Such is the strength of Aragorn’s will, something that we might call fey if it were not that he has been called to his destiny by a power that is both deeper and higher than the spirits of the earth, that at the last all the horses of the Dúnedain and even Arod of the Rohirrim are willing to follow their masters into the dark. For a time, Gimli stands rooted to the spot by his fear of the dead, but eventually he too is willing to follow.

The journeys into dark places, into tunnels, form a major theme in The Lord of the Rings. Gandalf is warned by Aragorn not to enter Moria, but when he does so he is confronted by the Balrog and in the deep places of the earth and then in a high place he fights the battle of his life, passing even into the place of the dead. Frodo and Sam go through Shelob’s Lair where the darkness has a tangible presence that can be touched, and there Frodo passes into a death-like state after suffering the sting of Shelob’s bite. Now Aragorn’s company follow their lord into the paths of the dead through a door that Halbarad, close kinsman and companion to Aragorn, knows that heralds his death. He will fall in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields a few days later.

I could go on to speak of other dark journeys that do not necessarily involve physical tunnels but share aspects of those. I could speak of the dark journey of Merry and Pippin across the plains of Rohan as captives of the orcs of Isengard; the dark journey that Faramir goes through in his relationship to his father that leads almost to his death; the journey that Frodo and Sam take across Mordor to the Cracks of Doom; Sam’s horror in seeing the destruction of the Shire by Saruman and his gang of thugs; and I could also speak of the dark journey that Éowyn takes that leads to her encounter with the Lord of the Nazgûl at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields and the darkness that she enters and within she remains after the battle. In fact, we could say that every major character in the story has to take a dark journey.

Of course this is not original to Tolkien, nor did he intend it to be. The theme of the hero’s dark journey is an old one in the European mythology from which Tolkien drew so much of his inspiration, weaving those stories with his own dark journey, his experience of the trenches of the First World War and the Battle of the Somme of 1916, and the death of all but one of his closest friends in that terrible conflict. We could mention the journey of Lemminkäinen into the underworld in the Kalevala of Finland that Tolkien loved and read in its original language. And although Tolkien did not appreciate it so much, I do not think that we can leave out the journey of Odysseus into Hades on his journey home from Troy to his home in Ithaca.

That none of us can find life, can come at last to Paradise, without passing through death, is at the heart of all of these stories, and Tolkien’s story invites us to consider this for ourselves. Indeed, we could say that it is the refusal of characters to embrace loss and diminishment in The Lord of the Rings, characters like Sauron and Saruman and Denethor, that is their greatest tragedy. And at the heart of all this, the story to which all the stories ultimately point, is what Tolkien called the True Myth, the death and resurrection of Christ as recounted in the gospels.

“Then She Fell on Her Knees, Saying: ‘I Beg Thee!” Éowyn is So Desperate That She is Prepared to Humiliate Herself.

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The Return of the King by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 767-768

It is a grievous thing to witness the humiliation of a proud woman as Legolas and Gimli do the humiliation of Éowyn before Aragorn. I do not know whether Tolkien deliberately draws our attention to this contrast, but shortly after the scene in which Éowyn falls to her knees before the man who has, to her mind at least, rejected her, we read of Arod, the horse who has borne both Legolas and Gimli, standing before the door that leads to the Paths of the Dead, “sweating and trembling in a fear that was grievous to see”. In both cases it is the witnesses that grieve. Legolas and Gimli, proud sons of lords of their people, grieve to see a daughter of the king’s brother, casting aside her dignity in a last and utterly desperate attempt to persuade Aragorn to take her with him to Gondor and the battle. It is a grievous thing for those who hold honour dear to see such a thing. And we see the Dúnedain of the North, for whom the bond between themselves and their horses is a precious thing, grieved to see a horse bereft of its dignity.

Dignity and honour are things precious to us. As we leave the innocence of our childhood behind and begin to enter our adulthood, we do the work of creating a persona. I still remember my first night in a dormitory in an English boarding school, a boy who was fourteen years old, lying in bed with the sleeping forms of four other boys in the beds round about me, making conscious choices about the person I felt I needed to be if I were to be accepted by my fellows. I was no longer going to be the child that had slept in my parents’ home among my younger brothers and sisters just the night before, I had begun the process, quite literally, of re-inventing myself, and presenting a person of dignity to the world, worthy of the world’s respect, was central to that project.

Wise people have said that no-one should give their Self away until they have a Self, strong enough, secure enough, to be able to give. Until that moment comes then it is right and proper that the primary task of each person is to build a strong Self. This is the task in which Éowyn is now engaged and until now she has undertaken this task in acts of service as has been expected of a woman of her status among her people. While for other women among the Rohirrim this has meant serving a household, for her it has meant serving a king. And while others may have regarded such a position as being worthy of honour, for her it has become merely another form of servitude. Later, when she lay near to death in the Houses of Healing in Minas Tirith, Gandalf spoke truly of her in these words:

“Who knows what she spoke to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all her life seemed shrinking, and the walls of her bower closing in about her, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in?”

So, as she kneels in desperation before the man she thinks of as her last hope of freedom from her shrinking existence, as she casts aside her dignity and merely asks for pity, we see a woman for whom the creation of a strong Self amidst the choices that seem to lie before her is an impossibility. She will make one more attempt to recover something of that dignity when she asks Théoden to allow her to ride to Minas Tirith among the Rohirrim, but when he refuses her request, she takes the matter into her own hands, going in the disguise of a man, knowing that her abilities as a horsewoman are such that she can match any one of them. And she will reach a place in the battle where she will perform a deed that no man could have done, a deed that will be one of the turning points of the battle.

All of this will be a part of her journey towards Selfhood. The words that she speaks in desperation into the darkness as her life shrinks about her, the words that she cries out to Aragorn in desperation before he takes the Paths of the Dead, her appeal to Théoden to let her ride with the Rohirrim to Minas Tirith, her action in going with the riders in the disguise of a man, her battle with the Witch-king of Angmar on the Pelennor Fields, her meeting with Faramir in the Houses of Healing, all of these are stages on her road to Freedom, her road to Selfhood. Such a road can never be a transition from one success after another. The authentic road will always be a road downwards before it can be an upward path.

“They Go Only Because They Would Not Be Parted From Thee- Because They Love Thee.” Some Thoughts on Éowyn’s Unrequited Love For Aragorn

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The Return of the King by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 765-767

Éowyn has tried in every way that she can think to persuade Aragorn to take her with him on what she is convinced is little more than a suicide mission through the Paths of the Dead into Gondor, laying bare her soul to him, of her fear of remaining within a cage for the whole of her life, whether long or short. And at the last all she hears are these words:

“Stay! For you have no errand to the South.”

Aragorn has given up any attempt to be gentle. He knows that he is risking everything on this venture and that everything may well be lost. All his hopes and even his life itself and the lives of all who go with him. Nothing must stand between him and his effort to come to Minas Tirith in time before it falls to the forces of Mordor and this includes the desperate young woman who stands before him. She too must be swept aside and it must be done swiftly.

And so Éowyn is left with but one thing remaining that she can offer of herself. Her heart. She longs to be claimed by this hero and all she can hear and feel is his rejection. She heard him say that were his heart to be where it most desires to be it would “be wandering in the fair valley of Rivendell”. She did not hear Aragorn speak of Arwen but she fears that there might be someone else in his life. But she has come to believe that the only hope of the freedom for which she longs lies in his hands and that if he casts her aside then she is left with nothing. And at this moment it is this nothing that she fears above all.

So when Aragorn brutally commands her to stay in Rohan, that she has no errand to the South she speaks the words that she has kept hidden from him until now.

“Neither have those others who go with thee. They go only because they would not be parted from thee- because they love thee.”

Then, having given everything that she can give she turns away and vanishes from sight.

Does Éowyn really love Aragorn? Or does she only love what he represents for her? The possibility of achieving the freedom from captivity and degradation that she has come to hate and to fear? How many of us truly know our own hearts? Does this mean that none can really know whether they love another person or not? To fall in love is a glorious thing. Perhaps the most exalted state that any human being can ever achieve. But to go beyond this state that can become a thing desired in itself because it is so all consuming, so intoxicating, takes something greater than the action of falling into it. It requires a commitment to remain with another person through everything.

As a priest in the Church of England I have presided at many weddings over the years and time and time again I have felt a thrill run through my body when I have heard a couple promise to one another that they will love and cherish each other:

For better, for worse; for richer for poorer; in sickness and in health.

These are words of commitment that I know will be tested to the limit in the lives of everyone who speaks them aloud before many witnesses, and, I believe, before God. But perhaps one of the greatest gifts that someone can give to the world is a life that has been true to those promises, through all its tests and even through failure. Such a life, such a gift, can be a source of great strength to others who struggle through their own trials, that it is worth not giving up, that there remains something to hope for.

Later in the story Éowyn will respond to the declaration of love made by another man and we will read that “the heart of Éowyn changed, or else at last she understood it”. I would add to these words that she understood her heart as it appeared to her at that moment, but she would come to understand it even better after years together with the man that she chose. This is true for all of us and as with Éowyn, though not by the path that she will walk that is unique to her, we will go through many trials and through many joys to the day when we can truly understand our hearts.

“What Do You Fear, Lady?” Éowyn Knows What She Fears as She Seeks For What She Desires.

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The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 765-767

In my last piece on this blog I touched on the words of Éowyn that I want to think more about this week.

“What do you fear, lady?” Aragorn asks her. And Éowyn replies:

“A cage,” she said. “To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.”

It is worth remembering here that The Lord of the Rings was published in the early 1950s and largely written during the late 30s and the 1940s. In other words before the modern women’s movement of the 1960s and beyond. The ideal world of a certain form of conservatism is one in which women largely remain in the home caring for their men and their children. It is one in which my mother had to give up her nursing career in England when she married in 1953. The modern nursing profession in England was created by Florence Nightingale in the mid 19th century and modelled upon a monastic style vocation in which women would give their entire life to nursing without the distraction of home and family. I remember my mother saying when she was particularly cross with the behaviour of myself and my four younger brothers and sisters, “If it were not for you I would be a matron (the senior nurse in an English hospital and a very powerful figure) now!”

So it is worth noting these words that Éowyn speaks in that particular context, the context of Tolkien’s world before the 1960s. She wants to go with the soldiers into battle. She tires of her responsibility as keeper of the hearth for the men until they return. Aragorn speaks truly when he reminds her that a deed that no-one notices is no less noble than one that is seen and praised by all. But Éowyn is no less true when she makes this reply.

“All your words are to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honour, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more.”

I do not want to think here about the question of whether the role of a women in either public affairs, (in Éowyn’s case, in the world of battle at a time of national crisis), or domestic affairs, (in Éowyn’s case, her responsibility to lead the women of her people as they watch over homes and families so that their men will have something to return to after battle is done), is more noble in one case than another. Clearly Aragorn is saying to her that her domestic role is just as honourable than any role that she might play in battle and in one sense that is true. The creation of an hospitable home is a wonderful thing as anyone who has experienced one will attest to and perhaps our deepest longing is to find rest within such a home after the trials of life. In Tolkien’s legendarium we might think of Rivendell as such a place, The Last Homely House, as Tolkien named it in The Hobbit. As Sam puts it when he and Frodo return there after their adventures for a brief stay, “We’ve been far and seen a deal, and yet I don’t think we’ve seen a better place than this.” (The Return of the King p. 964) There is a constant dialogue within The Lord of the Rings between deeds done beyond the domestic sphere and the places of shelter and hospitality within the story. Perhaps one comment that I might add is that the great places of hospitality are the shared responsibility of both women and men, of Arwen and Elrond, of Goldberry and Tom Bombadil, and at the end of the story of both Rosie Cotton and Sam Gamgee. And in the great battle of the Pelennor Fields great deeds are done, both by men and women, as we shall see.

But although Éowyn speaks bitterly about her feeling of being caged within one set of expectations and denied access to another, the most important thing she speaks of here is her own desire. And at this point in her story what she knows of herself is her fear. Her fear of living a caged life, and especially her fear of living within a degraded cage, “a thatched barn where brigands drink in the reek, and their brats roll on the floor among their dogs”. (The Fellowship of the King p. 849)

Éowyn knows what she fears. She also thinks that she knows what might free her from those fears as we shall consider in the next piece, but I would say that at this point she does not know what she truly wants, what she desires more deeply than anything else. But then for each one of us that is one of the hardest journeys of all. The journey into our hearts in order to discover what we truly desire.

“May I Not Now Spend My Life as I Will?” The Lady Éowyn Longs to Break Free From Her Cage.

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The Return of the King by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 765-767

The journey that Aragorn takes with his friends and with the Dúnedain takes him from Edoras to Dunharrow where the Lady Éowyn greets them. She has taken the women and children of Edoras to the comparative safety of the stronghold high in the mountain valleys and there she has been fulfilling the task to which Théoden assigned her, to command the people in the absence of her uncle, the King, and her brother, Éomer.

Her first reaction on seeing the coming of the Dúnedain and the sons of Elrond is one of awe for never before in her life had she laid her eyes on “mightier men” than these. She wonders why they have arrived before the rest of the Rohirrim and when Aragorn tells her that he must depart after breaking his fast in the early morning she assumes that it was to see her that he has come in haste.

“It was kindly done, lord, to ride so many miles out of your way to bring tidings to Éowyn, and to speak with her in her exile.”

But it is not for this reason that Aragorn has come to Dunharrow although he courteously replies that such an errand would not be regarded as wasted by anyone. Aragorn has come to Dunharrow because the entrance to the Paths of the Dead lies close by.

Éowyn’s first reaction on hearing of Aragorn’s intent is one of horror. She has been raised on stories of the Paths of the Dead and of what lies beyond the door near Dunharrow that were intended to prevent any from attempting to pass them. She knows the story of Baldor, the son of Brego, the second king of Rohan, who stood at the feast that consecrated the Golden Hall of Meduseld and vowed that he would tread the Paths of the Dead; and she knows that Baldor never returned from that journey. All her people know the story and all hold the door that Baldor opened with dread.

But Éowyn has a desire that goes deeper than her fear of that path. She fears being left behind. And most of all she fears being left behind by a man who has captured her heart. For much of her life she has stood but a few feet away from the malicious whisperings of Wormtongue as he spoke them into Théoden’s ears and she had to watch her lord and her people as they declined into a pale shadow of what they had once been. I once wrote of how Théoden had to look upon the image of Eorl the Young, his mighty forefather and founder of the kingdom of Rohan, as he rode from the north to rescue Gondor at a time of need. We know that Théoden felt deep shame as he thought of the might of his ancestor and how at the moment of his death the thought uppermost in his mind was that because of the manner of his death in battle, doing what Eorl had done, riding to the aid of Gondor in their time of need, that he would be able to face him without shame. And Éowyn has looked upon Eorl herself and felt the same shame and she has felt the shame of her position, to be a servant to an old man, a decrepit king of a degraded people.

And now into her life has come this man. A son of kings surrounded by knights of whom she could only dream. Indeed she probably has dreamt of men like this, men so unlike those among whom she has grown up. Can we blame her for nursing a fantasy within her heart that this man might lift her high above all other women and might set her free.

“What do you fear, lady?” Aragorn asked her.

“A cage,” she said. “To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall and desire.”

Éowyn longs to break free from her cage, to spend her life, not as others command her, but as she will.

“May I not now spend my life as I will?”

We will be thinking about Éowyn and the story of her life over the next few pieces on this blog and we will think about Aragorn’s answer to her question in the next week, but perhaps we might want to begin with compassion. Compassion for the life that she has been forced to live behind the bars of her cage. And that is a good place to begin.

“To The Stone of Erech! I Seek The Paths of The Dead. Come With Me Who Will.” Aragorn Acts Swiftly as Time Runs Out.

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The Return of the King by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) 762-765

It is in the very nature of things of great importance that however long we spend in thinking about them or in making preparation for them there will always come a point when action has to be taken and that when that time comes it will feel as if there is not sufficient time to do what we need to do. Nor are there sufficient resources. As my friends in North America put it, we will always feel like we are a dollar short and a minute late.

As to the questions of time and resources Gimli puts it well. When Aragorn, the Heir of Isildur, succeeds in taking control of the Stone of Orthanc from Sauron’s control, he learns that a great peril is approaching Minas Tirith from the south. These are the Corsairs of Umbar, ancient enemies of Gondor who have allied themselves with Sauron to put a final end to their foes. Aragorn knows that if help does not come then Minas Tirith will fall in ten days time.

“Then lost it must be,” said Gimli. “For what help is there to send thither, and how could it come in time?”

There is no help and there is no time.

But messages have come to Aragorn from Elrond and now he knows that perhaps there is help and there is time. But the way is dark and full of doubt. Perhaps that too is the way with decisions that we must take that are of great importance. We can never be entirely sure that what we are doing is the right thing. For Aragorn the message bids him remember the words of the Seer, spoken long ago in the days of his ancestor, the last king of the northern kingdom who fell in battle against the Witch-king of Angmar.

From the North shall he come, need shall drive him:
he shall pass the Door to the Paths of the Dead.

But how can Aragorn know that he is the one of whom the Seer spoke long ago. Have there not been many times since those days in which there has been great need? The answer is that Aragorn cannot be certain, not completely certain. It may be that this is not the final climax even though everything seems to point to the fact that it is.

And what of the help?

Aragorn tells the story of a people who lived long before the days of Malbeth the Seer, a people who lived in the mountains that divide Rohan and Gondor. He tells of how in the days of the Last Alliance when Elves and Men fought together against Sauron Isildur called upon this people to fulfil their oaths to serve him and his heirs in time of need, but how they refused to come because they had once worshipped Sauron and they feared him. And Aragorn spoke of how Isildur had cursed them, telling them that they would “rest never until your oath is fulfilled.” And how they lived still as unquiet spirits, the “Sleepless Dead”, around the hill of Erech in Gondor, waiting until they might receive the call from the Heir of Isildur to fulfil their oath to him.

“I hope that the forgotten people will not have forgotten how to fight,” said Gimli; “for otherwise I see not why we should trouble them.”

They cannot know whether the help of the oath-breakers will be enough. They cannot know if they will obey the Heir of Isildur even though his need is great, and even if they go with him to face the threat from the south, whether their help will mean anything. All they can do is to take the Paths of the Dead, to go to the Stone of Erech, to call the Dead to fulfil their oaths to Isildur and his heirs, and then to go with them into battle. It is only then that they will find out what power the oath-breakers possess. It is only then that they will know that they have the resources needed to do what is required.

A dollar short and a minute late. That is how it always is with the big things; with those decisions that truly shape our lives. We must take action, and only then will we learn whether we are too late and do not have enough. Or perhaps, that we arrived in time and have enough to do what we need to do.

“I Have Looked in The Stone of Orthanc, My Friends.” Why Does Aragorn Choose This Moment to Reveal Himself to Sauron.

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The Return of the King by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 761-765

in the last post on this blog we saw how Aragorn emerged from the disguise of Strider the Ranger that he has kept for many years to become Elessar the King. And when we heard him declare to Gimli, “You forget to whom you speak”, we felt the shock that his friends felt, friends who had become used to the disguise even though they knew deep in their hearts that he was more than the disguise. Perhaps it is worth reminding ourselves that when Pippin approached the throne room of Gondor with Gandalf in order to meet with Denethor that Pippin had to be warned not to speak about Aragorn to which Pippin replied, “What’s wrong with Strider?”. The disguise has been effective enough for Pippin to share in the surprise that Gimli and Legolas felt when Aragorn addressed them as the king.

But why has Aragorn chosen this moment to reveal himself to Sauron as king? Why has he done so even though Gandalf warned him not to be too hasty in using the Stone of Orthanc even though he is its rightful master?

I am going to offer my own understanding of this and would be delighted to read your thoughts about this in the comments section. I want to take you back a few pages from the passage that we are considering here because I think that in them we will find something that brings Aragorn out from his long crafted disguise. We read how the Dúnedain of the North overtook Théoden and his party as they rode from Isengard across Rohan to the fortress at Helm’s Deep, and how they brought messages from Rivendell to give to Aragorn, their captain. One message that we will think more about was from Elrond.

“The days now are short. If thou art in haste, remember the Paths of the Dead.”

And the other message, the message that I think brings Aragorn out from his disguise, comes from Arwen. It begins with a question that Aragorn asks of Halbarad.

“What is that you bear, kinsman?”

For Halbarad bears a “tall staff, as it were a standard, but it was close-furled in a black cloth bound about with many thongs.” And Halbarad answers his kinsman.

“It is a gift that I bring you from the Lady of Rivendell… She wrought it in secret, and long was the making. But she also sends word to you: The days now are short. Either our hope cometh, or all hopes end. Therefore I send thee what I have made for thee. Fare well, Elfstone.”

Note the way in which Arwen divides the word, farewell. Halbarad has done his duty as her messenger well in conveying her meaning exactly as she intended it. I cannot help but feel that she made it clear that he was to say, Fare Well. And think back to the moment in Lothlórien when Frodo heard Aragorn say to himself, Arwen, vanimelda, namarië.

Namarië. The word in the High-Elven tongue that means farewell. Here the word is not divided. Aragorn in Lothlórien has lost all hope after the fall of Gandalf in Moria. Here he is indeed bidding his beloved, his vanimelda, a last adieu “unless there be a light beyond the dark roads that we must still tread, you and I.” (The Fellowship of the Ring pp. 341-343)

But not so Arwen. In secret and alone she has woven a banner for the man that she has chosen against the wishes of the father that she loves. She knows the words of her father: “She shall not be the bride of any Man less than the King of both Gondor and Arnor” (The Return of the King p. 1036). And so she has made for Aragorn the standard of the King.

“Fare well, Elfstone.”

Arwen knew of the stone, the Elessar, that Galadriel kept secretly in Lothlórien and together with Galadriel she held the secret of her hope that she would be united with Aragorn. It was the stone that Idril of Gondolin gave to Eärendil before he made his great journey into the west on behalf of the beleaguered peoples of Middle-earth who had fallen under the yoke of Morgoth. Eärendil was Arwen’s grandfather, the father of Elrond her father, and Elros, the distant ancestor of Aragorn. Eärendil was the keeper of the stone of hope and in Lothlórien Galadriel gives the same stone to Aragorn with the words, “In this hour take the name that was foretold for you, Elessar, the Elfstone of the House of Elendil.” (Fellowship pp. 364-367).

Galadriel may have given the name to Aragorn in Lothlórien but now it is clear that she shared this secret together with Arwen, that together they have given the name that was once given to Eärendil by Idril of Gondolin. And in Arwen’s message to her Elfstone, her Elessar, come the words, fare well. Not a goodbye, an adieu, but a call to action, and an expression of her hope that in all that he does Aragorn will indeed fare well, go well, do well. And it is as the Elessar, the heir of Isildur, Elendil and Eärendil, that Aragorn receives her gift, her standard, and so declares himself to Sauron, wresting control of the Stone of Orthanc from his grasp.

“You Forget to Whom You Speak.” Aragorn Declares Himself to Sauron in The Stone of Orthanc.

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The Return of the King by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp. 760-765

“You forget to whom you speak” might just be a grander way of saying. “Do you know who are talking to?”, the words that an irritated parent might say to a child who has spoken too boldly. But for a brief moment when Aragorn speaks these stern words to Gimli it is the High King of Gondor and of Arnor who speaks in anger to a vassal who has spoken out of turn.

The title given to the final volume of The Lord of the Rings was not one that pleased Tolkien very much. It was always his wish that his story should have been published as a single volume, but his publishers were understandably a little nervous about expending too much money on a single project that might make little or no money. Tolkien felt that The Return of the King as a title was rather a plot-spoiler. We might add to his concern that it completely ignores the adventures of Frodo and Sam, adventures that lie at the very heart of The Lord of the Rings. But if we choose to focus upon his publishers’ chosen title we can see that the King’s return is an event that has a much wider scope than the single event that was Aragorn’s coronation in Minas Tirith at the end of the War of the Ring. From the moment when Frodo and his companions first meet the dishevelled traveller who calls himself, Strider, at The Prancing Pony in Bree, to the moment of triumph that is his coronation, we might say that the King is returning. Aragorn has been forced to lead a hidden life, a life in disguise, ever since Elrond first revealed to him his true identity as the heir of Isildur and Elendil. As Captain of the Rangers of the North he is forced to be as much Strider as he is Aragorn son of Arathorn. Others, like Bilbo, might see the true gold in his nature, but all agree that this gold does not glitter, and to many this great wanderer is simply a man who is lost.

We will think more in other places about the long journey of nearly seventy years that Aragorn has taken, often alone, from that day in Rivendell with Elrond to the moment when he reveals himself to Sauron at the Hornburg. We will think about the difference between the inflated self-confidence of the young man who walks in the woods of Rivendell, “and his heart was high within him; and he sang, for he was full of hope and the world was fair”. (Appendix A p. 1033 The Return of the King), to the grim faced, battle and travel hardened man who wrests control of the Stone of Orthanc from Sauron through mental fight.

There will be much to say about Aragorn’s journey to the throne of Gondor and Arnor but here we will note that it has taken place over so many years, and fellow travellers along the path have become so used to walking alongside the man in disguise that when he suddenly declares to Gimli that Gimli has not realised to whom he has been speaking when he cries out in dismay, “You have looked in that accursed stone of wizardry!.. Even Gandalf feared that encounter”, we are all taken aback. Like Gimli we all think that Aragorn is no Gandalf. Perhaps we may have forgotten the moment when Gandalf gave the Stone of Orthanc to Aragorn and the words that he spoke as he did so. “Receive it, lord!” he said: “in earnest of other things that shall be given back.” (The Two Towers, Harper Collins, 1991, 2007, p. 776)

Gandalf knows that Aragorn is the true keeper of the palantíri and not Saruman, or Denethor, or even Sauron, for he is the true heir of Elendil who first brought them from Númenor to Middle-earth. He even bows to Aragorn as he gives the Stone to him, acknowledging that he is the servant and that Aragorn is his lord. But even Gandalf counsels Aragorn not to be too hasty in using the Stone. Even Gandalf is not sure that the right moment has come for Aragorn to emerge from his disguise. So why does Aragorn reveal himself to Sauron in the Hornburg? We will think about this in the next post on this blog.