parresia

some fun

The Silmarillion

A couple years ago, for Christmas, or was it my birthday?, my sweetie bought me J.R.R. Tolkien's history of Middle of Earth entitled The Silmarillion.

The first half is wonderful, especially the opening chapters concerning what is essentially a creation story. Tolkien's Christianity is fully apparent and beautiful as he weaves his fictional account of how ERU (Jehovah) brings the world into being, and how ERU's principalities all converge to either aid (Manwe) or foil (Melkor) Middle Earth.

Anyway, after being fortunate enough to have a roomate who bought the Lord of the Rings DVD (with a bonus DVD full of great behind the scenes stuff) I was inspired to dealve further into the fantastic history of the Rings of Power.

Here's the history in a nutshell: Melkor (like the Devil) attempts to bring Middle Earth under his dominion. In his mission to do so he seduces Sauron (a principality but of lesser power than Manwe, himself Melkor, and of course of lesser power than ERU). Sauron, being the most powerful of Melkor's followers, is soon the chief havok on Middle Earth under the dominion of Melkor.

By way of seduction, deception, and cunning Sauron is successful in luring many to join him. Of those who follow him are some Elves. Now Elves are the first-born of Middle Earth, they are the wisest, most blessed, and gifted of the creatures. Sauron convinces some of them to create these rings of power to rule each race: as a result 9 are given to the 9 human kings, 7 to the seven dwarf kings, and several are given to the elven rulers. These rings are powerful and do indeed aid the ring-bearer, BUT what Sauron didn't tell the elven smiths was that he created a ring himself, putting all of his evil into it, and this one ring rules ALL the other rings, so that who so bears the other rings of power will be in submission to Sauron who wears the ONE Ring.

The story goes on from there; I encourage you to read these great stories if time permits. Anyway, I found it all quite interesting.