Faenör fags get out

You kidding me? Morgoth is the punk b***h, Feanor would have won if that pussy Melkor didn't gank him 50v1.

what's the most obscure tolkien lore you know
for me, it's that tar-ciryatan's adûnaic name was balkumagân, and he (#12) was the only númenórean king between elendil (#4) and tar-calmacil (#18) to have a known adûnaic name

here's a bit of lore I found really interesting. The fight between Fingolfin and Morgoth is Tolkien's retelling of why Saturn (the Greek Titan) has a limp.
Some history: the ancient astronomers/astrologers noticed that the planet Saturn was the slowest moving of the visible planets, in the myths they told they gave Saturn a limp to account for why it moved so slow.
Saturn the Titan is also considered to be the Demiurge, just as Melkor is Tolkien's retelling of the Demiurge. Melkor walked with a limp after the fight with Fingolfin.

Source?

but Morgoth had also just got his butt nearly handed to him by Ungoliant, so there's that. But yea, Morgoth was never really keen on duels, and preferred to let his minions do all the physical stuff.

Mine is
>the day will come again

sure.
So you know how gnosticism (even with all the different versions of it) basically says that physical matter is evil, corrupted, a prison of the spirit?
Tolkien basically wrote this idea into his works. True, you don't see it so openly in LotR (although it's there too, just not right in your face), but in Silmarillion it comes out in force and in the History of Middle Earth series (HoME), specifically "Morgoth's Ring" iirc, it's right there in plain sight.

In HoME, he about how Morgoth infuses his essence into the physical stuff of Arda. Tolkien makes the distinction between physical matter (which he calls "hroa") and non-physical spirit stuff (which he calls "fea"). So for example, Feanor, Fea-nor, means Spirit of Fire. Mandos and Lorien, the two Valarin brothers, are sometimes called the "Feanturi", meaning Masters of Spirit.

Silmarillion talks about how the Valar completely left Middle Earth and set up Valinor, casting spells of enchantment around that land to prevent Melkor from attacking. Later on, Iluvatar completely removes Valinor from the confines of the planet Arda. It's not even in Ea anymore, but a completely separate "pocket dimension" or something. In HoME it talks very explicitly about how hroa (physical matter) cannot enter Valinor. It's because everything in Valinor is pure Spirit (fea), and the enchantments keep out Matter. The reason why is because Melkor infused his essence into Matter, thus corrupting it.

This is extremely gnostic in theme. Tolkien, like the gnostics, equated Matter with evil, with the Demiurge/Melkor.

LotR is subtly a gnostic story about Frodo (the Everyman of the tale) who takes on the struggle against Matter (i.e. against the Flesh and all that this entails: greed, desire, ambition, etc.) and finally succeeds in destroying the Ring, which is to say he overcame his hroa. (Schopenhauer's "World as Will and Representation" talks about this process of overcoming the Self in order to escape reincarnating into this Matter prison, if you're interested in reading that)

There's other clues throughout, such as how Tolkien wrote that the Elves that remained in Middle Earth/Arda eventually shed themselves of all their hroa and became beings of pure spirit/fea, and then took the "boat ride into the West". But it's obvious that this boat ride into the West has a metaphorical meaning, leaving the shores of Matter and crossing into the Afterlife of Spirit world (Valinor). After all, not everyone who sails west will reach Valinor, no matter how often they try, the Numenoreans are proof of that.

Also, as far as gnosticism goes, the Christian gnostics most certainly viewed themselves as Christian. It was the Catholic Church that viewed them as heretics, and brutally tortured/murdered them. The gnostics largely kept to themselves and didn't deserve to be treated like that, even if you disagree with their teachings.

what point are you trying to make in regards to my comment "Melkor and Aule are the same person". You quoted it and then didn't address it.

And Bilbo did set foot in Valinor, albeit after he'd written his book. And Book of Lost Tales (one of those narrative frameworks you mentioned) is from the viewpoint of Aelfwine (iirc), a Saxon from England, who actually went to Tol Eressea (i.e. Valinor) and spoke with the Elves there.

And many of the similarities between Melkor and Aule are things personally witnessed by the Elves (though, granted, some aren't, such as the creation of the Dwarves/Orcs). The Elves witnessed the telluric powers of Aule and of Melkor. They witnessed that Dwarves and Orcs lived in caves, disliked Elves, were warlike, often spoke the language of their non-Dwarven neighbors to keep their own language secret, even the Elf Loremaster Pengolodh noted in his treatise on telepathy that Aule and Melkor were the foremost masters in that art, and he described how the greatest telepaths could, if they wanted, deceive even Manwe and Varda if they wanted. So it's entirely possible that Aule was playing a double-game of pretending to be good in public (his Aule-Dwarf mode) and plotting behind everyone's back in private (his Melkor-Orc mode). Palpatine did the same thing in Star Wars lol, it's not like it's that difficult to do when you're an Ainu spirit that can assume any physical form you wish, read minds, cloak your own mind, etc.

the most convincing evidence that Aule and Melkor aren't the same person (and instead are just very coincidentally similar) is that Melkor was physically chained with Angainor, which ... oh yea, Aule crafted.

So it's possible that Melkor was slipping the chains off in prison when he needed to go pretend to be Aule, and then putting them back on when he was done.
But even that would still seem to require the cooperation of his jail warden, Tu, and here's where that could come into play: in "Book of Lost Tales" Tolkien writes that Tu was a Maia in the service of Mandos, and that "Melkor taught him shadow magic" or black magic (can't remember the exact wording). After Melkor was freed, Tu decided to leave Valinor and to go to Middle Earth, where he eventually became the ruler of the Elves that remained at Cuivienen (their birthplace of the Elven race).

So while Lost Tales never says that Tu was evil, or that the Dark Elves of Cuivienen were evil (the most it says is that Tu could be "testy" but was otherwise benevolent), it is extremely odd that Melkor would teach Tu his magical arts and get nothing in return.

Christopher Tolkien speculated that Melkor was merely attempting to ingratiate/bribe the warden Tu, perhaps in the case of future need, but states that no such need ever arose, as Melkor was eventually freed without any recourse to Tu's aid. But then it's still kinda odd that Tolkien (JRR) would even write about Tu at all, or that Melkor tried to bribe him by teaching him magic, magic which Tu eventually used to rule over the Dark Elves at Cuivienen since he eventually became known as "the Wizard King" or something like that. He was never known as "Wizard" when he was just a jail warden at Mandos, it was Melkor's magic that helped Tu accomplish this.

Now it's true that this stuff about Tu was only in early drafts, but then why even keep copies of it at all? Why not just throw that away entirely?
Tolkien is known to have studied not only languages but also myths, and anyone who has studied myths (from any culture) will have noticed that there is often lots of different versions of the "same" myth, some overlapping, some drastically different in key aspects, even uncanny similarities between myths of different cultures that (supposedly) had no contact with each other. Tolkien being famous for recreating realism in his works, is it possible he did these overlapping stories, half stories, fragments of stories, variations of stories, etc. as some attempt to recreate in his world the same phenomenon one sees in the real world in regards to myths? (realism in the sense that everything, from geography, calendars, languages, plant-life, etc. is extremely in-depth and realistic, like a carbon copy from the real Earth injected into his fantasy Middle Earth)

>This eternal bait
https://medium.com/belover/no-tolkiens-the-lord-of-the-rings-isn-t-christian-a7d3b34b7677
"Christians like a scene in which Tolkien seemed to lead his friend C.S. Lewis into the faith. The details are odd. Tolkien said that Christianity was just like other myth-systems, except for being true — a “true myth,” as he said.
But the idea of Tolkien being Catholic might have to note the weaknesses. He made no effort to study theology. He never visited Rome. For all his distain of “mutilated beliefs,” he seems to have deeply loved Santa."
"Scratch the surface, and Tolkien doesn’t seem Catholic at all.
He seems to have personally believed in reincarnation and worked it into the plot of all his work, including The Lord of the Rings."

https://medium.com/belover/did-j-r-r-tolkien-believe-in-reincarnation-7cc75780040
"But was reincarnation confined to Elves?
In 2007, Flieger published a paper, “The Curious Incident of The Dream at The Barrow: Memory and Reincarnation in Middle-Earth,” that found the theme in Middle-earth—in hobbits. In The Fellowship of the Ring, Merry has a strange experience. Half-woken, he begins to speak:
“‘Of course, I remember!’ he said. ‘The men of Carn Dum came on us at night and we were worsted. Ah! The spear in my heart!’ He clutched at his breast.”
Merry then came to his senses.
“‘No! No!’ he said, opening his eyes. ‘What am I saying? I have been dreaming.’”
Tolkien’s original draft of the chapter, she notes, read a little different:
‘I begin to remember,’ he said. ‘I thought I was dead — but don’t let us speak of it.’”"

nope, not him. That's kind of funny though, usually people accuse me of being Stephen Colbert (*shudder*) Don't even listen/watch him, though i have heard of him. I just think being honest is more important than rooting for your favorite religious sports team, and it's pretty clear that Silmarillion (and the rest of the books) aren't strictly speaking "Catholic".

1. There's reincarnation, which Catholics used to torture and murder people for believing.

2. There's no Mary figure.

3. There's no Trinity.

4. There's no Eucharist.

5. The only organized, practiced religion on the planet is that instituted by Melkor and Sauron. The Elves believe in Eru and know He exists, but they don't build churches to him or spin elaborate theologies about Him.

6. The world is thought of as evil and corrupted by Melkor. Catholics tortured and murdered the gnostics for having a very similar outlook on the world.

7. There's no Jesus figure. Gandalf comes closest to it, but he resembles more a bodhisattva archetype, a beneficent angel that agreed to incarnate in Melkor's realm (Middle Earth) and try to guide people away from the cycle of reincarnating, i.e. to escape to Valinor. And Aragorn and Frodo don't make for very good Jesus stand-ins, neither of them neither of their father's are God, neither were immaculately conceived, neither of them lived forever or will rule Valinor or Middle Earth after Melkor is finally destroyed. Aragorn only ruled as king for what, a century? I could see him being a King Arthur type, but not a Jesus. Frodo is an Everyman, just a normal person that we all can relate to.

8. the cosmogony of Silmarillion resembles more the Nordic/Greek/Roman conception, which is to say pagan, interwoven with strong elements of gnosticism.

there's prolly more examples i could give, but 8 should be enough to prove that the book isn't Catholic. The best argument a Catholic could make is that it's proto-Catholic, reeaally heavy on the proto.
Catholicism to me resembles more something Melkor or Sauron would create as an attempt to whitewash their religion to the non-Orc masses to make it more palatable. Melkor often tricked humans into worshiping him by claiming that Eru never existed, that "Middle Earth" was all there is, that the Timeless Halls don't exist, just space/void and more space/void. Tolkien even wrote that the one trait that could instantly distinguish whether the religion was at core "Melkor-ish" was whether human sacrifice was performed, since all the religions that Melkor/Sauron created had that in common. And Catholicism has the sacrifice of Jesus.... which i know, i know, he was supposed to be "the ultimate sacrifice" so that sacrificing would never be needed again, but it could also be construed as a white-washed way to continue the practice of sacrifice to appease Melkor, just like animal sacrifices were originally a way to continue sacrifices without resorting to sacrificing humans.

minor objection
>in the earliest versions that Tolkien wrote, there were no orcs, but instead the Dwarves served Melkor.
the book of lost tales includes many references to orcs, and i know of no version earlier than that

>the Vala Orome created the rainbow as a bridge between Valinor and Arda.
Happy Pride Month to you too, anon.

>.There was a Noldorin Elf at Rivendell who wrote a treatise on telepathy and its rules, which is available online.
the only actually obscure lore is available online.