I finally finished rereading The Lord of the Ring, just for fun but it was interesting to see how the scriptwriter had modified the book. Turning the book into a film had required so many small changes to the plot. They do make to book more dramatic, yet at the same time the rationale for many events is lost. The book being what it is the natural question arises of what the author wanted to say. Is it an allegory of something or a children tale or both?
In the preface the author explains that the book is neither an allegory nor topical and it does not have a deeper meaning or message, but also that the main theme of the book was fixed when the Ring become a connection of this book to The Hobbit. This clarification only confuses things more since The Hobbit (1937) looks very much like an allegory of the restoration of the Jews to Palestine. As the books are connected, one would expect that the tale The Lord of the Ring (1954-55) would describe what happened from 1937 to 1948 but the events and the outcomes of the Second World War were different. The book tells a tale of the end of the third time of the Middle Earth, yet it looks like there is something of an allegory, but allegory of what?
I looked briefly at what kind of theories literature researchers have proposed, but they have not answered this question. Research methods of that field can convincingly point out what sources have influenced the author, but not answer questions such as what the author means. They can demonstrate that Kullervo’s tale from Kalevala influenced The Children of Huron and Silmarillion and show how the story developed from Tolkien’s early translation of Kullervo to the later works, but the meaning or a message if a book is usually not taken directly from any source. Kullervo’s story does not explain these later works in any major way, any more than Finnish explains the elf language. The meaning of a book must be deduced in some other way. Simple logic should be enough, it is not rocket science.
In the preface of the 1966 edition of The Lord of the Ring Tolkien denies that there is a deeper meaning or a message, but is it believable?
Is there some message in Gustav Meyrink’s Golem (1915)? Gustav Meyer was an occultist and a member of The Golden Dawn secret society. Golem predicts the disappearance of Jewish ghettos, happening at that time, and attributes it to golem walking through the ghetto every 33 years – that does look like a clear reference to Freemasons. The book has many such references. There is some message and yet the book does not give any secret insight to those events: it suggests the year 1890 as some base year, but nothing special happened in the esoteric world, or elsewhere, in that particular year.
Is there some message in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818)? Mary Shelley was only twenty when writing Frankenstein and did not belong to any secret society, but Lord Byron and Percy Shelley were well aware of the Freemason/Illuminati role in the French Revolution. While Percy and Mary may have visited passed the Frankenstein castle in Darmstadt, there is more reason to assume that the surname of Victor Frankenstein derives from François-Félix Nogaret’s book Le Miroir des événemens actuels, ou la Belle au plus offrant (1790) and the given name is Percy Shelley’s penname. Nogaret was a Freemason (in French, Franc-maçon). Again, there is little or nothing new to learn from this allegory for a student of subversive secret societies, but there is some message.
Lord Byron’s contest in writing horror stories lead not only to Shelley’s Frankenstein but also to the first vampire story by John William Polidori. The genre of vampire stories was continued by a fantasy writer Charles Nodier who also wrote a non-fiction book Histoire des Societes Secrètes de l’armee et des conspirations militaires qui ont eu pour objet la destruction du gouvernement de Bonaparte (1815), quite relevant in the context of the Masonic conspiracy. This long book has one obscure sentence that is of interest, as was noticed by the authors of the Holy Blood, the Holy Grail: Nodier mentions that his wow forbids him from mentioning the name of the Masonic secret society, but he hints that it is messianic. If I correctly interpreted this sentence, it probably refers to Eve Frank and the Frankist connection to the Mizraim lodges. Nodier inserted the sentence there on purpose.
At one time there was a special genre of Jesuit or Freemason conspiracy novels, like Alexander Dumas’s Affair of the Necklace (1849) where Joseph Balsamo (Cagliostro) plots with “Jesuits”, who actually belonged to the predecessor of the Mizraim lodges. This genre never totally disappeared and is again popular today. I think many people believe that Dan Brown’s books have some message.
Alexander Dumas, Charles Nodier, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley belonged to Romanticism. Fantasy and horror stories belong to Romanticism. Some of these books are allegories for a Freemason-type conspiracy theory. One should at least ask if The Lord of the Ring belongs to this genre before accepting Tolkien’s denial.
After reading the book second time I think the intended meaning of the book can be found by simple logical deduction of what is in the books and what Tolkien said about the books.
Firstly, Tolkien admitted that the dwarfs in The Hobbit are obviously similar to Jews. It is very difficult to deny this identification. Close to the end the episode where the dwarfs are jailed by tree elves recalls the reluctance of the British to allow Jews to the Mandate of Palestine. The dwarfs give false promises to the Lake people, which reminds of the early promises Zionists made to Arabs. Accepting that the return of the dwarfs is an allegory of the restoration of the Jews, the war of the five armies must be an allegory of the First World War. This leads to the identification of Beorn in The Hobbit. Beorn who is not fond of dwarfs and can change himself to a bear and appears in the final battle looks very much like Russia. Likewise the eagles, also appearing in the final battle, must stand for of the USA. The adversaries of the First World War, the Huns, Germans, can be identified with the Orcs. The effort of the dwarfs to return to their home country is the reason of the war of the five armies, that is, Tolkien makes explicit a common but controversial theory that the restoration of the Jews was linked to the First World War in a causal way.
Secondly, as The Lord of the Ring is a continuation of The Hobbit, these identifications must carry to the latter part of the tale and the tale must continue from where The Hobbit stopped. When Tolkien describes in the preface of the 1966 edition what would be different in the The Lord of the Ring if it were an allegory, he reveals what he thinks would be the allegory. He says that 1) Barad-Dûr, Sauron’s Black Tower, would not have been destroyed, it would have been occupied, that 2) the Ring would have been used against Sauron, who would not have been destroyed but enslaved, and that 3) Saruman would eventually have created a ring to threaten the self-made leader of the Middle Earth. This last statement probably led to the theory that the Ring was an allegory of the atomic bomb, which the Soviet Union also developed. Tolkien rejected this allegory but said that the Ring is an allegory of power. All of these statements must refer to the real war and its outcome.
Sauron had a deal with Saruman in the book and that suggests that one is connected with Germany and the other with the Soviet Union. Saruman survives the war and sets up a system resembling Communism in the Shire. Communism threatened the world after the Second World War. The self-made leader of the Middle Earth could be an allegory of the USA after the war. Germany was occupied after the war while the Soviet Union was never fully occupied, but it was partially destroyed as Isengard was destroyed in the book. These arguments lead to the identification of Saruman with Communism from which follows that Sauron was connected with Germany. The remaining statement is 2), the Ring was used against Sauron and he was not destroyed but enslaved. Nazis were not enslaved, Nazis enslaved the Jews, who were not all destroyed but established a state, but from that does not follow that Sauron is the Jews. Still he is only connected with Germany in some way.
Tolkien wrote the main theme of the book, the eventual destruction of the Ring, before 1939 and he wrote the book mostly during the war. It is only natural that he could not tell the outcome of the war before the events happened, but he did not change the text later to correspond to the events. Instead, he wrote a tale of the end of the third time in the Middle Earth. This suggests that he suggests that his own time was one of the ends of the times.
The connection between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Ring is the Ring. It has been claimed that the Ring is the Ring of the Niebelund from Wagner’s Ring cycle, but Tolkien discredited this theory and I think that here we can accept what the author states of his book. A ring that better fits to the Ring in Tolkien is the Ring of Gyges in Plato’s The Republic: both make the user invisible. Wagner’s Ring does not: his story features a helmet giving invisibility. The Ring of Gyges is explained in The Republic as a secret society. In order to do evil while appearing to do good the Sophists suggest establishing a secret society. Thus, the Ring of Gyges is for doing evil in secret for own gain: riches and power. Wagner’s Ring of the Niebelund gives the power to rule the world, an aspect that does not exist in the original tales, but Tolkien did not need to copy this property of the Ring from Wagner: the core of the Freemason-Jewish conspiracy theory is that there is a secret society, which tries to control the world. Wagner was openly Anti-Semitic and believed that Jews have a conspiracy to gain world power. Does Tolkien suggest any form of Freemason-Jewish conspiracy theory in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Ring?
It seems so. The Hobbit is about the return of the dwarfs, the Jews, to their old home. Freemasons were a main force behind the restoration of the Jews. Tolkien was Catholic. The Catholic Church, like the Evangelic Lutheran Church, does not interpret the Bible in the way that the Jews must return to Israel in the end of the times. Gandalf and Saruman are members of the White Brotherhood, which certainly sounds like a Masonic secret society, not Jesuits or any other Catholic organization. In The Hobbit Bilbo says: “Gandalf, Gandalf! Good gracious me! Not the wandering wizard that gave Old Took a pair of magic diamond studs that fastened themselves and never came undone till ordered? Not the fellow who used to tell such wonderful tales at parties, about dragons and goblins and giants and the rescue of princesses and the unexpected luck of widows’ sons?” That confirms that Gandalf represents a Freemason in the book.
Saruman was a leader of the White Brotherhood, but Gandalf excommunicated him. Saruman we identified with Communism and Communism originally belonged to Masonry as the revolutionary branch of Mizraim and Memphis lodges, Illuminati and Carbonaries. For a Catholic person, like Tolkien, the role of Freemasonry as the creator of revolutions and the origins of Communism must have been known, but he would also have know that the culprit was not British Freemasonry but French Grand Orient Freemasonry. Gandalf appears as a positive character in the books and he is the driving force to the restoration of the Jews. This suggests that Tolkien agreed with British Freemasons, such as Churchill, that Zionism is the only way to stop Communism, and that he was not against English Freemasonry, the restoration of the Jews, or for that matter, wizards. This also implies that Tolkien saw Communism as essentially Jewish, but who is Sauron?
By 2) the Ring was used against Sauron, who was enslaved but not destroyed, in the real world, that is. Saruman had come under the power of Sauron. Sauron was the Master of the Ring. Is Sauron Nazis, Jews or some conspiracy of Communistic Jews?
The dwarfs in The Hobbit are described in a fairly positive way. They are Zionistic Jews, so they are not Sauron for Tolkien. Tolkien answered to Nazis: “I understand you want to know if I’m from Jewish descent. I can only say that regretfully none of my forebears came from this gifted nation.” This clarifies that Tolkien did not identify Sauron with the Jews.
What about Nazi’s? Nazi party was creation of a secret society, the Thule Society, and close to Theosophy and Ariosophy, but Rudolf von Sebottendorf, the founder of Thule, was also a Freemason of the Mizraim rite. Certainly this qualifies as Sauron, but Sauron was also enslaved. It seems to be that for Tolkien Sauron was the force behind the Nazi’s and Communistic Jews, some kind of an evil conspiracy, the Elders of Zion, perhaps.
The two books do not try to follow history precisely as it happened. For instance, Russia made a peace with Germany in WWI, but in The Hobbit Beorn fights to the end in the great war. Tolkien was inspired by the war and wrote parts of the book before the events and to suit the plot. He did not change the book after the real events turned out differently. This is because the books were not meant as an allegory, only as applicable to the end of the times.
In a radio interview which is said to explain the true meaning of the book Tolkien said that the Ring is only a tool to make the clock tick faster. This agrees with the allegory: the restoration of the Jews by the secret society was a way to speed up the end of the times. Messianic Kabbalists did many things to speed up the end of the times, while Rabbinic Jews referred to the Song of Solomon that one should not hurry the events before their time. As for Kabbalists, I think Gollum stands for Kabbalists, one important party working for the restoration of the Jews.
This is as far as we get with the allegory with the powers during the Second World War. It is also as far as there is any sense to go with this allegory. J. R. R. Tolkien was a Catholic and did not belong to any secret societies. He cannot have any insider knowledge of the actual events. What he wrote is a tale of the end of the third time of the Middle Earth. The real meaning of the book is more general, it is of the end of the times.
Tolkien has written in his letters that the book is fully Christian and Catholic. He has also explained that the book is of death: the problem of being eternal or of succession of generations, and that the book is an allegory of human story: efforts of small people cause great events. I believe that an author describes his book’s intention correctly, but not in a way that fully explains it as that is the task of a reader. All of the characterizations must be true in some sense and not in contradiction.
We can make the following observations.
Restoration of the Jews is fulfillment of biblical the-end-of-the times prophesy. That is the reason for writing a tale of the end of the times.
There is only one dwarf in The Lord of the Ring, Gilmi, and while the enmity between dwarfs and elves is made clear, Gimli becomes best friends with elf Legolas and falls in love with elf Galadriel. This leads us to the Christian and Catholic message of The Lord of the Ring: Pauline Epistles state that at the end of the times Jews turn to Jesus. Tolkien did not see the Jews as the source of evil, though he gave the dwarfs the traditional characteristics of greed for gold and treacherousness: the dwarf in The Children of Huron betrays Huron’s men. Dwarfs do not always stand for Jews. They appear in old tales just like elves and dragons.
The Christian message becomes clear in Aragorn. He is a man, not a dwarf. The white city, Minas Tirith, ruled by a vicegerent, looks like a reference to Vatican ruled by the Vicar of Christ. That would not necessarily make Aragorn the Second Coming of Christ, only the rightful king of the legal ruling house, that is, the Davidic King, the king messiah.
Indeed, I think this must be intended. Gandalf dies and rises from the death. That makes Gandalf the prophet messiah. Sauron must be the false prophet, Christian Anti-Christ. In Islam the corresponding end of the times characters are Isa, Mahdi and Al Masih ad-Dajjal. The army of the dead may correspond to the dead rising from their graves. Elves are the first born. In the Christian analogy they are angels. It is not important that there were no real characters like that during the world wars. There is no direct mapping between the mythical end of the times and the real end of the times.
What is important is that one Era ended. In The Lord of the Ring elves leave the Middle Earth. Two virtuous hobbits, Bilbo and Frodo, leave with them, as does Gandalf. The time of magic is over. The message of the book seems to be that one end of the times passed and the modern time starts. Tolkien was a monarchist and loved old tales. He must have hated the modern time. He probably saw it much like Plato in The Republic: every new phase is worse than the previous: societies change from absolute monarchy through oligarchy and democracy to tyranny.
What about the claim that small people can do great events in the end of times?
There are some ends of the world that we know about.
The Revelation of John is a mythical description of the First Jewish War with a prophetic ending that fulfills the old prophetic book. There are sufficiently many similarities with real events to make this identification, yet there was no widely accepted King Messiah. Josephus proposed that Vespasian was the King Messiah and the Pharisees agreed with it, but the rebels did not. I think Jesus was the intended prophet messiah of that war, but the war came too late as the comet of Caesar was not the Halley comet. If the comet had come at the expected time there would have been a king messiah, Herold I Agrippa. But as it came too late, there was only Yosef ben Matityahu, who changed sides and is know as Josephus Flavius. Small people could do great events, such as help Nero to commit a suicide, if it was a suicide, and Jesus of course, but anyway, the plan failed. The dead did not rise from their graves, though Josephus tells that such rumors were circulating in 66 AD. Still it was a true end of the times. It started the time of Rome, first the Roman Empire and then the Church in the western and eastern forms. This end of the times lasted some 300 years from Antiochius Epiphanes to Bar Kochba.
There was another end of the times in the 7th century when the Jews rebelled, joined the Sassanians and took Jerusalem for a short time. Soon after came Mohammed. At this time there were all three characters: Mohammed as the King Messiah, Mahdi, Isa as the Christian Emperor Heracleios and the Exilarch as the Anti-Christ, Al Masih ad-Dajjal. Or, in the Jewish understanding, in Sepher Zerubbabel, the Exilarch was the prophet Messiah and Heracleios was the false prophet. These do not matter much. Real events do not fit completely to a mythical story. This end of the times lasted some hundred years. It started from the plague of Justinian and continued to the conquests of Mohammed.
There was one end of the times around 1070 AD when Christians waited for the Second Coming of Christ and went to Crusades, but also this end started earlier. At least Al Hakim and the Druze religion must be included.
The end of the times is some kind of a catastrophe and the times last one, two or three thousand years. The time scale probably depends on the speed of development during the time of written language and agriculture. Before written language and agriculture times were much longer and today we may assume that times are much shorter. Development proceeds and tries to change the society, but powers that be oppose the changes. Finally something happens, c catastrophe, and a new era starts. Earlier many of these catastrophes were caused by a change in global weather. Around 2000 BC the old kingdoms collapsed to a prolonged draught, or maybe it was floods. It was not exactly at the same time everywhere. There has been, however, a roughly 2000 year period in the global temperature. We are now at the time when the weather should warm up, though humans have worsened it. There has also been a period of 1000 years of smaller warming. But these are not the only catastrophes. Sometimes a plague can change the balance of powers. What has happened in these changes is that peoples start moving and the result is wars and collapses of kingdoms, even cultures.
In the myth there often appears a Savior in the time of the end, a Manu, who makes a new covenant. Something there is in this concept, since new religions have been born in the ends of the times. Still I do not quite accept this idea and I think that the most important insight The Lord of the Ring has is that we are living at the end of one times. The future will show if we like the new era.