Keepers of the Flame

The Flame of Anor Smial page

By Pedro Angosto

In her last letter to me, Taruithorn's April Robson raised an interesting question. We were debating about mythologies, their history and origin. I said that to me, every mythology was, in essence, one and the same, with minor historical and cultural differences with anecdotal value from the symbolic point of view.

Then she suggested that maybe I was thinking of myths' evolution in terms of languages' evolution: all the myths come from an original, primordial mythology in the same way that all the eastern languages come from the original Indo-European, through centuries of historical and geographical evolution.

Well, that isn't exactly what I was trying to say, but itself is a brilliant idea. I can't negate the historical reality of some myths, gods, cults and religions travelling and expanding through the globe with the people and their language. But the resemblances at the symbolic - poetic - level imply that there isn't one original historical model in the Far East. There is certainly a model from which the poets and visionaries take example, but it should be placed somewhere where they can look now and everytime.

In other words the Story of the myths is told anew in every culture any [every] time it is necessary. Everybody has his own fire, no matter if they retained a firebrand from the primordial fire.

Myths - and the truth they contain - come from men, through Mythopoeia, and it isn't necessary for them to know other myths from which to take example. Certainly, Tolkien did know about ancient mythologies, but at the same time he was creating something new, with chapters and details that are part of those myths, but were lost in time and space. His works weren't only the sum of different parts: like Sigfried in the north myth he had to reduce the old sword to little pieces. melt them with fire and reforge Nothung anew. From here comes the image of Aulë as smith/creator and the very same Smith of Wooton Major. The myths come from the poet the same way the languages, though they evolve, can come brand new from a poet like Tolkien.

But as I was saying the idea of myths evolving like languages is a brilliant one, especially if we look at it inside the world of Middle-earth. There, Tolkien clearly shows how the different languages of the different creatures (Valar, Maiar, Elves, Númenóreans, Dúnedain, Hobbits, etc ...) come one from the other and, following the doom of Arda, there is a degeneration as the ages pass: the languages lose power of description of reality at the same time the old traditions and memories are lost.

And that is exactly the way myths - or their true meaning - are lost and forgotten in our world as well as Middle-earth. A genial and subtle example is the Hobbittic poem/song of the Fastiticalon (from Adventures of Tom Bombadil), about how men reached an island in the west, encamp there, and suddenly the island began to 'downfall' into the sea ... because it was a giant turtle! That's what Hobbit lore made of the downfall of Númenór!

It seems to me that the moral Tolkien is telling us is: "Do you see the giant turtles of your myths? They were really Islands in your past." Events not from our history but from Eternity, only recorded in the myths. Eternal myths, that is.