“Cult” has spooky undertones, but, according to the tomes of Merriam and Webster, in its earliest English sense it just means worship. It comes from the Latin root colo (colere, colui, cultus), literally agricultural cultivation. Colo apparently already took on the secondary meaning of religious devotion in antiquity, along with another alternative meaning of education, which may be the one that gives rise to our word “culture.” While culture can literally mean the fine tastes resulting from education, the sense that I find more common and which I’m interested in exploring in relation to cult is as a constellation of linguistic, artistic, and technological features that give identity to a group of individuals, often in close geographic proximity to one another. That’s the type of culture we might refer to in “French culture” or infamously “Self, Culture, and Society.” “Popular culture” and “internet culture” are pushing the envelope a little, but they can fall into this category as well.
Cult as a convention of worship and culture as a collection of conventions come together as two related aspects of communities of people. Worship is communal, even in cases of private devotion. Ascetics, like Catholic anchoresses, rely on outside supporters to bring them food and, in some religions, to fulfill communal rituals like Communion. Personal prayers that diverge from liturgy still have to adhere to a communally established religious paradigm, which may be more or less strict in its tolerance for originality—semantics of worship can be especially important in Nicene Christianity, where terminological distinctions like homoiousios vs. homoousios and adore vs. venerate are the difference between heresy and orthodox practice. Cults of worship are themselves the collections of these phrases and practices, implicitly built on religious beliefs, held to be valid by a community of coreligionists. While these may often aspire towards universal truth, they are distinctly channeled through the cultural features of their community, expressed through particular languages, in particular artistic and architectural mediums, and with particular understandings of social order and the cosmos.
I want to situate Tolkien’s approach to religion between the two opposing poles of cultural specificity and theological universality. In most respects, Tolkien highly values cultural heterogeneity. In one of his wartime letters to Christopher Tolkien, he bemoans globalization’s effect of destroying the interesting things about the world: “The bigger things get the smaller and duller or flatter the globe gets. It is getting to be all one blasted little provincial suburb… But seriously: I do find this Americo-cosmopolitanism very terrifying.” (Letters, n. 53). He specifically views linguistic homogenization as a problem, and only half-jokingly wishes for a second Tower of Babel—a very interesting reframing of a Biblical curse to suggest that linguistic diversity has religious value or might even be an ideal.
While Tolkien certainly doesn’t want everyone speaking in English, he might want everyone praying in Latin. In line with his Catholic faith, religious universality is very important to Tolkien. In a 1968 letter drafted to his son Michael, Tolkien reflected on the aftermath of the groundbreaking Second Vatican Council and Pope Paul VI’s continued reforms. While the 70-year-old Tolkien found many of the changes frustrating, he writes: “I find myself in sympathy with those developments that are strictly ‘ecumenical,’ that is concerned with other groups or churches that call themselves (and often truly are) ‘Christian’. We have prayed endlessly for a Christian reunion, but it is difficult to see, if one reflects, how that could possibly come about except as it has, with all its inevitable minor absurdities.” (Letters, n. 306). “Catholic” literally means universal and the early ecumenical councils were so-called because they attempted to settle on religious doctrines for the entire world. The Greek concept of “oikomene” referring to the entire inhabited world is actually similar to Germanic variants of “Midgard,” which Tolkien draws his Middle-Earth from. Overall, Tolkien’s sympathies are very much in the traditional Catholic direction of one unified religion for the entire world, though he does tolerate “minor absurdities” that color variant groups that still follow the important universal ideals.
The religious dimension of Middle-Earth is subtle and almost entirely lacks rituals or clerical structures, but Tolkien still imbues it with the ideal of a universal cult of worship, transcending cultural differences. In Book III, “The Departure of Boromir,” Aragorn and Legolas join together to improvise a poetic eulogy for the fallen Gondorian warrior, joining together their cultures and races in a single act of “worship”: “The West Wind comes walking, and about the walls it goes/…/From the mouths of the Sea the South Wind flies…” (Houghton-Mifflin p. 417). Interestingly, Gimli declines to take part, which Aragorn anticipates by not giving him a chance to recite a third and final stanza. I’m not sure exactly what to make of that, but it does seem to suggest that dwarves are in some way excluded from the “true religion” of elves and men despite the apparent universalizing ideal—perhaps related to their illicit creation by Aulë, recounted in the Silmarilion, and their exclusion from the special divine connection that elves and men have as Children of Illuvatar. Gimli is allowed to sail to Valinor with Legolas at the end of the book though, pretty much the highest form of divine approval! This case does show religious unity across particulars between Aragorn and Legolas at least, especially as their alternating stanzas mesh perfectly with one another and don’t really bear marks of either of their authorship (of course Tolkien actually wrote all of the stanzas).
Due to the exclusion of dwarves, the above case might fall short of being fully “ecumenical.” The strongest thrust for a totally Middle-Global cult of worship comes right at the denouement of the story, when Sam and Frodo have achieved their quest of seeing the Ring destroyed at Mount Doom. The day of Sauron’s defeat becomes Middle Earth’s closest equivalent to a religious holiday, and all the “good guys” of the story come together to praise the Hobbits’ brave actions together. Aragorn, as the newly enthroned leader of the western world, calls forth a minstrel, who delivers an address about the Hobbits like a Bible sermon: “‘Lo! lords and knights and men of valour unashamed, kings and princes, and fair people of Gondor, and Riders of Rohan, and ye sons of Eldron, and Dúnedain of the North, and Elf and Dwarf, and greathearts of the Shire, and all free folk of the West, now listen to my lay. For I will sing of Frodo of the Nine Fingers and the Ring of Doom.’” (Houghton-Mifflin p. 954). This fulfills Sam’s hopes that their actions will become a story with a happy ending. Interestingly, almost all the “good guys” we’ve encountered through the book are here participating as listeners: including multiple types of elves and men, along with hobbits and dwarves. We are missing Eagles and Ents, but those cases can be excused since the Eagles had just left Minas Tirith and it would have taken the Ents forever to walk there from Isengard. With the outer story of Lord of the Rings coming to a happy conclusion, Tolkien’s rosy ideal of complete religious union also comes into shape.
As a digression, I want to reflect on my own perspective on religious universality and cultural specificity as an observant Jew. One well-known area where we diverge from Christianity is in our lesser emphasis on universality. We also believe in one God for the entire world—that’s arguably the most important part of the religion—but we embrace the cultural trappings of our particular relationship with God as essential to Judaism. We view the Bible’s commandments as specifically aimed at us as a cultural unit (some of the words used in the Bible for its concept of nationhood are עם, גוי, לשון, and specifically to the Jewish people בני ישראל , and עברים). Those rules are not obligatory for members of other “nations,” with the exception of the seven Noahide laws, which are mostly common sense like not murdering. We see many of our customs as sacred as well as culturally native, like the Hebrew language, Kosher food, and the calendar of holidays. I think Tolkien’s aesthetic appreciation of cultural quirks aligns with my own appreciation of the many forms of native religion, diverse “cults of worship” to the same divinity, that can arise when religious forms are brought more towards the specific rather than the universal. The “flavor” of religion comes from all the wacky details! Despite Catholicism’s inclination to the universal, it certainly has rich particulars as well, accumulated over 2000 years of history and manifested in different cultural forms for, say, Ireland and Mexico.
-Daniel Steinberg
2 comments:
Daniel, there is so much rich material in this reflection! As you mention, religious practice is inherently communal, even in its most introspective and apparently individual forms. And even as some religions (Catholicism, Islam) strive for universality, their concrete expressions are found in particularities: "The 'flavor' of religion comes from all the wacky details!" The anecdotes of Catholic history seeking to navigate between the universal and the particular that you chose, from Nicaea to Vatican II, could be multiplied: the debate over inculturation in Ming China, or the Gregorian reforms during the Merovingian Empire. I too found Letter 306, the words of an elderly Tolkien striving to come to terms with the continuities of religious practice during a time of change, very moving.
I wonder if you don't extrapolate too far from the funeral-song for Boromir. It is certainly a very interesting moment, a sacred observance without any deity being invoked directly. But Gimli does not sing because he refuses to address the East Wind, not because he is a Dwarf; the implication being that his piety and fidelity is shown precisely in *refusing* to venerate the opposite of the blessed West. But I do agree that the status of the dwarves is very ambiguous, partly because Tolkien repeatedly stresses that their culture is insular and slow to trust outsiders.
~LJF
Lovely meditation on the way Tolkien grapples with the tension between the local (language, customs) and the universal ("Middle-Global") through his storytelling. I am not positive he would want the liturgy only in Latin—he spent so much time studying the Old English versions of the Scriptures! But he was clearly torn between the universals of Christianity and the desire for his own corner of Christendom to have its own language and stories. RLFB
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