I read up a little bit on the old Anglo-Saxon pantheon of gods and it suddenly hit me that the many of the Valar from the Silmarillion are literally the same characters as these old gods. I know the dude aped a lot of stuff from Norse Myth to flesh out his world, but it seems strange that he was willing to use pagan figures in something as close to his heart as Arda’s creation story (which he defended on occasion from the criticism of other Catholics)
How much stock do you think Tolkien put in mythic characters like Thunor, Woden, Wéland, Wada, and Éostre? How much did he respect the polytheistic heritage of his people?
No. He was a devout Christian. >respect the polytheistic heritage of his people? Wasn't he South African?
Zachary Wood
He wasnt very crypto if a faggot like you could spot this. The man just liked mythology and languages, leave him alone.
Jace Miller
No.
Austin Evans
I swear the seething of neopagans that refuse to accept that every single thing that was preserved and cherished of their religion is still known today due to Christians is absolutely delicious
Jonathan Gomez
He was born in South Africa, but he was English
Christopher Brooks
Tolkien explicitly said the Valar are Christianised pagan gods, they have similar roles to gods but their power derives totally from Eru (i.e. God) so they are more like angels.
Isaac Mitchell
What's unknown is also because of Christians, Christians only protected some of these works from themselves.
Dylan Williams
>Christian Catholic. It estranged him and his mother from their Anglican family. His wife converted too, and was also estranged. The recent movie chose to omit this, so you know its important.
Jace Jones
More like Christian protected What they could from norsemen and muslims burning librarles but That's ok We all know that history isn't your forte.
Henry Clark
You idiot, biggest libraries purgers were the Byzantines.
Jeremiah Bailey
T. watched that episode of Mysteries at the Museum as well.
Just a reminder that mainline European Christianity/Catholicism was essentially “chritianized paganism” or “paganized christianty” up until the Reformation.
Literal pagan gods were made into “christian” saints on multiple occasions.
Brody Morris
>episode of Mysteries at the Museum as well. Link?
Jordan Diaz
JRRT was based but he ruined all fantasy that came after, I'm fucking sick of every fantasy world being a thinly veiled version of England
Blake Brooks
Did any 'fantasy' writer exist before him, barring the people who actually inspired him like the Beowulf author and the King Arthur author? He was great because he wrote mythology fanfic and got really carried away in the details. Everyone afterwards sucks because they dont understand why myths are so appealing and instead prefer to wallow in being dark and edgy while stealing a lot of his ideas and injecting their own mountains of detail that misses the point.
The witcher sort of bucks this trend somewhat. It's nice to see fantasy based on the folklore of another part of europe.
Brayden Garcia
There were many, Eddison and his Worm Ouroboros, which is by the way better than lotr, comes to mind
>Literal pagan gods were made into “christian” saints on multiple occasions.
Got any sources to this blasphemy? I can't find anything
Joseph Hall
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuous_pagan Both he and C.S. Lewis had deep admirations for prechristian greek and roman pagans because they studied literature. they both knew the value of myth and treated paganism as such. beliefs of ancient greeks were much different from neopagan revival caused by lost atheists that you can observe today
