Gorgeous, gorgeous parenthetical

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5162270&forum_id=2#44924404)

Rohan is Sythia-Goth-Saxony

Gondor is the late HRE, Protestant Europe (Byzantine in other ages)

Dwarves are craftsman and merchant guilds

Dunedain "rangers" are Merovingians

Elves are insular Catholic Celtic Tuatha de Danann

Maiar are Druids

Modor is land of Medes and Persians

Sauron is the prince and power of the air

The One Ring is international jewry, the ring of gyges

Haradrim are Ottomans

Trolls are Neanderthals

Nazgul are Fabian societies and fallen monarchs

Orcs are muzzies

Uruk-Hai are Mongols

Goblins are tree niggers

Dragons are the great banking houses

Tom Bombadil is himself and no one else

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5162270&forum_id=2#44931220)

(Nothing new under the sun, in other words!)

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5162270&forum_id=2#44931328)

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E0noQqPWYAE3ils.jpg

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5162270&forum_id=2#44931398)

Adam and Eve were stately royalty who were basically a Disney prince and princess, in the sense of being stewards of the happy and tame animals flocking to them and enjoying the relaxed environment.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5162270&forum_id=2#44931677)

"I think Lewis was on to something when he said that, deep down, all wild animals long to live in a tranquil Garden of Eden 2.0 with gentle and gracious people, stewards of all things bright and beautiful - because that's where they started, after all, before original sin caused everything and everyone to become wild and confused."

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5162270&forum_id=2#44931689)

Christianity is not a novel worldview, Lewis and Chesterton insist: it is the fulfillment (as you and I have discussed many times) of the pagan hopes, meaning that all the pagan understandings of a mysterious unknown God - an intuition shared by virtually all people historically, Chesterton notes in The Everlasting Man - a Heavenly realm beyond space and time that may or may not be accessible to mere mortals, and the obviously fallen and sinful state of humanity in desperate need of someone or something beyond us:

Christianity didn't invent any of those things: rather, God descended into our Earthly snowglobe - the playwright walking onto the stage, or the author becoming a character in his own story, as Peter Kreeft likes to say - in order to reconcile the long-lamented (by many different nations and cultures) estrangement of Heaven and Earth (the Fall - another thing that all people dimly remember, Chesterton points out!).

So Our Blessed Lord - the Mind of God Incarnate, the exact same substance as the Creator of space and time - UNLOCKED the gates of Paradise for us, and as George Macdonald and C.S. Lewis said: The Son of God did not die merely to save us from the punishment for our sins, because that's up to us whether we want to obey the Logos or not. (Hell is locked from the inside, the product of inveterate defiance, as Lewis discovered in his Great Divorce vision.)

The real point of Jesus's Passion, these wise and wonderful sheepdogs reminds us, is to save us FROM SIN ITSELF. It's one thing to be justified, eligible to go to Heaven. But the even more important thing, as Peter Kreeft says, is to become SANCTIFIED - that is, free from sin, the festering thorn removed from our paw, Lewis said... the heart surgery we all need and must surrender to, Kreeft reminds us: the final purgatorial purification.

After all, if you're invited to the Eternal EPCOT Victory Banquet, the endless Heavenly story perfectly fulfilling our deepest desires of pure home and pure adventure, as Kreeft predicts - wouldn't anyone courteous want to get all nice and cleaned up before walking through the door?

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5162270&forum_id=2#44932077)

Christianity didn't invent any of those things: rather, God descended into our Earthly snowglobe - the playwright walking onto the stage, or the author becoming a character in his own story, as Peter Kreeft likes to say - in order to reconcile the long-lamented (by many different nations and cultures) estrangement of Heaven and Earth (the Fall - another thing that all people dimly remember, Chesterton points out!).

180385953105

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5162270&forum_id=2#44932614)

Being compared to Mr. Bombadil by Pumonymous was one of the greatest moments of my life (and next time one of my family or friends gets a female golden retriever, I'm going to recommend the name Goldberry).

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5162270&forum_id=2#44931259)

!!!

"imagine her a Mary Magdalene archetype living at one time as Goldberg and reborn Goldberry."

And LMAO, this is perfect, especially because I've known a few Amanda Milius types IRL who went from a dissolute and/or defiant existence and/or pedigree, to becoming absolute uncompromising defenders of everything true and beautiful.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5162270&forum_id=2#44931758)

I can't remember which thread it was, but I remember a history buff poaster made the point that there are military events in Lord of the Rings which are directly lifted from classic moments in the history of Christendom.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5162270&forum_id=2#44931273)

I screwed up with my first gf in middle school, she read Tolkien, wore the One Ring necklace, cried when Boromir died when my parents took us to see the Fellowship. why the hell would I read that when I had a perfectly good ps2 and paintball gun. you know what my "Christian" school had us read instead of the Iliad? Holes.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5162270&forum_id=2#44931327)

(As shocking as it might sound to anyone familiar with my poasting, I'm gay and retarded btw.)

But thankfully it all worked out for the best, because later in our teenage years I helped get her back on track to her childhood conservaheroine Catholic outlook, so thank Jesus (literally) for that.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5162270&forum_id=2#44931348)

'you know what my "Christian" school had us read instead of the Iliad? Holes.'

LJL, and so sadly representative. As our guy Lewis said, Christendom is the unprecedented lightning-in-a-bottle (or message in a bottle, Walker Percy would say!) combination of the best of Greece, Rome, and Jerusalem (way, way back in time when Jerusalem and what it stood for was actually a respectable thing, hilarious as that sounds today). God's self-revelation to man...

So in that vein, it's crazy to think that my private prep school upbringing - thankfully grew up in a chill lib environment where people liked white Christian civilization, but were simply naive about the "Live and let live" camel's nose rhetoric of the left; and it's easy to believe in the rainbow utopia when you're around 95% old money whites and 5% non-whites with royal phenotypes - naturally this environment also failed to include any real historical context for the epic European story.

We read the Odyssey and watched the movie Troy, but there was no mention of the Aeneid, and everything between Greece and the Renaissance was simply "the Dark Ages." So thank Jesus (again quite literally) that I had an old-fashioned grandmother who was sure to introduce her grandchildren to beautiful Western traditions (hence Redwall and Narnia at a young age!).

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5162270&forum_id=2#44931377)

This is another great point, which reminds me of what Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc frequently said, that Jews who are transparent about being Jewish are often wonderful people, but you must always be on your guard against Jews LARPing as Europeans (or anyone else for that matter - "Mark Zuckerberg's" children will be "Hello, fellow Chinese!").

Similarly, C.S. Lewis lamented the bizarre modern trend of "Hottentots" LARPing as Europeans, because non-Europeans being viewed as European never occurred before 1945 (beginning The War on Sanity). "Barbarian" simply meant uncivilized and/or non-Christian European, Lewis reminds us.

And we can never forget, though of course certain (((people))) try to obscure this, that Tolkien didn't dislike Germany or Germans: he specifically disliked Adolf (the dictator, not the XO poaster) for not respecting white Christian civilization and its sacred traditions ENOUGH. It's the same reason Tolkien wrote to his son that many loyal English patriots, like himself, were terrified of victorious "American cosmopolitanism."

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5162270&forum_id=2#44931312)

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/33/4c/9a/334c9a98e129ab30e7c13f88f1cd600e.jpg

(This gorgeous URL is saved in my bookmarks under "Fellowship" BTW)

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5162270&forum_id=2#44931428)