The Hidden Secret of the Lord of the Rings

I was going through my older blog which I took down and replaced with this one several years ago, to see if there were any interesting posts.  At the time I was researching the interpretation and symbolism of an unusual dream. What began as a simple question turned into a rabbit hole adventure similar to the dream of Alice in Wonderland.  I've had time to reflect on it a bit more, so I am making portions of this public again.  This is a combination of several blog entries back in 2005. So lets take a peek into this rabbit hole.

AN UNUSUAL DREAM

The dream I had took place in July of 2004. In the dream I was taken up from my bed and lifted up high above the earth. I was in some sort of angelic realm, and the thought came to me that my angelic name was "The Eye of Mentar." The next thought that came to me was that this name is explained in the book The Lord of the Rings.  This was a bit of an unusual reference: I had seen the movies, but never read the book. I looked down below, and I saw the entire world before me. 

To the west was America, to the east there was a vast empire. War was being prepared. A great hatred had risen up against the Jewish people of the state of Israel. I saw that they were being expelled from America and that they were moving back to their land in great numbers. My vision focused on two points: on the east coast of America I saw that there was a tower, with a shining orange orb on top, and on Israel I focused on the wall that they had built. I had some relationship with that orb on top of the tower. The image of the attack of September 11 came to mind, but I was not sure how it was related to the dream. As for the wall, although now it was being built as a wall of protection, I was seeing that in the future that wall would be used to create a prison for the Jews in Israel. Israel will become a prison.  There would be some judgment from God on the State of Israel. I then awoke.

THE EYE OF MENTAR

The dream concerning some future events may have been drawn from the prophecies of Nostradamus, for he predicts very similar events. The first half of his prophecies I have published in The Decoded Prophecies of Nostradamus. The second half, which I have not published, does contain prophecies concerning a future war that occurs between the west and a great eastern empire.  I have held back from publishing it as there are references to other prophecies which require a bit more research - and its a bit hard to obtain the original source material. I may have to cut that material out.

One thing was out of place in this dream: what does the phrase Eye of Mentar mean?  And Lord of the Rings?  This did not make any sense.  When it comes to dreams, if there is something that is unusual, which is not based on any previous personal experience, I like to concentrate on that. I emailed a friend of mine who was familiar with other languages to ask what "Mentar" may mean, but that came up empty. I looked for Mentar on the internet, and all I found was that there was a crossing from Gaza into Israel called "Al-Mentar". Interesting, given that the dream had mentioned the wall being built in Israel. However this did not strike me as the right answer, as the dream was stating that this reference came from the Lord of the Rings. This was not going to be easy. The Lord of the Rings is a trilogy, and Tolkien - a university professor - poured in over 13 years of research into this work. Moreover, there was the Hobbit, and before that, another book, the Silmarillon. Not only that, Tolkien invented an elvish language, and there were tons of books of the subject.  I really did not have time.

Eventually curiosity got the best of me, and once I had time I set out to read the books of Tolkien. I started out with Fellowship of the Ring, the first book of the trilogy. Plowing through the book, I was beginning to feel that this was a fruitless effort. What a waste of time. Then finally I reached the end of the book, where Frodo sits on the seat of Amon Hen wearing the Ring, where he could see the entire world, looking east, north, west and south, and "everywhere he looked he saw the signs of war." But my attentions focused on the following sentence: "He was sitting upon the Seat of Seeing, on Amon Hen, the Hill of the Eye of the Men of Numenor." The Eye of the Men of Numenor I thought was significant, perhaps this was the Eye of Mentar?  Here is the relevant passage:

At first he could see little. He seemed to be in a world of mist in which there were only shadows: the Ring was upon him. Then here and there the mist gave way and he saw many visions: ... There was no sound, only bright living images. The world seemed to have shrunk and fallen silent. He was sitting upon the Seat of Seeing, on Amon Hen, the Hill of the Eye of the Men of Númenor. Eastward he looked into wide uncharted lands, nameless plains, and forests unexplored. Northward he looked, and the Great River lay like a ribbon beneath him, and the Misty Mountains stood small and hard as broken teeth. Westward he looked and saw the broad pastures of Rohan; and Orthanc, the pinnacle of Isengard, like a black spike. Southward he looked, and below his very feet the Great River curled like a toppling wave and plunged over the falls of Rauros into a foaming pit; a glimmering rainbow played upon the fume. And Ethir Anduin he saw, the mighty delta of the River, and myriads of sea-birds whirling like a white dust in the sun, and beneath them a green and silver sea, rippling in endless lines.But everywhere he looked he saw the signs of war. ...All the power of the Dark Lord was in motion. Then turning south again he beheld Minas Tirith. Far away it seemed. and beautiful: white-walled, many-towered, proud and fair upon its mountain-seat; its battlements glittered with steel, and its turrets were bright with many banners. Hope leaped in his heart. But against Minas Tirith was set another fortress, greater and more strong. Thither, eastward, unwilling his eye was drawn. It passed the ruined bridges of Osgiliath, the grinning gates of Minas Morgul. and the haunted Mountains, and it looked upon Gorgoroth, the valley of terror in the Land of Mordor. Darkness lay there under the Sun. Fire glowed amid the smoke. Mount Doom was burning, and a great reek rising. Then at last his gaze was held: wall upon wall, battlement upon battlement, black, immeasurably strong, mountain of iron, gate of steel, tower of adamant, he saw it: Barad-dûr, Fortress of Sauron. All hope left him.

Frodo sees war coming upon Middle Earth, and my dream was showing war was coming upon the world. I was not quite satisfied with this finding: the "Eye of Mentar" is supposed to be a personal name or title, and "Eye of the Men of Numenor" is close, but not close enough. My curiosity was perked so I finished the rest of the books, andI let this finding rest for a while.

In February 2005 I was browsing a web site, Thain's book, an encyclopedia of The Lord of the Rings. It looked very comprehensive.  Aha! I nice shortcut.  I had honestly quickly scanned through the trilogy searching for the name of Mentar and came up empty. I decided to look up entries beginning with "M". I saw one entry, Meneldor. Is this Mentar? The letter D and T are interchangeable in some languages. I looked up the entry, and was stunned. Its still up on the internet, anyone can read it:

MeneldorGreat Eagle of the Misty Mountains. On March 25, 3019 of the Third Age, Meneldor accompanied Gwaihir the Windlord to the Battle of the Morannon before the Black Gate of Mordor. When Mount Doom erupted, Meneldor was chosen to fly with Gwaihir and Landroval to rescue Frodo Baggins and Sam Gamgee because he was young and swift.
Names & Etymology:
The word menel means "heavens." The element dor is a form of taur meaning "high, lofty, noble, lord." Also called Meneldor the Swift.

Meneldor is the name of the eagle that picked up Frodo from the volcano. Meneldor is an alternate spelling for Meneltaur. It means "high heavens" or "Lord of the heavens." Eagles have very sharp eyes. As the eagle lifted up Frodo from earth up into the sky, so I was lifted in the dream high above, looking down on the earth. So the meaning of the Eye of Mentar is indeed explained in the Lord of the Rings. Then I knew, this was no ordinary dream.



Well I just found the above video...and I mean right now, so this was not in my original blog post from 2005. Pay attention to the lyrics. They are in elvish language of Sindarin. Below is the original elvish, along with the English translation:

Orthannen im vi ól
In a dream I was lifted up.
Coll e dû
Borne from the darkness
Or hiriath naur
Above the rivers of fire.
Na rovail mae sui 'waew
On wings soft as the wind.
Man prestant i ardhon?
What's happened to the world?
Cerithar aen illiad dim úthenin?
Is everything sad going to come untrue?

The elvish song begins with the phrase, "In a dream I was lifted up."  Oh how bizarre. Yes I saw the movie before the dream, but I had no idea one of the eagle's names was "Meneldor".  And I certainly do not know the Sindarin elvish language.

A QUESTION OF TIME

What in the world is going on? I decided to do more research into the Lord of the Rings, and J.R.R. Tolkien. Tolkien was friends with C.S. Lewis, and his apparent motive in writing the book was to write an epic myth, with Christian themes involves, but in a very implicit manner.  C.S. Lewis once told Tolkien that myths are lies breathed through words of silver.  Tolkien replied no: myths are lies that tell the truth. Now I was looking at the books completely differently: "there is more to me than the eye can see." Perhaps there is a hidden meaning behind the literal story? I was very familiar with that kind of writing; Swedenborg describes the method in detail.

As I said, we are only going to take a "peek" in this rabbit hole, not jump in it.  Except this rabbit hole has become a Hobbit hole.  I weeded through a lot of books, but then I came across a book entitled, A Question of Time, by Verlynn Flieger.  So what is this about?  I will tell you what it is about: Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were very interested in the concept of time travel. Unlike C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, a Catholic, was very interested in entering other times through the means of dreams.  As it turns out, Verlynn Flieger got her idea to write the book as a member of the Tolkien family revealed that Tolkien had a personal copy of the book, An Experiment with Time, by J.W. Dunne. And what is that book about?  Evidence for the phenomenon of precognitive dreaming. Having a dream that reveals the future.

I next went through the private letters of J.R.R. Tolkien.  He had this repeating nightmare dream, where a tidal wave was approaching, and would drown the entire land.  He would get caught in the wave, and begin to drown. He would always awake from the dream, gasping for air. He then took elements of this dream and put it into his earlier work, the Silmarillon, which describes an Atlantis like island called the Isle of Numenor, which like Atlantis eventually sank beneath the sea.  How many other dreams did Tolkien have?  How many of these did he put in his books?

It would seem that J.R.R. Tolkien had a lot of secrets. So Tolkien, how many secrets are you hiding?