Avalon Mentors

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This is a recording of one of the sessions on Tolkien held this summer, 2021.  Of the topics considered, the nature of dragons is paramount.  What is a dragon?  Tolkien said

"I desired dragons with a profound desire. Of course, I in my timid body did not wish to have them in the neighborhood . . . . But the world that contained even the imagination of Fáfnir was richer and more beautiful, at whatever cost of peril.”

Tolkien's dragons are of the Western variety.  Treasure hording, highly intelligent, they cannot ignore riddles but are inhuman in their destructive nature and tend to spread despair & half-truths through their greed and hatred.

The English word, "dragon", derives (via Middle English, Old French, and Latin) from Ancient Greek δράκων drákōn, "serpent, dragon", from δέρκομαι, "I see", ἒδρακον, "I saw", δἐδορκα, "I have seen" (in various senses); hence perhaps "sharp-sighted one"; or because a snake's eyes seem to be always open. The Greek word probably derives from an Indo-European base derk- meaning "to see"; the Sanskrit root dŗç- also means "to see".

Dragons, therefore, have to do with vision, insight, wisdom.  They are "the final test of heroes" as professor Tolkien wrote.  The encounter with a Western dragon poses a tremendous challenge but the reward for success, as Dr. Jordan Peterson points out, is riches beyond compare.

Bilbo, we find, encounters the dragon under Lonely Mountain, but not necessarily in the way we might expect.  Listen in to found out.

Famous Western (European) Dragons

1. Mushkhushshu - Babylonian from Akkadian from Sumerian “MUŠ.ḪUS, 'reddish snake', sometimes also translated as 'fierce snake'. 'splendor serpent' (𒈲 MUŠ is the Sumerian term for 'serpent')

2. Tiamat “salt water” and Apsu “fresh water” vs. Marduk – Enuma Elish

3. “Dragon” (serpent) of Eden

4. The Dragon of Revelation

5. Python vs. Apollo

6. Hydra vs. Herakles

7. Ladon & the tree of the Hesperides (Herakles)

8. Nidoggr & Jormungandr; the middle child of Loki and the giantess Angrboða (Norse Mythology)

9. Fafnir the Dragon & Siegfried (Sigurd) – Volsunga saga

10. Beowulf dragon; referred to as draca and also as a wyrm (worm, or serpent). Its movements are denoted by the Anglo-Saxon verb bugan, "to bend"

11. St. George & the Dragon

12. Red and white dragons of Arthur; Arthur Pendragon =  Welsh pen, "head, chief, top" and dragon, "dragon; warrior"

13. Errour & the Knight Redcrosse (1590 Edmund Spenser; “The Faerie Queen”)

Tolkien's Dragons

1. Chrysophylax (Farmer Giles of Ham)

2. Great White Dragon (Roverandom)

3. Glaurung – born by Morgoth, slain by Turin Turambar

4. Ancalagon the Black – born by Morgoth, slain by Earendil

5. Scatha the Worm – slain by Fram

6. The Fire Drake of Gondolin – participated in the fall of Gondolin

7. The Great Cold Drake – slew Dain I and forced dwarves eastward

8. Smaug the Terrible – infests Lonely Mountain, slain by Bard of Dale

9. Balrogs

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This episode is a recording of a talk I gave recently on JRR Tolkien's "Silmarillion".   Begun even before the Great War, this work was considered by Tolkien to be the work the closest to his heart; his magnum opus.  Yet the work wasn't even published until 1977, four years after Tolkien's death.  Why is it a significant work?  Would it be significant without the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings?  What is Tolkien saying about the nature of evil?  Hope?  Friendship? and the power of words to convey a vision of the world?

The Oath of the Silmarils, as given in Morgoth's Ring:

“Be he foe or friend, be he foul or clean

Thus spoke Maedhros and Maglor and Celegorm, Curufin and Caranthir, Amrod and Amras, princes of the Noldor; and many quailed to hear the dread words.

The inscription inside the Ring of Power:

"Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie."

— The Lord of the Rings

Hail, Earendil!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3wuI-bOSo8

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In this episode I discuss with my sister, Dr. Helen Freeh, the nature of the great epic The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien.  Dr. Freeh illustrates how, amidst the numerous depressing works of the 20th century, Tolkien stands as a literary beacon of hope and a prophet of the coming age of struggle in the latter part of the century and the beginning of our own era.

Dr. Helen Freeh received her B.A. in Politics and Masters in American Studies from the University of Dallas. After working in the business world, she entered Baylor University’s graduate program and earned her Ph.D. in English, writing her dissertation on fate, providence and free will in Tolkien’s Middle-earth.  She has worked at Baylor University Press, taught at Baylor University, McClennan County Community College, Hillsdale Academy and Hillsdale College where she met her husband, Dr. John Freeh.  She is a contributor to Tolkien Among the Moderns, edited by Ralph Wood, an occasional contributor to The Catholic Thing, and a Senior Fellow at Albertus Magnus Institute.  She and John are co-founders of Kateri College of the Liberal and Practical Art in Gallup, NM, and are traveling around the country in their missionary motor home, “Tekakwitha,” promoting and fundraising for the College while fulfilling their primary vocation of raising and educating their three children, Theresa, Joseph and John Paul.

We reference numerous works including Tolkien's Letters

#131 https://www.tolkienestate.com/en/writing/letters/letter-milton-waldman.html

and #186 https://clarifyingcatholicism.org/2020/10/27/tolkien-and-immortality/

as well as talking about Tolkien's own life and his time in the trenches including the loss of his friends, The Immortal Four.

Check out Dr. Freeh's newly minted college, Kateri college of the liberal and practical arts, here: 

https://katericollege.org/

And her series of talks at Albertus Magnus Institute here: 

https://magnusinstitute.org/

& check out this great art of the Valar at Etsy: 

https://i.etsystatic.com/11513997/r/il/f2d568/1507004795/il_794xN.1507004795_u9g5.jpg

https://www.etsy.com/listing/588711888/the-valar?gpla=1&gao=1&&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=shopping_us_b-art_and_collectibles-prints-giclee&utm_custom1=_k_Cj0KCQjw_8mHBhClARIsABfFgpjgrBV_jVI75clS_nsQoudh7ahBOzcjDbyNLfXtoQm9gI_tyaF4YmEaAt0jEALw_wcB_k_&utm_content=go_1844702583_72372896360_346428993098_pla-354814757658_c__588711888_12768591&utm_custom2=1844702583&gclid=Cj0KCQjw_8mHBhClARIsABfFgpjgrBV_jVI75clS_nsQoudh7ahBOzcjDbyNLfXtoQm9gI_tyaF4YmEaAt0jEALw_wcB

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In this episode I read the short story "Revelation" by  Flannery O'Connor which tells the tale of a self-satisfied woman who encounters a nasty shock forcing her to take stock of who she really is.

"Revelation" was written during the last year of the author's life, a time she knew she was dying from her fourteen-year battle with lupus.  The work was first published in the Spring 1964 issue of The Sewanee Review. The author was notified shortly before her death in August 1964 that her work won the O. Henry Award first prize for 1965, and the story was subsequently reprinted in Prize Stories 1965: The O. Henry Awards published that year. It was her third O'Henry Award first prize.

O'Connor's Southern Gothic style of writing was an attempt to get through to the generally self-satisfied culture of the southern United States.  O'Connor wrote in an essay that

“The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural; and he may well be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience. When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal ways of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock -- to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures.”

This deaf & blind tendency to feel "right with the LORD", however, seems to be an ubiquitous trait of humanity - the very definition of the first deadly sin, pride.

The tune referenced in "Revelation" is "You go to your church (and I'll go to mine)" written in 1931 by Philips H. Lord; recorded by Lulu Belle and Scotty in 1949, and by Bill Clifton & his Dixie Mountain Boys in 1959.  The episode uses the Bill Clifton version.  Here is the Bill Clifton recording of that tune:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnXaub0tUHs

The tune is originally a positive affirmation that all Christians are doing "the work of the Lord" and should get along in spiritual harmony with each other despite ecumenical differences.  I think O'Connor probably uses the tune ironically to symbolize the separation that we create between our (sanctified) self and the (perdition bound) other.

O'Connor also drew satirical comics and was from this visual medium that she probably gained her keen sense of observation that served her so well in writing.

https://www.themarysue.com/flannery-oconnors-comics/

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Discussion of Thrasymachus’ challenge to justice and Socrates answer.

What is wrong with the idea that "might makes right"?  How is the definition of Justice as "the advantage of the strong" a flawed definition?  How, moreover, is it a spiritual poison that causes death to the soul?  How could Socrates, Plato, defeat such a seemingly damnable vision of the world?

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Discussing Plato’s Republic we get into the opening text discussing setting and character and how the conversation about justice commences.

"How can you persuade us," says Polemarchus, "if we refuse to listen?"  Indeed, how can anyone be persuaded if they block out the images and arguments presented to them.  As Glaucon says, "it is not possible" & thus he reveals the growing disease within his own heart that makes him an image of Eurydice whose imprisonment in the world of the dead must be cured by the Orphic mythopoesis of Plato through his character, Socrates.  Thus begins the great discussion about the nature of Justice.

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A general introduction to the Republic by Plato in which we look at historical setting character of Plato and the structure of the work.

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Re-entering the world of podcasting with a new purpose. A brief discussion of one of the ideas from Hamlet and how slavery of the mind is the worst kind of slavery.

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A brief discussion about that great classic movie blade runner from 1981 and its current relevance to our situation.

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