Saruman's last chance, and some Brigham accomplices

Saruman's Last Chance

As I went back through the chapter "Many Partings" from LOTR to pull quotes for my some of my previous posts, the interaction between Galadriel and Saruman struck me for an additional reason that I haven't mentioned yet:  The mention by Galadriel that this was Saruman's last chance.  Here is her specific quote again (given in response to Saruman's suspecting that Galadriel had purposely steered the group to come across him and wormtongue):

"Saruman," said Galadriel, "we have other errands and other cares that seem to us more urgent than hunting for you.  Say rather that you are overtaken by good fortune; for now you have a last chance."

I believe Galadriel when she says it - this is Saruman's last chance, at that very instant.  There will be no other opportunities for him to un-bend his nature after this, as both events in the Shire will show, and his demise at the end of those events will seal.

I have written quite a lot about Saruman, particularly following my September/ October hiatus, including specifically mentioning that he was and is involved in our world today.  I even mentioned in my Walter White post that I keep those initials, WW, next to my name even when not necessary on this blog to remind me that this is currently his world, and there is no ability at present to be completely free from his influence.  I really believe that.

As part of that, however, I have thought a bit about the position and even words expressed by others that perhaps Saruman was offered additional opportunities for redemption, or was perhaps given a rehabilitation plan.   How does that fit into this story?  

I have come to the conclusion that this is and was not so.  It couldn't have been.  There is no possible rehabilitation plan that would have enabled Saruman to turn away from what he has become, and I don't believe any was offered.  That is my opinion, and again like much of whatever else I am writing, it could be wrong.  Galadriel's words, however, seem to support this view - there were chances given, in hopes that he would turn away before it was too late, but it was clearly even too late back then.  He has been running the show (or at least his part of it) here in our world as the 'devil' ever since, and I don't think there is any going back for him, and I don't believe Heaven is really into deal making with devils.  That doesn't seem to be how it works.

It is not widely known that Tolkien started a sequel to Lord of the Rings, called "The New Shadow".  Set a couple hundred years following LOTR, Tolkien only wrote a few pages of the sequel before abandoning it, in one letter calling the story he had started on "sinister and depressing".

In a letter he wrote about a year before he died, he said this about the abandoned sequel:

I have written nothing beyond the first few years of the Fourth Age. (Except the beginning of a tale supposed to refer to the end of the reign of Eldaron about 100 years after the death of Aragorn. Then I of course discovered that the King's Peace would contain no tales worth recounting; and his wars would have little interest after the overthrow of Sauron; but that almost certainly a restlessness would appear about then, owing to the (it seems) inevitable boredom of Men with the good: there would be secret societies practising dark cults, and 'orc-cults' among adolescents.)

In Tolkien's sequel, the evil that would befall men would be the same evil that would prove the destruction of the Jaredites and later the Nephites:  secret societies or 'combinations' practicing dark arts, oaths, and abominations.  

But what was the source of this New Shadow, or what would it have been revealed as if Tolkien had gone forward with the story?  I believe it was Saruman (if you couldn't guess), and this particular evil proved even more sinister than that of the evil before him, and continues on to our day.

In ages prior, Evil was represented in our world in bodily form.  The head of Evil, whoever was leading or orchestrating the battle against Good, existed in a body, in a particular place/location that could be pointed to and identified by Beings.  Melkor-Morgoth was the first such Being.  He had a body (though its form changed over time, going from pleasant to look at to hideous), and a place where he lived (Angband).  If a person living in the 1st age of this world wished to inquire as to where the source of the evil of their present condition was, they could directed north, to a particular place and to a particular Being.

Sauron, Morgoth's successor, operating likewise.  He had a body that also originally was able to be shown as fair, but later only hideous.  He also created a home, as everyone who has read the LOTR knows, in Mordor.

In both cases, Melkor and Sauron, you could actually destroy their bodies and the place they lived.  Further, both had been trapped into taking their very Being and infusing it into matter itself.  In Sauron's case, the One Ring was this matter, and thus the destruction of the Ring brought about the destruction of Sauron to such an extent that there was no coming back for him in any form that would be a threat to other Beings.  Melkor's case is a little different, as the Earth itself was what he corrupted and infused in Being into, and that still needs to be wholly resolved.  But, even with him, his power was destroyed to such an extent that he was banished and also currently poses no current threat (though his evil actions and their implications live on).

Saruman, however, has taken a different course, and it perhaps has proved the most sinister and deceitful.  Recall what happened to Saruman after he was stabbed by Wormtongue at Bag End:

To the dismay of those that stood by, about the body of Saruman a grey mist gathered, and rising slowly to a great height like smoke from a fire, as a pale shrouded figure it loomed over the Hill.  For a moment it wavered, looking to the West; but out of the West came a cold wind, and it bent away, and with a sigh dissolved into nothing.

Frodo looked down at the body with pity and horror, for as he looked it seemed that long years of death were suddenly revealed in it, and it shrank, and the shrivelled face became rags of skin upon a hideous skull.  Lifting up the skirt of the dirty cloak that sprawled beside it, he covered it over, and turned away.

A pretty horrible end, but what I want to stress is that this wasn't the 'end' at all for Saruman.  He could not die.  He was emphatically rejected by those back in Heaven or Valinor, a 'cold wind' barring his was back there.  And so was left on this very world as a spirit - an evil and malignant spirit.  A snake.

Saruman himself said his fate, though perhaps did not fully understand his own words, when he last spoke with Galadriel, as I quoted in the earlier post, but will include an excerpt below:

...And it will afford me some comfort as I wander to think that you pulled down your own house when you destroyed mine.

He will wander this world, seeking to make everyone else as miserable as he is.

Just recently, William Tychonievich posted a dream that had mention of a tale of a "Wandering Aengus".  I think Aengus can refer to two very different people, but likely the same two Beings I have mentioned before relative to a 'chosen one' and a 'snake', or the one that was not chosen and rebelled.

Aengus in Celtic means "Chosen One".  However, in Elvish (Angu or Ango), it means "Snake, Dragon".  Incorporating Angu here might seem too creative, but I believe it is fully justified (actually very obviously so in my opinion) by WJT's dream where he remembered the line "viper dragon" in a dream version of the poem about the wandering Aengus.

We thus have Saruman as the not-good Aengus version - the Wandering Snake.

It is an apt name, again because whereas his predecessors of Evil had both homes and bodies to reside in, Saruman has neither of his own.  Rather, our minds have become the places where he and his followers and partners in crime have taken up influence, and we as Beings in bodies, generally, I think, are not as well equipped to contend against or resist something that we cannot see, touch, or point to.

So, what I am saying is that Saruman has walked and wandered this Earth ever since the end of the 3rd age, making this entire world 'his'.  He was and is the New Shadow that Tolkien began writing about, but rightfully abandoned.  It was the right call, I think, because that Enemy has not met his defeat yet.  He is still in our minds and hearts, using the power of his voice, even while suggesting to us that there is no such thing as Being that could do something like that.

Anyway, this was a bit darker than I had intended, but I just wanted to get that thought down, at the very least for my own benefit to avoid confusion.  Any present effort of rescue or redemption is emphatically not for Saruman's benefit, or any of his evil partners.  It is actually rather to rescue all those who would be free from them.

Brigham's Accomplices

OK, well, I guess since we are in the mud, let's just go for it, and add a few more names to our Enemies List.

As I mentioned in my post "A Vampire's Weekend", Saruman is definitely not acting alone.  You have Ungoliant, obviously, who was a major focus of that post.  There were/are the Balrogs, too.  Countless numbers of mindless 'orc' hordes.  And there is, of course, Brigham-Omar, who has gotten as much ink as Saruman here on this blog, maybe more.  While Saruman remains bodiless, however, Wormtongue would have been born as Brigham back in the early 1800's, and I believe, unfortunately is once again among as a Man today.  That is how it goes.

Brigham wasn't alone, either, in those early Mormonism days, and isn't alone now.  I will add two Beings to the list of accomplices here on this blog:  Eliza Snow and Heber Kimball.

I won't go into either character with much detail here.  I don't think they warrant much more at the moment.  I just wanted to log them here while I was clarifying some things for Saruman.

Eliza Snow's own recollection of polygamy is probably one of the more damaging testimonies to Joseph and Emma if it can be taken at face value.  She claimed to be one of Joseph's plural wives, and would later go on to become Brigham Young's plural wife.  While Brigham replaced Joseph as the leader of the Mormon church (in Utah), Eliza would replace Emma  as the head of the Women's Organization.  She and Brigham would be, I guess, the 'power couple' of that organization (as much as that can be said for a man who had 56 wives).

Her claims of being Joseph's plural wife have permanently tarnished Joseph's reputation,  Emma went to her grave saying that Joseph never practiced polygamy (Joseph maintained the same position going to his own grave, I will add), and when her son, Joseph III, published his mother's final words on that stance, Eliza called Emma a liar.  Years before, when Joseph III was in Utah, Brigham took the opportunity to also call Emma "one of the damnest liars I know of on this earth."  

Anyway, within the span of a few short years, the Mormons were left without Joseph (due to his death) and Emma (due to Brigham's takeoever), and given Brigham and Eliza instead out in the desert, furthering all sorts of abominations, including the practice of polygamy.  

My view is that Eliza is also here on this earth again, and likely very closely connected with Brigham - probably married to him.

Heber Kimball was Brigham's right hand man, and served as his first counselor in the First Presidency of the Church.  In doing so, he was likely reprising a role that he played much earlier as a counselor or priest to King Noah.  As a reminder, I have Brigham also playing the role of Noah.  Noah kicked out all of his father's priests when he became king, and installed his own group.  We only have the names of two of them:  Alma and Amulon.  Alma would believe Abinadi and form a new church of believers.  Amulon would clearly not, and would go on to make first Alma's life miserable, and then a whole bunch of people's lives miserable, at one point abducting Lamanite women.  

Amulon's descendants would later be responsible for burning to death many Lamanite people who began to believe in Christ, which then gave us Mormon's remark that the descendants of Amulon and the other priests' were still hunted by Lamanites' at the time of Mormon's writing.  I actually have an interesting link between this, the Ammonites, and Brigham and Company's sailing to the Eressea #2 (that was a thought spurred by something Doug wrote, no less!) but will save that for another post.

For our purposes here, just enough to jot down that Amulon was a bad dude, he was with Noah as one of his priests, he was with Brigham as Heber Kimball, and he will be found once again hanging out with Brigham today in both of their new identities, I think.  Fun times.

Anyway, all of this writing about bad people with dark agendas, and the specific mention of people being burned alive has brought to mind the song "My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark" by Fall-Out Boy.

There are a number of righteous men and women out there, and even records, who could rightly sing along with many of the lyrics from this song.  Abinadi and the believing Lamanites are just two sets of people who were burned alive by evil Beings (literally being able to say, as the lyrics go, "I'm on fire!").   In addition, in a different but related story, Alma and Amulek were forced to watch women and children being thrown into the fire, with the only comfort Alma able to give Amulek as they watched that awful scene being that those women and children would be witnesses in a future day as to the acts of such horrible Evil.  

And when Amulek saw the pains of the women and children who were consuming in the fire, he also was pained; and he said unto Alma: How can we witness this awful scene? Therefore let us stretch forth our hands, and exercise the power of God which is in us, and save them from the flames.


But Alma said unto him: The Spirit constraineth me that I must not stretch forth mine hand; for behold the Lord receiveth them up unto himself, in glory; and he doth suffer that they may do this thing, or that the people may do this thing unto them, according to the hardness of their hearts, that the judgments which he shall exercise upon them in his wrath may be just; and the blood of the innocent shall stand as a witness against them, yea, and cry mightily against them at the last day. (Alma 14)

There really are evil Beings, both that we can see and that we can't, and I am becoming more comfortable with the thought that this will need to be made known at some point, and not just in the 'guessing' way I am doing on this blog - but with actual witnesses and records, the 'songs' or people who know what happened.  It is not just the 'good' stuff that comes out, but evil deeds and words shouted upon rooftops.