March 12 and 13 timelines: Shelob's Lair and a change in the wind

 Yesterday, March 12, William Tychonievich wrote a post titled Human skull on the ground, turn around, in which he included the song "Total Eclipse of the Hearth", sung by Bonnie Tyler in 1983.

I actually like that song as just a classic 80's power ballad, but I have never seen the video.  I couldn't put a finger on exactly why, but the music video frankly disturbed me.  Something about it just seemed bad, and frankly evil, or at least that is the sense I got as I watched it for the first time.  Sinister, maybe.

It caught my attention enough where I decided to look up the history of the song, and the music video.  I left a comment on William's post with some of my findings, with the headline being that the song was originally written about vampires, something I didn't know and William mentioned that he did not, either.  Once you know this is the case, you can listen to that song in a completely different way, at least that is how it worked for me.  Here is the comment I left, by the way:

I had to look up that song and video, because the video was so disturbing.

Vampires, including spiders, have come up quite a bit as well, and that is what "Total Eclipse of the Heart" is about. The songwriter, Jim Steinman (Stone-man!), said that he wrote the song originally for a musical he was writing based on Nosferatu, but never finished.

He actually did end up including it later in a 1997 musical called "Dance of the Vampires". Here is what Steinman said about including it in that musical:

“With 'Total Eclipse of the Heart,' I was trying to come up with a love song and I remembered I actually wrote that to be a vampire love song. Its original title was 'Vampires in Love' because I was working on a musical of `Nosferatu,' the other great vampire story.
If anyone listens to the lyrics, they're really like vampire lines. It's all about the darkness, the power of darkness and love's place in dark."

Listing [sic] to the song (and watching the video, which was shot at an insane asylum) while understanding those vampire roots, perhaps also more sense of the skull imagery and the booby traps. Traps are something that both spiders and vampires use to catch their prey.

As I mention in the comment, vampires and spiders have come up and on this blog both of those characteristics have been identified in the Being of Ungoliant.  For example, in the post A Vampire's Weekend, I discuss Ungoliant and her role as a Vampire in sucking the light from the Two Trees.   

Interestingly, that post was also at least partially driven by songs and their lyrics.  In the post, I refer to both "Ya Hey" and "Step", and wrote that "I spy our spider in those lyrics", specifically with Ya Hey in that post, but also with respect to the 'help' that Saruman has in his effort on our world (i.e., his unholy alliance with Ungoliant).

Anyway, after leaving the comment, I had the story of Frodo and Sam in Shelob's Lair come very clear to my mind.  In that story, we have a Vampire-Spider-Being (Shelob, the most famous of Ungoliant's children) springing a booby trap (a concept that had come up on William's blog).  Matching up with the song, her eyes were shining and bright, due to both Galadriel's Phial and the Evil burning within them.  And, just as the Bonnie Tyler's lyrics repeat, those Bright Eyes turned around as Frodo approached them with his Light.

The idea and the story was readily apparent or present in my mind, that I followed up my first post with a second post just a short while later.

I am not trying to just solely repeat my comments here in this post, as in there is another reason I am bringing this up which is the primary punchline and I will get to that in just a second, but I just wanted to summarize where we are at.  Here is that second comment, and then I will get to something pretty interesting (at least I thought it was).

After writing this comment, I had Frodo and Sam's confrontation with Shelob in her lair come to mind.

When they first saw Shelob's eyes, it was because they reflected back the light of the Phial of Galadriel, though Tolkien also described the eyes as starting to glow with with their own evil fire:

"The radiance of the star-glass was broken and thrown back from their thousand facets, but behind the glitter a pale deadly fire began to steadily glow within, a flame kindled in some deep pit of evil thought. Monstrous and abominable eyes they were, bestial and yet filled with purpose and with hideous delight, gloating over their prey trapped beyond all hope of escape".

Caught in the trap, they first turn and run, but Frodo realizes it is no use, and turns back around to confront Shelob. It is then her turn to 'turn around':

"Then holding the star aloft and the bright sword advanced, Frodo, hobbit of the Shire, walked steadily down to meet the eyes.

"They wavered. Doubt came into them as the light approached. One by one they dimmed, and slowly they drew back. No brightness so deadly had ever afflicted them before . . . One by one they all went dark; they turned away..."

OK, so this is where it gets even more interesting.  I mean, I think the commentary and the connections here make a good deal of sense and are interesting in their own right, but the timing of this story, it coming into my mind, and being shared on William's blog, is also fascinating.

For reasons I will get into in the next section of this post, I looked up some timing of events in the Lord of the Rings Appendix.  In Appendix B, we find a section called "The Tale of Years (Chronology of the Westlands).  I have brought up this section before in the post "Joseph and Hyrum . . . Pippin and Merry", in which  I mention the chronology and cite that Merry and Pippin were involved in its creation (Merry was said to have collected many materials used for it, and the Tooks had pulled it together, if I remember right).  Anyway, what we have in Appendix B is said to be a much reduced or summarized form compared with the original chronology.

The chronology, for the most part, captures events by year.  However, when we get to "The Great Years", which is the time span specifically dealing with the story of the Lord of the Rings, and the War of the Ring, we have dates now broken out by day of the month, beginning with April 12, 3018, when Gandalf reaches Hobbiton to confirm that the ring is the One Ring.

The One Ring is destroyed on March 25, 3019, and we have significant detail of the days in March leading up to that.  A lot happened in March.

To my own surprise, and quite frankly amazement, March 12, as in yesterday, the day that Frodo's encounter with Shelob in her lair came to my mind and I left a comment about it, is the anniversary or exact same date that this happened in the story.  Here is the entry for March 12:

Gollum leads Frodo into Shelob's lair.  Faramir retreats to the Causeway Forts.  Theoden camps under Min-Rimmon.  Aragorn drives the enemy toward Pelargir.  The Ents defeat the invaders of Rohan.

It gets even more remarkable (or stranger, I guess) based on what happened this morning, and what led me to even look up these dates in the first place.

Marry Poppins and a change in the wind

As I was in the process of waking up this morning, I had very clear but strange mental images of people blowing away in the wind.  Not in a bad or forceful way, but just people individually being carried up to the sky on a gentle breeze.   It was a good thing, in other words.  For example, in one of the pictures, one of my children was standing in our house, and a wind came along and just carried them up into the sky.  Along with the images, was a thought that went something like "People need their wind", and it was really at an individual level, it seemed, in some strange way.  There was also some thought about a magic trick, a great or the greatest one, or something like that, but I don't remember the exact words, just the sense of it.

The imagery and the associated thought was strange enough where after I was fully awake, I thought about it for a bit.  Whereas I usually use Eldamo to look up words that seem Elvish for any English translations, this morning I did it backwards and looked up an English word to see if there was an Elvish equivalent.

"Wind" was the word I looked up, considering the strange imagery and phrase/ thought.  I got several results back.  Su and Sure, for example, along with vaile and vaiwe.  On those last two, it was interesting to note that those words are very similar to vaile and vaiye, which mean the Outer/ Encircling Sea, or a covering/sheath.  Given that the imagery I had was of wind carrying people up to the sky, and I have equated that sky with the Outer Sea or Space, I just make note of it here, but this isn't where my train of thought ultimately took me.

Gwae is also a Sindarin word for 'wind', and it is this word that jumped out at me.  I actually saw it first in the form of Gwaeron, which means March (from "Windy-one").  March was a windy month in Middle-earth, apparently, so they named the month Gwaeron.  That is in Sindarin.  In Quenian, it would be Sulime.

It is March right now, and that struck me as being curious or a connection to keep in mind, and it would come into play a little later in my thinking.

I also thought that this word was the name for the Eagle that rescued Gandalf after he was imprisoned at Orthanc by Saruman, and who would have been sent by Radagast.  It turns out that I was close, but not quite right.  Gwaihir is the name of the Eagle.  It is based on "wind" though, obviously, and means "Windlord" (Gwai being a form of Gwae).

This point seemed, for whatever reason, to coincide with the individual nature of the wind I imagined as I woke up with the imagery of people flying away.  The Eagles in LOTR are always pictured as carrying people away individually.

So, all that is interesting, but didn't really go anywhere beyond that in my thought process relative to Eagles and Wind. 

After I had thought through this following my Eldamo search, the image of Mary Poppins flying away with her umbrella came to my mind, and I thought, yes, this was what that imagery was like - people flying away on the wind like Mary Poppins.

As I recognized this, I also remembered the details regarding her flight.  Specifically, that it had to do with wind.  Mary Poppins arrived on an East wind, I believe, and she was going to stay with the Banks family only so long as the wind kept blowing from that direction.  As soon as the wind changed, she would fly away.  This struck me as important when I remembered it - the wind is what brought Mary Poppins, and the strange events that surrounded her, and a change in the wind is what led to her flying away.  Here is a very short (3 second) clip from the Disney version of Mary Poppins with her explaining this to the children:

I sensed at this point that I was on an important thought train, but I didn't know exactly why.  As I considered her statement about the wind changing, I then remembered that this phrase came up in the Lord of the Rings.  

Theoden and his men were rescued from confronting a large force on the way to Minas Tirith, and led to a safe and fast passage to  the city with the help of Ghan-buri-Ghan and the Druadan (or Wild Men or Wose).   It was an important event, because without that aid, the Riders of Rohan would have arrived too late (or not at all!) to aid Gondor and help win the the Battle of the Pelennor Fields.

As Ghan is parting with Theoden and his men after leading them through safely, he makes a comment about the wind:

Ghan-buri-Ghan squatted down and touched the earth with his horny brow in token of farewell.  Then he got up as if to depart.  But suddenly he stood looking up like some startled woodland animal snuffling a strange air.  A light came in his eyes.

'Wind is changing!' he cried, and with that, in a twinkling as it seemed, he and his fellows had vanished into the glooms, never to be seen by any Rider of Rohan again..."

I thought that there must be something to this connection, where I have this dream imagery of people flying away on the wind, Mary Poppins saying that she will fly away when the wind changes, and Ghan talking about the wind changing, and the fact that my mind started threading this together (by the way, at this point I hadn't yet opened up the LOTR to find that quote, I just remembered that Ghan had referenced the wind changing).

I didn't know exactly how that thread fit, however (and still don't fully) but as I was thinking through this, it was like a little voice in my head brought back the wind reference to March, and said "you should go check the dates in March", meaning to go and look in Appendix B of LOTR.  I remembered that there were dates, obviously, since I had mentioned "The Tale of Years" before, but I couldn't remember which events were captured on a daily, or more detailed, basis.

So, I was somewhat delighted to see that March, in particular, is very well summarized and documented.  You can look it up if you want to see what I am talking about.

This is what led me to first find the reference to March 12 (yesterday) and what I wrote above regarding the timing of Shelob's lair and my comment on William's post regarding it.  I saw that first, and as described above, was surprised to realize those dates matched up.

I then looked at March 13 (today), and this is what is recorded:

Frodo captured by the Orcs of Cirith Ungol.  The Pelennor is overrun.  Faramir is wounded.  Aragorn reaches Pelargir and captures the fleet.  Theoden in Druadan forest.

The next day, March 14, (tomorrow) we have another reference:

Samwise finds Frodo in the Tower.  Minas Tirith is besieged.  The Rohirrim led by the Wild Men come to the grey wood.

So, today, March 13, is when  the Rohirrim first entered the forest where the Wild Men lived, and tomorrow (March 14) is when Ghan would note that the wind is changing.  

Given that the Shelob/ Frodo story matched up so well (to the day), I didn't think this was necessarily a coincidence.  At first I thought the wind changing comment also matched up to the day, but after reading the account and double checking the above timeline, I realized that it is March 14, in terms of the winds actually changing.  In revisiting story, I also noted with some interest that the horse that Eowyn and Merry were riding was named Windfola, likely meaning "Wind foal" from Old English.  So another reference to the wind.

I should close by noting that if the story I have been capturing some elements on this blog are true, Men will have another debt of gratitude to the Druedain or Wose.  In working through my dreams and words from 2022 (both the spring and fall words), the Wose were asked to make repairs to the Sawtooth Stone.  I don't exactly understand what is on that Stone (though have some ideas specifically centered around Joseph of Egypt), what it does, or how it plays into everything, but it seems like those repairs (assuming they were successful) are a critical part to the success of whatever plan is currently underway.

Anyway, in terms of anniversaries, it looks like we also have a busy week and month in front of us.