The Battle of the Rings

Before we met and married, both of us had read J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series, and we had each retained our own set of the books. When the first movie was released to theaters in December 2001, we became curious as to whether the events portrayed in Tolkien's books had actually taken place at some time in the distant past. Our Fair Folk family had already mentioned to us that Tolkien was a unique individual, who might, in their opinion, be referred to today as a shaman or spirit journeyer. They told us that, in his journeys, Tolkien had met many of the Faerie, and, during their encounters, they shared some of their history with him. We do not know whether Tolkien knew he was meeting real people or whether he believed them to be merely the product of his creative imagination. Our family, however, tells us that many of the events he wrote of did, indeed, take place. Therefore, Tolkien's books are a mixture of fact and fiction.

Like rings of a tree, Middle Earth is closer to the Mother and Father's realm than is the physical Earth we know, while, in contrast, the Dark Realms are farther out past our Earth. The Hobbits Tolkien speaks of are members of one of the Gnome tribes, and, while all Gnomes do not have hairy toes, this particular tribe does. The Battle of the Rings took place long before recorded Human history, at a time when Fair Folk and Humans mixed in an uneasy truce. Many of the Gnomes with whom we are acquainted are well over ten thousand years old, while some are much older even than that. The grandfather of one of these Gnomes took part in many battles during that dark time, and he was, even then, considered ancient by Gnome standards. Because these battles took place in Central Europe, much of the rest of the world knew nothing of them. Sadly, the battles in the days to come will be so terrible that all Creation will know of them.

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