The hymns sung by mountains
Monday, March 2nd, 2009 10:57 pm.
From this week's post by John Howe:
Why are there no temples in Middle-Earth? Middle-Earth in its entirety is a sacred place, but not in any conventional sense. Rather, it is a reminder that the entire Earth deserves the same reverence and respect we would accord any sacred place. Depicting pure landscape and conferring to it a sense of portent, or a sense of wonder, the whole with an underpinning of archetype and an overlay of myth, goes far beyond simple escapist "fantasy". Not only does it reach "back" through the looking glass of human experience, it pushes the mind forward to our own role on this Earth, both spiritual and physical, and what we mean to make of it, and what prefix we will attach to our own topos.
Amen, brother. Amen.
From this week's post by John Howe:
Why are there no temples in Middle-Earth? Middle-Earth in its entirety is a sacred place, but not in any conventional sense. Rather, it is a reminder that the entire Earth deserves the same reverence and respect we would accord any sacred place. Depicting pure landscape and conferring to it a sense of portent, or a sense of wonder, the whole with an underpinning of archetype and an overlay of myth, goes far beyond simple escapist "fantasy". Not only does it reach "back" through the looking glass of human experience, it pushes the mind forward to our own role on this Earth, both spiritual and physical, and what we mean to make of it, and what prefix we will attach to our own topos.
Amen, brother. Amen.