Marginalia Upon Markus Davidsen's "The Spiritual Tolkien Milieu" (2014)
by Arethinn
around September 2018
The dissertation is available here at Academia.edu. If your eyes glaze over at the thought of reading the full 500+ pages (hey, chin up! The actual text exclusive of the bibliography, etc. is only about 440!), he has also posted a 12-page summary.
Page citations those actually shown at the top corner of each page and differ from the PDF page numbering.
I've omitted some of my responses to assertions about Tolkien or Paganism that didn't relate to the topic of otherkin. If you want to see the full document with those included, email me.
Abbreviations used in the paper:
H The Hobbit
HoMe The History of Middle-earth
LR The Lord of the Rings
S The Silmarillion
Introduction
Other examples of fiction-based religion are the Otherkin who believe to be "other-than-humans", for instance Elves, Dragons, or Angels (Kirby 2009a; 2009b; 2012; 2013; Laycock 2012a), and the related Vampire community (Keyworth 2002; Hume 2006; Laycock 2009; 2012b).
(p. 17) Neither of these is a religion as most people think of "religion", of course. Either could possibly be called a spiritual belief, at least where the individual in question appeals to ideas about their soul/spirit for their non-human identity; and there are may be spiritual practices one considers to be related to or based on their otherness. Some groups of vampires come closer to being "religions", I think (e.g. Strigoii Vii, House Kheperu), but very few, if any, otherkin really fit the bill. Things like the Tribunal of the Sidhe and Tie Eldalieva qualify as religions, or at least spiritual paths ("Tolkien spirituality"), sure, but I would rather say these are religions that may be attractive to Otherkin (because of freedom to express otherness) rather than "otherkin is a fiction-based religion."
However, see the definition of religion he has adopted for this paper (p. 31): "I shall therefore define religion as beliefs, practices, experiences, and discourses which assume the existence of supernatural agents, worlds, and/or processes", and also the discussion in chapter 1.2.2 (p. 53) of "post-traditional [or trans-traditional] individual religion" = "spirituality".
...it remains to be seen whether Jackson's three-part movie adaptation of H (2012-2014) will provide a new boost for this kind of Tolkien spirituality.
(p. 20) I think it did not, but there may have been or continue to be things going on on Facebook that I'm not aware of (the earlier Lord of the Rings films of course predated Facebook). I wouldn't be surprised if there were several groups that got started right after, and then immediately fizzled out (as is often the repeated pattern no matter the platform, because people don't seek out and join a pre-existing group!). Perhaps they partly inspired a few of the Elven groups I keep getting notifications about, for instance (although presumably not in the case of the Silver Elves' various groups).
I need a definition of religion which is above all a useful analytical instrument. It is therefore clear, that I cannot use a colloquial or “social constructionist” (Beckford 2003, ch. 1) "definition" which takes religion to be simply those practices which participants themselves identify as “religious”. Such an approach would fail to capture much, for most religionists prefer to identify sub-institutional religion as spirituality, magic, gnosis, or even science.
(p. 30) This doesn't sit well with me. "It's religion if I say it is, even if you, the practitioner, do not"? I don't have an objection to (p. 31) "I shall therefore define religion as beliefs, practices, experiences, and discourses which assume the existence of supernatural agents, worlds, and/or processes", but a phrase like (p. 31) "when parading as non-religion" is rather supercilious.
Cf. p. 120, "I use the term "religious belief" more broadly to refer to any piece of discursive knowledge that assumes the existence of supernatural agents, worlds, and processes in the actual world."
I should furthermore make clear that when I refer to the entities which religion revolves around as “supernatural” that is to say that their postulated existence and causal power cannot be verified from the perspective of science and that the study of religion must therefore assume them to be purely the construction of the human imagination.
In other words, my approach is not one of methodological agnosticism, but of methodological naturalism or non-supernaturalism.40
(footnote 40) For Berger, this approach is atheist because it analyses and theorises religion on the assumption that no supernatural agents with causal power actually exist and intervene in human affairs, and methodological because it does not rule out the existence of such agents for good, but only states that the fundamental epistemological principles of science precludes scholars from assuming their existence.
(p. 31-32) Must assume? I'm fine with the first part of the first sentence, but wow. Sure, one cannot assume the actual existence of such agents; but "therefore, I must assume they do not exist" does not follow. It's not the only other option. Agnosticism would have been better; and indeed he admits later in the footnote it's a "strong strand" in the field. To be atheist/naturalist here is to have contempt for your subject before you even begin - "all of this is false, obviously..."
Cf. footnote 102 on page 81: "To be more precise, as methodological naturalists (cf. section 0.3.3 above), we assume religious narratives to be sincere but inaccurate accounts of the states of affairs in the AW [Actual World]. In other word they are errors." ..."We assume all religion to be error"? Wow.
The awakened Elves identify with the Elves of legend and fantasy fiction because these beings are near-immortal magicians
(p. 43) "Because"? *citation needed*! Where does he get off asserting that?
Ch. 1. Individual Religion and the Post-traditional Religious Field
Usually, the term movement refers to a group of people sharing an aim and working towards its realisation, whether this aim is political (as in the case of social or political movements) or salvific (in the case of religious movements).
(p. 62) Interesting/odd that he refers to "the Elven movement" then, since I don't think we could state this about elves or otherkin in general. (Maybe once upon a time -- see for example ideas from ~20 years ago that otherkin are here to bring magic back to the world -- but not by the time he was writing this paper.) I wonder what he thinks its shared aim is, or if he just didn't think clearly about the implications of calling it a movement.
Certainly, some individual religion is self-sacralising, also within the spiritual Tolkien milieu,81 ...
(footnote 81)
As we shall see in part II, experience and gnosis play an important role for Tolkien religionists, and especially the self-identified Elves are clearly engaged in self-sacralising expressive religion.
(p. 67) Define that. If he means "taking oneself as a god", then, no. If he means "regarding the self as a sacred thing", then what exactly is the problem with doing so?
Ch. 2. Fiction-based Religion
Taking the Theosophical Society as an example, I demonstrate, however, that the first fiction-inspired religions are much older. Concretely, I show how Helena Blavatsky was inspired by Edward Bulwer-Lytton's fiction, quoted his characters, and related key concepts from his novels to her own ideas in Isis Unveiled (1877) and in The Secret Doctrine (1888).
(p. 69-70) The similarities may be legitimate, but how can he claim to know the source of her inspiration? I.e., to know that she must have borrowed, rather than it possibly being the case that in these novels she saw reflection of things she herself had separately been thinking about and therefore decided to write them down?
We can distinguish between an epistemological and an ontological level of Baudrillard's argument. On the epistemological level, Baudrillard points to the modern period as one of increased doubt within Christianity itself concerning its ontological grounding. This epistemological change brought Christian theologians to realise an ontological constant, a “truth” (Baudrillard 1994, 4), namely the simulacric nature of the God concept as such. In other words, God is a simulacrum no matter whether the worshipper considers him to be a simulacrum or not, by the very virtue of being a concept claimed to refer to an objective reality, but being in fact void of reference to any reality whatsoever. This has important implications, for if God is a simulacrum, then all other notions referring to supernatural agents, worlds, or processes are also simulacra and all religions are by definition systems of simulacra.
(p. 72) All very interesting, I'm sure, but what is the relation of this to the whole Tolkien business? Is it that modern people in general seem less concerned with ontological reality of their religious beliefs, happy to worship fictions without any real referents?
It makes sense to single out fiction-based religion as a special type of religion because religions in general base themselves on narratives that fall under the rubric of history. That is so, because the narratives which form the textual basis of most religious traditions (think, for instance, of the Christian gospels, the Buddha legend, and the Babylonian creation story) claim to refer to events that have taken place in the actual world.101
(footnote 101) Please note that also religious narratives that are staged in the mythical past must be considered historical according to my definition of history as narratives with reference ambition. This does not rule out, however, that one can and must distinguish between religious narratives set in the far past (myths) and religious narratives set in the recent past (religious legends). Still, myths and legends can together be contrasted to fiction because they are both presented as historically true.
(p. 80) This has some bearing on discussions of whether there is a fundamental difference in the source material for mythfolk and fictionkin. (I think also the fact of a single source vs. no single identifiable origin is also pertinent.)
Put in the terminology of the previous chapter, we see that individual post‐traditional religion can be both fiction‐inspired (Neo‐Paganism in general), fiction‐integrating (branches of Satanism), and fiction‐based (Jediism), while institutional post‐traditional religion is usually only fiction‐inspired (if it draws on fiction at all).
(p. 88-89, but not the only reference to this idea) I'm chafing at the idea that Neo-Pagan religion in general is "fiction-inspired", i.e., "inspired and supported by fiction with which it shares concerns and ideas". Not that there is never any such material, of course, but this paper tends to give the impression that is its only basis, that it would not exist if not for certain works of fiction even though the connection is not as direct as with Jediism (fiction-based = "takes fictional texts as its very foundation") or the lesser strength category of Church of All Worlds (fiction-integrating = "integrating belief elements from fiction, re-enacting fictional rituals, and/or adapting identities from fiction").
Chapter 3. The Religious Affordances of Fictional Narratives
On the other hand, I am particularly interested in the formal reasons why Tolkien's narratives produce a variant response (the religionising reading) in a certain group of readers who are typically already active in the cultic milieu...
(p. 98) Having read the following, oh, four hundred pages, I'm not sure he ever does actually arrive at any kind of "why" people respond in this way. He thoroughly explores how they could come forth with a religionizing reading, but not why.
Chapter 4. Religious Blending in Fiction-based Religion
In the field of fiction-based religion we can speak of assimilation [the absorption of elements from one religious tradition into another] when originally fiction-based beliefs and practices are absorbed into religious traditions that consequently deny their fictional origins. We see this in the Elven movement and the Vampire community [... contrasted to synthesis:] the Tribunal of the Sidhe (ch. 10) ... readily acknowledge that they draw on Tolkien"s literary mythology (i.e. no disguising assimilation)...
(p. 110; bold text original) ... >:/ I could really do without this condescending attitude. (But then I suppose he did say he's operating from the perspective that all religious traditions must be wrong...)
I further contrasted fiction-integrating religion to fiction-based religion sensu stricto, i.e. "religion that takes fictional texts as its very foundation". ... I therefore prefer to borrow Ivan Marcus' term inward acculturation to characterise the syncretic process taking place in fiction-based religion sensu stricto. ... inward acculturation is a twin to assimilation, for both processes involve an exchange of religious elements between two traditions that are unequal in power and prestige. What makes the two processes different is the agent. We can speak of assimilation when the larger or stronger tradition swallows the small one. ... In inward acculturation, by contrast, the small tradition consciously and selectively borrows form the host culture.
(p. 110-111) So what "larger or stronger tradition swallow[ing] the small one" is he alluding to with "the Elven movement" in the previous quote? I'm having trouble following this.
Most Tolkien religionists believe that Tolkien"s Elves (the Quendi) and the fairies of Celtic folklore (or the fairies from the theosophical take on Celtic folklore) in some direct or indirect way refer to the same beings. ... Figure 4.3 illustrates how even the Elf-belief of merely Tolkien-inspired individuals actually tends to reflect Tolkien's noble and humanised Quendi rather than the dangerous Celtic sorcerer spirits.
(p. 117) *doubtful Marge Simpson noise* Only if one thinks Elves and Sidhe and Faeries/Fairies are all the same thing... He kind of says it himself right there in the following sentence: the Quendi and "the dangerous Celtic sorcerer spirits" aren't the same people!
Also, he keeps saying "merely". Eh?
(p. 118; images cropped from PDF) This idea of projecting only certain qualities from two different spaces into a single blended space is kinda interesting; but in terms of spiritual 'kin with past-life memories of other places, I would sort of want to read it backwards: Some of the characteristics of the actual ("blended") thing seem to map onto only some characteristics of (potentially) multiple "sources", that is, things that can potentially be compared to. cf. the "Sort of like that, but not exactly" pointing to fictions such as Strands of Starlight, Elric of Melnibone, Deverry, ElfQuest, etc. (including, of course, Tolkien).
Chapter 5. Dynamics of Belief in Religious Traditions
I use the term "religious belief" more broadly to refer to any piece of discursive knowledge that assumes the existence of supernatural agents, worlds, and processes in the actual world.
(p. 120) Yes, well, this might have been useful to state earlier...
Furthermore, I distinguish between two main types of justification of belief, namely legitimisation which aims at objectivising religious claims, and relativisation which protects the plausibility of religious claims by de-objectivising them.
(p. 121) Just noted for later.
A common mytho-cosmological reading of Tolkien's literary mythology affirms the existence of the Valar and the Blessed Realm (inventory), but considers the narrated events in LR and S (history) to be entirely fictional. Implicitly, readers who adopt the mytho-cosmological mode classify the text as "an imaginary story about real supernatural entities". Or they approach the text as a hybrid, i.e. as a fictional text embedding passages about the supernatural fit for a referential reading.
(p. 140) He appears to be struggling with the idea of "true in some sense, false in some sense, true and false in some sense..." being all simultaneously the case for mythic tales.
It is interesting to test the metaphorical turn thesis on my material, however, because one would expect a de-historicising and metaphorical turn, if it is taking place in cultic religion in general, to be even more pronounced in fiction-based religion. That is to say, if Tolkien-based religion turns out to be cosmological and metaphorical, that is simply what could be expected and changes nothing. But if rationalisations in Tolkien-based religion turn out to be literal-affirmative and if Tolkien religionists seek to objectivise rather than to de-objectivise their claims, then that would be a serious blow to the thesis that a metaphorical turn is taking place in the cultic milieu and in contemporary religion in general.
(p. 146) Calling this an axe to grind is probably too strong, but...
Chapter 6. Method: Data Collection and Analytical Strategy
All eight online groups that I found and studied for this project were to some extent interconnected and formed one large online network of Tolkien spirituality. A larger number of tiny, marginal, or short-lived groups were connected to the Tolkien network as well, as were several individual homepages. The existence of a (major) English-using Tolkien-spiritual online group outside this network must be considered highly unlikely.
(p. 149) He says eight, but I'm not sure what they all are. There is a table on p. 153-154 that lists 7 online groups: Elven Realities, Elende, Children of the Varda (sic), Middle-Earth Pagans, Indigo Elves, Tië eldaliéva, and Ilsaluntë Valion. It also lists 7 offline groups: Mojave desert group, The Elf Queen's Daughters, The Silver Elves, The Tribunal of the Sidhe, Morcelu Atreides (at least I assume it is offline, given a founding date of 1986; its entry in the "Primary location" column does not say online or offline but "10", which does not refer to a footnote or anything and therefore looks like an error), Terry Donaldson's LR Tarot Deck (I am not sure how this qualifies as a "group" or even a group-ing), and "esoteric historians" (e.g. Nicholas De Vere). On p. 152 he says he interviewed members of eight groups: Ilsaluntë Valion, Tië eldaliéva, Tribunal of the Sidhe, Silver Elves, Indigo Elves, Fifth Way, Middle Earth Pagans, and Morcelu Atreides -- but that is a mixture of online and offline, and all have already been listed. Thus the identity of this eighth online group is a mystery to me.
These groups are also arranged into four "clusters":
1. Middle-earth Paganism
2. Legendarium Reconstructionism
3. "the Tolkien-affirming Elves"
4. "the non-Tolkienesque majority of the Elven movement [that] lies on the margin of the spiritual Tolkien milieu".
The last two are presented as subcategories of "the Tolkien-inspired movement of self-identified Elves".
When the Elven movement emerged in the 1970s, the self-identified Elves all agreed that Tolkien's literary mythology was a main source of inspiration, but also agreed to approach it metaphorically.
(p. 150) All agreed? Silly researcher; elves never "all" agree on anything. :) Sounds like he might be taking just the EQD/Silver Elves as an "all", or may possibly be thinking of either group as bigger than it actually was. After all, we don't know a lot about what the people who subscribed to their letters thought; there are some letters from other Elves who sent them in for distribution, but not a lot (at least, not that are published in the SE's books of their letters).
Elven Realities (ER)
Founded: 1999
Tolkien texts: (S), movies
(p. 153, table) No other entry in the table has any of its supposed "texts" given in parentheses, so I am not sure what the significance of that is; perhaps he believes the influence on of the Silmarillion on Elven-Realities was secondary to that of the LR films. Setting aside that E-R didn't make particular reference to the Silmarillion, I do not understand how a group that was founded two and a half years before even the first of the Jackson LotR movies came out could possibly be said to have them as a "foundational text".
Chapter 7. The Religious Affordances of The Lord of the Rings
But in contrast to LR, which is clearly written for an adult audience, H is a children's book cannot work as a source for religious inspiration on its own.
(p. 163; second clause sic) I dunno, why not? If he means "there's not enough information in it to go on", he should say so; but the claim here seems to be solely on the basis of it being originally written for children. I submit that people can and will base religious or spiritual activity on just about anything! Nobody tell him about soulbonding or pop culture paganism, okay? In fact, 1. Middle-Earth Paganism really is pop culture paganism, and 2. since he acknowledges in this paper that some people state their rituals commune with the Elves or Valar, why can he not suppose the same technique could be applied to other source material?
Chapter 8. An Unexpected Success: Hippies, Neo-Pagans, and The Lord of the Rings
Initially, Neo-Paganism was inspired by LR and other fiction. Only later, the movement gained a more solid and non-fictional foundation in pre-Christian mythology, indigenous wisdom, and western esotericism.
(p. 192) So if Davidsen thinks this (although I do not agree), then why cannot Elves be similarly taking not directly from Tolkien, but from the same myths as he was inspired by; or indeed have their own unique "invented" lore? (For so I guess he would probably term it, because he would not take it as truth that it was genuine past/other life memories.)
The two immediate roots of the Pagan movement, English Wicca and American self-identified Neo-Pagan nature religion, greatly influenced each other in the 1970s, almost up to the point of convergence.
(p. 195) If true, this sheds some light on why the EQD were conflating being Wicca (I think they said that, and not "Wiccans"?) and being Elves all over the place.
The only reference to Elven religion falls en-passant when we hear that Morgoth attacks the city of Gondolin during the Gates of Summer festival (S 291).
(p. 211) Doesn't Ungoliant attack the Trees during "a time of festival", which is why no one was there? (Not that this much affects the point that there is very little directly given in the texts and so anyone wanting to do "Elven religion" would have to get creative.)
In the Elven chapter, I look at the practices and social structures which support the "conversion" to Elvenhood and I analyse how an identity as Elf, once acquired, can subsequently be rationalised and justified.
(p. 217) Did he not notice that some people "convert" (i.e. Awaken) as children? Surely in his "online ethnography" he encountered some people describing such in their personal stories. Or did he just disregard it?
Two characteristics make the Tribunal of the Sidhe stand out among other Pagan groups: (1) the belief that the members are “Changelings” [...] Members of the Tribunal believe that their astral home is populated by various forms of spiritual beings, including the Elvyn and the Sidhe, and refer to these beings collectively as the “kin folk”. [...]
The members of the Tribunal of the Sidhe hence claim to be kin folk who have chosen to be (re)incarnated in human form. [...]
This spiritual identification with the kin folk does not rule out a parallel belief in Changeling descent: When changeling parents procreate, their offspring will also be Changelings.
(p. 218-219) Hmm, I wonder if they mean they will necessarily be Changelings, or just might be.
According to Fortune, the “psychic vortex” created by a human sexual union normally draws forth a human soul “from the astral plane” that “is ripe for incarnation”. But sometimes it goes wrong and the vortex may
be deflected, as it were, out of the normal line of human evolution, so that it opens and extends into the sphere of evolution of another type of life. Under such circumstances it is theoretically possible for a being of parallel evolution to be drawn into incarnation in a human body (Fortune 1974, 79-80).
Fortune differentiates between the unfortunate calling forth of a non-human soul (in which case the individual will not feel at home among humans) (1974, 80-81) and the more dangerous incarnation of a positively evil elemental spirit.
(p. 225-226) Fortune 1974 = Psychic Self Defence.
The Tribunal of the Sidhe further legitimises its use of Tolkien's mythology by granting Tolkien himself supernatural power, wisdom, and purpose. Says Danu,
With magickal research we found that [...] JRR Tolkien was a Bard of the Kin Folk [...]. Tolkien was/is a changeling himself. [...] He is known to the people [=the Tuatha; the Changelings] as Tymmedyn Green, a Lord of the elemental North (290909).
[...] Members of the Tribunal believe that Graves “had kinship with us”, and Danu speculates that “Marion [Zimmer Bradley] and her brother Paul could be changelings though they have not been open about it yet”
(p. 228-229) Speculating, seriously or not, on what well-known figures might be otherkin is somewhat of a recurring pastime among otherkin. I'm quite interested in this name "Tymmedyn", but unfortunately the only hits I could find on Google were for this paper itself.
It is relevant to include this movement [the "Elven movement"] in a book on Tolkien-based religion, because the identity of the "awakened Elves" is inspired by Tolkien's Quendi.
(p. 238) Wwweelllll, sometimes, or in some part. But back on page 233 he himself said "It is this blended image of the elf/sídhe/Tuatha‐in‐general which members of the Tribunal (and the Elven movement) identify with, rather than Tolkien’s Quendi or Graves’ Tuatha specifically."
They ["self-identified Elves"] will therefore typically stress that while Tolkien's fiction helped them realise their own Elven nature, they do not identify as Quendi, but as those "real" álfar or fairies who inspired Tolkien's tales. They will say so even if their notion about what Elves/álfar are is evidently inspired by Tolkien. We can thus say that there is a tendency within the Elven movement to assimilate ideas from Tolkien's literary mythology, i.e. to adopt ideas from Tolkien, but deny the fictional origins of these ideas.
(p. 239) See above cite from p. 192. I recognize that he's stated specific research questions and thus has to frame things to address them. But clearly he understands that it could be the case that Elves are drawing not from Tolkien directly but from the same sources Tolkien drew from... yet apparently forgets this?
I argue that the adoption of an Elven identity can best be considered a process of interpretive and epistemic drift. I identify four stages of the epistemic drift (fascination with Elves; identification with Elves; hunch of being an Elf; certainty of being an Elf) and identify the practices which propel the drift (e.g. role-playing and activity in online groups).
(p. 239) I don't much like the implication of "they started with something small and blew it out of proportion", vs. re-evaluating information to come to a different honest conclusion. Darn this "naturalist" perspective that says "we must assume they are wrong".
According to the Silver Elves, the Elf Queen's Daughters sang (and still sing) hymns to Elbereth Gilthoniel (151209). [...] The Elf Queen"s Daughters thus did not only adopt an Elven identity from LR, but also took over the Elves' veneration for Elbereth, hence modelling a part of their own religious practice on narrative religion from LR. Despite all of this, Tolkien's literary mythology remained more an add-on to the spirituality of the Elf Queen's Daughters rather than its core. Fundamentally, the Elf Queen's Daughters were Wiccans (Love 2005, 32) with a strong Graves-inspired emphasis on the Goddess.
(p. 241) From having read the Elf Magic Mail books, I'd say this is fairly accurate (for certain values of "Wiccan", but allowing them their self-identification). As an additional note, they use the name Varda to mean basically "Gaia", "Mother Earth", rather than the "Star Goddess" type of being a reader of Tolkien might expect (see below).
Both the Elf Queen's Daughters and the Silver Elves owed their Elven identity to Tolkien's writings. The Silver Elves even told me that “if Tolkien's works hadn't been published, it is likely that we would not have called ours'elves Elves”
(p. 242) That first sentence is a bit strong. Maybe they owe to Tolkien the idea of referring to what they are as "Elves", but "without Tolkien none of this would have happened at all" does not necessarily follow. The Silver Elves themselves addressed the influence (or lack thereof) of Tolkien upon them in a blog post in October 2019.
Tolkien's authority as a creative visionary and as a scholar of mythology allows his narratives to be used as a source of legitimisation, even though the Silver Elves clearly do not consider them to constitute a work of factual history.
Though the Elf Queen's Daughters and the Silver Elves differed somewhat in their use of Tolkien's narratives, both groups considered Tolkien's literary mythology to constitute a legitimate and central source of inspiration, albeit a non-referential one that must be read in the binocular mode. As the letter quote on the previous page illustrates, the Silver Elves ascribed much authority to Tolkien's texts, but at the same time they maintained that the general truth which these texts communicate, namely that an elder race exists and that humans and Elves used to live together in harmony, is presented within an entirely fictional frame. They told me that for them Tolkien's novels constitute “an inspiring, even sacred mythology, but were never taken as the literal truth” (SE 191209).
The explicit references to Tolkien's works grow rare in later letters. The Silver Elves told me that this was because they had not attempted to re-enact Tolkien"s mythology, but had used his books “as emotive guidelines for creating [their] own Elven Culture” (191209).
(p. 244) Against the idea that the EQD or Silver Elves are/were "Tolkien fictionkin". You may also be interested in this discussion between Loralyndae and myself on Tumblr in March 2021 debunking this idea.
(The "binocular mode" p.140-141: "takes the narrative in question to be fiction through and through, but at the same time points out that some aspects of the textual supernatural are so strikingly similar to real supernatural entities in the AW [Actual World] that they indirectly bear witness to them. ... In most cases the binocular reading considers the text in question to be a palimpsest, i.e. a rewriting of another and more authentic text.")
The first step towards establishing an online Elven community was taken in 1990 by R'yankar Korra'ti, then a student at the University of Kentucky. R'yankar, who identified as an Elf himself, had been in contact with the Silver Elves and had run a small offline group of Elves in the late 1980s (Sandstorm 2012, 25). In 1990, he launched the Elfinkind Digest, the first electronic mailing list for Elves (Sandstorm 2012, 25).
(p. 245-246) "R'yankar"? *facepalm* He surely encountered this name multiple times if he read the Timeline. You oughta get people's names right in a doctoral dissertation, bub. Try copy and paste if you can't remember a weird spelling.
That aside, the implication (whether intentional or through lack of clarity) that R'ykandar had been in contact with the Silver Elves in the 1980s and that they may possibly have influenced the starting of Elfinkind Digest is not correct. In Elfinkind Digest #49, dated June 8, 1990, she (using current pronoun) describes how she had just received a reply to the SASE she had sent "weeks ago" when she first found out about them. The lead time is not stated explicitly, but even a generous interpretation would be earlier the same year. So while it is possible ED was not yet underway when she wrote off, it definitely was by the time she could be said to have been "in contact with" the SE.
Lupa cites one elf, sade, who had awakened in response to an article (perhaps a letter) by the Silver Elves in Circle Network News around 1985 and who was still active in the Elven community twenty years later (Lupa 2007, 167).
(p. 245, footnote 297) sade is not an elf; or at least she was not calling herself that by the time I met her in the late 1990s. I suppose Davidsen did not contact sade directly, but (though this is without actually pulling out the Field Guide from its storage box to check) I doubt Lupa would have misidentified her; the survey Lupa used naturally asked each respondent to detail what type of otherkin they were. I'm confused how he can realize there is "a broader Otherkin movement (of people identifying as various sorts of non-human beings)" and e.g. correctly refer to Orion Sandstorm as a Dragon, but then keep misidentifying people like this (myself included; see below).
Since 1990, several generations of social community and networking sites have appeared, including Yahoo! Groups (launched 1998)
(p. 246) Not true. Yahoo Clubs was launched in 1998. Yahoo Groups came into existence after the services Onelist and eGroups, both of which began in 1997, merged in late 1999 and then Yahoo acquired eGroups in mid-2000. Wikipedia says its official launch of Yahoo Groups was January 2001. Otherkin lists had existed on Onelist and eGroups for several years before these events. Also, I find it curious that he doesn't make any mention of off-Yahoo lists other than Elfinkind Digest, such as TirNanOc (begun in October 1995) and Darkfae-L (start date unknown to me, but in existence at least by 1997).
The Elves especially established themselves on Yahoo! Groups, a milestone being the founding of the group Elven Realities in 1999.
(p. 246-247) Thus, it was actually founded on eGroups, not Yahoo Groups as such. (Hypothetically it could also have been Onelist, but ER was definitely on eGroups in March 1999.)
During the 2000s, individual Elves also began to maintain their own homepages. Some examples include [...] the homepage of Arethinn (formerly Eshari) who is has [sic] organised the Otherkin gatherings known as MythiCalia and who moderates the Otherkin community on LiveJournal.
(p. 247) OH HAI. That way of citing my name, with "formerly", makes me wonder if he read boards where I use that phrasing in my signature, because I don't think I use it anywhere here on my site. *headscratch*
A further indication of Internet-facilitated growth is the majority of new members of the online Elven communities have not developed an identity as Elves on their own, but have only done so upon being exposed to the idea that you can be an Elf yourself by stumbling upon online sites maintained by self-identified Elves.
(p. 248) But this is the story he gave from the Silver Elves on down, basically (maybe not R'ykandar?) and quoted them about how making contact with Elves was helpful (if not necessary) for awakening.
Since most Elves are also Pagans
(p. 248) Actually bringing that idea in to any collection of Elves might be a mistake. Certainly it's something I've been disappointed to be wrong about more than once.
Elven Realities was the only Elven group on Yahoo! Groups to reach the growth stage, especially because it was the only group to ever gain critical mass. Even so, Elven Realities scored only moderately well on the other success factors. While attempts were made to organise offline gatherings, these initiatives were infrequent and the gatherings were poorly attended.
(p. 249) A doctoral candidate says what? An annual event -- typical for, say, a lot of academic and professional associations -- is too "infrequent" to be significant? And while Walking the Thresholds may not have been huge like a sci-fi or comic convention, it was very well-attended for a while relative to the size of the list it primarily drew from. 730 listmembers in 2012 is a bloated figure (as indeed Davidsen describes -- people joining just out of curiosity but never unsubscribing, etc.), but the attendance in 2001, which I think was the largest year, was nearly 10% of that amount. Surely in 2001 the membership itself was smaller, so it might have been 20% or more of the list members at the time. He also seems unaware of Crossing the Thresholds, Dancing the Endless Dream, Summer Gateways, the FAE Retreat, A Gathering Echo, Kinvention North, etc. -- all small by some standards (but then he notes the whole community is small; what does he want from us?) but annual, or even twice-annual in some cases depending on how you look at it. (I suppose I will give him a mulligan on not being aware of many smaller monthly events, since they have left less "paper trail".)
Already in 1990, therefore, the words “Otherkind” and “Otherkin” were coined and there was even talk about renaming the list “The Otherkind Digest” (Sandstorm 2012, 25‐26).307 Though this never happened, non‐Elves continued to be active on the Elfinkind Digest, and soon online newsgroups emerged, both for Otherkin in general and for various specific Otherkin groups besides Elves, including self‐identified Dragons and Werewolves.
(p. 251) I assume he's referring to the Usenet groups alt.horror.werewolves and alt.fan.dragons here, although neither was founded with the intent to be an otherkin/therian group. I have no idea what he's got in mind as "newsgroups ... for Otherkin in general", unless he's using "newsgroup" rather broadly to include lists and possibly anachronistically to include later LiveJournal communities and boards, rather than strictly meaning Usenet.
Six of these [communities] are worth mentioning, namely Otherkin.net (founded 2000), the “Otherkin” community on LiveJournal (founded 2001), and the four ProBoard-based sites, Embracing Mystery (founded 2001), Otherkin Alliance (founded 2005), Otherkin Phenomena (founded 2008), and Otherkin Community (founded 2009). Thanks to a critical mass of discussion participants and to good management and privacy protection, these six groups have successfully made the transition into the maturity stage in Iriberri and Leroy's sense.
(p. 251) Maybe in 2012 when he wrote the paper that later became this one ("The Spiritual Milieu Based on Tolkien's Literary Myth"), but by 2018 when I originally wrote these marginalia, all of these were defunct or moribund. Indeed, I would say that most of them were pretty inactive already in 2014 (the date of this dissertation), so it's strange that he puts it this way. Otherkin Phenomena is trying to make a comeback as of 2021, but there is community controversy about its new owners.
The Elves make up a considerable member contingent on the mature Otherkin sites. For instance, per 1 August 2013, the five largest groups of non-Elven users on Otherkin.net were Therians (N=144), including especially Grey Wolf Therians; Dragons (N=124), mostly of the Western type; Vampires (N=70), including both Psychic and San- guinarian ones; Angelic beings (N=70), including archangels and fallen angels; and Demonic beings (N=47). By comparison, the site hosted 76 Elves. This figure is somewhat misleading, however, for while the Therian and Dragon categories include various sub-types, several kinds of Elves were granted their entirely own category. Besides the 76 Elves, some of whom were Dark Elves and Star Elves, Otherkin.net hosted an additional 51 Faeries, 21 Sidhe, 15 Tuatha Dé Dannan, and 2 Fae. More comparable with the Therian and Dragon totals is thus the figure of 165 Elves and Elf-like beings (not counting self-identified Nymphs, Goblins, and other demi-humans), making this group constitute the largest contingent of members.
(footnote 307) Today the term Otherkin is used in two senses, a narrow and a broad one. In the narrow sense Otherkin refers to self‐identified humanoid fey/fae beings (such as Elves) together with self‐identified mythological creatures (such as Dragons). Members of these two groups generally feel comfortable identifying as Otherkin in addition to identifying more specifically as a particular kind of non‐human. In the broad sense of the term, the Otherkin include also self‐identified Vampires and Therianthropes, though these groups tend to dismiss the Otherkin label and prefer to organise their own communities.
(p. 251-252) He's apparently not aware that there had been at least one purge of inactive accounts, which would have affected the demographics of the remaining ones; but this also reflects the growing trend of animal-folk who call themselves not therians, but "[animal]kin" (e.g. wolfkin, foxkin), registering themselves on Otherkin sites although they are not Otherkin in the narrow sense described.
In other words, the Internet and the Otherkin movement could help nurture an Elven identity that was already present.
(p. 252) Which... he... claimed above... that most people... didn't have? That they only decided this after encountering others online and it generally wasn't already present?
The most significant role-playing games for the Elven and Otherkin movements were the World of Darkness series published by the game company White Wolf in the 1990s. ... Changeling: The Dreaming (Rein∙Hagen 1995).310 White Wolf's games nurtured an Otherkin identity more potently than earlier role-playing games because they were the first games to take a non-human perspective. [...] Rich Dansky, one of the designers of Changeling, told the journalist Nick Mamatas that he had come across the electronic mailing list darkfae-l whose members wondered “how the folks at White Wolf had gotten so much of their existence right”
(p. 253) This is funny to read because there was actually at least one Otherkin on the Changeling writing group (who is still doing some work for Onyx Path). I remember hearing of the ha-ha-only-serious of "who blabbed?" that apparently went around the community lists at the time. I wonder whether there might have been an element of a conscious magical act in the hopes of Awakening others.
Second, the self-identified Elves are inescapably influenced by Tolkien's new vision of the Elves as tall and majestic human-like magicians. This is so, no matter whether the self-identified Elves have this image directly from Tolkien or via later Tolkienesque fantasy.
(p. 257) Or, you know, it could be an authentic native self-concept. *eyeroll*
Also: "new" vision of the Elves? Isn't Tolkien's whole thing kinda that he's going back to an older well and he decries what the Victorians have done to the majestic proper Elves of old?
A particularly elaborate account of Elven ancestry was presented by Aeona Silversong in a series of articles in Green Egg in the mid-1990s (1995; 1996a; 1996b; 1996c), in which she claimed that the Elves had originally come from the stars about 250,000 years ago, raised Atlantis, and built the pyramids.316 This all happened in the harmonious time before the “Faerie wars” between humans and elves which forced the elves to retreat to the Otherworld (Silversong 1996c).317 Before retreating, however, some of the intergalactic elves must have interbred with humans, for Silversong considers herself to be an Elf due to her “ancient Milesian blood” (1995), i.e. by genetic descent.318
(footnote 316) With these articles, Aeona Silversong attempted to revive the Elf Queen's Daughters. The first article was printed in the theme issue of Green Egg which also featured a review of Changeling: The Dreaming. The issue was dedicated to fairies and includes other articles by self-identified Fey (Sandstorm 2012, 37).
(p. 260) This would be very interesting to get a hold of.
"Milesian" descent does seem like a strange justification unless there was some interbreeding, since the Sons of Mil are, effectively, just Men, who defeated the Tuatha De Danann and were the last to take Ireland.
In the "folk evolutionism" which predominates among genetic Elves, Elven genes are considered to be not only dominant, but also to be able to extinguish human genes altogether over generations. The offspring of two half-elves (each with 50% Elvish genes) is considered to have more than 50% Elvish genes.
(p. 263, footnote 324) ??? What on earth is he talking about? I wonder which "genetic Elves" he read or talked to, because I haven't heard of this idea. There isn't a specific citation relating to this for several pages backwards or forwards, so I don't know where he's drawing this generalization from.
In the 21 st century, the Elven movement has merged with and become a substantial part of the Otherkin movement. The self-identified Elves now benefit from the Otherkin"s infrastructure, especially their well-organised online communities and occasional offline gatherings.
(p. 273) This has got it backwards. Elves are at the bottom of it. What we now call "the Otherkin community" grew out of Elven spaces that attracted non-elves.
Michelle Belanger's book [Psychic Energy Codex] is so far the only work by an Otherkin intellectual which has been published with a commercial publisher rather than by means of self-publishing.
(p. 274, footnote 337) Huh? What about the Field Guide, just to name an obvious example? And calling Michelle an "Otherkin intellectual" is very weird, especially considering she was skeptical of Otherkin before she started attending Kinvention North and as far as I know would not consider Kheprian vampires to be a kind of otherkin.
Based on the fact that Tolkien was an expert on mythology, languages, and all ancient things, one can easily assume that if a secret bloodline exists, Tolkien must have known about it though he did not dare reveal the truth openly and risk his job and academic standing. Fortunately for Gardner and de Vere, Tolkien nowhere makes the alleged sub-text explicit (because there never was one), and they are therefore free to construct claims about Tolkien's esoteric message, claims that are conveniently unfalsifiable. Again, when trying to persuade those who are not already convinced, it is more attractive to claim that Tolkien's narratives have a secret message than to cite non-fictional and falsifiable claims such as Murray's. Furthermore, Tolkien is dead and cannot object to the esoteric charisma which is ascribed to him.
(p. 288) Ugh. Not that I disagree with the general point here, but this snideness permeates the whole piece. It's papered over somewhat when talking directly about "self-identified Elves", buuuut... yeah.
Middle-Earth Pagans were not successful as a group, but that does not mean that the phenomenon of Middle-earth Paganism is insignificant. The group"s failure shows only the obvious: A group that urges its members to find their own way and lacks the ambition of building a collective identity and a shared tradition, is destined to collapse rapidly. Or, as Colin Campbell puts it, a cult which does not begin to transform into a sect by codifying its teachings and establishing formal membership and leadership institutions, will soon collapse into the cultic milieu from which it emerged (1972, 128).
(p. 335) Otherkin are not a "cult", of course -- including not just the pejorative sense but also the neutral "a particular system of religious worship" -- but I find this salient. I think earlier on, up to around early 2000s, possibly a bit later, we had at least some of this ambition; and then either willingly abandoned it, or it failed (cf. ideas about certain energies no longer being anchored in this reality or world) and so collapsed, perhaps "back into the cultic milieu", although I think in this case there have also been some changes in that milieu itself.
The [Lord of the Rings] films kept its fantastic elements concerning race, magic, and intuition, but strongly reduced the otherworldly character of the Elven dwellings.
(p. 340) ???? "Reduced"? I guess he means "made them seem more situated in the ordinary world of the characters than in an otherworld relative to them than was true in the books"? (Although I don't agree this is the case; for my money places like Rivendell and Lothlorien were always in their "ordinary world".) He surely can't mean they're not otherworldly relative to the audience.
It is the construction of Middle-earth as an independent, spiritual world – itself afforded by the movies
(p. 341) No one could possibly have said "aha, this framing device is obviously fiction, the whole thing is an otherworld" from reading the books?
We need an analysis of the religious affordances of HoMe because Legendarium Reconstructionists consider this corpus more authoritative than S and LR.
(p. 343) ??? "More authoritative", when much of HoMe is necessarily earlier than LR and at best contemporary with S? (Cf. p. 318: "Instead, Legendarium Reconstructionists focus on Tolkien"s written works, including S and the appendices to the book version of LR.") There's certainly more stuff one could work with in HoMe, but unless the argument is "Tolkien's first impressions were more likely to have been correct"...
cf. Introduction p. 20, "One group of second wave "Tolkien religionists", which might be referred to as Reconstructionists, look to HoMe for the earliest, purest, and most original version of Tolkien's spiritual vision." I do wonder, though, whether their internal characterization of it is really, "This is better and more true than other material", "This is more authoritative".
First, the Valar in HoMe are represented as more suitable partners for ritual interaction than their counterparts in LR and S. In HoMe, the Valar are no mere angels, but are identified as gods.
(p. 364) I submit that multiple traditions consider "mere" angels to be perfectly suitable partners for ritual interaction!
Given the ontological, epistemological, and phenomenological duality of Elwin's position, his mode of justification can be categorised as a form of compartmentalisation, i.e. "the position that religious beliefs constitute their own province of meaning and that their truth can therefore not be determined rationally, but only according to its own logic or language game" (cf. section 5.1.4 above). It is the first time we encounter this sophisticated type of justification in the spiritual Tolkien milieu.
(p. 423) "First"? Seems to me he encountered this with otherkin; or if he didn't, he should have, because I've heard it used as justification -- not often with the specific term "religious", since most otherkin do not consider their beliefs about themselves religious in nature, but in arguments like "the existence of souls cannot be proved empirically, or at least has not yet been proved, therefore claims like these have to be evaluated with different standards."
For Gwineth, gnostic experiences are of a radically different kind pertaining to a world (ontologically speaking) or to a province of meaning (phenomenologically speaking) that transcends such rational distinctions as true/false and objective/subjective.
(p. 423) Sounds about right: mythic truth! (Something I imagine Tolkien would have been on board with.)
...gnosis is true in a way that transcends the distinction between the objective and the subjective: it is not factually true in the objective sense, but neither subjective in the crude sense of being made up. Gnosis is true in a way that cannot be described in terms of rational reasoning; one has to experience it and intuitively “get it”.
(p. 424) Same for otherkin.
H, LR, and S were written as fiction and marketed as fiction. Especially in his preface to the second edition of LR, Tolkien unequivocally dismissed the notion that his stories should refer to states of affairs in the actual world, either directly or indirectly. Granting that the Middle-earth universe is presented as our world"s ancient history, he emphasised that his history is “feigned”. Against those who would read his stories as allegories, either as Christian fiction (like C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia) or as a Cold War analogy (with the Ring representing the Atomic Bomb), Tolkien forcefully asserted that his story was no such thing and that he detested allegory in all its forms.
(p. 433) "No, this is not clever allegory about recent known history" is not the same as "there is no truth in it, mythic or otherwise". In other words, just because it doesn't refer to ordinary history doesn't have to mean it doesn't refer to any "affairs" in the "actual" world.
As noted in chapter 11, the Elf Queen's Daughters constitute a case of apparent counter-evidence, as this group adopted an Elven identity as well as the veneration of Elbereth/Valar prior to the publication of S. In fact, the Elven spirituality of the Elf Queen's Daughters was ironic and their identification as Elves transitory
(p. 437, footnote 546) I suppose one could say "transitory" in that they gave up writing the Letters after a few years, although I don't agree this must necessarily mean they stopped thinking of themselves as Elves at the same moment; or maybe he's referring to how they later called themselves Hobbits. He cited some things earlier to illustrate that they may have thought of it more metaphorically than literally (e.g. that "Elf" was a way of saying "ecologically-minded Goddess worshipper", and Melryn finding Zardoa's zeal for Awakening and gathering all kindred Elves to be cause for affectionate amusement). But "ironic"? You what?
For this reason, Middle-earth Paganism was never more than an add-on to conventional Paganism. It never developed into a full-fledged and independent tradition, and it could not possibly have done so, impaired as it was by the weak religious affordances of its main authoritative text. ... To sum up, fictional texts with fantastic elements but no narrative religion can provide significant religious inspiration (LR-inspired Pagans) and even lead to the formation of fiction-integrating religious practices (Middle-Earth Pagans), but no long-lived and distinct fiction-based religious tradition can arise from such texts.
(p. 439-440) It's true that Middle-earth Paganism did not so develop. It may be true that its chances were poor from the start. But "couldn't possibly have done so"? And no such tradition ever can? How can he possibly state that with certainty? If nothing else, this is an awfully broad generalization from this particular study of Tolkien to the potentials of any and all fantastic fiction!
More precisely, to be usable as the basis of a fiction-based religion a fictional text must include divine beings who are subject to veneration within the narrative world. Both S and HoMe fit this criterion. Preferably, the text should also include descriptions of rituals, upon which real-world rituals can be modelled, but this is no absolute requirement.547
(footnote 547) As pointed out in in chapter 4, the Church of all Worlds adopted a water-sharing ritual and the greeting "Thou art God/dess" from Robert Heinlein"s Stranger in a Strange Land.
(p. 440) He just contradicted himself there. Divine beings "must" be included... but then his chosen example of a text that can inspire a long-lived tradition (CAW) is something that affords only ritual (I think)?
Elven Realities
[Location] Online
[Main text] movies
[Success indicators] 700+ members; collapse after 2-3 years
(p. 455) See above (p. 153) about the weirdness of assuming the movies were a "main text" given that ER predates them. I can only assume he must not have been able to actually read group messages, because I don't grok how he figured that there was any "main text" at all on ER, unless he was just assuming that because there was high activity in 2001-2002 that this could only have been caused by the Jackson films being released at that time.
I'm not sure what he's getting at with "collapse after 2-3 years." Possibly he's referring to the significant dropoff in message volume in 2003 compared to 2000-2002, although that is more like "after 3-4 years" since it was founded in March 1999. But I don't think the fact that message volume didn't continually increase forever constitutes "collapse". (In fact, having been there at the time, slightly lessened activity was welcome - it's hard to keep up on nearly sixty posts a day, especially when it's not your only list!) By my lights a point of collapse was not reached until about 2013, when posting volume fell to less than one per day (in fact about 1 every 4 days) and never recovered; and I note also that the actual peak activity was before the first of the Jackson films. Here's a chart:
(If it's too small to see, maximize your browser window so it's not being shrunk, or click it to get the image alone.)
Last updated: 5/18/2021