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The author Brian Bates is a
psychologist and a Professor at the University of Brighton in the UK. He
specializes in the use of deep imagination in tribal cultures, the
performing arts, and business, and he also directs a research programme
and teaches a course in Shamanic Consciousness.
Most readers will be aware that the Middle Earth is the setting of
Tolkien’s epic fantasy The Lord of the Rings and his earlier
novel The Hobbit. What they may not know that the term “Middle
Earth” is an Old English or Anglo-Saxon term for the magical world in
which these people and their ancestors lived. Bates uses the term Real
Middle Earth to refer to the culture that existed in north-west Europe
and Scandinavia from about 0 to 1000 CE. In this book he concentrates
on ancient England but also refers to sources dealing with Scandinavia
and mainland Europe. He discusses how these people lived, their customs
and beliefs, and especially their magic, and how these inspired Tolkien
“to write Lord of the Rings as an attempt to invent a legendary
story which captured this essence of ancient England”.
The real Middle Earth is so named because in the Anglo-Saxon cosmology
it was seen as existing between the Upper World of the Gods and the
Lower World inhabited by the Dwarves. Not only the name Middle Earth,
but also many of the exotic creatures – including Dwarves, Orcs, Ents,
Elves, and Dragons in the fantasy have been borrowed from ancient
English mythology and folklore. The character Gandalf has a close
resemblance to the God Odin in his aspect of being an archetype for the
wizards of the historical Middle Earth. The fact that magic played an
important part in the historical Middle Earth is indicated by the large
number of words for different forms magic, divination, and witchcraft in
the Anglo-Saxon language.
The author uses primary sources where possible, but when these are not
available, he looks at alternative sources, such as laws and
prohibitions designed to stamp out magical practices, documentation of
rituals and healing techniques practiced by Christian priests, but which
had their origin in pre-Christian times, and evidence from later
Shamanistic cultures in other parts of the world. For example there is
no direct evidence of how wizards were initiated into their craft during
the Middle Earth era, so Bates interpolates by examining a “Spider
Spell” in the Anglo-Saxon Lacnunga manuscript, and combines this
with what is known about the beliefs and practices of the Middle Earth
era, to conclude that this was a Christianized account of an initiation
rite for a wizard.
This book would be of interest not only to fans of Tolkien’s fiction,
but also anyone interested in the mythology and magical practices of old
England and Western Europe.
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