Totemic Reflexes in Tolkien's Middle-Earth

THAT J.R.R. TOLKIEN TOOK INSPIRATION FROM BEOWULF, among many other medieval works, in writing The Lord of the Rings [LotR] and his other tales of Middle-earth is well known. This has been amply documented by T.A. Shippey, among others. (1) What I would like to explore here is the way in which shamanism, particularly in its connection to Old English works like Beowulf, has left its imprint on Tolkien's works. This may seem like a curious idea, and perhaps an explanation, and justification, is in order, via a short detour into the work of Tolkien admirer and Old English scholar, Stephen Glosecki. (2) Much of Glosecki's work focused on what he called shamanic and totemic reflexes in Anglo-Saxon culture. These related terms refer to the residue of an older culture that remained in the Germanic cultures of history and record. Things like the prominence of the avunculate (the tie between mother's brother and sister's son) and the prevalence of animal imagery, according to Glosecki, point to an earlier culture that was matrilineal and totemic. Further, elements of surviving Old English poetry indicate an older shamanic tradition that underlies them, a residue that well may not have been fully understood by the poets themselves. (3) Along with his scholarly focus on Anglo-Saxon culture, Glosecki had an abiding interest in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, teaching a class on "Lore of the Rings" at UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham), most recently in 2006. In that course he included many of the Old English and Germanic texts that served as Tolkien's inspiration in order to reveal what he called the "glowing depths [that] underlie Tolkien's fantasy" (qtd. in Crossley 10). One way to think about the intersections between these two ideas is to consider totemic and shamanic reflexes in Tolkien's work. One runs into an immediate problem, however: Whereas a poem like Beowulf may contain elements that reflect an older culture, Tolkien's Middle-earth is not a work that accrued over significant periods of time but is the creation of one man--a secondary world. While the prevalence of the avunculate in Beowulf can be said to reflect the presence of an older culture where such relationships had a power and meaning, the full relevance of which is likely lost to the later Anglo-Saxons, for Tolkien's Middle-earth such depth of cultural history is not a condition of its creation. Yet Tolkien created his secondary world to have at least the appearance of such depth of history and culture. As such, it can perhaps be said to contain such reflexes as Glosecki finds in Old English poetry like Beowulf. Glosecki himself may have been attracted to this idea. In his most recent publication, his essay on the possible mythic resonances of the metrical charms in his 2007 essay collection, he refers to Tolkien no less than three times. In a discussion of Woden/Odin as he figures in the Nine Herbs charm, Glosecki refers to him parenthetically as a figure "that in turn underlies the Wotan of Wagner's Ring operas and their spin-offs, as well as, one might argue, Tolkien's peripatetic wizard Gandalf" ("Stranded Narrative" 62). In a note to his translation of the Wio Dweorh ("Against a Dwarf") charm, Glosecki observes that "the charm reflects pre-modern impressions of the 'dwarf' popularized in more recent folktale and fantasy. It's especially eye-opening vis-a-vis Tolkien's sanguine dwarf characterizations" ("Stranded Narrative" 65, note 36). And finally, in a footnote to his discussion of "disease-riders" in the Old English charms such as Wio Faerstice ("Against a sudden/violent stabbing pain") and the Nine Herbs charm, Glosecki asks "Need we look further for the exemplar of what might be Tolkien's most horrific villains, the Nazgul, 'Dark Riders' or 'Ringwraiths'? Today, much of their impact depends upon their deep mythic resonance, most apparent here in the metrical charms" ("Stranded Narrative" 67, note 38). These are suggestive observations, and worth examining more fully. …