Breaking the Orc Cycle

Like the movie 2012, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy is another account of the shifting of the ages. Jay Weidner has written an excellent essay on Tolkien's knowledge of alchemy and world mythology. It shows how The Lord of the Rings itself is the story of the passage from the Third Age, or the Age of Bronze, to the Fourth Age, our own era -- the Age of Iron or the Kali Yuga.

 

While the Third Age of Middle-earth formally came to a close with the downfall of Sauron and the passing of the Three Rings into the West, the beginning of its end was marked by the discovery of the One Ring by Bilbo.

Riddles of Darkness

Undoubtedly, the best scene of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is exactly this moment when Bilbo finds the Ring. In fact, this is the only scene in the entire movie which utterly compelled me. Not only is it the best scene, but it is the most important event of the story which the film is telling. Clearly, if there is any deeper mystery to be unravelled in this Dec. 14th film, it is to be found here.

　

In the book, The Hobbit, this episode involves a riddling game between Bilbo and Gollum. The chapter is called "Riddles in the Dark."

His [Bilbo's] head was swimming, and he was far from certain even of the direction they had been going in when he had his fall. He guessed as well as he could, and crawled along for a good way, till suddenly his hand met what felt like a tiny ring of cold metal lying on the floor of the tunnel. It was a turning point in his career, but he did not know it. He put the ring in his pocket almost without thinking; certainly it did not seem of any particular use at the moment.

Within a short time of finding the Ring, Bilbo encounters Gollum and the game of riddles begins. The stakes are high: Bilbo would be shown the passage out if he won, and eaten if he lost.

Gollum poses the first riddle:

What has roots as nobody sees,
Is taller than trees
Up, up it goes,
And yet never grows?  

Mountain is the answer, and it is the mountain in which both Gollum and the Ring dwell. It is a place of darkness. Mountains "never grow," apparently, because they are not as quickly affected by time as living beings. From our perspective, mountains are nearly immortal. Bilbo is next:

Thirty white horses on a red hill,
First they champ,
Then they stamp,
Then they stand still.

The answer here is teeth, and while the riddle compares teeth to horses it is easy to envision teeth as a ring of mountains. Like bones, like mountains, teeth long survive the decomposition of the flesh after death. On a smaller scale than mountains, teeth also exist at a much slower pace of time. The subject of Gollum's riddle is grand and impersonal, and Bilbo's subject is smaller and more intimate, but both of these two will outlast us.

Voiceless it cries,
Wingless flutters,
Toothless bites,
Mouthless mutters.

Gollum's next riddle is the wind. It's interesting that it is described as being "toothless." The wind is even less affected by time than mountains and teeth. It is ever-present and is breathed in by all living creatures, but dependent on none of them. This riddle takes us even further into cold abstraction.

In the film a couple riddles are skipped, which are worth returning to, but in his next riddle Bilbo attempts to steer the game back to the sunny, day-to-day world of breakfast and nourishment.

A box without hinges, key or lid,
Yet golden treasure inside is hid.

"Eggses!" Gollum hisses. This is correct, but I think that Tolkien might have something much bigger in mind.

Blake's term for the entire fallen cosmos is the "mundane shell" -- our egg-shaped world of limited perception that is as comfortable as it is inauthentic. Like Bilbo's nostalgia for hearty breakfasts and easy living in the Shire, it is this shell that keeps us from fully exploring our own imagination, from realizing eternity. The mundane shell, the cosmic egg, is the cycle of time. It contains all cycles, including the very cycle of life.

Four other riddles are given in the book that are not depicted in the film. Bilbo's riddles about the sun shining on the daisies, and a man and his cat eating fish are both cheery, light-filled instances in the mundane cycle. Gollum, on the other hand, describes fish as being as "cold as death." His next riddle deserves a closer look:

It cannot be seen, cannot be felt,
Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt.
It lies behind stars and under hills,
And empty holes it fills.
It comes first and follows after,
Ends life, kills laughter.

The solution is darkness, and while in the book Gollum poses this just before Bilbo's egg riddle it could also be taken as a response to it. What is beyond the mundane shell, beyond the stars? Darkness. It even permeates and fills the holes and empty gaps within this world. It is, in a sense, what the shell protects us from -- an infinitude of darkness. The shell is the "limit of opacity," as Blake called it. All the warm, hobbit-like pleasantries of this world can only be savoured if we are ignorant of, or suppress, the darkness. But it still there and will find us in the end.

Gollum's last riddle in the film continues along these lines:

This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountain down.

Time itself finally enters into the game. We find that even the mountains are beaten down by it. Apparently nothing is greater than it. Toothless like the wind, it nonetheless devours everything. The mundane shell, which Bilbo describes as being sunny and abundant, is the same world that Gollum knows is filled with darkness and misery. Both characters are subject to time. One is temporarily in Fortune's favour, the other perhaps not. Gollum, though, seems the wiser for being the more afflicted.

Bilbo's final riddle, more of a stumbling question than a riddle, is really the riddle behind all of these riddles. His question is "What have I got in my pocket?" The answer is of course, although not even Gandalf knew positively until years later, the One Ring.



The words that appeared several decades afterwards when the Ring was thrown into Frodo's warm fire translate as:

One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them,
One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

The One Ring, forged centuries before, has the power to enslave all the other magical ruling rings of Elves, Dwarves and Men. All will be bound by it, and its Lord, in absolute darkness.

The Golden Bind

It's remarkable, whether Tolkien intended this or not, that this inscription perfectly answers the riddles of The Hobbit. The Ring is both darkness and time, and all of the things like mountains and teeth and the lives of mortals which are eventually overcome by time. It is itself the binding Mundane Shell which is surrounded by darkness from one perspective. But from the viewpoint of those with perceptions cleansed, the Ring also represents that which binds us to this world of relative darkness. It prevents us from an experience of eternity.

 

In other words, the Ring is identical to Fortuna's Wheel. Power over it is power over everything -- both light and darkness, "good" and "bad." All is bound to the golden Wheel. In the preface to the Silmarillion, Tolkien appears to confirm this view of the Ring:

The chief power (of all the Rings alike) was the prevention or slowing of decay (i.e. 'change' viewed as a regrettable thing), the preservation of what is desired or loved, or its semblance. But also they enhanced the natural powers of a possessor­ thus approaching 'magic', a motive easily corruptible into evil, a lust for domination.

The power of the Ring is primarily a power over time or Fortune. With such a power, which is also the desire for immortality, comes the "lust for domination." In a previous post, I discussed how exactly this lust for immortality and domination among shamans and priests led to the creation of the State and its successive Empires of debt enslavement.

For Blake, this is the primary quality of this fallen world enclosed by the Mundane Shell. It is ruled by the Selfhood which in turn tries to subject all others. The archetypal figure most representative of the Selfhood is Satan. In a sense, then, the One Ring is Satan's ring. Satan is exactly Tolkien's model for Sauron and Sauron's master, Morgoth or Melkor.

To go deeper, though, this means that Satan is the lord of time, the Prince of this World. The Ring represents the complete Fall into time. As Weidner's essay demonstrates, Tolkien's mythology, following archaic and classical world mythology, is a vast epic of a successive and ever deeper Fall into matter and time. In this, he definitely aligns with Blake.

The recovery of the Ring, as told in The Hobbit, represents both a threat and a hope for Middle Earth. On one side, it signals that the Dark Power is now able to complete its total enslavement of the world. On the other side, it exposes this power for all to see. It reveals the Dark Power's greatest strength, but also its greatest weakness. The Ring shows that this power rests on its ability to manipulate our sense of time. Its recovery indicates that both sides are culminating at once.

The film's Dec. 14th release in the US, and the terrible events that coincided with it, can be viewed in this light. Satan's ring was recovered amidst the senseless slaughter of innocents. Can hope as well as fear be found here? Does this event signal an even deeper, perhaps total, enslavement by time and the reign of quantity? Does the Wheel of Fortune become fully unveiled as a Wheel of Torture, or is ultimate liberation at hand?



If the Ring was symbolically recovered on Dec. 14th, then it was first forged last July. During the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics the One Ring was cast and raised to rule over the other four rings in front of an audience of millions.

In a previous post this ceremony was examined in depth. Danny Boyle, in his Finnegans Wake-like intertwining of all British history, literature and pop culture, included the ring-forging sequence in a section of the ceremony alluding to Blake's "Satanic mills." Boyle's name for this sequence, however, is "Pandaemonium," the capital city of John Milton's Paradise Lost. It is Milton who really ties together the work of Blake and Tolkien in regard to the Orc Cycle.

Fall From Splendour

In Tolkien's mythology it is Sauron who forges the Ring, but Sauron was the servant of an even darker lord, Morgoth or Melkor. Melkor was the most powerful of the Ainur, the old gods of Middle-earth. He was the original dark force who desired to pervert all of creation and dominate it with his will. With this desire, Melkor was the first to Fall:

From splendour he fell through arrogance to contempt for all things save himself, a spirit wasteful and pitiless. Understanding he turned to subtlety in perverting to his own will all that he would use, until he became a liar without shame. He began with the desire of the Light, but when he could not possess it for himself alone, he descended though fire and wrath into a great burning, down into Darkness. And darkness he used most in his evil works upon Arda (Earth) and filled it with fear for all living things.  Silmarillion, p. 31.

Jay Weidner explains the mythic and archetypal similarity of Melkor to the Gnostic Demiurge:

So from the beginning of the actual formation of the earth out of the music and vision of the Gods the corruption of the Divine Art of Creation began. Having fallen from grace in a manner reminiscent of the Demiurge of the Christian Gnostics, Melkor could never create of his own accord but merely produce counterfeit versions of pre-existing beings by twisting, distorting and manipulating those created by the One. In this way, he brought forth a rift into the world. For from the moment that he 'fell' and turned his face towards egotism and tyranny, Melkor became an irritant that could not be ignored. 

It is obvious, though, that Tolkien is referring to Satan as well. This version of Satan, however, comes more from Milton's Paradise Lost then it does from the Bible. In Blake's own writing, especially in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and later in Milton, Blake points out Milton's heroic portrayal of Satan.

The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil’s party without knowing it. 
--The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, plate 6.

Blake recognized in Milton's Satan the story of Orc -- the transformation of a Man to a Snake to a Dragon. Blake realized in his inversion of all conventional morality that Satan as Lucifer, at least initially, was a revolutionary would-be liberator. He sensed that Milton too realized this, but remained in his orthodox "fetters." In the beginning Satan rises up against the Demiurge, the Prince of this World, the God of the Old Testament, or Urizen himself. Only later does he truly Fall.



Satan, like all Orcs, becomes ensnared by his own Selfhood. He becomes seduced by power. He is seduced by the Ring of this Mundane Shell. He himself becomes the new Dark Lord of the fallen world. Tolkien does not dwell on this part of the myth, but it is essential to know if we are to understand Morgoth and then Sauron. They too are aspects of Orc.

Blake's exploration of the Orc Cycle is thus needed to complete both Milton and Tolkien. The Gnostics are basically correct. The God of this world is an evil Demiurge. It is the poetic brilliance of Blake to add that throughout history the potential usurpers of this Yaldabaoth in turn become cosmic tyrants.

You're Not My Father

In a sense, though, Blake is following a theme that is found continuously in global mythology. In Greek and Roman myth we read of the castration of the primordial sky-god, Uranus, by his son, Saturn.



Saturn or Kronos, although he was said to have ruled justly over a Golden Age, devoured his own children on hearing a prophecy that he would likewise be overthrown by one of them. Eventually, Jupiter or Zeus, hidden from Saturn, was able to do just this and to imprison his father in the underworld. Zeus himself existed in perpetual paranoia that the same fate would befall him. He was especially worried about his sons, Apollo and Dionysus.



These myths illustrate that even the gods are subject to the turnings of the Wheel of Fortune. It was Blake's unique genius to realize, though, and to express as art the idea that the main mechanism of Fortune, the whole loop of the Fall and Redemption, is built on the will to power. The Wheel of Fortune, governing the fate of both kings and paupers, is in essence the Orc cycle.

In modern times we see the Orc cycle play out in movies constantly. One very obvious example is the Star Wars series. Joseph Campbell's influence on George Lucas, and especially in Campbell's idea of the Hero's Journey, is well-known. As this "monomyth" was taken straight from Joyce, we could say that Star Wars indirectly derives from the pages of Finnegans Wake.

The Hero's Journey is really one half of the Orc Cycle. What we don't notice as much in the work of Campbell is how when the hero returns home, after killing the Dragon, saving the kingdom, etc., he soon begins to become a tyrant or Dragon himself. In the prequel trilogy to Star Wars, however, Lucas shows just this process.

An Unexpected Journey has often recently been compared to the first of these films, The Phantom Menace. Both are unpopular prequels to highly successful film trilogies, both are criticized for their over-use of special effects at the expense of good story-telling, and both featured ridiculous supporting roles -- the bunny-sled riding, birdshit streaked wizard, Radagast, and the cosmic, floppy-headed, underwater-living rasta, Jar Jar Binks.

A more relevant comparison here, however, is that both films depict a time of apparent growing darkness. The Phantom Menace and the two following films, much more clearly than An Unexpected Journey, are the story of how a revolutionary Orc becomes a tyrant himself. Anakin Skywalker morphs into Darth Vader. The Republic becomes an Empire.



An Unexpected Journey marks this rise of darkness with the recovery of the Ring. Sauron knows that if he regains this Ring he will become invincible. As noted previously, the significance of symbolically finding the Ring on Dec. 14th points to a similar rise in darkness, to yet another Orc cycle.

Antiorc

The alleged shooter of Sandy Hook, Adam Lanza, and other shooters of the recent past, such as Jared Lee Loughner, Anders Behring Breivik and James Holmes, might also be classed as Orcs and/or orcs.



It could be that all of these men, although it is dangerous to attribute reason to obvious psychosis, saw themselves as revolutionaries --  Breivik certainly did. It could be that they thought that their actions, horrendous in themselves, would eventually provoke radical change that would overturn the old, corrupt order. This is the thinking of Orc.

An earlier yet related figure, Charles Manson, also thought in similar terms. Manson convinced his followers that their actions would provoke a Race War which would quickly escalate into a general Apocalypse and hence a New World. And, as writer Peter Levenda in Sinister Forces recounts, Manson, the Son of Man, had himself crucified while on LSD in 1968:

Charlie decided to re-enact the Crucifixion with himself as the central character. He dropped acid. His followers tied him to a cross, jeered and humiliated him, and then symbolically killed him. They later celebrated his resurrection with an act of group sex.

Whether or not this is entirely accurate, the myth does help to peg Manson as an Orc figure. The crucifixion of Orc is a key aspect of Blake's poetic cycle. The name Adam Lanza also resonates here. Both Adam and Lanza correspond to different "Eyes of God" or "historic" Orc cycles. Adam obviously is the first man, while Lanza recalls the second Adam -- Christ who was pierced by a lance while on the cross.



None of this is meant to glorify these individuals or the atrocities attributed to them. It is necessary, though, to realize the ambiguous nature of Orc. It is possible that these figures really believed that they had a role to play in the overturning of the old order.

In this, they did not succeed and they became corrupted by the very actions that they had hoped would trigger the change. They are Lucifers who almost immediately became Satan. But in terms of the vast cycles of the Seven Eyes of God they are small Orcs.

In a sense, they are also false Orcs. They were never intended to accomplish anything beyond making the system stronger, to keep the cycle turning. In lieu of a real revolutionary Orc archetype, these surrogate Orcs or orcs allow the current Urizen to tighten his grip on power.

There are also times when Urizen poses as Orc. Things become so bad that the people demand an Orc to change everything. When this "Orc" comes to power he quickly shows his true colours. Only the most deluded believers of the hope and change promised still think that he was ever a genuine Orc at all. At best he is Dragon in the guise of a Snake.



And so the cycle continues.

The Stumbling Block

More and more people are beginning to question the Official Story of Sandy Hook. Videos and articles questioning this story have gone super-viral. Whatever merits there are in these speculations, it is truly significant that a level and raw mass of doubt that took years to show its head after 9/11 has manifested in just over a month after this event.

One can without effort construct a very paranoid, meta-conspiracy theory on why this is happening. Free and privileged US citizens, like Roman citizens of old, are the last stumbling block to total NWO imperial takeover. They are akin to Iraq, Libya and all of the other so-called "rogue states." They are too independent, too spoiled, and too opposed to being dominated by the imperial will. They have become increasingly docile and obedient over the last decade, but they must have their spirits completely crushed.

The Empire knows that the only true Orc it needs to fear is if the most anti-authoritarian, liberty-loving elements of movements similar to both the Tea Party and Occupy unite against it. If a genuine union of resistance like this occurred the masses would quickly join it.



To prevent this, the Empire hammers in the ultimate wedge -- a call for gun control in response to the massacre of children.

The meta-conspiracy theory mulls overs the possibility that the goal of this operation is not simply to disarm Americans, but to provoke Civil War. Why was Alex Jones able to rant like a madman against gun control and for a new American revolution on CNN? Because the Empire knew that he would repulse and disgust half of the US population. He might even inspire the other half. Even better.

A dystopic scenario is easy to envision. The government attempts to forcibly take away the people's guns and is violently resisted. Resistance spreads and becomes amplified. Chaos ensues. Divisions of the military refuse to fire on the rebels. The US becomes dangerously close to becoming a failed state with nukes and the UN agrees to send in troops. The rebellion is quashed and a World Government is declared. A boot stomping on a human face forever.



If such a thing is on the Agenda, it's equally easy to think of reasons why it wouldn't work. If anything, it is only one scenario among many being considered. It's obvious, though, that the world, and particularly US society, is facing a multifaceted, unprecedented crisis. Revolution and/or Civil War are not out of the question.

In the US, the clamour for one or both of these is becoming louder every day. It is remarkable that the banner from which Blake may have got the association of the Snake symbol for the revolutionary Orc is now, once again, the flag of American anti-government rebels. The Serpent rises again.

Reaping the Stars

While Blake initially supported the revolutions in both America and France, his vision of change goes far beyond even the most radical revolutionaries of his or any other time in history. He hoped that the 19th century revolutions would go global, eliminate tyranny and injustice from all lands, provoke the Apocalypse, and eventually bring about an entirely new, unfallen Creation (notice the similarities and differences to Manson). Northrop Frye explains Blake's radical position:

Thus when the fall of the Bastille aroused a wave of enthusiasm in England, Blake turned at once to write an epic on the French Revolution, in which he treated this event sub species aeternitatis as the beginning of the end of the long nightmare of cruelty and injustice which is human history. 

The desire to end the long nightmare of history recalls Stephen Dedalus' words from Ulysses -- "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." To awaken from the nightmare of history is to finally end the Orc cycle. It is to pass from revolution to revelation.

The "starry harvest" of six thousand years, Blake's conventional figure for the interval between creation and apocalypse, is about to be reaped: men are about to unite into a single Man, who is God, and who will dwell in a new heaven and a new earth. The fall of the French monarchy, like the fall of empires in the prophecies of the Bible, is significant only as a sign of an approaching Messianic kingdom of liberty.

Blake, and Joyce following him, aims for nothing less than the collapse of all empires including, at a very fundamental level, the Black Iron Prison of the Demiurge, Melkor/Urizen/Satan/Zeus/Jehovah, himself. Blake desires the breaking of the Wheel -- the starry harvest -- and the mass reawakening into eternity.

For many, this was the promise of December 21st, 2012. The final empire was about to decisively and catastrophically reach its breaking point. Things were about to approach such a level of weirdness that any sort of control would be impossible. Time would end.

The point in the cyclic epics of Tolkien and Lucas most comparable to the expectations for 2012, is their presentation of the explosive climax at the end of the age. In The Return of the King, this is depicted in the fall and collapse of Barad-dûr. In The Return of the Jedi, this is the death of the Emperor and the destruction of the Death Star. 2012 was to have ended in cleansing fire. A cosmic ekpyrosis.





When nothing like this happened many of us, perhaps more privately than publicly, began to scratch our heads. Were the debunkers right in the end? Were all of the prophecies and visions, including those of Terence McKenna, utter bullshit?

Could it be, though, that 12/21/12 did happen as foreseen, but we were wrong about where things are in the cycle? The Ring was found on Dec. 14th, in the midst of all of the highly charged events of that day, but it has not yet been destroyed. Before being destroyed the Ring must first be revealed. This is the revelation. This is the apocalypse. But what is the Ring?

As discussed above, the Ring is the Wheel of Fortune itself. To reveal the Ring is to reveal the illusory nature of time and all that rests on this illusion. To finally shatter these illusions is to cast the Ring into fiery oblivion, it is to break the cycle and to reenter eternity.

Riding the Orc Cycle

Orca Bellona! Heavencry at earthcall, etnat athos? Extinct your vulcanology for the lava of Moltens!

While the Winter Solstice has long since come and gone without the obvious mass transformation for good or for ill that many were expecting, it would be hard to deny that the world is going through an unprecedented transition. Everything remains on the edge. None of the tensions felt by people across the globe have been resolved.

2012 is over, but in a sense "2012" has not yet happened. 12/21/12 provided a sort of temporal anchor. This date may have represented a change in everything, but before it actually arrived it was comforting to know that we could at least grasp onto the date itself.  Now that it has passed we are left flailing. Now "2012" could happen at any point. At every point. Unexpectedly. Like a Thief in the Night.



This blog has explored how certain unsettling synchronicities surrounding the horrendous events of Sandy Hook, happening a week before the Solstice, have provoked perhaps a threshold number of people to question the very nature of reality. Most still blame some sort of conspiracy, which cannot be ruled out, but increasingly many suspect something far stranger and deeper.

The appearance of "Sandy Hook" in Dark Knight Rises as the location within the Gotham City area where Bane would begin his campaign of terror is enough to make even the most hard-nosed "skeptics" momentarily scratch their heads. Either we dismiss this as mere coincidence or we take a deep dive down the rabbit hole. We dive.

Monomythic

The shooting at Aurora happened on the opening night of Dark Knight Rises. What film opened in the U.S. on the day of the Sandy Hook shooting on Dec. 14th?The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

Unlike the Aurora shooting, there is no evidence that the shooting and the film are connected in any intentional way. I'm hesitant to try to make any link between the two. The event is sickening and should in no way be glorified or analysed for idle entertainment. The fact is, though, that tragic events or big film openings that attract so much attention also seem to be natural magnets for synchronicity. If we truly want to understand this phenomenon we may have to look into some dark places.

So what ties can be made? There is a cryptic resonance between the names Sandy Hook and Unexpected Journey. Just as HAL is one step before IBM, and OZ is one step before NY, SH is two steps before UJ. A tenuous link, I know, but these are all examples of possible wheel cipher codes.
 


Meaningless coincidence, I'm fairly sure. The fact, though, that An Unexpected Journey opened in the US on the same day as this attack probably indicates that there is something significant to be found in the film.

In An Unexpected Journey, Peter Jackson does what is far too common currently. He sacrifices spirit for style. Any Tolkienesque magic that was found in the original LOTR film trilogy has been squeezed out of this film in favour of 48fps and 3D gimmickry. Jackson manages to reduce a classic of children's literature to a boring cartoon.

Fortunately, though, for us lovers of sync a movie does not have to be good in order for it to contain profound meaning. This is also the case with AUJ . When combined with an analysis of Tolkien's book, and in the light of recent events, and especially in the context of the symbolic passage from 2012 to 2013, several things become clear.

 

The story is one of thirteen dwarves who travel to their ancestral homeland in the Lonely Mountain in order to overcome the dragon that now dwells there and to repossess lost treasure. Bilbo Baggins, a fairly respectable hobbit of Hobbiton, becomes the reluctant fourteenth member of the party. He is to be the burglar. Their quest is largely successful.

In terms of Middle Earth history, several important events are set into motion in the course of this quest. Smaug is killed and Middle Earth is finally rid of dragons, the Battle of Five Armies is fought involving men, dwarves, elves, eagles and orcs, Sauron as the Necromancer is driven from Dol Guldur, and most importantly Bilbo discovers the One Ring in Moria.



Of these, only the last is depicted in the movie. Significantly, then, it is on Dec. 14th, 2012 for U.S. audiences at least that the Ring is symbolically found. I'll return to this point.

The narrative structure of The Hobbit is simple enough. Taking Bilbo as the chief protagonist, the story is a clear example of what Joseph Campbell famously plotted as the Hero's Journey. Bilbo is set on his adventure by Gandalf and the dwarves, faces many ordeals and challenges, wins the Ring from a mysterious being, plays an essential role in the slaying of the dragon, and returns home a transformed individual. The book's subtitle of There and Back Again underscores the cyclical structure of the story.


Campbell uses the idea of the hero's journey to explore common themes of myth in all times and cultures. Campbell also calls this cycle the monomyth -- a term and idea Campbell takes directly from Finnegans Wake.

The Hobbit enacts another cycle also developed by Joyce in the Wake -- the cycle of attack, revenge and counter-attack. In The Hobbit, both in the book and in Jackson's movie, this cycle is expressed in several ways. The dwarves want to take revenge on the dragon for capturing their kingdom, but the orc, Azog, also wants to take revenge on Thorin for wounding him. Thorin's own attack on Azog was to avenge the latter's killing of Thorin's grandfather, Thror.

Azog the orc, especially in the movie, acts as a sort of lesser version of Smaug himself. He is evil villain number 2. The cycle of revenge and counter-revenge between dwarves and orcs, and personalized in the struggle between Thorin and Azog, is a major sub-plot of both the book and the movie.

This cycle, really starring Azog, reminds me instantly of the Orc Cycle found in the poetry of William Blake. Before getting into this, however, I should stress that the word "orc" refers to two entirely different things in the work of Blake and Tolkien.

Revolt and Revolve

Throughout his writing Tolkien provides a number of conflicting myths on the origins of the orcs. The Tolkien myth that Jackson seems to settle on is that the orcs were once elves, their bodies and souls twisted and mutated by the Dark Lord. As Saruman asks in The Fellowship of the Ring film:

Do you know how the Orcs first came into being? They were elves once, taken by the dark powers, tortured and mutilated. A ruined and terrible form of life...

Tolkien also gives multiple explanations for the etymology of the word orc. One source is the Old English word orcneas, which is found in Beowulf  and where it is described as being the monstrous offspring of Cain. This is interesting as it corresponds with the myth given above.

Here, then, we have two accounts of warring twins -- Elf and Orc, and Abel and Cain. We could also add the twins from Finnegans Wake, Shaun and Shem, and Christ and Antichrist. Cain and Abel are, of course, the firstborn sons of Adam. Again the Hero Twins theme is encountered.

Blake's version of Orc is seemingly much different. In Fearful Symmetry, critic Northrop Frye explains what Blake means by Orc:

Orc is the power of the human desire to achieve a better world which produces revolution and foreshadows the apocalypse... To the reactionaries, of course, he is a demonic and hellish power, rising up to destroy everything that is sacred and worth conserving.

Blake describes Orc as a revolutionary youth with flaming hair who, like Prometheus, sought to steal fire from the gods.

In Blake's eccentric mythology, Orc is in constant resistance against Urizen who represents the decadent and corrupt old order. From the point of view of this order, as Frye explains in the quote above, Orc is entirely Satanic. From Blake's perspective, though, this is entirely accurate. Satan/Lucifer (Blake combines these two figures following Milton) is the first rebel who becomes corrupted in exactly the same way as Orc.

Orc is Satan, and it is here that the etymologies of Orc in Blake and Tolkien perfectly match. For both authors Orc is ultimately derived from Orcus, a Roman god of the underworld.

Blasphemous Demon, Antichrist, hater of Dignities;
Lover of wild rebellion, and transgresser of God's Law,
Why dost thou come to Angels' eyes in this terrific form?

Despite this commonality, while Tolkien presents the orc as being wholly negative (although as a possible mirror of the elf), Blake's view of Orc is far more complex. Only the orthodox see Orc as being demonic. For the poets and the common people, he is a hero, a liberator. He shines like the rising sun. Frye again:

Orc represents the return of the dawn and the spring and all the human analogies of their return: the continuous arrival of new life, the renewed sexual and reproductive power which that brings, and the periodic overthrow of social tyranny.

Orc is the dragon slayer. He is St. George. He is Apollo slaying the Python. He is the resurrected body of Osiris as Horus seeking revenge against his monster brother/uncle Set/Typhon. (13 pieces of Osiris' body as the 13 dwarves? Bilbo as the phallus??) Smaug, for Blake, would represent the old order and, perhaps ironically, it is Bilbo and the dwarves who possess the spirit of Orc.

Urizen, the tyrannical god or god-like tyrant, is always associated with the Dragon -- the Leviathan, Hobbes' appropriate name for the State or Empire. And as Philip K. Dick reminded us, "the Empire never ended."



Blake's mythology is very complex and difficult, but if Urizen is associated with the Dragon then Orc is most often represented as the Serpent/Snake. Like the Sun, and as in the stories of past Orcs like Baldur or Christ, Orc is born or reborn at the Winter Solstice. Orc is also associated with the spear or lance (Lanza), because it is with this weapon that he attacks Urizen.

In The French Revolution and America, a Prophecy, Blake identifies the spirit of the American and French revolutions with Orc. It was Blake's hope that the revolution which begun in America in 1776, and later erupted more violently in  France, would circle the globe toppling tyranny everywhere.

Frye explains that Blake may have taken the Serpent symbol for Orc from the original Gadsen or "Don't Tread On Me" flag of the American rebels against the Empire.

The serpent which appeared on the flags of the revolting Americans would then be an emblem of an infant Orc, and may have been the source of the association.

Blake's initial enthusiasm for the revolutions of the eighteenth century soon became tempered with disillusionment. The revolutionary US government did not outlaw slavery, which Blake hated, and the French Revolution was entirely highjacked by Napoleon. Blake realized that a cycle was in operation. To revolt is also to revolve. Orc would eventually himself become Urizen.

Eyes and Crosses

Blake envisioned these cycles as occurring, in their widest span, seven times in "history" (Blake does not mean literal history). He termed these the "seven eyes of God." Each of these seven, named after different Orc manifestations from Lucifer to Jesus, has three phases.

The first phase comes with the original revolutionary fervour. It occurs when the imagination of the people is at its greatest. It is characterized by energy and spontaneous creation. The second phase is entered when this spontaneity and original energy begins to wane. It becomes marked by increasingly abstract religion, a mechanical view of the universe, mediocrity, and the domination of "common sense" over eccentric genius.

The third phase is most unbearable. The mechanical worldview becomes externalized and our world and humanity itself become mere machines. In Blake's poem, The Four Zoas, this phase is symbolized by Urizen crucifying the serpent Orc. We see this symbolism in Moses' crucifixion of the snake in the desert, foreshadowing the crucifixion of Christ. Frye explains:

The cycle finally dies in a wild cancerous tissue of huge machinery, a blankly materialist philosophy, an inner death of the soul which causes mass wars, and a passive acceptance of the most reckless tyranny. It is in these late periods that new prophets, in whom the spirit of a reviving Orc is stirring, appear to proclaim a new gospel. This last phase is symbolized by the crucifixion of Orc, in the form of a serpent, on the tree of mystery, the binding of human imagination to the vegetable world and the absorption of human life into the order of nature.

Of all his wandering Experiments in the horrible Abyss
He knew that weakness stretches out in breadth & length he knew
That wisdom reaches high & deep & therefore he made Orc
In Serpent form compelld stretch out & up the mysterious tree
He sufferd him to Climb that he might draw all human forms
Into submission to his will nor knew the dread result 
(The Four Zoas)

At the end of the cycle, at the closing of each of the eyes of God, Orc becomes Urizen. The Snake becomes the Dragon.

As soon as we begin to think of the relation of Orc to Urizen, it becomes impossible to maintain them as separate principles. If Orc represents the reviving force of a new cycle, whether of dawn or spring or history, he must grow old and die at the end of that cycle. Urizen must eventually gain the mastery over Orc, but such a Urizen cannot be another power but Orc himself, grown old.

The same is true of the dragon: the dragon must be the hero's predecessor and the hero in his turn must become a dragon. But if the dragon is death, then when the hero dies he is swallowed by or otherwise absorbed into the dragon....

But if the dragon is itself the old Orc, then surely is not Orc simply a dragon who has the power to shed his skin from time to time? This is a very abrupt change from our young and heroic dragon-killer, but nevertheless Blake continually associates Orc with the serpent, which is an easy modulation of the dragon symbol.

The Dragon and the Snake fight each other until they eventually meld into one. It seems to me an amazing sync that we are currently in the transition from the Chinese Year of the Dragon, mostly 2012, to the Year of the Snake, officially beginning on Feb. 10, 2013. Does the Snake finally conquer the Dragon or does it once again become what it once hated?

It's also interesting that Blake's Orc, the Snake, is born or risen on the Winter Solstice. The Solstice of last year was to have been the point of transformation. Symbolically that may have been so, but do the real transformative events happen this year when the serpent has fully awakened?

The Course of Heaven

The Chinese zodiac of twelve years is another cycle to determine the quality of time. On a micro, more detailed level the Chinese observed the quality of time through use of the I Ching. Of this ancient oracle's 64 hexagrams, the hexagram which most clearly syncs with the present moment is Hexagram 24, Fu, the Turning Point.



This hexagram is also identified with the Winter Solstice, a time when new things are slowly born and rest is required.

The Judgement

Return. Success.
Going out and coming in without error.
Friends come without blame.
To and fro goes the way.
On the seventh day comes return.
It furthers one to have somewhere to go.

The Image

Thunder within the earth:
The image of the Turning Point.
Thus the kings of antiquity closed the passes
At the time of solstice.
Merchants and strangers did not go about,
And the ruler
Did not travel through the provinces.

This might sound familiar to certain readers, especially if they are fans of early, Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd. Syd admittedly lifted his lyrics directly from the I Ching for his song "Chapter 24" on the unparalleled, psychedelic masterpiece, The Piper at the Gate of Dawn. 

All movement is accomplished in six stages,
and the seventh brings return.
The seven is the number of the young light.
It forms when darkness is increased by one.
Change return success.
Going and coming without error.
Action brings good fortune...
Sunset.

The time is with the month of winter solstice,
when the change is due to come.
Thunder in the Earth, the course of Heaven.
Things cannot be destroyed once and for all.

Change return success.
Going and coming without error.
Action brings good fortune...
Sunset.
Sunrise.

The time is with the month of winter solstice, when the change is due to come. This certainly sounds like the prophecies and promise of 2012. But there is even a greater sync with both the hexagram and song, and the present moment of transition. Chapter 24 could also be Solar Cycle 24, which by the Solstice was approaching its maximum in early 2013.

 

The eleven year sunspot cycle may have an even closer relation to the Orc cycle. There have been studies correlating periods of maximum sunspot activity, the "solar maximum,"with upsurges of popular resistance, riots and revolution. As far back as the First World War, A. L. Tchijevsky, a Russian professor of Astronomy and Biological Physics noticed that the sunspot cycle was somehow related to cycles of social discontent.

Tchijevsky divided the sunspot cycle into four distinct periods. These span from a time of autocratic, conservative rule with passivity and disunity among the masses, leading to a period of gradual discontent and challenges to elite rule, then building into the current phase of outright rebellion and revolution, and returning to a time when the masses become less excited and more apathetic.

Clearly, this eleven year cycle also reveals the shifting fortunes of Urizen to Orc and then back to Urizen again. Tchijevsky's four periods neatly mirrors the three phases and return of Blake's Orc cycle.

 

2011 was an especially radical year with Time Magazine naming The Protester as its Person of the Year in recognition of the Arab Spring, the Indignados of Spain and Greece, the riots of Britain, the global spread of the Occupy movement and so on. Orc was obviously on the rage. The protest continued to a lesser but still vocal extent in 2012, and global discontent has by no means subsided in early 2013.

Indeed, if Tchijevsky is correct as we reach solar maximum these social disturbances will only increase in frequency and intensity. Is the Snake about to finally overcome the Dragon? Are the elite aware of this cycle? Are they planning for it? Or perhaps they know that the wheel's still in spin and there's no tellin' who that it's namin', as the poet sang.

The Wheel of Fortune card of the Tarot, and especially in the Rider-Waite deck, is the Major Arcanum that most closely corresponds to Hexagram 24 of the I Ching. In fact, one meaning of the card is "the turning point."

In the Rider-Waite version of the card we also find familiar symbolism. A snake slithers down the left side of the wheel while a red coloured Anubis, an apt substitute for the dragon, rides up the right.

Four winged creatures also appear in the four corners of the card. These represent the four evangelists as well as the four fixed astrological signs, Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius. These four are identical with the Four Zoas of Blake's mythology as well as the Four Historians of Finnegans Wake.



It is interesting that the top of the wheel, where the Sphinx sits between the Angel of Aquarius and the Eagle of Scorpio, marks exactly the point of the Winter Solstice. This is another obvious connection with Hexagram 24. Is the change due to come?

Wheels Within Wheels

The history of the Wheel of Fortune symbol is also relevant here. While its origins go back to the ancient beliefs in the goddess, Fortuna, the idea becomes Christianized and popularized in the early medieval period by the philosopher, Boethius.

The influence of Boethius' principal text, The Consolation of Philosophy, written in 524 AD while the author was imprisoned and awaiting trial before his execution, cannot be overestimated. It captured the popular imagination of the Middle Ages, and its inspiration to the art of that era is obvious.



In The Consolation of Philosophy, the goddess Fortuna describes her "art":

Am I alone to be forbidden to do what I will with my own? Unrebuked, the skies now reveal the brightness of day, now shroud the daylight in the darkness of night; the year may now engarland the face of the earth with flowers and fruits, now disfigure it with storms and cold. The sea is permitted to invite with smooth and tranquil surface to-day, to-morrow to roughen with wave and storm. Shall man's insatiate greed bind me to a constancy foreign to my character? This is my art, this the game I never cease to play. I turn the wheel that spins. I delight to see the high come down and the low ascend. Mount up, if thou wilt, but only on condition that thou wilt not think it a hardship to come down when the rules of my game require it. Wert thou ignorant of my character? 

The Orc cycle is also an aspect of Fortuna's wheel. The masses rise up. The privileged fall. The rebel is transformed into a new tyrant and soon faces a new rebellion. The goddess takes delight in all of this.

It's fascinating, from the point of view of this blog, that The Consolation of Philosophy appears in the very opening scene of the movie, 2012. Immediately before the scene of the overturned toy ship, which for many resonated with the Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster of early 2012, is a brief shot of the leading role reading a copy of Boethius in a taxi.



With this we have the connection of the Wheel of Fortune to the not only the Winter Solstice, but also to 2012.

Much of the movie, 2012, is about how people are able to cope with tribulation. This is the main theme of Boethius' book. This is also a key theme of a far better film, Melancholia. Like Melancholia, 2012 is about the end of the world or at least the end of the Age.

Allusions to past shifts in the ages are abundant in the film. The elite, the "chosen," escape in giant "Arks." A boy named "Noah" is able to be saved along with his father, who wrote a book about "Atlantis." The Arks finally land in Africa, which escapes much of the cataclysm, and in Blake's poetry Africa is at times referred to as an unfallen part of Atlantis.

At the end of 2012, after the deluge, the date shown on screen is Day 27 Month 1 Year 0001. What is striking, apart from the obvious indication of the start of a new era, is the impersonal, universal and almost mechanical notation for timekeeping. The New Age, apparently, is one of strict rationalism and not of the imagination. Blake would be appalled.

The apocalypse has come. A new eon has begun. Atlantis has risen. Apparently. But what really has been shown here? What has changed? Only the wheel has moved. For Blake, as we'll see, that's not enough. Orc has become Urizen yet again. The new Snake will become another Dragon. Is there a way to escape the cycle?