Brow Energy

 

 

SYMBOLISM

J. R. R. Tolkien:  Costume design

The Royal Crown

Tar-Elestirnë , Lady of the Star Brow

A title given to Erendis in Númenor after her betrothal to Aldarion, 'Lady of the Star-brow' is a direct translation of the Elvish Tar-Elestirnë.

 

Some time before this, Aldarioin had given Erendis a diamond, a gift he had brought back from his journeys to Middle-earth. Erendis had the jewel set on a silver fillet, and when their betrothal was announced, she wore the diamond on her forehead. From that time on, she was given the title Tar-Elestirnë, Lady of the Star-brow. 

 

 

Erendis does not appear to have worn the fillet indefinitely - there are signs that she abandoned it after her estrangement from her husband. Nonetheless, the tradition had been set, and the later Kings and Queens of Númenor wore a fillet of this kind in place of a crown. The tradition survived into Middle-earth after the Downfall: the Kingss of Arnor wore the Elendilmir, a royal jewel in the same style as Tar-Elestirnë's gem.

 

Lady In White - Elven

In Tolkien, we have two almost identical ‘ladies in white’: Lúthien in The Silmarillion, and Arwen in The Lord of the Rings. Both these Elf princesses are considered the most beautiful women of their time; both have eyes that shine with light, and skin as white as snow. Both are connected with a white star-shaped flower called Niphredil. This is a flower that first bloomed in celebration of Lúthien’s birth, and blossomed eternally on both Lúthien and Arwen’s burial mounds. And finally, the winning of both required near-impossible quests. For the mortal Beren to win Lúthien, the Silmaril had to be captured; and for the mortal hero Aragorn to win Arwen, the One Ring had to be destroyed.

-David Day, Tolkien’s Ring [illustrated by Alan Lee]

 

The Hope of the Dúnedain

Strider leads the four hobbits and a newly acquired pony away from the village of Bree. See the page for Aragorn as Strider in The Wild 

The name 'Estel' [Hope] was given to Aragorn by Lord Elrond in his youth at Rivendell, to keep the young heir of  Isildur safe from the Dark Lord. Gilraen took Aragorn to Rivendell as a child after his father was killed hunting orcs. Aragorn visited her garden memorial in Fellowship of the Ring, when Elrond's Council convened.

 

Éowyn, The Lady in White

Shieldmaiden of the Rohirrim

White Lady of Rohan:  A title given by Faramir to Éowyn of Rohan. They married, and dwelt together in the hills of Emyn Arnen in Ithilien.

 

Gandalf the Wizard

Gandalf on the bridge with the Balrog

created by: itubeftw, who edited together all the parts of Gandalf's battle with the Balrog to create this complete version.
Videos: 25  go  You Tube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbYlq6O9QkE

 

Gandalf is the keeper of Narya. Originally the Ruby Ring was borne by Cirdan, keeper of the Grey Havens. He passed on the Red Ring, in secret, to Gandalf, the Grey who drew power from it during his battle on the Bridge of Khazad-Dum

See  Howard Shore's original piece for Gandalf the White's first appearance from 'The Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers'.

 

Historical Context of a Ritual Mentality

     For royal ceremonies, the European monarchies, particularly those of France and England, perpetuated in a new key the medieval ritual expressions of Christian sanctity, while Renaissance Italy added strikingly new artistic and theatrical effects and iconologies. Many early modern Europeans held the medieval belief of the "king's two bodies," that is, kingship was represented in a unique royal person who possessed both a natural, mortal body and a mystical, immortal, political one. According to this belief, the king, in ritual, became the intermediary who joined God's working in the world and his justice with the preservation of a people as a unique body politic. In studying the belief in French and English kings' ability to heal scrofula by touching people with the disease, Marc Bloch's groundbreaking study The Royal Touch traced how "rather vague ideas" based on a general belief in the supernatural character of royalty "crystallize in the eleventh and twelfth centuries into a precise and stable institution" that lasted for seven centuries. The ritual of the royal touch developed into frequent public demonstrations of the miraculous results of coronation rites, in which kings were both anointed with holy oil and crowned. Bloch traced the vicissitudes of the ritual among the divergent explanations of eight centuries of writers. By 1500, the coronation mattered less than the evidence of the king's unique nature as a royal person. French kings performed the ritual until the Revolution; the practice ended in England with the death of Queen Anne in 1714.

     The belief in the power of the royal touch emphasizes the notion that the king was a "mixed person"—part sacred and part layperson. Although the essentially religious attributes of this notion are related to the concept of the "king's two bodies," they should not be confused with it. The latter concept has a larger scope than the particular ambience and rites around the king's person and finds its fullest development in juridical thought and ceremonies that emphasized the king as image or embodiment of justice: justice being, after truth (religion in medieval Christian thought), a permanent part of God's creation. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, lawyers, officials, and corporate bodies claimed rights in this divine creation according to the notion of legal fictions: that is, that towns or institutions have rights in law as do persons. Ceremonies with kings and princes articulated these rights and mirrored right order in secular titles, offices, and institutions. Among the people participating in political life, rituals complemented and represented constitutional developments over which the seventeenth-century French were best positioned to assert hegemony as model builders. Other national histories took different turns: in Spain the isolationist policies of the monarchy starting with Philip II (ruled 1554–1598) prevented foreign ideas and innovations in state rituals; in Germany independent imperial principalities limited the spread of royal ceremonies; in England royal ceremonies took shape bounded by the weakness of the monarchy and growth of parliamentary power; in Italy the Habsburgs, papacy, and princely dynasties favored the new inventions of political spectacles over rituals that contained residues of civic traditions; and throughout Europe Reformation and Counter-Reformation churches were attentive to maintain the purity of religious ceremonies from secular pollution. Through symbolic forms and performances, early modern rituals placed one's sense of status and civic consciousness within a framework of loyalty to national monarchy or state identities.

Marc Bloch, The Royal Touch: Sacred Monarchy and Scrofula in England and France. Translated by J. E. Anderson. London, 1973. French publication of 1924 was the first to move from apologetics, polemics, or positivist interpretations of monarchical customs and ceremonies and apply the insights of ethnography and anthropology to interpreting historical sources. Essential for studying medieval and early modern ceremonies.

 

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