Ēala Ēarendel

This is a translated section from the Old English poem that inspired Tolkien’s poem ‘The Voyage of Earendel’, which together with his constructed language, was the beginning of his legendarium. The poem is an Anglo-Saxon Christian poem called ‘Crist I’ or ‘Crist A.’ 

Hail Earendel, brightest of angels,

Sent to men over middle-earth,

And true radiance of the sun,

Fine beyond stars, you always illuminate,

From your self, every season!

As you, God born wholly of God,

Son of the true Father, were ever

In the glory of heaven without beginning,

So now your own creation awaits you

Through eternity in need, that you send

To us that bright sun, and you yourself come

So that you illuminate those who for the longest time,

Covered by smoke, and in darkness here,

Dwelled in continual night; enfolded in sins,

They had to endure the dark shadow of death.

Now we believe in joyful salvation,

Brought to people through the word of God,

Which in the beginning was from the Father almighty,

Jointly eternal with God, and now again became

The flesh without sin that the virgin bore

Through suffering to safety. God was with us,

Seen among sins; the mighty child of fate

And the son of man dwelt together,

United amidst the people. We may express

Our thanks to the Lord of victory always through our deeds,

Because he wanted to send himself to us.

(‘Crist I’, Lyric 5)

‘Earendel’ is the equivalent of Oriens, Dawn-bringer, Bringer of light or Rising light - in Anglo-Saxon, used for the sunrise and for the morning star. Here it refers to Christ - brightest of Angels, not because he is of Angelic nature but because, by way of analogy, he supereminently fulfills the role of ‘Aggelos’ and is often called ‘King of the Angels’, as St John the Baptist can also be referred to as an ‘Angel.’

Tolkien particularly liked this name ‘Earendel’ which he found in the Old English poem, ‘Crist I.’ He was struck by its great beauty and thought it was euphonic to a peculiar degree for an Anglo-Saxon word. It is a pleasant sounding word. It is clearly fitting that a name used or co-opted to be used for Christ should be beautiful and euphonic. 

It was the inspiration for a poem Tolkien wrote in 1914: ‘The Voyage of Earendel the Evening Star.’ This was apparently the beginning of Tolkien’s mythology, together with his constructed Elvish language, which became later known as Quenya. Earendel became in Tolkien’s legandarium, the half-Elvish mariner Eärendil. In the Two Towers, Frodo explains in Quenya: ‘Hail Eärendil, brightest of stars!’ The first bit of the section from ‘Crist I’ given above was an obvious inspiration for Tolkien:

Ēala ēarendel, engla beorhtast,

ofer middangeard monnum sended.

"Hail Earendel, brightest of angels,

Sent to men over middle-earth.”

‘Middle Earth’ or ‘Middangeard’ or ‘Midgard’ was in Norse and Anglo-Saxon used to refer to the mortal realm; it was compatible with Christianised use for reference to Earth where mortals dwell, which is neither Heaven nor Hell.

Sinister Symbolism of ‘Left'

Today is the Feast of Pope St Pius X, who warned us in the Encyclical E Supremi about the distinguishing mark of the antichrist and of the cult of man and self:

The interests of God shall be Our interest, and for these We are resolved to spend all Our strength and Our very life. Hence, should anyone ask Us for a symbol as the expression of Our will, We will give this and no other: "To renew all things in Christ."

...For in truth, "The nations have raged and the peoples imagined vain things" (Ps.ii., 1.) against their Creator, so frequent is the cry of the enemies of God: "Depart from us" (Job. xxi., 14). And as might be expected we find extinguished among the majority of men all respect for the Eternal God, and no regard paid in the manifestations of public and private life to the Supreme Will - nay, every effort and every artifice is used to destroy utterly the memory and the knowledge of God.

When all this is considered there is good reason to fear lest this great perversity may be as it were a foretaste, and perhaps the beginning of those evils which are reserved for the last days; and that there may be already in the world the "Son of Perdition" of whom the Apostle speaks (II. Thess. ii., 3). Such, in truth, is the audacity and the wrath employed everywhere in persecuting religion, in combating the dogmas of the faith, in brazen effort to uproot and destroy all relations between man and the Divinity! While, on the other hand, and this according to the same apostle is the distinguishing mark of Antichrist, man has with infinite temerity put himself in the place of God, raising himself above all that is called God; in such wise that although he cannot utterly extinguish in himself all knowledge of God, he has contemned God's majesty and, as it were, made of the universe a temple wherein he himself is to be adored. "He sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself as if he were God" (II. Thess. ii., 2).

We can see these themes in modern culture and society, and in the subversions and decadence of our times.

The original 'Left Wing' in the French Revolutionary days were the subversive, masonic, anti-Church, and anti-Monarchy forces. Different ‘left wing’ movements throughout history have played roles of advancing different subversive and diabolical ends and chaos. 

But the symbolism of the 'left' seems to have more historically far-reaching symbolic significance. In India, Vamachara referred to unorthodox ways of ritual. Helena Blavatsky translated Vamachara in the west as ‘Left Hand Path’. The Left Hand Path connotes self-deification, hedonistic, even subhuman, and taboo-breaking activities, and the abandoning of set morality. 

Some occultists and 'magic practitioners' talk of a difference between a left hand path and right hand path. The meanings here are complex. If you're an advocate of the 'left hand way', you're going to see what you regard as moralistic and servile as the enemy. Therefore, they could lump together the True Religion, other false but non-occult religious branches, and then also misguided people who think they are 'benevolent' magic practitioners. One origin of this distinction could be that evil praeternatural forces have long adopted 'left' symbolism as a sort of signature among their explicit devotees. This in turn could be a result of the fact of who will stand at which side on judgement day. As Our Lord said (Matthew 25): And when the Son of man shall come in his majesty, and all the angels with him, then shall he sit upon the seat of his majesty. And all nations shall be gathered together before him: and he shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on his left. Then shall the king say to them that shall be on his right hand: Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world...Then he shall say to them also that shall be on his left hand: Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels. 

Given that the forces of hell have co-opted the symbolism of 'left path', this could be an explanation for why there is an association with disorder, evil, and chaos with the left in cultures throughout the world. I speculate that this could be due to historical experiences of attempted subversions and revolutions by certain magic-practicing peoples. According to one website I found on the internet: “...In New Zealand the Maoris considered the right side to be godly, representing life; the left side is dedicated to demons and the devil, representing death...Amongst North American Indians the right represents bravery and virility but the left signifies death and burial...Throughout the African continent the right is good and the left is evil. In some places wives should never touch their husbands' face with their left hand. The same patterns persist in South America: The right is good, is life, is divine but the left is female, bad, evil and morbid.”

Furthermore, according to a wikapedia article on the 'Left Hand Path':

“practitioners state the difference between the two is that the desired outcome of the right is to be beside "God" and to serve him, while the left believe in self deification and bow to no one...espousing the breaking of taboo and the abandoning of set morality...Right-handed path practitioners tend to work towards ascending their soul towards ultimate union (or reunion) with the divine source, returning to heaven, allegorically alluded to as restoration or climbing back up the ladder after the "great fall". In Solomon's lesser key, they embrace the light and try to annihilate anything they regard as "dark" or "evil"...Left-handed path practitioners embrace the dark as well as the light in order to invoke the alchemical formula solve et coagula ("dissolve and precipitate")...separating from that divinity, out of this creation into a new creation of their own making, with themselves as the sole divinity of the new universe, apart from the previous creation. The godhood self sought by Left Hand Path followers is represented by the Qlipha Thaumiel in the Tree of Knowledge.”

Moreover, the site referred to above says:

“The RHP [Right Hand Path] represents the vast majority of religious practice in the World and followers of the LHP [Left Hand Path] are often instinctively reticent about revealing their affiliations...”

And it gives quotes from various sources, including the below:

“deliberate attempt by Left-Hand Path magicians to transcend the outmoded and value-laden dichotomy of 'black' versus 'white' magic ... because it is held to reflect the 'moronic oversimplicity of the Judeo-Xtian distinction between good and evil.”

- “Left-Hand Path Ritual Magick" by R. Sutcliffe (1995)

“Collective religious and cultural norms are questioned in the pursuit of individualized ethics and spiritual evolution. The magician seeks to abandon his/her culturally given set of ethics, and adopt personal and individualized ones”

- Granholm (2009)

'Right hand’ seems like it can have different extensions. In its broadest extension, it can include true morality and the True Religion, as well as those religions that deviate from the full truth but attempt an orthodox way, as well as those who generally seek to follow the Natural Law, but it seems that it can also include (and can also exclusively refer to) misguided individuals who engage in 'magic' under the mistaken pretext that it is ‘white magic’. Perhaps we can think of the latter as a sort of counterfeit right hand path which one must beware of. 

Indeed those who embrace Jesus Christ and the Catholic Religion are not one side on two Manichean sides of magic. First of all, we condemn all magic, since, unlike miracles which have a divine source, magic has a demonic source. Also we reject a Manichean mindset. We are not just 'one side' of a balanced conflict. We transcend the divisions of the world, adhering to the Eternal Truth. Nevertheless, if we consider 'right' and 'left' in reference to Christ's words about judgement day, then we can indeed think of 'the Children of Light' referred to by Our Blessed Lord as the true right hand.

Perhaps one lesson to take from the idea of a counterfeit 'right hand' is that evil forces can rely on their left hand allies, but what they also seek to do is to corrupt those seeking to follow the right way. This is why there is always an attempt and often success to corrupt the apparent 'right' or those who see themselves as wanting to be orthodox, moral, and rightly ordered. Consider how much the ‘political right’ got corrupted in the history leading up to present day, to the extent that now it is just a slightly more moderate branch of ultra libertinism. 

May St Pius X intercede for us, together with Our Lady of the Rosary, St Joseph the Terror of Demons, St Michael the Archangel, St Augustine, and the Martyrs of the Spanish Crusade.

Surge Dómine et dissipéntur inimíci tui et fúgiant qui odérunt te a fácie tua.