Search This Blog

Thursday, January 10, 2019

The Beast, The Dragon, and did they influence J. R. R. Tolkien?

So this Apocalypse Tapestry, as  Apocalypse from the Book of Revelation, in France...

... is about the seven heads and 10 horns, and 10 crowns on the horns. The dragon gave authority to the Beast from the Sea (aka The Beast)... and I tried to zoom in when looking at this on the web and see what sort of tiny little crowns would be on the horns. They must be about the size of rings in the picture. Hang on! As I started to read on wikipedia... then it struck me. Was this not how Tolkien got his idea for the rings of kings and the One Ring?

Take this quote from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beast_(Revelation)

The seven heads represent both seven mountains and seven kings, and the ten horns are ten kings who have not yet received kingdoms. Of the seven kings, five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come. The beast itself is an eighth king who is of the seven and was and is not and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition."[4]


So that sure as hell reminds me of the human kings with rings, the dwarf kings with rings, and the elvish kings with rings. How many did Tolkien's world have? Twenty rings.

http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Rings_of_Power

"Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie."


So is that literally both the dragon and the beast from the sea, 10 crowns each, so twenty total?! I can't be the first to stumble upon this, but I haven't found it via the internet yet. Hang on, did the dragon have crowns, also (maybe not)? Well I'm reading on, and naturally there are different versions... sometimes the beast from the earth has only two horns like a [lamb?] or something and "talks like a dragon"... and so isn't a dragon I guess? Looks like it is depicted here....

The second beast is primarily described in Revelation chapter thirteen. This second beast comes out of the earth whose overall appearance is not described, other than having "two horns like a lamb", and speaking "like a dragon".[5]

I take it the earth beast here is the lion looking monster with 2 curly horns. 
Well anyway, I still wonder if the tapestry was an influence on Tolkien. Certainly I've seen references to Tolkien's works being Christian story influenced or something. C.S. Lewis also. Maybe it's a thing, maybe not... fun to speculate.

No comments:

Post a Comment