I’m disappointed though not surprised in this rebuff from the administrator. I understand that you had a creative idea, organized it, and had certain hopes and expectations, unwittingly it seems that from the start your hopes have been thwarted. I’m thinking though that it is you, and not Elder Chantdown who seems to have missed the point of the stated purpose of this website. You set intended parameters that you judged to have gone far afield. Yet I’m convinced that this statement from you shows your ignorance of the field you’ve chosen and the spirit of the comments of EC. Let me show how I believe the comments of EC do indeed reflect the ideas of Tolkien’s Legendarium and the works of DS Faithful and Slumbered.
First annotation- I, Nephi. I honestly have no idea with what points you take issue, but I’ll pull out a few points that I personally feel are connected to the other works. This comment was made by EC in response to another, previously held, conversation that began with the annotation at “and I know that the record I make is true. And I make it with mine own hand and I make it according to my knowledge.” That conversation discusses creation, though not easy to discover or comprehend on a cursory read over. It talked about mythos (God) creating space that through the word becomes a place/thing. [The first book in the Silmarillion is the “Ainulindale,” the “Music of the Ainur.” The Silmarillion 25 (Christopher Tolkien ed., Houghton Mifflin 2d ed. 2001) (1977). It opens with “Eru, the One,” the creator, who wills into being “the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought.” In an image illustrating Tolkien’s take on interplay between divine sovereignty and free will, Iluvatar declares the theme, but does not dictate its details, rather, he says “ye shall show forth your powers in adorning this theme, each with his own thoughts and devices, if he will.” – by JKC from the blog Common Consent]
God, mythos, made a record of what He knew to be true and he made it using his own knowledge. What he made, in Tolkien’s work, were the “offsprings of his thought.” What Nephi made were his engraved writings. EC goes on to share his thought that it is creation when a person takes a space created by mythos and “the Spirit continues to flow through linguistics channels”. When the spirit is stopped and the recursion interrupted, then we get vain imaginings not reimagining. Melkor is a great example of this vain imagining when he disrupts the flow of spirit and throws down the two giant lamps lit by the Valar. This is the opposite of creation, not to build up but to tear down.
The conversation comes back to I, Nephi when EC uses it to show archetypes and prototypes in the BoM. It’s true. He didn’t pull out any ideas from Tolkien or DS, but they are able to be independently picked up by the reader. EC mentions earthly emissaries, the archetypes of “gods/ainur” angels, “elves” prophets, ect. And that’s a theory I’m suggesting, not something I know. I, Nephi is an archetype. EC says there is a Qabbalistic teaching, a hidden secret, and the first word is I – the first letter in the name of the Existing One. How does I, Nephi relate to that Existing One? And is he stating that he is an elf? Or an Anuir? I don’t know. But these seemed like ideas worth pursuing.
*EC stands for an online name (handle) Elder Chantdown. This is a response from being kicked off of the Reimagining the Book of Mormon annotation group.
Breathings 