7. Helm's Deep; 8. The Road to Isengard
The chapter deals with the Battle of Helm's Deep and contains little of interest for our analysis. However, we can note that Gandalf rides off on some urgent errand before the battle begins. “He comes and goes,” says Háma, “and no one knows when.” This is an apt description of what Gandalf represents, in a broader sense, namely daemon. As an unconscious and thus autonomous function within us, we cannot choose when it will be present or absent. When we discussed intuitive writing in “Treebeard,” we saw that Tolkien, when stuck in his story, simply waited until the development revealed itself to him, or “till it writes itself.” In other words, when the daemon/Gandalf was absent, Tolkien waited until it returned, and then the story could continue. In a letter, Tolkien calls Gandalf the “Kindler,”[1] which, from the current perspective, can describe one who ignites the flame of creativity and provides inspiration – in other words, daemon.
The corresponding figure in alchemy was Mercurius, the spiritual helper, familiaris, in the adept’s mystical work. But Mercurius was also called cervus fugitivus, the elusive stag, for he could suddenly disappear and become inaccessible.[2] Mercurius was both the adept’s fortune and ruin. It was not up to the adept himself; he was at the mercy of Mercurius’s whims. This corresponds, as we have seen, to the daemon, which can drive a creative person to forsake everything else – and then simply abandon him. We saw examples of this in “Intuitive Writing.”
“He comes and goes, no one knows when,” Háma says laconically, perhaps with a glance at the “stag” disappearing into the distance.
8. The Road to Isengard
After the battle, the heroes ride north toward Isengard to confront Saruman. They see that the river, which has its source in the mountains behind Isengard and once flowed through the valley and out across the plains of Rohan, has dried up. In the chapters on Moria and Lothlórien, we saw how stagnant, drying, or flowing water represents a barren or fertile state, respectively – a metaphor for whether the good feminine energy is available or not. That it has dried up for Saruman is not surprising.
When they make camp for the night, the Ents (or Huorns) pass them on both sides, heading toward Isengard – the same ones who aided in the Battle of Helm’s Deep. Once they have vanished into the darkness, the river returns. The Ents represent “nature’s revenge,” a restoration of the maternal order; thus, it is unsurprising that the feminine energy returns in connection with their arrival.
The next day, they ride on through mist and steam. They find that the once-beautiful valley leading to Isengard is now filled with undergrowth and thorns. No trees remain. “Thorny creepers crawled over the ground or clung to bushes and slopes, forming tangled thickets where smaller animals dwelt.” The area foreshadows the chaos that Saruman and Isengard have now been consumed by.
Then they ride along a road and come to a tall black pillar rising before them. It supports a massive stone carved with chisel and painted to resemble a white hand with red nails, pointing north.
The white hand is Saruman’s sign. His warriors bore a white, open hand painted on their shields. It is not an entirely obvious “symbol.” But the hand typically symbolizes action and conscious will. We interact with our physical surroundings through our hands – working, shaping, crafting – but it is also a means of communication. To handle one’s environment with confidence indicates ability, strength, or authority. The Roman legions sometimes used an open hand as a signum; it could express control over a territory. With the Roman salute, the hand was extended from the body in a gesture reminiscent of suppression, evoking thoughts of dominance. We believe this is how Saruman’s mark should be understood, as Saruman is above all power-hungry, both in his desire to dominate others and in his lust for the One Ring.
That a statue of a white hand with red nails stands before the riders thus expresses “deliberate control through violence,” and it points to the one behind it.
The hand is likely white due to Saruman’s pursuit of knowledge and enlightenment, something his tower emphasizes. This pursuit involves consciousness, which the hand itself symbolizes, in contrast to unconsciousness. While consciousness is undoubtedly a good thing, its pursuit risks losing contact with the unconscious, with the earth itself. In dreams, the symbol of being high up often expresses exactly this – the dreamer has lost contact with the earth, with his or her natural, instinctive self, or yin. “Indeed,” writes Edward Edinger, “for contemporary [dreamers], elements of ascending, heights, and flying almost always indicate a need for descent.”[3] Jung says of this cultural problem:
“What Nietzsche does in Zarathustra is really what our intellect and our cult of the will is doing – ascending, ascending, chiefly for selfish and egotistical ends, and in vain ambition apparently high above the earth. … It is the fault of all of us who have an attitude which disregards the laws of the earth. We simply provoke the spirit of gravity by striving after the stars …”[4]
This becomes, in this context, an apt description of Saruman, who, in his unbridled ambition, has provoked the earth’s counterreaction, represented by the Ents. But let he who is free from the sin of ambition cast the first stone.
When they finally reach Isengard, the destruction is total. “If the Great Sea had risen in wrath and fallen upon the mountains with a storm wind, the devastation would not have been greater.” The area between the walls and the tower of Orthanc is filled with steaming water, a “bubbling cauldron” where debris floats. (This witch’s cauldron reminds us of the lake outside Moria.) The earth’s rebellion is terribly destructive, a raging, unstoppable force, as furious goddesses often express in myths.
The figure that might first come to mind is Kali, who represents the destructive aspect of the mother goddess, but closer to our context, perhaps the forest goddess Artemis is more relevant. As is well known, she was a huntress who preferred to roam alone in the woods, but if anyone wronged her, her vengeance came swiftly and mercilessly. This could strike individuals, as when Actaeon saw her bathing, and she transformed him into a stag that was torn apart by his own hunting dogs; or when the king of Calydon forgot to offer the first sheaf of the harvest to Artemis, enraging her so much that she sent a monstrous boar to ravage his fields; or when she prevented Agamemnon’s fleet from sailing after one of his soldiers claimed to be a better archer than Artemis, with the intention of allowing it only if the king sacrificed his own daughter.
There are several stories of this kind, showing how the goddess’s wrath could have dire consequences, primarily due to hubris, or in this context, inflation. All she demands is a little respect.
Saruman, high up in his tower with his head in the clouds, has had orcs recklessly devastate the forests below on the earth. This has, of course, provoked the spirit of the forest, and now her vengeance has finally struck him.
The area is flooded because the Ents have destroyed the dams Saruman had built in his industrialization ambitions. They do not tolerate dammed water; the feminine energy must flow freely as it wills. At the same time, the water has mostly rushed down into all these pits and further south, so the area might currently be better described as waterlogged – a state where the ground has absorbed more water than it can “swallow.” This is a fitting image for the inflationary state; for example, identification with an archetype, which causes the consciousness to be overwhelmed by an influx of unconscious content (as water typically symbolizes). The fact that a tower rises in the middle of this waterlogged valley doubles the inflation symbolism.
In alchemy, there is an image of the king suffering from dropsy (edema), a consequence of having drunk too much of his “special water.” This signifies an “inner drowning” due to inflation – an influx of more unconscious content than the ego can handle.[5] What is required is “drying out,” extracting the unconscious from the ego’s domain so that renewal can occur. But this is a challenge, not least because the inflated individual is unaware of his own “waterlogged” state. We will also see that Saruman never abandons his lust for power or his identification with the archetype, even when he becomes a rather pathetic figure.
The ground is “somewhat hollowed out like a giant shallow bowl” with a tower in the center. We are reminded of the Barrow-downs, where the hobbits came to a place with the same shape – a shallow bowl with an obelisk in the center. The obelisk was the first distinctly masculine object in the story and foreshadowed the rite of passage from boy to man. Isengard was once green and filled with avenues and orchards, irrigated by streams that formed a lake – a feminine place from which the masculine tower rose. Isengard was a place where opposites were united. It was also built by the Dúnedain in ancient times, the people represented by Aragorn, and we know that he has the ability to balance masculine and feminine, as far as his masculine mission allows. But under Saruman, this beautiful place has been defiled by buildings and mines alongside general destruction – the feminine has been ravaged in his tyrannical masculine pursuit. Iron wheels turn, giant hammers strike. At night, vapors rise from the pits, illuminated from below by “poison-green light.” The place is full of holes where, for example, wolves are fed; the shafts run deep, and everywhere lie mounds of earth, “which in the moonlight made Isengard’s ring resemble a graveyard for restless corpses.” The perverted masculine corrupts and industrializes, while the suppressed feminine has been twisted into black magic, death, and unrest.
High above this cauldron rises Orthanc, where the tyrannical Saruman sits, detached from the earth, with his studies, his desires, and his hubris.
Footnotes
[1] Tolkien, Letters, p. 390.
[2] Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, par. 84.
[3] Edinger, Anatomy of the Psyche, p. 142.
[4] Jung, Visions, p. 282.
[5] Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis, par. 358-359; Practice of Psychotherapy, par. 472.