8. Fog on the Barrow-downs
To recapitulate, the old wise man sent Frodo out on an adventure but did not, as planned, accompany him. During the journey through the Shire, the hobbits were pursued by the Black Riders, a negative symbol of the adult man. (They are perceived as dangerous because the hobbits do not want to grow up.) When they leave the Shire, they enter the Old Forest, where the Terrible Mother nearly kills them through drowning and suffocation. But the Good Father rescues them and invites the hobbits to his house. There, he tells them they absolutely must not go to the Barrow-downs but hints that if they do go there anyway, they should call for him with a rhyme he teaches them. The wise old man thus sets the stage for the hobbits to fall into the clutches of the wights.
The wisdom behind this is that the hobbits are still children and must become adults for further adventures. This can only happen through a rite of passage, and that is where the Barrow-downs come into the story. Let us examine the symbols in this section.
When the hobbits leave Tom Bombadil and Goldberry, they go up and down, up and down, over ridges and valleys. This symbolizes a realization of opposites to balance them,[1] something we have established they greatly need. The sun is prominent in this section as an expression of the collective masculine, the domain of the heavenly Father. Eventually, they come to a hill whose top is vaguely concave, like a “saucer.” In the middle of this place stands a large stone like a “finger.” The place, with its verdant bowl-shape, is feminine, while the stone is masculine; together, they form an equilibrium following their ups and downs. The sun stands at its zenith, so the stone casts no shadow. It is thus midday, a high point, indicating an impending transition.
So far, the hobbits have wandered unarmed and unaware through forests and fields, taken shelter in trees, been cared for by elves, eaten bread and fruit, and so on. In contrast to these feminine images, the stone they lean against to eat is the first explicitly masculine object in the tale. The stone or rock represents the enduring, the unyielding, and is associated with the Father in many traditions, and with yang in Daoism. It rises here directly under the sun as the world axis. They find themselves for the first time in a masculine environment (though not exclusively so), and we understand that something previously unseen is about to happen.
The hobbits take a nap - possibly due to the bowl-shaped motherliness - and then wake with a start. They see that the sun has grown pale behind a haze, and the hill is surrounded by fog, which begins to roll up over the edge where they stand, looking around in dismay. The haze and fog symbolize uncertainty here, the borderland between consciousness and unconsciousness; the situation is unclear, blurry, and unease creeps in. “It felt as if a trap was closing around them.” And indeed it is - Tom Bombadil, according to our understanding of the events, has indeed set a trap for the hobbits, just as ancestral fathers once took sleeping boys into the forest to be isolated and subjected to painful initiation into the adult world.
The hobbits have no choice but to walk into the fog that envelops the hill as the sun sinks into a “white sea.” Frodo rides ahead. He glimpses a landmark in the fog and urges his companions to hurry while he spurs his pony’s flanks. But what he glimpsed was not what he hoped for; instead, it is two giant stones leaning against each other, forming a gate. He rides through it, and at that moment, the darkness seems to thicken. The pony rears, snorts, and Frodo falls off. Because he rode through the gate, he is lost; he is on “the other side.” To his horror, Frodo discovers that his companions are not with him and begins to wander with rising desperation. He is completely lost, nearly panic-stricken, and starts running around, calling for help - just as he did in the Old Forest. But this time, Tom Bombadil does not come. What follows is something Frodo must endure. He sees through the veils of mist that it is night; he is in the darkness of the unconscious. Eventually, he comes to a stone barrow. Instead of the recurring symbol of trees, we have stone throughout this environment. While the tree in the tale is feminine, the stone is masculine, in line with universal conceptions.[2] We recall that Tom Bombadil lived in a stone house. Since these barrows are also a kind of stone house, we see once again how closely tied Tom Bombadil is to this place.
An icy voice says, “I have been waiting for you.” The voice seems to come from the ground. In other words, it is the voice of the ancestors reaching him. They have been waiting for Frodo’s initiation rite, which has long been in the making. Then a wight appears, a “tall dark figure” bending over him. When the wight seizes Frodo, he faints - and wakes up in a barrow, “hopelessly lost.” Frodo thus undergoes a symbolic death. He lies on a stone slab alongside his three friends, who are “deathly pale.” The lifeless hobbits have been adorned with jewelry - diadems, necklaces, and gold rings - and weapons lie beside them. Treasures and the underworld go together, as the god Pluto exemplifies, and the fact that the hobbits are adorned with the underworld’s treasures shows that they are now part of the realm of the dead.
A voice begins to mutter and turns into a spell that seemingly will extinguish the sun, moon, and stars; that is, the voice conjures the end of the world - symbolically, the end of the ego and its rebirth. Then an arm comes crawling on its fingers, heading toward the sword lying across Sam’s neck, apparently to decapitate Frodo’s loyal friend. Frodo is, of course, terrified and instinctively reaches for the ring, the one that makes him disappear into the Mother’s world. But he does not put on the ring; instead, he grabs a sword! Instead of the feminine dissolution, he consciously chooses masculine discernment. He cuts off the crawling hand.[3] This act is utterly decisive. Then he hears a growl and begins to sing Tom Bombadil’s rhyme.
Almost immediately, a door to the barrow opens, and light streams in. “There was Tom’s head (hat, feather, and all) silhouetted against the red rising sun.” Once again, we see how Tom Bombadil, as the Father, is linked to the sun, but what strikes one most is the sense that he seems to have been lurking at the Barrow-downs all along, ready to conclude the ritual when the time was right. How else could he be there at the precise moment? One might even speculate that he was the very wight that seized Frodo. We will return to this seemingly wild idea in a moment.
In any case, they carry the three hobbits out into the grass outside, bathed in sunlight. Tom Bombadil goes into the barrow and retrieves treasures. The three hobbits awaken and find they are wearing white tunics, their own clothes gone. (Wearing a white tunic in connection with initiation is well-known from many traditions, not least the Christian one.) Tom Bombadil “dances around them” and urges them to take off their clothes and run naked in the grass, which they do…! With a literal understanding, these are almost bizarre scenes, but from a symbolic perspective, they are entirely consistent - they are reborn. Then Tom Bombadil brings their horses and packs. The rite of passage is complete. He gives each of them a dagger (small swords for a hobbit) from the barrow, “adorned with serpent patterns in red and gold”; the sheaths are decorated with “fiery red” stones. These weapons, which clearly mark that they are no longer children but adult adventurers, are thus linked to the serpent, which, in brief and in this context, symbolizes renewal; together with the fire theme, renewed libido.
The daggers were forged long ago “by the Men of Westernesse,” the Dúnedain, Tom Bombadil explains. The weapons connect the hobbits to Aragorn, the last leader of the Dúnedain, who is waiting for them at the Prancing Pony in Bree.
Now that Tom Bombadil has fulfilled his task of initiating the hobbits, they part ways. The Good Father advises them to stay at the Prancing Pony when they reach Bree. Why? one might ask. He refers to the innkeeper, who is apparently decent, but why would this spirit suggest a specific inn in a human village? He says he cannot continue with the hobbits because his “realm” ends here. (He repeatedly mentions that he must return to Goldberry; she apparently cannot be alone for long, presumably because she is afraid of the dark.) In other words, Tom Bombadil is not in the habit of frequenting inns in Bree. Thus, he does not recommend this particular inn as a travel guide but because, as an ancestor, he has helped Frodo integrate the mature masculinity that Aragorn represents. This Dúnedain is, after all, the first “big folk” figure who is, let us say, normal - neither wizard, Black Rider, nor some other kind of spirit.
We will conclude with some remarks on the initiation, as we have made some claims that the reader may not find obvious. Rites of passage, especially for young boys, are - or were - a universal phenomenon. The ritual aims to transition the boy from childhood to manhood. Everyone in the society, not least the mothers, ceased to regard him as a child and instead saw him as a man. Naturally, the initiate’s identity also changed during the ritual - he was now part of the adult male community.
Characteristic of this initiation - “which follows the same basic pattern worldwide”[4] - is that the boy is taken from his home (the mother’s domain) by the fathers, isolated, subjected to trials, undergoes a symbolic death and resurrection, and thereafter partakes in the fathers’ knowledge, thus joining their community. (For the hobbits, this last step came first, when Tom Bombadil told them old stories before they went to the Barrow-downs.)
In our tale, we see how the father essentially sends Frodo to the Barrow-downs, where he becomes isolated, gets lost, and is frightened. This is entirely in line with ancient rites of passage, where the child is isolated and scared by the fathers, often disguised as demons or other horrors. If we imagine that Tom Bombadil represents the fathers subjecting Frodo to this trial, it would be natural for him to also appear as a wight and terrify him. We have already seen that Tom Bombadil is something of a spirit, that is, a wight. Remarkably, the moment before this happens, a voice comes from the ground, saying it has been waiting for him. Voices from the ground represent buried ancestors, as already hinted. Another significant detail is that just before Tom Bombadil appears in wight form, an “icy wind” blows. As we saw in the Old Forest, one of Tom Bombadil’s attributes, if nothing else as a air spirit, is wind. At the Barrow-downs, in his fearsome guise, where death plays a central role, the wind is naturally icy. When the father has thus terrified the boy, he finds himself in a grave. The most central element of the traditional rite of passage is the symbolic death. The person one was dies, and the person one becomes is reborn.
Frodo is subjected to a trial in the barrow. This is another typical element of the rite of passage[5] - the fathers need to ensure that the initiate is worthy of joining their community. An arm comes walking on its five fingers, heading toward the sword lying across Sam’s neck, apparently to decapitate him. The situation is terrifying, and Frodo accordingly reaches for the ring, that is, for the Mother. This is a utterly decisive moment in the tale. For reasons not explained, he lets go of the ring and grabs a sword instead. This weapon is highly masculine; it is crafted, penetrating, and discerning - all symbols of consciousness and masculinity. With this tool, he severs the hand from the arm with a single stroke, neutralizing the threat. With this courage, this determination, and the ability to face the threat alone with a sword in hand rather than fleeing back to the Mother, he proved himself worthy.
Consequently, the father comes and concludes the rite by letting in the sunlight. The sun symbolizes the masculine consciousness; it shines on all and thus has - unlike, say, a candle - a distinctly collective quality. Frodo is admitted into the world of adult men, just as the initiated young men of old.
When the rite of passage is complete, Frodo leaves the barrow as a new person. He takes off his clothes and walks naked in the grass, just as we are all born naked. Tom Bombadil gives him a sword as a symbol of his achieved manhood, adorned with motifs reminiscent of serpent and fire; Frodo has overcome his “instincts” and thereby gained access to new libido. To manifest this new fertility, Tom Bombadil takes treasures from the barrow and places them in the grass under the sun, so that anyone passing by can pick gold from the grass.[6] The gold symbolizes seed, which Tom Bombadil “sows” so that it may multiply. Gold represents light, value, and consciousness, and Tom Bombadil sacrifices this for the sake of general fertility.[7]
This is what the Old Forest, Tom Bombadil, and the Barrow-downs are about - the transition from the Mother’s world, via the Father, to adult independence. This transformation leads the young hero to the king in the making, Aragorn.
Footnotes
[1] Cf. Carl Gustav Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, trans. R. F. C. Hull, 2nd ed., Collected Works of C. G. Jung, vol. 14 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), par. 296.
[2] The tree is a highly complex symbol that has masculine elements, such as the world axis, etc., but we consider the symbols in relation to their respective context in the tale.
[3] When Frodo later leaves the barrow, he feels as though he sees the injured hand writhing "like a spider." This is significant because the spider recurs frequently as an indirect reference to the Great Mother in the story, and ultimately as the most explicit variant of the Terrible Mother, in Shelob.
[4] Religionslexikonet, ed. Jan Hjärpe et al. (Stockholm: Forum, 2006).
[5] Funk and Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend, ed. Maria Leach and Jerome Fried (New York: Harper & Row, 1984).
[6] Tombs, death-rebirth, and treasures together form an archetypal image. See, for example, Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz, The Grail Legend, trans. Andrea Dykes (Boston: Sigo Press, 1986), pp. 129ff.
[7] Cf. Edward F. Edinger, Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism in Psychotherapy (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1985), p. 161.