七窍三秋钉 - Seven Times Impaled, Three Autumns Nailed
A fun facts and exploration post!
Something a little different this time because @tian-chuang’s twitter thread on What is the meaning of Zhou Zi Shi’s seven nails? landed me in a sea of 经络图 | jīng luò tú (known in English as meridian diagrams).
Disclaimer: Before this evening, all I knew of meridian pathways was that they exist, clearing meridian blockages and circulating Qi is a major part martial arts practice featured in many wuxia novels and also that 七窍 refers to our seven orifices.
Kindly excuse any over-analyzing. This is all very new and exciting for me :D!!!!
I do find it genuinely interesting that the Silmarillion doesn’t mention Sauron’s reaction to the Silmarils either way. You have just about everyone else tearing apart entire kingdoms in their name, but one of the principal villains isn’t even involved.
It’s like, either his loyalty to Morgoth is at such a fanatical pitch that it totally negates any interest he might’ve had in them himself, or he’s just off at the side, watching the chaos unfold, like: “I really don’t get all the brouhaha. Personally, I feel that if you’re going to have ultra-magical shiny things that make people absolutely lose their heads with the lust to possess them, they should at least perform some practical function too. Like binding the will and soul of the wearer to your own. Just a thought.”
Mhmm so I think the Silmarils, while possibly not made for a practical purpose (though; there were places in Valinor hardly touched by the light of the Trees, and Fëanor was fond of wandering…portable treelight!) do actually have a practical function; the people of Sirion perceive at least do perceive them to have one; “for it seemed to them that in the Silmaril lay the healing and the blessing that had come upon their houses and their ships” (Silm), and it’s given as a reason why they are unwilling to hand them over.
And you know what, that actually makes sense. The Silmarils caught Treelight, and that light does definitely have physical effects on people. The Noldor become very tall and their eyes and skin shine with light. It doesn’t sound at all unlikely to me that the light caught in the Silmarils would help crops to grow, for one thing simply because it’s, well, intense light, aside from being Special Light and blessed by Varda. There is a reason why growlights are so popular.
Anyway. Why does Morgoth want them and why isn’t Sauron interested, or why do we not hear of it at least?
I think the answer might be this;
Morgoth wants to possess above all else. He wants the Silmarils even though they burn him, even though Varda’s blessing and his own corruption makes his eyes water and his skin peel off. He doesn’t care. The Light shouldn’t be theirs because it should be his, even if he has no use for it. He should be the king of Arda. He will pursue these goals even if they hurt and destroy him.
Sauron, well. Sauron is much more practical. He knows that if he touches objects blessed by Varda, he will burn. The orcs and other creatures of darkness thrive in well, darkness. They’re in fact so averse to even just sun or starlight, much less strong than that of the Trees– that it’s highly unlikely they would have thrived under the glare of the Silmarils.
He doesn’t care so much about possessing all the light because others want to have it despite his having no use for it, doesn’t care so much for the symbols of authority and power as he does about actually having those things.
He’s not going to burn his hand for a symbol. He’s going to make his power over others a reality, and his hand will never be hurt by the power he wears on it.
IA with @galadhremmin. Sauron is a fundamentally different person than Morgoth, and one way in which he’s different is that he’s practical, and the Silmarils are very unpractical for a dark lord. And yes yes, he is interested in symbols of power insomuch as they give him power (and symbols absolutely can, esp in a pre-modern world), but not for their own sake. He’s also completely ok with not possessing things that he doesn’t think he needs - Sauron wants to rule and make things and people do what he wants them to, but he’s not opposed to the existence of other beings.
Mildly related, but another thing I think is very interesting about the Sauron/Morgoth difference is that Sauron was obsessed with Order (”it had been his virtue (and therefore also the cause of his fall, and of his relapse) that he loved order and coordination, and disliked all confusion and wasteful friction”), whereas Morgoth merely raged at the existence of the world and wanted “destruction and reduction to nil of a world in which he had only a share” (both quotes from Morgoth’s Ring).
Therefore, I kind of headcanon that Sauron held Morgoth in utter contempt by the end of the First Age; this failed and wasteful god, whose vision of the world had proven vulnerable to his own avarice and shame, would surely not deserve the service of Sauron. I think it’s funny to put this in the context of Sauron’s Morgoth temples on Numenor, too. What a lark to get humans to worship this loser!
(Sauron being order and Morgoth being entropy is a really interesting contrast to me as well, especially how they work together at first.)
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Oh to be a kitten in a fluffy pink bed, lounging in the sunlight.
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"We will not blame him for the crimes of his ancestors if he relinquishes the royal rights of his ancestors; but as long as he claims their rights, by virtue of descent, then, by virtue of descent, he must shoulder the responsibility for their crimes."
James Connolly, on the visit of King Edward to Ireland, 1910
A lot of British colonies didn't gain independence until the 1960s and 1970s. The current Queen has was in charge before then.
This isn't about the crimes of the Queen's ancestors. The current Queen was involved in British colonialism.
Brunei did not get independence until 1984
‘Children of Shatila’ (Lebanon, 1998) film by Mai Masri. In this scene the youth of the Palestinian refugee camp interview an elder with a video camera.
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