Introduction to “THE RINGBEARER’S DIARY”

or – what (who) is THE RING?  

by Peter Kjærulff

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Imagine, just for a brief moment, that God has a plan: through the centuries he has chosen a special group of people to investigate into matters out of reach of official science – matters such as the understanding of the deeper levels of the human mind, the existence of God, the difference between good and evil, etc. 

God knows, of course, that traditional science struggles with a problem whose trace can be followed through the centuries: all research results should be open to scientific proof according to already existing criteria. Consequently wide areas of the human emotional expression field would be out of reach. As it is evident for everyone to see: some worlds of human thoughts, feelings, behaviour patterns, emotions – are evasive when it comes to demonstration and statistical facts.

However – the artist can follow whatever line his/her intuition tells him or her to follow: the opera composer can choose between myriads of textbooks and hit upon the one which is closest to his heart at a given moment. The painter, the author, etc. can do the same with their choice of motive, subject, etc.

So – throughout the centuries great artists have (in their art) expressed great things about the conditions of human life. One could write a book on morals, ethics and human behaviour in romantic opera – and deduct a lot about mankind from the behaviour of the characters in the operas of i.e. Verdi, Puccini, Wagner and R. Strauss.

One could write a book about popular everyday emotional attitudes towards God through the study of church music/religious music from the last five centuries. And because the music has a level of emotional expression (which you won’t find in theological or philosophical research), you will – through the music – be able to enter the church on a Sunday in 1725 (for instance) when a cantata by Bach is performed (or another day in another year – inspired by a Mass by Schütz, Schubert, Mozart, Beethoven or Bruckner).

Or – one could write a book about a special device – a ring – which some artists, namely Plato, Wagner and Tolkien, have described – and see how great artists are able to cooperate, even though they live in different centuries – in order to expose a structure of destruction (!), which is able to cover up the human consciousness so completely as to make you invisible. It eats you up!

I have written such a book. It is the story of the creation of The Ring, the destructive power of The Ring through 14 millennia, and the exposure of, the demolition of The Ring. The title of the book, THE RINGBEARER’S DIARY, indicates that someone (like Frodo in Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings”) has mastered the task of carrying (neutralizing) this Ring – from the days of its creation to the day of its death.

As the main capacity of The Ring is that of covering up the human consciousness – the book has three important tasks:

  1. To describe in detail the human consciousness.
  2. To describe in detail how to cover up this human consciousness.
  3. To follow the story and the evolution of The Ring from its “birth” to its demolition – including an analysis of the two major works written about it: Wagner’s “Ring des Nibelungen” and Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings”.

It is not difficult to imagine that points 1 and 2 together form a battlefield, where sometimes 1, sometimes 2 is the stronger. This battle is (seen through the intuitive vision of the artist) the battle between good and evil – a subject unfit for research in university laboratories. And yet it is a subject of paramount importance to mankind, so God may have plans that science knows nothing about: such as the true revelation of the purpose of life – expressed and described through for instance – art.

This idea contains and gives forth a lot of hope. Maybe it really is possible to understand life and the world. You just have to know where to look for the answer.

The third topic of THE RINGBEARER’S DIARY also includes a description of the method of research. This method is untraditional and “strange”, but it should be mentioned here briefly (for more information, see “A Letter to Eleven Nobel Prize Winners”). A story began to accumulate in my head about 36 years ago – a story which I could consider only recollections of past lives, a story which contained so many pieces of cultural information and so much logic that it made an owner of a second hand bookshop in Copenhagen say (after having read the book): “Either you have read 30,000 books, or you are right”.

Wagner himself mentions reincarnation in his sketch of the uncomposed opera “Die Sieger” and in the character of Kundry in “Parsifal”, but still my personal challenge was great, because what I experienced was not a “symbolically logical” chain of events, as we would find it, say, in a science fiction novel. What I experienced had the character of simple memory of coherence between some of the most exceptionally great artists of our culture, such as Homer, Plato, Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare, Mozart and Wagner. The story unfolded itself stating that these persons were expressions of one and the same personality in different incarnations. Wagner himself came close to this, saying that in his art he embodies the worlds of Plato, Shakespeare and Beethoven. He was considered a braggart because of this. But what if he was actually right – except for Beethoven, where you should read Mozart?

I was, of course, aware of the “dangers” involved with using this approach to any kind of research: laughter, mistrust, religious protests, etc.

But the story kept insisting that this was the way it wanted to be told. And so I told it. Here it is – for everyone to read. And it makes sense.

This article I write for readers who are interested in Wagner. Or – this is the practical reason – I was asked by Wagner enthusiasts to write about THE RINGBEARER’S DIARY. But the subject of the story would be of interest to Tolkien readers also, to philosophers, psychologists, priests – and all those who research into parapsychological matters.

Still – the “hero” is The Ring – and Wagner, Tolkien, philosophy, psychology, religion etc. come into the picture because of The Ring. It covers it all, it has statements to make, it has got something to say about every aspect of human life. And because I, in my book, cover all the details of The Ring, the book also covers many aspects of human life.

Throughout my 36 years of research to complete this book, I have studied the language of dreams and myths. And when you get as far as to be able to understand this language – which can be used as a normal language like Danish, it becomes clear, how clever and meticulous was such an artist as Wagner. There are no coincidences. Each little additional comment in the text, each colour in the orchestra, each and every description of staging details such as scenography and movements is there for a purpose. These days (2003) all opera enthusiasts seem to agree that Wagner’s music is wonderful. But still very few directors, conductors, etc. take it for granted that Wagner knew what he was doing – also when describing the performance he would like to see on the stage.

If works such as “Der Ring des Nibelungen” are performed according to Wagner’s intentions (water is water, a sword is a sword, a tree is a tree) – a new world opens. (This is not the case if water is a parking lot, a sword is a gun and a tree is a bulldozer.)

This world is the magic world of the inner human being, the world of our conscious and subconscious battle for The Light against The Darkness – and in Wagner’s terminology every human being has a divine self (a “God layer”) as well as a number of “everyday” levels of consciousness.

The Ring attacks it all – from top to bottom, from divine self to everyday behaviour – from the level of the Gods to the worldly level of consciousness. If you combine Wagner and Tolkien, the perspective naturally widens. Could it be the same ring? Which parallels do we find – even though Tolkien himself declared that no similarities exist, apart from the fact that both rings are round?

Let us see:

1.   Tolkien’s work consists of a “prelude” (The Hobbit) and three main books (The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King).

Wagner’s work consists of a “prelude” (Das Rheingold) and three main operas (Die Walküre, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung).

In both works:

2.   The creator of The Ring wants to use it for evil power in order to do something good for himself (this is also the case with Gyges’ ring as told by Plato in his “The Republic”). Thus: the creator as well as The Ring are representatives of The Darkness.

3.   Both creators (Alberich in Wagner’s work and Sauron in Tolkien’s novel) lose The Ring shortly after its creation.

4.   The Ring can be neutralized only by returning it to the place of its origin (Wagner: water, Tolkien: fire).

5.   The Ring itself seems to be in charge of the person wearing it – and it wishes to climb higher and higher in order to be where the most powerful person is.

6.   In this way it partly wishes its own destruction (without realizing this) because it is so evil that it wants to devour even the person who created it. Like a mistletoe in a large tree where the mistletoe’s plan is to cut down the tree in order to become the master superior. Or the story of the women in the ditch, who wants to be God and ends up in the ditch again.

7.   Tolkien: if you wear The Ring you become invisible.

Wagner: connected with The Ring is a “Tarnhelm”, which can make you invisible or change your appearance.

8.   Tolkien: in “The Hobbit” Bilbo and Gollum have a questions-and-answers competition where they put their lives at stake.

      Wagner: in “Siegfried” Wotan and Mime have a similar contest with their lives at stake.

9.   Tolkien: Smaug, the dragon, lies upon a heap of gold and jewels.

      Wagner: Fafner, the dragon, lies upon a heap of gold and jewels.

10. Both works are dealing with good and evil on a large scale – not merely with a feud between sympathetic and unsympathetic people.

11. In neither of the works the one and only God is mentioned – but he clearly exists – above the Wagner gods we find the ethics of the eternal laws – and the same thing can be said about Tolkien’s work.

12. The demolition of The Ring marks the end of an old world order and the beginning of a new.

13. In both works the creator of the Ring and the Ring itself appear in the title.

14. In both works broken swords must be reforged. The magic of the Ring (directly og indirectly) destroyed the last owner of the sword.

15. The first effect of the Ring is fracticide. Fafner kills Fasolt, whereupon he is transformed into a dragon and hides in his lair. In reality he cannot use the Ring. Smeagol kills Deagol, whereupon he is transformed into Gollum and hides under the ground. In reality he cannot use the Ring.

16. The woman, who loves the hero who reforges the broken sword - is an immortal person who is transformed into a mortal one. Arwen submits to this process voluntarily; Brünnhilde is degraded, when inadvertently she uses the ideology of the Ring. The parallel is only indirect, but still significant.

Well – some of these parallels may be only marginally significant. But even though we cut away a few of them (the dragons, the fact of the works being in four parts), and say that these are either coincidences or something that can be found in thousands of other stories – some essential parallels remain. And the story I was able to build up (the sequence of events through 14,000 years, the life-span of The Ring) made all these parallels fit together with an amazing result: Wagner and Tolkien tell the stories of actual historical persons and actual historical events.

Neither of them would of course have guessed or even considered this when writing their works. Tolkien even underscored quite heavily his detest of allegories made with reference to his books.

But how would Tolkien explain the parallels? A psychologist might claim that both artists drew from their “collective subconscious”.

Well – define that.

THE RINGBEARER’S DIARY thus tells a story of events starting approx. 14,000 years ago in Atlantis (cf. Tolkien’s “Numenor” in “The Silmarillion”). It accounts for how The Ring was forged, we follow the persons, who were drawn into its pattern (the “ringbearer group”) – and in the references to Wagner’s Ring and to Tolkien’s great novel these ancient events can be seen described in works of art – thousands of years later. The connection between actual events and works of art do not take away the perspective or pleasure from reading or listening to the works. Quite the contrary: the works become even more astounding than they already are. In the case of Wagner, the ancient story clarifies a lot of the action, the persons and the symbolism in “Der Ring des Nibelungen”, and it becomes even more evident that a tree should be a tree (etc.). Because in the language of myths and dreams these details are important. Just listen to these two “versions” of the same “dream”:

  1. “I was swimming under water, and I could breathe nevertheless. Some mermaids told me to look for their lost gold.”
  2. “I was walking through the sewers under a big city. Three prostitutes asked me to help them find a stolen handbag full of money.”

The first version is about a person who enters his own emotional level, where he is able to breathe (he is not overpowered by his emotions). Some aspects of genuine natural eroticism (the mermaids) urge him to find again the beautiful values of genuine erotic contact.

Apart from the range of light and colour, this interpretation opens to the entire history of the person involved: his past, his present, his future.

Version 2 is “just a story” if it is staged – tragic and in ugly colours. Like an uninteresting B-movie. If it is interpreted as a dream, the dream is very far away from genuine values. And to help prostitutes find a stolen handbag offers no promise of a future harmonious life.

At this point I want to say something which is of great importance for me to make clear. Even though I feel uncertain as to whether it will be possible for me to say in a few words just how important it is. And readers who do not know much about opera – or are not really interested in opera – may want to skip this section altogether. But please do not do so – try to listen with confidence to me when I try to explain:

If the music is composed to fit example one – you then violate the music, the message, the composer, art itself and thus the possible connection to God-behind-it-all, if your staging is parallel to example two.

An example: In Copenhagen I recently attended a performance of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde”. Where love is concerned this opera of Wagner’s is at the same level as Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”. These two works are maybe the most profound and heartfelt descriptions of love in our entire culture. Wagner wanted to raise a monument in the honour of love, and the text, the plot and the music describe a kind of love that is immortal – between two people who love each other so much that they see themselves as one person. They feel they have never really been apart, and they will never separate – says the text, the music and the staging remarks. Not even death can separate them.

In the version I attended in Copenhagen every trace of communication and love had disappeared. Nobody was able to reach the other persons, they only “communicated” with their own “illusion” of “imagined love”. The staging had the character of a nightmare, and Tristan and Isolde never touched each other, never looked each other confidently in the eye, never felt nor expressed any love for one another – only for “the false illusion of love”.

In this version the staging wages war upon text, music, the ideas of the composer, his writings, letters, stage-remarks, etc. etc. The result is that the ability of art to tell us about hidden truths concerning love, death, God and eternity – is totally lost. All we are left with is some director’s idea, that he is more interesting than Wagner – and that the director’s idea that love is an illusion is more interesting than Wagner’s statement: indeed love exists – but the conditions on Earth make it extremely difficult to honour it as it should be honoured.

My suggestion is: through the centuries The Ring has made such a mess in the hierarchy of human values, that this kind of staging seems to be preferred to the one the composer has designed.

The Ring – why The Ring??? someone may ask. What business has The Ring in such matters as film scenography and opera staging?

The answer is: The Ring is not the least interested in film or in opera. Its main interest is to make every one of us lonely and depressed, and therefore it aims at destroying any form of human communication which suggests that we are not alone. A director such as he who is behind the mentioned staging of “Tristan und Isolde” is not aware of the fact that the opera has been staged by The Ring. He will probably just be angry if somebody tells him that he shouldn’t tamper with Wagner’s ideas.

The Ring is the villain. Alberich and Sauron are secondary villains in comparison. The Ring will eat them as well – if they manage to get it back.

SO WHAT (WHO) IS THE RING?

Wagner’s “Ring des Nibelungen” gives the more precise description of the creation of The Ring – through this simple statement: in order to find the formula which enables you to forge The Ring, you have to renounce love. Alberich then curses love and creates The Ring. To him “renouncing love” is a minor thing. He can always force his way to sex, as he says – already forgetting that the issue was love, not sex. So he cannot foresee the following results of the creation of The Ring.

In any place where love can be found, The Ring will surely attack:

  1. The communication between people (because communication leads to friendship and friendship is already a kind of love).
  2. The communication between the sexes (this goes without saying).
  3. The communication between members of a family (because communication between just two persons in a family – will lead to friendship or towards an idea about a possible deep harmony between male and female).
  4. The connection between God and mankind (if this communication is not violated, it will become increasingly clear that God loves us and that the problems on Earth are of our own making. If The Ring attacks our connection with God, God instead becomes similar to an unloving parent (see 3) – someone who is often angry or moody or someone who could father the idea that a large number of people should end up in Hell).
  5. When The Ring decides that love is out of the question, it comes up with an alternative suggestion: why not use destruction in a constructive way? In this way “the good” are allowed to wage war upon “the bad” – making war a useful tool for “those who are good”.
  6. The result is the construction of a society where most of the energy is used to build up and maintain an army.
  7. The Ring suggests that we should behave like “the good” would behave – in order to be safe – in order to “neutralize loneliness”. Thus: we build up a mask, a behaviour – different from our true self – we have become invisible.

The main anti-love idea of The Ring is the mentioned: destruction can be used in a constructive way. One can even be considerate and “loving” when using this line of behaviour: “It is for the country’s own good that we bomb it.” (Instead of using the same amount of money the army demands – to reach an understanding or a true communication.)

 This “love concept” of The Ring comes about when you forge it – it is its last, its formula, its essence. The actual destruction of love is part of its process of creation. And it reaches the sky, it takes its energy from a simple statement:

 “Above the boundary of death eternal love exists.”

This very idea is one of the cornerstones of all religions and cultures. If everything else fails, one may find hope and consolation in the idea that the eternal worlds “beyond the threshold of death” contain everlasting values such as love, care, justice and harmony.

But if one curses love, the sentence above can be twisted, in the following way:

     Above the threshold of death we find eternal love.

1st twist: In order to find eternal love one has to cross the threshold of death.

2nd twist: Through the gateway of death you reach eternal love.

3rd twist: Death leads directly to eternal love.

4th twist: Death is a must if you want eternal love.

Final twist: Eternal love leads to/demands death.

The original sentence has become its own contradiction – The Ring has been born. Because of this original sentence which is still enclosed in The Ring (albeit in a distorted way), with much authority it will claim a connection directly to God. Its self-assurance is of “divine proportions” – it worships itself, in a way. And it has powerful allies: the idea that destruction can be used in a constructive way has been sanctioned by the Church, which has chosen to see the death of Jesus as the way to salvation – instead of seeing the life of Jesus as the way to salvation – and his death as a tragedy – an embarrassing reality to face for mankind.

“If you want to find yourself, you must destroy your mask” has been twisted into: “In order to find yourself you must lose yourself”.

In “Der Ring des Nibelungen” Wagner describes how even the highest levels of the human consciousness are affected by the poisoning: in the beginning of “Das Rheingold”, the god Wotan makes one mistake: he promises the giants Fasolt and Fafner that they can have the goddess of love, Freia, in payment for their building Valhalla. As a matter of fact it was never Wotan’s intention to include Freia in the bargain; he merely wanted to gain time while finding another means of payment. This now comes to him – in shape of The Ring – and the giants get this (among other things) instead of Freia. So now The Ring is on the loose.

Wotan realizes his terrible mistake – and in the remainder of “Der Ring des Nibelungen” he is the only person who knows for sure that one cannot use destruction in a constructive way.

Through the description of those who unfortunately do so anyway – Wagner comments on the world order we know from our everyday life on the globe:

Siegmund threatens to kill his beloved and their unborn child, if he cannot have her with him all the time. He uses death as a means to obtain love – and is out of the story.

Brünnhilde, Wotan’s daughter, helps Siegmund because of this threat – and thus loses her divinity. She becomes “blind” – The Ring encloses her in the shape of a wall of flames.

As a result of her “acceptance” of Siegmund’s way of using death to obtain something – Brünnhilde, in the end, even orders the death of her beloved Siegfried – confirming the mechanics of The Ring: love leads to death.

Siegfried misuses his sword twice – he uses destruction in order to regain “harmony”. So he sentences himself to death.

And everything, all this misery, is the The Ring’s work – not the doings of Alberich or Wotan.

In the end, after Brünnhilde confronts the death of Siegfried – she understands. And she walks through the flames – out of the old world order and into a new one. The old world collapses, and also Wotan “walks through the fire”: he voluntarily burns down his former world.

In THE RINGBEARER’S DIARY it has been possible to describe in detail how the thought patterns of The Ring influence our society and ourselves – our world order. As a contrast, the wonderfully positive endings of Wagner’s Ring and Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” indicate that some artists have seen the end of the present “Ring-dominated” world order where it is still “OK” to use destruction as a constructive tool.

The Ring would say: “Man will never change, there will always be war.” But the artists see it differently – much in the way of the wonderful double quote: 

“God is dead.” (Nietzsche)

“Nietzsche is dead.” (God)

Or: the day is not far away when all humanity will understand that war (etc.) never has and never will lead to anything good.

When that day comes, many a “temple”, many ideas of investment will lose their foothold, and for a lot of people the “collapse of an ancient and nursed way of thinking” will feel like “Götterdämmerung” (without maybe the atmosphere of the soothing “redemption theme” which closes the work): to lose one’s mask in order to become visible again – hurts! All the investments (economical, emotional, etc.) you have placed upon the altar of the old world order will have been futile. A waste. And to realize this is very painful. It “burns you up”.

If you add the visions of Tolkien to those of Wagner, the perspective widens and becomes almost breathtaking. Allow me to briefly mention that the one Ring in Wagner’s work becomes a system of rings in Tolkien’s novel.

Three Elven-Rings, seven Dwarf-Rings, nine rings for mortal men – one Ring to rule them all.

Through a close study, it can bee seen that this ring-system corresponds to the mathematics, the frequencies of the human consciousness. It would take a full-length article to explain even briefly that the human consciousness, when seen with “clearsight”, consists of seven main “processes” called “chakras” (Sanscrit) and these processes have the following frequencies: 4, 6, 10, 12, 16, 96, 960 + 12.

The Ring-combination of 1, 3, 7 and 9 rings can through simple addition (kinship between destructive thought patterns) cover up the first five chakras. The remaining two are covered up as well, as they arise through combinations of the first five levels of consciousness (chakras).

As mentioned, THE RINGBEARER’S DIARY describes the human consciousness (which by the way, with the aid of the language of dreams, can be seen modelled in the corridor-system of the Cheops pyramid).

The book also describes the abilities of The Ring to cover up this consciousness. And to see and to expose The Ring is to demystify and finally demolish it.

So now it has been demolished. What we can still see and experience of its effects is like the smoke and embers of a recently extinguished fire.

A new world order is dawning: listen very carefully to the air – the global way of thinking is changing: war is no longer honourable or useful. Some politicians still think so – but listen very carefully once again: they are a minority, and their number is declining.

Peter Kjærulff

August 2003