Decemystery (2019) 26: Is Lord of the Rings Based on a True Story?

Uh...

Wow.

666 999 777 My Ears Fell Off: Is Lord of the Rings Based On A True Story?

I didn’t know what else to name this chapter, so I went with my initial reaction to seeing what this claim was all about.

Today, we discuss the fourth Conspiracy Iceberg story, this one ranking at Tier 6. As the title of this blog and the header both say: it’s about the idea that J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendary series—Lord of the Rings—is in fact based on a true story. Or, more specifically, that it’s historical in nature.

Let’s get one thing out of the way before we dive in any further. As funny or silly as that idea may seem, the concept of “alternative history”, as some call it, is by no means something revolutionary.

In the way of a source for today, I’m citing this off of a blog called “world-mysteries.” If you wish to read the article for yourself, just click the link. Or you can watch a video from Dead Rabbit Radio, who did amazing coverage of this story. The video is right down below and I won’t be offended if you leave this blog to listen to him as his videos are fantastic.

If you opt to stay, let me turn on some Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons and let’s get this show on the road.

Ah, what a very special time for me. Anyways, this conspiracy consists primarily of two conspiracies: Alternative History and Ancient Aliens. Both are held together by a 50-50 split (give or take a bit). On one hand, the Alternative History aspect comes in the form that we don’t know the true history of our planet. This is actually kind of true even if we ignore the conspiratorial elements of the claim. Some parts of history are very sketchy/vague and as such, we’re left to speculate as to what might’ve happened around that time or what happened during a specific event. In this case however, the idea is something that is significantly more extreme.

Generally, Alternative History claims things such as our planet being a merely 5,000 or so years old, humans and dinosaurs living alongside each other (this doesn’t include cryptids like Mokele-Mbembe, the Georgia Raptor, or the New Guinea Iguanodon), or ancient civilizations (like the Sumerians or Mayans) having been around back in the 1400s–1700s. There’s plenty more, but the historical revisionism here is much larger than your standard “X wasn’t a bad leader.”

Now as for Ancient Aliens, I’m sure that even those who don’t care about conspiracy theories or anything akin to them has heard of this. The idea is that aliens either visited Earth and helped ancient civilizations become more technology advanced and had us build pyramids or other wonderous structures in exchange or something like that. The evidence for this theory is very interesting; there are hieroglyphs in Egypt that depict objects similar to UFOs and helicopters that have mystified historians. One of the most controversial though are the Anunnaki, the Sumerian Gods that were said to have come from the sky and outright spoken with them. We’ll get to them next year though.

Anyways, that’s the gist of what we’re dealing with. Now that we’ve gotten the basics for the two main ideas related to this conspiracy, let’s merge them together and throw in Tolkien’s Middle Earth stories. Quite an interesting combination, but how does it fare in practice? Well, let’s find out.

This story comes courtesy of a man named Jay Weidner, though the article I’m citing this from was written by a man named T.S. Caladan. Weidner states that what we know about Earth and history as a whole is a lie. J.R.R. Tolkien discovered within the basement of Oxford University that in reality, our planet isn’t as old as scientists claim and is instead merely thousands of years old. Way back in the time of yore, our planet was invaded by an alien warlord from Saturn who would later become the basis for Sauron, who was also partially based off of the legendary Mesopotamian dictator, Sargon, who Weidner claims “invented time.” Before I forget, Weidner also claims that sargon invented clocks, calendars, and schedules.

Anyways, this alien warlord attacked Earth with his clone army (who would become the basis for the Orcs) with one goal in mind: to take our energy. At least, that’s what I think he was trying to accomplish. Either way, he wants to subjugate us because the power of Saturn (“Saturnian Power” as Weidner put it) is superior. For Tolkien however, this “Saturnian Power” evolved into the idea of the Ring of Power; the Ring itself representing the rings of Saturn. As for Weidner, I’m going to quote what the article itself states that he said on his radio show:

     …We don’t really know what it is Sauron is trying to accomplish, not really…He’s trying to destroy the elves who know too much and have too much power.  He’s trying to trap the Earth into an energy-sucking thing and he’s creating half-breeds of CLONES, the Orcs and all those who are not really human; they’re only partially human, just like the Archons… 

From here, Tolkien took this knowledge he’d amassed and used it to create his legendary fantasy series: Lord of the Rings. He created the world of Middle Earth from this true history. Weidner then goes on to say that he shared this information with his friends, such as C.S. Lewis (the man who wrote The Chronicles of Narnia). He also says that Tolkien told people in letters that Lord of the Rings was actually what happened in Europe 6,500 years ago. He claims that the Iriths were the Hobbits in his books and the Elves were the Nordic people. Whenever people would say that the books were merely an analogy or metaphor, Tolkien was supposedly get quite ticked off and say things like:

“No! It isn’t analogy and metaphor! This is what I learned from my reading…”

As a side note: that isn’t a typo or error on my part. That’s what Caladan wrote, though if these are excerpts from Weidner’s show: that’s what he said and how he worded it. If that is acceptable English though, then do inform me. As it stands: it looks reads quite oddly.

Anyways, that’s where this story ends… kind of. That’s the general basis for the story itself and what Jay Weidner alleges. I have no idea who Weidner is, but he apparently the Senior Director of Production of the website Gaia.com. Well, should there not be a second Jay Weidner out there who operates it. Weidner himself has covered legendary director Stanley Kubrick a fair bit and one day, I’ll get to that. For now, all I want to say is that I don’t know if Mr. Weidner has any sort of historical credentials that could point me in the direction of understanding why he thinks this, but as it stands: this is how I feel reading through all of this.

Though it seems that these allegations that what we know about history doesn’t end at Middle Earth. In an effort to present evidence, Caladan (or Weidner, at this point I’m not sure if it matters) go on to claim… well, allow me to let the article speak here.

One fact for certain is prehistoric GIANTS truly roamed the lands long ago as told in the Bible and in countless other stories around the globe.  ‘Behemoths’ are specifically stated in Genesis. Legendary ‘Sons of Heaven’ (giant humans) came down (landed) and mated with the ‘comely’ ‘Children of Earth’ producing the ‘Titans’ of myth.

I shall now allow this reaction meme to this sudden change in the topic speak for me.

I normally try to avoid vulgarity, but in this case: I see no reason to dodge it given that we’ve gone from Tolkien to the topic of Giants living among us. This is a part of the Alternative History conspiracy, but given that this isn’t what we were discussing, it’s quite the drastic shift, but it’s where this article heads and it still manages to tie back into Tolkien. Though I believe that now, all of this is coming straight from Caladan as opposed to Weidner.

Anyways, Caladan states that there have been various skeletons of human-like creatures—or rather  giants—that have been discovered throughout the ages. These skeletons have been between 9–50 feet in height. This is true to some degree. There have been skeletons of very tall humans discovered in various parts of the world. I’m unsure of the ones that have been 50-feet-tall, but there have been skeletons of people that have been 9–13 feet tall. However, there’s the skeleton of Teutobochus, a skeleton discovered back in 1613. The skeleton was supposedly 25 and a half feet tall and from shoulder-to-shoulder was 10 feet wide. The bones allegedly belonged to Teutobochus, who was the supposed leader of the giant clan, the Teutons. If you want to read more about it, click here to check out the Wikipedia article. As for giants, there are still people who claim to see very tall humanoids around the world, but they’re generally of creatures like Bigfoot.

Though Caladan isn’t talking about Bigfoot in this case. Rather, we’re focused strictly on the skeletons of these creatures, which he says aren’t in places like museums. Instead, they’re stored away in archives (specifically the Vatican archives—or at least that’s what I think Caladan claims) or in underground chambers. As a side note: you can actually request documents from the Vatican archives, though I’m guessing that certain documents aren’t available to the public.

The ability to request documents doesn’t seem to matter though. Instead, Caladan makes a very bizarre claim, which is that there are “reports” that exist that tell of both researchers and locals who’ve made attempts to reveal these incredible discoveries to the public. In parenthesis, Caladan includes “Pitcairn Island, 1934.” I tried to look this up, but came up with nothing that appeared to match what’s being conveyed here. If anyone can inform me as to what Caladan may have been alluding to, I’d love to know. Besides this possible cover-up, Caladan also references the cover-ups of photographic evidence of both aliens and UFOs, both of which have many more reports to them than the claims of skeletons belonging to giants being covered up.

Though it seems that giants aren’t the ones with skeletons that Caladan believes have been discovered. Though I’ll let him do the talking for this part:

Could an uncensored; financed; detailed investigation reveal BONES of Centaurs, Minotaurs, Unicorns, Pegasus, Cerberus, Hydras, Griffins, Dragons, Orcs, Cyclops, Mermaids, Harpies, Pixies, Chimeras, Krakens and other mythological creatures?  Possibly…physical evidence (fossils) for these life forms is locked away from us, far from public eyes?

To steal a question that Dead Rabbit Radio had asked in his video: how could a Kraken skeleton be found? Wouldn’t it be at the bottom of the sea?

Whatever, this next part comes from an interview that Caladan did for Russian TV in February of 2014, which seemed to include some of his beliefs. These include that he believes that ancient constructions included things like anti-gravity, laser weapons, supercomputers, and everything that we have today (or at least had back in 2014), only significantly more advanced.

Caladan also claims that these ancient civilizations had the capability to clone and specifically mentions Atlantis. Atlantis is an important part of this as… well, again, I’ll let Caladan speak:

    …They (we) had CLONING.  Now, what was the problem in Atlantis?  If they had all the power (in the world) they could generate…They actually had Utopia.  Atlantis was Eden and we have this memory that we came from Paradise. That was Atlantis.  Now, what happened to it?

As for what happened to Atlantis: Homer claims it sank.

At this point, it may be a bit apparent that this has nothing to do with the original topic, which was Lord of the Rings. Rather, we’ve jumped from one topic to another. This isn’t an error on my part, this is seriously how the article I’m citing from goes. It does in fact go back to the original topic at the very end—a bit at least. I can’t quite explain why the article does this, though Dead Rabbit Radio speculated it may have been because Caladan realized that there wasn’t enough material from Weidner to warrant a full article and so it was padded out with various other conspiracies.

Nonetheless, I want to cover a few more parts because it ties some of the same topics that were a part of the Tolkien one. The first of which comes from this gem:

     …George Lucas made ‘Attack of the Clones.’  Maybe he knew something in History? Maybe Utopia became…that perverted in time?  That’s the problem. We are so old of a species. We are so ancient…

Perversion is quite fitting given the immediate follow up quote from the interview.

     …The destruction of Atlantis was 12,000 years ago and like Cayce said…was electrical.  This is the destruction of the World (Power) Grid. There was a NUCLEAR AGE 8000 years ago and then a World Flood 5000 years ago… (check the date Tolkien gave for Middle-Earth: 6500 years ago.  Time fits with a NEEDED FLOOD 5000 years ago).

This is the next big topic shift, which has gone from Lord of the Rings being based on a true story to giant skeletons and other mythological creatures being covered up to now the Great Flood that’s described in Noah’s Ark. The topic of the Great Flood is a bit of a controversial one, though according to the Bible: it was done to wipe out all sinners. Noah was tasked with building a massive ark, collecting two of every animal, and then going aboard the ark with his family. However, according to Caladan, the real reason was significantly more… fantastical.

     …I believe the Great Flood also cleansed (killed)…ANIMALS that were cloned!  We have mythological Greek and Roman legends of a half-man, half-horse; 3-headed dog…all these mythical animals.  They may have been genetic experiments…all that had to be wiped out in a Flood to LOWER RADIATION LEVELS…and to just get rid of the (cloned monsters) madness.  And, what else would we be left with but the pyramids and fantastic constructions that we can’t build today…’ – TSC

Indeed, the Great Flood was brought upon us by God to wipe out these cloned animals because of the extreme levels of radiation and the perversion of God’s creations. Now exactly how the other constructions that were made survived the extraordinarily devastating flood, I don’t know, but it’s at this point that the article finally shifts back to the topic of Tolkien. Alas, Caladan posits something that I spent a bit too much time trying to piece together. There are two paragraphs that precede this one, but I cannot connect them to this one as it makes little to no sense. As such, I’ll let you try to decipher it.

History never progressed.  Maybe Tolkien was trying to tell us this with his Lost History of Middle-Earth?  Not saying the ‘Lord of the Rings’ creatures were real, exactly. But, do not be surprised to discover a nuclear age neatly hidden away from you.  And if that were true…then maybe sea shells truly found on top of Mt. Everest proving a global Waterworld was because…bizarre, unnatural creatures and their insane Cloners HAD to be removed.  Great Flood was not an act of God; but Science from ‘angels’ (Indians) with remnants of old technology fighting to save the planet (again) from dark forces.

After this shift back to Tolkien, Caladan shifts back to Noah and has a take hotter than the Sun’s Corona.

Speaking of NOAH…there’s big-money, big-budget Hollywood portraying the biblical story of the Flood.  There’s Russell Crowe as Noah. There are all the animals LITERALLY walking up the plank; in perfect pairs, not eating each other.  Who’s going to clean up the bottom of the ark, that’s what I want to know? In my version, the true version…the animals’ DNA was on millions of crystal chips (suspended animation) on MANY ARKS that sailed!  Science, people; the ‘Forbidden Fruit’ of the ‘gods’ is the only thing to believe and have faith in!

He then has another hot take that left me doubled over in laughter.

Were the dinosaurs also a part (big part) of these prehistoric, genetic experiments?  Consider the dinos not as old as we think which explains the famous enigma of the ‘squashed-Trilobite, sandal fossil’ and Puluxy River finds.  (Carbon-14 is bogus).

I don’t like to laugh at those I write about, but this has gotten so absurd that I feel like I should be riffing this article rather than writing about it. Nonetheless, the article finally settles on discussing both Tolkien and C.S. Lewis’ respective views on things like mysticism and religious mysticism before finally concluding. I tried to seek out additional information on this conspiracy, but ultimately I’ve come up empty handed. For all intents and purposes, that’s where the bizarre story of Tolkien’s legendary Middle Earth saga comes to an end. I’ve read many weird stories in my life, but writing this one—the very story that I just conveyed—has to be one of the most maddeningly strange. It’s definitely not the strangest (that one has yet to come), but it’s one that strikes me as being so disorganized and cluttered thanks to how often it jumps from one topic to another that I eventually fell victim to the exact same thing. I didn’t mean for this to lose that “serious” touch I try to maintain I write, but I found myself wondering if there was anyway I could realistically present this.

I digress though. Let’s move onto the theories, which are as black and white as films from the 1920s.

Theories

1. It’s historical fact

This is definitely not me thinking about the possibility that people believe this.

Our first theory is that, well, everything as described above is 100% true and that Tolkien did in fact discover the true history of our world in the basement of Oxford. Many people who believe in this generally have already subscribed to the ideas of Alternative History and Ancient Aliens. Those two will have their own dedicated write-ups, but for now: let’s go over a very abridged version of the arguments that these folks generally give.

The first is very simple: the truth has been covered up in the past, so why trust what’s said now? An argument like this is something I find difficult to counter given that it is actually a decent point in my eyes. The powers that be have lied in the past and there’s no real reason to take their word at face value. This is why I often say that I do have my own distrust of those powers and always leave the door open to skepticism and conspiracies when it comes to topics like this. However, I’ll forever counter with this: how exactly can the truth be covered up so consistently without someone coming forward with hard evidence to prove that they’re lying?

Whether you think he’s a hero or a traitor, Edward Snowden did this when he proved that the NSA was spying on American citizens. He presented irrefutable evidence and changed the way Americans now view the agency as a whole. So if there’s truly evidence for this theory, why hasn’t anyone ever come forward? Heck, Weidner claims that Tolkien sent letters claiming that Lord of the Rings was based off of what he read. Why haven’t those letters been leaked? Does Weidner have them? Where’d he learn about them? Or is it all hogwash on his part?

Whatever, I digress since I know I’ll never get an answer by rambling. As such, the second argument presented is that everyone who has tried to leak it has been passed off as a kook or was killed. Both of these are true to some degree—the former more so than the latter. There have been supposed former CIA agents who’ve come forward and claimed something and have been passed off as either crazy, senile, or something else. Other times, the claims have been a bit more sketchy, such as the case of a supposed CIA agent named Malcom Howard who stated that they (the CIA) blew up World Trade Center 7. That’s a topic we’ll maybe one day discuss down the line, but for now: I recommend just Googling the claims of WTC7 for yourself as it’s a very controversial topic.

Now as for the claim that those who’ve blown the whistle on something and have been silenced for it, that’s somewhat true. In the past, there have been whistleblowers who’ve been killed for their actions. This has been done in certain countries where the government has a much stronger hold on the populus and can maintain obedience from them. As such, in this case, it’d require obedience from the world’s historians—at least the most prominent ones. I can’t quite see that working out without someone potentially leaking something to the Internet. Though to some, it’s possible given the organized nature of this Shadow Government.

The third and final response is that what we generally accept as historical fact is what the powers that be want us to think. That you, myself, and Harold who lives in that old dilapidated house are all sheeple. Okay, to be fair: not everyone who buys into these theories is like that. It’s very much a fact that those that we see as “kooky conspiracy theories” can—and normally are—normal folks who have “unorthodox” (per-se) beliefs. Though I’m putting this here as some can, and do, get a bit irked when you laugh off the theories. Perhaps that’s acceptable as you’re more or less scoffing at them and passing them off as lunatics. Though to some, the better man would just turn the other cheek. I leave whichever is the better response up to you though.

These three responses are a bit of a generalization on my part, but they’re the ones I’ve seen the most often. As such, this is generally how the folks that believe in this theory see things. I’ll admit that it’s not that crazy given the shady history many governments have had, but I don’t quite see it personally. Nonetheless, I leave judgement up to you. We’re all free to make our own decisions and as such, I won’t judge you personally if you opt to believe in this theory.

2. It’s just a fantasy story

The second and final theory is that Lord of the Rings is nothing more than a fantasy story and the conspiracy we just discussed is complete and total nonsense. Nothing more, nothing less. The evidence this theory brings to the table is that there’s nothing to support it. History and archaeology have taught us that there’s nothing to prove that centaurs or minotaurs roamed the Earth at any point in our existence. There’s nothing to prove that there are alien warlords on or around Saturn. There’s nothing to prove that these creatures existed. Likewise, people who abide by this theory say the same for the conspiracy: there’s precisely nothing to prove that anything described above ever occurred.

My Take

Yeah, I won’t beat around the bush today. I don’t think that this conspiracy has any basis in reality. While I do believe that legends originate from somewhere and I firmly believe our world is much more mysterious than we think it is, I don’t believe that Lord of the Rings is historical in nature. Sure, I think it’s possible that dragons exist[ed] (we’ll cover this next year), but I don’t think they’re the fire breathing lizards that they’re portrayed as—and I definitely don’t think they’re like Smaug. The same goes for creatures like Fairies, Gnomes, and Mermaids/Mermen. I think they could, possibly, be real; though that’s just me. I don’t think they’re like the generic fantasy portrayal they’re given though. Rather, I think they’d be something much more grounded in reality; a fairy potentially being some sort of odd looking butterfly or moth for example.

As such: I think that this idea that Lord of the Rings is historical in nature is simply too… well, fantastical. Alternative History is something I’ve never been fond of thanks to how much it relies on suppression of knowledge. Hiding the idea of the true history is something that feels way too difficult to keep up for centuries, let alone millennia. Yes, the idea of hiding archaeological discoveries of giants is plausible to a degree (you can simply have the bones destroyed), but when it comes to the things described by Tolkien, I have to wonder how in the world we can hide the existence of aliens from Saturn. Did we wipe them out when we defeated the warlord? Or did we make peace with them? Are they going to be in on Project Blue Beam?

That, coupled with the idea of the ancient nuclear age, doesn’t ring true to me. This isn’t something I can easily buy into. Sure, the idea of more technologically advanced humans from times of yore isn’t impossible to me (it’s actually something I like to think about from time to time to entertain the idea), but I don’t think it’s at all likely. When you throw in the idea of magical wizards, Elves, Dwarves, dragons, Ents, and other creatures though? Then I’m showing myself to the door like I just walked in on the ritualistic sacrifice of goat.

Moving on though: the aspect involving Ancient Aliens is something that really tipped the scales in the way of this not being believable to me. That’s a conspiracy I want to one day cover as it’s one of the biggest and most famous, but I’ve always been hesitant because it’s one that I don’t like. To put it simply: I’ve never believed in the idea of aliens who helped catapult humans ahead in the way of technology, let alone helped us build the pyramids (among other structures). In the case of an alien warlord who visited us to try and wipe us out or steal our energy though, I think it’s even sillier than them having us build giant structures. Not helping matters is what happened to them after we beat them in some great battle. As I asked earlier: where did they go? Are they still around? Was this Sauron-esque guy the only alien from Saturn? Did he break off from his species to travel around conquering planets and he was finally beaten when he got to Earth? Ideas like this generally warrant some sort of explanation and if we’re to believe that this has been covered up, surely there’d be secret history relating to his species. At least, I imagine there’d be.

One other issue I have is the sudden shift in the article from discussing the idea that Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings based on what he read to the topic of giants to then discussing the Great Flood. This, on a personal level, just bothered me. As Dead Rabbit Radio stated: it was like the writer knew that they didn’t have enough material to justify an article and so they padded it out with other topics. So they jump from Tolkien to giants and suppressed archaeological finds to then discussing Biblical texts and how the true meaning is actually something else and not what’s written in, well, the Bible. As a side note: I don’t think I’ll ever see a larger stretch anytime soon than the idea that Atlantis—which was never mentioned as far as I’m aware until Homer wrote about it—was in fact Eden. One is described as a city while the other is a garden. Unless my understanding of the story of Adam and Eve is wrong, how in the world can they be one in the same?

Finally, in the way of the genetically cloned creatures and the Great Flood as described in the story of Noah’s Ark: I honestly had to stop reading here for a bit because I was beginning to think this might’ve been a parody of a conspiracy. I don’t like saying things like that when I write as it feels like I’m attacking the person or believer[s] rather than the idea, but in this case: it’s the honest to God truth. I had to wonder if maybe I was being fooled and this was all a parody.

This aspect I believe ties into the alternative history portion, but Biblical revisionism isn’t something new. Though why on Earth the text as described in nearly—if not all—of the Abrahamic religions would change “God wanted to wipe out all genetically cloned animals” to “God wanted to wipe out all sinners” is beyond me. Yes, Biblical interpretation is a thing, but I’ve never heard of such a gargantuan leap in what’s written to what it really means. Maybe I’m wrong though. Maybe I’m ignorant. Who knows, but I’m not going to dwell on it for too long.

Overall, as I said before: I don’t think this conspiracy has any basis in reality. I can understand why to some it does given it merely adopted some very well known conspiracies, but the overall idea is way too much to buy into.

Conclusion

This conspiracy is definitely not something I would’ve ever foreseen myself tackling mere months ago. While it’s more an amalgamation of a few well known theories, the mere idea of something as fantastical as Lord of the Rings being based on historical fact is quite confounding. Though I guess that’s what makes the world of conspiracies appealing to some. The mundane explanations for things aren’t satisfying. There has to be more to the story. In the case of Lord of the Rings, it’s ripe for being seen as more than just a fantasy story.