The Palantir Gambit...

“… fed the despair of his heart until it overthrew his mind.”* 

So spoke Gandalf the White concerning the death of Denethor, Steward of Gondor. Desperate for tactical intelligence on the actions of Sauron the great enemy Denethor  had dared the palantir of Minis Anor, one of the seven seeing-stones of the King, and exposed himself to the thought of the dark lord who had possession of the palantir taken with the fall of Minis Ithil. 

Finding Denethor to great to be subdued immediately the dark lord more than allowed him he aided him in seeing the armies of Mordor mustering against his realm, allowed him the tactical advantage of this knowing that in time his strategy would prevail. Sauron’s dark perception proved accurate, in the most critical hour the deceptions of understanding Sauron had seeded bore foul fruit.  The ruler and defacto king of Sauron’s greatest enemy was stricken to suicidal madness by the sight of the very fleet bearing the rightful King returning to his aid leading not one but two armies to the defense of the city: one living and one dead.

The suicide of Denethor at the height of the battle is just one of many, many scenes of high drama found in *JRR Tolkien’s masterwork “The Lord of the Rings” involving the wizard Gandalf.  Gandalf Istari revealed in the appendixes as the Mia of Yavanna, a spirit from the same order of creation as Sauron and most likely Sauron’s elder.  Gandalf the Gray resurrected into Gandalf the White, Tolkien’s faith made flesh.

More than simply high drama the tale of Denethor’s fate is as fine an example as I could find of one of the most critical dangers facing the modern world.  The palantir were  plot creations of a masterpiece of fiction but the functionality of the palantir are in this day and age of the sun all but ubiquitous.  You don’t have to be a King to own a smart phone that will show you the world as it is… or as it was... or as it might be. 

The question is of course are you, oh loyal sprinverizoatt subscriber and faithful pilgrim to the Temples of Google wise enough to understand that which you see?  Are you wise enough to understand that the forces of despair and corruption are in possession of just as many of those things as you are?  Are you perceptive enough to understand that the absolutely most effective lies are crafted from an absolutely accurate palette of facts?  Are you?

A prime example from this age of the sun of how such lies are worked concerns another wizard found in a masterwork of fiction, the modern wizard Albus Dumbledore who is headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry seen in the tales of Harry Potter.  

In what would appear (to a totally trivial surface investigation) to have been simply a comment answering a simple question posed in casual conversation on the social media site twatter  Dumbledore’s creator JK Rowling said she’d always thought of Albus as gay.  Ok, you wrote him, if you say so then that’s how it is.  Gandalf is a Mia, Dumbledore is gay.   Matters of trivial fact quite unrelated to the tales as told.

What is equally a matter of fact but hardly trivial is how JK assigning to her magnificent and noble character Dumbledore the humanizing affliction of psychiatric sterility has allowed the modern forces of despair and corruption to mount a campaign of truly Sauron subtle lies: the lie that any life supporting emotional intimacy between two males, men, must of necessity have shit on a dick in its’ history; the lie that sterility is a consequence of nobility, or worse that such sterility is the initiating event of nobility; the lie that those aspiring to such nobility should adopt psychologically initiated sterility as a prerequisite to achieving their ambition.  Sauron, known in the second age of the sun as Sauron the Deceiver by reason of his corruption-to-destruction of the kingdom of Numenor would fully appreciate their campaign, it is a weapon of exactly the same sort he used with great skill to the detriment of all the free peoples on many more than one occasion.

Of course, stick your tongue in your cheek and squint your left eye and it isn’t hard to see how JK Rowling might..  right… might maybe coulda’ been… employing a bit of subtle thought in her own right to protect her kingdom.  By declaring Albus Dumbledore as gay she damn sure sealed off any possibility of her vision of Harry’s world getting diluted by fan fiction detailing the exploits of Dumbledore’s children in their efforts against the deatheaters and the Dark Lord of their realm, the consummately evil and patricidal black wizard Voldemort.