On 9th June 2025, members of the Nurturing the Fields of Change community gathered to explore the nature of power and the shadow it casts. The session, aptly titled “At the Gates of Mordor,” offered a Tolkien-rich metaphor for the darker forces of human nature; capitalism, ecocide, genocide. I left feeling raw yet strangely empowered by the honesty and depth shared in people’s personal stories. A few days later, my podcast co-host suggested we centre our next episode on The One Ring and its relationship to power and animism. A coincidence? I think not.
Animism, in its essence, is the belief that objects, landscapes, and non-human entities possess their own life force or spirit. Tolkien’s world is richly layered with animism- trees speak, swords bear names and histories, and starlight is preserved in a piece of jewellery. But nowhere is this more evident than in the One Ring. It is not merely enchanted; it has agency. The Ring slips off fingers, betrays bearers, and exerts a persistent will to return to its master. Tolkien (2012) makes it clear: the Ring wants to be found.
In Tolkien’s moral cosmology, evil is typically depicted as a distortion of original goodness; an echo of Augustinian ontology, in which evil is understood not as a substance, but as a privatio boni, a privation or absence of good. Figures such as Morgoth, Gollum, and Denethor embody this fall from grace; each is a corrupted form of what Eru Ilúvatar originally created as good (Tolkien, 1977). But the One Ring stands apart. It is not a perversion of something once pure; it is malice made material. Sauron did not twist a noble object into something dark; he forged it as a vessel of domination from the outset, pouring into it his will to conquer, corrupt, and control. The Ring is not merely magical; it is an object born of intention: dark, consuming, and infectious.
Boromir captures this paradox with chilling clarity: “It is a strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt over so small a thing… such a little thing” (Tolkien, 2004, p. 270). Indeed, it is small. But its significance lies not in its size or even its power, but in the relational energy it carries. The Ring is not just a tool but a bearer of purpose. It was forged in domination, and it seeks relationship only through control. In that sense, it is not merely a reflection of its creator, but an extension of him.
So, what does animism ask of us here? It challenges us to reflect on what intentions are embedded in the objects we hold close. The Ring is a mirror, not just for characters like Frodo or Boromir, but for us. What energy are we pouring into the things we create and carry?
Bilbo famously asks, “What have I got in my pocket?” (Tolkien, 2012, p. 80). So, I ask you: What is in your pocket? Likely, it’s your phone; an object that connects and distracts, empowers and consumes. What have we poured into it? And what has it poured into us? Perhaps, like the Ring, our phones whisper. Perhaps they too bind us in ways we don’t fully understand.
If you’d like to explore this theme in more depth, check out my podcast: For the Shire: Coming Home Through Tolkien, Tarot and Jung.
Substack: https://boneandmirror.substack.com/
References
Tolkien, J. R. R. (1977). The Silmarillion (C. Tolkien, Ed.). George Allen & Unwin.
Tolkien, J. R. R. (2004). The fellowship of the ring. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. (Original work published 1954)
Tolkien, J. R. R. (2012). The hobbit (75th Anniversary ed.). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. (Original work published 1937)
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