Preview: Rings and Rituals with Marilyn R Pukkila

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Lorehounds. I'm David. I'm John and we're here with our favorite Tolkien

[00:00:17] scholar Marilyn R. Pucila to discuss an exciting new project she's starting.

[00:00:23] Marilyn, thanks so very much for being here. We're excited to find out what you've been the ritual of the Harfoots, their autumn festival. I felt that people were misunderstanding the Harfoots from the beginning because they were talking about how they were so cruel and leaving people behind and social Darwinism and all that stuff. That had generated a lot of discourse.

[00:01:40] It did. It did. I was seeing it and colleague, Dr. Sara Brown of Signum University, if she'd be willing to do this with me. And she said, yes. Yay. Lovely. So. And listeners may know her because she's on the Prancing Pony podcast, Rings Wrap Up.

[00:03:00] Rings of Power. Right. Which was the Prancing Pony's Rings of Power, right? And I know a fellow, more hands East study who I'm going to invite and see if he's willing to spend some time with us on that. Great. Um, so yeah. Why don't you pitch the show a little bit? Why don't you tell us a little bit more about actually how the show is going to work, how many episodes and, and you're going to do one for each of the rings of power series are going to do some stuff in front of them

[00:04:24] behind that. Well, there's going to be? It's very higher higher attic. It's it's very formal. It involves body position it involves Releasing of the tools that you're using that the you have brought your swords to support her. You're no longer doing that You're putting your swords down. Mm-hmm, you know very small very short

[00:05:42] And yet already, you know a fair bit about know this culture

[00:06:43] What do you accomplish by that? What's the intention behind? Yeah, that's a good question. Ignoring your phone, drinking your coffee,

[00:06:47] all the steps that you just mentioned. And then what does that tell us about David?

[00:06:50] Right. That he's a pretentious pinky.

[00:06:56] Or somebody who values his state of mind, who values a thoughtful awakening.

[00:07:04] Right, with an eight-year-old that we've got to get off, bundle off to get to school.

[00:08:07] structure to life. It also helps transition from being awake to being asleep. That can be a very scary transition.

[00:08:08] A state change, right?

[00:08:09] Change of state.

[00:08:10] Especially for little kids. Yeah, that's a big deal.

[00:08:12] And intentional, done with intentionality.

[00:08:15] And I'm thinking we're recording this in December and there's lots of ritual that's going on

[00:08:20] in this month all over the world, depending're approaching the time of recognizing that they're at the peak of the sun, the greatest strength. And now they have to move into a time of increasing darkness. And so what does that mean? Are you going to have a good harvest? Are you going to have a no stored away

[00:09:42] for the winter? Of course, people in the who are no longer with you. This is an interesting thing in this space that we're doing in this with our podcasts in general. It's not that we're necessarily

[00:11:04] critics, we're fans, we're discussing, we're has it in her notes. I kind of want her to pull it in here. But that's the beauty of the lore hound sort of integrated, right? We're swirling around in all of these different things. So. Is this the one about why we tell stories? Yes. Okay. Yes. Why we have fantasy. Give me a minute. There's like, it's such an apt quote here. And I was like, man.

[00:13:27] molecule of mercy. And yet, death waved a hand, and yet you act as if there is some ideal order in the world, as if there is some some brightness in the universe by

[00:13:33] which it may be judged. Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the

[00:13:38] point? My point exactly. You need to rings and rituals. So you're going to do basically an episode by episode analysis. You've got a little formula, a little tool, a little analytical tool to examine all these things and then you're going to have sort of a bigger conversation about this particular

[00:15:03] ritual where it came from, what it means, where do we see it in our everyday life, these

[00:15:08] kinds of ritual. Can we be human without ritual? I don't think we can. Interesting. I don't think we can be human without telling stories. Right. Ho, ho, ho. Much better, yes. So this is actually really exciting. This is a little bit bigger of a scope than I was initially thinking.

[00:16:23] So maybe we can take what you've learned out be able to find it in your podcast player of choice. And, um, we'll, uh, we'll keep you posted as the development goes. Join us on our discord server. We'll set up a special channel just for rings and rituals for conversations there.

[00:17:41] And we're going to set up an email for you rings at well, rings and rituals

[00:17:46] at the lorehounds.com.

[00:18:46] And I think we all could with you because you you have fascinating things to say we all could fill out a lot of space if we Had to so I'm not worried about the content of these podcasts

[00:18:49] I'm sure they will be chock full of goodies for anyone at any level of Tolkien fandom. No, thank you, John. That means a lot

[00:18:56] That's great. Okay, so search for rings and rituals in your podcast

[00:19:01] Player of choice and we will see you there or on our discord or by email to a Marilyn and Sarah. Thanks so much, Marilyn