“No half-heartedness and no worldly fear must turn us aside from following the light unflinchingly.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
Of the many motifs that shape Tolkien’s Legendarium, none is more persistent—or more profound—than that of light. From the Flame Imperishable to the Two Lamps and Two Trees, from the Silmarils to the star-glass of Galadriel, readers of Tolkien’s work will encounter no shortage of luminous imagery. Entire scenes, locations, and characters are defined by their radiance; or, in the case of beings like Ungoliant, by their bitter absence of it—a consuming “unlight.” Yet this ‘light’ is far from ornamental metaphor. In Tolkien’s mythology, light is not merely symbolic or aesthetic—it is a force of being, a medium of vision, a vessel of memory. To trace the path of light through Middle-earth is to follow a deeper thread of meaning: one that entwines metaphysics with myth, language with perception, and spirit with story.
Inarguably, the most important piece of scholarship exploring Tolkien’s use of light is Verlyn Flieger’s Splintered Light: Language and Logos in Tolkien’s World. First published in 1983 (and substantially revised in 2002), this book (which was, remarkably, her first) has become a cornerstone of Tolkien scholarship, exploring how the theme of light—both as a physical substance and metaphysical symbol—permeates his mythopoetic vision. Flieger’s study delves into the intricate ways in which light functions not merely as an aesthetic presence, but as a structuring principle of meaning in Tolkien’s world.
Central to Flieger’s thesis is the observation that light, in Tolkien's cosmology, undergoes repeated fragmentation—or ‘splintering’—which parallels the gradual diminution of unity and purity across the ages of Arda. Its dispersal marks the sorrowful progression of history, and the gradual diminishing of divine presence in the world. This fragmentation is not simply a narrative device, but reflects Tolkien’s deeply linguistic and philosophical understanding of the world, wherein the logos—the creative Word—also suffers division and obscurity through the ages. Light is the medium through which meaning enters the world—and through which it is preserved, even as it fractures. In Splintered Light, Flieger helps us see that Tolkien’s mythology is not just illuminated by light, but structured around the loss of its unity and the longing for its return.
Barfield’s Semantic Unity
One of the key connections made by Flieger is the transformative influence of Owen Barfield’s work on Tolkien. A fellow Inkling (and indeed the last to pass away in 1997), Barfield was an author, poet, literary critic, and philosopher perhaps most esteemed for his 1957 book, Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry. Barfield had met Tolkien on multiple occasions, but the two were not close; and he noted that he was never an “enthusiast for The Lord of the Rings”. But his work had a monumental impact on Tolkien’s imagination, particularly his 1928 book, Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning. C.S. Lewis once told Barfield that the work had such an impact on Tolkien that he even found himself needing to radically revise some of his lectures, remarking, “It is one of those things, that when you’ve once seen it there are all sorts of things you can never say again”.1
At the heart of Poetic Diction is Barfield’s theory of ‘semantic unity’, which argues that language and human consciousness co-evolved from an original state of unified perception and expression to a modern condition in which meaning has become fragmented and abstract. According to Barfield, early human beings experienced the world not as a collection of discrete, external objects, but as an undivided field of meaning. Their language reflected this unity. Words were not abstract symbols pointing to separate concepts, but holophrases—dense, experiential expressions of phenomena that were simultaneously physical, emotional, and spiritual.
The classic example of this is the Greek word pneuma (or Latin spiritus), which is variably translated into English as ‘breath’, ‘spirit’, or ‘wind’, depending on context. In the modern mind, we naturally regard these as three rather different things deserving their own specific terms, assuming perhaps that Ancient Greek speakers treated these as a set of homonyms rather than a singular idea. But Barfield argued that this was not the case, and that in fact words like pneuma or spiritus originally arose out of a perception of the world in which ‘wind’, ‘breath’, and ‘spirit’ were one and the same—or rather aligned expressions of the same fundamental principle. This was not, in Barfield’s view, ‘metaphor’ in the modern sense—where abstract concepts are poetically superimposed on physical reality—but a literal perception of unity between physical and spiritual phenomena. The word expressed a reality in which inner and outer, mind and matter, were not yet split.
Going even further back, Barfield postulated that words like pneuma must have originally possessed a kind of ‘proto-meaning’ which conceptually precedes all the others. Thus pneuma is not a mere union or conflation of the ideas expressed by ‘breath’, ‘spirit’, and ‘wind’, but originally something more foundational and all-encompassing—something which our modern brains can simply no longer comprehend.
Another important example, both to Barfield and to Flieger’s application of his theories to Tolkien’s work, is the word logos, variably taken to mean ‘word’, ‘speech’, ‘reason’, ‘organising principle’, and ‘cosmic harmony’. As Flieger notes, “To translate logos, as we are forced to do today, by selecting one from among these meanings, is arbitrarily to isolate that meaning and that concept from the entirety of meaning it must have originally expressed. Word, percept, and concept have altered so that the former wholeness has, of necessity, been fragmented”2
According to Barfield, as human consciousness evolved, the original semantic unity of such terms was irreversibly fragmented. Rational thought and analytical distinction brought precision and abstraction, but at the cost of experiential wholeness. Modern minds no longer perceive the world as inherently meaningful, but instead must construct meaning from symbols and analogies. But Barfield argues that there is one artistic medium through which we can still taste this semantic unity: poetry. Poets, he argues, are uniquely able to engage with words in ways that echo this earlier mode of linguistic consciousness—contriving new meaning through metaphor and reenacting, in a poetic microcosm, the evolutionary process of language and thought. For Barfield, the work of the poet is not mere aesthetic play; it is an epistemological exercise. Poetry becomes a window into the deep structures of human knowing.
Barfield argued that although this fragmentation is irreversible in the historical sense, it is not the end of the story. What lies beyond is not a return to pre-modern consciousness, but a movement forward into what he called final participation: a future mode of being in which the perceiver is no longer passively observing the world, nor nostalgically yearning for lost unity, but actively co-creating meaning through conscious, imaginative engagement. In this state, the subject-object divide is not erased but transcended—healed through a synthesis of reason and reverence, intellect and intuition.
Tolkien’s mythology may be read as a visionary enactment of this very process. His stories do not merely describe a world; they participate in the making of one. As Tolkien himself wrote in On Fairy-stories, “the incarnate mind, the tongue, and the tale are in our world coeval.”3 Language, thought, and imagination are not separate faculties but intertwined expressions of a participatory cosmos. Through the luminous threads of light, language, and longing that run through his Legendarium, Tolkien invites us not simply to remember a world in which word and world were one, but to imagine—and perhaps begin to inhabit—a world in which they might be again.
It is here that Flieger’s reading of Tolkien finds its most powerful resonance. For Tolkien, myth is not an escape from reality but a liberation into it. His stories enact a movement toward Barfield’s final participation—not didactically, but by awakening in the reader a sense of perceptual wholeness, of meaning that is both discovered and made.
Beyond Symbolism
With this in mind, let us return to our concept of light. Light is used at length in Tolkien’s Legendarium to identify objects and beings which are suffused with holiness—the closer they are to the luminous ‘source’, the more light they inherently possess. This is, of course, a rather popular symbol used in many mythic traditions. But in Tolkien’s case, this light is not merely symbolic, nor is it purely physical. The Two Trees are not luminous only in a metaphorical sense, nor can their luminosity be reduced to the presence of some bioluminescent compounds. Their light is both physical and spiritual—both natural and suffused with meaning. In Flieger’s words, “Tolkien has used fantasy to reinvest metaphor with literality”.4
In the ‘beginning’ of Arda, both light and language exist in their natural unified state. But over time, they both become splintered through repeated fragmentations. Just as languages splinter into manifold dialects and families of speech, the primordial light of the world is also repeatedly fragmented into increasingly dimmed (both in literal brightness and holiness) manifestations. The luminous Phial of Galadriel, which still holds tremendous power at the End of the Third Age, is itself a fragment of the light of Eärendil — a Silmaril — a fragmented derivative of the light of the Two Trees, who themselves emerged out of the fragmented light of the Two Lamps, in an ongoing lineage of ever-diminishing brilliance. The splintering of light is a recurring theme throughout the entire trajectory of the Legendarium, from the Music of the Ainur to the end of the Third Age and beyond.
But this, importantly, isn’t simply a story of the entropic dimming of spiritual light. Much like language, the splintering of light rather famously produces something that the original form did not overtly possess: rays of rainbow hues. As light and language splinter, new colours and tones of expression emerge. While new perils certainly arise in the process, so do new opportunities for expressions of goodness. What we lose in brightness we gain in a diversity of expressions. Thus, it is quite fitting that it would take a fellowship of diverse individuals—many splinters, if you will—to facilitate the destruction of the Ring.
Language mirrors this. As the tongues of Middle-earth diverge, so too do their ways of seeing and naming the world. As Flieger writes, “Both words and light are agents of perception, enabling us to see phenomena”.5 In Tolkien’s world, this is not just an artistic conceit—it is the structure of reality itself. Each new linguistic strand offers not just a new method of communication, but a distinct way of attending to reality. Meaning is refracted—not destroyed, but made plural. And fittingly, in Tolkien’s mythology, language itself arises from an encounter with light: the elves or Quendi (literally ‘those who speak with voices’) first awaken beneath the stars of Varda at Cuiviénen. Their first act is not to master, but to name. Language, in this telling, is born not of utility, but of wonder. It emerges in response to light—and in doing so, helps to preserve it.
On the significance of Poetic Diction, Barfield writes that it is “not merely a theory of poetic diction, but a theory of poetry; and not merely a theory of poetry, but a theory of knowledge” (Barfield, p. 14). His is a fundamentally philosophical work, composed in a style that is familiar enough to those who pursue such things. But Tolkien’s work is, in many ways, a kind of philosophy in action—a luminous expression of the pursuit of wisdom. As Flieger writes, “The questions Tolkien raises are the same ones mankind has always asked: where do we fit in? what do we mean? why are we here? Mythology is as proper a forum for such questions as philosophy; and while philosophies come and go, mythologies tend to endure as stories long after they have ceased to command belief”.6 Stories take us well beyond the flat analysis of data—they compel us to feel, to experience, to wonder and reflect in ways that philosophical tracts often cannot. It may be that myth and poetry are the purest expressions of philosophical inquiry and insight.
On Enlightenment
It is, of course, necessary to touch on the notion of enlightenment. This term—so often reduced in modern parlance to rational insight or intellectual clarity—holds a far more profound resonance when we consider Tolkien’s treatment of light. Enlightenment, for Tolkien, is not merely a cognitive process but an ontological transformation: the awakening of the mind to the presence of deeper realities, often through direct encounters with light which are not merely symbolic, but wholly literal.
In this context, enlightenment is not the accumulation of knowledge (nor indeed of merit), but the recovery of vision. It is an un-forgetting—a re-seeing of the world with clarity born out of direct participation in the original unity of things. As Flieger observes, Tolkien's light is not a metaphor for truth, but rather truth made visible. The Elves, awakening under the stars of Varda, experience a moment of literal and figurative enlightenment: they emerge into consciousness not by degrees, but through the primordial beholding of luminosity. Their first sight is starlight—and their first act is naming. Illumination and language arise together.
The ninth chapter of Flieger’s book is titled “Perception = Name = Identity”, and it is in this triad that we find Tolkien’s deepest articulation of enlightenment. To perceive something clearly is to be able to name it; to name it is to affirm its reality; and in so doing, both the object and the perceiver gain identity. Enlightenment thus becomes a mutual recognition—a communion between being and knowing, mediated through light and language. It is a process that reverses the modern alienation of subject and object.
This view closely echoes Barfield’s argument that early language was born from a consciousness that experienced the world in participatory unity. Enlightenment, then, is not a movement away from myth toward rational clarity, as the European Enlightenment era might suggest, but a movement through division toward reintegration—a ‘final participation’ in meaning that is both inner and outer. In this, Tolkien’s mythos radically reorients the modern narrative of progress. Enlightenment is not the shedding of illusion, but the illumination of reality through myth, memory, and the imagination.
As Flieger demonstrates, we see this most clearly in Frodo’s narrative arc. His burden is not only the Ring, but the slow dimming of vision. As he nears Mount Doom, his physical and spiritual sight begin to fail. It is in these darkest places—Shelob’s lair, the plains of Gorgoroth—that the smallest remnants of light become sources of revelation. Galadriel’s phial does not merely light the way; it reorients the will, revives the memory, and calls the soul back to what it truly is. Likewise, the fleeting glimpse of a ‘star’ (Venus/Eärendil’s Silmaril) in the heavens above the clouds is a profound moment of re-enchantment for Frodo and Sam, affording them the fortitude to complete their quest. Enlightenment is not attained by conquering darkness, but by illuminating a path through it.
Even Gollum’s tragic story contains a distorted echo of this idea. Once named Sméagol, he has forgotten his name, his kin, his light. His descent is marked by a retreat from perception—he cannot bear the light, cannot recall the stars, cannot name what he loves or fears. His is a de-enlightenment—perhaps an endarkenment—a slow erosion of the soul through loss of vision and speech. He becomes, quite literally, “nameless.”
Thus, for Tolkien, enlightenment is not a secular or psychological insight, but a spiritual reorientation. It is the ability to perceive with fullness—to see and to name in a way that restores both self and world. It is what the Elves preserve, what the Silmarils enshrine, what Frodo glimpses in the light of Eärendil, and what Sam carries back to the Shire. It is not the knowledge of power, but the memory of luminosity.
On this, it is worth noting that the Buddhist notion of ‘enlightenment’ would have certainly been known to Tolkien—though he also would have been aware that this was a rather improper translation of the Pali and Sanskrit term Bodhi, popularised by none other than Max Müller, a fellow philologist whose approach to fairy-stories Tolkien critiques in his essay ‘On Fairy-stories’. While the original term is already itself a kind of metaphor (or is it?)—using the motif of ‘waking up’ to explain the experience of spiritual liberation—Müller seems to have used this alternate motif of illumination to draw allusions between Buddhist philosophy and the European Enlightenment.
While conflating Buddhism with Enlightenment-era thinking is problematic for many reasons, the connection with light is itself not wholly misguided. Particularly in lineages like the ‘Great Perfection’ (Tib. rDzogs chen) tradition of Tibet, light and luminosity are indeed of profound significance. Notably, this ‘light’ is likewise not merely symbolic. While the ‘luminosity’ of the Nature of Mind may be used as a kind of metaphor for basic awareness or cognition, engagement with ‘clear light’ (Tib. ‘od gsal) is indeed a core practice of the Great Perfection tradition, ultimately culminating in the achievement of a ‘body’ of rainbow light (Tib. ja’ lus).
Following the Light
Much like Barfield’s effect on Tolkien, Flieger’s Splintered Light is “one of those things, that when you’ve once seen it there are all sorts of things you can never say again.” Her analysis transforms how we read Tolkien—not only by illuminating the intricacies of his cosmology, but by inviting us to reconsider the act of reading itself as a kind of seeing, and seeing as a form of remembrance and co-creation.
In Tolkien’s Legendarium, light is never static. It is created, divided, refracted, lost, hoarded, given, and reclaimed. It is not merely a metaphor but a metaphysic—a means of understanding being, knowledge, and longing. What begins in the Flame Imperishable does not end in darkness but persists, however faintly, in the Phial of Galadriel, in a star glimpsed through Mordor’s smoke, in the words of a hobbit gardener.
To follow Tolkien’s light, as Flieger shows us, is to engage in more than literary analysis. It is to participate in the act of recovery—a Barfieldian remembering of meanings too ancient for modern minds, too whole for fragmented speech. Through this process, Tolkien does more than tell a story: he restores to us a way of seeing. As Flieger writes, he “reinvests metaphor with literality.” He brings back into being a world where word, world, and wonder are one.
In the end, Tolkien offers no dogma, no theological system, no neat conclusions. He offers, instead, a vision—fragile, fading, but fiercely luminous. It is this vision—of meaning as light, and light as meaning—that Flieger helps us behold, and that Tolkien invites us to follow.
As Flieger writes in the preface to Splintered Light:
Tolkien puts us in touch with the supernatural; he opens our eyes to wonder; he gives us, for however brief a period, a universe of beauty and meaning and purpose. Whether there really is such a universe is less important than the undeniable truth that we need one badly, that we are deeply uneasy at the lack of one and at the prospect that we may have to make, or remake, one ourselves. Tolkien shows us a way to do that.7
To follow the light, then, is not to simply follow the worn out tracks of materialist analysis or religious dogma—it is to strive to see the world anew. And perhaps, in doing so, to help remake it.
Humphrey Carpenter (1979), The Inklings: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and Their Friends (Boston: Houghton Mifflin), p. 42.
Verlyn Flieger (2002), Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien’s World, Revised Edition (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press), p. 39.
J.R.R. Tolkien (2014), Tolkien On Fairy-stories: Expanded Edition with Commentary, ed. Verlyn Flieger (London: Harper Collins), p. 41.
Flieger (2002), p. 64.
Flieger (2002), p. 44.
Flieger (2002), p. xii.
Flieger (2002), p. xii.