Mycelium
A vocab word that explains Tom Bombadil.
I feel like this essay is going to be a bit of a mess, but honestly I think that’s actually okay. I’ve been mulling over this idea for the past couple weeks, ever since we read through the Tom Bombadil scenes in the Personal Canon Formation readalong of Lord of the Rings. The more I pored over this insane idea, the more it became a thesis. A thesis that’s so crazy, I think it might be true.
My thesis, though simple, is as multiply-rooted as the vocab word itself. It is simply the following:
Tom Bombadil is a Mushroom.
Allow me to explain.
It all started with this conversation in the comments of the Tom Bombadil piece, that I was having with
:
I feel like it’s apropos to discuss this concept as it connects to my thesis, as in our LOTR readalong right now, we’re up to the Ents and having a discussion of the deep ecological connections that many of the non-human beings of Middle-Earth have, as a way of life and of being. And yet Bombadil is still an enigma. But Martha and I hit on something here, when we discussed how deeply connected Tom is to his land, not in ownership but it feels like he literally is part of the landscape. When we were mulling over this connection, and I mentioned that he has a limited area wherein he functions, and Martha typed that word ‘mycelium’ I thought ah-ha! A mushroom is just one fruiting body of the powerful underground network that is the mycelium—Tom is just manifesting as this bearded man who’s dressed like he is (more about this in a minute), as a humanoid appearance of the mushroom.
Who but a mushroom could open up Old Man Willow so effectively to free the trapped and hypnotized hobbits? Who else could be this deeply friendly with all animals, and be able to conquer dead things like the barrow-wights, but a mushroom? Plus, he is a fun guy.
A … fun. gi….
I’ll see myself out.
But then! Guess what I learned, when I brought up this thesis to my partner? Mind. Blown:
Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow;
Bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow.
‘Magic’ (or psilocybin) mushrooms are yellow in the stem, but turn blue upon disturbance—why this happens is kind of unclear, but it is a major indicator of the presence of psilocybin in the mushroom—the blue jacket, though the boots are yellow.
The strangely dreamlike environment of Tom’s house, as an almost aftereffect of the hobbits’ weird hypnotic state, wherein they felt outside of their bodies? The healthful sleep at Tom’s house and almost miraculous healing properties of Tom’s song?
Actually, it’s not even ‘almost’—think about the song they learn as they leave Bombadil for the first time and immediately get gotten by the barrow-wights? The barrow is not within hobbit-voice-distance of Tom’s house, but yet they chant the calling song in a panic and here comes the echoing song from afar, conquering the corrupt death-ghouls and spreading. The whole Tom Bombadil sequence is very hallucinatory, in a healing way when they’re with him, in a bad way when they’re not. In my admittedly limited research, I did find that music is often an essential ingredient in psychedelic therapy sessions. And there’s so much correlation between Frodo’s experience, the Black Riders, and depression—Bombadil literally gives the hobbits a thorough therapeutic experience, and saves them and their brains before sending them on their way.
Tom’s called The Eldest and The Master, and that would make sense here too. Mushrooms are some of the most ancient and complex living things on Earth, and why wouldn’t they be so on Middle-Earth too? This is why the deeply-connected-to-trees Elves don’t really know what he is, but know that he’s Eldest, and have respect for him. They recognize him, in other words, without really knowing his ‘race.’ This is of course why he’s familiar friends with such a supposedly minor character like Farmer Maggot: Maggot’s whole life and livelihood is centered on mushrooms. He’s obviously got Tom’s blessing.
Could this be why Tom can only sing? He’s just one budding-out of a hive mind, a mycelium? And so this one-shroom manifestation chants in the rhythm of the whole?
One thing’s certain: he doesn’t go past his own territory. My theory, as attached to this thesis, is: he can’t. He can’t exist past his mycelium network and that’s why he doesn’t travel and has to leave the hobbits at a certain boundary of his land—he’s at the edge of where he can live, and can’t go past where his giant networked being ends.
Now I know, as a nerd of the first water myself, that Tolkien himself had no deep concept for Bombadil—his intention in creating him was to supply a mysterious enigmatic figure, one with no explainable origin. Tolkien even said outright that Tom is not representative of God nor the author, and is not any of the godlike or angelic beings of Middle-Earth, and is ‘not improved by philosophizing’ about him. Which, yeah, of course: Tolkien explained all histories of his world in meticulous detail, whether it’s within the story of LOTR itself or in letters or works like the Appendices and The Silmarillion, and so if he meant to have a Bombadil backstory, best believe there’d be one. And Tolkien famously hated allegory; he wouldn’t have made Tom one. So yes, I understand all this. It’s like Levinson and Link averring that we never should learn Columbo’s first name, or verify his family. The character is supposed to be mythical, and mysterious, and have no back story, just the story of him in the immediate framework of the story where he appears. I get it. I do. And I agree. But.
Isn’t it a cool idea?
I love the idea! I’ve long seen Tom as the spirit of the Old Forest, potentially explaining his short stature and his boundaries (since the Forest is much reduced from what it was), but this takes that genius loci to the next level. This was a fun and thoughtful read.
That is a fascinating idea, and spotting the connection to the color choices is a great hook.
It reminds me this article about the world of fungi is amazing and creepy: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n10/francis-gooding/from-its-myriad-tips
Try to imagine what it is like to be a fungus. Not a mushroom, pushing up through damp soil overnight or delicately forcing itself out through the bark of a rotting log: that would be like imagining the grape rather than the vine. Instead try to think your way into the main part of a fungus, the mycelium, a proliferating network of tiny white threads known as hyphae. Decentralised, inquisitive, exploratory and voracious, a mycelial network ranges through soil in search of food. It tangles itself in an intimate scrawl with the roots of plants, exchanging nutrients and sugars with them; it meets with the hyphae of other networks and has mycelial sex; messages from its myriad tips are reported rapidly across the whole network by mysterious means, perhaps chemical, perhaps electrical. For food, it prefers wood, but with practice it can learn to eat novel substances, including toxic chemicals, plastics and oil. Is it somehow sentient? As its thousands of hyphae simultaneously but independently rove through the soil, is the mycelium behaving as an individual or a swarm? What is it like to be this way?
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