Mycelium Bombadil
Hey! Come derry dol! Hop along, my hearties!
Mae govannen, friends! Josh here with a guest post for you today from Jenn Zuko on our good friend Tom Bombadil. Tommy B, Tom Bomb dot Com. Tommmy Tom Tom.
Jenn is a not-so-absentminded adjunct professor of Humanities (specifically literature, English, writing, and theatre) who lives in Colorado with her fiancé and two stepgoblins. Jenn is a fight director and intimacy coordinator for live theatres and schools in her area, and co-produces and often performs in an old-school variety show called Blue Dime Cabaret, which puts on monthly shows. You can find Jenn at her Substack,
, as well as Instagram and Threads.Mycelium Bombadil
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Back in the Spring, I had the very great pleasure to engage with
’ LOTR Reading Challenge, and it got my old brain re-pumped about so many themes and characters and etc. that I dusted off a bunch of my old lecturettes from a literature course I had taught online around two decades ago. Back in the early aughts at the University of Denver, I was one of the first online instructors for the graduate level professional writing program, and among the writing courses I taught were some special literature topics, Lord of the Rings included. The course was called Hobbits and Heroes, and covered The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and lots of paratexts like Norse epics, Celtic folklore, Tolkien’s letters, the (at the time) brand new Peter Jackson movie adaptations, and even The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. You can find all these lecturettes republished over on my newsletter, Zuko’s Musings, if you’re interested. But I digress.In this recent Reading Challenge, I found myself Musing (!) about some details and characters and backstories that I hadn’t before. One of these ponderings is one that a very many
nerdsfans before me have pontificated about time and again. It’s the enigmatic and mysterious (and musical) figure of Tom Bombadil.
Mycelium? Your celium.
Amid the rich discussions surrounding Fellowship and the events leading up to the hobbits meeting Tom (including the Farmer Maggot incident), a conversation with my partner sparked a really weird yet compelling idea of what Tom Bombadil is. 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 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 John Halbrooks’ Tom Bombadil piece a few months ago, that I was having with
:
Tom’s country ends here: he will not pass the borders.
In our Spring LOTR readalong when I first was chatting about this, we were up to the Ents and having a discussion of the deep ecological connections that many of the non-humans of Middle-Earth have, especially the creatures (and beings) thought of as very old. Even evil brooding Shelob is very much a part of her environment, the Ents are essentially embodiments of the trees they herd, and the Elves are as in sync with green growing things as Dwarves are with underground crystalline depths. Just listen to Gimli attempt to describe the beauty of the Glittering Caves to Legolas (footnote: this exchange is in The Two Towers, Book 3: ‘The Road to Isengard.’) – the prosaic Dwarf waxes rhapsodic and ecstatic, so much so that Legolas is moved enough to appreciate his reaction (if not totally on board with the awe) and to agree to witness the caves later when all’s done.
But it seems that Bombadil is not only deeply spiritually connected to his land like these other beings, but also literally connected: he won’t (or perhaps can’t) roam past his home boundaries, and speaks about his seasonal habits. Remember: he tells the hobbits they’re lucky he was close enough nearby to save them on that day, as he doesn’t tend to travel up that way until Spring.
And yet Bombadil is still an enigma: he’s not Dwarf nor Elf nor Istari, nor even an Ent. And he’s way too magical to be a mere Man. Martha and I hit on something here when we discussed how deeply connected Tom is to his land. This connection does not come from ownership of the land: it feels like he literally is part of the landscape.
When Martha and I were mulling over this connection and she typed that word ‘mycelium’ after I mentioned that Tom has a limited area wherein he functions, I thought: “Ah-ha!” After all, 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 his clothes 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 further discussed this thesis with 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, like being cut or bruised – 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. And so if we’re talking about Bombadil as mushroom, wouldn’t it make sense that he was a psilocybin ‘shroom? The hobbits’ experience in Bombadil’s home is dreamlike, therapeutic, trippy. They feel a loss of time, and are healed spiritually as much as bodily as they rest and sleep and listen to story and song. Frodo’s dreams while there are particularly important, as they are gentle foreshadowing to his final journey to the Grey Havens after all’s done. What the hobbits experience at Bombadil’s home, in other words, is very like a micro-dose of healing psychedelics.
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 and his deep connection to green growing things, as all Elves are too. They recognize him, in other words, without really knowing what he is. 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? I can’t help but nerdily connect this concept to the Renaissance Europe idea of the Music of the Spheres too: that each planet was fixed to a crystalline sphere which is what moved it through the sky, and each made its own music, all of the planets networked together creating a cosmic tune that is celestial and holy. Of course, we learn in The Silmarillion that Ainu, The One, created the world using song. Is Bombadil (since they call him The Eldest) doing the same, in his smaller way?
One thing’s certain – Bombadil 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. He’s extremely grounded (literally) – he talks to Old Man Willow by his roots, not the crown of leaves at the top, and banishes the dead Barrow-wights with only a few verses of his powerful song. This of course makes me think of how mushrooms feed on decay, transforming it into nutrients, and often attach to trees around the bottoms of trunks. Also, he’s married to the ‘River Daughter’ – and we know how mushrooms flourish in damp areas. It all seems pretty ‘shroomy to me.
Old Paul Stamets is a merry fellow: Bright blue his jacket is, and his hat’s a mushroom.
Ever heard of Paul Stamets? He’s a famous mycologist and mushroom advocate, who extols the medicinal benefits of psilocybin, among other shroomy things like astromycology, martial arts and mushrooms, and mycomediation, which is a form of environmental cleanup using mycelium as a very effective decontaminant. This guy is a mushroom galaxy brain, and he also… wait for it…wears a blue jacket and a hat made out of mushroom, on a regular basis. Coincidence? Nope – he wears the blue jacket to signify the blue ‘jacket’ of the psilocybin mushrooms which are the center of his career and life. Is Stamets Farmer Maggot? Or perhaps Tom Bombadil himself? You decide. He looks a lot like Bombadil, is all I’m saying… I’d actually love to know if Stamets has weighed in on Tom Bombadil. I haven’t seen such, if he has.
His songs are stronger songs, and his feet are faster.
Now, as a nerd of the first water myself, I know 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. (Editor’s note: In Letter 144 Tolkien says “even in a mythical Age there must be some enigmas, as there always are. Tom Bombadil is one (intentionally).”) Tolkien even said outright that Tom is not representative of God nor the author, (footnote: Letter 153, where Tolkien’s reply to a question about whether Goldberry saying “He is” about Tom connected to Yaweh’s “I am that I am” and Jesus’ “I am” statements was “as for Tom Bombadil, I really do think you are being too serious, besides missing the point.”) 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 brief presence 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?
(Or maybe Tom is a moss? Let’s save that for another essay, shall we?)
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Jenn, I loved returning to our exchange last year about Tom Bombadil as a mushroom, and it took me back to what his deep connection to the land represents in *The Fellowship of the Ring*. So fun...gi. I'll show myself out as well :-)
I officially lost at “he’s a fun guy.” 🤣
Truly fascinating take. I have to share this with my friends at dinner this weekend…it will make for an interesting meal discussion!