This week, I want to keep unloading my Tolkien-related thoughts, turning from last week’s character study to a look at the way ‘magic’ and spiritual power work in Tolkien’s legendarium and in particular to how contests between fundamentally magical beings in Middle-earth are decided. This is a topic that I think even the best adaptations have generally failed to grasp, representing (as Peter Jackson does) contests between supernatural beings as involving fireballs and telekinetic shoves. Rings of Power likewise seems, in its depiction of Gandalf, committed to magic that is very open, flashy and kinetic (and sometimes wielded by beings who ought not have it, reflective of a misunderstanding of where supernatural power comes from in Middle-earth).
So I want to lay out my reading of how all of this functions. While Tolkien’s magic system is often described as a ‘soft’ system (or even not a system at all), as if it had few rules or boundaries, I would argue that in fact we can perceive the basic patterns for how Tolkien understands supernatural power to exert itself in his legendarium and how supernatural being compete in strength.
Once again I should note we are not entirely departing from the craft of the historian here. After all, we frequently read the writings of past societies looking to understand how they viewed the world and part of that is often understanding how they understood the metaphysical (that is, supernatural) nature of their world: how do they imagine things like curses and gods and magic work? We’re effectively performing the same analysis, but on Tolkien’s writings, with the aim of trying to suss out how he imagines ‘magic’ works in his constructed ‘secondary‘ world.
Our starting point is something Treebeard says to the Gandalf as the Fellowship passed Orthanc on their way home, at the end of the story: “You have proved mightiest, and all your labours have gone well.” (RotK, 287). It is a striking statement and it picks up something Gandalf said at the Council of Elrond, “There are many powers in the world, for good or for evil. Some are greater than I am. Against some I have not yet been measured. But my time is coming” (FotR, 266). Treebeard is observing that the measuring has now been taken and Gandalf has “proved mightiest.” But measured against whom?
At first, one might think that Treebeard is merely commenting on Gandalf’s clear superiority in strength over Saruman, but this won’t do: Gandalf spoke to Treebeard after breaking Saruman’s staff in The Two Towers (TT, 226), so Gandalf’s victory there is no new information for Treebeard to observe with this statement. And in any case, that would merely make Gandalf mightier. Nor will it do to simply dismiss Treebeard as speaking empty words: for his slow pace, he is ancient and has seen many ages of the world and many powers as one of the oldest beings in Middle-earth1 and what is more, no one corrects him in that moment, despite quite a few of ‘the wise’ being present.
No, I would argue that what Treebeard is saying is that Gandalf has, at the end of his many labours, been measured against and “proved” mightier not merely than Saruman or the Witch King but mightier than Sauron and thus the “mightiest” creature in Middle-earth.2 And no one corrects him – because there is nothing to correct. It is a revealing reading! Although Gandalf and Sauron never met face-to-face, never appear to contest directly, it imagines Gandalf to have been, in a very real sense, in contest with each other not only in the physical (‘Seen’) world, but also in the spiritual (‘Unseen’) world, which is, as we’ll see, the more important one.
But how can Gandalf have proved mightier than Sauron, a being he never meets in person?
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Magic in Middle-earth
Before we dive in, I think we need to distinguish here between three different kinds of power in Tolkien’s writings that we might call ‘magic,’ though in each case, Tolkien himself might object. I am going to term them as craft-magic, spiritual power and then a subset of spiritual power, dark magic. We can begin with craft-magic: Elves and Dwarves sometimes produce objects or effects which are marvelous out of their deep knowledge and connection to parts of Arda. Bread that is wondrously nourishing, doors that open on their own at a word, swords that glow blue in the presence of orcs and so on. These are not magic per se – they do not really involve a supernatural power – but rather understood in Tolkien as something more like technology: wondrous, magical-seeming results borne of the tremendous skill and deep knowledge of the crafters. We are setting this sort of ‘craft-magic’ aside for now, except to note that it is unlike the other two forms of ‘magic’ we’re looking at, as it is not spiritual or supernatural at all.
By contrast, the Ainur – that is, the greater Valar and lesser Maiar (of which Sauron and the wizards are examples) – have access to what I am going to term spiritual power, because they are angelic, supernatural beings. Having been involved in the Song of Eru and the very creation of Arda, these beings are able to a degree to reshape Arda around themselves. This is the sort of ‘magic’ – spiritual power – that we’ll be focused on here. Like all ‘magic’ in Tolkien, such power is an expression of the primacy of the Unseen over the Seen and in a sense as a result such spiritual power does not effect or perform but rather reveals: the true, Unseen nature of the world is revealed by the exertion of a supernatural being and that revelation reshapes physical reality (the Seen) which is necessarily less real and less fundamental than the Unseen.
As an aside, note those moments where Gandalf’s manner suddenly changes and a character glimpses, however briefly, his true being as an angelic Maia of tremendous power. It is not that Gandalf makes himself seem bigger or older or wiser (nor is it that Saruman makes himself seem like a coiled snake, ready to strike, TT, 219), but rather that in those moments characters who normally can only observe the Seen world momentarily glimpse the deeper truth of the Unseen world.
Denethor looked indeed much more like a great wizard than Gandalf did, more kingly, beautiful, and powerful; and older. Yet by a sense other than sight, Pippin perceived that Gandalf had the greater power and the deeper wisdom, and a majesty that was veiled. And he was older, far older. (RotK, 30, emphasis mine)
This spiritual power also has a subset, which we might term ‘dark magic:’ certain non-Ainur are able to wield magic that is not craft-magic and is seemingly invariably evil. The Mouth of Sauron “learned great sorcery,” for instance (RotK 182), and the Witch King can make his sword ignite and command Barrow-wights. Such ‘dark magic’ is actually spiritual power, one step removed: what these mortal magic users command is actually the disseminated remains of Morgoth’s spiritual power, diffused through Middle-earth.3 What these evil magic users have learned, in essence, is how to manipulate elements of this ‘Morgoth-stuff’ to produce magical-seeming effects; because the ‘stuff’ is of Morgoth, the effects and their users are generally evil.
As an aside, I think the power of the Rings introduces some complexity into this question. The One Ring is very clearly an extension and focusing of Sauron’s own spiritual power and perhaps to some degree also his knowledge of ‘dark magic,’ and the fact that the Seven and the Nine, in which Sauron had a hand, tend to lead their holders to bad ends suggests to me they too had some element of either Sauron’s or Morgoth’s power in them. But it is unclear to me if the Three rings are similarly tainted: on the one hand, they are free of Sauron’s influence in the absence of the One Ring, but on the other hand, they fail when the One Ring is unmade, suggesting that some essential part of their design drew on the same source as it did, which is fundamentally Sauron’s spiritual power. Yet they do not seem to corrupt their wearers on their own, which might suggest they are close – or at least closer – to pure ‘craft-magic.’ My own suspicion is that in their design, drawn from the Seven and the Nine, there is some part of Sauron’s spiritual power reflected in them (included unintentionally by Celebrimbor), but that they are mostly ‘craft-magic,’ but I do not think this reading is at all required by the text.4 As an aside, it is striking that in the Lord of the Rings, the one instance we see that we might read as an elf doing magic rather than just craft-magic – Elrond flooding the Ford, comes from Elrond, bearer of Vilya and thus may have been an extension of his ring’s power.5
In any case, we’re interested here in spiritual power, the sort of magic Ainur like Gandalf, Sauron, Durin’s Bane and Saruman can wield – and which some of Sauron’s lieutenants can wield either as a delegated power from Sauron or as an extension of ‘dark magic’s’ manipulation of ‘Morgoth-stuff.’
While Tolkien is sometimes slotted into ‘soft’ magic systems or even no system at all, I want to argue here that spiritual power follows a clear pattern in Tolkien. What makes it tricky to assess as a ‘magic system’ is instead that spiritual power works at a very profound level, making it easy to mistake the most important uses of it as ‘chance’ or ‘happenstance’ when in fact we are observing the surface emanations of something much deeper. But in most cases – arguably all of the, – this spiritual power does follow a system, if we are attentive enough to detect it. Naturally, the fellow we see work the most of this sort of ‘magic’ is Gandalf and so upon Gandalf we shall focus, as he confronts and defeats other spiritually powerful beings.
Obvious Magic
We want to start by grounding our understanding in moments that are obviously expressions of spiritual, supernatural power: the obvious magic. That will help us set the ‘ground rules’ by which we assess some of the less obvious instances.
I can think of a few core examples of this sort of ‘obvious magic’ that we see first-hand in the text.6 Gandalf twice conjures fire (FotR, 347, 357) with an invocation, although this is an interesting example as it is the only time Gandalf uses another language (Sindarin) to do so, rather than doing so in the ‘plain’ (English standing in for Westron) language of the text; as we’ll see, I have my suspicions as to why. Gandalf’s confrontation with the Balrog is likewise a clear instance of supernatural power, a confrontation between to Maiar in which Gandalf breaks the Bridge of Khazad-dûm (FotR, 392). He also describes opposing Durin’s Bane – though he doesn’t know it yet – with a “shutting spell” that is answered by a “counter-spell” which he answers by a “word of Command” (FotR, 388) though we get this described to us rather than see it. The other very clear example is Gandalf’s breaking of Saruman’s staff (TT, 222). If we put these events together, we might begin to understand how Tolkien expresses spiritual power and in so doing begin to detect more subtle instances of its expression.
The first thing to note is that in every case there is a clear verbal invocation. Speaking seems to be, if not required, a normal part of expressing supernatural power, particularly larger expressions of such power (more than, for instance, a flash of light). But the form of that invocation too is interesting. Whereas ‘magic words’ are common in a lot of fantasy fiction, only one ‘spell’ is spoken not in ‘plain language:’ the conjuring of fire. On Caradhras, Gandalf ignites wet wood under heavy wind with something called a ‘word of command’ – a phrase Gandalf uses again later – in Sindarin, naur an edraith ammen, literally, “fire for saving us” (FotR, 347). Later, against the wolves, Gandalf uses a longer, more specific version of the same ‘spell:’ “Naur an edraith ammen! Naur dan i ngaurhoth!” which we might render, “Fire for saving us! Fire against the wolf-host!” (FotR, 357). This is, to my recollection, the only time Gandalf invokes like this in Sindarin and I suspect the reason is precisely that this is fire magic and thus involves Gandalf’s carefully hidden Elven ring, Narya the Ring of Fire.
We do, by the by, get told about one other ‘spell’ invocation delivered in a language other than Westron and it is the spell upon the One Ring itself, which Gandalf notes, “For in the day that Sauron first put on the One, Celebrimbor, maker of the Three, was aware of him, and from afar he heard him speak these words, and so his evil purposes were revealed” (FotR, 304, emphasis mine). Gandalf goes on to recite those precise words shortly thereafter: Ash nazg durbatuluk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatuluk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul, “One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the Darkness bind them.” And invoking the words produces an immediate supernatural result locally (the sky darkens), as if the One Ring responds to them in a way it does not respond to their translation. That suggests to me that the Rings might require invocation in a specific language, the language of their creation, to function properly.
Our two other invocations are delivered in ‘English’ (English for Westron) and take a form I want to note: they are plain language assertions, in the present tense, about the state of the world. Gandalf’s spell to block the Balrog and eventually collapse the bridge is quite simple, “You cannot pass!” (FotR, 392), repeated four times. Of course this comes embedded in a larger speech:
‘You cannot pass,’ he said. The orcs stood still, and a dead silence fell. ‘I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor. You cannot pass. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udûn. Go back to the Shadow! You cannot pass.’
Note that the orcs, lacking any kind of spiritual power capable of withstanding Gandalf in this moment where he unveils his power, stop immediately, but the Balrog presses forward, leading Gandalf, after a brief clash, to repeat his invocation, ‘You cannot pass!’ one last time. Then Gandalf strikes the bridge with his staff and both his staff and the bridge break, leading the Balrog to tumble down. Which is to say Gandalf told the Balrog something about the true nature of the world – that it could not pass – and and Gandalf was right.
We see the exact same construction mirrored with Saruman. For all of the exchanges of words, Gandalf does not stop Saruman’s effort to use his voice (which I suspect is as much an exercise of craft-magic as any) but only at the end engages in a direct supernatural confrontation:
He raised his hand, and spoke slowly in a clear cold voice. ‘Saruman, your staff is broken.’ There was a crack, and the staff split asunder in Saruman’s hand, and the head of it fell down at Gandalf’s feet. (TT, 222).
Note that Gandalf does not order the staff to break, nor does he say it will break or bids to let it break. He simply declares that it is broken just as he declares that the Balrog cannot pass. These are present tense statements asserting a reality rooted in the Unseen world which then express themselves through the Seen world. Saruman’s staff is broken because he has broken with the will of Eru which was always the true source of his power. We had actually spent several pages seeing that reality as Saruman tries but fails in using his Voice to win over one listener after another that “the power of his voice was waning” (TT, 224). Gandalf, invoking that fundamental reality of the Unseen, spiritual world makes it visible, manifest in the Seen physical world: he declares that the staff is broken and it conforms.
Notably, this moment, where Saruman hurls a fireball and Gandalf blocks it with magic, doesn’t happen. Supernatural beings do not generally fight this way in Tolkien, at least not in fights we witness first hand.
Doubling back for a moment, I think we can also say that our non-Westron invocations actually follow this formula, with a bit of a grammatical quirk. In formal English (which represents Westron), speakers cannot ‘gap’ (that is, drop) the verb ‘to be’ – though in informal English folks do all of the time (think “he a fool” for “he is a fool”) – but in many other languages you can and regularly do ‘gap’ simple present tense forms of the verb to be, especially in poetry. I am not an expert in Tolkien’s linguistics, but this is common enough, for instance, in Latin – especially in poetry – and of course famously throws many Latin students who meet a sentence composed entirely of nouns and adjectives, searching for a verb in vain only to be told to ‘supply est.’7
I think in the same way, we can understand naur an edraith ammen, “fire for saving us” and Ash nazg durbatuluk “One Ring to rule them,” simple descriptions of an object, to be ‘gapping’ a form of the verb ‘to be.’ The temptation would be to supply it in the optative, “let there be” but I think, given the above example, we ought to actually supply it in the present indicative – and indeed, there’s nothing stopping us, which renders the meaning of the invocations as, “[There is] fire for saving us” and “[There is] One Ring to Rule them.” And that is, in practice, the implication of both statements: they are describing something and so by ‘magic’ willing it into existence: fire for saving or a ring for ruling.
In short, then, we have our pattern for ‘magic’ – for exertions of true supernatural power in its most powerful and direct forms: characters exert their spiritual power through plain language assertions about the current state of the world – the spiritual power – works, the world alters itself to accommodate their statement, to make it true or perhaps more correctly, given the present-tense nature of the construction and the profundity of the statements, we might even say to make it always have been true, because what is being made ‘true’ is really a ‘truth’ derived from the more fundamental, more real reality of the Unseen.8 And because the Unseen is more profound and fundamental than the Seen, when its nature is revealed the Seen world, as if snapping to a reality that has already existed immediately conforms.
Gandalf declares “You cannot pass!” and indeed, it cannot. He declares there is fire and instantly there is fire. Sauron announces there is One Ring which will rule and bind the others and there is such a Ring, though note that there indeed has been such a ring for moments at least (for he is only in that moment placing it on his finger), yet it is the invocation that makes that Unseen reality real to Celebrimbor in the Seen world. And of course, Gandalf declares, “Your staff is broken” and, indeed, it is – and in the Unseen sense, perhaps has been for some time.
The Seen world conforms.
As an aside, because it fits nowhere else: it is also clear that these expresses of spiritual power seem generally to require a focusing object to be fully effective. Of course we see this in the staves of the wizards, but equally in Sauron’s spell upon the One Ring and – if my supposition above is correct – Gandalf’s use of Narya to focus his command of fire. Interesting that while both times Gandalf uses the naur an edraith ammen he holds a branch aloft, but only in the first case (FotR 347) does he make use of his staff. I wonder if, unseen to the book’s narrator, he is holding that stick aloft and tossing it (FotR 357) with his ring-bearing hand. In either case, that the object contains a portion of the spiritual power of its individual and its breaking matters is clear in both the unmaking of the ring and the breaking of wizard staves – Gandalf’s at the bridge and Saruman’s at Orthanc – and of course Gandalf’s care to make sure he still had his staff when he went to confront Théoden (TT 137). Of course if we understand Gandalf’s staff may be a part of him as much as the One Ring is a part of Sauron, we may equally understand his reluctance to lay it aside. So while we never get quite as clear a picture on the role of these focusing objects, I think it is a fair supposition that they matter quite a bit.
Tricky Magic in the Golden House
With our formula in mind, I think we can begin to detect moments in which supernatural power is expressed a bit more subtly or perhaps we might say more profoundly, which makes it a bit trickier to assess.
The smallest and first tricky example is Gandalf’s arrival at Meduseld. It seems clear some expression of spiritual power is intended here: “He raised his staff. There was a roll of thunder. The sunlight was blotted out from the eastern windows; the whole hall became suddenly dark as night. The fire faded to sullen embers” (TT, 140). But the nature of the magic is a lot less clear, particularly compared to the very clear and obvious power duel that Peter Jackson substitutes for this moment, complete with Saruman being thrown across a room miles away.
But I think we can make some sense of what is happening now that we have something of a model. For one, Gandalf is doing things with his staff here, raising it at first and then later “he lifted his staff and pointed to a high window” (TT, 140). But there also ought to be words and we are looking not for commands in the imperative mood but rather plain language statements about the state of the Unseen world, realized in the Seen world.
And I think we get two. The first, which produces the roll of thunder, is directed at Gríma, “I have not passed through fire and death to bandy crooked words with a serving-man till the lightning falls” (TT, 140). And I hear you say, “but that’s a past tense statement” but in fact it is, if we can break out a bit more complicated grammar, a perfect tense statement. Tolkien, of course, a philologist whose training included quite a bit of Greek will have known how the Greek perfect tense functions: it expresses a past tense action which has been completed but the results of which continue to the present – a past tense action which creates a present tense reality. What Gandalf is saying is that the fact that he has passed through fire and death – and as we know, emerged as Gandalf the White, sent back with more power and an expanded remit by Eru Ilúvatar – has created a present tense reality that he is not going to be tied up with Gríma.
What to me seals this as the invocation is that ending, “till the lightning falls” because Gandalf then raises his staff and the very next thing that happens is “There was a roll of thunder” (TT, 140) and the light in the windows is blotted out, presumably by the coming storm heralded by the lightning (which will vanish shortly and equally magically). Gríma then moans that they ought to have forbidden Gandalf’s staff (and so he is unable to trap Gandalf in their war of words) and then the lightning falls, “there was a flash as if lightning had cloven the roof. Then all was silent. Wormtongue sprawled on his face” (TT 140). Gandalf thus declares the Unseen reality – that unlike the Gandalf the Grey who had visited this court before, he, having passed through fire and death, is no longer the sort of Gandalf who will be held off by mere words, “till the lightning falls” – and the Seen world conforms to the stated reality: Gríma retreats and the lightning does indeed fall.
The second instance fits our model even more cleanly, though it may just be the conclusion of the same expression of supernatural force:
‘Now Théoden son of Thengel, will you hearken to me?’ said Gandalf. ‘Do you ask for help?’ He lifted his staff and pointed to a high window. There the darkness seemed to clear, and through the opening could be seen, high and fair, a patch of shining sky. ‘Not all is dark. Take courage, Lord of the Mark; for better help you will not find.’ (TT 140, emphasis mine)
Here our sequencing is the complication. Our plain language statement of the Unseen reality is clear enough: “Not all is dark” as is the Seen world conforming to that statement, “There the darkness seemed to clear.” Merely the order is tricky: the Seen world is conforming to the Unseen first, with the statement coming after. But I don’t think this is an insurmountable problem, because remember that the ‘magic user’ is not creating a new reality but merely revealing the Unseen reality, the more fundamental spiritual reality, which already exists.
Also, as an aside, because this fits nowhere else, Gandalf needs Théoden to consent, to “ask for help” (though he does so with actions – leaving his chair and going outside – rather than with words) in order to work his ‘magic.’ This, of course, is what separates Gandalf from Sauron or the fallen Saruman: he has not the will to dominate which is the root of all evil in Tolkien. He will not force Théoden, he will merely show him the better path and bid he take it. Indeed, he will not force Gríma either: even once Gandalf reveals Gríma’s treachery, he urges Théoden to “Give him a horse and let him go at once, wherever he chooses. By his choice you shall judge him,” by which he means if Gríma rides to war with Théoden he might be forgiven, but if – as he does – he flees to Saruman, then he is revealed in his choice.
Underneath the Gate of Minas Tirith
The other major confrontation between supernatural beings that we view directly is the confrontation between Gandalf and the Witch King beneath Minas Tirith’s main gate. This is one of my favorite moments from the book and actually the entire reason I decided to write this nearly 7,000 word post was because I am still sore that Peter Jackson, for all of the quality of his adaptation, got this moment very wrong (in the extended edition). Not only does he have Shadowfax rear up and quail before the Witch King, rather than being, “Shadowfax, who alone among the free horses of the earth endured the terror, unmoving, steadfast as a given image in Rath Dínen” (RotK, 113) but he has Gandalf’s staff shatter, as if Gandalf has lost – or even has nearly lost – this confrontation.
First, I would argue this is a misunderstanding because it can only be overweening, staggering hubris that the Witch King even imagines he has any shot at winning this spiritual confrontation (though overweening arrogance is his great flaw, so it is in character). It’s unclear to me if the Lord of the Nazgûl actually quite realizes what he is up against – he calls Gandalf “Old fool!” and one wonders if he has mistaken Gandalf for an aged lore-master and magic user rather than the far more powerful Maia he is. But there is no doubt in my mind that Gandalf would always be the stronger here. Recall Gandalf’s statement to Gimli at their first re-meeting that, “And so am I, very dangerous: more dangerous than anything you will ever meet, unless you are brought alive before the seat of the Dark Lord” (TT, 122). Note the change from the Gandalf who once demurred that “Against some I have not yet been measured” (FotR 266) – this Gandalf knows himself to be the most dangerous thing Gimli could meet, short of Sauron himself. The Witch King hasn’t a hope of winning this confrontation.
But more to the point, he very clearly doesn’t win this confrontation. Instead, what we get is an expression of supernatural power, same as the others, in the same form:
“You cannot enter here,’ said Gandalf, and the huge shadow halted. ‘Go back to the abyss prepared for you! Go back! Fall into the nothingness that awaits you and your master. Go!’ (RotK 113).
And look what we have: a present tense plain language statement of the state of the world, in particular a clear declaration that it is the case that the Lord of the Nazgûl cannot, is incapable, of entering. The WItch King, of course, dismisses this as words, mocks Gandalf, reveals his iron crown, raises his sword and with dark magic sets it alight (RotK, 113). But you know what he doesn’t do?
He doesn’t enter. Because he cannot.
Once again, I think it is worth stressing that Gandalf does not speak idly: when he is uncertain, he says so. If he thinks something is possible, he says that too, using words like ‘may’ and ‘hope.’ But here he states a cold reality: the Lord of the Nazgûl cannot enter here, the same way that Durin’s Bane cannot pass. A reality about the Unseen world is being expressed. And then, of course, the Seen world conforms to the deeper reality of the Unseen world.
And as if in answer there came from far away another note. Horns, horns, horns. In dark Mindolluin’s sides they dimly echoed. Great horns of the North wildly blowing. Rohan had come at last […] the darkness was breaking too soon, before the date that his Master had set for it: fortune had betrayed him for the moment, and the world had turned against him; victory was slipping from his grasp even as he stretched out his hand to seize it […] King, Ringwraith, Lord of the Nazgûl, he had many weapons. He left the Gate and vanished. (RotK, 113, 125)
In understanding how spiritual power can express itself in Tolkien, I think this confrontation is the essential bridge. Because on the one hand it is, in structure, paradigmatic, complete with that clear, present-tense statement of the state of the Unseen reality. That this is such a confrontation is made clearer in how closely it mirrors Gandalf’s clearly ‘magical’ confrontation with Durin’s Bane on the Bridge of Khazad-dûm: “You cannot enter here” neatly matching “You cannot pass,” and if we missed it, in both cases the villain produces a flaming sword with which to challenge Gandalf (FotR 392; RotK 113). On the bridge, Gandalf and Durin’s Bane are so close in power that both fall and so Gandalf staff breaks as he reaches the utmost of his power, but under the gate, the Witch King is not so near a peer (and Gandalf is now far stronger) and so the Witch King merely withdraws; Gandalf’s staff does not break. But the structure of the supernatural confrontation and its fundamental nature as rooted in spiritual power remains.
What is revealing however in this moment is how that power is expressed. Gandalf does not drive the Witch King from the gate with fireballs or curses or swordplay. Instead, the physical reality of the Seen world conforms to the spiritual reality of the Unseen world: the arrival of the Rohirrim prevents the Witch King from entering and so he “cannot enter.” Again, this mirrors the confrontation on the bridge: Gandalf declares the Balrog cannot pass and indeed he cannot, not because Gandalf is going to punch him out, but because the bridge will break beneath him if he tries. The victory in the spiritual contest is expressed not in direct, flashy confrontation, but in the truth of their vision of the world. Gandalf’s victory in both cases is born out by the fact that his statement about the world was correct, while the Balrog’s unstated assumption and the Witch King’s open mockery were incorrect.
I didn’t grab screenshots, but Rings of Power is equally blunt with ‘Gandalf’s magic, having him summon sand tornadoes, cause trees to bloom instantly and explode and so on.
Of course, Gandalf is not uninvolved with the arrival of the Rohirrim, even if we might not imagine his participation to seem particularly ‘magical.’ Gandalf was very involved! He has – even if he didn’t know it fully – been setting the terms for this very confrontation for weeks now, by pulling Théoden from his depression, aiding him against Saruman, bringing Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas to him (all of whom play crucial roles at Helm’s Deep), all thereby ensuring that when the Witch King tries to enter “under the archway that no enemy ever yet had passed” (RotK 113) it would be the case that he “cannot enter.” The Witch King, arrogant and overconfident, does not recognize this reality in the Unseen world, but Gandalf – the wisest of the Maiar – perceives it, having efforted himself to bring it about. The ‘spell’ is thus the product of Gandalf’s many labors, because as a fundamentally spiritual, angelic being, all of these labors too are expressions of spiritual power, all aimed at producing an Unseen reality, which Gandalf then describes, manifesting it into the Seen world.
You Have Proved Mightest
And now our road, having gone ever ever one turns at last to home and our starting place: Treebeard’s judgement on Gandalf, that he had “proved mightiest,” as if we had seen Gandalf engaged in some direct contest of wills and spiritual power with Sauron, like the confrontations we see between Gandalf and Durin’s Bane, Saruman and the Witch King, and come out the stronger (RotK, 287).
But, my dear reader, we have seen that. We have been reading that for the entire three books.
The remit of the Istari, the wizards, as the Elves understood it is described to us in the Silmarillion, “that they were messengers sent by the Lords of the West [that is, the Valar] to contest the power of Sauron, if he should arise again, and to move Elves and Men and all living things of good will to valiant deeds” (Sil. 299). Only Gandalf stays fully true to this mission (though only Saruman, perhaps, fully failed it) and “Now all these things were achieved for the most part by the counsel and vigilance of Mithrandir [=Gandalf]” (Sil. 304), so it is fair to say that in a sense Gandalf is, throughout the story, directly, personally contesting the will and power of Sauron.
As we’ve seen above, the line in these spiritual contests between ‘magic’ and ‘labors’ is not just blurry but functionally indistinct: Gandalf triumphs over the Witch King in a clear by-the-numbers spiritual contest of wills not by casting lightning bolt, but by having set in motion days and weeks before the movement in the hearts of men which would bring the Rohirrim to Minas Tirith, which is of course, perfectly fitting with his mission. Gandalf may not even have fully known that – in the plan of Eru Ilúvatar – this is what he was doing, setting the stage for that very confrontation. Yet his actions first create a reality in the Unseen, in the hearts of people, which then at the critical moment manifests in the Seen world.
And of course, you can see where I am going with this. Gandalf has been working his ‘spell’ to defeat the evil of Sauron, at this point, for many years kindling in the hearts of Men and Elves the will and courage for valiant deeds most of all in setting Frodo upon his quest and in his counsel priming Frodo to make the crucial choice to spare Gollum (FotR 85-6) and to bring Sam (FotR 90-91), the decisions that in the end, though made by Frodo of his own free will, are the decisions that will cause the Quest to succeed where it might have failed at the very last. As we’ve noted before, while the Seen world of Middle-earth is ruled by physics, its Unseen world is ruled by morality and the choice to do right can ripple through the Unseen world with a profundity that the Seen world lacks. After all, Gandalf himself notes, “My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end; and when that comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many – yours not least” (FotR, 86) and once again, Gandalf’s deep sense of the Unseen reality is fundamentally correct: because Bilbo and Frodo did the right thing and showed pity and mercy (the latter having been encouraged to do so by Gandalf), the Quest succeeds and evil is defeated. Of course that is just one of the many, many interventions Gandalf makes.
All we need is our invocation, our present-tense statement about the state of the Unseen world, as it manifests into the Seen world.
But Gandalf lifted up his arms and called once more in a clear voice.
‘Stand, Men of the West! Stand and wait! This is the hour of doom.’
And even as he spoke the earth rocked beneath their feet […]‘The realm of Sauron is ended!‘ said Gandalf. ‘The Ring-bearer has fulfilled his Quest.’ And as the Captains gazed south to the Land of Mordor, it seemed to them that, black against the pall of cloud, there rose a huge shape of shadow, impenetrable, lightning-crowned, filling all the sky. Enormous it reared above the world, and stretched out towards them a vast threatening hand, terrible but impotent: for even as it leaned over them, a great wind took it, and it was all blown away, and passed; and then a hush fell. (RotK, 252, emphasis mine)
And so we have our complete formula for a confrontation rooted in an expression of spiritual power. Gandalf declares that the “hour of doom” is at hand, and so it is and then that “the realm of Sauron is ended!” a truth that already exists in the Unseen world but which now manifests even as the Captains gaze south into Mordor, the Unseen truth very literally becoming part of the Seen world as they see it. And the spiritual power of Gandalf’s statement, to which the world around him is rapidly conforming, is of course rooted – as was his victory over the Witch King – in Gandalf’s many labors, a ‘spell’ many years in the making.
Treebeard is thus correct when he observes to Gandalf that “You have proved mightiest, and all your labours have gone well” (RotK, 287). It is, of course, in line with a story that already sought to surprise the reader by having the Quest completed not by the Noble Knights (Boromir and Aragorn) but rather by the smallest and weakest creatures, the hobbits, that Gandalf’s great power is revealed not in his physical might or by throwing fireballs or commanding armies, but rather in his wise counsel, in his compassion and his pity: he has overwhelmed Sauron’s power with goodness and in so doing, “proved mightiest.”
In his ability to move others to right action, to one good deed after another whose morality shaped the Unseen world until at last the grand magic of Doing The Right Thing bears out in unmaking the very “realm of Sauron.”
Because it was always the Unseen world, shaped by hearts rather than armies, which mattered the most.9
- Not Arda, mind you – there are older beings that either pre-date Arda (the Ainur) or in Valinor, surely.
- But not in Arda, of course.
- For those unfamiliar with the broader lore in the Silmarillion, Morgoth (also known as Melkor) is the setting’s equivalent of Satan, an angelic being that defied the will of the singular creator God and rebelled against the divine order, thus giving rise to evil. By the time of the events of The Lord of the Rings, Morgoth has been thus into the Timeless Void, having been defeated by the Valar in the War of Wrath that ended the First Age of Arda and began the Second Age.
- Which is to say, I do not think it was possible for the Elves to create the Three Rings entirely out of craft-magic, because the Three Rings subvert the will of Eru and this could only be done through the spiritual power of an Ainur to change the song as Melkor/Morgoth did. Though Celebrimbor didn’t know it, there was no morally neutral way to create the Three Rings.
- This fits nowhere else so I shall put it here in a note: I think there is significant ambiguity in the text as to the degree to which Elrond’s intervention here is magic. Gandalf notes that “the river of this valley is under his power, and it will rise in anger when he has great need to bar the Ford” (FotR, 271) which sure sounds like magic but equally could be a lyrical way to describe the fact that Elrond, as ruler of Rivendell, can order dikes opened and the river flooded. Equally, this could be craft-magic, that Elrond’s careful cultivation and development is such that he can flood the river at will, easy enough to understand as a sort of ‘sufficiently advanced’ craft-technology. Notably, the one truly supernatural element of the flood – the waters taking the form of horses – was the doing of Gandalf, an expression of his spiritual power and Gandalf implies that he intensified the flooding himself (and then worried he had gotten too carried away, FotR 271). In short, then, I am happier to term Elrond’s intervention at the ford not magic (on his part), but simply craft-magic. If it was true magic, I think we would have to regard it as an expression of the power of his ring, as the Three Rings clearly are capable of something beyond pure craft-magic in their preservation of people and places from decay.
- Unfortunately, we do not see Gandalf’s confrontation with the Nine on Weathertop first hand, merely see it at a great distance (FotR 226) and then only briefly described (FotR 317)
- Est in Latin is the word for “he/she/it is,” but equally can have on its own the sense of “there is.”
- Oh boy does English not like that tense construction, but I think that is correct and also why it is easy to miss ‘magic’ being used: the ‘effect’ can happen before the ‘spell,’ as an extension of the actions and spiritual power of the speaker, as we’ll see in just a moment.
- Here at the end I want to note that it didn’t really fit into any specific citation or footnote, but my thinking on these points has been fairly heavily shaped by M. Dickerson’s Following Gandalf: Epic Battles and Moral Victory in the Lord of the Rings (2003), which explores the theme of moral victories and their importance in The Lord of the Rings.
The “animistic” component of Tolkien’s universe also seems important here. Mountains can have personalities, trees can grow moody and resentful with age, and Gandalf comments that he “had to use a Word of Command” on the door when struggling with Durin’s Bane near the Chamber of Mazarbul/Records. It is possible to work with the unseen/spiritual world by speaking to its residents, whether politely or by commanding them, and this in turn blends into “craft-magic”: sufficient craft, wisdom, and knowledge enable elves and dwarves to interact with the unseen through the seen- but through relationships of respect towards the unseen. As Gimli describes the Glittering Caves in terms of fostering and gently adjusting them rather than mining them.
(Elves who have been physically present in Valinor exist in both worlds at once, and presumably could interact with the unseen world more profoundly, but only Glorfindel and Galadriel are definite members of that category in Lord of the Rings.)
I hate to bring up a non-Tolkien author in what’s supposed to be a post about Tolkien, but given their close personal relationship I think it’s reasonable. C. S. Lewis went into this a bit in his Space Trilogy (the last book specifically), and it’s more or less *exactly* what he saw as the essence of ‘white magic’ (which in turn, he saw as not wrong in itself, unlike black magic, but still kind of spiritually dangerous and strongly inadvisable). He likens it to coaxing a horse, or a child, to do something (i.e. working with the animistic powers within nature, rather than imposing one’s will on them).
I had never thought of this before (having forgotten that passage by Lewis, I guess), but magic in many stories strongly resembles working with horses. That explains why Hermione, despite being both smart and a grind, does not have the magical power that Harry Potter does. Academic subjects generally yield fully to the combination of the kind of intelligence measured by IQ and diligent study. In contrast, knowledge of equine physiology, and even superior muscle control in seat and legs and hands, may not make one person a better horseman than another.
The Space Trilogy in particular (and Lewis’ other fiction too) are full of fascinating little ideas like this, which he tantalizes us with and then never really takes anywhere. I’ve always been a bit sad that he didn’t give one of his close associates, in his will, the right to continue the series and flesh out his imagined world a little bit more.
I think C. S. Lewis is overrated as an essayist, but he was really excellent as a fiction writer (at least, in my view).
“That explains why Hermione, despite being both smart and a grind, does not have the magical power that Harry Potter does.”
She has power. She doesn’t have aggression. She does not have the willingness to hurt people needed in a fight.
One minor nitpick: I don’t think you can limit spiritual power to Ainur alone. Elves can have spiritual power; especially ones who have been to Valinor. I don’t think there’s any other plausible reading of Finrod’s song-battle with Sauron:
He chanted a song of wizardry,
Of piercing, opening, of treachery,
Revealing, uncovering, betraying.
Then sudden Felagund there swaying
Sang in answer a song of staying,
Resisting, battling against power,
Of secrets kept, strength like a tower,
And trust unbroken, freedom, escape;
Of changing and of shifting shape,
Of snares eluded, broken traps,
The prison opening, the chain that snaps.
Backwards and forwards swayed their song.
Reeling and foundering, as ever more strong
The chanting swelled, Felagund fought,
And all the magic and might he brought
Of Elvenesse into his words.
Softly in the gloom they heard the birds
Singing afar in Nargothrond,
The sighing of the Sea beyond,
Beyond the western world, on sand,
On sand of pearls in Elvenland.
Then the gloom gathered; darkness growing
In Valinor, the red blood flowing
Beside the Sea, where the Noldor slew
The Foamriders, and stealing drew
Their white ships with their white sails
From lamplit havens. The wind wails,
The wolf howls. The ravens flee.
The ice mutters in the mouths of the Sea.
The captives sad in Angband mourn.
Thunder rumbles, the fires burn —
And Finrod fell before the throne.
Of course, Finrod loses this battle, but he has the ability to resist, and fight the battle at all, and the narrator describes him using the ‘magic and might of Elvenesse[=the lands of the elves]’.
Cosign this, I think the text bears out that pretty much everything has some degree of spiritual power. Maiar can do a lot more with it because they have a lot more spiritual power or authority than others. Next to them seems to be higher elves who went to Valinor then other elves then dwarves and men the like. The levels of authority also tends to be blurry at the edges as well, with some overlap between high elves and maia or lesser elves and men for example.
I also think that the Witch King and Gandalf isn’t the mismatch our host thinks it is. I’d agree that Gandalf is mightier, but the greatest Ringwraith is also a significant power that has a punchers chance in their confrontation. Whether that’s because of his own direct power or that Sauron is empowering him as his instrument, I don’t think the scene makes sense if the outcome is not in doubt until it happens.
I would just add in support to what you wrote, from letter 210, concerning some notes JRRT made to a possible film treatment in 1958
9. Leaving the inn at night and running off into the dark is an impossible solution of the difficulties of presentation here (which I can see). It is the last thing that Aragorn would have done. It is based on a misconception of the Black Riders throughout, which I beg Z to reconsider. Their peril is almost entirely due to the unreasoning fear which they inspire (like ghosts). They have no great physical power against the fearless; but what they have, and the fear that they inspire, is
enormously increased in darkness. The Witch-king, their leader, is more powerful in all ways than the others; but he must not yet be raised to the stature of Vol. III. There, put in command by Sauron, he is given an added demonic force. But even in the Battle of the Pelennor, the darkness had only just broken. See III 114.3
So yeah, WK is definitely being enhanced by Sauron in his confrontation with Gandalf at the gate of Minas Tirith.
I always found it weird that RotK tried to sell the Witch King as a major villain when he had already been defeated (along with the other 8) in the first half of FotR. I guess it makes more sense now.
From what I can tell of Tolkien’s method, he likely discovered while writing the Siege of Gondor that he needed an antagonist that matched Gandalf for the story at this point and he’d been using the Ringwraiths as the Enemy’s primary servants so they were a good fit. So he came up with a reason that reconciled the two levels of threat to square the narrative circle.
Yah, I definitely agree that while there is a *difference* of spiritual power, everyone has various degrees of it. Elves more than men and those who went to Aman even moreso, and among men Nûmenoreans more than others.
the way i see it, the degree of spiritual power depends a lot on how tied they are to “the fate of Arda” (reality) described in the silmarillion. Men have very little, because their fea (souls) are not tied to the fate of arda. Elves, which are tied to the fate arda, have more, but are still limited. Numenorians get a bit more than normal men but less than elves because they are a blend of both, but they are mortal and thus have the fate of men. the Valar however have immense power because they created the fate of arda, singing it into existence at the beginning of creation then choosing to enter into it. with the maiar being just part of a power scale within the valar. being tied to the fate of reality allows them to shape it with their spiritual power.. but also means they cannot change the future of it as set out by Eru illuvatar at the beginning of time. which was why the gift of men was true death and not being tied to the fate of arda.. only men can change both the destiny of themselves and the world. (basically, free will) everyone else is following a plan that eru created at the beginning of the universe. but at the same time.. because humans have so little spiritual power, those changes are individually small. which makes the idea that gandalf and the rest are merely revealing a spiritual reality that already exists a very apt description, since they are bound to a deterministic reality. Morgoth (and sauron) in trying to alter this divine plan, are said in the silmarillion to just be ensuring that the parts of it occur, that ‘nothing they can create will but further [eru’s] plan’ (the whole ‘free will vs deterministic order’ thing was something tolkien spent a lot of time thinking about it seems (probably in part because it is a recurring issue within christian faith), and even wrote a short text exploring it as the elves saw it, while connecting it to the etymology of his elvish language: ( https://muse.jhu.edu/article/266270 )
“because they are a blend of both”
I’d note that most Numenoreans are _not_ part elf, at least in a parental heritage sense. The royal line was, but most Numenoreans were just transplanted Edain.
They were blessed (with long lives and mental powers), in a blessed land, and taught by visiting Eldar from Tol Eressea, so in an actual-lives sense they were kind of like elfish humans. But if you traced family trees in most cases, you wouldn’t hit an elf.
(Or maybe you would, in a mathematical sense, but fantasy bloodlines almost never care about that, and I’m pretty sure that’s not what Tolkien was thinking of. Especially with long generation times.)
I really enjoyed our Host’s essay but I also read the confrontation at the gate as closer than he thinks, and I think it heightens the beauty of Rohan’s arrival for that reason (it’s also my favourite scene in the trilogy).
It’s not clear exactly what the Witch King thinks Gandalf is, but I don’t see why he would not be aware through his boss that Istari exist. He is thousands of years old, a capable warrior, and as the siege shows, reasonable and methodical. He seems to think that he could succeed in the confrontation–I think that says a lot.
I think it is unclear what actually would have happened if they had actually exchanged blows. However, I suppose our Host’s point is that Gandalf outclassed him by setting Rohan in motion in a way that stops that scene. In that way, he is completely right about Gandalf’s power, maybe in a way that makes “who would win in a 1 on 1” unimportant?
One thing is that Tolkien writes repeatedly about “mental powers” and “powers of mind”. Denethor has the “long sight” (and no, the palantir revelation doesn’t explain all that away), Numenoreans could call beloved horses from miles away, Finrod learns human speech by seeing the thoughts behind words, Galadriel telepathically tests/tempts the Fellowship. Related is a power of implanting or calling up images in people’s minds — benignly so in the case of an elvish bard, malignly so for the phantoms of Sauron.
Elves clearly have a fair bit of such power. Finding clear instances of other magic, of telling the _world_ how it is to be, might be harder. Especially if we exclude the part-Maia Luthien. Though Galadriel’s lament sounds like a case:
‘I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold, and leaves of gold there grew
Of wind I sang, a wind there came, and through the branches blew.’
Plus her magic mist that she casts over Eorl in UT. But then, Galadriel has Nenya, which might be her tool for ‘working real magic’ on the world.
Supporting your point about Denethor’s special mental powers not being entirely explained by the palantir, his son Faramir is similarly gifted.
“Faramir is similarly gifted.”
Indeed! Well, probably. We don’t see him using “long sight” at range (we don’t see Denethor do it either, or almost anyone in the entire legendarium; Gandalf aiding Frodo at Amon Hen is one if not the only exception), but he does talk as if he can peer somewhat into Gollum’s mind. Almost literally, eye contact seems key:
‘Come hither!’ said Faramir. ‘Look at me! Do you know the name of this place? Have you been here before?’
Slowly Gollum raised his eyes and looked unwillingly into Faramir’s. All light went out of them, and they stared bleak and pale for a moment into the clear unwavering eyes of the man of Gondor. There was a still silence. Then Gollum dropped his head and shrank down, until he was squatting on the floor, shivering. ‘We doesn’t know and we doesn’t want to know,’ he whimpered. ‘Never came here; never come again.’
‘There are locked doors and closed windows in your mind, and dark rooms behind them,’ said Faramir. ‘But in this I judge that you speak the truth. It is well for you. What oath will you swear never to return; and never to lead any living creature hither by word or sign?’
Galadriel’s probing used eyes as well:
And with that word she held them with her eyes, and in silence looked searchingly at each of them in turn. None save Legolas and Aragorn could long endure her glance. Sam quickly blushed and hung his head.
OTOH, Frodo wasn’t anywhere near Gandalf when he heard Fool, take it off!
So in RPG terms I’d say eye contact isn’t strictly necessary, but is one thing which makes mental contact easier, and might be needed for weaker practitioners or deeper probing.
This seems to me to fit more into the range of what Devereaux calls “craft-magic” – and is one of the ONLY instances we see of men possessing any. The characters have such deep knowledge and skill for “reading” others (like a detective) that they can conclude far deeper things from looking in a person’s eyes than can be ready in real life.
Same with Galadriel, except her effect on the Fellowship is that they can FEEL her ability to read them that deep. Sam says “I felt like I ain’t got no clothes on” or something, and all the others are also turning away because they realize she can sense their fear/uncertainty/temptation etc.
“they can conclude far deeper things from looking in a person’s eyes than can be ready in real life. ”
That’s what I thought when I was younger, that they were just really good at ‘reading’ people.
But later I read the essay on osanwe-kenta. Tolkien never uses the word ‘telepathy’ but that’s what it is. Mental contact, including across long distances without eye contact, or as Gandalf says “the long sight”. UT describes Numenoreans summoning horses from miles away. There’s Frodo on Amon Hen, with Frodo ‘hearing’ Gandalf despite being nowhere nearby.
Oh, and there’s a late scene in RotK, on the way home, when Gandalf and the elves sit around a fireplace and commune silently.
‘If any wanderer had chanced to pass, little would he have seen or heard, and it would have seemed to him only that he saw grey figures, carved in stone, memorials of forgotten things now lost in unpeopled lands. For they did not move or speak with mouth, looking from mind to mind; and only their shining eyes stirred and kindled as their thoughts went to and fro.’
Okay, that’s high elves and a Maia, but Tolkien says of the Numenoreans ‘They became thus in appearance, and even in powers of mind, hardly distinguishable from the Elves’
Elves touch the unseen a little, enough that when they make a cloak thinking “I want this cloak to hide me from my enemies” it really does that, even in the days of the waning of the elves. Finrod was one of the mightiest of the elves, someone who had dwelt among the powers, learned at their feet, and was raised in the light of the trees. Gandalf, especially Gandalf the white, works a lot closer to the metal, but fundamentally is doing the same thing that eves are.
Yes, and we also see Lúthien (who I think is herself essentially of elf-kind, even if her mother is a Maia) performing this kind of spiritual magic.
Was trying to think of the big examples of this kind of magic in the Quenta Silmarillion. The Doom of Mandos, Finrod vs. Sauron, Lúthien putting Morgoth’s court to sleep, Morgoth’s curse on Húrin and his children, Glaurung’s ensorcelment of Nienor. Are there others? Maybe the Oath of Fëanor?
Gandalf: “Omae Wa Mou Shindeiru!”
Sauron: “Nani?!”
Fans of Naomi Novik may recall this is Galadriel’s signature spell, useable only by her: “You’re already dead”.
Now that I think about it, I wonder what Tolkien would think of the Scholomance trilogy.
I enjoy this LotR analysis as much as the next guy, but I miss the history. There are lots of great blogs / YouTube channels out there that dissect Tolkien in endless different ways. But there aren’t so many that explore specific aspects of ancient history in depth and with references to both primary sources and modern scholarship. I eagerly await your next “How To” (or similar) collection.
This is surprisingly applicable to some real history, albeit rather allegorically. I would like to point to two examples.
First, the Monroe Doctrine and its British counterpart. As I understand it, at the time (the early 1800s) the dominant view of economics was still that trade was zero-sum, therefore the entire point of conquering/founding colonies was that they could then be exploited by the imperial core. Naturally this implied that other powers mustn’t be allowed to trade with one’s colonies. Through their more correct understanding of
the Song of Erueconomics, Britain and the United States understood that they could, via improving the lot of the newly-independent Central and South American states — by promising to fight alongside them to maintain their independence against other Great Powers — they could also improve their own standing relative to the other Great Powers. (Which is to say, relative to the assumed baseline case of their brief independence being suppressed under e.g. French boots, Britain and the US could gain the thing valuable for themselves, the right to trade with them, not only without having to spend any effort on putting numerous British boots there, but probably also without having to actually fight France — and this was exactly the outcome which eventuated. For the whole continent, all at once.)Second, one particular facet of the long buildup to WW1. A relatively newly united Germany took note of its situation, notably that Britain happened to be sitting on chokepoints to its oceanic trade — and in what I think could be an example of “Tolkienesque moral failing”, decided that the obvious thing to do in such a situation is to change it by force, by attempting to outbuild the Royal Navy. And while the eventual naval contest contained very little in the way of strategic surprise, it primarily took the shape of a staring match next to the notice posted by the British, “we wish to reemphasize that over the previous decade we built more battleships than you did”. As in, the German battlefleet mostly survived the war, only losing a few ships in battle, mostly ending up scuttling itself in Scapa Flow, as opposed to the dramatic option of mostly being sunk/captured in combat in the manner of Trafalgar.
Yes, I admit this is probably too allegorical to be useful. It is already abundantly known that contests of force (wars) are matters of which coalition, and also that one can build more extensive and more solid coalitions by being “nice” than by domination. It is already well-analyzed on this blog that such hegemonies are fragile (Seleucids, EU4 Mingsplosion, etc.).
Yes, very applicable. As our host often reminds us, the contest of morale wins battles, not violence (although the contest of violence obviously affects the contest of morale). Equally, moral force shapes history to a great extent (though of course in ways interlinked with the physical realities of the world).
‘Ils ne passeront pas’ is actually a pretty close analogy to Gandalf-like-magic: the unequivocal public statement of a leader creates its own reality, because both his own men and the enemy pay attention. But like Gandalf, it would not have worked if he hadn’t also have done the slow quiet (normal, Seen) work of generalship in bringing the army to the battle.
Falkenhayn and Nivelle were apparently very closely matched in magical power…
Nivelle made his famous statement after the key town of Fleury fell on June 23. Fleury changed hands no less than 16 times in 2 months. Finally, on August 18 the Germans broke. Falkenhayn’s dark master (Hindenburg) fired him 11 days later…
> Yes, I admit this is probably too allegorical to be useful.
Indeed. The similarity seems to boil down that people believe things both in fiction and in real history. That’s certainly true, but that doesn’t make studying Tolkien the same thing as studying history.
If we’re going into deep Tolkien-lore, I have a few thoughts, occasionally supporting, occasionally contradicting this article. Note, I will be drawing from a very wide variety of sourcing, and I don’t know what our good host considers ‘proper’ sourcing or proper analysis of different modes of information, so some of this might be nothing more than me drawing from items that he won’t.
Firstly, when concerning with the Ring and how it draws of Sauron, I do not think that is entirely correct. The Ring seems to stand apart from Sauron in a sense. Letter 246 of the letters of JRR Tolkien goes heavily into what would have happened if Gandalf or one of the elven-lords had claimed The Ring; and he posits that Ringlord-Gandalf could have waltzed into Barad-Dur and tried to wrestle with Sauron directly for control of it and by extension middle-earth with about a 50-50 chance of success. And if he had won, Gandalf could have ‘killed’ (insofar as any ainur can die) Sauron as totally as the destruction of the Ring would have; and ruled Middle-Earth and actually been worse than Sauron for the people there.
That to me, implies that there is a degree of separation from Sauron, and that any failure of the Three after the ring’s destruction is because of the destruction of the Ring itself which they are somehow drawing on (even before the Ring’s own forging), not Sauron per se.
And also, if you view it as proper canon, Notes on Motives in the Silmarillion makes this quite clear:
“Sauron’s power was not (for example) in gold as such, but in a particular form or shape made of a particular portion of total gold. Morgoth’s power was disseminated throughout Gold, if nowhere absolute (for he did not create Gold) it was nowhere absent. (It was this Morgoth-element in matter, indeed, which was a prerequisite for such magic and other evils as Sauron practised with it and upon it.)
It is quite possible, of course, that certain elements or conditions of matter had attracted Morgoth’s special attention (mainly, unless in the remote past, for reasons of his own plans). For example, all gold (in Middle-earth) seems to have had a specially evil trend — but not silver. Water is represented as being almost entirely free of Morgoth. (This, of course, does not mean that any particular sea, stream, river, well, or even vessel of water could not be poisoned or defiled — as all things could.)”
And that drawing from that, it seems very reasonable that the reason Sauron makes the One out of pure gold (in contrast to the other rings, which all have gems and all are made from other stuff) is probably to tap into that latent Morgoth power that has been deposited in gold; becoming an ultimate expression of ‘dark magic’.
Secondly, concerning Elvish ‘magic’, and Elrond’s raising the flood at the ford of Bruinen. Here I’m going to draw from Unfinished Tales, as well as the main trilogy, so again, warning about sources.
But to start off with, when Frodo asks Gandalf if Rivendell is safe, we have Gandalf say this
`Yes, at present, until all else is conquered. The Elves may fear the Dark Lord, and they may fly before him, but never again will they listen to him or serve him. And here in Rivendell there live still some of his chief foes: the Elven-wise, lords of the Eldar from beyond the furthest seas. They do not fear the Ringwraiths, for those who have dwelt in the Blessed Realm live at once in both worlds, and against both the Seen and the Unseen they have great power.’
Even if you think Gandalf is mistaken somehow in this instance (unlikely), we see some more direct evidence. When Frodo is badly fading from the effects of the Morgul-knife, and becoming something like a wraith himself, his perceptions of the Seen fading and the Unseen taking to the fore, he sees Glorfindel as
‘With his last failing senses Frodo heard cries, and it seemed to him that he saw, beyond the Riders that hesitated on the shore, a shining figure of white light; and behind it ran small shadowy forms waving flames, that flared red in the grey mist that was falling over the world.’
Gandalf then confirms that this interpretation is correct.
‘I thought that I saw a white figure that shone and did not grow dim like the others. Was that Glorfindel then?’
‘Yes, you saw him for a moment as he is upon the other side: one of the mighty of the Firstborn. He is an Elf-lord of a house of princes. Indeed there is a power in Rivendell to withstand the might of Mordor, for a while: and elsewhere other powers still dwell. There is power, too, of another kind in the Shire. But all such places will soon become islands under siege, if things go on as they are going. The Dark Lord is putting forth all his strength.
Which is a way of saying, I do think Elves have a degree of spiritual power. But theirs is of a lesser order, different not just in extent but in kind. And here, I want to draw most heavily on my weakest source, a bit of the messy bit of Unfinished Tales concerning Celeborn and Galadriel; specifically the section ‘The Elessar’ (referring to the elf-stone that Aragorn has); and even this section splits it into two different ‘possibilities’ of what the Elfstone is.
The other tale runs so: that long ago, ere Sauron deluded the smiths of Eregion, Galadriel came there, and she said to Celebrimbor, the chief of the Elven-smiths: “I am grieved in Middle-earth, for leaves fall and flowers fade that I have loved, so that the land of my dwelling is filled with regret that no Spring can redress.”
“How otherwise can it be for the Eldar, if they cling to Middle-earth?” said Celebrimbor. “Will you then pass over Sea?”
“Nay,” she said. “Angrod is gone, and Aegnor is gone, and Felagund is no more. Of Finarfin’s children I am the last. 20 But my heart is still proud. What wrong did the golden house of Finarfin do that I should ask the pardon of the Valar, or be content with an isle in the sea whose native land was Aman the Blessed? Here I am mightier.”
“What would you then?” said Celebrimbor.
“I would have trees and grass about me that do not die – here in the land that is mine,” she answered. “What has become of the skill of the Eldar?” And Celebrimbor said: “Where now is the Stone of Eärendil? And Enerdhil who made it is gone.” “They have passed over Sea,” said Galadriel, “with almost all fair things else. But must then Middle-earth fade and perish for ever?”
“That is its fate, I deem,” said Celebrimbor. “But you know that I love you (though you turned to Celeborn of the Trees), and for that love I will do what I can, if haply by my art your grief can be lessened.” But he did not say to Galadriel that be himself was of Gondolin long ago, and a friend of Enerdhil, though his friend in most things outrivalled him. Yet if Enerdhil had not been then Celebrimbor would have been renowned. Therefore he took thought, and began a long delicate labour, and so for Galadriel he made the greatest of his works (save the Three Rings only). And it is said that more subtle and clear was the green gem that he made than that of Enerdhil, but yet its light had less power. FOR WHEREAS THAT OF ENERDHIL WAS LIT BY THE sUN IN ITS YOUTH, ALREADY MANY YEARS HAD PASSED ERE CLEEMBRIMBOR BEGHAN HIS WORK, AND NOWHERE IN MIDDLE-EARTH WAS THE LIGHT AS CLEAR AS IT HAD BEEN, FOR THOUGH MORGOTH HAD BEEN THRUST OUT INTO THE VOID AND COULD NOT ENTER AGAIN, HIS FAR SHADOW LAY UPON IT. Radiant nonetheless was the Elessar of Celebrimbor; and he set it within a great brooch of silver in the likeness of an eagle rising upon outspread wings.” Wielding the Elessar all things grew fair about Galadriel, until the coming of the Shadow to the Forest. But afterwards when Nenya, chief of the Three,” was sent to her by Celebrimbor, she needed it (as she thought) no more, and she gave it to Celebrían her daughter, and so it came to Arwen and to Aragorn who was called Elessar.
(capitalization mine)
But, at the very least, it is presented as a plausibility, and thus a way that the world must work, that while Celembrimbor’s effort posted more skill than Enedrhil’s (and thus be superior as ‘craft-magic’) it is nonetheless lesser. Because each elf-stone is drawing on the light of the sun in some fashion, connecting to the natural world and drawing on its power to enact its power.
And I think that if Celembrimbor can connect to the sun for making a magic jewel, it stands to reason that Elrond, even without necessarily using Vilya, can draw upon the valley that he’s lived in for millenia to make a flood if he needs to. The elves are connected to Middle-Earth and to Arda more generally in a way that men are not, and that in fact seems to be the core divide between the two kindreds. The souls of elves who die stay in Mandos, while those of men leave this world and go elsehwere, hopefully to Illuvatar’s side.
I would also add that some degree of magic seems to be more widespread than just craft magic in imbuing objects with a degree of impossible power. For instance, we have Gandalf saying this when trying to get into the gate of Moria.
`I once knew every spell in all the tongues of Elves or Men or Orcs that was ever used for such a purpose. I can still remember ten score of them without searching in my mind. But only a few trials, I think, will be needed; and I shall not have to call on Gimli for words of the secret dwarf-tongue that they teach to none. The opening words were Elvish, like the writing on the arch: that seems certain.’
Whatever lack of standing Elves have vis a vis Ainur, men (and probably orcs) have a lot less. But they still do seem to have spells for the purpose of opening doors, and what’s more, Gandalf seems to acknowledge some degree of power in them here.
Secondly, I just want to mention things like Beorn’s shape-shifting, Bard’s ability to understand the Old Thrush, and Isildur’s curse being able to temporarily delay the souls of the Men of the Mountain from reaching the standard afterlife. Men too, seem to have a degree of ability to work through the Unseen world in something that does not seem to be mere craft-magic.
I disagree with characterising the Unseen as a ‘truer’ reality, and would argue that when the Ainur blatantly manipulate the world, they are not revealing the Unseen (a world of spirits, to be sure, but not one mentioned to have say, different geography, though Morgoth raised mountains), but perhaps emphasising a phrase or melody from the Song, which created the world and (largely) governs its fate. The ability and way the world is changed remain the same, but the underlying ‘true’ world is a different one than the Unseen world.
I’d also point out that by the time that Treebeard describes Gandalf as ‘mightiest’, Sauron has little to no power left. It might well be that Sauron was the mightier, but might is less important in Tolkien than is Eru’s will. That’s quite nitpicky though.
Does this mean Gandalf could have said ‘The Ring is Destroyed” at the start of the books and then the ring would have gone ‘poof’ and disappeared? I don’t mean to sound too flippant but if we’re starting to show how this magic system works then where are the limitations to it?
Going by the logic presented in this post — to achieve such a large and dramatic result in the face of all the works of a being as powerful as Sauron, Gandalf first would have to work long and hard to bring about an underlying truth of the world that would support his statement.
And, indeed, the ring does go poof, but only after Gandalf has arranged for it to be brought to Mt. Doom, and exerted his great wisdom to arrange the pieces on the board in such a way that this can lead to a happy conclusion.
I think you’re looking at it backwards. If The Ring is not imminently about to be destroyed, Gandalf could not have said any such thing.
You do indeed have it backwards. The words he speaks don’t cause the thing to happen. It’s already happened, or is happening currently, in the Unseen world, and the words he speaks merely manifest it in the Seen world. Unless the Ring was already destroyed or being destroyed in the Unseen, simply saying that it’s destroyed does nothing at all.
the metaphor tolkien uses is music, and the unseen can be thought of as that music. thats how i think of it anyway. there is an kind of aesthetic joke that the point of a musical composition isnt to get to the final note even though the final note often clarifies message of a piece ONCE YOU GET THERE. if you sing the tonic at the beginngin, it has no emotional resonance. if you play every note in a piece all at once in every instrument you have noise, not a song. the magic moment, metaphorically, is delivering the essential note after the appropriate build up so it has maximum emotional, aesthetic and spiritual content. in the silmarillion, tolkien wrote about valar responding to melkor’s discordancy, to reweave it into the logic and beauty opf the song. I dont have it in front of me, its just always stuck out to me- this is what my greatest heroes have always done. taken discordant music (pain, oppression, hopelessness) and rewoven the broken parts back into the beauty again. you do it with gandalf’s greatest strength- an empathetic listening. Melkors failure was his belief that somehow his music alone could shine and by extension, that the way to affect the music was to dominate or drown it out. gandalf’s moments were taking every string, brass and percussion and accepting whatever it was and adding just the right note to make it beautiful again. i love the idea in this piece. i offer this as an extension that also explains why magic dies. there is still music. so why no magic? its because once it is the world of men, the composer isnt writing the music anymore…
I always disliked Jackson’s decision to have Gandalf be essentially thrown down by the Witch-King. It is, as you have pointed out, a complete reversal of the books. I love the image of Gandalf, a white-cloaked figure atop a white steed, standing alone amidst the ruin wrought on the square before the gate, and the dark shadow of the Witch-King riding up to the blasted gates.
I really enjoyed your discussion on the linguistic construction of how Gandalf speaks. It eluded me until now the power of the very declarative “this is how it shall” that Gandalf makes when he speaks.
I think writers like Sanderson and games like DnD and more generally video games really popularized this hard magic system with rules and it has led to this entrenchment of “soft magic is bad storytelling” when it’s not, it’s just *different* and it depends on the quality of the author’s writing to make it work. Rings of Power tried to bring this more modern conception of magic into LotR and it just doesn’t *fit*.
Great analysis once again.
“I always disliked Jackson’s decision to have Gandalf be essentially thrown down by the Witch-King. It is, as you have pointed out, a complete reversal of the books.”
Even worse was having Frodo turn from Sam, in favor o Smeagol. I will never forgive that utterly gratuitous choice, because, clearly, Jackson thought this made things more dramatic and interesting in terms of scenes. Same reason he had to have the horse rear and the staff break. Fah. The more time that passes, the more I dislike these films.
I’m still mad at Haldir and co showing up at Helm’s Deep. That’s the one that sends me into frothing, unreasonable rage. I get that PJ wants to do a story of “Here’s How The Good Guys Got Together To Fight The War Of The Ring”, but that is most emphatically counter to the theme of the books.
I hate what Jackson did with Faramir. In the book Faramir was wise enough to not try to take the Ring. Much much wiser than his brother. But In the film Faramir is a copy of Boromir.
Jackson, to my mind, probably gave us as good a film of LOTR as we were likely to get from the studios, but also fell far short of how good it COULD have been, mainly because to me he departed from the book more and more as he went along, his team’s ideas and dialogue (and lame attempts at humor) weren’t a patch on Tolkien’s original work, there was too much awkward fan service, and the simplistic triumphalism present in the movies to a great degree is over-reaching and far from the sorrowful, tragic tone that suffuses the book and by rights should have been emphasized more.
I’ve been watching a series that compares the differences between the books and movies and that one stands out for how Frodo sends Sam away, Sam dejectedly goes off, finds the discard lembas, and angry chases after Frodo, Gollum’s treachery ‘revealed.’
Sam knows he didn’t eat the lembas, yet the scene plays out as if he doesn’t and only figures things after finding the evidence.
One of many non-sensical changes made for dramatic tension that make no sense and end up hurting the storytelling in the long run.
You’re misunderstanding the scene where Sam finds the bread. He returns not because he has uncovered treachery: he returns out of anger, out of righteous rage.
Yes, but why? Seeing the lembas doesn’t provide any new information, he already knows Gollum set him up.
Seeing the lembas is what triggers him, but it shouldn’t because he should already have felt that way.
While reading this article I was thinking about how Sanderson has a magic system that actually works somewhat similarly, and while Sanderson probably has some internal rules for how it works it’s left relatively less explained than some of his other magic systems. It involves carving complicated magical seals which can be impressed onto objects to essentially ‘trick’ them into thinking their history was different, leading them to be different in the present. This might sound like craft-magic (and a high degree of craft and knowledge is needed to do it), but in the Cosmere there are explicitly three realms (the Physical, the Cognitive, and the Spiritual) and what’s being done is essentially a change in an object’s Cognitive/Spiritual aspects which leads to its Physical form conforming to its supposed new history. (Though if the change isn’t ‘plausible’ enough – a rather soft measure that’s never quantified – it won’t stick, with the object returning to its former state sooner or later.)
It’s definitely not the same thing as what Tolkien describes, but I was struck by the thematic similarities.
I think a lot of people misread Sanderson’s First Law of Magic. Firstly, it should be noted that Sanderson’s Law is not about whether or not there is a Fireball Spell – somebody already mentioned The Emperor’s Soul, which is a Sanderson Novel that does magic without any flashy pyrotechnics, in a very “Power Word” way, but still with clear rules that make it Hard. And in reverse, while I haven’t watched RoP, based on the descriptions here I would argue that it counts as Soft Magic despite the lightning-throwing and tree-blooming, because it’s just a thing people do without any explanation of the why and how and the explanations.
But more importantly, Sanderson’s Law is about the correlation between the hardness of magic and the ability of it to resolve the plot. It’s not actually a new idea really, it’s something that I think a lot of people grasp intuitively about storytelling: If the protagonist uses a tool to resolve a situation, it feels unsatisfying as a reader if you don’t understand how the tool works (and even more unsatisfying if you didn’t know the tool was available in the first place). Thus, if magic is to be part of the protagonist’s toolkit, it needs to be explained at least so much it doesn’t feel like it comes out of nowhere when it solves a problem.
To give an example: Superhero powers are pretty much a very “soft” magic system, in that the hero regularly pulls out new toys or invents new uses for their existing powers. But if you look at for example Iron Man 2, it still takes the time to make the ending satisfying by explaining a rule: It spends a pretty long scene setting up that two hand blaster shots aimed at each other cause a circular explosion, so that Tony and Rhodie can later use that to take down the bad guy. That’s basically all that Sanderson’s Law is expressing: Put the tool in the toolkit before using it.
That’s also why table-top RPGs like DnD *need* hard magic: Because the game is fundamentally about the players as their characters, and that involves using the character’s tool-kit to solve problems. You can’t do that unless you know what the character’s tools can do, including the tools labelled “magic”.
Gandalf’s magic is Soft, but that’s not an issue because it’s not what resolves the plot – and the actions of Gandalf that do are ones that we, as a reader, can follow and understand. The question of “Is the Rohirrom turning up and preventing the Witch King from entering the city magic?” is an interesting thing to ponder in a blog, but for the story itself it doesn’t matter much whether it is or isn’t – it’s a result of actions and consequences that have been set up and explained to us as readers, and thus their arrival and their effect on the siege make sense to the readers.
Within Hobbit and LotR, Tolkien is fairly good about having his characters re-use magic rationally. The invisibility ring gets used a lot, or we later get a reason why Frodo shouldn’t use it. Sting is repeatedly used as orc-detector and even backup light source (if enough orcs are around but not too close), in LotR as well as Hobbit. Once the palantiri enter the story, they get used and mentioned (Aragorn keeping the Orthanc stone and saying he’ll use it), plus we first saw something like them in the Mirror of Galadriel — an aqueous palantir, like her Phial is an aqueous Silmaril. Mind-reading comes up more than once: Galadriel, Faramir and Gollum, perhaps Gandalf and the convalescent Frodo in Rivendell. On the evil side, both Sauron and Saruman can exert long-range mental influence over their forces.
Fairly good, but not perfectly. Denethor has “long sight” but we never see it from him, e.g. a suggestion of him using it to coordinate with Faramir or Imrahil. Denethor and Faramir have mental powers, but we almost get Aragorn POV when he’s pursuing the captured hobbits, and he doesn’t show any sign of being psychic there despite being even ‘higher’ than they are. (I have suspicions about him mentally challenging the Mouth, though.) The text implies that Elrond communicates with Galadriel by sending his sons as messengers, and not by having Arwen call her grandmother on Mirror-phone. The Appendix says Arwen “watched over Aragorn in thought” but that doesn’t _matter_.
(Though there are some gray areas, like how Galadriel sent messages north to the Rangers, or told Gwaihir to go pick up the resurrected Gandalf.)
Across the whole legendarium re-use gets murkier, though. Sleep magic is a recurring tool, at least. But no one in the Silmarillion is using orc-detecting blades, palantiri, or long distance mental communication per the Osanwe-kenta essay. That essay does say it’s hard to use, but it also claims distance is no barrier, yet we only see short-distance uses: Finrod or Idril or Maeglin reading minds. No one in captivity uses it to call out to their close friends or relatives, like Gandalf in Orthanc, or Aredhel with Eol. (Though in LotR, Galadriel seems to say she’s in a constant mental wrestling match with Sauron.)
If you made a list of “magic in Hobbit and LotR” and “magic in the rest of the legendarium” they’d probably end up looking pretty different.
Adding to some of the complaints about Jackson’s films (which I generally liked), having Aragorn kill the Mouth (in the extended edition only, I think) is very wrong. Somehow the moral duty to respect heralds and envoys seems to have gone out of modern culture, because we saw the same thing in “300”: the ancient Greeks were appalled by the Spartan treatment of the Persian envoys, and considered the Spartans to be accursed thereby, but the movie presents it as an event with no moral significance. Perhaps this is part of a general decline in the consideration of hospitality as a virtue.
The Mouth of Sauron only appears in the director’s cut, yes. And I agree that it was handled poorly, especially in the crass denouement that departs entirely from Tolkien.
I wish it stopped at that; the movie presents it as a laudable, praiseworthy act.
And a decline in seeing the value of negotiating with people.
Because the movie follows the modern, western “ethos”, the neocon ethos if you will, that absolutely everything is allowed as long as it hits supposedly “evil” people.
All american foreign policy is based on this assumption.
Of course a fascist like Zach Snyder heartily agrees.
More troublingly so do basically all so called liberals as well these days.
Came here to write the same thing. Hardness and Softness of magic systems aren’t to do with the visuals or subtlety (or lack thereof), but to do with how *understood* the mechanisms of magic are for the reader (which thus enables them to be used to resolve plot issues, or cause them, in a satisfying manner).
However, I think your point that people often get it intuitively is a good one, and that it applies here too. Although Bret has mentioned the flashyness of the magic a number of times (understandably as this is a point where the films depart from the books), I think he’s got the crux of the hardness of Tolkein’s magic system correct.
I came to this article thinking that Tolkein’s magic system was fully ‘soft’ and largely without rules, and have been convinced that it’s a lot harder than I thought. Both in terms of the rules that appear to govern it, and in its use to cause and resolve plot issues. The thing that makes it seem softer is that it’s all fairly subtle, and often flies beneath the attention of readers (it did for me!).
Regrettably, this now leaves me without a really solid example of a ‘soft’ magic system to talk about when discussing this sort of thing (though, no doubt, Tolkein’s magic is a lot softer than many, it being a spectrum).
I think you can still use Gandalf’s magic as an example of a predominantly Soft magic system, given the fact that the rules as outlined by Bret still leave a lot of things open. Very simplified, they sort of limit what Gandalf can *say* but not what spells he uses. What’s the limit of him setting things on fire with his ring? We don’t know. What’s the limit of his telekinesis and why does he use it so sparingly? We don’t know. What is the role of his staff in his spellcraft? We don’t know.
Rather, I would say LoTR’s magic is a good example that not all rules on magic result in the same amount of Hardness. A metaphysical rule like the one here, “By stating a truth from the Unseen it manifests in the Seen” gives a few limits, but certainly not as many as Sanderson’s very specific “There’s 16 metals you can ingest for specific special powers” as the Hardest example.
Yeah I think you’re right. Harder than I initially thought, but still very much a soft system. For instance, I have no inkling whatsoever who might win in a confrontation between Saruman and the Balrog. Gandalf defeats both (the Balrog by a closer margin), but it’s not as straight forward as taking that as evidence of a clear power tier of Saruman/Balrog/Gandalf.
I forgot the importance of limits in Sanderson’s definition of hard and soft magic systems. It’s those, really, that allow magic to be used to satisfactorily solve plot tension. And you’re right, we know some limits of magical power in LoTR but nowhere near enough to make it a ‘hard’ system.
“Thus, if magic is to be part of the protagonist’s toolkit, it needs to be explained at least so much it doesn’t feel like it comes out of nowhere when it solves a problem.”
This reminds me of Randall Garrett’s “Lord Darcy” stories. Darcy is a detective, in a world where magic exists – but Garrett plays fair, and the solution to the mystery is never simply “someone used magic”. So he often has passages where Darcy and his associate Master Sean rule out various magical explanations.
“Too Many Magicians”, for example, is a locked-room mystery, and the two have a discussion which establishes there are no spells that could have teleported the key back into the room, nor could a magician simultaneously levitate outside the window and telekinetically throw the window-bolts.
I think Sanderson is careful to say that hard and soft magic systems are equally good; they’re just good for different things. Hard magic systems are good for making sure that the tactics of the protagonists actually matter because we can see the causes and effects at work. Sanderson says himself that soft magic systems are useful for other purposes beyond short-term tactical decisions.
That was very insightful, and it seems broadly true. But wasn’t there an elf-lord in the Silmarillon who could understand the language of humans thanks to some kind of telepathy? I think it was Finrod Felagund. There’s also the fact that Galadriel can read minds. Is that also her ring? Because I thought she could perceive minds before that.
This focuses almost entirely on LOTR itself, but I should note that there is a couple of other instances in the Legendarium: (there’s actually a thread on the subject of “magic in LOTR” on rpg.net, AFAIK it didn’t finish but i’ll drop a link: https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/the-magic-of-middle-earth-a-sort-of-lets-read.903992/) though it only gets to the Hobbit.
* During the goblin ambush in the hobbit Gandalf causes a flash of lightning and the smell of gunpowder: “”there was a terrific flash like lightning in the cave, a smell like gunpowder, and several of them fell dead.”
* Later on during the scape when they’re in the trees he also lights some pinecones on fire. (the origins of D&D’s “Fire Seeds” spell…) and throws them at the wargs.
* There is Finrod Felegund and Sauron’s song-battle in the Silmarrilion: This is interesting because A) While Finrod *loses* he is still capable of at least fighting Sauron and B) It coheres with the general theme: Both are essentialyl making statements about the world.
* This might be closer to craft-magic, but Lúthien’s dances clearly has supernatural effects: They cause people to fall asleep, etc. Her words also seems to have power of their own (in her own confrontation with Sauron f.ex.) Then again she is half-Maia herself.
* Both Gandalf and Thorin doing weird things with the smoke rings: Thorin commands his to go place and they do.
* The dwarfs song mentions how dwarfs of yore “made mighty spells”, this is craft-magic, but still notable.
* Gandalf: “”struck a blue light on the end of his magic staff.”” more fire-related stuff.
* I should also note RE: Elrond that he himself is (albeit distantly) related to the Ainur.
* Craft-magic isn’t just for elves or dwarfs either: There are some examples of orc (the have a drink that acts like lembas) and even the trolls in the Hobbit has a purse that speaks.
* Gandalf also does things like throwing his voice, which might just be ventriloquism but might be magic.
* After defeating the trolls they: “. . . carried away the pots of gold, and buried them very secretly not far from the track by the river, putting a great many spells over them, just in case they ever had the chance to come back and recover them.”
* “Just at that moment all the lights in the cavern went out, and the great fire went poof! into a tower of smoke, right up to the roof, that scattered piercing white sparks among all the goblins.” Gandalf again messing with fire. (and probably the origin of D&D’s pyrotechnics spell)
* The RPG thread actually notes that Gandalf does a lot of fire-stuff without speaking. If you assume this is Narya-connected that works. Though ther eis also a mention that he has “made a special study of bewitchments of light and fire”.
* “Wolves are afraid of fire at all times, but this was a most horribly and uncanny fire. If a spark got into their coats it stuck and burned into them, and unless they rolled over quick they were soon all in flames.” This isn’t normal fire. It’s also multicolored.
* We have Beorn who can change shape. This is seemingly just a thing that he can do.
* The Mirkwood Wood Elves make the dwarfs fall asleep (someone points out usually when crossing some kind of boundary)
* The dwarfs try “fragments of broken spells” to get the door in Erebor to open. This more implies that ther eis a general class of spells for opening doors that just…. exist.
* “Bilbo was now beginning to feel really uncomfortable. Whenever Smaug’s roving eye, seeking for him in the shadows, flashed across him, he trembled, and an unaccountable desire seized hold of him to rush out and reveal himself and tell all the truth to Smaug. In fact he was in grievous danger of coming under the dragon-spell.” Smaug has some degree of supernatural control (as does Glaurung) it’s not quite mind-control but definitely *something*.
* Back in the Silmarilion, and this is craft-magic again, Beren turns into a wolf by wearing Charcharoths skin (and Lúthien turns into a vampire the same way)
This is a good list. To which I’d add, “I once knew every spell in all the tongues of Elves or Men or Orcs, that was ever used for such a purpose. I can still remember ten score of them without searching in my mind.”
Taken together, I think they suggest that, while our host may be accurately describing how Tolkien thought about magic in his legendarium *at some points in time*, the full picture is significantly messier. After all, when Gandalf first appeared in the Hobbit, there was no connection whatsoever to the Silmarillion—the Hobbit ends up having a few references to the Silmarillion but it’s clear they were originally treated as little cameos from this unrelated thing Tolkien had been working on at the same time.
Well, The Hobbit was not meant to be part of Middle-Earth, it was retconned to be so with the creation of The Lord of the Rings. Part of the retconning was explaining it is Bilbo’s telling of the adventure.
Taking those two things into account, any conclusions derived from need to be hedged because they may not be accurate accounts of events or how Tolkien would have would have done things had he written it with the intent of being a part of the Middle-Earth legendarium.
It seems Legendarium has the same issue as reading historical sources. Ancient writers may not be completely trustworthy and neither is Tolkien. Tolkien have come up with all the facts and has the authority to decide what is the truth, but he has not thought everything through at different points at life. He may have written something, later decided that was incorrect, but possibly not written down the correction. People researching his writings need to evaluate how true and correct they are.
This is an excellent list! I was myself disappointed in the lack of discussion about magic in The Hobbit.
In the Silmarillion, Feanor also seems to have access to “magic” otherwise only used by the Maiar: his voice is so amazing that when he criticised Manwe, “even the herald of the Valar bowed before him”; and when he dies his body goes up in flames due to the power of his spirit
Pardon my lack of LOTR knowledge but, why doesn’t Sauron, for all his might, never seem to win a direct battle or lead his armies. Were at Pelenor fields wouldn’t he have won the battle and conquered Gondor.
Sauron is in command a couple of times earlier in the Second and First ages. He does not actually seem to be great at it, losing his share of battles and in fact almost being captured at the Gwathló (Second age)
Judging from his second age performance, Sauron is a bit of a coward and only takes the field himself when in truly desperate straits or utterly convinced that victory is completely inevitable so he can be there at the kill. When there’s actual risk, he hangs back and sends his minions in. To quote Denethor, who has seen at least a little into Sauron’s mind:
“‘Nay, not yet, Master Peregrin! He will not come save only to triumph over me when all is
won. He uses others as his weapons. So do all great lords, if they are wise, Master Halfling. Or why should I sit here in my tower and think, and watch, and wait, spending even my sons? For I can still wield a brand.’
And one other thing, right at the end, when Frodo claims the ring for himself in the few minutes between that and Gollum falling into the fire.
‘And far away, as Frodo put on the Ring and claimed it for his own, even in Sammath Naur the very heart of his realm, the Power in Barad-duˆr was shaken, and the Tower trembled from its foundations to its proud and bitter crown. The Dark Lord was suddenly aware of him, and his Eye piercing all shadows looked across the plain to the door that he had made; and the magnitude of his own folly was revealed to him in a blinding flash, and all the devices of his enemies were at last laid bare. Then his wrath blazed in consuming flame, but his fear rose like a vast black smoke to choke him. For he knew his deadly peril and the thread upon which his doom now hung.
From all his policies and webs of fear and treachery, from all his stratagems and wars his mind shook free; and throughout his realm a tremor ran, his slaves quailed, and his armies halted, and his captains suddenly steerless, bereft of will, wavered and despaired. For they were
forgotten. The whole mind and purpose of the Power that wielded them was now bent with overwhelming force upon the Mountain. At his summons, wheeling with a rending cry, in a last desperate race there flew, faster than the winds, the Nazgul, the Ringwraiths, and with a storm of wings they hurtled southwards to Mount Doom.’
Sauron doesn’t seem to need to be there personally to drive his armies forward. His attention on them suffices. And again, he’s something of a coward; and he doesn’t really care if his minions die as long as he’s safe and secure. He’ll keep throwing fodder until he wears down his adversaries. As far as he knows, this is the 0 risk strategy.
If Sauron’s attention is spread so far and wide while communicating and controlling his minions, then it’s probably best that he doesn’t go on the field where he would probably need to focus his attention to there. Even if he was still able to spread his attention what would happen if the Rohirrim decide to do a desperate suicide charge towards Sauron’s command tent. If they get close enough to cause concern and Sauron needs to suddenly focus his attention this might have detrimental effect on many distant battlefields.
One of my favourite quotes from Return of the King addresses this. Book 5, chapter 4:
‘Is Faramir come?’ [Denethor] asked.
‘No,’ said Gandalf. ‘But he still lived when I left him. Yet he is resolved to stay with the rearguard, lest the retreat over the Pelennor become a rout. He may, perhaps, hold his men together long enough, but I doubt it. He is pitted against a foe too great. For one has come that I feared.’
‘Not – the Dark Lord?’ cried Pippin, forgetting his place in his terror.
Denethor laughed bitterly. ‘Nay, not yet, Master Peregrin! He will not come save to triumph over me when all is won. He uses others as his weapons. So do all great lords, if they are wise, Master Halfling. Or why should I sit here in my tower and think, and watch, and wait, spending even my sons? For I can still wield a brand.’
Sauron is also in some ways diminished from his strength of old, preventing him from acting like this. The downfall of Numenor involved him taking physical form and only escaping the island in part, not full.
Second was his being slain in the Seige of Barad-Dur, at the end of the Second Age.
The first removed his ability to appear in a fair and appealing guise. The second removed his ability to manifest physically.
Now that’s interesting. When we see Gandalf slain, he returns with greater power and purpose (as gifted by Eru). When we see Sauron slain, each time he returns somewhat diminished (but return he does).
I wonder if this would imply that something (Eru, perhaps) is attempting to keep Sauron dead, but through his crafty wiles parts of him escape back to the world. It certainly fits Sauron’s tricksterish themes.
The implication is that Sauron dissipated much of his innate power and essence into his physical realm and followers and minions — much as did Melkor/Morgoth. And so he “diminished” — also he bound so much of his own being into the One Ring, necessary to make it so powerful, that it’s loss was the final blow to his being able to manifest in Arda. And so he is at the end banished to the Void with his master. Yet the evil his spirit imbued into Arda remained, an echo of his malignancy. And so it remains to this day.
It’s a good point. I do not think the books ever make it super clear, but I always got the impression that Sauron was not actually “dying” (and going into the west) but that because of the Ring, his spirit was somehow still kicking around middle-Earth and remaking a physical form. It’s only after the Ring is destroyed that he truly “dies” (and is rejected by the West)
So Eru does intervene against Sauron but in a really stupid way that allows him to do untold damage for thousands of years more?
Is he actively encouraging Sauron, getting him to think “Haha, obviously not even Eru can keep me down!”?
How about Eru intervening in some way that is actually helpful and smart?
There’s no indication in the actual books that he doesn’t have a physical form, and indeed seems to be more suggesting that he does. If nothing else, Gollum seems to have actually encountered him manifest.
I think the blog answers this: because that is not how supernatural beings fight.
Just as Gandalf is preparing his years long spell by rallying the hearts of Men and slowly affecting a change in the Unseen, Sauron is doing the same thing with his armies. His position in Mordor might very well give him the best tools (Palantir, the Eye, etc.) to be able to perform the “labors” necessary for his magic. He is not riding at the front of the Orcish army for the same reason Gandalf is not riding at the front of the human one: because that is not how you wield the true, Unseen power.
All the way until the final confrontation, the “casting” of the spell. I could easily imagine an alternate ending, where Sauron is the one proven mightier, and arrives to the field of battle to proclaim his statement of fact, “The Age of Men is ended.” Only, in the story we have, Gandalf beat him to it. Before that moment, it is simply not necessary for Sauron to be physically present.
At the time of LotR, Sauron cannot take physical form, so he cannot actually fight on the battlefield. He can only serve as a malevolent spiritual force in the minds of his servants.
“Sauron cannot take physical form”
Funny how Gollum could count how many fingers there were on the Black Hand, then.
I never heard any fans think Sauron couldn’t take form before the PJ movies came out.
This is an issue much and long debated by Tolkien readers, and the evidence in the book is frustratingly contradictory. I want to ay that Tolkien may have cleared this up in some of jis other writings, or quite possibly his letters, but I’d need to go back and reread the large and fascinating volume of his letters again for insights. I’ve simply gone stale on the matter. There may not be a definitive answer, but I can see several interpretations as being valid, and perhaps there is some confusion in that Sauron may have been able to assume different forms as suited his purposes? The “Eye” of Sauron may have been one manifestation; or it may have been a projection. One must mention that in the Silmarillion, Sauron is an accomplished shape-shifter, after all.
“much and long debated by Tolkien readers”
As I said, I don’t recall any such debate (Sauron having a body) before the PJ movies came out, and I can’t recall any textual suggestion that he is bodiless during LotR. As for “clearing it up”, besides Gollum having seen the Black Hand down to the number of fingers, we have Denethor talking about what would make Sauron come out. Also Tolkien in the Letters saying Sauron should be a figure larger than human but not hugely so, and (246) talking about Sauron coming out to confront Frodo in a scenario where Gollum didn’t take bite his finger off.
RotK also mentions Sauron’s Road from Barad-dur to the Chambers of Fire. “Often blocked or destroyed by the tumults of the Mountain’s furnaces, always that road was repaired and cleared again by the labours of countless orcs.” Which makes most sense if Sauron has occasion to physically walk or ride to the Chambers.
“Do Balrogs have wings” and “why didn’t they take Eagles to Mordor”, now _those_ are old debates.
Tangentially, in this discussion or last week’s there was a question of whether Isildur was counselled to destroy the Ring. I quoted Fellowship in answer, but “Of the Rings of Power” reinforces that:
‘For Isildur would not surrender it to Elrond and Círdan who stood by. They counselled him to cast it into the fire of Orodruin nigh at hand, in which it had been forged, so that it should perish,’
Even more tangentially, on the power of Galadriel:
“northward, beyond the Falls of Rauros and the Gates of Argonath, there were as yet other defences, powers more ancient of which Men knew little, against whom the things of evil did not dare to move,… until that time was come, never again after the days of Eärnil did the Nazgûl dare to cross the River or to come forth from their city in shape visible to Men.”
And oh hey, Sauron taking shape:
‘when well nigh a third of that age of the world had passed, a darkness crept slowly through the wood from the southward,… For coming out of the wastes of the East he took up his abode in the south of the forest, and slowly he grew and took shape there again;… all folk feared the Sorcerer of Dol Guldur,’
After Gandalf’s infiltration:
‘‘True, alas, is our guess. This is not one of the Úlairi, as many have long supposed. It is Sauron himself who has taken shape again’
Very erudite commentary! And amusingly enough, it made me think about old funny articles in the Dragon magazine (i.e., Dungeons & Dragons) about how “Gandalf was only a 5th Level magic-User.”
At least Tolkien never resorted to “Magic” in comic book fashion a la Zatara or Zatanna, speaking spells backwards! Comic writers have tried their best to rationalize this , somewhat successfully I suppose, but in the words of Black Canary, “Really? How contrived.”
To be fair, that was developed to entertain children (who’d find it fun to “decode” the spells) in the 1930s (Zatara debuted in the same Action Comics #1 Superman did). It persists as a legacy bit and something that distinguishes them from Zatara’s model, Mandrake the Magician.
Yes, quite so. Zatara is an old school magician character a la Mandrake (and others!), from a far simpler time. Zatanna (daughter of Zatara) was introduced in the 1960s and has been lumbered with the same magic tradition despite the various modernizations and ret-conning since the Silver Age of comics.
I’m not knocking it, I love Zatanna!
I read a good argument that Gandalf was a paladin flavored as a wizard. He’s an okay mage and not horrible at fighting, but where he really shines is inspiring others and battlefield management.
That’s because when measured by the DnD level scale (number of hit points, numbers of abilities on hand), Gandalf *is* not performing the way a 20th level DnD Wizard would. That doesn’t mean Tolkien has somehow made an error, it just means that DnD’s scale keep going into way more ludicrous power levels than Tolkien imagined as appropriate for his world:
https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/587/roleplaying-games/dd-calibrating-your-expectations-2
Back in the 1980s I recall a game magazine article that argued that Gandalf was a 5th level magic user in the D&D of that era.
I think there was also a jokey thing circulating in the fanzines or APA’s of that era that “Jesus was only a seventh level Cleric,” or something similar!
I think this captures the essence of it, but I am not convinced that the present tense is necessary. Prophecy is effectively the same thing, and similarly a province of the Wise, but for an effect at some point in the future, right? Consider Glorfindel’s words to Earnur regarding the Witch-King:
“Do not pursue him! He will not return to this land. Far off yet is his doom, and not by the hand of man will he fall.”
Glorfindel certainly ought to have spiritual oomph, but he’s worded the second and third sentences in the future tense, and both prove true.
(Also consider Gandalf’s attempts at opening the Moria-gate: he requests that it open, he demands, he commands – but we don’t see him just say “the door is open!”)
I don’t think prophecy is the same thing. The magic that makes the unkillable Witch-King killable is the craft-magic of Merry’s blade.
Anyone could have killed the Witch-King after he was wounded that way, but it was Eowyn who was there and did it. Glorfindel in some way perceived this future event, though with only incomplete information: that there would be a doom for the Witch-King, that it was far in the future, and that it is not a man who kills him. If Glorfindel had not uttered this prophecy, the Witch-King’s doom would have changed little – Eowyn wouldn’t laugh in his face, causing him to be insecure for a few seconds, but they would clash with the same result.
I think that view sells short the role of prophecy *itself* in bringing about the prophesied events. It’s a classical (see Oedipus) trope of prophecy, that it is itself necessary to shape the chain of events in such a way that it becomes true. Especially actions undertaken specifically to avoid the prophesied events have a tendency to be the one ingredient crucial to bring it about.
(see again, in multiple instances, Oedipus: After hearing the Oracle prophesy that if they had a son, he would kill his father and marry his mother, his parents abandon him so he couldn’t do that, with the effect that he didn’t know them. He himself doesn’t return to his foster parents after hearing the prophecy, thinking it was them it talked about, thus bringing him back to his biological parents.)
I think this happens with the ‘Not by hand of man…’ prophecy as well: It makes the witch king overconfident, letting down his guard enough for Merry to strike and Eowyn to kill him, but also gives Eowyn especially the confidence that she is able to do it.
Sure, it could have been *anyone* that fits the criteria, opposing the witch king on the Pellenor fields, but the prophecy *itself* had to exist.
IMO, that’s what makes a prophecy such an interesting narrative device. We as the readers can amuse ourselves with devising different sequences of events, or thinking ‘Well, if he hadn’t heard about this, he wouldn’t have gone there, etc.’, but it could never have been otherwise (because we’re reading a story that someone else create purposely to be like that), and in the end we admire the elegant way the different bits and pieces slot into each other to give a satisfying and surprising chain of events to achieve an end we were told in the beginning.
This is another great example in the same vein:
Abū ‘l-Shaykh from Dā’ūd ibn Abī Hind; he said: It reached me that the Angel of Death was made responsible for Solomon (peace be upon him), and he was told: ‘Go into his presence every day, and ask what he needs; then do not leave him until you have performed it.’ He used to enter upon him in the image of a man, and he would ask him how he was. Then he would say: ‘Messenger of God, do you need anything?’ If he said: ‘Yes’, then he did not leave him until he had done it; and if he said: ‘No’, then he left him until the following morning. One day he entered upon him while there was an old man with him. [Solomon] stood up, and greeted [him], then [the Angel of Death] said: ‘Do you need anything, Messenger of God?’ He said: ‘No.’ The [angel] glanced at [the old man] and the old man trembled; the Angel of Death left and the old man stood up and said to Solomon: ‘I beg you, by the truth of God! to command the wind to carry me and throw me down on the furthest lump of mud in the land of India!’ So [Solomon] commanded it and it carried him [there].
The Angel of Death came unto Solomon the next morning and asked him about the old man. [The Angel of Death] said: ‘His book came down to me yesterday, [saying] that I should take his soul tomorrow at the rising of dawn in the furthest lump of mud in the land of India; but when I came down, and thinking that he was there, I then found him with you. I was astonished and could not think of [anything] other than him; I came down to him today at the break of dawn and found him on the highest lump of mud in the land of India, and he trembled, and I took his soul (rūh).’
“No other blade, not though mightier hands had wielded it, would have dealt that foe a wound so bitter”
That phrasing suggests that another sword would still have wounded the Witch-King, just that the injury would have been less bitter. And really, did Tolkien think that the Witch-King had survived so long because his previous opponents had lacked the right spells on their magic swords?
No. The Witch-King had survived so long because his previous opponents had wanted to live, and so were susceptible to his aura of terror that unmanned them. And Eowyn, at that moment, doesn’t want to live. She wants to die in glorious battle, fighting the most powerful and terrifying thing she can find. And that’s exactly what he is promising her. He is trying to threaten her with exactly that which she desires most.
I think the firm distinction between “craft magic” and “spiritual magic” is the least convincing part of this essay, actually. “Craft magic” I think is more a special case of spiritual magic. It is the Elves’ spiritual connection to Arda that allows them to create magical items out of the physical stuff of Arda – to bring out properties that would not otherwise be made manifest.
This is a process that requires knowledge and skill as well, but ultimately I think it is connected to the same kind of spiritual power you’re talking about. It is bringing into the seen world properties that those items possess in the unseen world.
But was the Witch-King actually unkillable prior to that? Glorfindel’s prophecy doesn’t say that say that a man can’t kill the Witch-King, just that none would.
That doesn’t mean the Witch-King has some special aura that needs to be defeat to kill him, it can simply mean that until his prophesied doom arrives no one will defeat him.
What a great argument from such a close reading. You took what was nebulous in my mind and showed me that it was real, so maybe you’re a wizard?
It reminds me a bit of the way god magic works in the Raven Tower by Ann Leckie. Gods make statements and, as gods can only say true things, their power works to make that thing true. If what they’ve spoken is beyond their power to make true, then their power will be spent trying to make their words true until the god is exhausted and dies. Different gods can present conflicting versions of reality and strive to bring them about
Much less of a moralistic element than Tolkein though
The base idea of “Changing the world with an incantation”, that is, spoken words, is pretty old and has seen lots of interpretations and variations over the years. (It basically goes back all the way to religious rituals and prayers – in the end, the prayer is also words spoken to effect a change in the world)
I think it would just a valid a reading of Tolkien that his magic works in similar lines as you describe, in which Gandalf can’t just state something which is already true (if only in the Unseen), but also *command* something to become true which wasn’t before, but at considerably greater expense of power. In that reading, the true power of Gandalf becomes his ability to *not* use the supernatural to achieve his goal, but the natural actions of those he counseled. The Witch King wastes his power on a flaming sword and spells of ruin on his battering ram – Gandalf doesn’t, and still manages to win.
This is an idea/framework also explored somewhat in Discworld (especially with the Witches: Granny Weatherwax is the most powerful witch because she *doesn’t* use magic until she really has to) and Elder Scrolls: Skyrim (The Way of the Voice, in which similarly somebody who doesn’t use their ability to shout a new reality is shown to be victorious over those who do so lightly). But I digress.
“But it is unclear to me if the Three rings are similarly tainted….”
My view on this is that they were. Not AS tainted, but they were. I believe that Ring-Making was incapable of making Rings that weren’t tainted, because the whole process was invented by Sauron in order to ensnare others to his will. The Elves had power to resist Sauron, and could use the Rings to their own ends, but the ultimate purpose of Ring-Making was to benefit Sauron, the guy who came up with the idea.
Remember, Saruman also had a Ring. And look what happened to him.
I also think you’re wrong about there being no morally neutral way to change the Song of Eru. Aule the Smith did so with the creation of the Dwarves. Eru quite pointedly calls him out for it–but, unlike Morgoth, Aule immediately repents and attempts to destroy the Dwarves he made. Eru says, in essence, “LOL, just kidding, I like these guys, I’m gonna keep ’em” and puts them to sleep so they don’t wake up before the Elves. (The obvious counter-argument is the massive tensions between Dwarves and Elves. The other is the Ents.) Further, the Valar lay down their dominion and demand Eru change the world when Numenor invaded, resulting in the world breaking and becoming a sphere. This is not presented as the Valar committing an act of evil–an act of desperation, sure, but it’s not WRONG.
The Music was never intended to be a single thing. Even in the beginning the Valar were allowed latitude in how they expressed it–only Morgoth openly defied it, but all of them changed it. As long as they were in harmony and in keeping with the main themes, Eru was happy. And Eru himself changed it multiple times; Eru by definition cannot be evil, and nothing He does can be wrong. And we see this again and again in Middle-Earth: Fate isn’t set in stone, Eru can change his mind, but you have to follow the theme.
There is quiet strong evidence that using the Three Rings to change the course of history is not wrong–Gandalf returning from the dead. Gandalf bore a Ring, and at least my interpretation is that it was Eru, not Manwee, that returned Gandalf to Middle-Earth. This means Eru saw Gandalf using the Ring, knew it was intended as a tool to Sauron’s purposes (and thus contrary to the Music), and told Gandalf “Go back and do more of what you were doing.” And that tracks with my previous paragraph: Gandalf was changing the music (using a weapon against the Enemy), but keeping the theme (love and compassion conquering hate and violence).
There is also the point that even Melkor’s attempt to change the song merely reinforces Eru’s themes: Melkor twists the Song into freezing ice and bitter cold and it results in the beauty of the snowflake.
Yes! Exactly so. Eru says as much in the Ainulindale:
“And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.”
There is an interesting kind of teodicy here (presumably kinda connected to the entire author-as-creator bit) where “Why does evil exist?” has the answer of “Because it makes for a better story when good vanquishes it”.
Tolkien surely thought of Eru as God and omnibenevolent, and later tried to argue how Manwe sitting on his hands was a Deep and Wise decision. But the events make more sense if Eru is a vaguely benevolent artiste who doesn’t mind letting suffering happen if it lets him show off his finesse, and the Valar are mostly lazy or feckless, at least after the Creation period and arresting Melkor the first time.
It does make more sense if we aren’t so hopped up on Catholicism as Tolkien and can accept that the Creator god isn’t perfectly good. But within the Tolkien frame I think he’s reaching for the idea that the good done but confronting and defeating evil is somehow greater and better than the original good. Looping back to the original topic, I think Tolkien views Gandalf the White as in some way better than Olorin, and has gained something by his time as Gandalf the Grey and labouring against Sauron.
But also a world that has Gandalf the White also causes Curumo becomes Saruman of Many Colours and none, or Marion becomes Sauron.
I think It’s even simpler: evil has to exist as a “frame of reference”. You need darkness before you are able to define light. You need evil to exist to be able to define what “good” is.
“the good done [by] confronting and defeating evil is somehow greater and better than the original good”
Certainly Tolkien would have endorsed that, and noted that God did a greater work by becoming man, suffering death, and overcoming it than He would have if the there had been no Fall in the first place.
@mindstalk0 Agreed. I think I shall prefer to interpret the Red Book of Westmarch as a transcription of a more ambiguously cosmologied pagan epic that has been translated by successive Catholic authors all the way to Tolkein, no doubt projecting their own morality onto a tale that only partially fits it.
It seem the most parsimonious explanation to me 😉
I think It’s even simpler: evil has to exist as a “frame of reference”. You need darkness before you are able to define light. You need evil to exist to be able to define what “good” is.
That makes a lot of sense to me, but I think a serious Catholic theologian (and presumably also Tolkien) would say that it’s heretical, for a couple reasons. Christian orthodoxy holds that evil isn’t a necessary, or co-eternal, component of reality in the same way that good is.
I don’t think the orthodox Christian answers to the problem of evil really work, personally, but that’s just me.
I think I now see why Tolkien had such trouble with his conceptualisation of the Orcs. If everything that Melkor twists contains at its heart a song that is all good and beautiful…where is that present in orcs?
I suppose this reinforces my belief that he would be really rather pleased with their rehabilitation under Blizzard.
“where is that present in orcs?”
They sing (Hobbit), make art of sort (carved knife in Two Towers), and feel some sort of loyalty to avenger their leaders (the Misty Mountain contingent in the Two Towers). Traces of positive feeling?
As can be seen in the Rankin & Bass Versions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aElWg_lFHI
And of course the most famous one:
Yes, perhaps that’s enough. It certainly is compared to some depictions of orcs, where they’re given precisely zero characterisation or humanisation beyond being mindless murder-machines.
@Arilou Always pleased to reminded of that song! Grade A material.
I was thinking about this a few months ago, and why the Three rings were vulnerable to domination by the One when Sauron had no personal involvement with their making. My conclusion was that all the rings, even the Three, by their very nature had a sort of “security backdoor” inherent in their making which Sauron could exploit.
See, Sauron sold Celebrimbor & co. on making the rings for the purpose of Preservation. But Preservation is, if we look closer, simply Domination (of nature) by another name. Among other things, the rings grant longer lifespans to mortals who wield them, but they don’t do it by “freezing them in time” (i.e., keeping them at the same age/appearance/physical capabilities of when the wearer first puts them on). To preserve their wearers, they have to be making lots of little targeted changes to undo the natural increase in entropy that all things experience; one might imagine them repairing DNA and zapping cancers before they start to keep someone alive on a physical level.
Thus, all the rings were inherently domineering, even if Celebrimbor had good intentions when making the Three and Sauron wasn’t personally involved. Sauron didn’t have to be involved, as he’d already poisoned the well by getting Celebrimbor started down that path in the first place. This, I think, is why the power of the Three fails when the One is destroyed (and why it was able to control their wearers): all the rings were tools of domination by their very nature, and thus Sauron could essentially hack them all with the One (and tie their fates to it) by exploiting that fact.
I’ve always called the elven and dwarven magic in LoTR “Sufficiently Advanced Craft” (with reference to Clarke’s Third Law: “Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”) so I’m down with calling it ‘Craft-Magic’ but I do think the Three Rings are something more. I assume Sauron taught Celebrimbor enough about ring-lore that the latter could create Rings that could modestly change the world in the way an Ainur might, but that such artifacts where necessarily open to domination by Sauron because they used his knowledge of how to do so in the crafting.
I think with the supernatural powers discussed in this post we could add a Clarke’s Third Law Section 2: “Sufficiently unfamiliar laws of nature are also indistinguishable from magic.”
Reading this on a plate of glass that shines, apparently, of its own volition, and on which I write by merely touching it (or by dictating it), and which then sends my writing to you by means unseen, I would tend to concur.
The very tablet my hand holds, and which works by using the very simple laws of nature and logic in an extremely convoluted manner, is a great example of craft-magic.
This framework makes sense to me, and I’ll have to check out Following Gandalf for more.
I’m wondering how you would explain something like the contest of Finrod and Sauron during the quest of Beren and Luthien: their confrontation is clearly “magical” speaking broadly, and described as consisting of “songs of power,” which seems an indicator more of spiritual than of craft-magic. While the exact words of their encounter aren’t recorded, it seems like Sauron makes a statement of his ability to perceive Finrod and his companions, which Finrod counters by asserting their protection from his view (this is all p. 161 of my illustrated edition).
How would this work? Finrod shouldn’t have access to spiritual power, but is able to put up a meaningful resistance to Sauron here and even has a measure of success in meeting his goals (protecting his & his companions’ exact identities from Sauron).
I’d argue Finrod, who has been to Valinor, seen the light of the trees and spoken to the Valar personally, absolutely has a degree of spiritual power.
That said I think it is possible to argue that singing is actually Craft-magic: It is simply music *so good* it does seemingly magical stuff. I think that works *less* well for this particular thing, but more for some other instances.
And of course, Music is intimately connected with the spiritual in the first place: It is what brought forth the world!
I think the bit on Weathertop with Frodo invoking “O Elbereth! Gilthoniel!” and Aragon remarking that that might have been the most effective thing that had been done in the struggle is significant in terms of the larger magical themes as well.
‘Bored of the Rings’ knew what craft-magic is:
‘The crates were unloaded and opened at D****’s door, and the mewling boggies wagged their vestigial tails with wonder at the marvelous contents. There were clusters of tubes mounted on tripods to shoot rather outsized roman candles; fat, finned skyrockets, with odd little buttons at the front end, weighing hundreds of pounds; a revolving cylinder of tubes with a crank to turn them; and large “cherry bombs” that looked to the children more like little green pineapples with a ring inserted at the top. Each crate was labeled with an olive-drab elf-rune signifying that these toys had been made in the elf-shops of a fairy whose name was something very much like “Amy Surplus.”
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Bored-of-the-Rings/The-Harvard-Lampoon/9781451672664
It also reminds me of situations where dying characters appear to utter curses that come true. I think that the text bears out that what is really happening is not so much that they have a general power to curse – which wouldn’t really make sense, but that their closeness to death gives them a deeper knowledge of the unseen, and they speak it out.
Ehh, not as sure about this regarding curses. For instance, I do think Frodo’s (Or perhaps the Ring’s itself) curse to Gollum that ‘if you touch me ever again, you will throw yourself into the fire of doom’ is something being enacted, not merely perceived.
Oh, timing! See below – there’s actually a very perception-shaped statement *immediately* before in the same passage: “Your time is at an end. You cannot slay me or betray me now.”
There’s an interesting… I’m going to say corroboration of all of this, actually, in a confrontation between Frodo and Gollum towards the end of RotK.
(I’m here working pretty directly from a tumblr post – https://mikkeneko.tumblr.com/post/171469590499/frodo-laid-a-geas-and-other-invisible-magic – that introduced me to this read, but the way the text here lines up with the argument in this post is pretty telling.)
‘Down, down!’ [Frodo] gasped, clutching his hand to his breast, so that beneath the cover of his leather shirt he clasped the Ring. ‘Down, you creeping thing, and out of my path! Your time is at an end. You cannot slay me or betray me now.’
Then suddenly, Sam saw these two rivals with other vision. A crouching shape, scarcely more than the shadow of a living thing, a creature now wholly ruined and defeated, yet filled with a hideous lust and rage; and before it stood stern, untouchable now by pity, a figure robed in white, but at its breast it held a wheel of fire. Out of the fire there spoke a commanding voice.
‘Begone, and trouble me no more! If you touch me ever again, you shall be cast yourself into the Fire of Doom.’
Then the vision passed and Sam saw Frodo standing, hand on breast, his breath coming in great gasps, and Gollum at his feet, resting on his knees with his wide-splayed hands upon the ground.
Notably Frodo is using the One Ring here – the narration explicitly notes that he’s grasping it – and we have *both* a present-tense statement of the world (“Your time is at an end. You cannot slay me or betray me now”) followed by a statement about the future (as Kaiphranos says above, a prophecy) – “If you touch me ever again, you shall be cast yourself into the Fire of Doom.” Both of those turn out true, more or less: Gollum attempts a betrayal but only manages to destroy himself and complete Frodo’s purpose (at least, the Frodo speaking in this passage, although it *is* a betrayal of the Frodo who says “The Ring is mine!” at the last); and the part where Gollum touches Frodo again and is cast into the Fire of Doom is *extremely* literal.
All of that seems to match the pattern of statements about the world that prove to be true, and indeed the “other vision” is emblematic of the motifs of seen and unseen here.
(Or, well. I think it’s Frodo giving the latter prophecy. It could be the Ring itself – the voice speaks, after all, out of the fire.)
Every time Bret mentions the First World War, I gain a little bit of hope that he will appear with Jesse Alexander on the Great War channel. Wouldn’t it be glorious?! Like
JESSE: I’m Jesse Alexander…
BRET: …and I’m Bret Devereaux!
JESSE: And this has been a production of RealTimeHistory,
BRET: the only history channel that drinks at every mention of Clausewitz!
I’m not sure my liver is prepared for that…
To me, the magic in Lord of the Rings and also in the Star Wars Original Trilogy feels in some way more “real” than in many other fantasy stories like Harry Potter, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and A Song of Ice and Fire. And I suspect that is because JRR Tolkien and George Lucas believed that magic exists in the real world as well. Tolkien has his Catholicism, where supernatural power has an impact on this world, sometimes connected with objects (relics), words (that a priest says – note that the formula used during Transsubstantiation is also present tense), and moral actions taken. For George Lucas, I suspect he held some beliefs common in the New Age movement, like human thoughts being able to influence reality and war and oppression being caused by negative emotions – the way the Force works is pretty close to that. Other Fantasy authors write with the thought “what if magic was real?”, but for Tolkien the powers of Gandalf are as close to reality as Rohan is to a real Medieval kingdom and for Lucas the Force represents an aspect of real life just like the Empire represents real world authoritarianism.
I’m curious what you think of the magic in the Earthsea books
I haven’t read Earthsea and know basically nothing about it second hand either, so I have no thoughts about it as of now.
I would recommend them in that case! I think Le Guin manages to make her magic both somewhat understandable/systematic, while also having mystical/numinous aspects.
Her inspiration for this aspect of her books, as far as I know, were her readings of Taoism and anthropology
I have been shlepping these books around for years meaning to get to them one day, and your post inspires me to make THAT DAY come soon and stop shilly-shallying! Ta!
Interesting thought. The only other world I’ve come across where magic feels as thoroughly woven into the fabric of the world as LoTR and the original Star Wars movies is the world of Glorantha. Greg Stafford, its creator, was a practicing shaman.
I always a thought that the best and most easy to understand use of ‘magic’ in LotR was when Frodo and Gollum use the power of the ring to seal an oath. I think it’s easier to understand because it’s characters who don’t really understand that they are using that power, but it still comes to pass.
A passage in Two Towers’ “The Black Gate is Closed” has Frodo tell Sméagol exactly what is going to happen to him if he betrays his oath, giving him about a future, contingent command that ends up playing out largely as Frodo states.
I always thought that it made it easier to understand how power works in Tolkiens world. It’s also worth noting, when discussing the Christian worldview of Tolkien, that this is often how ‘legitimate’ spiritual power works in the Bible as well, especially with Jesus.
I cannot help but notice that this means Middle Earth magic ends up being, basically, Futurama God (or the remains-of-a-space-probe-that-collided-with-God) in that if you do things right, no one will know you’ve done anything at all. We see Gandalf use very little magic, because he’s good enough he doesn’t need to use magic much. He doesn’t need direct confrontation except when things start going very wrong.
As I’ve pointed out, we actually see him do quite a bit of magic in the Hobbit. And in LOTR he does mention in the Caradhras sequence that lighting the fire somehow revealed him to those with the knowledge to read the signs: I think you can argue that he’s simply less free with it in LOTR than in the Hobbit because stealth is of more concern.
And also because Tolkien knew he was writing a book truly set in his full legendarium and not just a one-time knock-off to entertain children wanting a ripping yarn.
Thanks for a nourishing read! It is long since my understanding of Tolkien expanded.
As for craft magic, why not look at how you shape A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry? How much of your heart does it take? What would it do to you if it was destroyed?
I find the phrasing of footnote 4 interesting, because there IS another type of being, besides the Ainur, who can subvert the will of Eru and change the song: Men. Free will is specifically part of the Gift of Men and they are not bound by the Music of the Ainur. It seems strange to describe Men in Tolkien’s legendarium as possessing “spiritual power”, but perhaps “dark magic” (which we never see performed by elves) is not necessarily dependent on Melkor or Sauron’s power, but on the Gift of Men.
This has some interesting merit. We know that the Numenoreans, at their peak, were able to straightforwardly defeat Sauron and his armies by main force- Sauron may have been able to get the upper hand on them by subverting them and sending them to their doom, but he did lose one or more major battles to them, despite all his power and the orcs and so forth that he had at the time. And the Numenoreans had many abilities that we might consider supernatural. For instance, at least one of their kings was able to curse an entire people to be trapped as undead ghosts for millennia until one of his heirs set them free of their bindings (the Paths of the Dead).
With this in mind, we might suppose that the Numenoreans were to some extent using a special ‘Gift of Men,’ and that the righteous Numenoreans (including the early kings of Gondor such as Elendil and his immediate heirs) were using this gift ‘properly’ whereas Numenoreans who fell to evil used it improperly.
Re: “magic” vs. “craft magic”.
This is a fascinating distinction, in part because it seems to neatly tie up some of what otherwise seems like incomplete worldbuilding from the books. For instance, when lembas is initially described the Elf giving the explanation seems honestly uncomprehending when the hobbits ask if it’s ‘magic’. And just as fascinating (to me), it seems highly similar to the distinction made in the setting of Kinoko Nasu’s works between “magecraft” and “true magic”.
To elaborate just briefly: magecraft is usable by humans via well-defined techniques and subject to well-understood limitations, including those imposed by the weilder’s capabilities and the more fundamental limits upon things that are absolutely impossible. True magic by contrast has much more vaguely defined rules and is only usable by beings that are already magical in nature and by the five or six humans who have discovered a way to connect directly to what’s described just as vaguely as the source of all existence, each such instance of which cannot be repeated and instead permanently extends the limits of what’s possible for others by less extraordinary means.
Gandalf does directly confront Sauron when Frodo is on the summit of Amon Hen while wearing the Ring and is nearly discovered by the Eye.
From https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Amon_Hen
At that moment from some other point of power came another thought: “Take it off! Take it off! Fool, take it off! Take off the Ring!” Balanced between Eye and Voice, Frodo regained his ability to choose and removed the Ring an instant before he was discovered.
The identity of the Voice that strove against the Eye was later revealed when Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas first meet Gandalf the White in Fangorn Forest. Gandalf informs the others that the Ring was nearly revealed to Sauron but “I sat in a high place, and I strove with the Dark Tower; and the Shadow passed”.
This seems to be a confrontation entirely in the Unseen. Neither Sauron nor Gandalf appear to have “won” but Gandalf’s intervention allowed Frodo to regain freedom of action and will, which is the victory that Gandalf intended.
Typo: “Morgoth has been thus into the Timeless Void” looks like it should be “Morgoth has been thrust into the Timeless Void.”
“Gandalf’s confrontation with the Balrog is likewise a clear instance of supernatural power, a confrontation between to Maiar in which Gandalf breaks the Bridge of Khazad-dûm (FotR, 392).”
to -> two
I am of mixed agreement with your assertions, but the one thing that stands out to me the most is that it is almost impossible for the Witch-King to not have known who he was facing off against at the gate. Being a wraith he can perceive the Unseen (as we see with Frodo and the morgul blade), and he had encountered Gandalf on Weathertop previously. My suggestion would perhaps then be that, having fought Gandalf before, he thought he had the measure of his foe and that might be the source of his arrogance. Other commenters have observed that he was being empowered by Sauron (a being he must have met personally, I note, and so he likely recognizes Gandalf as a Maia), which would be even further reason to expect he had the mastery here. He was wrong, in the event, but I think this might be a more plausible reason for his arrogance than a simple failure to recognize his foe.
I do wonder how Bombadil and Beorn (+ descendants) fit into this scheme
Bombadil is so weird and deliberately working against many of the rest of the setting that I don’t think you can come up with any interpretative lens for Tolkien’s work that doesn’t say “Yeah, but Bombadil doesn’t quite fit”
My headcanon is that Bombadil was a special creation of Eru, largely to mess with people wanting neat categories for things.
My personal headcanon ties into the embedded narration; that we’re not reading ‘what happened’, rather we’re reading the contents of the Red Book of Westmarch, after a long series of different people (both human and hobbit) all contributing their thing and eventually being found and ‘translated’ by JRRT.
You have a constellation of different stories with different authors and different notions, kind of the way a real life set of mythology accretes. The ‘War of the Ring’ story, and the ‘Hobbits wander into the forest and are saved by a benevolent spirit’ story, were at some point in the fictive composition two separate stories that later got imperfectly welded together for some reason.
The RPG:net thread makes a similar argument, namely that The Hobbit is *Bilbo’s* recollection of events, and then Bilbo’s retelling of Frodo’s telling of events up to Rivendell. (which explains the talking fox) while from that onwards it’s Frodo/Sam/Pippins version more directly.
I think that the RPG:net notion clearly needs some refinement. A passage like this one from The Hobbit
“The mother of our particular hobbit—what is a hobbit?
I suppose hobbits need some description nowadays, since
they have become rare and shy of the Big People, as they
call us.”
Is clearly written by a human addressing other human, and seemingly some time after the events of The Hobbit. So clearly some of Bilbo’s words got mixed in with others.
My own reading is in part similar, a lthough in it there’s two separate concepts, Wisdom and Spiritual Power. Wisdom works like the (according to the Stoics, unattainable) Stoic Sage who acts according to perfect moral knowledge, deeply aware that providence of Logos/Eru Ilúvatar will eventually make things come out right. Some of the Wise like Elrond and Galadriel may intuit parts of Ilúvatar’s plan, like the importance of the Hobbits, Gandalf the White can tread the fate of Middle-Earth through eye of a needle, and Tom Bombadil cheerfully does his minor part of the providential plan (as his role never was to vanquish Sauron, and he doesn’t have the hubrist to think otherwise) and otherwise simply lives in the moment knowing for sure that things will definitely come out right. Having been present in Ainulindalë, Ainu like Sauron can recognize motifs such as that e.g. Gollum has something to do with the fate of the Ring, but because he isn’t Wise (morally good), he can’t comprehend Ilúvatar’s providential plan and so even trying to act on this knowledge will simply hasten his own downfall.
Spiritual Power in contrast is just the ability to achieve supernatural feats, whether in strength (like being physically stronger than physics of one’s musculature would allow) or in “magic” like conjuring a whip of flame, and here Manwë has more of it than Sauron who has more of it than Saruman who has more of it than Gandalf who has more than Elrond. It’s just that in a providential cosmos Evil is eventually going to fail, no matter how spiritually powerful.
Of course, I know full well this isn’t how Tolkien imagined things, because for one in my reading the future is pre-determined with no one having been able to do otherwise, which a Catholic like Tolkien wouldn’t have liked. But I feel it is rather similar in spirit to that of professor Devereaux, at least in consideration to who will eventually triumph (the good).
On Gandalf “I once knew every spell in all the tongues of Elves or Men or Orcs, that was ever used for such a purpose. I can still remember ten score of them without searching in my mind.” and the dwarves in the Hobbit likewise trying “fragments of broken spells”, I suggest this is a more casual or colloquial use of the word “spell”. The doors will only open when particular words are spoken, just like the password, pass phrase, or PIN for various modern electronic gadgets. Today it’s not uncommon for someone to refer to the password etc as the “magic word” needed, in Middle Earth people refer to the “spell” that opens a door or otherwise needed to make an item of craft-magic work, although the real spell was cast/infused/whatever long ago when the item was made.
Many thanks for a must illuminating article. A couple of minor thoughts:
Magic seems to work by the accumulation of psychic power, eg when Sauron created the ring by pouring all his spite and will to dominate into it.
I liked the idea that magical works by starting the current reality, rather than a future event.
Good intentions, bravery and selflessness create a harmonious connection with the physical world, and attract a positive response. This reminds me of Beowulf: ‘wyrd often saves an undoomed man, if he is undaunted’.
Typo: between to should be between two…
How would you categorize Aragorn’s use of athelas in the Houses of Healing? Craft magic perhaps, except there’s no deep knowledge of the world involved, just the right bloodline. Further, it can overcome the Nazguls’ black breath, surely a form of black magic.
I think there is something like “light magic” in addition to dark magic in LotR – characters making use of spiritual power that doesn’t come from them. Aragorn’s healing is an instance of this, as is Glorfindel glowing in the unseen world because he has been to Valinor.
Ambiguous: as candidates we have craft magic/herbalism, power derived from being raised by elves, power derived from being distantly descended from Luthien, power derived from being the ‘rightful King’ (also related to being descended from Luthien).
I believe Tolkien himself was coy about it in his Letters, waving non-committally at both hobbit-ignorance and descent from Luthien.
I suppose it depends on where Kingsfoil came from.
The reason Aragorn can use the Seeing Stones is craft-magic–someone made them as gifts to the Numenorians, and those with the right or authority to use them are particularly strong with them. If someone can make a magical seeing-stone, it’s not unreasonable to assume they can make plants as well (remember Yavanna was there to help, and she was one of the folks who made plants in the first place).
It could also be divine (Valar) intervention. You see this a few times in LOTR–when Sauron and Saruman die the wind from the West blows away their shadows, which is pretty clearly Manwe repudiating them. Legolas is ensnared by Ulmo’s sea-longing, which is direct Valar intervention in the world. The Eagles also are servants of Manwe, so we can take their actions as Valar intervention. Even the name “Elbereth” can inflict damage on the Ring-Wraiths (as I recall she was the Valar that Morgoth most feared). The whole thing with the White Tree seedling also springs to mind. And we know from Numenor that the Valar can manipulate the lives of men, especially those with Elven blood like Aragorn. (When you start to look for them, there area a LOT of times when the Valar take an active role in LOTR….) So it’s not unreasonable to assume that Aragorn’s use of kingsfoil is Yavanna, or some other Valar, subtlety but directly involving herself in the affairs of Middle-Earth.
This would be in keeping with Tolkien’s Roman Catholic theology. In Roman Catholicism God can interact, sure, but so can angels, archangels, and saints, as well as demons and other creatures (how complex this got varied through time). Go to any Roman Catholic church and you’ll see side alters set up for Mary and other saints (often a patron saint of that parish). The interactions of lesser beings tend to be extremely subtle, but no less potent for it.
It’s definitely an interesting interpretation of Tolkien’s magic and world. I’m not convinced it is necessarily True or what Tolkien had in mind; in particular the idea that the Unseen is ‘primary’ is utterly new to me, and I’m pretty well steeped in Tolkien lore. Tolkien took meticulous care in some things, and ran on vibes in others; I wouldn’t be shocked if his magic was really more for story vibes, and a perceived pattern doesn’t explain everything, like blind men with the elephant.
On the pro-utterance side we have Eru himself in the Silmarillion, making the world:
‘Therefore I say: Eä! Let these things Be! And I will send forth into the Void the Flame Imperishable, and it shall be at the heart of the World,’
Though there’s also a difference from what Bret says about Gandalf: Eru isn’t saying “the world is”, like a statement of fact, he’s doing a more normal “let there be light”.
(There’s also the question of what _speaking_ means, in a time before the world, vocal cords, or air. Presumably a mental ‘speech’? But then why should magic in Middle-earth require moving air? Perhaps simply because it’s easier for an Incarnate to be precise if they say their word-thoughts out loud?)
On the flip side, Arilou’s list of magics left out a couple instances of outright telekinesis, done by Gandalf the White without any speech:
‘He lifted up his staff, and Gimli’s axe leaped from his grasp and fell ringing on the ground. The sword of Aragorn, stiff in his motionless hand, blazed with a sudden fire. Legolas gave a great shout and shot an arrow high into the air: it vanished in a flash of flame.’
Staff motion, but axe-moving and burning arrow: no speech.
‘He lifted up his hand, and in the very stroke, the sword of Denethor flew up and left his grasp and fell behind him in the shadows of the house;’
There’s also
‘But now the dark swooping shadows were aware of the newcomer. One wheeled towards him; but it seemed to Pippin that he raised his hand, and from it a shaft of white light stabbed’
though Pippin isn’t near Gandalf, so we can’t rule out a spell.
Back on speech:
‘‘Did I not say that I wished to speak to you?’ said the old man. ‘Put away that bow, Master Elf!’
The bow and arrow fell from Legolas’ hands, and his arms hung loose at his sides.’
but that’s an actual command, more like Saruman’s voice, not a statement of reality.
Re:
“On the pro-utterance side we have Eru himself in the Silmarillion, making the world:
‘Therefore I say: Eä! Let these things Be! And I will send forth into the Void the Flame Imperishable, and it shall be at the heart of the World,’
Though there’s also a difference from what Bret says about Gandalf: Eru isn’t saying “the world is”, like a statement of fact, he’s doing a more normal “let there be light”.”
I would argue that this fits together perfectly well:
Eru is the creator, and the form ‘Let […] Be!’ is a command, bringing ‘these things’ into existence. Eru couldn’t say ‘There are these things’, because until he commands them to be, they are not there.
On the other hand, Gandalf is not a creator, he only makes factual statements about the order of the world, and I would follow our host in that he makes statements about the Unseen world that then make the state of the Unseen world visible in the Seen. So ‘Your staff is broken!’, because in the Unseen world, it already is, being a manifestation of Saruman’s power. Saying ‘Let Saruman’s staff be broken!’ would have no effect, because Gandalf doesn’t have that kind of power, Eru on the other hand could presumably do this, but won’t.
I would guess that when Gandalf uses his Nazgûl-repelling light he says something like “The Nazgûls flee before light.” or maybe even “the light of day shatters the dark of night.”
There is one other magic spell that Bret missed. It is the final stage of the healing of Theoden. “Your fingers would remember their old strength better, if they grasped a sword-hilt.” Another statement of fact, another spell cast?
Great post. I always really appreciated that in the MMO, Lord of the Rings Online, they avoided the temptation of letting you be a counterfeit wizard (at least in vanilla; an expansion class did push the envelope a bit more). Health was replaced by Morale, and healing came through a minstrel’s songs or a captain’s exhortation. The lore-master was the most wizard-esque class, but they didn’t perform magic; they were just someone who knew things and put them to use, rather more like van Helsing in the original Dracula novel.
More prosaically, if you can’t get screencaps of a stream, I had an issue like that for awhile. The solution wound up being turning off ‘hardware acceleration’, whatever that is.
I’ll have to disagree with the “craft-magic” interpretation of wondrous Elvish technology. Some of it really does seem to reflect the kind of craftsmanship of creators who have been doing this for millennia, but Elves (and to a lesser extent “ennobled Men” like the Faithful Numenoreans and even Aragorn) have spiritual power as well that manifests as “magical” works in practice. The Faithful built a stone tower so perfectly seamless and hard that even the Ents could barely scratch it (along with the outer wall of Minas Tirith), and Boromir’s horn is probably magical as well – Faramir hears it at an impossibly far distance, and when Boromir blows it on the bridge in Moria it even gives the Balrog temporary pause.
One reason why I love Morgoth’s Ring is that it really adds to the context of the rings of power and the One Ring in particular. Morgoth (formerly Melkor) was once easily the most powerful singular Ainu in Arda, but diffused his power permanently in the world to corrupt and twist it. The entire world is Morgoth’s Ring. Sauron reacted to this by instead concentrating and preserving his power against time and diffusion, but at the cost of also giving himself a singular point of vulnerability.
There are other examples of elves doing magic in LotR, including a whole chapter that begins with a discussion of ‘elf-magic’ framed in contrast to wizard magic ont the one hand and the deceits of the enemy on the other – The Mirror of Galadriel. Some of what Galadriel does there seems to be craft-magic, though of an extraordinary kind (trapping the light of Earendil’s star in water), some of it derives from Nenya, but some of it (seeing the future(!) and waging some kind of constant mental struggle against Sauron) appears to be of a different kind.
The hiding of Lorien may also count – it’s pretty clearly modeled on the Girdle of Melian, and serves similar narrative roles – but there are indications that Nenya is involved in that somehow.
I keep thinking there are two components to this – Tolkien was a devout Catholic; and Tolkien spent the first three years of his life in the land of his birth, South Africa, and was the favourite of the house-boy, a Basotho who took him to his kraal on a weekend visit once. And who probably told him all sorts of stories about the his people. Tolkien probably viewed H Rider Haggard’s stories as a kind of catch-up on what he’d been missing all along, after making the journey to England. In both there is a tradition of making “magical” statements – “This is my body, which is broken for you”, said by Jesus of Nazareth at the Last Supper, which Tolkien as a devout Catholic would’ve understood as transubstantiation. And in the animistic tradition which Basotho like most other African peoples, would’ve adhered to, much of what passes for “magic” can be understood as an attempt to restate unseen realities. (H Rider Haggard seems to have had much more sympathy towards those who held such traditions than most of his contemporaries – he doesn’t mock the dwarvish wizard in his Zulu stories. Instead, he’s a respected, though feared, actor in the drama of those times.)
“Tolkien spent the first three years of his life in the land of his birth, South Africa, and was the favourite of the house-boy, a Basotho who took him to his kraal on a weekend visit once. And who probably told him all sorts of stories about the his people.”
How many of these stories would a three-year old remember?
Maybe you would not remember stories from when you were 3 years old, and certainly I would not, but I have been surprised more than once by a relative or friend who have vivid memories from that age. Tolkien may have been one of those who retained perhaps at least just impressions formed from stories heard at that age.
If you’re interested, the YouTuber Girl Next Gondor has made an entire series on Magic in Middle Earth. Two points where I disagree with you
1) when Gandalf uses magic he sometimes uses Sindarin. I do not think this has to do with the Ring of Fire, because the Ring was made by a Noldo, who of course use Quenya. I don’t know why it’s Sindarin, but this explanation does not sit right with me.
2) The Three are indeed ‘unpolluted’ by Sauron’s touch (although like any clever coder he has left himself a backdoor in the program he taught Celebrimbor), but I think that they would still have had a disastrous effect on any mortal who tried to wear them. Gandalf says as much – “A mortal .. who keeps one of the Great Rings, does not die, but he does not grow or obtain more life, he merely continues, until at last every minute is a weariness.” I think a mortal who wore one of the Three would have ended up as a wraith. Maybe a less ‘evil’ wraith, but a wraith nonetheless. This is part of the Rings’ power to preserve, but it is an unnatural preservation.
“the Ring was made by a Noldo, who of course use Quenya”
The Exiled Noldor adopted Sindarin for daily use not long after reaching Beleriand, where it was the lingua franca. ‘Celebrimbor’ is a Sindarin name. Celebrimbor was probably fairly young when he came over (and lets ignore alt versions where he was actually a Teleri) and thus even more likely to assimilate.
One might think he would use Quenya for a Great Work like the Three, but OTOH Sindarin was likely the language of Eregion, too.
Point is, I don’t think there’s any singular conclusion to draw. The Three might use Sindarin, which Gandalf then invoked, as Bret proposes. Or they might not ‘need’ any particular language, and Gandalf used Sindarin there for reasons only Tolkien knows. (Maybe he’s more comfortable with it? Olorin should know Quenya well, but Gandalf the Grey is a somewhat veiled version of Olorin.)
Doh, forgot the second part of my reply.
“I think a mortal who wore one of the Three would have ended up as a wraith.”
I think the mortal would end up feeling stretched, too little butter over too much bread, in Bilbo’s words, but _not_ a wraith. I think wraith-dom per se was an interaction of such stretching and invisibility, and Tolkien said in a Letter that the Three did not confer invisibility, since Sauron never touched them.
I know you seem more concerned with elements of the Legendarium that have direct adaptations, but given the last two posts and the series on Eregion in RoP, I’m wondering if you would ever make a post on the little we know about the major battles in the Silmarillion (the five battles so to say, though tbh only the Dagor-nuin-Giliath, Dagor Bragollach and the Nirnaeth Arnoediad seem to have any level of description). I’ve always been interested especially in what the Sudden Flame might have looked like given my impressions from the texts.
This is of course only a suggestion.
Great post overall, and in particular the interpretation of how mortals can make use of “dark magic” answered something I’ve long been unclear on (though, having read Morgoth’s Ring years ago, perhaps it’s spelled out there and simply slipped my mind).
Like other commenters, though, I think there’s more to tease out in the ability of the more powerful elves to do things that aren’t explained by “look, they just REALLY know how to make bread.” The example that I always ponder is from the LOTR appendices, which tells us:
“Celeborn came forth and led the host of Lórien over Anduin in many boats. They took Dol Guldur, and Galadriel threw down its walls and laid bare its pits, and the forest was cleansed.”
Of course you can resolve an ambiguity here by saying “at Galadriel’s instruction, the elven host manually destroyed the tower,” but I think this would be a weird way to write it if that’s what Tolkien meant, having described command of the host as Celeborn’s, and only naming Galadriel as the author of this action, as though it wouldn’t have occurred to Celeborn to give the same order. Presumably Galadriel accomplished this herself, and it happens after the destruction of the One Ring is supposed to have disabled Galadriel’s ring. I have seen a piece somewhere that compares Galadriel here to Luthien (who is half-Maia, unlike Galadriel) and makes the point that in one of the earliest versions of the story of Beren and Luthien, Tolkien has her literally force precursor-Sauron to somehow transfer Ownership of the castle to her, which then means she is empowered to speak words which undo the magic that was part of the castle’s making … but I don’t love argument by reference to the earliest forms of the legendarium, which often explicitly include concepts Tolkien pointedly doesn’t revisit by the 1930s, let alone the ’50s and ’60s.
“in one of the earliest versions of the story of Beren and Luthien”
The published Silmarillion has
‘unless thou yield to me the mastery of thy tower.’
‘Then Sauron yielded himself, and Lúthien took the mastery of the isle and all that was there; and Huan released him…’
‘Then Lúthien stood upon the bridge, and declared her power: and the spell was loosed that bound stone to stone, and the gates were thrown down, and the walls opened, and the pits laid bare;’
My memory failed me; consulting a synopsis of “The Tale of Tinuviel” I find that what happened there, and what I half-recalled some essay online referencing, is that Huan defeats Tevildo, Prince of Cats (who would by twists and turns eventually become Sauron), and forces him to reveal the spell he learned from Melko that holds his tower together and gives his servants unnatural power, and then Huan relays it to Tinuviel, who then uses the spell to destroy the tower and free Beren (who’s a Gnome, which is what JRRT was calling the eventual Noldor at this point).
So what I misremembered is that the essay argued we should still read this literal discovery of a spell into the versions of the tale that made it into The Silmarillion and thereby also presume that Galadriel literally forced whomever was serving as the captain of Dol Goldur in Sauron’s absence to tell her the magic words.
And on that point I remain … unsatisfied. There’s a lot in the ’10s/’20s versions of the legendarium that is contradicted later, and I don’t believe it’s correct to think that if Tolkien DIDN’T contradict it then we should assume it’s still there under the surface. I think Luthien in The Silmarillion is doing something intrinsic to her nature, and I suspect Galadriel is doing the same, despite not being half-Maia. Being a child of Aman, like Glorfindel she seems to have substantial extra juice. (Elrond was born in Beleriand and never saw the Undying Lands, but in addition to the ring he’s still 1/16 Maia.)
The existence of patterns in a magic system isn’t a distinguishing feature between “hard” and “soft” magic systems, but between “good” and “bad” magic systems.
The distinguishing feature between “hard” and “soft” magic is the type of pattern which the magic follows. The patterns of “hard magic” are mechanistic, inputs and outputs; the patterns of “soft magic” are generally more linguistic or symbolic.
Aquaman’s command of the sea is “soft magic”. Sometimes he just talks to fish, sometimes he can command them, sometimes he basically summons sea monsters. Sometimes he also has hydrokinesis. Once in a while, an author argues that all life ultimately comes from the sea, and we’re supposed to roll with it.
The important thing is that he is King of Atlantis, and has superhuman powers corresponding to that role.
Contrast this with—and I realize this next example is pretty obscure—Taylor Hebert/Skitter. She controls bugs, but the limits of that control are clearly defined. She can control the actions of bugs within several blocks; her range slowly increases over time, and also when under certain kinds of stress. (It’s well-defined, but I’d have to infodump for a couple paragraphs to explain how.) She gets some sensory feedback from the bugs, but it’s hard for her to process most bug senses in ways her human brain can understand. She briefly discusses what her power counts as “bugs” with her teammates.
In my opinion, if there’s a clear distinction between “hard” and “soft” magic, it’s “Can they do that?” If you’re reading the book (or watching the movie, or whatever), how confidently can you say whether character X can do thing Y?
Aquaman and Skitter are at the beach. Can Aquaman command the sea gulls? Maybe. Can Skitter control the crabs? Yes.
Spiritual power in Middle Earth comes from the Ainur, and the Flash’s speed comes from the Speed Force. Gandalf invokes his power with verbal invocations, as the Green Lantern invokes his power with his ring. Gandalf’s magic makes the Seen world reflect Unseen reality, as Aquaman commands the seas.
But sometimes—I hope you’ll forgive me for exclusively describing the effects on the Seen world—Gandalf conjures fire, sometimes he breaks a bridge or a staff. Sometimes he changes the weather and conjures a lightning bolt, or he clears a little darkness, or he forces the Witch King to retreat. In principle, Gandalf can do anything that makes the Seen world more like the Unseen. But the Unseen is, well, unseen. It’s ethereal, abstract, and above all, not visible by most characters.
Gandalf is at the beach with Aquaman and Skitter. Can he turn the waves into horses? Maybe.
And it gets even squishier when you expand “the magic system” beyond Gandalf. When Gandalf says you cannot pass, you know you can’t pass, because he’s the wisest Maiar and doesn’t say anything unless he knows it’s true. But if Saruman says you cannot pass? He’s a wizard like Gandalf, but he demonstrably says all sorts of things he assumes to be true even though they aren’t.
Saruman is at the beach. Can he turn a pile of sand into a sand castle? Maybe.
There are patterns and limitations to LotR’s magic system, but they’re orthogonal to the question of if it’s “hard” or “soft”.
I don’t understand the “Speed Force” at all, or have kept up with comic book physics in that way. I still think of Barry (Flash) Allen acquiring the power of super speed via a freak accident involving chemicals and a lightning bolt. I don’t know when or why it had to get more complicated (or ridiculous) than that. So is Peter Parker now juiced with the “Arachnid Force”?
AFAIK The speed force was largely invented because Flash kept doing things that makes no sense physically, so they felt he needed an explanation.
Spidey actually got something similar a couple of decades ago with the maybe/maybe not totemic animal stuff.
Actually it got more complicated AND ridiculous. See https://comicsarcheology.com/index.php/2025/04/11/the-flash-167/ for a review of the issue that introduced “Mopee”.
I’m curious how the colours of the wizards cloaks tie into this. I’m assuming that they’re an indication of spiritual power (i.e. white > grey), but I was never quite sure what the significance of “Saruman of many colours” was meant to be.
Saruman basically claims the position of all the wizards, and Gandalf points out that in doing so he is just abdicating his appointed position and role. Thus becoming lesser.
Poor Radagast the Brown, so ignored, slighted, and uncelebrated!
He is truly the Jar Jar Binks of Tolkiendom.
Now that I come to think of it, I’m willing to forgive a movie or TV director for downplaying the Unseen.
The Unseen world, to the Seen: “Oh, you haven’t heard?”
The depiction of spiritual power as being generally exercised through speech, which causes the Seen to correspond to the Unseen, reflects Tolkien’s Christian belief. As you may recall, the world itself is created by God’s speech (“Let there be light” etc.), which is not the mechanism in all mythologies. In the New Testament, Jesus himself is the Word. Most of his miracles are healings, i.e., causing the brokenness of the Seen to revert to the wholeness of the Seen, and many of them are accomplished, or better yet realized, by speech, as for example (one of many chosen at random) Mark 7:30, where he tells the Samaritan woman, “The demon has left your daughter.”