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CuriousG
Gondor
Dec 20 2012, 7:37pm
Views: 302
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Excellent post, noWizardme!
I'm having trouble finding a large block of time to reply, so I'll have to do it in chunks, and in random order.
Galadriel's line about the word "magic." I must have 10,000 favorite lines from Tolkien, and this is one of them because it's rich in meaning. There's a tendency in all fantasy stories for authors to invent races, then gradually forget the differences between them so eventually they all act and talk the same, they just have pointy ears or not. This was a great reminder of the difference between Elves and mortals. It's repeated and augmented a little later by the Elf who's also confused by the word "magic" when asked about the cloaks. These immortal beings don't share the same perspective that mortals do, down to their word choice in everyday speech, and there's a profound conceptual misunderstanding between the races.
We grow up with fairy tales where magic means turning invisible (check!) and involves reciting spells and ugly witches brewing up nasty things in a pot. I doubt it was intentional, but think how Tolkien reversed the whole witch-and-pot image with the ethereal Galadriel and her wondrous Mirror. For her there is no conjuring and no tricks, which is what magic is to Sam and hobbits. It's more of a manifestation of the spirit. I'm not aware of a concrete explanation for the mechanics of the Mirror, but it seems like it represents the intuitive part of your mind that's buried beneath the rational part, hence the part that dreams and makes creative connections, which is also a little wild and uncontrollable. ("Do not touch the water.")
It's revealing that she says that the Mirror is more helpful when left to its own will, rather than obeying her commands. Creativity works the same way. Try telling an artist to paint a rainbow in a field of daisies with two kids playing with a dog vs. asking them to paint whatever landscape is on their mind. The latter would almost always be more beautiful and more satisfying.
The boats, cloaks, and ropes of Lorien seem to work the same way: there is no recipe of spells that the Elves use, but rather they spontaneously put their love into all that they make, again letting creativity flow naturally without command. So the Elves are mystified that this creative flow is equated in the same word for Wargs of Sauron that don't leave corpses behind or Sauron's emissaries appearing fair (but feeling foul).
I think there's more than expert craftsmanship or better technology that goes into the works of the Elves. I think that they impart a portion of their souls into their works, and that results in things like ropes that untie themselves when the suggestion or need is put to them not by a spell, but by a person's will. I would also guess that there's selectivity involved and that Elvish magic is not neutral. By that I mean that conventional magic works for everyone; spells in Harry Potter work for whoever recites them. But I don't think that if an orc tugged on an Elvish rope that it would untie itself. And if a Nazgul looked into Galadriel's Mirror, I doubt it would be compliant in any fashion. These Elvish things don't have on/off switches.
Another thought about how magic does/doesn't work is that the Phial of Galadriel is no ordinary flashlight. If it was, it would have worked in Orodruin. And when the hobbits confronted Shelob, its intensity wouldn't have increased as their wills grew bolder. There's an organic nature to all these Elvish things that doesn't translate as technological devices. Given that JRR didn't like technology very much, he probably came up with these alternatives to it quite intentionally.
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Subject
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User
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Time
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'The problem of magic' in Tolkien
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noWizardme
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Dec 18 2012, 11:53am
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A thought about games
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noWizardme
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Dec 18 2012, 1:33pm
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Galadriel and semantics
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CuriousG
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Dec 20 2012, 7:37pm
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Magic vs Blessed
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Cyberia
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Dec 21 2012, 12:22am
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Elvish magic (a helpful/distracting thought from "On Fairy Stories"
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noWizardme
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Dec 21 2012, 4:12pm
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Palantiri vs Skype
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CuriousG
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Dec 20 2012, 10:14pm
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Or the palantir as YouTube?
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noWizardme
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Dec 21 2012, 6:59pm
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Gandalf's magic: a wizard's must
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CuriousG
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Dec 21 2012, 2:51am
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Compare & Contrast: Terry Pratchett's witches
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noWizardme
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Dec 27 2012, 12:55pm
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Magic and knowledge to Medieval witch hunters
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CuriousG
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Dec 28 2012, 2:06am
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A problem of terminology
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Mim
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Dec 23 2012, 6:41pm
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Magic & Grace of Valar/Aman/Undying Lands
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Nolofinwe
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Dec 24 2012, 3:38pm
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You can add to that
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sador
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Dec 24 2012, 4:33pm
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The dark side of magic: Nazgul
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CuriousG
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Dec 24 2012, 7:56pm
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passive elven magic
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Cyberia
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Dec 24 2012, 10:10pm
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Light vs. Dark..
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Nolofinwe
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Dec 25 2012, 4:56am
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Perception of Lorien (and Imladris for that matter)
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Nolofinwe
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Dec 25 2012, 4:09pm
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Good comparisons
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CuriousG
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Dec 25 2012, 4:24pm
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Yes
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Nolofinwe
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Dec 25 2012, 4:31pm
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Evidence of anger?
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Otaku-sempai
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Dec 26 2012, 2:37pm
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Read Gandalf's explanation to Frodo
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CuriousG
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Dec 28 2012, 1:55am
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Well, to be fair...
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Otaku-sempai
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Dec 28 2012, 9:26pm
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Please do!
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noWizardme
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Dec 27 2012, 12:45pm
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Hobbit magic (to add to the pot!)
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noWizardme
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Dec 27 2012, 6:21pm
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Elves/Rivendell
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Nolofinwe
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Dec 31 2012, 3:05pm
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