catacomb
Level 2 Seer
mesmerizedbysirens.blogspot.com
Posts: 40
|
Post by catacomb on Jun 10, 2016 4:43:57 GMT -6
|
|
|
|
Post by Finarvyn on Jun 10, 2016 7:24:34 GMT -6
Interesting. I downloaded the images and may type up the text so it's more readable.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 10, 2016 8:35:10 GMT -6
catacomb: Your blog, awesomesauce!!! Big fan here! 
|
|
|
|
Post by Stormcrow on Jun 10, 2016 10:24:22 GMT -6
Site is unusable due to aggressive advertisements.
|
|
catacomb
Level 2 Seer
mesmerizedbysirens.blogspot.com
Posts: 40
|
Post by catacomb on Jun 10, 2016 11:10:53 GMT -6
|
|
|
|
Post by tkdco2 on Jun 11, 2016 15:24:31 GMT -6
Very cool! Thanks for posting this.
|
|
|
|
Post by tkdco2 on Jun 13, 2016 23:52:33 GMT -6
Another article wrote Gandalf up as a level-8 cleric instead of a magic-user.
|
|
|
|
Post by Porphyre on Jun 14, 2016 15:02:51 GMT -6
Personnally, I think of Gandalf as an Elf : he's not technically human, and he wields sword & spells in equal measure...
|
|
|
|
Post by cooper on Jun 14, 2016 18:43:23 GMT -6
Some of you have seen my posts writing up the Istari as sages:
The more I think on this subject I feel the proper focus on magic in LoTR should be on magic items. Incidentally this properly lines up with Beowulf. If individuals have lots of magic power inherently, then the necessity and power of a thing like, The One Ring lose their importance; After all, if Galandriel has access to lots of magic, what does she need her Ring of Power for?
Irrespective of Gandalf's origin, or race, It is Gandalf's ring and staff alone that allow for all of the outward manifestations of magic. This would certainly make the One Ring tempting no? The only means of increasing his power would be to take it from Frodo...
So, Gandalf owns a ring of fire, a staff of striking, and a Sword+3 who's special purpose is killing goblin-kind
In this way a wizards power really is in his staff. If your staff of the magi is broken, you really are bereft of power. It explains the necessity of the palantir or gandalf's reliance on sages and libraries, because wizards don't have spells of divination on their own.
*Incendentally, Galandriel had the ring of water which would make the river rising up to defeat the Nazgul at the Fjord make sense of her power? I would give most of the fire abilities to gandalf's staff and perhaps his mind control and helpful morale type spells to the ring of power.
--------------
|
|
|
|
Post by tkdco2 on Jun 15, 2016 0:24:53 GMT -6
IIRC, it was Elrond who commanded the Ford to rise up against the Nazgul, perhaps with the Ring of Air. Gandalf added a few touches, like the image of horses. Galadriel used her ring to hide her realm from Sauron.
Interesting write-ups on the Istari. How would Radagast look like?
|
|
|
|
Post by Stormcrow on Jun 15, 2016 8:42:46 GMT -6
The purpose of the Three Rings was to preserve the world and the elves as they remembered it, rather than let natural decline change it forever. They were not, and could not be, used for war.
Magic in Middle-earth takes many forms, and I will not attempt a full survey here. There are many places where this has been done. Generally, magic consists of Art and Will.
Art is used to create "magic" items like the elven rope and cloaks given to the Fellowship in Lothlorien. It is not that some special enchantment was embedded into special items; they are "magical" essentially because they are superior technology. But—and here's the important part—Art differs from technology in that it aims to add to the glory of God's Creation; it is a primarily subcreative act, to use Tolkien's terminology. The elves point out that, had they had the time, they could have taught Sam the Art of making superior rope—"magic" rope. They don't understand what he thinks is so "magical" about it; to them it's just well-made rope. That's what rope does when you make it that well. Men and hobbits don't know how to make it that well.
Will is the use of one's willpower to affect and interact with the world. This happens a lot in the stories, though they are sometimes hard to spot. Gandalf and Galadriel can "see" Frodo in his mind from afar. The One Ring allows its wearer to command others, to subjugate them to his will. Denethor pits his will against Sauron's in the Palantir. Gandalf and Denethor wrestle with their wills, and as they're doing so Gandalf's "cloak" is dropped, allowing Pippin to wonder exactly what Gandalf is, something he's startled to notice that he's never wondered before. In Moria Gandalf tries to hold back the balrog with a Word of Command, an act of Will put into an incantation.
There are other cases, but these are the main types, and there are lots more examples of both. D&D simply doesn't model the way Middle-earth works at all.
|
|
|
|
Post by cooper on Jun 15, 2016 10:08:52 GMT -6
That's a nice idea, but not one completely consistent with medieval understanding of "virtue" and "'malefici". Tolkien uses the word virtues a lot in relation to good magic, he uses "magic" for malefici. Tolkien was creating a real fake history of Europe and he would definitely have used the understanding of magic as understood by the Neoplatonic thinkers of the early Christian church because everything else, from names of people to backgrounds of civilizations are drawn from Tolkien the Oxford medievalists understanding of how Europe understood itself. For heavens sake, the song of Eru is completely derived from platonic harmony of the spheres.
The ring narya had definite powers. Gandalfs staff had definite powers. Heck, Sarumans entire modus operandi was driven by jealously of not having a magic ring of his own. He fashioned one himself.
One should look to science and the mystical arts of Europe during the Neoplatonic age and not some modern day new age layering of "will" and "art". Rather mantike, astrology, necromancy, virtue and malefici.
A good primer is "magic and the experimental sciences in the first thirteen centuries of our era". By Lynn Thornd[ike from Columbia university. The hardback set is about 600 dollars, but there is a decent 3 dollar kindle version.
If you don't want to wade through 8 volumes, he wrote much shorter "the place of magic in the intellectual history of Europe" that you can also get, maybe 40 pages.
|
|
|
|
Post by Falconer on Jun 15, 2016 10:47:57 GMT -6
I think that’s very interesting, and I think your end-product (writeup), Cooper, nails it. However, the A&E article is a truly delightful snapshot. There’s a certain fun naïveté to it; an urgency, too: that excitement of discovering D&D (and Warlock and Greyhawk) when it was so hot there was nothing that could stop them from just playing it all the time. Their ME MU writeup basically amounts to tweaking the spell list and letting him use a sword. And, off to fighting the balrog!
|
|
|
|
Post by Stormcrow on Jun 16, 2016 8:22:08 GMT -6
Tolkien was creating a real fake history of Europe and he would definitely have used the understanding of magic as understood by the Neoplatonic thinkers of the early Christian church because everything else, from names of people to backgrounds of civilizations are drawn from Tolkien the Oxford medievalists understanding of how Europe understood itself. There's so much wrong in this; how do I begin to unpack it? Tolkien began writing his mythology in the nineteen-teens to (a) give a context to his constructed languages and (b) supply the English with a lacking ethnic mythology. As his writings developed he eventually mostly abandoned the notion that he was writing an English mythology. Middle-earth remained our world in a remote past, but the ideas of Ælfwine being the father of Hengist and Horsa and Tol Eressëa being England were largely lost. Tolkien was not equating Middle-earth with the Medieval world. He does no such thing. Especially in his earlier writings, magic is neither good nor evil. The Two Trees are "the magic sun." Hobbits and Men call both the works of the elves and the deceits of the Enemy magic.He does tend to call "good" magic wizardry and "bad" magic sorcery, but he is not consistent about it. Virtue means good, so the fact that "good" objects are said to have virtue is hardly revealing. The Tolkien Gateway summarizes the alleged powers of Narya: "It is described as having the power to inspire others to resist tyranny, as well as (in common with the other Three Rings) hiding the wielder from remote observation (except by the wielder of the One) and giving resistance to the weariness of time..." I am unaware of any description of the powers of Gandalf's staff. It is not made clear that the staff itself contained power, was a conduit for Gandalf's innate power, or was just a symbolic stick. There is never any point where a wizard says, "If only I had my magic staff!" Except Tolkien wasn't in any way saying that Middle-earth resembled the Middle Ages, and wasn't trying to emulate real-world magical traditions. He did, however, use the term Art in exactly the way I have done, to represent the magic of subcreation. And he uses the word will often to refer to the act of affecting the world through mental force. |
|
