Q: Did Aragorn Use Any Magic?
ANSWER: Some people feel that Aragorn used magic in The Lord of the Rings; other people say that Aragorn, being a man, could NOT use magic. We have to look closely at what J.R.R. Tolkien wrote about Men and Magic in Middle-earth in order to reach any conclusion. However, if you’re one of those people who requires an explicit statement from J.R.R. Tolkien one way or another, you’re going to be very, very disappointed.
One of the most often-cited “proofs” in the arguments against Aragorn’s “use of magic” is Letter No. 155, which was in fact a passage from a draft for a letter that J.R.R. Tolkien prepared for a response to Naomi Mitcheson. According to the introductory note, this passage was never sent — and you have to look at the end-note to see why it wasn’t sent. This is an example of one of those experimental essays where J.R.R. Tolkien abandoned what he was writing after realizing that it contradicted something which had appeared in print. Here is the text of the entire unsent passage:
I am afraid I have been far too casual about ‘magic’ and especially the use of the word; though Galadriel and others show by the criticism of the ‘mortal’ use of the word, that the thought about it is not altogether casual. But it is a v. large question, and difficult; and a story which, as you so rightly say, is largely about motives (choice, temptations etc.) and the intentions for using whatever is found in the world, could hardly be burdened with a pseudo-philosophic disquisition! I do not intend to involve myself in any debate whether ‘magic’ in any sense is real or really possible in the world. But I suppose that, for the purposes of the tale, some would say that there is a latent distinction such as once was called the distinction between magia and goeteia.1 Galadriel speaks of the ‘deceits of the Enemy’. Well enough, but magia could be, was, held good (per se), and goeteia bad. Neither is, in this tale, good or bad (per se), but only by motive or purpose or use. Both sides use both, but with different motives. The supremely bad motive is (for this tale, since it is specially about it) domination of other ‘free’ wills. The Enemy’s operations are by no means all goetic deceits, but ‘magic’ that produces real effects in the physical world. But his magia he uses to bulldoze both people and things, and his goeteia to terrify and subjugate. Their magia the Elves and Gandalf use (sparingly): a magia, producing real results (like fire in a wet faggot) for specific beneficent purposes. Their goetic effects are entirely artistic and not intended to deceive: they never deceive Elves (but may deceive or bewilder unaware Men) since the difference is to them as clear as the difference to us between fiction, painting, and sculpture, and ‘life’.
Both sides live mainly by ‘ordinary’ means. The Enemy, or those who have become like him, go in for ‘machinery’ — with destructive and evil effects — because ‘magicians’, who have become chiefly concerned to use magia for their own power, would do so (do do so). The basic motive for magia — quite apart from any philosophic consideration of how it would work – is immediacy: speed, reduction of labour, and reduction also to a minimum (or vanishing point) of the gap between the idea or desire and the result or effect. But the magia may not be easy to come by, and at any rate if you have command of abundant slave-labour or machinery (often only the same thing concealed), it may be as quick or quick enough to push mountains over, wreck forests, or build pyramids by such means. Of course another factor then comes in, a moral or pathological one: the tyrants lose sight of objects, become cruel, and like smashing, hurting, and defiling as such. It would no doubt be possible to defend poor Lotho’s introduction of more efficient mills; but not of Sharkey and Sandyman’s use of them.
Anyway, a difference in the use of ‘magic’ in this story is that it is not to be come by by ‘lore’ or spells; but is in an inherent power not possessed or attainable by Men as such. Aragorn’s ‘healing’ might be regarded as ‘magical’, or at least a blend of magic with pharmacy and ‘hypnotic’ processes. But it is (in theory) reported by hobbits who have very little notions of philosophy and science; while A. is not a pure ‘Man’, but at long remove one of the ‘children of Luthien’.2
So before we go too far into discussion about this unsent passage, let us look at the notes attached to it:
[155] 1. Greek γοητεία (γόης, sorcerer); the English form Goety is defined in the O.E.D. as ‘witchcraft or magic performed by the invocation and employment of evil spirits; necromancy.’ 2. Alongside the final paragraph, Tolkien has written: ‘But the Númenóreans used “spells” in making swords?’
In fact, Tolkien had previously written to Naomi Mitcheson (in Letter No. 144) about another man who used magic: Beorn. There he wrote:
Beorn is dead; see vol. I p. 241. He appeared in The Hobbit. It was then the year Third Age 2940 (Shire-reckoning 1340). We are now in the years 3018-19 (1418-19). Though a skin-changer and no doubt a bit of a magician, Beorn was a Man.
Several years later, in a letter he wrote to Rhona Beare (Letter No. 211), Tolkien addressed the (as yet) unnamed Istari (the Ithryn Luin or “Blue Wizards”):
Question 3. I have not named the colours, because I do not know them. I doubt if they had distinctive colours. Distinction was only required in the case of the three who remained in the relatively small area of the North-west. (On the names see Q[uestion]5.) I really do not know anything clearly about the other two – since they do not concern the history of the N.W. I think they went as emissaries to distant regions, East and South, far out of Númenórean range: missionaries to ‘enemy-occupied’ lands, as it were. What success they had I do not know; but I fear that they failed, as Saruman did, though doubtless in different ways; and I suspect they were founders or beginners of secret cults and ‘magic’ traditions that outlasted the fall of Sauron.
Tolkien seemed to be reluctant to confer a magical capability upon Men that was similar in nature that of the Elves (or at least the Eldar), but he seems unfortunately to have already done so by the time he was answering questions from readers of The Lord of the Rings. Naomi Mitcheson was a friend of J.R.R. Tolkien and she was a proof-reader for The Lord of the Rings. Dr. Rhona Beare corresponded with J.R.R. Tolkien while she was a student at Exeter College.
The Numenorean swords Tolkien’s note referred to were probably the small blades that Tom Bombadil recovered for Frodo and his companion from the Barrow-wight’s hoard. Aragorn speaks of these blades’ power when he, Legolas, and Gimli search the bodies of the slain Orcs at Parth Galen:
Quickly they searched the bodies of the Orcs, gathering their swords and cloven helms and shields into a heap. ‘See!’ cried Aragorn. ‘Here we find tokens!’ He picked out from the pile of grim weapons two knives, leaf-bladed, damasked in gold and red; and searching further he found also the sheaths, black, set with small red gems. ‘No orc-tools these!’ he said. ‘They were borne by the hobbits. Doubtless the Orcs despoiled them, but feared to keep the knives, knowing them for what they are: work of Westernesse, wound about with spells for the bane of Mordor. Well, now, if they still live, our friends are weaponless. I will take these things, hoping against hope, to give them back.’
Merry’s sword, of course, was instrumental in bringing about the downfall of the Lord of the Nazgul. The passage describing Eowyn’s confrontation with the Ringwraith has been much debated and discussed, but this subsequent passage suggests that Aragorn’s description of the swords was accurate enough:
And still Meriadoc the hobbit stood there blinking through his tears and no one spoke to him, indeed none seemed to heed him. He brushed away the tears, and stooped to pick up the green shield that Éowyn had given him; and he slung it at his back. Then he looked for his sword that he had let fall; for even as he struck his blow his arm was numbed, and now he could only use his left hand. And behold! there lay his weapon, but the blade was smoking like a dry branch that has been thrust in a fire; and as he watched it, it writhed and withered and was consumed.
So passed the sword of the Barrow-downs, work of Westernesse. But glad would he have been to know its fate who wrought it slowly long ago in the North-kingdom when the Dúnedain were young, and chief among their foes was the dread realm of Angmar and its sorcerer king. No other blade, not though mightier hands had wielded it, would have dealt that foe a wound so bitter, cleaving the undead flesh, breaking the spell that knit his unseen sinews to his will.
Of course, there are passages about Aragorn himself where he appears to use magic, and it is these passages which have led people to ask if Aragorn did indeed use magic. The first such passage occurs when Aragorn realizes the extent of Frodo’s wounding at Weathertop:
He sat down on the ground, and taking the dagger-hilt laid it on his knees, and he sang over it a slow song in a strange tongue. Then setting it aside, he turned to Frodo and in a soft tone spoke words the others could not catch. From the pouch at his belt he drew out the long leaves of a plant.
Although gaming systems suggest that athelas, the Numenorean herb Aragorn gathered and used to heal people, is magical, the issue is not so clear in the story. Aragorn seems to use athelas in a rather medicinal fashion, as when he treats Frodo’s wound in the Dimrill Dale:
There was a dark and blackened bruise on Frodo’s right side and breast. Under the mail there was a shirt of soft leather, but at one point the rings had been driven through it into the flesh. Frodo’s left side also was scored and bruised where he had been hurled against the wall. While the others set the food ready. Aragorn bathed the hurts with water in which athelas was steeped. The pungent fragrance filled the dell, and all those who stooped over the steaming water felt refreshed and strengthened. Soon Frodo felt the pain leave him, and his breath grew easy: though he was stiff and sore to the touch for many days. Aragorn bound some soft pads of cloth at his side.
Ioreth the Wisewoman of Gondor chants a brief rhyme which suggests that athelas has special properties when used by a rightful King of Gondor. That might be an indication of a magical property of athelas, or it may only be an indication of the power of the descendants of Elros Tar-Minyatur. Aragorn does indeed draw Eowyn and Merry back from the clutches of the Black Breath:
‘I have, maybe, the power to heal her body, and to recall her from the dark valley. But to what she will awake: hope, or forgetfulness, or despair, I do not know. And if to despair, then she will die, unless other healing comes which I cannot bring. Alas! for her deeds have set her among the queens of great renown.’
Then Aragorn stooped and looked in her face, and it was indeed white as a lily, cold as frost, and hard as graven stone. But he bent and kissed her on the brow, and called her softly, saying:
‘Éowyn Éomund’s daughter, awake! For your enemy has passed away!’
She did not stir, but now she began again to breathe deeply, so that her breast rose and fell beneath the white linen of the sheet. Once more Aragorn bruised two leaves of athelas and cast them into steaming water; and he laved her brow with it, and her right arm lying cold and nerveless on the coverlet.
Then, whether Aragorn had indeed some forgotten power of Westernesse, or whether it was but his words of the Lady Éowyn that wrought on them, as the sweet influence of the herb stole about the chamber it seemed to those who stood by that a keen wind blew through the window, and it bore no scent, but was an air wholly fresh and clean and young, as if it had not before been breathed by any living thing and came new-made from snowy mountains high beneath a dome of stars, or from shores of silver far away washed by seas of foam.
‘Awake, Éowyn, Lady of Rohan!’ said Aragorn again, and he took her right hand in his and felt it warm with life returning. ‘Awake! The shadow is gone and all darkness is washed clean!’ Then he laid her hand in Éomer’s and stepped away. ‘Call her!’ he said, and he passed silently from the chamber.
There are a few other passages where Aragorn may use some sort of power: as when he sits on the High Seat at Amon Hen (although it could be that any magical activity there is due to the seat itself); as when he summons the Dead Men of Dunharrow (although that could simply be due to the nature of the curse imposed upon them); and perhaps as when he uses the palantir or Anduril.
Not everyone is convinced of Aragorn’s special abilities — but as I have shown above J.R.R. Tolkien did not canonically forbid such abilities. Letter No. 155 does not support any point of view because Tolkien himself abandoned this line of thought. It is impossible to show that Aragorn could not use magic — but neither do any of the passages above state explicitly that Aragorn was using magic. The scene where he heals Eowyn follows a stylistic pattern Tolkien uses throughout the book, where the narrative voice expresses ambiguity in a way to imply that what seems impossible or unlikely is real.
See also …
Who Were the Rings of Power Made for?
Can Men Use Magic in Middle-earth?
How Did Elvish Magic Work in Middle-earth?
Magic by Melkor: No Returns Accepted (Classic essay)
Moving Sale: Magic Rings and Other Trinkets Half Off (Classic essay)
What Were the Toys of Dale Like?
The Magic of the Minstrels (Classic essay)
How Rare Was Magic in Middle-earth? Should Gamers Have Lots of Magic Items?
The Belt Buckle of Truth (just for fun)
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