How Did Elvish Magic Work in Middle-earth?

Q: How Did Elvish Magic Work in Middle-earth?

ANSWER: The second literary convention I ever attended was World Fantasy Con ’92. Tom Dietz had suggested I go there to meet editors, agents, and authors in the science fiction and fantasy field. The event (limited to 750 memberships) was a fantasy genre Who’s Who gathering. Just about everyone who was anyone was there. That was where I met Andre Norton for the first time. I spoke with Robert Jordan, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Tom Doherty, Jack Chalker, and many others. My friends and I came upon a woman walking along a dark road as we were heading back to our “chateaux” bungalow. We offered her a ride and she turned out to be Patricia A. McKillip. I got to see Janny Wurts don a horned “Viking” helm (okay, Viking helmets didn’t have horns — but that’s the motif).

There are so many memories that came out of that convention I cannot remember them all (so I guess they’re not really memories, are they?). One of my most vivid memories is of something I heard, rather than what I saw. That is, I attended a panel by some then rather well-known fantasy authors (whose names and faces, ironically, I can no longer remember). The panel had something to do with magic. The panelists were all of one mind that magic in a fantasy story must work logically — that it must impose some sort of cost upon the magic user or else it simply becomes a perpetual motion machine. My vivid memory is of the universal condemnation these authors expressed for how magic works in Tolkien’s stories, because his characters don’t have to “pay” for the magic. That is, there is no cost of using magic in Middle-earth.

And they were wrong to say that, for there ARE very specific costs associated with the use of magic in Middle-earth — at least, that was how Tolkien saw it. “Costs” may not be the right word, however. Tolkien didn’t really think about magic mechanically. Rather, it was more like a biological process to him — biological in the sense that an Elvish body was only capable of enduring so much stress and strain, some of which might be related to the use or expression of magic.

Because Tolkien’s stories are not focused on how magic works, but rather on the consequences of (mis)using magic, he doesn’t dwell on what modern authors might call the “mechanics” of magic. Hence, it requires some research to see that Tolkien did impose limits on his magic — and that there were indeed costs associated with its use.

The greatest example, in my opinion, would be the One Ring itself. While Sauron was not an Elf, but rather a being who came of a more gifted and powerful “race”, Sauron’s own innate abilities were relatively small compared to those of Melkor — and yet Sauron was able to enhance his own power by externalizing a large portion of it in the One Ring. Tolkien wrote about this in Letter No. 211 (composed in October 1958 in response to questions posed by Rhona Beare):

The Ring of Sauron is only one of the various mythical treatments of the placing of one’s life, or power, in some external object, which is thus exposed to capture or destruction with disastrous results to oneself. If I were to ‘philosophize’ this myth, or at least the Ring of Sauron, I should say it was a mythical way of representing the truth that potency (or perhaps rather potentiality) if it is to be exercised, and produce results, has to be externalized and so as it were passes, to a greater or less degree, out of one’s direct control. A man who wishes to exert ‘power’ must have subjects, who are not himself. But he then depends on them.

Tolkien wrote about this in a little more detail in 1950 in Letter No. 131, which he composed for Collins publisher Milton Waldman:

But to achieve this he had been obliged to let a great part of his own inherent power (a frequent and very significant motive in myth and fairy-story) pass into the One Ring. While he wore it, his power on earth was actually enhanced. But even if he did not wear it, that power existed and was in ‘rapport’ with himself: he was not ‘diminished’. Unless some other seized it and became possessed of it. If that happened, the new possessor could (if sufficiently strong and heroic by nature) challenge Sauron, become master of all that he had learned or done since the making of the One Ring, and so overthrow him and usurp his place. This was the essential weakness he had introduced into his situation in his effort (largely unsuccessful) to enslave the Elves, and in his desire to establish a control over the minds and wills of his servants. There was another weakness: if the One Ring was actually unmade, annihilated, then its power would be dissolved, Sauron’s own being would be diminished to vanishing point, and he would be reduced to a shadow, a mere memory of malicious will. But that he never contemplated nor feared. The Ring was unbreakable by any smithcraft less than his own. It was indissoluble in any fire, save the undying subterranean fire where it was made – and that was unapproachable, in Mordor. Also so great was the Ring’s power of lust, that anyone who used it became mastered by it; it was beyond the strength of any will (even his own) to injure it, cast it away, or neglect it. So he thought. It was in any case on his finger.

Power has limits in Middle-earth and those limits are sometimes exceeded. For example, when Gandalf first understood he was confronting a Balrog he commented, “And I am weary already!” The ensuing struggle with the Balrog ultimately cost Gandalf his life and only divine intervention restored him to Middle-earth. Gandalf is, of course, the only character in The Lord of the Rings who returns from death — and he does so not by his own intervention or by that of some other character in the story but rather through the intervention of the absolute highest power.

Death is closely associated with much of the “magic” in Lord of the Rings. One of the prime objectives of the Elven-smiths who made the Rings of Power, for example, was to give them the ability to render seen the unseen and vice versa. That is, they wished to commune with the spirits of dead Elves that were still haunting Middle-earth. The great rings, among the most powerful artifacts ever created by Elvish design, were nonetheless limited in their abilities and then further limited by the creation of the One Ring. Even so, the rings were able to “hold back” the effects of Time in Middle-earth, and the consequence of the Rings’ failure after the destruction of the One Ring was that the Elves who had most depended on the Rings of Power (especially Elrond and Galadriel) were forced to leave Middle-earth because the years were catching up with them.

Míriel Serindë, mother of Fëanor, died soon after giving birth to him because he had drained so much of her spirit. In explaining this event Tolkien wrote (in “Laws and Customs Among the Eldar”) that part of the parent passed into the child. One might infer that all Elvish power or strength was limited by whatever was established in the original Elves. In fact, this view agrees with a comment Aragorn makes in Minas Tirith, when he says: ‘Would that Elrond were here, for he is the eldest of all our race, and has the greater power.’

Another point Tolkien made was that — among the Eldar — the greatest healers refrained from going to war because the taking of life interfered with the healing process. This is one reason, perhaps, why Elrond no longer went to war. It was only with his aid that Frodo was able to overcome the power of the Morgul-blade that had pierced his shoulder.

In the construction of their artifacts, or the making of things, the Elves (and Dwarves) occasionally made exceptionally powerful things the like of which they would never again be able to make. When the Valar asked Fëanor to break the Silmarils so that the Two Trees of Valinor could be restored he refused because he knew he would never be able to make anything like the Silmarils again. The Valar themselves were constrained by limits on their own power; Yavanna was incapable of bringing anything like the Two Trees to life at this point in Time by herself. She needed what remained of the Trees’ light in the Silmarils to restore them.

Of course, most of these details are not evident in The Lord of the Rings. One must read all the Tolkien books to see that J.R.R. Tolkien did indeed invest considerable thought in the limits of power and its costs. It may be a worthy question to ask if he should have explained more in the stories, or if the stories in themselves were sufficient. On the one hand, fuller explanations would have diminished the chance of well-known fantasy authors scoffing at Tolkien’s use of magic; on the other hand, the reader really does not need to know how the magic works in order for the story to move forward.

Tolkien excised many minor points of explanation from the story and I think most people who have read The History of Middle-earth agree that The Lord of the Rings is largely better off for those editorial decisions (although we all have a few prized items we wish would have been included — such as the Epilogue that Tolkien cut late in the process). Criticism of the story is a different process from the reading and enjoying of it. But if the criticism is not well-informed by the story itself then the critics must plead that it is the author’s fault for not explaining things better.

We are, of course, left to ponder these points endlessly not only by Tolkien’s omissions but by the omissions of a thousand other great authors. In Tolkien’s case, at least, we can see that there was more to it than just “Gandalf uttered a spell and something happened.” And that is a valuable lesson any fantasy author should appreciate despite its own limitations.

See also:

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