Q: Is Huan One of the Maiar?
ANSWER: The short answer is “No” — Huan is NOT one of the Maiar. However, many people have been persuaded to believe must be one of the Maiar through a number of false logic arguments. False logic operates in a mode of convenience which finds ways to disregard inconvenient facts and logical fallacies. An example of false logic, in terms of Tolkien’s stories, is the so-called “Uzi Rule”, which states that all the Orcs in The Lord of the Rings must have carried Uzi sub-machine guns because J.R.R. Tolkien never said that they did not carry such weapons. This is a logical fallacy because it uses an absence of denial as proof, disregarding the fact that there is no support for the proposition in any of the texts.
Some of the most popular Tolkien fandom myths are based on arguments supported only by an absence of denial rather than any actual facts. Rather than address the specific false logic arguments used to persuade people that Huan was one of the Maiar, let’s look at the actual Tolkien texts concerning Huan that have been published to date. Let’s begin with one of the experimental essays published in Morgoth’s Ring, where JJRT writes while contemplating the nature of Orcs and their origins:
(4). What of talking beasts and birds with reasoning and speech? These have been rather lightly adopted from less ‘serious’ mythologies, but play a part which cannot now be excised. They are certainly ‘exceptions’ and not much used, but sufficiently to show they are a recognized feature of the world. All other creatures accept them as natural if not common.
But true ‘rational’ creatures, ‘speaking peoples’, are all of human / ‘humanoid’ form. Only the Valar and Maiar are intelligences that can assume forms of Arda at will. Huan and Sorontar could be Maiar – emissaries of Manwë. But unfortunately in The Lord of the Rings Gwaehir and Landroval are said to be descendants of Sorontar.
One of the problems with this essay is that it does not reach any definitive conclusion. It is neither canonical nor Biblical (in the sense that Tolkien had an established “bible” he was using to develop his Middle-earth mythologies). The essay on “Orcs” fails to achieve a satisfactory explanation of the nature of Orcs and speaking creatures; hence, it cannot support a logical argument as it is neither factual nor axiomatic within the context of Tolkien’s Middle-earth. The particular section cited above bears this out as it continues thus:
In any case is it likely or possible that even the least of the Maiar would become Orcs? Yes: both outside Arda and in it, before the fall of Utumno. Melkor had corrupted many spirits – some great, as Sauron, or less so, as Balrogs. The least could have been primitive (and much more powerful and perilous) Orcs; but by practising when embodied procreation they would (cf. Melian) [become] more and more earthbound, unable to return to spirit-state (even demon-form), until released by death (killing), and they would dwindle in force. When released they would, of course, like Sauron, be ‘damned’: i.e. reduced to impotence, infinitely recessive: still hating but unable more and more to make it effective physically (or would not a very dwindled dead Orc-state be a poltergeist?).
But again – would Eru provide fëar for such creatures? For the Eagles etc. perhaps. But not for Orcs.
This essay in fact discards the notion that Huan and the Eagles might have been Maiar, as near the end Tolkien writes:
In summary: I think it must be assumed that ‘talking’ is not necessarily the sign of the possession of a ‘rational soul’ or fëa….The same sort of thing may be said of Húan and the Eagles: they were taught language by the Valar, and raised to a higher level – but they still had no fëar.
At most, if we are to argue that this essay as establishing an axiomatic position on talking creatures, then we must accept that it removes Huan from the ranks of the Maiar.
There seems to be a tendency among some of Tolkien’s readers to associate speech and sentience with possession of fëar (“spirits” or “souls” created by Ilúvatar). This assumption is not supported by any published text.
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