Q: Was the Seat On Amon Hen Inherently Magical?
ANSWER: I don’t mind saying there are still several older, much longer, more detailed questions from early 2018 sitting in the queue. But I wanted to work with a short question for this article. I chose this zinger, submitted in May 2018:
Was the seat of seeing on Amon Hen inherently magical or was it just the ring that gave Frodo his visions? The seat could have been built in the time of Isengard with the “power” available at the time.
Why is this question a “zinger”? Well, it reminds me of one of the Great Debates from the 1990s (in fact, I feel a bit like Miracle Max from “The Princess Bride”, when Inigo inadvertently reminds him that Prince Humperdick had fired him after he had so loyally supported Humperdinck’s father – but I digress).
Now, if I recall correctly, about 20 years ago someone asked almost this very question, sparking a massive discussion about whether men could use magic in Middle-earth. The short answer to THAT question is, “Yes, men can use magic in Middle-earth”. Not everyone accepts that even though J.R.R. Tolkien himself wrote about men making magical things and doing magical things (including Aragorn). But because of one rejected fragment of an addendum of a letter (no. 155) in which Tolkien wrote at some length about why men couldn’t use magic (he wrote in the margin that Númenóreans “used spells” in making swords), some people insist that men cannot use magic in Middle-earth.
Why is that important to the question about whether the seat on Amon Hen was magical? Well, it is. I can’t say why other than that it came up before so I felt compelled to address it now. Technically Tolkien doesn’t say explicitly who built the seat on Amon Hen.
If you scour The Treason of Isengard for hints about the nature of Amon Hen, you’ll find fragments of older versions of the story where the narrative says:
At first he could see little: he seemed to be in a world of mist in which there were only shadows. The Ring was on him. [Then the virtue (written above: power) of Amon Hen worked upon him] Then here and there the mists gave way and he saw many things: small and clear as if they were beneath him on a table and yet remote: the world seemed to have shrunk…
But I’ll spare you (and me) the tedious citations. Christopher Tolkien’s commentary on the passage suggests that his father may have changed his mind about whose or which power was at work. Trotter (the Hobbit ranger who preceded Aragorn in the story) was to be prevented from experiencing a vision similar to Frodo’s by activity on the hill. But when Tolkien changed the character to Aragorn the man he rewrote the passage and made both the source of the vision(s) and the possibility of Aragorn seeing something similar somewhat ambiguous.
I believe, and I think a number of people agree with me, that Christopher correctly deduces that his father implied (in the final published text) that Frodo’s vision was the result of both the hill’s power and the Ring’s power.
But if that is the case, where did the hill’s “power” (or “virtue”) come from?
Aragorn reminded Boromir that the High Seat was made “in the days of the Great Kings”. Who were these guys? Elves? Númenóreans? Elendil and the High Kings of Arnor? The Kings of Anarion’s line in Gondor?
It’s conceivable that Tolkien imagined the Valar bestowing some special virtue point Amon Lhaw and Amon Hen in the days when they were monitoring Melkor’s realm. But that thought is pure speculation.
The Númenóreans could have created some sort of magical place there. How or when are open to speculation. There is nothing to interpret. But the Elves could equally have established the High Seat(s?). They would have had as much reason to do that as Elendil and his people. Maybe the “Great Kings” were Elendil and Gil-galad, whose joint forced marched south through the Vales of Anduin on their way to Mordor.
As far as I am concerned the seat was magical in some way. Why else would Aragorn want to sit in it? In the published story he briefly sits there and looks around but “the sun seemed darkened, and the world dim and remote”. That perception only occurs when Aragorn is ON the High Seat. In other words, something other-than-normal is happening. Both Sauron and Saruman have bent their wills toward the region. Sauron had nearly discovered Frodo when he was on the High Seat; only Gandalf’s intervention (from afar) had prevented that. So it’s conceivable that Gandalf and perhaps even Galadriel was concentrating on the region.
With four powerful wills trying to perceive or block perception in the area, I’m not surprised the narrative says that Aragorn couldn’t see anything. I think it’s clear that “magic” was at work as Aragorn tried to look out. But then, as Tolkien intended in his notes, Aragorn’s visit was cut short by the sounds of battle below. He might, as Elendil’s rightful heir, have been able to wrest control of the High Seat from all the wills acting upon it (assuming it could be commanded like a Palantír – but there is no textual basis for such an assumption).
Amon Hen and Amon Lhaw were clearly special by designation and use, and I think the narrative provides enough information to show that some sort of power or virtue or magic was activated by the act of someone sitting there. Since Frodo was wearing the One Ring he had greatly enhanced capability. We have no way of knowing if Tolkien intended the virtue to work only for beings with the authority or the power to activate it, or if it was simply active all the time.
To reconstruct the arguments put forth 20 years ago, or to write a thoroughly detailed analysis of the texts and textual history now, would take far more time than I can devote to this question. I am highly skeptical of the idea that anyone could prove the seat or hill was not somehow enchanted, though I use the word “enchanted” loosely. After all, any discussion of “magic” in Middle-earth quickly devolves into lengthy semantic debates about what Tolkien meant by “magic” (and inevitably leads to someone citing that abandoned, rejected letter fragment).
I hope this answer suffices. And to those of you still waiting for answers to those very lengthy questions, I will do my best to catch up with them this year. Sorry for the long delay.
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Have you read our other Tolkien and Middle-earth Questions and Answers articles?
The proximity to the Argonath implies, imo, that they were built by Gondor. Great Kings can’t mean anything other than Elendil and his sons, there was no Elves in the region in the last millennia. As for magic, they may just be fine places of observation, the power of the ring did the rest.
”There was no sound, only bright living images. The world seemed to have shrunk and fallen silent. He was sitting upon the Seat of Seeing, on Amon Hen, the Hill of the Eye of the Men of Númenor. Eastward he looked into wide uncharted lands, nameless plains, and forests unexplored.”
Clearly, one of Númenoreans Works.
Interesting Article Michael! I had not thought about the Seat of Seeing in a long time. In Fellowship of the Ring pp 416 it says “He(Frodo) was sitting upon the Seat of Seeing on Amon Hen, the Hill of the Eye of the Men of Numenor.” Seems to be saying this was a special place, and it was built by the Men of the Numenor. By the Kings of Gondor in their glory? Or before? I also believe the Seat was magical. Also that since Frodo was wearing the Ring, the Seat’s power was enhanced or magnified. After all, wearing the Ring did not normally give one visions of things going on in faraway lands and places. How the Seat was made seems to be lost in the mists of history. The Numenorians also built the Orthanic-a Tower with some magical properties, or at least by a craft that was now unknown. Finally there are the magic blades from the Borrow, ‘wound about with Spells” that the Hobbits were given that were also made by the Men of Numenor. Numenorians could have learned some the arts of magic from the Elves or even from some of the Maiar after the War of Wrath.
The time when the Seat of Seeing could have been build is most likely around the time when the line of Andun was fortified. There were many forts along Anduin that later on were abandoned, there was some traffic on the river and Aragorn mentioned that: “It cannot yet have perished; for light boats used to journey out of Wilderland down to Osgiliath, …”. King Rómendacil II fortified this area and had Argonath build so why not those seats? It’s curious to note that Amon Hen is the Hill of the Eye while Amon Lhaw is Hill of the Hearing, does that imply analogical structure, but for hearing sounds from long distances.
“On his return Rómendacil fortified the west shore of Anduin as far as the inflow of the Limlight, and forbade any stranger to pass down the River beyond the Emyn Muil. He it was that built the pillars of the Argonath at the entrance to Nen Hithoel.”
The Return of the King, LoTR Appendix A, Annals of the Kings and Rulers: Gondor and the Heirs of Anárion
Of course it doesn’t explicitly say that those structures were made in that time, they might be earlier for all we know, but clearly the power is associated with the seat itself which is work of people’s hands so it’s not really about natural properties or powers of that place (or at least not solely). I liked to speculate myself that maybe those seats were experiments of duplicating properties of the palantiri (with a Amon Lhaw structure actually succeeding to do something like that for the sound, as palantiri do not transmit those).
As for a reason why Aragorn did not see as far (aside from lacking boosting effect of the Ring) it may be that what prevented the seat from working properly was the lingering will and attention of Sauron on the area, the ‘shadow’ of his dark power quelling all other powers. After all Sauron is capable of quite literary covering places with veils of magical shadow (like Dol Guldur and Barad-dur), he knew the shrouding technique to prevent from palantiri scrying apparently and as Elrond mentioned: ““Then I cannot help you much, not even with counsel,” said Elrond. “I can forsee very little of your road; and how your task is to be achieved I do not know. The Shadow has crept now to the feet of the Mountains, and draws nigh even to the borders of the Greyflood; and under the Shadow all is dark to me.”
It may well be that Sauron’s power prevents from such far seeing efforts of others :).