Refuting or Accepting Magic

[EllethValatari]

*This is a continuation about a more specific subject relating to my post, Gandalf: Truly a Wizard?

In LOTR, the ring is referred to as magical. However, in the Simarillion, we find out that the magic was at least brought about by a providencial god, Eru Iluvatar. My teacher (the one mentioned in the previous post)thinks that this is a magic like that in Harry Potter. I have nothing against this type of "magic", but I have always loved LOTR because it is the only fictional book (series) besides the Chronicles of Narnia that includes a perfect, providencial God. My teacher is just an example. However, if it really isn't magic, but the power given to certain people by Eru, why does Tolkien use the term, magic?

*This might be a stupid question and i might be taking a fictional book too seriously, sorry if I am.

[The Dread Pirate Roberts]

It's a matter of perspective, I think. To Men and Hobbits, the rings are magic, and so the term is used in speech with them. I don't think you'll find an Elf referring to the rings of power as magic, not unless he/she is talking with a Hobbit or a Man. Gandalf wouldn't have referred to the One Ring as magic when talking with Elrond, I don't think.

But even if he would, I'm not as sure that "magic" is as derogatory as you think it is. Isn't magic simply unexplained technology? I don't know. Perhaps we need to discuss just what magic is.

[Noble Elf Lord]

Just to give an example, in the Elder Scrolls games magic is called raw energy, which can be controlled with words and actions. It's an "arcane" power, part of the universe as much as the winds or gravity.

In Arda, I wouldn't call magic technology. Even though it's a pretty secretive art, it's pretty much about words and movements. Remember Gandalf and mellon? I doubt you could craft the gates so that their structure or something would recognize this one word. Also, Gandalf's powers with fire can be (can be - not necessarily) explained with the fact that he's a maia, a spirit who either is fire or was born from it. The Fire or just fire, I do not know. Or if you really want to think it as technology (killjoys :p) then, while bound in flesh, the maiar and other magical creatures's spirits formed their flesh and bones so that they could control the energy from their spirits, thus turning it into spells.

...Just thinking. :D

[inked]

It has been famously said that any sufficiently advanced technology would appear as magic to those less advanced. A thoroughly materialistic assumption that all events have material causes which can be traced and explained by "science". Which really begs the question because science describes the events and how they happen but fails completely to get at the meaning of the events.

No doubt one can read the rings as technology on one level, but to solely read them that way is to miss Tolkien's point about their origins and artificers and users. The latter is more important than whatever technology produced them as we understand technology.

Magic in the Tolkienian sense is much more the conceptualization of appropriate participation in natural forces by appropriate degree of the participant and in proper alignment with Eru and the intention of the Creation of Middle Earth et alia. Note that the level of attainment and participation can be thwarted in degree equivalent to the participant in an evil direction: from the artificer of the one ring through Saruman and down to the ruinous hobbits of the Shire who seek personal aggrandizement by manipulation of the forces available to them, the personages of whatever order who seek to misuse magic in any way ultimately become shadows and nothingness and dead.

Those points about the misuse of the gifts of the various orders are far more important than the various technologies of magic available to them, wouldn't you say?

[The Dread Pirate Roberts]

n Arda, I wouldn't call magic technology. Even though it's a pretty secretive art, it's pretty much about words and movements.
I think some of it is about words and movements but a lot of it is also about craftsmanship and artifacts. Strictly speaking, that's technology, even though it isn't exactly the way most people use the term in today's world.