CHAPTER 12

MAGIC AND MIRACLE

In some Christian circles, one of the most controversial aspects of The Lord of the Rings is the presence of “magic.” For some Christians, magic and sorcery are synonymous, making not only Tolkien’s work but even C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia forbidden territory. The whole issue has been complicated by the phenomenal success of the Harry Potter books and by the legion of fantasy books and products that have seemingly saturated the market. There is no doubt that much modern fantasy is poisonous and pernicious, but it is a serious error to judge the work of Tolkien or Lewis in the light or darkness of the orc-oriented imitations and gollumized parodies that have followed in their wake.

In order to understand how “magic” is treated in The Lord of the Rings it is necessary to understand the hierarchy of creative value at the heart of Tolkien’s philosophy of myth that animates all his creative work. This hierarchy is evident in Tolkien’s famous lecture and essay “On Fairy-Stories,” in his allegorical short story “Leaf by Niggle,” and in his superb poem, “Mythopoeia.” It is also to be found throughout his letters and is implicit in his work.

At the top of the hierarchy is the Creator, the source of all that is. Below the Creator is creation—that is, the things of nature made directly by the Creator ex nihilo (out of nothing). And below creation is subcreation—that is, those things made from the preexisting things of nature by rational beings, such as men or angels, with the creative gifts bestowed upon them by the Creator. Subcreation can itself be subdivided into those things made for the sole purpose of reflecting the goodness, truth, and beauty of reality (what might be called good art) and those things made for some practical utilitarian purpose (what might be called technology). Subcreation can also be subdivided between those things subcreated virtuously and those subcreated viciously.

An example of virtuous subcreation would be the beautiful cloaks the elves of Lothlórien bestow as gifts upon the Fellowship: “[G]rey with the hue of twilight under the trees they seemed to be; and yet if they were moved, or set in another light, they were green as shadowed leaves, or brown as fallow fields by night, dusk-silver as water under the stars.”

“Are these magic cloaks?” asks Merry, beguiled by their astonishing beauty and the way their colors seemed to shimmer and change.

“I do not know what you mean by that,” the leader of the elves answers. “They are fair garments, and the web is good, for it was made in this land. They are Elvish robes certainly, if that is what you mean. Leaf and branch, water and stone: they have the hue and beauty of all these things under the twilight of Lórien that we love; for we put the thought of all that we love into all that we make.”1

The beauty of those things subcreated by the elves is so marvelous to the eyes of those who do not possess their subcreative gifts that there appears to be a magic in them. And yet, as the leader of the elves makes clear, their beauty is simply a reflection of the beauty of nature transfigured by the love with which the elves make things from it. Elves possess gifts of subcreation that are superior to those possessed by men or hobbits but the gift is nonetheless natural to them and therefore not magical.

Compare this natural gift of elves with the natural gifts of hobbits as described by Tolkien on the very opening page of the prologue to The Lord of the Rings: “They possessed from the first the art of disappearing swiftly and silently, when large folk whom they do not wish to meet come blundering by; and this art they have developed until to Men it may seem magical. But Hobbits have never, in fact, studied magic of any kind, and their elusiveness is due solely to a professional skill that heredity and practice, and a close friendship with the earth, have rendered inimitable by bigger and clumsier races.”2

Clearly the gift of disappearing swiftly and silently is as natural to the hobbits as the subcreative gifts are to the elves. A good analogy would be to compare the art of disappearing swiftly and silently with similar gifts possessed by wild animals. The superior sense of hearing, eyesight, or smell that these creatures possess would indeed appear magical if humans were to possess them—as would the power of flight possessed by birds—but they are purely natural gifts these creatures possess that “bigger and clumsier” creatures do not. Similarly, the superior subcreative gifts possessed by Michelangelo, Mozart, or indeed Tolkien appear magical to those of us who do not possess such gifts. In the same way, although elven goods are superior to those made by men, the making of them is purely natural to the elves and not in the least magical, unless we are going to use the word “magical” in a very broad and loose sense applicable to wild animals, artistic geniuses, and elves.

Compare the virtuous subcreation of the elven cloaks with the vicious motives of Saruman in the weaving of his shimmering coat of many colors. Like the elven cloaks, Saruman’s robes change hue with the change of light upon them, but the effect is not one of beauty but one that “bewildered” the eye of the beholder.3 The simplicity of goodness and virtue, present in the white robes that he had formally worn, is broken into fragments, signifying his desire to break from virtue in the pursuit of relativism that claims to possess knowledge and power beyond good and evil.

Are Saruman’s robes any more magical than the elven cloaks? Certainly, in one important and crucial sense, they are different in kind to anything subcreated by the elves. Saruman is, like Gandalf, one of the Maiar, angelic beings called Istari by the elves, which means “Wise Ones,” but who men call wizards. His power is, therefore, supernatural and, to be more precise, demonic. Can such power be called magical? And what of the power Gandalf possesses, which we are told is “beyond the strength of kings”?4 Can Gandalf’s power be called magical? Like Saruman’s, his power is supernatural, but unlike Saruman’s, it is angelic and not demonic. Strictly speaking, and to ensure the necessary precision in our definitions and distinctions, Saruman’s demonic power is also angelic because demons are fallen angels. What differentiates Gandalf’s power from Saruman’s is that Gandalf employs his supernatural gifts virtuously whereas Saruman employs his viciously. One serves the Creator and the hierarchy of creative value, the other defies the Creator, seeking to usurp the Creator’s powers for prideful purposes.

We will recall, in this context, Tolkien’s assertion that The Lord of the Rings is “an allegory . . . of Power (exerted for Domination).”5 Strictly speaking, such power is not magical but miraculous, a miracle being defined as a “marvelous event due to some supernatural agency.”6 The supernatural power of God is not magical but miraculous, as is the supernatural power of his angels and saints; the supernatural power of the Devil and his demonic host is also angelic and therefore miraculous but is used—or more correctly, abused—in defiance of the giver of the gift and to usurp the order of hierarchy. Thus the demonic power of subcreation exerted and perverted by Saruman and Sauron (another more powerful demon) defies the Creator and defiles creation.

If the power of the elves is really natural and not magical, and the power of Gandalf, Sauron, and Saruman is supernatural and not magical, where, if anywhere, is magic to be found in The Lord of the Rings? Considering Tolkien’s Catholicism and his academic grounding as a medievalist, it is not surprising that it can be found in the same sense in which it was understood and condemned by the medieval Church. Magic in Middle-earth is similar to the magic of the Middle Ages as practiced by alchemists who sought the power to turn base metal into gold in their pursuit of the philosopher’s stone or who sought immortality in their pursuit of the elixir of life. The modern word for such alchemy is scientism, which can be defined as the worship of science for its power of dominance over nature. Unlike genuine science, which is an authentic path of knowledge, scientism is “power exerted for domination.” Today, as in the Middle Ages, scientism is obsessed with discovering ways in which man can dominate, cheat, and defeat nature. The vast bulk of scientific research is funded by global corporations seeking ways of increasing their power through increased profits (the philosopher’s stone), and the burgeoning pharmaceutical industry remains obsessed with its pursuit of the secrets of aging (the elixir of life). Plus ça change plus c’est la même chose. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

In this light, Tolkien’s assertion that The Lord of the Rings is “an allegory of power (exerted for Domination)” can be seen as a reference to the magic of alchemy and scientism and their evil consequences. It is in the same light that we must also view Tolkien’s additional assertion that he did not think “even Power or Domination [were] the real center” of the story, but the “real theme [was] about something much more permanent and difficult: Death and Immortality.” On a theological level, this theme serves as a memento mori reminding us of death, judgment, heaven, and hell, accentuating the essential distinction between eternity and temporal longevity; on what might be termed the political level, it refers to the quest to defeat mortality in the manner in which the alchemists and the pharmacologists are seeking the elixir of life and the power over death that it brings.

The essential difference between magic in the sense in which it has just been defined and the powers of elves and wizards is that magic is neither natural nor supernatural but unnatural and antinatural. It is a war on nature. It defiles nature in its defiance of nature’s laws, polluting and poisoning in its pursuit of power. It is the abuse of subcreative gifts for prideful purposes, which was encapsulated by Tolkien in The Hobbit in his description of the abuse of such gifts by the goblins. We are told by the narrator that “goblins are cruel, wicked, and bad-hearted” and that they “make no beautiful things, but . . . many clever ones.”

It is not unlikely that they invented some of the machines that have since troubled the world, especially the ingenious devices for killing large numbers of people at once, for wheels and engines and explosions always delighted them, and also not working with their own hands more than they could help; but in those days and those wild parts they had not advanced (as it is called) so far.7

In essence, therefore, it can be said that the path of virtue in Middle-earth is to live in obedience and deference to the hierarchy of creative value, reflecting it by respecting its inherent order of precedence:

1. Creator (God)

2. Creation (nature)

3. Virtuous subcreation (art and technology that reflects and respects the preceding claims of the Creator and His creation)

In contrast, the path of evil is to live in rebellion, defying the hierarchy of creative value, seeking to usurp and invert the hierarchy’s rightful order for purposes of prideful domination:

1. Vicious subcreation (magic)

2. Creation (destroyed and polluted to serve the needs of magic)

3. Creator (defied, hated, and His power replaced by that of magic)

Once this relationship between magic and power is understood, it can be seen that there is an inextricable and unhealthy connection between magic and politics. It is not surprising, therefore, that many have sought to see The Lord of the Rings as a political allegory. Considering that the book was being written during World War II and the Cold War that followed in its wake, it has been suggested that Mordor represents communism, Isengard represents Nazism, Gondor represents the Allied powers, and the Shire represents an idealized vision of England. Tolkien was clearly uncomfortable with such analogizing of his story with contemporary politics, insisting that it works on the deeper level of theology.

Nonetheless, he does concede the legitimacy of seeing points of applicability in his story that relate to the world beyond the story. This being so, it must be said that the Eye of Sauron suggests parallels with the efforts of the totalitarian regimes to usurp the divine attributes of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence. In the age of secular fundamentalist tyranny in which The Lord of the Rings was written, the leader, the Führer, was taking on godlike power, served by the all-seeing eye of the Party and its Secret Police, and striking terror into the hearts of those living in its shadow. It is perhaps no surprise that Tolkien was writing his masterpiece at the same time that George Orwell was writing Nineteen Eighty-Four and there are uncanny and creepy parallels between the evil eye of Big Brother and that of Tolkien’s Dark Lord.

With the specter of World War II and its atrocities looming large as a backdrop to Tolkien’s imagination, it is tempting to see the red eye painted on the shields of the orcs of Mordor as signifying the red flag of the communists and the white hand daubed on the shields of the Uruk-hai—Saruman’s specially bred master race of storm troopers—as signifying the open-handed salute of the Nazis, as distinct from the clenched- or closed-fisted salute of the communists. An additional ominous touch of applicability is provided allusively by the fact that the hand is white—a signifier, perhaps, of the racist creed of the Nazis.

After the Ents, the very epitome of nature and tradition personified, rise up against the antinatural and “progressive” magic of Saruman, leaving his “Reich” in ruins, Gandalf and his company arrive to survey the aftermath of Isengard’s defeat. Riding past the great pillar of the hand, the men of Rohan gaze upon the white hand, the symbol of Saruman’s reign: “[T]he Hand appeared no longer white. It was stained as if with dried blood; and looking closer they perceived that its nails were red.”8 The staining of the hand was presumably caused by the receding flood waters, the aftermath of the Ents unleashing the cleansing force of nature to purge Isengard of the pollution caused by Saruman’s technological magic, but whatever its natural cause, the symbolism of the bloodstained hand speaks for itself.

It would be little short of a sin of omission to conclude this discussion of the connection between magic and politics in The Lord of the Rings without paying due attention to the palantiri.

The palantiri, or seeing stones, were made by the subcreative arts of the High Elves of old and were, therefore, the product of virtuous subcreation, but as Gandalf tells Pippin, “there is nothing that Sauron cannot turn to evil uses.”9 Within The Lord of the Rings, the palantir stones are used by Sauron, whose will controls them, to seduce and ultimately dominate the mind of Saruman, and to drive Denethor, the Steward of Minas Tirith, to despair and ultimately suicide. It is not that the news that Saruman and Denethor receive is completely false but that it is all one-sided. Those gazing into the stones see only the part of the truth Sauron’s will permits them to see. In modern parlance, Sauron is feeding his enemies propaganda so that they either are seduced to his side, as is the case with Saruman, or are driven to the defeatism of despair, believing the enemy is unstoppable and destined to triumph and, in consequence, that resistance is futile, as is the case with Denethor.

As a brief tangential aside, it is intriguing that Denethor is paired thematically with Théoden, both of whom are tempted to despair through the malicious power of misinformation. Whereas the former refuses to listen to the wisdom of the wizard, preferring to believe the propaganda he receives from the palantir, the latter receives the wizard’s wisdom and exorcises the evil Wormtongue from his presence. In consequence, Denethor succumbs to suicidal despair while Théoden recovers his senses through the revival of hope.

The thematic connection is accentuated by the linguistic connection, Denethor and Théoden being near anagrams and what might be called anaphons—that is, phonetic “anagrams” in which the sounds of the individual syllables are rearranged. One is tempted, upon pondering this linguistic link, to wonder whether Denethor connects to paganism via Thor, the Norse god of Thunder, whereas Théoden connects to true religion via Theos, the Greek word for God, the root of words such as theology. Certainly the words of Gandalf, in rebuking Denethor for his plans to commit suicide, suggest that Tolkien had paganism in mind in his characterization of Denethor: “Authority is not given to you, Steward of Gondor, to order the hour of your death. And only the heathen kings, under the dominion of the Dark Power, did thus, slaying themselves in pride and despair, murdering their kin to ease their own death.”10 Perhaps, therefore, at the deepest level, the thematic pairing of Denethor and Théoden parallels pagan despair and Christian hope, the former engendering nihilistic defeatism and the latter inspiring the true heroism that makes victory possible.

Considering the ways the palantiri are used by the powers of evil to disseminate pernicious propaganda, it is intriguing that Tolkien, through the words of Gandalf, makes a point of translating the literal meaning of the word palantir. Gandalf informs Pippin and therefore the reader that the word means “that which looks far away.”11 More specifically, palantir has its etymological roots in the Elvish language of Quenya and consists of two elements: palan, which means “far and wide,” and tir, which means “watch.” This being so, palantir is often translated as simply “far-seer.” Here we see Tolkien linguistically at his most playful because “far-see” in German is Fernsehen, the German word for television, and indeed the word television itself also means “far-see” or “far-seer.” Tele is Greek for “far” and video is Latin for “see.”

Television was very much an ascendant technology at the time Tolkien was writing The Lord of the Rings, and he was clearly unsettled by the power that this new magic possessed to spread propaganda. In 1944, in the midst of the writing of his epic, Tolkien wrote a letter to his son lamenting the lies being disseminated by the BBC and the Ministry of Information,12 the latter of which would inspire Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, the propaganda ministry in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Today, more than seventy years after Tolkien had satirized the dark magic of television, there is a deeply ironic and wistfully whimsical lesson to be learned from Denethor’s experience as a television addict. Put bluntly and abruptly, if we watch too much television, with its daily dose of the Dark Lord’s propaganda, we will be driven to despair, possibly to the point of suicide.

Let’s conclude our ruminations on the way magic (vicious subcreation) is used to usurp power for the purposes of domination by reminding ourselves of where all true power ultimately resides.

At one of the darkest moments in the story, Frodo and Sam arrive at the Cross-Roads en route to Mordor. By the light of the setting sun, they see the statue of an ancient king, “a huge sitting figure, still and solemn as the great stone kings of Argonath.” To their horror, they see that the violent and vandalizing hands of orcs had maimed it and defaced it, defiling it with foul graffiti, “idle scrawls mixed with the foul symbols that the maggot-folk of Mordor used.” The ancient statue had been decapitated, “and in its place was set in mockery a round rough-hewn stone, rudely painted by savage hands in the likeness of a grinning face with one large red eye in the midst of its forehead.”13

The symbolism of this scene is both potent and palpable. The statue, sculpted lovingly by an ancient artist into the likeness of the king in an act of virtuous subcreation, reflects the true hierarchy of creative value. The ancient and venerable artist, like the great Michelangelo, takes a part of God’s creation (the stone or marble) and raises it with a subcreative labor of love in homage to the Creator himself, of whom the king being sculpted is an authentically ordained servant. In short, the statue is a living and edifying symbol of civilization, much as Michelangelo’s Pietà in Saint Peter’s in Rome is a symbol of civilization.

If the statue is a true reflection of the hierarchy of creative value, which is the hallmark of civilization, then its defilement by the forces of darkness is a reflection of the inversion of the hierarchy, the mark of the Beast and its heathen slaves. The decapitation of the king and its replacement by an ugly and leering roughhewn stone, daubed with paint and crowned with the symbol of Sauron, signifies the triumph of the Usurper over the Creator, the turning of the order of the cosmos on its head.

And yet, in the midst of this apparent triumph of darkness over light, the light itself dispels the darkness:

Suddenly, caught by the level beams [of the setting sun], Frodo saw the old king’s head: it was lying rolled away by the roadside. “Look, Sam!” he cried, startled into speech. “Look! The king has got a crown again!”

The eyes were hollow and the carven beard was broken, but about the high stern forehead there was a coronal of silver and gold. A trailing plant with flowers like small white stars had bound itself across the brows as if in reverence for the fallen king, and in the crevices of his stony hair yellow stonecrop gleamed.

“They cannot conquer forever!” said Frodo. And then suddenly the brief glimpse was gone. The Sun dipped and vanished, and as if at the shuttering of a lamp, black night fell.14

In these few lines, as if by a miracle of grace, the hobbits have been shown a microcosmic glimpse of the order of the cosmos. As on several other occasions in both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, the light of the sun (significantly capitalized in the book) is the finger of Providence—that is, the presence of the Creator himself. By his light, the power of darkness is removed so that the hobbits can be encouraged by a vision of the restoration of the true hierarchy. Thus the Creator reveals his creation, in the form of the stonecrop and the trailing plant, crowning the king and the work of art with silver and gold flowers, restoring the glory of civilization with the promise of resurrection. It is God blessing art; it is creation crowning subcreation; it is life crowning the good, the true, and the beautiful.

Although the “brief glimpse” soon vanishes, it was, as Frodo clearly understands, the “sudden and miraculous grace” of which Tolkien writes in his essay “On Fairy-Stories,” a joyous epiphany that “denies . . . universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world.”15 It shows, as Sam would sing in another dark moment soon afterward, that “above all shadows rides the Sun,”16 which is why we can be sure, as Frodo proclaims, that the powers of darkness cannot conquer forever.