The Great Tolkien Reread: Farewell to Lórien

 

Illustration by Morgan Rogers, 2020

'Are these magic cloaks?' asked Pippin, looking at them with wonder.

'I do not know what you mean by that,' answered the leader of the Elves. '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. Yet they are garments, not armor; and they will not turn shaft or blade.'

As The Fellowship of the Ring winds towards its conclusion, the company prepares to leave the haven of Lothlórien and venture back into the wild on their way south. "Farewell to Lórien" is a fairly uneventful chapter, whose focus is on reiterating yet again the majesty and wonder of the realm and the Lady who protects it, and the sadness of their inevitable diminishment. An awareness of this looming loss underpins the ritual of gift-giving between Galadriel and each member of the fellowship. What on the surface is merely an expression of her hospitality and care is actually an act of giving away mementos that will keep some part of her in the world after her departure.

There isn't that much to say about this scene (beyond, that is, "isn't Gimli's courtly infatuation with Galadriel adorable?") but it does give me an excuse to talk about how The Lord of the Rings approaches magic. This is a topic that often seems to frustrate readers who come to the novel through later works of epic fantasy, or even the movies. For a novel built around the quest to keep out of the hands of the enemy a magical object of fantastical, world-ending power, it often seems weirdly vague about the nature of that power. At the same time, it is a story suffused with the otherworldly, even in places where we expect it to be thoroughly mundane.

The most concrete, familiar uses of magic in The Lord of the Rings come from Gandalf: small tricks and flourishes that are what we, and the hobbits of the Shire, and perhaps most importantly, the child readers of The Hobbit, think about when we hear the word "wizard". He adds a bit of flair to Bilbo's farewell speech, or to the river Bruinen when it floods to prevent the Black Riders' crossing (Gandalf, it turns out, is a bit of a showman). And he can offer blessings of protection, or curses of foulness, to objects and animals like Bill the pony or Barliman Butterbur's beer.

It's not until he faces off against the balrog that we get a sense of Gandalf as a magical being in the sense that modern fantasy fiction (fantasy filmmaking in particular) has accustomed us to expect. The closest The Lord of the Rings comes to characters throwing different colored balls of CGI smoke at one another is in this (reported) confrontation in "The Bridge of Khazad-Dûm":

'What it was I cannot guess, but I have never felt such a challenge. The counter-spell was terrible. It nearly broke me. For an instant the door left my control and began to open! I had to speak a word of Command. That proved too great a strain. The door burst in pieces. Something dark as a cloud was blocking out all the light inside, and I was thrown backwards down the stairs. All the wall gave way, and the roof of the chamber as well, I think.'

But of course Gandalf's actual confrontation with the Balrog looks nothing like this. There are no spells and counter-spells in that moment, but a kind of spiritual grappling. The outcome of that duel is almost surprising for how much it is rooted in the physical: in a crumbling bridge, and a coiling whip.

Another place where we might expect The Lord of the Rings to address the magical is, of course, the Ring itself. But here the novel appears to be consciously, deliberately vague. We know that the Ring is affecting Frodo—his senses are heightened, and he has prophetic dreams and can perceive things hidden to others. But as Galadriel has explained to him, his ability to wield the Ring is proportional to his strength.

'Only thrice have you set the Ring upon your finger since you knew what you possessed. Do not try! It would destroy you. Did not Gandalf tell you that the rings give power according to the measure of each possessor? Before you could use that power you would need to become far stronger, and to train your will to the domination of others.'

As for what the Ring could do in the hands of someone who did have the power to wield it, the book offers only oblique glimpses. At the council of Elrond, Boromir talks about the demoralizing effect that even a Ring-less Sauron had on Gondor's troops; Sam wishes that Galadriel could take the Ring to prevent his vision of the trees of the Shire being cut down. This approach has been known to frustrate readers, but the fact remains that when adapters try to penetrate this fog and actually put into words or images what the Ring can do, the result—as seen, for example, in Peter Jackson's movies—is often quite cheesy. The vagueness of what the Ring is and how it functions is not, it seems, a mistake, but an essential component of the story.

All of this brings us back to the banks of the Anduin and to Galadriel's gifts to the fellowship. Some of these gifts are practical: lembas bread, warm cloaks, rope. As Pippin is told, the magic in these objects might simply be that they are crafted with skill and care, by people who have had centuries to hone their craft, and no mortgage to pay. In this age of enshittification, it's hard not to see the magic in a handmade object made by a master and freely given. And yet, as the elves hint to Pippin, and as we will see in future chapters, the care that the elves put into the objects they make is sometimes transformative. When Sam, later in his journey, uses the elven rope he admires in this chapter, it holds fast when needed, and comes loose when it's useful for it to do so. So far in this book we have seen landscape that possesses intention; the magic of the elves, it seems, is to give intention also to objects.

We will see this same effect in the gifts Galadriel gives to Frodo and Sam. The glass phial she gives Frodo, and the box of earth she gives Sam, are both ways of allowing them to carry her essence with them; to either hold back darkness, or restore nature, as she could have done had she been there. But what is the essence of Galadriel? It is the essence of Valinor, of the Two Trees, and of the Valar.

In other words, magic in The Lord of the Rings is something religious. It is that little remaining bit of godliness, of the light of heaven, that has made its way to the mundane world through countless dilutions and diminutions. When Galadriel, or even Gandalf, do magic, they are placing a bit of their virtue—the virtue of being closer to the Valar—back into the world. When the Ring does magic, it is exerting the corrupting force of Morgoth, the novel's devil figure, on its bearer and everyone around him.

This is so foreign to how most fantasy fiction these days approaches magic that it often doesn't entirely register. We've become accustomed to fantasy novels with "magic systems", in which magic is codified into something mechanical and quantifiable. Even when those novels deal with religion, it's often in the terms of a magic spell. If you say the right words, gather the right ingredients, make the right sacrifice, you'll get what you're after. In The Lord of the Rings, magic is only ever another name for religion—and, as Pippin and other characters are repeatedly reminded, an inaccurate name at that. People in Middle Earth experience magic when they are able to channel the virtues of the Valar, through faithfulness, self-sacrifice, goodness, or simply through their innate nature. The result—quite intentionally, I suspect—often doesn't feel like magic at all.

Next time: On August 11th, we arrive at "The Great River" and "The Breaking of the Fellowship". Guys, I think something might be up with Boromir.

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