this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024
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Am I wrong or do the wizards not remember their lives before they were sent to middle earth?
I don't think the original books ever told anything about it.
Iirc the books themselves didn't say, but Tolkien's letters say something to the effect of the Istari only having vague memories of their time as Maia, with the exception of things that they were explicitly meant to remember, e.g. Olórin's memories of being sent back after his physical death while fighting Durin's Bane.
They know that they are, in our parlance, embodied angels or minor gods, but they don't remember a ton of where they came from
Do the balrogs have the same memory issues?
That's a very good question, and one that I don't know the answer to. I would guess no, as the point of the Istari losing their memories was to make them more like the people they were sent to save; it's not something about being embodied that made them lose their bodyless memories, it was part of their mission. The balrogs had no such mission
Isn't it though? I get that Tolkien may have specified that the Istari not having their memories aided in them being more like the people they were sent to save, but...
Perhaps it is a property of being a body that you can not have the properties that the spirits do. A body is a finite.
IIRC having watched a lot of Nerd of the Rings and whatnot, a lot of the depictions of Balrogs have them as sort of fiery angels instead of the gory beasts we have in the Peter Jackson movies. Now if Balrogs are a sort of angelic but demonic things, then I'd go with your assumption, but if they were the Peter Jackson beast-like, then I think mine could work. In the sense that if being embodied means you just can't retain all the knowledge you have in the spirit realm and the body affects your spirit as well, then having that sort of raging demonic beasts would make sense as even if they were higher beings while disembodied, while being embodied they'd just feel the rage and fury of the body and wouldn't recall anything about being a Maia before eventually being disembodied again.
That was probably very incoherent. It was influenced by the thoughts I had when I used to do a lot of nitrous.
I haven't read anything in the legendarium that supports your theory that the hröa (body in quenya) restricts the fëa (soul).
All beings in Arda initially had hröar, but hröar are susceptible to harm regardless of the status of the fëa within (see Morgoth's wounds, and Sauron and Saruman's deaths) that could cause the fëa to become unbodied. In the case of the fëa becoming unbodied, the fëa would have to be powerful enough to exist on its own, create a new body (Sauron after the fall of Númenor), be otherwise tied to the world (Sauron after the war of the last alliance with the one ring), or dissipate into nothing (Sauron after the destruction of the one ring and Saruman after his death by Grima's)
I wouldn't say "restricts", as much as "limits". I do have a difference in mind for what I mean by that, but I understand just using cursive probably isn't enough to communicate it.
May I ask what texts are you referring to that actually touch on this? I'm not implying disagreement or that I've read them, I definitely haven't, my depth basically goes to the depth of 'I read most of Silmarillion as a teenager'. I'm curious because I might be inclined to read them if I see them.
Tell me if I'm wrong, and I probably am, but isn't this because Sauron poured so much of his essence (fëa I suppose) into the ring that after it was destroyed, he lost so much of his power as to not be able to exist anymore and thus dissipated into nothing? So before he did that, if his body was destroyed, he was able to hang on, but after the Ring was destroyed, he wasn't powerful enough and thus "truly" died.
But yeah I don't see anything contradicting my thoughts in that paragraph of yours. I'm just saying that for the while that any Maia inhabits a body, they're less powerful than they are when disembodied, although I don't know if then we also have to consider where that power can be applied to, as in the Seen and the Unseen.
I think I understand what you mean. A physical body does obey laws of physics and thus restricts the "true freedom" of a whisp or spirit. However, a hröa can also focus and direct the energies innate to a fëa, which could make the being more powerful. In Fëanor's case, his fëa was the brightest and strongest of all the elves, and when he died, his hröa actually disintegrated due to the power of his fëa leaving, so one could argue (without much evidence) that his spirit was stronger than a physical body could truly handle (but this falls apart when looking at Morgoth or the other Vala's bodies that don't burn up).
There's not a lot of text specifically surrounding the fëa and hröa, but some of it can be gleaned from the silmarillion, or unfinished tales. Tolkien liked his mysticism a lot more in the earlier drafts of the legendarium, so unfinished tales will probably suit you more (although some of those drafts aren't considered "canon" in light of the silmarillion's later publishing and research, but that's another matter entirely).
You're exactly right with Sauron. He was originally able to shape shift into anything (fun fact: his first appearance was Tevildo Lord of cats, then altered to Thû the necromancer who could turn into a werewolf, then finally Sauron), but after the fall of Númenor, he lost that ability and was left with his body looking dark and evil. By pouring his fëa into the one ring, he risked total doom by its destruction since he wouldn't have enough power left to maintain even a spiritual form on middle earth.
I don't think there's any evidence that a Maiar with a hröa is weaker than a Maia without a hröa. There's no interaction between a pure fëa Ainur and an embodied Ainur, so there's no way to get a definitive answer. I would say that without a hröa, the fëa can't be "focused" and is therefore weaker (from the wiki (no source provided): "According to the Elves, the fëa is powerless without the hröa, and likewise the latter would die without the former.")
Huh, you do get what I mean. Have you ever imbibed any illicit substances, or just good narratives? (I'm hoping the answer is "both", but I don't judge.)
That's a very good point.
I don't think "weaker". I just think limited until the body burns up and their full might is revealed, sort of. Like if they had to fight another maia, that is. Like a huge bodybuilder in a weird costume that limits their actions, but if you actually started a fight with them, they'd just punch you "for real" and the cardboard of their costume wouldn't be in the way, it'd just tear off while they're punching you through the costume.
I get your point, but I think it's more about the sort of fight that's going on. Like if you have a lense, it's not gonna make the light source more powerful, but it can focus it into a neater beam, making it more powerful in that spot, but then that focusing would mean that there's less light going around "the room" in general. Like a beam of light that's as powerful as an orb of light would burn your eyes if directed at you, but also, would be less blinding than an orb of light if directed away from you. So in that sense, the hröa being able to focus power would be a positive and a negative, depending on the type of environment/enemy you're facing.
Definitely both 😎
I get what you're saying, but it doesn't work that way in middle earth according to Tolkien. We have lots of instances of Ainur vs Ainur combat where they don't pop out of their hröa for more power. The best example is the war of wrath where the host of the valar (including Eönwë, a Maia) goes against Morgoth, the mightiest of the valar, and there's no mention of that happening. It could be that Tolkien omitted it, but that's a big enough fight that I think it would have been mentioned if it occured
Well, the pure power wouldn't matter if it wasn't concentrated enough to destroy the hröa their enemies was using to influence the Seen, I guess. Like they'd have first destroy their enemies physical being to be able to influence their incorporeal being?
And to do that, you'd want to focus your power, so you'd need a "lens" of sorts, meaning you'd use a body to fight the enemy?
Oh wait no, Morgoth didn't have a physical body in that fight? Uh, I'd probably do well to read the Silmarillion again lol.
To my knowledge, Tolkien never wrote about a battle between an unbodied fëa and a hröa
Well shit, does that end the theorising? So did Morgoth have a body or not whilst in that fight you were describing?
Of course not! Just because he didn't write it doesn't mean you can't imagine it. It just means there's no precedent for it, so you have to be creative
Morgoth did indeed have a body for the entirety of the war of wrath.
I believe that in Tolkien's writings, the only Ainur that lost their bodies were Sauron (during the fall of Númenor, then when the ring was destroyed), Saruman (killed by Grima), Gothmog (killed by drowning/stabbed in the fountain during the fall of Gondolin), Durin's Bane (killed by Gandalf the grey), and possibly an unnamed balrog (if indeed dead, then slain by Glorfindel during the fall of Gondolin). There's some mention in Melkor's Ring(?) that during Melkor's first chaining, his original body was slain, but I'm not sure if that's backed up by other writings about his first chaining. Regardless, it's a pretty small club of fëa separated Ainur, so I'd think that if there was a benefit to splitting from the hröa, it would be made clear
The books mention nothing about their memories at all. just them arriving to middle earth and being given names by the elves and other races.