God talking about magic in Tolkien you know I thought I kinda had it settled in my head, I’d accepted it’s kind of rare and unknowable nature you know? But then I reread Concerning Hobbits and like…
There’s a sentence that basically says ‘Hobbits didn’t study magic because they just didn’t go in for that sort of thing’ which fucks me up royally because it gives us two pieces of information.
- Magic can be studied
- Hobbits COULD have had magic but they didn’t want it
I’ve been assuming that Magic’s some inherent thing that requires a process of making and some element of mysticism and a little Valar influence thrown in but no! No apparently you can just read a book like… this isn’t HoME stuff this is Lord of the Rings secure 100% accepted canon material that we now have to just deal with! This means fucking Pippin could have been a Wizard if he’d studied hard enough! We have to process that! John! Did you ever think of that?!
also, Dwarves have magic. apparently. they can put curses on things. he just.. casually threw that one out there and never mentioned it again.
Yeah!!! Like the Shire just has a bunch of stated ‘clearly magical’ toys all about the shop. Like! What!
I mean, everybody thought that the Necromancer was just some human with a weird research specialization.
| Via: sappsorrow |
