XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien
From: Troels@ThisIsFake.invalid
In message
Bill O'Meally spoke these staves:
>
> On 2011-11-02 12:36:54 -0500, JimboCat said:
>>
>> I suppose you may be right, that a slain Maia would just reappear
>> in Valinor. But it's too simple an answer to be really appealing!
>> What if some Maia had been hanging out at Feanor's when Melkor
>> appeared to grab the Silmarils? Melkor slays the Maia, and what?
>> Nothing happens? The Maia is already IN Valinor! Not satisfying.
>
> I don't think a disembodied Maia necessarily "goes" anywhere at
> the time their physical form is slain. They are still subject to
> space and time afterall.
As for the latter, Tolkien does seem to explicitly contradict that.
In /Parma Eldalamberon XVII/ 'Words, Phrases and Pasages in /The Lord
of the Rings/' we have the statement that
But the Vala (or Maia) could move or pass over Sea. For
their bodies were self-made. They houseless[?] as spirits
could go where they would (either slowly *or immediately*),
and could then reclothe themselves.
(p. 176 under the root PHAN)
and
The /Valar/ and /Maiar/ were essentially 'spirits',
according to Elvish tradition given being before the making
of Eä. *They could go where they willed, that is could be
present at once at any point in Eä where they desire to be.
(ibid. p. 177)
Though the first of these notes was struck through, the other was
kept, and it would seem that it was not the claim that the Ainu,
unclothed, could go immediately wherever they wished (certainly
within Arda) that was the reason for striking the first of these
notes.
However, as you say below, an Ainu that had been unhoused by having
their /fana/ (or body or /hröa/) killed is likely to suffer some kind
of shock that would leave them at least temporarily incapacitated
(though the destruction of the body both Saruman and Sauron implies
that this period was rather short -- seconds, perhaps).
> I don't think they are suddenly whisked away back to Aman, though
> I think it likely they may choose to go there, provided they have
> not rebelled (such as Sauron, Saruman, the Balrogs, etc). They may
> also choose to remain in Middle-earth. They are allowed their
> free-will, afterall.
I agree.
> They may choose to re-clothe themselves, if possible, or perhaps
> remain a spirit.
And here it seems that the process of becoming bound to the body
makes a significant difference. In Tolkien's note 5 to Òsanwe-kenta
he wrote (attributing it to Pengolodh):
So it was also with even some of [Morgoth's] greatest
servants, as in these later days we see: they became wedded
to the forms of their evil deeds, and if these bodies were
taken from them or destroyed, they were nullified, until
they had rebuilt a semblance of their former habitations,
with which they could continue the evil courses in which
they had become fixed.
(/Vinyar Tengwar/ no. 39 p. 30)
Of course this all belongs to the rather productive period in the
late fifties which introduced many changes in the fundamental set-up,
such as the change from having Elves be reincarnated through birth as
children to the concept of the Valar building for them a new body,
identical to the one they had lost upon death, so it is impossible to
say how great is the scope of validity of these statements.
>> I also don't like the idea of a slain Balrog suddenly reappearing
>> in Valinor: sounds like a nasty surprise for whoever's around at
>> the time.
>>
>> I agree that their spirits are bound to Ea, of course. And if a
>> Maia is slain in Middle Earth, it looks - to a local observer -
>> just the same as the slaying of any other entity: the body falls
>> down, stops moving, and the spirit is no longer attached to it.
>> But surely there must be consequences to that spirit from the
>> violence of having its body slain.
>
> I'm sure there must be some kind of shock, especially those who
> have become basically incarnate (Melian, The Istari, etc). Though,
> I don't think it is anything that most Maiar are not likely to
> eventually get over. I do suspect that they would not be able to
> re-clothe themselves in the same form that was destroyed.
Not the same physical form, but one that was identical to it.
> We know that with the destruction of the Ring, Sauron was so
> weakened that he would never be able to take physical form. I
> don't know if Saruman or the Balrogs would ever be able to
> generate new forms or not.
I don't think that Tolkien ever developed the details of this very
far.
There is a passage in letter #200 where Tolkien says
It was because of this pre-occupation with the Children
of God that the spirits so often took the form and likeness
of the Children, especially after their appearance. It was
thus that Sauron appeared in this shape. It is
mythologically supposed that when this shape was 'real',
that is a physical actuality in the physical world and not
a vision transferred from mind to mind, it took some time
to build up. It was then destructible like other physical
organisms. But that of course did not destroy the spirit,
nor dismiss it from the world to which it was bound until
the end. After the battle with Gilgalad and Elendil, Sauron
took a long while to re-build, longer than he had done
after the Downfall of Númenor (I suppose because each
building-up used up some of the inherent energy of the
spirit, which might be called the 'will' or the effective
link between the indestructible mind and being and the
realization of its imagination). The impossibility of re-
building after the destruction of the Ring, is sufficiently
clear 'mythologically' in the present book.
As a physicist it is of course extremely tempting to give an
explanation based on energy conservation, and though I don't think
this is /philosophically/ correct (it is, I deem, /definitely/ not
what Tolkien intended, or would have intended if he had given more
thought to it), I think it is likely that it may be /functionally/
correct (i.e. it may be used to correctly predict situations). Such
a description would have the body represent an investment of innate
energy (mass, after all, equals energy). Under normal circumstances,
the Ainur would simply withdraw that energy when they disembodied
themselves (we never hear of any great number of discarded bodies
lying about -- the natural assumption is that they are under normal
circumstances /unmade/ when the Ainu has finished using them), but if
the body is physically slain, the link is broken and the Ainu is
unable to unmake the body and retrieve the energy invested in the
body.
[continued in next message]
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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