# Were the Istari conscripted?



## Odin (Jun 9, 2015)

The Istari seem to get a fairly tough mission: Take mortal bodies and go to Middle-Earth to guide men against the shadow of Sauron. Were they forced to take on this task by Manwe or could they have refused? For example, let's say Gandalf the Grey gets tired of wandering Middle-Earth for century after century and longs to return to the paradise of the Undying Lands. Would he be able to go back to Mithlond and take a ship back to Valinor, leaving his task unfulfilled? Or would the Valar deem him as having failed in his appointed task and destroy his body and cast his spirit to the winds as they did with Saruman after he failed in his mission and was slain by Grima Wormtongue.


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## jallan (Jun 13, 2015)

I don’t see that the Istari were conscripted.

Presumably Manwë chose Maiar whom he believed would commit themselves to to the task. There is no account that any of the Istar chose to abandon their mission and attempt to return to the Undying Lands. Whether they had that option open to them is unknown. It can be said that, if this option was open to them, none of the Istari took that option.

Saruman, the only one of the Istari who completely failed, seems to have believed legitimately that his policy of partial cooperation with Sauron was the wisest course of action. Gandalf disagreed, and in the end was proved right in his opinion.


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## Alcuin (Jun 14, 2015)

Curumo (Saruman) was chosen by Aulë. Aiwendil (Radagast) was selected by Yavanna. Manwë politely ordered Olórin (Gandalf) to go. Maybe Saruman or Radagast or Gandalf _could_ have refused to go; but would a good Maia really defy the Vala whom he serves? 

They weren’t impressed (like a sailor), they weren’t conscripted (like a soldier), but they _were_ commanded by a superior. 

This seems to me more like the relationship between a lord and his vassal. The vassal might be a person of high rank, but if his lord tells him to go do something, he’s bound to obey and do it to the best of his ability.


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## JoyridingTilion (Dec 12, 2015)

Didn't Manwe advise against Saruman going though?


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## Belnorn (Dec 12, 2015)

I feel bad cause all the apprentices of Aule go to the dark side haha. But I think what made it interesting was that because most of the Wizards had little to no interactions with any people. Saruman, only used or dominated them when he chose too. Radagast, well hung around in the forest. The blues...idk. They aren't really mentioned and by the non cannon sources from Shadow of Mordor. We're supposedly killed by that main antagonist of the game. So it was Gandalf. He actually spent time with people. He began to care and love the people from Middle Earth.


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## Lebennese (May 22, 2016)

The Istari Wizards are lesser Angels, or Maiar. Hence they would not be inclined to forsake their mission as would mortal beings.

The Maiar are not known to be apathetic to the cosmic struggles of good and evil. If they stray from the good path, like Saruman, they would do an about face towards evil as opposed to living ordinary lives. It is not in the nature of the Ainur to be ordinary.

Sauron himself is of equal creation as the Istari: He is one of the Maiar who turned towards Melkor, who is a Valar Higher Angel and since he of high status rebelled, he is the definition of evil. 

So the Istari are brought to the mortal plane by the Valar as mercies to the world. That is their purpose: to act as divine guides and prophets of humanity in our own world. 

And like prophets, they are created to fulfill their mission of truth. They are in full synchronization with the will of Iluvatar.


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## Alcuin (May 22, 2016)

They weren’t prophets: none of the Istari are recorded as having prophesied, Saruman’s “prophesy” against Frodo notwithstanding: his was more a wicked-hearted barb. According to Tolkien, they were ἄγγελος – angels. (_Letters_ #156, to Fr Robert Murray, a Jesuit priest and friend of Tolkien’s.) Nor were the Istari “in full synchronization with the will of Iluvatar.”


> [T]hey were embodied in physical bodies capable of pain, and weariness, and of afflicting the spirit with physical fear, and of being ‘killed’… Being incarnate were … likely to stray, or err. Gandalf alone fully passes the tests, on a moral plane anyway (he makes mistakes of judgement).


Saruman apostatized and turned traitor: he went over to Sauron, then betrayed Sauron, too. The Blue Wizards failed, too. (See _Letters_ #211) Radagast did not stick to his charge: although he remained honest, he fell away from his assigned task. (I understand he used to run a Ben & Jerry’s in San Francisco, but I’ve heard he recently moved to Denver.) 

Aman, Eldamar, and Tol Eressëa _were_ on the physical plane, or at least _a_ physical plane, if you want to use that terminology, but removed from the “Circles of the World”. Mortals could not normally reach them because they no longer had access to the Straight Road (actually a sea passage) that formerly led to the Uttermost West by way of Númenor. (There is some evidence that Pengolod, the Second Age Elven historian, sojourned for a while in Númenor after he left Middle-earth following the ruin of Eregion in the War of Sauron and the Elves, teaching the Númenóreans histories of Middle-earth and Aman.) When Númenor was destroyed, Aman and its environs were removed from the “Circles of the World”, so that thereafter, only the Elves could take the Straight Road back to the Uttermost West. In doing so, they did not lose their physicality, but passed from the-world-as-it-is to the-world-as-it-was.


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## Lebennese (May 28, 2016)

A prophet's main purpose is not to see the future, but to move humanity towards a greater understanding of God. This is what Muhammad did and other prophets throughout history. Someone who sees the future is a psychic like Nostradamus, not necessarily a prophet sanctioned by God.

It is clear that in this light, that the Istari as prophet-like creations sent to bring balance to the world and bring it closer to good. Gandalf says that a wizard is never late, but precisely where he is meant to be, when he is meant to be there; they do no lolygagging. In the case of Saruman, even he did not relinquish his gift but rather did an about-face to serve Sauron. 

There is no normal life for the Istari, no relinquishment of the power of their status in creation. They do indeed have free will, but like prophets, they are revolutionary beings with great potential to make change. The freedom that they have is whether that change is positive or negative.


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## Alcuin (May 29, 2016)

> Gandalf says that a wizard is never late, but precisely where he is meant to be, when he is meant to be there...


That’s not Tolkien: that’s Peter Jackson. Don’t conflate them. Jackson was not telling Tolkien’s story, he told his own story, using Tolkien’s _Lord of the Rings_ for material. They’re not the same, Jackson’s characters are different both in motivation and in action. In particular his mishandling of Tolkien’s Aragorn and Faramir are odious: Jackson’s portrayal of these characters are nearly opposite Tolkien’s. Arwen is misrepresented and mishandled. Your paraphrased quotation of Jackson’s Gandalf is likewise an example of his misrepresentation. 

The quotation is a mangling of Gandalf’s discussion with Frodo in “Shadow of the Past”:


> There was more than one power at work, Frodo. The Ring was trying to get back to its master. … Only to be picked up by … Bilbo from the Shire!
> 
> Behind that there was something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker. I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker. In which case you also were meant to have it.


Tolkien’s Gandalf was encouraging Frodo, who was becoming increasingly frightened by the wizard’s revelations about the magic ring he inherited from Bilbo, to take hope in what appeared to be a hopeless situation. Jackson’s Gandalf is arrogantly proclaiming himself a kind of error-less demiurge, as you suggest. 

If you prefer Jackson’s telling of the tale, you are welcome to it. But it isn’t Tolkien’s. 



> There is no normal life for the Istari, no relinquishment of the power of their status in creation. They do indeed have free will, but like prophets, they are revolutionary beings with great potential to make change. The freedom that they have is whether that change is positive or negative.


Again, not what Tolkien says. 

In _Unfinished Tales_, “The Istari”, Christopher Tolkien reports his father’s writings:


> [W]ith the consent of Eru [the Valar] sent members of their own high order, but clad in bodies of as of Men, real and not feigned, but subject to the fears and pains and weariness of earth, able to hunger and thirst and be slain; though because of their noble spirits they did not die, and aged only by the cares and labours of many long years. … [T]he Istari, being clad in bodies of Middle-earth, might even as Men and Elves fall away from their purposes and do evil, forgetting the good in the search for power to effect it. … [T]hey were not commanded or supposed to act _together_ as a small central body of power and wisdom…


In _Letter_ 144, Tolkien wrote that the wizards’


> proper function, maintained by Gandalf, and perverted by Saruman, was to encourage and bring out the native powers of the Enemies of Sauron. Gandalf's opposite was, strictly, Sauron, in one part of Sauron's operations; as Aragorn was in another.


The Istari were not to supplant Men and Elves, but to encourage them. Saruman sought to supplant them; Gandalf sacrificed himself when Aragorn and Boromir charged onto the Bridge of Khazad-dûm to preserve two Mortals who would otherwise have been killed, but represented the last of the leadership of the Dúnedain of Arnor and Gondor, respectively: _their_ survival was critical to his mission, at least in this situation. (Hence his harsh instruction, “Fly, you fools!” for they were, indeed, foolish to attack a Balrog.) 

Elsewhere, in _Letter_ 257, Tolkien wrote that “the Valar were forbidden to try and dominate [Elves or Men] by fear or force.” This rule held for the Maiar as well, of course: Sauron violated the Rule while the Two Trees still lived: Saruman fell sometime around Third Age 2759, when he entered Orthanc and took possession of its palantír in order to search for the One Ring for himself. 

While you are correct in observing that the Istari exercise freedom of action, they were sent as emissaries of the Valar, and only indirectly of Eru through the Valar’s action. The Valar in this telling are literary counterparts to the archangels of Judaic and particularly Christian theology. In his _Letters_, Tolkien says Gandalf the White, sent back to Middle-earth, is acting as an emissary of Eru; but even then, his power and authority are carefully concealed, and he uses his power only when the “magic” power of evil overwhelms Men: in the breach of the Gate of Minas Tirith or the assault of the winged Nazgûl upon Faramir’s retreat. Gandalf the Grey interceded carefully, too: for Bilbo, for instance, to help him break free of the Ring in Bag End. 

I think you are trying to Islamize a text that is decidedly un-Islamic. Tolkien was Christian and Roman Catholic. While he professed to “dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and” to “prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability”, he slipped a immense number of references and situations “applicable” to Christianity into the tale.


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## Lebennese (Jun 1, 2016)

The unique thing about fantasy is that it is up for interpretation and hence not bound by reality. Otherwise it would just be another rigid science. No one knows what Tolkien was thinking; we can only interpret his writings our own unique ways. I do not see how there can be a right or wrong answer here. Hence, I am not debating whether or not my claims are correct as much as I am arguing that they could be correct.

Tolkien wrote the Lord of the Rings as a way to consolidate the different faiths in the world and write something that would recognize the commonalities in all preceding myths and religions. He wanted to give Britain its own unique mythology. And naturally any new mythology or religions takes inspiration from the old. 

If you understand this concept, then it will not puzzle you how I relate Islam into this inspiration. Tolkien was Roman Catholic, but he certainly did not want to replicate the Bible. What would that do for the creative mind? What would any dogmatic interpretation of any text, even Tolkien's do for the spirit and mind?

The beauty of the Silmarillion, the Lord of the Rings, and the Hobbit is that they are so familiar to us all, whether you are a Muslim, Christian, or Hindu, and they open our eyes to religious ideas that are free to float in our imaginations. To treat Tolkien's works in a rigid and dogmatic way would take away from purpose of his fantasy universe. I do not know exactly what anything means, but I am sure inspired to see meaning and connect the dots to my abilities.

So, back to the point that began this whole discussion: Are the Istari conscripted by the Valar and Iluvatar? 

Well, in our traditions, what separates the Angels from the humans? Angels are governed by destiny, whereas humans also have free will. In Tolkiens world, the humans vs. the Ainur: The humans have free will, but do the Ainur? If the Ainur had free will, it is in synchronization with Iluvatar, so their free will and destiny are one. 

This is in full harmony with the Abrahamic notion of Angels being the messengers of God. In the Christian and Islamic scriptures, the exception to their unlimited service is Satan, whose free will distanced him from the purpose that God had for him to serve Him as do all the Angels. 

In Tolkien's world, this concept is embodied by Melkor, Sauron, Saruman, and all the other lesser Angels who follow Melkor. In the Abrahamic faiths, this does not happen except for with Satan. And there are no lesser Angels who can be swayed so easily while maintaining their powers, unless they are not angels, but demons who like humans have free will. But demons have less power than angels no more power than humans. 

So with this reasoning, I liken the Istari Maiar to prophets among mankind. Because in the Abrahamic traditions, Prophets are humans who are more akin to Angels in that both have harmony between their free will and their predestination. They are sent to the people with a mission to bring back harmony with God:

This is not an Islamic concept alone, even though Islam mastered and clarified it. And just like Tolkien's new mythology, Islam came not as a new religion, but as a consolidation of all that came before. The difference here is that there is no Tolkien religion , his works are meant to be interpreted freely. 

So if I were to make comparisons, I would liken the Valar to the Angels, Melkor to Satan, and the Istari to Prophets, one of whom, Saruman, took the example of Melkor and broke with his purpose using his free will, whereas Gandalf fully embraced his conscription and became the guide of Iluvatar, similar to the Mahdi in our universe.


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## Alcuin (Jun 1, 2016)

You are certainly entitled to you own opinion. You are not, however, entitled to you own facts.

In Judaism and Christianity, angels are indeed the messengers are God. The Greek ἄγγελος translates the Hebrew _mal’akh_ ( מַלְאָךְ‎‎ ), “messenger”, cognate with the Arabic _malak_ (ملاك). But in Judeo-Christianity, angels, like men, are possessed of free will. Their fall, if I understand the theology correctly (the point is not one upon which I have spent much energy), is their refusal to _serve_. This refusal is the result of _pride_, which results in a “hatred of God [which] comes from pride. It is contrary to love of God, whose goodness it denies, and whom it presumes to curse as the one who forbids sin and inflicts punishments.” (catechism of the Catholic Church ¶ 2540). 

As you note, this is represented in Melkor, who in the _Ainulindalë_ raised a cacophony discordant with the themes proposed by Eru to the Ainur. 

As for _prophets_, I am unfamiliar with angelic “prophets” in any of the three Abrahamic religions. The Christian and (I think) Jewish view of an angel (in the sense of a spiritual being normally without corporeal form) proclaiming a truth to some man or group of men and women would be the same as a human in the service of a king delivering a message from the king to others in his service: that they should do such-and-such, or that they were astray in this or that activity, or that the king proclaims some act or event he has prepared now or for the immediate future. Sometimes we see them performing things we humans cannot do: in Christianity there is the story of an angel awakening Peter in prison the night before his scheduled execution: his chains fall off him, the angel leads him quietly past the sleeping guards, the doors of the prison opening of their own accord, until Peter finds himself standing alone at night in a silent street outside the prison. To find a parallel in Tolkien, you would have to turn to the story of Beren held chained and captive in Tol Sirion by Sauron: When Lúthien and Huan the Hound of Valinor defeated Sauron, she “stood upon the bridge and declared her power: and the spell was loosed that bound stone to stone, and the gates were thrown down, and the walls opened, and the pits laid bare; and many thralls and captives came forth in wonder and dismay”. (_Silmarillion_, “Of Beren and Lúthien”) 

As for Gandalf, you are somewhat astray. Tolkien told Michael Straight, editor of _New Republic_ (_Letter_ 181),


> [Gandalf's] function as a “wizard” is an angelos or messenger from the Valar or Rulers: to assist the rational creatures of Middle-earth to resist Sauron, a power too great for them unaided. … [The wizards] were … involved in the peril of the incarnate: the possibility of “fall”, of sin… The chief form this would take with them would be impatience, leading to the desire to force others to their own good ends, and so inevitably at last to mere desire to make their own wills effective by any means. To this evil Saruman succumbed. …



_Predestination_ is a subject of considerable controversy in Christianity. It is a tenet eventually rejected by the Fathers of the Church: without _free will_, Man is no longer a morally responsible. For the most part, Christians held this position until the Protestant Reformation, when John Calvin resuscitated the idea that some people were created to enjoy salvation, while others were created to be damned, and that this was the Will of God which no one could set aside. (Calvin’s position is called “double predestination”.) 

The problem with predestination is that we human beings exist as creatures passing through time. While all of us instinctively understand the concept of time, none of us, not even our best physicists and philosophers, know or understand what it is or how it works at what we might call a “mechanical level”. (Time might be “quantized”, that is, broken into tiny discrete pieces like sand falling through an hourglass. If it is, the tiniest unit of time could be what physicists call Plank time, about half a second divided into parts numbering 10 to the 44th power (10 followed by 44 zeros), an incredibly small number.) Our whole existence is in time, and we know nothing else. God, however, is _outside_ time; and I believe (though you may correct me) that this is a belief held in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In Tolkien’s world, Eru is also outside time, though he interacts with the Ainur in what sounds like a time structure. 

Buy a Being outside Time can see all things in Time all at once, like a man who has a familiar book in front of him (I have _Lord of the Rings_ open in my lap) who can see and inspect at his leisure what is in both the beginning and the end of the story. When in the chapter “The Stairs of Cirith Ungol” Sam recalls the tale of Beren and Lúthien, how the Silmaril they took became the star Eärendil, and that the light Frodo’s Phial of Galadriel is the same light, he exclaim, “Don’t the great tales never end?” And Tolkien’s deliberate use of a double negative, something Sam would be prone to saying by accident, tells us, _The Great Tale never ends._ Then he effuses,


> Things done and over and made into part of the great tales are different. Why, even Gollum might be good in a tale, better than he is to have by you, anyway. And he used to like tales himself once, by his own account. I wonder if he thinks he's the hero or the villain? Gollum! Would you like to be the hero – now where's he got to again?


Now to Gollum, Frodo, and Sam, passing through time in Tolkien’s _subcreation_ (his own word for it), Gollum’s fate is not sealed. He still has free will. _We_ know that he will shortly fall from Grace to Evil, but _we_ are outside the book, and outside its subcreated stream of time. 

(Now if someone reading this is an atheist, bear with me for a moment, and consider the puzzle.) To us, the perfect foreknowledge of events of a Being outside Time appears identical to predestination; but we are conflating our sense of passing time with foreknowledge. If you allow for a moment that there is such a Being outside Time, and that this Being created all that is and endowed each creature with Free Will (and again I tip my hat to you atheists and agnostics passing through this thread who are familiar with the philosophical postulates of the Problem of Evil and the Problem of Free Will), then why does it boggle the imagination that this being would allow each character in creation to exercise its free will? The Problem of Evil (“Why would a good god allow evil to exist?”) only becomes irreparable if this life is all there is; Judaism teaches that this is not so (though not all its sects and branches concur), and Christianity echoes this teaching with a shout. 

Tolkien touches on predestination. I have already cited Gandalf’s speech to Frodo, “you were _meant_ to have the Ring,” as one example, but there is another. When the Fellowship of the Ring is about to break at Parth Galen, just before Boromir tries to seize the Ring, Aragorn and the rest of the Company of the Ring are debating what course to take by the waterside. When they deduce that Frodo will attempt to go East without them, Pippin exclaims, “Stop him! Don’t let him go!”, to which Aragorn replies,


> I wonder? … He is the Bearer, and the fate of the Burden is on him. I do not think that it is our part to drive him one way or the other. Nor do I think that we should succeed, if we tried. There are other powers at work far stronger.


Aragorn is stating clearly his belief that there is a Being driving the outcome of the Quest, though neither he nor even Gandalf knows or can know what will be.


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## Alcuin (Jun 1, 2016)

As to the Mahdi, I will not answer that in this forum. I will say this about Tolkien and the mythos he created: Christianity does influence what Tolkien has Men in his mythos believe. 

In _Morgoth’s Ring_, there is a well-known essay, _Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth_, “The Debate of Finrod and Andreth”. Andreth was a woman of the House of Bëor, the great-aunt of Barahir and a cousin to Emeldir: Barahir and Emeldir were the parents of Beren Erchamion. 

Andreth had fallen in love with Finrod Felagund’s brother, Aegnor. Aegnor fell in love with her, too, but he refused to show it or to see her. Finrod was very fond of Andreth, and Andreth clearly liked Finrod; but she could not understand why Aegnor refused to show his love to her. Finrod tried to explain that it was because the Eldar did not marry under such uncertain conditions; but Andreth was convinced it was because she was Mortal. (I have always imagined Barahir and Emeldir as children hiding in the kitchen while Finrod and Andreth have their conversation, Andreth unaware of them until the Elf-lord is gone, but Finrod well aware of the children, saying nothing and giving no sign because something tells him to let them be.) 

Finrod presses Andreth. The Eldar can sense that something terrible has happened to Men, something dark and evil that even they themselves only barely remember. Andreth tells him that Men were not in their origins short-lived, but longevial like the Elves. Finrod cannot believe it: If Morgoth cannot change the longevial nature of Elves, how could he change that of Men? 

Then Andreth reveals that Men have a Secret: “The Old Hope”. Finrod has never of this: What is it? he asks, gently pressing her again for answers. Andreth tells him that some Men believe that Eru Himself will enter into Arda to heal the wounds wrought by Morgoth and his followers. Finrod is astounded! He asks Andreth if she believes this, and she answers,


> How could He the greater do this? Would it not shatter Arda, or indeed all Eä?


Finrod replies,


> [O]ur words may mislead us, and that when you say “greater” you think of the dimensions of Arda, in which the greater vessel may not be contained in the less. But such words may not be used of the Measureless. If Eru wished to do this, I do not doubt that He would find a way, though I cannot foresee it.


That is a clear reference to the Christian belief in the Incarnation, which is, as I understand it, quite different from the concept of the Mahdi. For Christians – who for millennia have conveniently forgotten that the _first_ Christians _all_ were Jews – the Messiah is both God and Man: not two natures, but one: God living among Men as a Man. Not a spirit as messenger, or another man as prophet, but God Himself becoming one of us Men. 

When Finrod left Andreth, she wept and declared to him her love for Aegnor. He tried to assure her that his brother loved her, too. A few years later, the Dagor Bragollach erupted, and both Aegnor and Andreth were killed. Barahir, now old enough to go to war, saved Finrod’s life.


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## Lebennese (Jun 2, 2016)

Arcuin, through this discussion, I can see that your knowledge of Tolkien's works greatly exceeds my own. I have learned much from what you have written, and I will continue to learn from similar discussions and further enjoyment and pondering of the LOT universe. I admit, this is a recently acquired interest of mine, while my interest and study of religion goes back much further. Although connecting the dots and seeing parallels is in itself quite exhilarating, I believe that I have learned here not to jump to conclusions in my own interpretation and to learn from others, especially with regards to the facts. I am indeed fascinated by this subject as of late, especially after completing the Silmarillion, and I hope to continue to allow Tolkien's works to complement and further my ongoing spiritual quest. Thank you for the discussion.


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