black wizard
 

is there one because there is a grey or was and a 2white

No, there was a grey, a white, a brown, and two blue.

And for a very short period of time, a many-colored wizard!

-réd

Ooooooh right!
I forgot about that last one!
Dang!
I really need to reread the books.

When Ganalf meets the others he says something to the effect of "White is strong, Black is stronger"

That might refer to what color Sauron is..

There's a brown one? WOW, that's really interesting, I had never heard of it, who's the brown wizard?

[ February 07, 2002: Message edited by: Meriadoc ]

The brown wizard is Radagast the Brown. He's mentioned in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

In The Hobbit, Beorn doesn't know who Gandalf is, so Gandalf asks him if he knows his cousin Radagast (to which Beorn replies yes - Radagast's home was Rhosgobel on the outskirts of Mirkwood).

In LOTR, Saruman uses Radagast to lure Gandalf to Orthanc. It is also Radagast who sends the eagle to rescue Gandalf from Orthanc. It's also possible Radagast was responsible for a few of the other instances when the eagles just happened to show up in time to save _____. Radagast failed his "mission" (that the Valar gave him) by turning his attention to the care of animals.

Radagast in Adunaic means 'tender of beasts.'

Aiwendil, his name in Valinor, means 'bird-lover.'

[ February 08, 2002: Message edited by: Legalos ]

He is also mentioned in "Of The Rings of power" which is part of the Silmarillion

I read in "Of the Rings Of Power", that it was Radagast who lent Saruman the use of his crows. But he didn't know that Saruman was wicked by then and would use the birds perversely.

Where did you find this? I seem to remember looking for a translation for 'Radagast' and being unable to find one. And it doesn't look very much like Adunaic.

I suppose you can tell from my name that I'm a fairly big Radagast fan.

I'm sure you didn't mean this in the way I perceived it, but I must say, I just had a very creepy vision of Saruman and his, um, birds. [img]smilies/eek.gif[/img] [img]smilies/eek.gif[/img] [img]smilies/eek.gif[/img]

hmm...where did Gandalf say black was stronger than white? or did I misread it?
he debated with Saruman-Saruman said something along the lines of "you can change white, it can be discoloured"
Gandalf's reply was "then it would no longer be white"
[img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

he said it to one of the Fellowship after the confrontation is over [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

I went searching for the quote that Alch was referring to. Mainly because I didn't remember the line myself. Here is the line

"'No,' said Gandalf. 'That is not the road you must take. I have spoken words of hope. But only of hope. Hope is not victory. War is upon us and all our friends, a war in which only the use of the Ring could give us surety of victory. It fills me with great sorrow and great fear: for much shall be destroyed and all may be lost. I am Gandalf, Gandalf the White, but Black is mightier still.'"

I found that in "The Two Towers" in The White Rider chapter.

I'm pretty sure that Gandalf is referring to the black of Sauron and not the cloak color of a Wizard.

I got confused, sorry bout that [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img] I missed the line where you said "black might refer to Sauron"-but Sauron isn't a wizard, he's a Maia

Aaah, but the wizards are Maia, so the two terms are not exclusive. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

Yesm Sauron is a Maia, so are the wizards, such as Gandalf and Saurman. But they are from a second gropu of Maia called the Istari.

If I understand this right, all Istaris are Maias, but not all Maias are Istaris. Its like saying that all Ford F-150' are trucks but not all truck are Ford F-150's.

I should like to clarify myself on something that I posted yesterday. I said that Sauron was a Maia, that is true, but it may have seemed that I said that he was one of the Istaris. That is not true. Only the wizards, Gandald, Saurman, Radagast, and the two Blue Wizards are Istaris.

Yeah, Joy. Sauron is a Maia, but one that was corrupted by Melkor during the Ainulindale, so he's been evil since the beginning.

However, the Istari were originally Maiar as well. Olorin (Gandalf) was one of Nienna's; Aiwendil (Radagast) was one of Yavanna's; Alatar and Pallando (the Istryn Luin) were of Orome's order; and Curumo (Saruman) was of Aule's order (the same as Sauron, before he was corrupted!). That may be the reason that Saruman was more easily consumed with desire for the One Ring (though this is just conjecture by me).

But, the Istari weren't always a special 'group' of Maiar. They were chosen by the Valar to go to ME after Sauron had risen again from the desolation after the Battle of Orodruin, when the Ring should have been destroyed. The five were chosen for certain qualities that they exhibited that could be of greater service in ME. The Istari were basically Maiar who became incarnate in the flesh of Arda, thereby becoming subject to all the possibilities inherent within, both good and bad. They were only considered a 'group' after they came to ME about the year 1000 of the Third Age.

Wow, i hope I didn't bore anyone with this long-winded discussion of the Istari! If anyone wants to keep this going, you can send me a private message.

I suppose you could call Sauron the black wizard, he was the Black Hand for a while and the "Dark Lord", and like the Istari, he was a Maia, so Thu the Black or Sauron the Black is correct. But not as an Istari wizard, much much better.

What were the Blue wizards? I havent read anything about them. Are they mentioned in the lotr or wa it in the other books?

Not much is writen about the Blue Wizards. They are found in the Silmarilion and I think in the Unfinished Tales.

the two blu wizards were called Alatar and Pollando. They went out together with saruman and went to the east. But only Saruman came back. Which makes me supsicious(saruman is evil) but nobody else care so why shuold i? [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]

Wow, what's with all the interest in Wizards these days?
Just wanted to point out, white is all colors! I always thought this is what Gandalf meant--he was white, and therefore of many colors. I can't find the passage in the text again, though...

(BTW--Gandalf says "I am...the White, but Black is mightier still" in the section where he first returns)

Dain, a certain person keeps bringing up really old topics related to wizards. Go figure.

2 Dain
[img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] It's not Gandalf, but Saruman who claims to be "of Many Colours". To which Gandalf replied: "I liked white better". This scene is in "The Council of Elrond"

Saruman still wore white(many colours that make up white) But I think inside his soul and everything he became the black wizard becasue of his dealings with Sauron.

I honestly don't mean to be picky or anything but white was the one colour Saruman didn't wear; he wore many colours, not all - and only all colours equals white. This is a clear mark of Saruman's decay; he had lost some major elements of his "essence" when turning in to the "dark side". He had become something vague and constantly changing, he was many things but nothing specific, authentic or whole. And those adjectives describe too well this text also, so I'll stop now. [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

This is a very funny topic. Saruman's robes seemed white from afar, but when Gandalf got close and started looking at him, he started to see all the colors showing up as Saruman moved. I really doubt that this was because Saruman wanted to use up all of his colorful scraps of cloth. [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img] His pride put him above such things, and therefore he somehow wove a great mix of colors into his robes forming a pseudo-white look.

Iarwain

Gandalf is just using black meaning the enemy in general.

I believe actually that the term 'wizard' is exclusive to the group of Maiar that came to Middle Earth at the beginning of the Third Age at the bidding of the Valar. One would not consider Gandalf a Balrog, though Balrogs are a type of Maiar as well. The same would apply for calling Sauron a member of the Istari, or a wizard.

To answer the initial question, there may well have been a 'black' wizard. Although Tolkien never mentions one, he does say that it is unknown how many Istari came to Middle Earth at the start of the Third Age, and he also hints that not all of the wizards that came to Middle Earth came on the same boat as Gandalf, Saruman, Radagast and the Blue Wizards, nor necessarily to the same area of Middle Earth or at the same time.

[ October 19, 2003: Message edited by: Lord of Angmar ]

Sorry if I seem to nitpick here, but there were no specific "groups" of Maiar. All Maiar are Ainur and so they have the ability to take a physical shape (or stay in spirit form, like Gandalf/Olórin mostly was when he still was in Valinor). The Balrogs were Maiar who became evil and clothed themselves with a Balrog physical shape. The Istari (which just means 'wizard') took physical shape as human beings. Although they had different physical appearances, both Balrogs and Istari were Maiar.

I know. As I said, both were Maiar, but Balrogs were not Istari and Istari were not Balrogs. Therefore it can be said that though both were Maiar, they were subdivided into different groups. The Istari were subdivided by their physical appearance and their purpose for entry to Middle Earth, and the Balrogs grouped by the fact that they were evil spirits who had served Morgoth and who could no longer change from their forms.

As I said above, yes, there were. Just like there are different groups of orcs (Uruk-hai, snaga, etc.), different groups of Elves and Men (Sindar vs. Noldor, Gondorians vs. Haradrim, etc.) and just like in real life almost every species or race can be broken down into sets of subdivisions, so too could some of the Maiar be grouped into different categories.

[ October 19, 2003: Message edited by: Lord of Angmar ]

At any rate, we have the quite neatly defined categories of _istari_ and _Balrogs_, in addition to perhaps _maiarin orcs_ etc. which would be more loosely associated and hardly a group. The same might or might not go for the respective Maiar retinue of a Vala.