[Child of the 7th Age]

Pio ---

Does incarnate mean any sort of embodiment? Or is it more specifically some sort of humaniform body - Elves, Men, Hobbits, Dwarves?

Some further questions: The term 'mirroanwi', that applies to fear incarnate in hroas only, correct? And not the Ainur who 'take on bodily raiment?

Osanwe-kenta doesn't discuss this issue in relation to "non-human" beings. Moreover, the definition of "mirroanwi" is brief, and doesn't make any distinctions.

However, once your copy of the essay comes, Pio, take a look at note 5 on page 30 which goes on for paragraphs, discussing the use of hroar by the Valar. It goes into many details, but the point you may find most interesting is this:

Re the Valar who take on bodily rainment..... "Though in origin a "self arraying", it may tend to approach the state of "incarnation", especially with the lesser members of that order (the Maiar). 'It is said the longer and the more the same hroa is used, the greater is the bond of habit, and the less do the self-arrayed desire to leave it. As rainment may soon cease to be an adornment, and becomes (as is said in the tongues of both Elves and Men) a habit, a customary garb.....Pengolodh also cites the opinion that if a spirit (that is, one of those not embodied by creation) uses a hroa for the furtherence of its personal purposes, or (still more) for the enjoyment of bodily faculties, it finds it increasingly difficult to operate without the hroa The things that are most binding are those that in the Incarnate have to do with the life of the hroaitself....Most binding is begetting or conceiving.

You may also find this interesting. In note 7, Tolkien seems to equate the fea and the sama as well as the "heart":

enda. This we translate "heart", though it has no physical reference to any organ of the hroa It means "centre", and refers (though by inevitable physical allegory)to the fea or sama itself, distinct from the periphery (as it were) of its contacts with the hroa; self aware; endowed with the primeval wisdom of its making which made it sensitive to anything inimical in the least degree.

Hope this helps.

sharon, the 7th age hobbit

[ September 09, 2002: Message edited by: Child of the 7th Age ]