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Originally Posted by davem
I suppose the question is whether the abilities of the Pukel Men are innate or a product of 'study'. I think Tolkien was opposed to the practice of what we could call 'ritual' magic. Are they manipulating natural forces? Tolkien stated that 'magic' is an aspect of the Machine, a seeking after technology to control & coerce things/people, hence the Ring is the ultimate Machine within Middle-earth, & the other Rings are lesser Machines. All technology (which in Middle-earth includes Rings, Palantiri, etc) is 'evil' in that its purpose is to remake the world in the user's own image - even if that was not the intent behind their making.
Of course, the Machine is actually a way of thinking & the objects produced are manifestations of that - attempts to actualise deisre. Tolkien sets Art against the Machine. Art attempts to (sub) create a secondary world in the mind, while the Machine is an attempt to alter the world. So, yes, it is a question of the potential for corruption in the individual, but the use of magical objects is an outward sign of that inner corruption. I would note that the Pukel Men were hardly successful as a species.....
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Good stuff! You are putting so many interesting lines here to be appreciated, that it would require an essay to even try to comment a bit! But maybe a couple of things to begin with.
It's interesting to note, that Tolkien had received his learning during a time, when certain trends in anthropology & religious studies were the top of the pops'. For instance Frazer's "the Golden Bough" (anyone: read it someday, if you have time: lots of wonderful stories in it). That time, they talked about "symphatetic magic", eg. they had an idea, that earlier cultures were like the then modern western cultures, which were already having as their first aim the technological superiority over the nature (and the utopia of a technologies to make all their dreams come true). So all old beliefs, rituals and customs, were interpreted in this same manner; as ways of having an effect over nature, or manipulating it, by magic (and later by religion) - and just being overtly wrong when compared to science of their days.
That should have offended Tolkien, in quite a modern way indeed. But as I think the Tolkien connoisseurs' would agree, Tolkien disliked basically the idea of technologically manipulating the world (that is propably one of the main reasons why one can read a kind of sorrowness in the text, when Tolkien is telling us about the beginning of the age of men).
In this context, which i guess, is quite "natural" way of interpreting the issue, you put forward the even more interesting idea, that you count the rings also as these technologial pieces of craft (vs. nature, one must presume?), then the whole setting changes a bit, doesn't it? So "technological pieces", understood in the widest sense possible, could do something good, f.ex. the possibility of elves remaining in the Middle Earth, of Gandalf having the powers he had etc.?
(Well, it propably is a question of from whose standpoint you define good? But Tolkien was not a relativist!)
Looked from this point of view, there is a notion in Tolkien, that you could help things with technology - although it would end up in sacrifices'.
So beating technology requires technology, but if you use it to defy your technological opponent, you will be consumed in the fight?
This seems to be a good one! Let's open this up a bit more...