Source of Magic

[Formendacil]

Originally Posted by Hakon

Well you have the perfect example in The Hobbit. Beorn learned how to change his form which is magic. That is a great example of a human learning magic.

I'm not so sure, myself... for that to be the case, you have to grant a few assumptions.

Firstly and most importantly, you have to assume Beorn is human. All things considered, he could just as well be a bear that changes into human form as a human who changes into bear form, if I may suggest the slightly silly. More seriously, Beorn might not be full-blooded human. Precisely where the non-human strain would come from, I wouldn't know--presumably not a normal bear!--but one could speculate on Bear-incarnate Maia taking human form and a Thingol/Melian type situation... in which case Beorn's "magic" would be analogous to Aragorn's: used by a human but descended from a non-human source.

Secondly, you're assuming that Beorn learned it, which is not something I would assume at all, since I've always assumed it was an inherited trait (from those alleged ancestors driven from the Misty Mountains by the orks), particularly as it became a passed-on trait to his descendants--but notably with less potency in some generations, regardless of usage or character.

Thirdly, you assume shape-shifting is magic. Now, this is actually probably a safe assumption to make, but it doesn't have to be necessarily so. It all depends, really, on how you define "magic" (which, of course, is the whole conundrum of this thread). Personally, although shape-shifting could be the effected outcome of a magic process, I don't see that it need to be magical necessarily--just like my car moving could be the outcome of people pushing it, it doesn't need to be someone pushing it in order for it to move.