Gandalf's Staff

[JennyHallu]

Honestly, I have no clue if I've read that before. Years ago, I lost any chance of keeping up with my own reading habits. Is that the series by Patricia Wrede?


I simply thought that if the Istari are Maiar, then they don't need the staffs. But they undoubtedly mean something, and the Istari undoubtedly use them in some way, related to their power. As a channel, and maybe a capacitor (electrical thingamabob that stores power), that made sense to me.

[Glirdan]

Hmmm, this is really reminding me of the last play that Shakespear ever wrote: The Tempest. Here's the general idea of what happened. The Duke of Milan was usurped by his evil twin and the King of Naples. He and his daughter were put aboard a rickety old ship and cast out to sea. However (this is the most important part), Gonazalo, the King's advisor, gave Prospero (the Duke) books and he had a staff. From the books, he learned magical abilities so to speak, which would represents his knowledge of the magic. The staff represented his way of controlling that magic. Sound kind of familiar?

I believe that the same thing applies with Gandalf and Saruman. The staff breaks, the magic is broken. Because Gandalf put so much power into breaking the bridge of Moria and the fact that the staff broke signifies (in my opinion) that he lost his magic. All his energy was spent on defeating the Balrog and because he didn't have his magic to aid him, he "died".

[Roa_Aoife]

I can see where you're coming from, Glirdan, but I think you have it a bit backwards. The staff's breaking doesn't make the power dissapate; it just becomes less accessable. Gandalf wasn't killed by the Balrog right away, either in the books or in the movies. Even after his staff was broken, he continued to put up a good fight, and he won before he died. I would say that the effort of focusing his magic with out his staff, especially after the massive surge that broke the bridge, took it's toll on his physical body.

Originally Posted by Glirdan

The staff represented his way of controlling that magic.

Exactly, it's the method of control, not the magic itself. The staff just makes it easier to direct the power into something viable. Staff is to power as OS is to Computer, so to speak.

[davem]

I suspect that a magical object like a staff is in some ways like the taking on of a physical form. None of the Maiar actually need to incarnate, but it enables them to function better in the physical universe.

The same seems to be true of Elves, but in the opposite way - their fea will eventually (in Middle-earth at least) burn away their hroa & they will exist as beings of spirit only. To what extent a wizard's staff can be seen as an 'extension' of his physical form is an interesting question. To lose a staff may be equivalent to losing a limb - it wouldn't finish you off, but it would severely disable you. It may be that Gandalf was powerfull enough without his staff to perform certain magical acts, but clearly it is useful in extreme circumstances. Or maybe its just easier to use a staff & means less energy is expended in the particular act. I'm not sure there's anything a wizard could do with a staff that he couldn't do without it, but at the same time one could ''charge' it with so much power, or become so dependent on doing magic with it, that without it one became virtually helpless.

It reminds me of Julian May's 'Saga of the Exiles', where the aliens have latent psychic abilities which they activate by using artifical devices (torcs). These necklaces give them great powers but in the end actually prevent them developing their abilities naturally. Anything they could do with the torcs they could have learned to do without them, but they chose the short cut of technology.

Perhaps this is another subtle condemnation of the Machine on Tolkien's part - as he stated magic is another manifestation of the Machine, not something qualitatively different.

[Farael]

Originally Posted by davem

It may be that Gandalf was powerfull enough without his staff to perform certain magical acts, but clearly it is useful in extreme circumstances. Or maybe its just easier to use a staff & means less energy is expended in the particular act. I'm not sure there's anything a wizard could do with a staff that he couldn't do without it, but at the same time one could ''charge' it with so much power, or become so dependent on doing magic with it, that without it one became virtually helpless.

(My emphasis)

Well, Davem's comment brought another case of an innanimate object being "charged" with energy to the point that the one who charged it becomes extremely dependent. Yes, the One Ring and Sauron.

Gandalf looses his staff but then recovers it when he comes back. Gandalf only increases his powers. On the other hand, Gandalf breaks Saruman's staff and Saruman looses most of his powers. Before I did not really see how Saruman could have lost his magic "all of a sudden" when his forces were destroyed by the Ents and the Rohorrim, yet if you think of the Staff as a "weaker" equivalent of The Ring, it'd be possible that by loosing his staff Saruman lost his magical "energy" or powers or what ever name you may give it... yet he had not compromised so much of his own being as to be destroyed with the destruction of the staff.

In that light, the creation of the One Ring could have very well been the science of magic staffs taken to the extreme. In a way, both things are very similar, inannimate objects that give their Ainur owners powers far greater than before.

[Lalwendë]

The Staff can represent a lot of things, including status, positions of office, leadership. What is it? It could be seen as a simple pointing device, as in the conductor's baton, or it can also be used as a weapon. The staff can also be used as a simple walking stick, as Gandalf himself cleverly claims it to be at Meduseld.

I think what Tolkien is playing with is that the Wizard's staff is both a form of wand and a symbol of his position. Of course, a staff is much more visually impressive than a wand. But it does seem to perform the same basic function as a wand, and that is to channel something. Wands could be seen to be an invention of modern Wiccans, but they exist in the tarot as one of the suits, and are sometimes also known as Staves, and are often also depicted in that way.

The staff of a wizard is clearly important in Middle-earth or else Gandalf would not have broken Saruman's. But I think it also serves an additional purpose to channeling 'magic', the staff is also a symbol of the Wizard's position. Gandalf is head of the order when he breaks Saruman's staff, so I think he was also performing the function of casting him out when he broke it.

[davem]

There is, now I think about it, a very obvious Freudian interpretation of the breaking of Saruman's staff....