The Blue Wizards

[Fredeghar Wayfarer]

This is one of the great unsolved mysteries of Tolkien's work and these characters have always intrigued me. We're told that there were five Wizards/Istari sent to Middle-earth (that we know about): Gandalf the Grey, Saruman the White, Radagast the Brown, and the mysterious Blue Wizards or Ithryn Luin.

These latter two are not named in the main works but they are given the names Alatar and Pallando in Unfinished Tales. As I recall, Pallando didn't especially want to leave Valinor but was convinced to accompany Alatar "as a friend."

Beyond this, Tolkien establishes almost nothing about them. They travel into the East and are never heard from again. I found this quote online which seems to indicate Tolkien himself didn't even know what happened to them:

'What success they had I do not know; but I fear they failed, as Saruman did, though doubtless in different ways; and I suspect they were the founders or beginners of secret cults and 'magic' traditions that outlasted the fall of Sauron.' (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, No. 211).

So what do you all think became of the Blue Wizards? Was Tolkien implying that they were the source of later stories about "sorcerers" and "magic" that existed after the era of LOTR? Was this his way of accounting for the practice of the occult in later centuries?

I've always wondered what happened to these characters and why Tolkien decided on five wizards if he never developed the last two. Not to mention why both were said to be Blue when he easily could have chosen another color. Any thoughts?

[Andorinha]

Hi ya, Fredegar!

Ah, the mysterious Blue wizards... Tolkien seems to have ameliorated his attitude towards them after the UT piece. Instead of just being "lost" in the East, now he gives them some credit for helping to save Middle-earth: "Morinehtar and Romestamo. Darkness-slayer and East-helper. Their task was to circumvent Sauron: to bring help to the few tribes of Men that had rebelled from Melkor-worship, to stir up rebellion ... and after his first fall to search out his hiding place (in which they failed) and to cause [CT note here: ?dissension and disarray] among the dark East ... They must have had very great influence on the history of the Second Age and the Third Age in weakening and disarraying the forces of the East ... who would both in the Second Age and Third Age otherwise have ... outnumbered the West. (HOME vol. XII, The Peoples of Middle-earth, pp384-85, hb version)

I often wondered if a bit of the old Social Darwinistic philosophy of the 1870s - 1945 era, crept into Tolkien's mind here : "... otherwise have ... outnumbered the West." Hints of the old "Yellow Peril" syndrome?

At any rate, the Blue Wizards often brought to my mind the concept of the Zoroastrian Magi. Any student of Graeco-Roman history, and/ or the origins of Christianity is soon forced to tackle this eastern religion. Of course, the very word magi gives us our modern day terms magician and magic, wizardly accomplishments. JRRT being a philologist would probably have known that: "The terms used in the Avesta which could be translated as 'priest' are numerous. The main term isâthravan (Pahlavi âsravan, âsron, âsrok; Zoroastrian Persian âsrûn)."* Here, linguists seeking to compare words often drop the fluidly changeable vowels, leaving word roots of consonants str, compare istari, str. Then both also carry the initial place "i". I have no citation from JRRT to show that he ever did make this connection, it is probably mere coincidence, but fun to speculate upon, Istari = Isathravan. Alas, it is far more likely that JRRT used istr = izrd, Istari = Wizard.

I was hoping to find that Zoroastrian "priests" were associated with the robe colour blue, but found no such connection. I often wondered if the term "Blue Wizards" originated before they were given robe colours? In this case, blue refered to the "wild blue yonder," places far beyond the normal boundaries of travel for people of the West. Bilbo, goes off into the "bue" I seem to recall, and certainly these two wizards went even further into the "blue." All simple speculation, I fear.

______________
*http://www.zoroastrian.org/articles/Zoroastrian%20Priest%20in%20
the%20Avesta.htm

[Stormrider]

But...I thought all the Istari were supposed to go looking for the Dark Lord Sauron and The One Ring. I thought that was the mission they were all sent to work on while in Middle-earth.

Granted they could all have gone in different directions in their search. But if the blue wizards had not fiound anything out east, why wouldn't they have come back west to see if the others had found anything and needed assistance? Unless something else befell them.

I guess I shouldn't get on their cases too much, Radagast didn't try very hard in his attempt to find Sauron or the One Ring--he went off after the animals instead.

[Fredeghar Wayfarer]

You know, I wondered if there was something about these characters in the later writings. That's what I get for not reading the History of Middle-earth series or doing better research, I guess. Turns out I could have discovered their revised fate with something as simple as a Wikipedia search.

Regardless, thanks for bringing this to my attention, Andorinha. Good to know that the Blue Wizards didn't completely fail or have a negligible role in the mythology.

admin said:

But...I thought all the Istari were supposed to go looking for the Dark Lord Sauron and The One Ring. I thought that was the mission they were all sent to work on while in Middle-earth.

My understanding was that they were sent to combat the power of Sauron and the Ring, though not openly and each in their own way. Gandalf rallied the peoples of the West and acted as a mover and shaker behind the scenes. Radagast united the birds and beasts of the world and prevented them from falling under Mordor's control the way the Wargs or the Dragons did. Alatar and Pallando, it seems, chose to concentrate on the peoples of the East and lead them away from the Dark Lord's influence.

Good to see that Tolkien rethought his position. This was the untold story that had always nagged at me the most. I had half a mind once to do a short story about the fate of the Blue Wizards (though I don't think I could pull off a Tolkien-esque style). Nice to learn a little more about them after all this time.

[Stormrider]

Fredegar wrote:

My understanding was that they were sent to combat the power of Sauron and the Ring, though not openly and each in their own way. Gandalf rallied the peoples of the West and acted as a mover and shaker behind the scenes. Radagast united the birds and beasts of the world and prevented them from falling under Mordor's control the way the Wargs or the Dragons did. Alatar and Pallando, it seems, chose to concentrate on the peoples of the East and lead them away from the Dark Lord's influence.

Yes, they weren't to do it themselves but to sway the peoples to fight him. However, they had to find him first and the Ring.

Were the Istari certain that the Necromancer was Sauron? Now that we are reading some of the HoME series relating Tevildo/Thû/Necromancer/Sauron, I wonder--or is our research just proving the development of Sauron's character as the Necromancer? We are are having trouble actually finding the words "The Necromancer" in JRRT's own words in his development of the Beren/Tinúviel story and found CT's commentary linking them.

I didn't realize Radagast kept the birds and beasts from falling under Sauron's power! I am liking him even more now. I just thought he liked the birds and beasts and just prefered living with them instead of people.

I guess I missed the meaning of Andorinha's quote regarding the HoME Vol XII quote. Now that I read it over again, it sounds like their role was two fold:
(1) to cause war between the DARK (by this I mean "evil") Eastern people to diminish their numbers and to keep them from becoming part of Sauron's army and
(2) to eventually merge the common (non-evil) Eastern people with the western people to fight against Sauron.

This does help give us more insight into the Blue Wizard's doings.

[Andorinha]

Re Stormrider's: "Were the Istari certain that the Necromancer was Sauron?"

We have a dating problem here again. Both the UT texts and the Home XII material concerning the Istari are post LotR, I think Fan once mentioned that a lot of the UT stuff comes from 1956 or later and Home XII was written in 1968. So I don't think we can understand anything from these late references/ revisions about what might have been known by Sauron and Radaghast in 1938? I'm wondering when the idea of "Five Wizards" is first created, and the conception of the Order of the Istari. It's my understanding that both these concepts originated in the late 1940s or early 1950s, and that in The Hobbit Radaghast and Gandalf are simply wizards, maybe physically related as cousins, but not yet thought of as maia banded together in an order. I'll have to check on some dates here.

I get the feeling from the HOME XII volume that Tolkien was starting to "change with the times." The 1960s saw a great deal of admiration among college students for all things eastern, and oriental cultures were much appreciated as offering wisdoms that went beyond the western tradition of industrial capitalism and imperialism. Tolkien, as Fimbrethil points out in the Chesterton thread, was influenced by a sort of early counter-culture movement with the distributionists. I'm wondering if he felt a sudden kinship (in some limited ways) with aspects of the"hippie" movement, and instead of seeing the east of Middle-earth as an unredeemable place of hordes of barbarians who worshiped Morgoth, now he started seeing at least some pockets of resistance there, some things of good, and so altered his view of the two blue wizards. They did have some good impact after all.

Maybe, if he had lived longer, he would have changed his mind concerning some aspects of feminism, and maybe we could have read a new "There and Back Again" tale about the Three Remarkable Daughters of the Old Took? lol

[fimbrethil]

A few comments on this thread:

andorinha said:

Ah, the mysterious Blue wizards...
They must have had very great influence on the history of the Second Age and the Third Age in weakening and disarraying the forces of the East ... who would both in the Second Age and Third Age otherwise have ... outnumbered the West. (HOME vol. XII, The Peoples of Middle-earth, pp384-85, hb version)

The Istari appeared in ME about a thousand years into the third age, according to Appendix B.

admin said:

Fredegar wrote:

My understanding was that they were sent to combat the power of Sauron and the Ring, though not openly and each in their own way. Gandalf rallied the peoples of the West and acted as a mover and shaker behind the scenes. Radagast united the birds and beasts of the world and prevented them from falling under Mordor's control the way the Wargs or the Dragons did. Alatar and Pallando, it seems, chose to concentrate on the peoples of the East and lead them away from the Dark Lord's influence.

Yes, they weren't to do it themselves but to sway the peoples to fight him. However, they had to find him first and the Ring.

I don't think their assignment included the ring. Again, Appendix B says
"It was afterwards said that they came out of the Far West and were messengers sent to contest the power of Sauron, and to unite all those who had the will to resist him; but they were forbidden to match his power with power, or to seek to dominate Elves or Men by force or fear."

Somewhere (can't find it right now) Gandalf refers to himself as the enemy of Sauron. I think that is the mission of the Istari - simply to resist the power of Sauron, and to keep free and innocent all that could be protected from him (like the Shire). So Radagast's work with the animals was very much in keeping with his mission.

This doesn't answer the question of the Blue wizards, but it makes it clear that their disappearance into the east was not necessarily an abandoning of their mission.