Aragorn and spellcasting

[fusangite]

But we DO see Elrond, and both his sons, healing!

As everyone participating in the thread knows, Elrond heals Frodo at a critical time in the story; yet, his actual practice of healing arts is never depicted. I am drawing a distinction between "show" and "tell" in order to underline my point about what Tolkien is doing in the text.

Similarly, in the scenes you reference, we are told but not shown the healing effected by Elrond and his kinsmen. Just like Galadriel throwing down Dol Goldur, this is undoubtedly part of the story but one that Tolkien chooses to tell instead of show.

Thanks for the quotations. I think they help to further illustrate the points I have been making.

 

[Steverooo]

Because he had a D&D class based on him?

...

But nobody (except possibly Joshua) is arguing that Aragorn's magical healing is not magical; we are just arguing that it is not a spell.

...

Joshua makes a very important point here. Why is everybody invested in believing that LOTR can be modeled using D&D. There are all kinds of worlds that cannot be modeled well using D&D rules; Middle Earth is just one of them.

No, silly! I am saying that the D&D Ranger is based on Aragorn, and that D&D Rangers cast spells because of things in the LotR books, like that in my "What IS he doing?" post, above. It doesn't matter, to me, if Aragorn casts spells by singing a verbal component (instead of speaking it), while manipulating athelas as a material component, instead of holy water for his version of Cure Light Wounds/Cure Disesse/Remove Curse. You can even say that it's a spell-like ability that requires V&M Components, but the "spell" is still the easiest game mechanic to explain it.

(Parenthetically, yes, one could model the Ranger as a spell-less class with a whole HOST of special, spell-like abilities. Even as a totally skill-based class, with special skills like "Mind-Reading". But, again, I don't see how a spell-like ability, with V&M Components, is not the same as casting a spell. YMMV.)

I'm not interested in modelling ME via D&D, and agree that D&D isn't the right game for that. I still believe that both Aragorn and Legolas cast spells in the LotR, though. Why are YOU so invested in trying to prove that Aragorn did not cast spells?

 

[Desdichado]

Your position:
"hands"="knowledge"
"king"="Numenorean"
My position:
"hands"="hands"
"king"="king"

From that, how do you come to the view that your interpretation is more literal than mine?

Because I didn't take two words out of context.

 

[kirinke]

Um, Fusigate where do you find that Galadriel threw down Dol Guldur? In the books/histories, it was the White Council who managed to break the stones and send Sauron scurrying back to Mordor. Now in the last battle, both she and Thranduil joined forces to drive the Shadow of Mordor out of their respective realms. But she didn't do it alone.

And there is the fact that even Aragorn acknowledges that Elrond is stronger in the healing arts then him. I think you're getting something confused here....

 

[fusangite]

Because I didn't take two words out of context.

Well, given that you yourself have acknowledged that you cannot find a single instance where the text is inconsistent with my interpretation, it strikes me that you don't have much of a context-based argument here at all.

Well, it was fun while it lasted but I guess my work on this thread is done. Have fun guys!

 

[fusangite]

Now, answer my question, in the "What IS he doing?" post, above. What IS Aragorn doing, Fusangite?

Sorry. I apologize for leaving this question unanswered. Normally I don't leave threads with hanging questions.

He's praying.

Now I'm gone.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

When it comes right down to it, every reader makes a book his or her own. No one here can definitively state that their view is the correct one on this matter - the only person who could resolve the issue has been dead for 30+ years. My own interpretation is that Aragorn had a small bit of knowledge of healing magic, which is demonstrated in the quote above where he sings over the athelas (but he didn't have as much knowledge or power as Glorfindel, who one could interpret as having a paladin-like "lay on hands" ability, which we see him use on Frodo's arm). As has been pointed out, singing is very much part and parcel with Tolkien's trope of magic as music - after all, the very act of creation as related in the Silmarillion is described as a great symphony. If anyone disagrees, that's perfectly fine, because nobody can be right or wrong on this, just as no one can be right or wrong as to whether Aragorn belonged to a D&D class (but I've been leaning towards interpreting him as a Gestalt Ranger/Paladin lately).

It is always interesting, and often surprising, to see discussions on matters like this. To me, Aragorn's use of magic, while very subtle, is obvious. It adds dimension to the book for me to discover it isn't as obvious, or is even non-existent, to others.

 

[Agback]

Wouldn't that support the position that Aragorn had some healing power, since it has already been established that the plant itself has no medical use?

While I agree that Aragorn has healing power, I don't think it has been established that kingsfoil has no medical use. Aragorn states that it was brought from Numenor as a healing herb and that it has great virtue (though few people around here know about it), moreover the ordinary people of Gondor use it to cure headaches (that's where they get it from to treat Merry and Eowyn).

While I am posting, I will add that Ioreth says that the tradition is 'the hands of a king are the hands of a healer, and thus could the true king ever be known'. Note the word 'ever'. All the kings of Gondor, by virtue of their right to the throne, would seem to have had healing powers. Aragorn plainly also had some knowledge of field herbalism and surgery, the result of his lore and seventy years' experience in the wild. But he had the healing hands of a true king. No-one else had the combination.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

What I have not seen is textual evidence that when Tolkien says, "the hands of the king are the hands of a healer" that we should not take him at his word and read the text literally.

But you're not reading it literally. You're reading "hands" and "king" literally, sure. (Perhaps too literally, but that's a different argument.) But the single most important word in the sentence, "healer," you're reading to mean "person with a magical ability to lay on hands and cure wounds," when a literal interpretation is actually "person skilled in healing." That includes everything from spells to herbalism.

(Just as an aside, and not really meant as proof of anything, which of these two D&D characters would an NPC be more likely to call a "healer": a bard with access to cure light wounds, or an expert with a Heal skill modifier of +20? Maybe my games are different, but no NPC in my game would call a bard a healer, whatever his spells, unless, well, that's what the bard did.)

Athelas is a plant with remarkable properties. Just smelling it made people feel better, and with proper care and cleaning of the wound, and then application of this remarkable plant by someone who knows what he's doing (including that the plant is beneficial in the first place), Frodo got (a little) better. That's not magic, not by the text, and any read that says it is, IMO, is not only a far from literal read, it's a weak read. It's the projection of the reader's views and desires upon the text.

As for what Strider was doing when he was singing over the remains of that blade ... who knows? People in Tolkien's work sing for many and varied reasons. Why assume it's magic? Again, that's a projection of the reader's views on the text: "Oh, this is a fantasy book. He must be doing magic."

Well, maybe, but maybe he's just singing an old song of lore to himself, because he wants to be sure to remember the verse that discusses being injured by a Ring Wraith weapon. The latter seems at least as likely as the former.

Look, imagine that you read an equivalent passage in a mainstream novel. The protagonist has been injured, and the healer is muttering to himself in a strange language that the bystanders don't understand. Is the healer casting a spell? No ... he's a med student, and he's reciting a procedure from one of his trauma classes, preparatory to helping the protagonist.

Just because a book is a fantasy novel doesn't mean that everything that happens within is fantastic. If Tolkien intended to show Strider exhibiting magical capabilities in that scene, he did a piss-poor job of it ... and considering Tolkien's skill with language, that seems pretty unlikely to me.