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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 2038017" data-attributes="member: 7240">A few points to consider:1. Gandalf is a Maia; in other words, he is a lesser God existing in a human form through hypostasis. To argue that human beings can cast D&D-style spells in Middle Earth because lesser deities/angels can is simply not on. Saruman, Radagast, Gandalf, the two Blue Wizards, Bombadil and a handful of others in the world are all or part-Maia. Their magical properties, I would argue, come principally from the fact that they are immortal divinities.2. "The hands of a king are the hands of a healer" -- Aragorn can heal people with Athelas aka. "kingsfoil" because he is the one true king. Tolkien is using a standard medieval trope here. True kings, in medieval times, were considered to have the capacity to cure scrofula. This ability is distinguishable from D&D spells in a number of ways: (a) there is no maximum number of times it can be cast; (b) it is not a learned skill; (c) it inheres in his identity as the rightful king not in any other aspect of him. The fact that he happens to be good as finding kingsfoil because he is a ranger is not what makes him able to heal with it.As I said before, I am not arguing that magic is not going on. But this magic is not well-represented through D&D-style spells. Most magic is tied either to a person's genealogical proximity to the gods or to items fashioned by the gods themselves.</blockquote>