The White Council

Re: The Wizards Alatar and Pallando

Tolkien and Inklings Discussion

Hi, this is my first time posting here. Hope I'm doing it right. My only question deals w/ your statement that Tolkien became uncomfortable w/ the fact that he made the orcs essentially unredeemable. I've often wondered about this seeing as how they had no choice in their corruption. Knowing that Tolkien was a christian, I have always found this fact about the orcs odd. Thanks for any reply.: : : Can anyone give any more information about Alatar and Pallando, such as where they went, or their powers or deeds? Any ideas where they ended up, why they did not play a part in the War of the Rings?

: Tolkien never told us much about these two wizards, save their Valinoric names and, in a brief passage, his "outside" sense of what happened to them: that it is very likely that the Ithryn Luin went into the South or remained in the East, and that both of them 'fell'; not like Saruman, but to Darkness nonetheless, and were the source of evil cults that lived on even after Sauron's defeat.

: Two phrases jump out at me: stayed in the East and source of evil cults that lived on. What can they mean?

: If the scene of action of the LR is equivalent to Europe (working with the FR map, the Iron Hills are 1800 miles east of the Gulf of Lune, roughly the distance from the west coast of Ireland to just east of Moscow: our Eurasia stretches over 3000 further miles eastwards: a vast and rugged area in which to be lost. Judging by the descriptions of the Wain Riders and the Balchoth, Sauron did his recruiting among peoples probably equivalent to the Steppe nomads of our history (Huns, Alans, Pechenegs, Khazars, Magyars, Turks, Mongols, wave after wave...) There are other areas, more suitable to settled agriculture, less inclined to up and go ravaging thousands of miles from home just at some Demonic Power's say-so. (the hearthland of what we call China) Sauron may have passed through the region, but, seeing it as less useful for his purposes (save that, should it prosper, it would provide a diversion from the target he wished the nomads to assault), he'd leave it relatively alone. (This is of course, assuming a roughly similar geography, not a safe assumption.)

: In any event, two Wizards, condemned by the terms of their mission, to incarnate in bodies limited in speed of travel and such, may easily have become so distant, so absorbed in whatever they thought their mission was, that they never even heard of the War of the Ring (67 years from Sauron's reappearance to the WR, but the main action was concentrated in a mere month)

: Evil cults could mean anything, and there have been plenty of cults that reasonable folks should call evil,not letting themselves to be blinded by fashionable cultural relativism: the Baal cults that burned babies, Aztec industrial scale human sacrifice spring immediately to mind.

: But, to my mind, this might not be the type of evil cult JRRT could be describing. There seem to be two poles in the response to evil: uncompromising opposition (Zoroastrian, the Northern heroic ethos so appealing to Tolkien) and a gentle acceptance that aims to redeem evil, or incorporate it into a greater good: there are hints that Illuvatar, from his high place, took this kind of view towards all of Melkor/Morgoth's efforts.

: On a human scale, Christianity aims to bring redemption, to "love the sinner while hating the sin." Thus Gandalf offers redemption to Saruman, Frodo to Wormtongue. (No one offers it to Orcs, an aspect Tolkien came to be very uncomfortable with). In this view, we are all "fallen," in need of redemption, none are free of the taint of evil and so shouldn't set ourselves above one another. Still, evil is evil, a taint.

: Another system accepts evil as part of existence without condemning it. The Chinese system we call Taoism depicts good and evil as aspects of one another, opposites that are constantly waxing and waning, giving rise to one another, each containing a small "seed" of one another, as the famous Yang-Yin symbol with the white dot in the black "teardrop" and black dot in the white corresponding area. By binding this darkness to light, this system seeks to keep both within limits, so that evil is tamed, does not grow out of hand: which means that Taoists are very poorly equipped to deal with radical evil of the Hitlerean, Maoist or Sauronic variety.

: If Alatar and Pallando were behind such a cult, a proto-Taoism, those committed to unyielding opposition to radical evil would see its acceptance of, or attempt to work with, redeem, or appreciate on its own terms a less developed evil as evil in itself.

: Let's say Alatar & Pallando became separated and Alatar spent some time with Sauron, staying behind when Sauron went west as a kind of "recruiting agent." Then Pallando found his lost twin, and while appalled by the evil he had fallen into, had so much love for his twin/partner (or whatever their relationship was, it was so close they are usually spoken of together) that he entered into a partnership, aiming to redeem Alatar, but, as it turned out, the influences went both ways, and something that would evolve to be Taoism was generated between them, off to the sides of the main nomad staging area in the distant east of Middle Earth.

: Any way, that's what I think could have happened to Alatar and Pallando.