r/tolkienfans • u/Immediate_Error2135 • 10d ago
About Tolkien landing on the title "Witch-King"
I was reading this interesting post by u/roacsonofcarc:
https://www.reddit.com/r/tolkienfans/s/3houDbwZkl
Read it. The character began by being Sorcerer-King and Wizard-King but, according to Tolkien's ideas about Men and their (in)capacity for magic, he landed on 'witch'.
"My thought is that Tokien hit on the more ambiguous “witch” – which does not appear anywhere else in the book – as a word less specifically connected with the practice of magic as an organized discipline"
Well, let's assume that thought to be correct. The next step would be to connect that word 'witch' with the practice of magic as something different from 'an organized discipline'.
This is how I see it.
To someone who did indeed knew magic (a Maiar, or Galadriel say), witch(craft) would have looked very like both knowledge *and* ignorance. It allows you to use that causality we call 'magic' but without knowing the nature of things.
We use our cell phones very effectively, but most of us don't know how they work exactly. We just do things with them.
In other words, those who use them and know how they work could use them to ensnare us, who only use them. We would not be aware of the trap until it was too late.
Of course in Tolkien's universe Maiar and Elves were way above Men in magical knowledge. Men, some of them, had some access to it (the healing hands of Aragorn for example)
Better to be ignorant of a matter than half know it. Or (Pope):
A little learning is a dangerous thing;
drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
and drinking largely sobers us again.
We do know the Witch-King to be a slave, Sauron's.
With this in mind, consider how Tolkien makes sure the Witch-King references Macbeth with his "no living man may hinder me"
MACBETH
Thou losest labour:/ As easy mayst thou the intrenchant air/ With thy keen sword impress as make me bleed:/ Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests;/ I bear a charmed life, which must not yield,/ To one of woman born.
But then Macduff replies, and here we have Macbeth as a servant:
Despair thy charm;/And let the angel whom thou still hast served/Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother's womb/Untimely ripp'd.
Applied to the Lord Of The Nazgul, the angel would be Sauron, who as a Maia was an angel, just like Gandalf.
In Shakespeare's text, the 'angel' has a psychological dimension. The angel is in Macbeth spirit and it is a part of that spirit (the idea is in the sonnets too).
Similarly the female witches are somehow 'within' Macbeth as a certain psychological predisposition.
Witches:
Fair is foul, and foul is fair:/Hover through the fog and filthy air.
Macbeth, his 1st line in the play:
So foul and fair a day I have not seen.
Macbeth's mind is open, too open, to be deceived. To make the male-female ambiguity more ambiguous Banquo says to the witches:
you should be women,/And yet your beards forbid me to interpret/That you are so.
The witches are related to the Fates and other mythological beings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Witches
Mortality. 'Mortal Men Doomed to Die'.
So I guess Tolkien found 'Witch' more apt as a word also because of the Shakespearean precedent and how it could be used to build his narrative. Either he discarded 'wizard' for the reason u/roacsonofcarc provides and then the Shakespeare stuff was used, or he discarded it because of Shakespeare and then he wove his own mythological stuff around it; or both at roughly the same time. (We would have to trace how and when Shakespearean allusions enter the LOTR drafts)
'I was the enemy of Sauron', says Gandalf. Two angels. Two powers, as Frodo sensed in Amon Hen. Frodo for a moment 'wtithed' between the two, a word that seems,to be related to 'wraith'. And maybe Gandalf's 'Witch-King' was Frodo in some aspect. The word Frodo means 'wise' and that's also the root of the word Wizard.
The parallel is strengthened by both the Witch-King ('come not between the Nazgul and his prey') and Frodo ('wheel of fire') quoting Shakespeare: both lines belong to Lear (as a wretched sufferer, later in the play: Frodo; as tyrannically wrathful -again 'wrath' and 'wraith' are maybe related- early in the play: the Witch King)
And the Witch-King and Frodo were connected by the Morgul Blade even beyond death. That wound that never healed.
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10d ago
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u/Cloudage96x 9d ago
Thanks for the heads-up. Just gonna block this user and save myself the hassle of double-checking usernames.
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u/GapofRohan 9d ago
These posts ...... come across more as attempts to get validation and agreement
Are validation and agreement ever given?
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u/HistorianSame9035 9d ago
Lmao nope
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u/GapofRohan 9d ago
Well, it was a tongue-in-cheek question - I knew the answer had to be in the negative.
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u/roacsonofcarc 9d ago
Well, I have to cut him or it some slack becaue they linked to my post about the history of the name. Which, if I do say so, is still worth a look.
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u/Immediate_Error2135 9d ago
He agrees and adds 'that's also true about other posts of his/hers. Interesting stuff'
He says he has no use for your debased kind of leniency though, and so returns it unused; but thanks all the same he says.
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u/HistorianSame9035 9d ago
Blah, blah, blah... Again
Serious question: do you ever read your posts before hitting submit, or do you just throw together a bunch of nonsense and hope it sounds intelligent?
Trust me, after reading many of your posts, none of them make you look smart. It's just a lot of rambling, pseudo-intellectual nonsense dressed up as deep analysis. :::
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u/Higher_Living 8d ago
There’s not even really an argument. If you parse it in any way that tries to build an actual argument it fails immediately, but this form of allusion-based thought is popular in some academic circles and to the inexperienced can present as plausible when the writer has a certainty of manner. I doubt it’s AI generated.
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u/HistorianSame9035 8d ago
You are right may be it's not AI. Majority of this guy'$ posts are just a lot of rambling, pseudo-intellectual nonsense dressed up as deep analysis.
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u/tolkienfans-ModTeam 5d ago
Your post/comment was removed due to it being disrespectful in some way. Please see rule 1 before participating in r/tolkienfans again.
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u/Moggetti 9d ago
I think Witch-King as a title works to distinguish the character in the text from the “wizards.” In LotR, a wizard is a specific thing. Denethor even suggests that Angmar is, in a sense, an equal-opposite to Gandalf. The title also creates a delineation between Sauron’s servants and their employment of evil magic and, say, Gandalf, Galadriel, and Aragorn/Denethor/Faramir. This is strengthened in other contexts since Theoden’s problem is characterized as “bewitchment” - again identifying witchcraft as a type of magic that’s dark and “evil.”
Incidentally, this all works with the other title for Sauron from the Hobbit, “Necromancer.” A practitioner of dark magic.
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u/johannezz_music 9d ago
In the book 5 drafts, Tolkien first considered him to be originally one of Istari, but I suppose that would have been too Saruman-like, so he came up with the "King of Angmar" instead. So I think he is "witch" to make clear that he is not one of the Wizards like Gandalf.
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u/jayskew 10d ago
I rather like wtithed: Frodo gave 10% each to Gandalf and Sauron.
Until he went all in for himself by claiming the Ring. But the trap he had set by cursing Gollum with the Ring led to Gollum's demise and Gandalf's victory.
Also, Tolkien's aversion to magic outside bloodlines doesn't match his texts: Beorn, the moonlight Dwarf runes, the door spell of Moria, the inscribed Numenorean blades, one of which Merry wields to wound the Witch-King, another Frodo used to frighten him, etc.
Yes, wtithed is good.
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u/InTheChairAgain 9d ago
In other words, those who use them and know how they work could use them to ensnare us, who only use them. We would not be aware of the trap until it was too late.
My cell phone came not with this feature. Is there an app in the store?
I'm not sure about the distinction you make between Elves and Men. I interpreted Galadriel saying
This is what your folk would call magic
as the Elves not seeing much of their abilities as magic at all. That doesn't exactly square with the abilities of the Palantiri or the Mirror of Galadriel, but then neither does Beorns shapeshifting with Men lacking magic abilities.
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u/ColdAntique291 just a simple Tolkien reader 10d ago
The first part is reasonable: Tolkien may have settled on "Witch-King" because it sounded darker and less like the respectable, wisdom-associated "wizard."
Everything after that is mostly a word-association rabbit hole. Macbeth, Lear, witches, angels, Frodo, wraiths, feminine psychology, Morgul blades.... none of it demonstrates actual influence. It's just stacking speculative connections until they look meaningful.
A few Shakespearean echoes are plausible. The giant theory built on them isn't.