The Istari, Part II

Just came across an enlightening passage in Bradley J. Birzer’s excellent J. R. R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth, concerning the wizards, or Istari. Enlightening to me because it adds a couple of points to what I thought was a well-researched blog post last week.

Here’s the quote:

… Tolkien seemed genuinely puzzled over the names, whereabouts, and fate of the two unnamed wizards (members of the Istari) who arrived at roughly the same time as Gandalf, Saruman, and Radagast. Known only as the “Blue Wizards,” they simply fade from the legendarium, never to be seen by any of the characters who populate Middle-earth. Tolkien had predicted that either Sauron corrupted them to evil, or they had become the founders of Eastern mystery religions and gnostic cults. (pg. 28)


Wow! That last sentence is packed with potentiality. It kinda leads to my intuitive thesis that Tolkien accounts for every philosophic and theologic ism under the sun.

An immediate footnote adds more detail to our mysterious Blue Wizards:

… Tolkien offers yet another possibility concerning the Blue Wizards in his writings published posthumously. They might be, he argued, agitators against Sauron in the East of Mordor, perhaps “weakening and disarraying the forces of the East.” The names he gave them were “Morinehtar and Rómestámo,” meaning “Darkness-slayer and East-helper.”

So now there are four names for these two mysterious “Blue Wizards” floating along the periphery of Tolkienna:

Alatar
Pallando
Morinehtar
Rómestámo

Hey, forgive me this wild-goose chase. It’s an inexplicable childhood obsession!