The Istari

Right after finishing my first (and only) reading of The Lord of the Rings back in the summer of 1981, I jumped into The Silmarillion. And hit a speed bump. As a matter of fact, it properly derailed me. I recall reading Tolkien’s theogony on the beach at Lavalette, thinking, “Where are the hobbits?” Yes, I was a bit too young for that work.

But my insane desire for more Tolkien only intensified. Never did it cross my mind to re-read the Rings epic. No. Instead, I went to my uncle’s shelves and read through a slim volume pairing of Tolkien’s peripheral works, Farmer Giles of Ham and Smith of Wootton Major. Since neither novella had any bearing on or foundation in Middle-earth, I quickly lost interest.

At the time, the only way to expand and fill-in gaps was to consult two Tolkien dictionaries. My uncle had one, The Tolkien Companion, by J. E. A. Tyler. My best friend at the time had the other, The Complete Guide to Middle-Earth, by Robert Foster. So I borrowed both and wound up reading them, hour after hour after hour off and on over the next year or so. Not cover to cover, for they were encyclopedias. But I would pick any entry at random, and very quickly a chain of reading/researching would sprout. For hours.

I could write thousands of words on what I learned from these two books (and I probably will, in some form or another here at the Hopper). But one item in particular fascinated me to no end: the Istari, the wizards of Middle-earth. During the Council of Elrond, at the beginning of book II of The Fellowship of the Ring, we learn that there are five wizards – of which Gandalf and Saruman are the chief – come to Middle-earth in the middle of the Third Age, to aid Elves and Men in their struggle against Sauron.

What really, really got me was Tolkien’s deliberate vagueness behind the idea of the Istari. I had several questions, and all went unanswered. Why five? (Somewheres it’s written “at least five” …) Gandalf and Saruman play prominent roles in LotR, and Radagast the Brown is mentioned, but who were the other two? Were they mentioned in the LotR? Why or why not? Who sent them? What were they, exactly?

Now, the answers to two of those questions may have been answered back then. The wizards may have been sent by the Valar, the gods of Tolkien’s world, and they themselves might have been a lesser degree of angelic being, Maiar. Even when he supplies answers (or the answers are supplied to us readers via the encyclopedias), we have those troubling words may and might. That element of uncertainty was maddening to me.

But the most infuriating thing for me were those two unnamed Istari. I vividly recall spending hours on the couch at my grandparent’s house thumbing through The Tolkien Companion in a fruitless search for their identity. Never mind what their mission was or what they did, just their mere names would suffice.

Never did find out. Never forgot it over the years.

Then, about two months ago, I got bit by the Tolkien bug again, coming a few months after reading The Children of Hurin. I found Tyler’s Complete Companion in the library, but made an astonishing discovery. It seems in the years since I first read the master, a whole cottage industry has arisen making his heirs multigazillionaires.

When I was a kid, there was only The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion to draw from. Now, Christopher Tolkien has gone through so much of his father’s notes that nearly a dozen volumes of notes and essays have been published. I have now the 492-page paperback Unfinished Tales, and there is a ten-volume Histories of Middle-earth that I have yet to investigate. However, it seems that both Tyler and Foster have utilized this vast body of newly-released source material to expand both their encyclopedias.

And now I have my answer to the Unknown and Unnamed Wizards.

I first found it in Tyler’s updated encyclopedia, but the answer is also found in the Unfinished Tales.

The two wizards I searched for three decades ago were called the Blue Wizards. There names are Alatar and Pallando, and “are said” to have traveled far into the East with Saruman. But unlike the chief of the Istari, they never returned to play a role in the War of the Ring.

Still lots of unanswered questions that may never be answered, but it’s just personal proof to me that, with perseverance and patience, a preponderance of puzzling pablum will pass away into partial yet placid pellucidity.