Are wizards immortal?
 

Are wizards immortal?
And how are they born? By a wizard mother and a wizard father?

For more information on the Wizards (or Istari as they are also called) I'd recomend you read Unfinished Tales. To make a long story brief, the Wizards were Maiar (have you read The Silmarillion? if not, Maiar are somewhat like what we know as angels... not exactly, but to keep it simple) that were sent to Middle Earth to help fight Sauron. While in Middle Earth they were still very powerful, yet their 'souls' were inside human bodies and so their power was rather limited.

They came to Middle Earth from Valinor, so they weren't quite born from Wizard parents... although I don't know about the bodies they inhabited.

Gandalf & the other wizards were brought to Middle-earth by the Great Stork of Manwe & left under the cabbages in Bilbo's garden. When they grew up they went to live in the magical land of Novices & Newcomers, where they can be found to this very day.

Yes they are immortal in life span, as long as they stick to thier Mission. Saruman didn't, so when Wormtongue slit his throat he didn't re-incarnate wheras Gandalf did.

So that's where Cabbage Patch Kids come from.

When I first read the title of this thread I thought the question was 'Are Wizards Immoral?' - which would have been a much more interesting topic, particularly in terms of Gandalf's 'torture' of Gollum in the Elven King's dungeon...

I would be interested in a thread like that as well. Probably in Books though. Get it done Dave. I got your back! References to Sauran and Saruman! Those pesky Blue wizards! That animal loving brown wizard. Only one stepped up.

Very interesting indeed...

Wizards are Maiar, lesser Valar, (the powers of the world). They were sent to Middle-Earth in an incarnate form, which was weaker, and forbidden to deviate from their path of defying Sauron, who in ancient origin was one of their order.

(Annoyingly, Gandalf was the only one that did his job properly!! Only one out of five, tut tut, Powers of the World.)

Anyway, they were originally Ainur and helped create the World, their father is Iluvatar (god) I guess.

They are immortal because they are basically lesser gods in human form. But Saruman, after his incarnate body was killed, looked to the West for pardon, and was apparently destroyed completely!

I believe that he was not destroyed for I'm not sure the Ainur could be destroyed as we can, but maybe he was rejected from Valinor and then cast into "the void" (although that's rather akin to destruction) or perhaps as he was unable to take physical form and whatnot he wasn't quite destroyed but he was unable to interact with the world anymore... so for all intents and purposes, he's as good as gone.

But that's just speculation, I'm sure someone more knowledgeable than myself will soon adress that point much better.

I agree with Farael:

You know the idea of 'wizard parents' isn't so silly as it sounds, because after all in 'Queer Lodgings' in 'The Hobbit' Gandalf tells Beorn that Radagast is his cousin. I mean, that's a pretty clear statement indicating family ties, isn't it?

I mean, if he had said 'my brother' then that could easily be interpreted as 'my comrade' or something like that, but 'cousin' can't! Or, of course, Gandalf was lieing.

I think that's simply down to the fact that when TH was written it had nothing to do with the Legendarium, so Tolkien was free to create Wizards with family ties. It was only when the world of TH was drawn into the world of the Legendarium by means of LotR (very unsuccessfully as some of us would argue) that these kinds of problems arose.

Gandalf was hiding the truth, this is not in its self a lie, he was keeping things simple, for simple folk. He could hardly say: Radagast is a emmisary of Valinor like myself, saying: He is my kin is would be also the same as he is my cousin, and are not some of the Valar aligned in the mind of Iluvatar as brethren.