[Pitchwife]

First, about the Frazer quote and a bit off topic, I suspect animals (at least domesticated ones) don't need to speculate about gods or spirits because they have us; and no doubt they quite often think that the gods must be crazy.

Second,

Originally Posted by TheMisfortuneTeller

I agree completely with this usage of the more comprehensive term "Animist" in preference to the parochial and sectarian manifestations of received religious rituals that many people unconsciously assume when they -- loosely -- use the term "religious."

Well, I don't, mainly because if you say all religions are animistic, you make the words animist and religious synonyms, and thus one of them redundant - unless you mean that there are also forms of animism that are not religious; and it seems you do mean that when you say:

Originally Posted by TheMisfortuneTeller

Therein lies the distinction between "Magic" and "Religion" -- both forms of Animism, but differing in their advertised ways of dealing with the unseen Big-Animal or host-of-little-unseen-animals

But only a few lines above you said:

Originally Posted by TheMisfortuneTeller

Professor Tolkien opted -- in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings -- for the creation of a "Magical" world instead of an Animist or "religious" one.

- again using animist=religious as synonymous and opposed to magical.
See why I prefer to use the term in a narrow sense?

Third, no need for the bolding. We can all read and recognize a distinction without having it shoved in our faces.

Originally Posted by Inziladun

Going by those parameters, it doesn't appear that LOTR fits the bill for "Magical" or "Religious".

Which, if I understood him right, is more or less what TMT was originally saying before he entangled himself in the intricacies of terminology.

About the eagles - I think you may be right that they were sent more for the Númenóreans benefit than the Valar's. Remember the Three Houses of the Edain originally were dissenters from Morgoth worship (as per Adanel's Tale in the Athrabeth); the Valar may have feared that their descendants might relapse if left to themselves (and surprise, they did!), so they felt a need to remind the Númenóreans "We're watching you." And I think it's no coincidence that the last warning omen from the West in the days of Ar-Pharazôn was a cloud of eagles - "The eagles of the Lords of the West are at hand!", no longer as witnesses, but in wrath.