Although Tolkien never mentions gunpowder, descriptions in
Lord of the Rings suggest its existence in Middle-earth.
To place this discussion in context, we should be aware that
as early as 1267,
Roger Bacon knew how to make gunpowder and
was familiar with its explosive effects. It was another sixty years before gunpowder weapons began to appear in European military arsenals, but they spread quickly. The point is that in Europe during the Middle Ages, gunpowder was known, through few knew how to make it.
Gandalf’s fireworks bespeak of gunpowder: fireworks are an early use of the mixture, and Tolkien’s description of them by Bilbo in
The Hobbit and as narrator in
Fellowship of the Ring are excellent descriptions of “modern” fireworks that we see today, little changed except in computer-controlled electronic ignition from those Tolkien saw as a child, and that in turn basically the same as
Chinese fireworks eight or nine centuries ago.
Now Gandalf was also the bearer of Narya, the Ring of Fire, and he displayed some significant fire-related abilities. In
The Hobbit, he lit pinecones that he used to attack and frighten the wolves of the Misty Mountains in “Out of the Frying-Pan into the Fire”. These burned with various colors, as might fireworks treated with various chemical compounds. (In fact,
all flame colors are caused by the chemicals present in them.) In
Fellowship of the Ring, “The Ring Goes South”, he creates “green and blue flame” (like many copper compounds) when he lights the wet tinder in storm in the Redhorn Pass; and later fighting the werewolves, he used a “blazing brand” that “flared with a sudden white radiance like lightning” that spread quickly to many trees (much like magnesium). I’m not saying that any of these similarities to real world chemistry indicate that Tolkien intended that Gandalf was a practicing chemist; but Tolkien was familiar with fireworks and pyrotechnics (he certainly saw – and experienced! – a lot of chemical pyrotechnics during World War I); and at Oxford University, he could easily ask any number of first-class chemists how such ignitions might be surreptitiously accomplished and what they would look like. Maybe all this was due to Gandalf’s being a Maia, or maybe it was due to Narya, or maybe Tolkien did use real chemistry as his starting point: any or all of these could be true.
What Aragorn called “Devilry of Saruman … the fire of Orthanc” and described to Théoden as “a blasting fire” (
Two Towers, “Helm’s Deep”) was never said to have a sulphurous smell, something most people notice about gunpowder. (I don’t recall that Tolkien ever described anything in
Lord of the Rings with a “sulphurous” odor, not even the poisonous fumes of Orodruin or Gorgoroth, where sulphur should be expected around an active volcano.) But while Gandalf uses his fire-“magic” for constructive purposes – even delight in watching fireworks is constructive – Saruman uses his for evil, for blasting and killing. In
Two Towers, “Flotsam and Jetsam”, Pippin described
machinery producing “fires and foul fumes”, killing Beechbone the Ent who “got caught in a spray of some liquid fire” that sounds reminiscent of
Greek fire.
But even if these are examples of better living through chemistry, I suppose the inhabitants of Middle-earth would have just called them all “wizardry”.
Speaking of machinery, we should consider, for example, the Doors of Durin at the Westgate of Moria: they opened on a word. We would call that “magic,” though Galadriel told Sam, “I do not understand clearly what [mortals] mean [by ‘magic’]; and they seem also to use the same word of the deceits of the Enemy.” We could accomplish opening the Doors of Durin with computer-activation, as long as the power supply did not fail nor the machinery break down.
Perhaps, as
Nerwen postulates, what we are looking at are examples of
Clark’s Third Law,
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.