Magic in Middle-earth

[littlemanpoet]

Hey hey I've found a thread to bring back from the (really)dead. [img]smilies/tongue.gif[/img]

Anyway, I was intrigued while reading about Faramir's gift of the walking staves to Sam and Frodo when they left Henneth Annun. He says,

I have no fitting gifts to give you at our parting...but take these staves. They may be of service to those who walk or climb in the wild. The men of the White Mountains use them; though these have been cut down to your height and newly shod. They are made of the fair tree lebethron, beloved of the woodwrights of Gondor,k and a virtue has been set upon them of finding and returning. May that virtue not wholly fail under the Shadow into which you go!

Okay. Here's the thing. It has been argued by some that the Edain/Atani -that is, humans, do not have magical ability of any kind, at least not of GOOD magic. But here, Faramir talks about a virtue of wooden staves. Now, is the virtue in the lebethron, or is it in what human woodwrights have done to the wood? Still, how is it the woodwrights even KNOW about this virtue in the wood? The upshot is that clearly Tolkien's humans DID have magical ability of some sort. My guess is, that since Tolkien's world was basically ours in a long forgotten past, whatever magic humans may be fantasized (or believed) to have now, they had then. Right?

I decided to bring this particular thread back up because some of the previous posts on it seem to kinda inform this topic. Such as Melkorian "virtue(?)" in all things of Arda.

As to the interesting topic of whether the Mouth of Sauron was thousands of years old or just over one hundred, I don't have much to add except that weren't black numenoreans still around in Umbar even by the end of the Third Age?

As to the whole semantic debate regarding wizard versus sorcerer, I think it useful to remember that Tolkien was translating from the common tongue, and recorded for us "wizard" as being a complimentary term, of Nordic origin, compared to "sorcerer/ess" being a pejorative term, of Latinate origin. It seems Tolkien pretty much saved his latinates for evil.

So, what about human magic?