I've been musing on the question of uncloaking the Nazgul, and have a few questions.
What does it mean for a wraith to be cloaked? LOTRO presents lots of bad guys that are essentially physical entities animated by an incorporeal spirit. We see it with dark water things, grims of various sorts, wights (dead bodies animated by spirits), etc. We also see disembodied spirits acting independent of any physical entity, like the spirits from the paths of the dead. Are the Nazgul like the former when they are cloaked, and like the later when they are decloaked? Or is a wraith something more than one of these spirits?
What about other entities from the lore that lose their physical body (or whatever we choose to call it)? Gandalf springs to mind. Was he decloaked after his battle with the Balrog? Of that event, he relates "darkness took me, and I strayed out of thought and time, and I wandered far roads that I will not tell". (I'm not sure what sense of "tell" that is, meaning "to relate" or "to count".) Was he recloaked when he relates that "naked I was sent back for a brief time, until my task is done. ... There I lay, staring upward while the stars wheeled over, and each day was as long as a life-age of the earth. Faint to my ears came the gathered rumor of all lands..." When Gwaihir found him, he was reported to be "as light as a swan's feather", and "the sun shines through [him]". He had to be carried to Lothlorien to be healed in body. As I side note, it seems that Gandalf got a new cloak when he was sent back, not just the same old cloak with a new color. If the Nazgul are like Gandalf as he relates his experience, it might take some time after uncloaking to reach full strength again.
Then there is Sauron. The text tells us that "Isildur Elendil's son cut the Ring from Sauron's hand and took it for his own. Then Sauron was vanquished and his spirit fled and was hidden for long years, until his shadow took shape again in Mirkwood." As I understand this Sauron had a physical hand, from which the ring was taken, and when he fled, it was only his spirit, no body. This sounds rather like the uncloaking of Sauron. It is not at all clear to me what it means when it says his shadow took shape again in Mirkwood. Does this mean that he regained a corporeal form, or merely that his spirit somehow because less disfuse, and took a more well-defined form? Is this the recloaking of Sauron?
I also wonder about how the (sort of) undying Nazgul wraiths relate to the issue of the "Gift of Illuvatar", (death). My understanding of this lore is not good, but as I understand things, the Nazgul never died, and thus seem to have side-stepped this gift. I wonder if this is also be the state of other wraiths like Frodo, had he not been healed. I wonder if this un-dead wraith state is what allows them to inhabit and direct physical stuff like cloaks and boots. I also wonder if this ability is not easily acquired, which is why we see things like the cloak as "a dark black bundle left behind", seeming "to move and sway this way and that" when the Hobbits were crossing the Brandywine. To me, this seems like a less adept control of a physical cloak by an unmaterial wraith.
Let me attempt to answer some of the questions I've raised according to my limited understanding. I think that the Nazgul (and other wraiths), are not really wearing the cloaks, rather they are animating the cloaks, just like the entity we know as Gandalf, is not wearing the body we call Gandalf, but it is animated and manifested by him. When the Nazgul are decloaked, it means that their contact with and ability to animate those cloaks is cut from them and lost. It's kind of like what we see when the ring is destroyed. "As when death smites the swollen brooding thing that inhabits their crawling hill and holds them all in sway, ants will wander witless and purposeless and then feebly die, so the creatures of Sauron, orc or troll or beast spell-enslaved, ran hither and thither mindless". I think this is what we see with the Nazgul's horses, the Nazgul control over them is lost and "the black horses were filled with madness, and leaping forward in terror they bore their riders into the rushing flood." Glorfindel cut the mind-control of the wraiths over their horses, their cloaks, and we presume their boots, although the historian forgot to mention them.
We also get a hint of this control of wraiths over things in the barrow downs, including Merry, imparting it's memories to him. One wonders if necromancy is a particular form of such control, practiced and studied by Sauron during his time in Dol Guldur.
Of course, we see other reports of control over beings or physical objects. Caradhras controlled the weather over the Redhorn gate. Gandalf animated the waters at the ford. Galadriel exercises much control over Lothlorien. Even Sam seems to have the ability to control his rope, but one suspects this is a level of control imparted to the rope by Galadriel, not an ability of Sam's. One must not forget Sauron's control over the mists of darkness, and the wind from the south that broke that control. And then there's Tom Bombadil, who seems to have some level of control over things, "he is master", even though "all things growing or living in the land belong each to themselves."
Again, I apologize if these questions have already been addressed, and I've missed the discussion of them.
Addendum: Since I wrote the above, I've thought about the report of Theoden's death at the hand of the chief Nazgul. It reports that he was a "shape, black-mantled, huge and threatening. A crown of steel he bore, but between rim and robe naught was there to see, save only a deadly gleam of eyes". Is nothing there, or is there something, but it is invisible? There is a gleam of eyes, but are there physical eyes? "A great black mace he wielded." Later we read that "Merry's sword had stabbed him from behind, shearing through the black mantel, and passing up beneath the hauberk had pierced the sinew behind his mighty knee." This sounds very much like all my arguments above are wrong, and their actually is a physical body of some sort for the Nazgul. But it's different; it's invisible. Later we read of that blow, "No other blade, not though mightier hands had wielded it, would have dealt that foe a wound so bitter, cleaving the undead flesh, breaking the spell that knit his unseen sinews to his will." This almost seems suggest that it's the undead, invisible, but still corporeal body of the Nazgul that is knit together by some spell and controlled by his will. So perhaps, the cloak is in fact worn by this invisible body. But that body is knit together and controlled by the will of the Nazgul by some spell. Strange.
The Nazgul also gives a description of the process what he intended for Eowyn. "He will not slay thee ... He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shrivelled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye." This sounds more like wraithification to a state I had envisioned for the Nazgul themselves.
This is all very strange and hard to understand. Perhaps it was also not completely clear to the historians who wrote and edited the text. After all, we do not have any first hand account of a Nazgul about what it was like for him to put on his clothes or to have them taken off. We can only speculate.
What does it mean for a wraith to be cloaked? LOTRO presents lots of bad guys that are essentially physical entities animated by an incorporeal spirit. We see it with dark water things, grims of various sorts, wights (dead bodies animated by spirits), etc. We also see disembodied spirits acting independent of any physical entity, like the spirits from the paths of the dead. Are the Nazgul like the former when they are cloaked, and like the later when they are decloaked? Or is a wraith something more than one of these spirits?
What about other entities from the lore that lose their physical body (or whatever we choose to call it)? Gandalf springs to mind. Was he decloaked after his battle with the Balrog? Of that event, he relates "darkness took me, and I strayed out of thought and time, and I wandered far roads that I will not tell". (I'm not sure what sense of "tell" that is, meaning "to relate" or "to count".) Was he recloaked when he relates that "naked I was sent back for a brief time, until my task is done. ... There I lay, staring upward while the stars wheeled over, and each day was as long as a life-age of the earth. Faint to my ears came the gathered rumor of all lands..." When Gwaihir found him, he was reported to be "as light as a swan's feather", and "the sun shines through [him]". He had to be carried to Lothlorien to be healed in body. As I side note, it seems that Gandalf got a new cloak when he was sent back, not just the same old cloak with a new color. If the Nazgul are like Gandalf as he relates his experience, it might take some time after uncloaking to reach full strength again.
Then there is Sauron. The text tells us that "Isildur Elendil's son cut the Ring from Sauron's hand and took it for his own. Then Sauron was vanquished and his spirit fled and was hidden for long years, until his shadow took shape again in Mirkwood." As I understand this Sauron had a physical hand, from which the ring was taken, and when he fled, it was only his spirit, no body. This sounds rather like the uncloaking of Sauron. It is not at all clear to me what it means when it says his shadow took shape again in Mirkwood. Does this mean that he regained a corporeal form, or merely that his spirit somehow because less disfuse, and took a more well-defined form? Is this the recloaking of Sauron?
I also wonder about how the (sort of) undying Nazgul wraiths relate to the issue of the "Gift of Illuvatar", (death). My understanding of this lore is not good, but as I understand things, the Nazgul never died, and thus seem to have side-stepped this gift. I wonder if this is also be the state of other wraiths like Frodo, had he not been healed. I wonder if this un-dead wraith state is what allows them to inhabit and direct physical stuff like cloaks and boots. I also wonder if this ability is not easily acquired, which is why we see things like the cloak as "a dark black bundle left behind", seeming "to move and sway this way and that" when the Hobbits were crossing the Brandywine. To me, this seems like a less adept control of a physical cloak by an unmaterial wraith.
Let me attempt to answer some of the questions I've raised according to my limited understanding. I think that the Nazgul (and other wraiths), are not really wearing the cloaks, rather they are animating the cloaks, just like the entity we know as Gandalf, is not wearing the body we call Gandalf, but it is animated and manifested by him. When the Nazgul are decloaked, it means that their contact with and ability to animate those cloaks is cut from them and lost. It's kind of like what we see when the ring is destroyed. "As when death smites the swollen brooding thing that inhabits their crawling hill and holds them all in sway, ants will wander witless and purposeless and then feebly die, so the creatures of Sauron, orc or troll or beast spell-enslaved, ran hither and thither mindless". I think this is what we see with the Nazgul's horses, the Nazgul control over them is lost and "the black horses were filled with madness, and leaping forward in terror they bore their riders into the rushing flood." Glorfindel cut the mind-control of the wraiths over their horses, their cloaks, and we presume their boots, although the historian forgot to mention them.
We also get a hint of this control of wraiths over things in the barrow downs, including Merry, imparting it's memories to him. One wonders if necromancy is a particular form of such control, practiced and studied by Sauron during his time in Dol Guldur.
Of course, we see other reports of control over beings or physical objects. Caradhras controlled the weather over the Redhorn gate. Gandalf animated the waters at the ford. Galadriel exercises much control over Lothlorien. Even Sam seems to have the ability to control his rope, but one suspects this is a level of control imparted to the rope by Galadriel, not an ability of Sam's. One must not forget Sauron's control over the mists of darkness, and the wind from the south that broke that control. And then there's Tom Bombadil, who seems to have some level of control over things, "he is master", even though "all things growing or living in the land belong each to themselves."
Again, I apologize if these questions have already been addressed, and I've missed the discussion of them.
Addendum: Since I wrote the above, I've thought about the report of Theoden's death at the hand of the chief Nazgul. It reports that he was a "shape, black-mantled, huge and threatening. A crown of steel he bore, but between rim and robe naught was there to see, save only a deadly gleam of eyes". Is nothing there, or is there something, but it is invisible? There is a gleam of eyes, but are there physical eyes? "A great black mace he wielded." Later we read that "Merry's sword had stabbed him from behind, shearing through the black mantel, and passing up beneath the hauberk had pierced the sinew behind his mighty knee." This sounds very much like all my arguments above are wrong, and their actually is a physical body of some sort for the Nazgul. But it's different; it's invisible. Later we read of that blow, "No other blade, not though mightier hands had wielded it, would have dealt that foe a wound so bitter, cleaving the undead flesh, breaking the spell that knit his unseen sinews to his will." This almost seems suggest that it's the undead, invisible, but still corporeal body of the Nazgul that is knit together by some spell and controlled by his will. So perhaps, the cloak is in fact worn by this invisible body. But that body is knit together and controlled by the will of the Nazgul by some spell. Strange.
The Nazgul also gives a description of the process what he intended for Eowyn. "He will not slay thee ... He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shrivelled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye." This sounds more like wraithification to a state I had envisioned for the Nazgul themselves.
This is all very strange and hard to understand. Perhaps it was also not completely clear to the historians who wrote and edited the text. After all, we do not have any first hand account of a Nazgul about what it was like for him to put on his clothes or to have them taken off. We can only speculate.
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