Regarding Uncloaked Wraiths

TThurston

Member
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.
 
Last edited:
First, I don't think it's necessary to understand everything literally. Leave us some mystery.

A few things, though I don't claim great understanding of this stuff.

Gandalf is a Maia with an immortal spirit. But his relationship to his body is different than is described when other Ainur take bodily form. They are said to put on bodies like raiment. The Istari, however, are sent as physical beings. So when Gandalf dies his spirit returns West (Mandos?) and his body remains on the mountaintop. The point is, there is still a body, and his spirit is sent back to it. Personally, I believe his relationship to his body is different after his return, more like other Maiar who take on bodies, but that's just me. But that would explain his telling Legolas and Gimli that they have no weapons that can harm him. Similarly, when Saruman is killed, his spirit is carried off by the wind, but his body remains. The bodies are real.

The Ringwraiths, on the other hand, are humans who were enslaved by rings of power given them by Sauron, and then by the Ruling Ring. They become wraiths. They are some form of undead. Their bodies disappeared over time - I think of Bilbo saying he felt like butter spread over too much bread, and imagine the wraiths lives being spread over thousands of years. They exist in the spirit world and need help to interact with the physical world. But they do not belong in the spirit world - their presence there is jarring. Comparing them to Gandalf makes no sense; they are completely different kinds of beings dealing with two different states - Gandalf with death, and the wraiths with being undead. Also, when Eowyn kills the Witch King, his spirit departs, but Eowyn falls forward onto nothing - there is no body. They are unlike the High Elves who live at once in both worlds. Their bodies are removed from the physical world and cannot return.

One correction - Isildur cuts the finger with the Ring off of Sauron's corpse - he had been killed by Gil-Galad and Elendil. He had already been vanquished before the Ring was taken from him. His body was dead, but being Ainur he had "put on" the body like a piece of clothing. When his spirit gathers itself again to power over the next couple of thousand years, he is no longer able to take pleasing form, and so can no longer use that kind of deception (looking fair and being foul). But I think he still takes on a physical form in order to act in the physical world. Again, this is not like the Ringwraiths, who had started out as human and not immortal.

I'm not sure what you mean by wraiths in the barrow. The wight is not the spirit of the person buried there but an evil spirit who has inhabited the remains of that person, and has nothing to do with the dream-memory Merry reports. The memory belongs to the person buried there, a memory of his death.

The spirits of the Oathbreakers are like traditional ghosts - unable to rest because of unfinished business on earth. After they fulfill their oath, they are free to leave the earth for wherever human spirits go after death.

I don't think it helps to group so many different types of beings together because of one shared trait. There are nature spirits like Caradhras or Goldberry, there are human souls, there are wraiths and wights and Wizards, and I don't think we can expect them all to act the same way.
 
Last edited:
I'm not sure what you mean by wraiths in the barrow. The wight is not the spirit of the person buried there but an evil spirit who has inhabited the remains of that person, and has nothing to do with the dream-memory Merry reports. The memory belongs to the person buried there, a memory of his death.


[/QUOTE]

Hi Rachel,

It seems a common imagination for readers to imagine the barrow-wights as somehow inhabiting the remains of the dead. However, I don't think this image is supported by the evidence.

The barrow-wights do not resemble skeletons or corpses or zombies.

“Trembling he (Frodo) looked up, in time to see a tall dark figure like a shadow against the stars…He thought there were two eyes, very cold though lit with a pale light that seemed to come from some remote distance.”

“Then a grip stronger and colder than iron seized him (Frodo). The icy touch froze his bones, and he remembered no more.”

“Round the corner a long arm was groping, walking on its fingers towards Sam, who was lying nearest, and towards the hilt of the sword that lay upon him.”

Frodo does not percieve the barrow-wights as skeletons. He sees a long arm groping round the corner, not the bones of an arm and hand.

The bodies buried in the barrows have long since turned to skeletons. Tom Bombadil says that the barrow-wights arrived and 'stirred the bones', as they looked for gold and jewels. He does not say that they animated the bones. Anyway, 'a tall dark figure like a shadow against the stars' does not seem like the description of a skeleton. The stars would shine through parts of a skeleton in a way they would not through a body (however shadowy).

I don't think there is any evidence that the barrow-wights inhabit the bodies or skeletons of the people buried in the barrows. There is some evidence that they do not.

My own speculation is that the wights are some form of wraith. They are perhaps semi-incorporeal. They were possibly wraithified by the Witch King (if we know he had one Morgul knife, why couldn't he have had others? Aragorn identifies the Morgul knife. This also implies it is neit.her a new nor a one-off thing.) Also, Gorbag's comments seem to suggest that he has seen or heard of the Nazgul wraithifying people.

However, the barrow-wights are certainly mysterious. What are they? Where do they come from? Why do they live in barrows? How bound to barrows are they? (The poem in 'The Adventures of Tom Bombadil would seem to suggest that they are not? Not that I rate that very high as an authoritative source. (Not because it wasn't published by JRRT. It was! But because it was meant to be a Hobbit poem about Tom so might contain muddled legends rather than accurate information.)

It is surprising that 'What is Tom Bombadil?' is such a longstanding interest of Tolkien fans, but 'What are the Barrow-wights?' is not.
 
I guess I wrote my original questions above based on my limited experience with Lore, primarily from reading The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and playing LOTRO. Add to that a bit of sketchy lore I've gleaned from reading part of The Silmarillion at least 40 years ago, and some things I've picked up here.

I'm still not convinced that the barrow wights are something different from the shades of the men buried there. The text says "a shadow came out of dark places far away, and the bones were stirred in the mounds. Barrow-wights walked in the hollow places..." Perhaps the shadow simply roused the souls of men who were interred there, and they (the roused souls) reanimated their bones and became wights. I I think that's what I understood when I first read the text, and have yet to be convinced I was wrong. A shadow (singular) becoming multiple wights (plural) seems less plausible to me.

Likewise, when I first read the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, I did not encounter anything to suggest to me that Gandalf was other than a man with unusual skills and a particular mission, who belonged to an order of wizards. Think of a monk or an itinerant missionary - Saint Patrick's mission to Ireland. Gandalf has a long life, but so does Aragorn, and so do others like Bilbo and Gollum. And then there are elves. Who knows, perhaps his long life derives from his training as a wizard, his initiation into his order, or perhaps his staff, a bit like the long life granted by Bilbo's ring. We also read that the Nazgul had originally been been granted rings of power which extended their lives, but made them wraiths. Hence, based on the limited lore available to me, it might not be too far off to compare Gandalf experience after fighting the Balrog to the Nazgul or to Sauron.

Perhaps it might be useful or interesting to explore the Lord of the Rings in the light of what was published and widely available during Tolkien's lifetime besides (or rather than) in the light of everything else that we often consider. After all, the title of this endeavor is "Exploring the Lord of the Rings", not "Exploring Everything Tolkien Ever Wrote (or might have written or said)".
 
Regarding the use of other writings, I agree it is a valid perspective to consider the work in the context of what had been published at the time.

When we get to deeper questions like ‘What are the barrow-wights?’ we are likely to be unable to derive fully satisfactory answers without looking further afield, firstly to the stories and story elements alluded to in the published text. The relevant one here is the story of Beren and Luthien. From the text we know that Luthien’s second death resulted in her alone being truly lost to the Elves. The reason for this is the separate fates of Elves and Men. This knowledge makes it difficult to conclude that the shadow could rouse the spirits of the dead Men, as their spirits should have already left the circles of the world. While the Men of the Dwimmorberg are restless spirits, they were cursed in life remain until their oath was fulfilled. So, these spirits never needed rousing, as they remained restless.

Equally, without evidence of the Men of Cardolan practicing mummification, or similar, then as Flammifer has identified, the bodies can’t be more than skeletons, if even that.

In short, it’s easy to develop an initial impression that is hard to shake, but careful reading of the text might reveal evidence that we’ve previously missed that speaks against that first idea.
 
All that said, I would also say that the intention of the text is to be unsettling and creepy.

If the image of a rotting skeletal hand is what is evoked in your mind, then hold onto it. Without context, your welcomed by the author to fill in the gaps. It’s four people trapped in tombs being stalked by something disturbing that invokes the idea of death. Your instinct is your guide where the text intentionally lacks. And a skeletal hand doesn’t preclude the reading of it as an evil spirit alone from being invalid. If to you that feels like a resurrected corpse, enjoy that as you read it. It may not stack up with other texts but I say enjoy the ride. All the rides are in the same theme park and you can easily walk from one to the next, but you get to also enjoy each ride for what it is.

It’s your reading, make it creepy.
 
Last edited:
Flammifer, I maintain that Gorbag's comment is a figure of speech. We might say of someone that he'd as soon bite your head off as look at you. We do not mean that we ever saw him bite anyone's head off, or that he has ever done such a thing. That's the form Gorbag uses, and if he's creepier than we would be, well, he's an orc and he's talking about a Nazgul.

As for the barrow wights, I was sure I'd read something about embalming but haven't been able to find anything. I might have been thinking of Faramir telling Frodo about the later kings of Gondor, and the energy they spent preparing their tombs, no longer thinking of the future, marrrying and making sure there were heirs to the throne. It sounded Egyptian to me, so I guess my mind went to embalming. But I don't believe the shadow that passed roused the souls buried in the barrows - don't the souls of Men leave the world? I suppose the evil spirits that inhabited the barrows might have some sort of vague form such as Frodo describes.

But that the Nazgul might have made wraiths with weapons like the one he used on Frodo, I think that is possible.
 
Back
Top