Magic in Harry Potter vs. Lord of the Rings

Music written and generously provided by Paul Jernberg. Find out more about his work as a composer here: http://pauljernberg.com

The subject of this video may seem irrelevant to you if you aren’t heavily invested in nerdlore, but I promise you, this has very real implications for how you view the world and how you operate your life within it, so can I request that you just bear with me and give this one a chance even if you’re not interested in Harry Potter or the Lord of the Rings.

When I first encountered the stories of the Lord of the Rings, I found myself perplexed by a character trait that was uncommon in the fantasy genre. I couldn’t figure out why Gandalf would sit on his staff and do nothing when danger was upon him and his company.

And even when he did decide to help out, instead of shooting lightning or balls of fire or other uncanny elemental forces at his adversaries, he would just start swingin’ a sword around or worse, use his magical staff like a club, which would be like opting to use throw a rifle at the bad guys rather than shoot them with it.

I found this fact persistently frustrating to watch and what’s worse, nobody else seemed to care. If I was with him trapped in the mines of Moria and a host of goblins and trolls had cornered us, I would have been like, OK Mr. Wizard, you’ve allowed the plot tension to build up enough, you can go ahead and diffuse it with your abilities to control elemental nature now.

But they don’t act like that. They assume that they’re going to have to hack and slash their way out of there. Why doesn’t Gandalf use his magic?

By contrast, when we encounter wizards in the Harry Potter series, they use magic for everything. They can’t even wash the dishes without casting some charm on a brush and soap to do it for them. Which I can sympathize with. If you can conjure supernatural powers to make things easier for yourself, you probably would, like all the time.

But two things happened in my life that helped me come to peace with Gandalf’s apparent absent mindedness. First, I adopted the same religion that JRR Tolkien adhered to, Catholicism, and as a direct consequence of the first event, I started to read in my spare time and learn why modern conceptions of magic need a lot of correction.