this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024
387 points (98.7% liked)
Lord of the memes
8108 readers
1150 users here now
The Lord of the rings memes communitiy on Lemmy. Share memes about Lord of the rings and be respectful.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I don't think the original books ever told anything about it.
Iirc the books themselves didn't say, but Tolkien's letters say something to the effect of the Istari only having vague memories of their time as Maia, with the exception of things that they were explicitly meant to remember, e.g. Olórin's memories of being sent back after his physical death while fighting Durin's Bane.
They know that they are, in our parlance, embodied angels or minor gods, but they don't remember a ton of where they came from
Do the balrogs have the same memory issues?
That's a very good question, and one that I don't know the answer to. I would guess no, as the point of the Istari losing their memories was to make them more like the people they were sent to save; it's not something about being embodied that made them lose their bodyless memories, it was part of their mission. The balrogs had no such mission