Re: questionable conception

Mike Schilling <mscottschilling@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>> David DeLaney <dbd@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>> On Wed, 23 Apr 2008 18:17:45 GMT, Dorothy J Heydt
>>> <djheydt@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>>> With Gandalf, it's a bit different.  In the first place, he is
>>>> not of humble origins.  He is a Maia, a spirit of the second
>>>> rank, created _ex nihilo_ by Eru Iluvatar.  For him to be
>>>> incarnated as something that looked rather like a Man, and sent to
>>>> Middle-Earth to aid its inhabitants and oppose Sauron, must have
>>>> been something of a let-down.
>>>
>>> Oh, I don't know; we might think of ... the world, gah, lost the
>>> word for it for a moment ... Arda as the equivalent of an RPPvP
>>> server. He did level up at least once during the series, after all.
>>
>> Yes, from Grey to White.  But I'm talking about his initial
>> change from a bodiliess spirit dweling in peace in Aman, to a
>> carnate being that has to eat and drink and sleep and is addicted
>> to nicotine.

Well, yeah, there's always a learning period for the new user interface.

But - Aman? Do you mean from the stuff that was around before Arda was
made,
or am I missing something about Aman containing unbodied spirits as well
as
the incarnated Vala and Maia? I thought they all took on form and shape
when
they entered the world originally? (Yeah, okay, Melkor and Sauron, and
Saruman, all take tem****ary spirit form on being defeated ... and, okay,
Sauron came back from that state at least twice. But I didn't think the
Maia were wandering around bodiless in Aman until sent on specific
missions?)

>Why bodiless?  The elves didn't become bodiless when they lived in the 
>West (they kept having children, for one thing.) 

Dorothy's referring to _before_ Arda was created (or I thought so before
rereading what she wrote and noticing the 'Aman', anyway). Several fairly
im****tant concepts didn't exist before then; if I remember right, spatial
directions were one of them (though there had to be time Beforehand,
because
things were still happening in order). It's hard to have bodies if there's
literally no place for them to exist in.

The Elves that went West were still inside the walls of the world; even
after
the Earth was bent, that didn't remove Aman from Arda as such, it just
made
getting there from Middle-Earth much more difficult. So they kept their
bodies
there, could make new ones, etc.

[This part of my reply has been made irrelevant, but hey.]

Dave
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