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
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
it’s not something about being embodied that made them lose their bodyless memories
Isn’t it though? I get that Tolkien may have specified that the Istari not having their memories aided in them being more like the people they were sent to save, but…
Perhaps it is a property of being a body that you can not have the properties that the spirits do. A body is a finite.
IIRC having watched a lot of Nerd of the Rings and whatnot, a lot of the depictions of Balrogs have them as sort of fiery angels instead of the gory beasts we have in the Peter Jackson movies. Now if Balrogs are a sort of angelic but demonic things, then I’d go with your assumption, but if they were the Peter Jackson beast-like, then I think mine could work. In the sense that if being embodied means you just can’t retain all the knowledge you have in the spirit realm and the body affects your spirit as well, then having that sort of raging demonic beasts would make sense as even if they were higher beings while disembodied, while being embodied they’d just feel the rage and fury of the body and wouldn’t recall anything about being a Maia before eventually being disembodied again.
That was probably very incoherent. It was influenced by the thoughts I had when I used to do a lot of nitrous.
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
Isn’t it though? I get that Tolkien may have specified that the Istari not having their memories aided in them being more like the people they were sent to save, but…
Perhaps it is a property of being a body that you can not have the properties that the spirits do. A body is a finite.
IIRC having watched a lot of Nerd of the Rings and whatnot, a lot of the depictions of Balrogs have them as sort of fiery angels instead of the gory beasts we have in the Peter Jackson movies. Now if Balrogs are a sort of angelic but demonic things, then I’d go with your assumption, but if they were the Peter Jackson beast-like, then I think mine could work. In the sense that if being embodied means you just can’t retain all the knowledge you have in the spirit realm and the body affects your spirit as well, then having that sort of raging demonic beasts would make sense as even if they were higher beings while disembodied, while being embodied they’d just feel the rage and fury of the body and wouldn’t recall anything about being a Maia before eventually being disembodied again.
That was probably very incoherent. It was influenced by the thoughts I had when I used to do a lot of nitrous.