I like Ax's notion as well. There's something fundamentally different about Gandalf after he is sent back that is alluded to in his conversation with Gwaihir:
"A burden you have been," he answered, "but not so now. Light as a swan's feather in my claw you are. The Sun shines through you. Indeed I do not think you need me any more: were I to let you fall, you would float upon the wind."
I've always taken this to mean that Gandalf is now "housed" in some form of body that is closer to the "raiment" the Valar and Ainur wore to express a physical presence, than it is to actual flesh and bone.
scirroco wrote:I had always understood that the Istari were limited and restricted by their mortal bodies, but had thought it was kind of an unfortunate side-effect. I hadn't previously realised how deliberately the imposition of those bodies was done. Quite, I don't know, Machiavellian of the Valar I would almost say...
The Valar, Machiavellian???
No way.
I think the Valar had finally learned that the "workings" of the Children of Ilúvatar were beyond their ken. They could love Elves and Men; they could revere them and care about them. But they could not really understand their hearts and minds, nor their worldly experience as incarnate beings of Arda (although I think Ulmo came closer than any to really "getting" what the
Eruhini were all about). I don't think it was a matter of hindering the powers of the Istari because they were not trusted to follow the "right path"; I think it was more that the Valar really could not discern what the "right paths" for The Children might look like. To discover those paths, to be really open to understanding the needs and desires and "mindset" of those actually walking them (or potentially capable of walking them), the Istari, I believe, had to be given the opportunity to fully experience the journey alongside them.
No, I don't think the Valar were Machiavellian........but I do think they were (as they always seem to be) naive in matters of the
Eruhini. I wonder if they were capable of even seeing the risks inherent in the Istari taking on the qualities of corporeal beings: risks that were just as real as those posed by sending Maiar in their "natural state". Would Saruman have fallen if he had not become enamoured with "worldly" comforts and possessions and knowledge, and the idea of securing these for himself as a physically experiential being? Would Radagast have become an "absent-minded professor" of biology if he hadn't felt such an affinity for the physical world he was now, for all intents and purposes, a part of? Gandalf, it would seem, was the only one who truly entered into and maintained an intimate fellowship with the "common folk", suffering their pain, rejoicing in their triumphs, feeling their sorrows.........walking the hard path alongside them, and rejecting the monk-like detachment of Radagast, and the worldly covetousness of Saruman.
Each of the Maiar chosen to take on the errand within Middle-earth had a distinct nature, as did all of The Powers of Arda; each had an innate "personality" and a set of natural inclinations that were just as much a part of their being as the unique genetic legacies of Elves and Men. I find it ironic that Saruman, whose "angelic" nature was obviously not drawn towards Melkor in the beginning, fell after being seduced by the "little" temporal effects of knowledge and power. His fall, I think, is a human one, not an angelic one, reflecting the perils facing all The Children walking upon Arda Marred.