I’ve received an e-mail from a young lady expressing her parents’ concerns about “magic” in The Lord of the Rings. Here’s the text of the e-mail; my response follows:

I am taking your Lord of the Rings class at Homeschool Connections and my parents asked a question to me that I wasn’t sure how to answer. They asked what is the difference between Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling and Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien because they both use magic and they both have wizards that use magic that are both represented as good. When in reality magic is considered evil. I’m sorry if my question isn’t too clear.

My response:
In order to answer your question fully, I would need to expend much more time than I have available. I would suggest that you and your parents purchase my three books on Tolkien’s work. In brief, “magic” in Tolkien’s work is really miracle, i.e. supernatural power. Such power is miraculous in the usual sense of the word when enacted by one of the virtuous characters but is demonic when enacted by the evil characters. Other so-called “magic”, such as that to be found in the ability of hobbits to “disappear”, i.e. make themselves scarce, is not really magic at all but the natural power inherent in the creatures themselves, such as a deer’s ability to “disappear” before we see it because of its superior sense of smell and hearing.
As I state in my course, Tolkien was a lifelong practising Catholic who insisted that “The Lord of the Rings is a fundamentally religious and Catholic work”. Any conscientious study of the work reveals this wonderful Catholic dimension.