…sarcastically of course… :smack:
Um, I own and have read and re-read the Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and Lost Tales. The question about the Silmarils was meant to be rhetorical.
I thought the whole point of invisibility was that you don’t see it? 
But can you identify Makar and Meassa yet? 
The Silmarils are just the biggest McGuffins ever in the history of the worlds!
I don’t have my books handy, but there is a passage in LOTR at the departure from Lothlorien where Pippin* asks “are these magic cloaks”? The reply is that the cloaks were woven by Galadriel and her women, and they have no magic except that which inherent in the materials they were made of, and contain the best of the fields, and the forests, and the valleys, etc.
A truly beautify passage, and maybe somebody out there can dig up the exact quote. Anyway, it seems to indicate very clearly that the magic of the Elves is the magic of the good things in nature.
*or Merry, but it’s such a dumb question, I assume it’s Pippin.
Good quote, Cadfael, exactly my point. Yet the elven cloaks have great “power” to hide or camoflage the wearer.
Even in THE HOBBIT, one of the opening lines is that hobbits don’t have “magic” about them, except the normal every-day magic that allows them to move quietly through the woods, hide without being seen, etc. That, to me, crystalizes Tolkien’s attitude towards magic – it’s “natural.”
Magic in the Silmarillion is different from magic in LotR, and more explicit. I can’t help but wonder if that’s one reason the JRR himself never published it. I do like the bit – very much – where Luthien sings to Morgoth, and the singing puts him to sleep, to rest from the cares of all the evil he was doing. I think that’s brilliant.
Yeah, Tolkien’s idea of magic, especially Elven magic, is very different from D&D type spells and other fantasy. It’s much more tightly integrated with the world than it is a supernatural force.