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tolkiens legendarium - How were Gandalf, Elrond and Galadriel able to comunicate telepathically?


In The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012), when the company arrives in Rivendell, Gandalf is asked to attend a surprise reunion with Elrond, Galadriel and Saruman the White.


While Saruman opposes Gandalf's involvement with the Dwarves and goes on a speech minimizing the threat of the Necromancer, Gandalf and Galadriel start to discuss telepathically. A discussion that Elrond later joins.


How are they capable of this feat? Is it related to the fact that :




They are the bearers of the Three Elven rings of power




Answer



Elves are magical and Gandalf, as a Maiar, even more so.


From the Lord of The Rings, after the fall of Sauron:



Soon Celeborn and Galadriel and their folk would turn eastward, and so pass by the Redhorn Gate and down the Dimrill Stair to the Silverlode and to their own country. They had journeyed thus far by the west-ways, for they had much to speak of with Elrond and with Gandalf, and here they lingered still in converse with their friends. Often long after the hobbits were wrapped in sleep they would sit together under the stars, recalling the ages that were gone and all their joys and labours in the world, or holding council, concerning the days to come. If any wanderer had chanced to pass, little would he have seen or heard, and it would have seemed to him only that he saw grey figures, carved in stone, memorials of forgotten things now lost in unpeopled lands. For they did not move or speak with mouth, looking from mind to mind; and only their shining eyes stirred and kindled as their thoughts went to and fro.



So it's not an invention of the movies. But it indicates to me that the ability is not tied to the Rings, since:




  • Celeborn is mentioned explicitly in the beginning and not excluded from the part that describes telepathic communication

  • At this point, the One Ring is destroyed, and the Elven Rings have also lost their power


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