What was the deal with the blue wizards?

[Li.]

I heard a rumour that they went into the east and taught naughty magics to the people who lived there. Then the people who lived in the east buddied up with Sauron but the magic tricks from the blue wizards were absolutely useless and they still got completely bodied by Aragorn's ghost army.

Thoughts?

[Eldy Dunami]

I'm fond of the fragmentary version of the tale, published in The Peoples of the Middle-earth, in which the Blue Wizards (who weren't Blue, but that's a topic for another post) arrive in the Second Age and are actually successful in their mission at strengthening the peoples of Rhûn to resist Sauron. I think this meshes nicely with the line in Letter 211 about the Blue Wizards founding "secret cults and 'magic' traditions", which you allude to.

My personal headcanon, though, is that the Blue Wizards were actually ninja, their "magic traditions" were the foundations of ninjutsu, and there was a slow-burning conflict between Sauron and people with abilities from the Naruto universe at the same time as his wars against the Dúnedain in the west.

[Li.]

I keep having to remind myself that this is an old fanled form of media and I cannot 'like' things.

I love your headcanon and I would be 100% okay with Sauron being the new "big bad" in Boruto.

Real talk though, how much do we really know about the east? It has been far too long since I cracked any of my Tolkien books open and I'm tongue-in-cheeky trying to dredge up the old favourites of the lore forums.

[Eldy Dunami]

Unfortunately, there's not a ton to say about the East. The Akallabêth has a rather nice poetic description of Númenórean voyages there in the Second Age ("they came even into the inner seas, and sailed about Middle-earth and glimpsed from their high prows the Gates of Morning in the East"), though it also implies they only made permanent settlements on "the western shores" of Middle-earth.

We know there was stuff happening in Rhûn throughout all relevant time periods, though most of it wasn't known to the Eldarin and Dúnedain loremasters whose work provides the ostensible basis for the Appendices and much of the rest of the legendarium. The Wainriders were, for a time, enemies of the men of Khand, but they eventually made peace and launched a coordinated attack against Gondor together. I'm pretty sure either the Wainriders or the Balchoth--a later, presumably related nomadic people who moved from Rhûn into Rhovanion--were motivated to migrate by wars in the East, but I can't recall where that's stated offhand, so don't quote me.

Speaking of Khand, Michael Martinez wrote an interesting article a number of years (fake edit: 10, damn) ago, based on the observation (previously made by David Salo) that Variag is an archaic synonym of Varangian, not (as many people, my younger self included, assume) an ethnonym.

[Troelsfo]

In addition to the minimal bits and pieces about the blue wizards in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (letter #211 to Rhona Baere, October 1958) and in The Peoples of Middle-earth mentioned by @Eldy Dunami, there is also a bit in the section on the Istari in Unfinished Tales, where we find two very brief passages from two different source texts:

Of the Blue little was known in the West, and they had no names save Ithryn Luin ‘the Blue Wizards’; for they passed into the East with Curunír, but they never returned, and whether they remained in the East, pursuing there the purposes for which they were sent; or perished; or as some hold were ensnared by Sauron and became his servants, is not now known.

Unfinished Tales, p. 504

Whereas in the essay on the Istari it is said that the two who passed into the East had no names save Ithryn Luin ‘the Blue Wizards’ (meaning of course that they had no names in the West of Middle-earth), here they are named, as Alatar and Pallando, and are associated with Oromë, though no hint is given of the reason for this relationship. It might be (though this is the merest guess) that Oromë of all the Valar had the greatest knowledge of the further parts of Middle-earth, and that the Blue Wizards were destined to journey in those regions and to remain there.

Unfinished Tales. p. 509-10

And that, I think, summarises just about all that is known about the Ithryn Luin ...

[Eldy Dunami]

One thing to note about the letter Troels mentioned ties in with my previous aside about the so-called Blue Wizards not actually being blue. From the Letters, with my emphasis in bold:

I have not named the colours, because I do not know them. I doubt if they had distinctive colours. Distinction was only required in the case of the three who remained in the relatively small area of the North-west.... I really do not know anything clearly about the other two – since they do not concern the history of the N.W. I think they went as emissaries to distant regions, East and South, far out of Númenórean range: missionaries to 'enemy-occupied' lands, as it were. What success they had I do not know; but I fear that they failed, as Saruman did, though doubtless in different ways; and I suspect they were founders or beginners of secret cults and 'magic' traditions that outlasted the fall of Sauron.

To back up for a moment: most people's conception of the "Blue Wizards" is based on the chapter "The Istari" in UT. The bulk of that chapter consists of what Christopher Tolkien referred to as "the essay on the Istari", which is the fullest account of the Five Wizards and assigns them all colors. This text was written in 1954. UT also mentions "jottings" in which the two wizards are named Alatar and Pallando (cf. Troels' second block quote). These were rough and disjointed, but none of the quotes provided by Christopher ascribe colors to Alatar and Pallando. It's unclear if this pre or postdated the longer essay. Letter 211, which explicitly rejects the idea of the other two wizards having distinctive colors, is from 1958. In the much later fragments from HoMe XII, in which the wizards are named Morinehtar and Rómestámo (or Rómen(s)tar), they again have no color association.

There is, of course, very little that can be set with certainty about the two missing wizards beyond them going East, but when looking at all the available evidence, their blueness appears to be something Tolkien only considered in the earliest stages, rejecting after only a few years (1954 to 1958). Ever since a friend pointed this out to me I have tried to be more careful in my wording (hence the parenthetical disclaimer in my first post), though "Blue Wizards" sounds much nicer than "other two wizards", so I haven't always stuck to this.

[Troelsfo]

... my previous aside about the so-called Blue Wizards not actually being blue.[/color]...

While it is correct that J.R.R. Tolkien does not use the colour in the text of “The Five Wizards” in The Peoples of Middle-earth, I would say that Christopher Tolkien's discussion and indexing using “the blue wizards” repeatedly in that volume is very clear evidence that he, at least, fully accepted the two last wizards as being blue.

As Christopher Tolkien has pointed out, one should not take the absence of some element in later texts as indicative of it being abandoned. His father would often bring back elements that had, by oversight, for stylistic reasons, or for some other reason, been left out of the texts for a period, simply because that element had not been abandoned, but merely not described.

The letters, while a gold-mine of information, also often sees Tolkien writing off the top of his mind, giving answers that are, strictly speaking, not consistent with his actual texts and intentions (whether published or unpublished), so this, too, is not a solid indication. See also Hammond and Scull's discussion in The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion (in discussion of 258 (I: 271). Saruman the White).

For me, and barring other evidence yet to be produced, Christopher Tolkien's obvious acceptance of the concept of the Ithryn Luin – or Blue Wizards – is sufficient evidence of his father's intention that the last two wizards should be seen as blue.

[Eldy Dunami]

Christopher Tolkien's discussion and indexing using “the blue wizards” repeatedly in that volume

I'm looking at The Peoples of Middle-earth right now, and there is only a single occurrence of the phrase "Blue Wizards", as part of a comment by Christopher describing the narrative from UT (p. 385 in my edition):

Conceivably he [JRRT] was thinking of the sketched-out narrative of the choosing of the Istari at a council of the Valar (Unfinished Tales p. 393), in which the Two Wizards (or 'the Blue Wizards', Ithryn Luin) were named Alatar and Pallando.

Note that the first term Christopher uses is "Two Wizards", with the words "the Blue Wizards" relegated to parentheses. He does the same thing in the index:

Wizards 228, 245, 311, 360, 392; the Five Wizards 384-5; the Two Wizards (Blue Wizards) 384-5; Wise Men 228. See Istari.

Unless the index in my copy of PoMe is incomplete and Christopher does, in fact, use the term elsewhere in that volume, I don't see this as indicative of "obvious acceptance" of anything except the fact that "Blue Wizards" is a widely-recognized term due to its use in the best-known narrative about the Istari.

ETA: "Blue Wizards" and "Ithryn Luin" are both listed in the index as well, but the former merely directs the reader to the main entry for "Wizards", and the latter points only to the editorial comment on p. 385 (not even the entire discussion of the Two Wizards on pp. 384-5, though noting such a fine distinction feels a bit like peering at tea leaves).

[Troelsfo]

Christopher Tolkien's discussion and indexing using “the blue wizards” repeatedly in that volume

I'm looking at The Peoples of Middle-earth right now, and there is only a single occurrence of the phrase "Blue Wizards", as part of a comment by Christopher describing the narrative from UT (p. 385 in my edition):

In addition to the use, you refer to, “Alatar”, “Morinehtar”, “Pallando”, and “Rómestámo” are all identified simply as “One of the Blue Wizards” in the index, which shows Christopher Tolkien adopting the term and using it repeatedly.