BIBLICAL THEMES IN THE SILMARILLION: II. THE GODS OF MIDDLE-EARTH
(SPOILER ALERT! This blog summarizes the chapter "Valaquenta" from The Silmarillion.)
The Story
When Eru Iluvatar made the Song of the Holy Ones real, he gave the Ainur, the Holy Ones, the task of turning chaos into finished work. The Ainur who came to Arda, the earth, where the Children of Iluvatar, Elves and Men, would live, comprised greater spirits and lesser spirits. The Elves would call the greater spirits Valar, the Powers of the world; the lesser spirits, Maiar. Men, as far as they even knew of the Ainur, called them 'gods.' From ignorance Men often worshiped them instead of Eru Iluvatar.
The Valar consisted of seven great male spirits and seven great female spirits. The ones who will matter in Middle-Earth's story are:
Manwe, the power of sky and air, the king of Arda. His servants are eagles.
Varda, Manwe's consort. She makes the stars. Her the Elves revere as Elbereth, Star-Kindler.
Ulmo, the power of the ocean.
Aule, the power of metal and gem, the great craftsman and the maker of the Dwarves.
Yavanna, Aule's consort, the power of vegetation. She made the Ents.
Orome, the power of the hunt. He will find the Elves at the Water of Awakening.
Mandos, the power of judgment. He keeps in his dim halls the dead of Elves and Men.
Lorien, the power of dreams.
Tulkas, the power of combat. He is Morgoth's deadliest foe.
Nienna, the power of mourning. Her tears can revive the dead.
In Valinor, the Blessed Realm in the West, Manwe and Varda Elbereth live atop the tallest of the earth's mountains. Thence they can survey all of Arda at once. To their snow-white mansion the Elves send prayers to Elbereth, who gave them what they love best, the stars.
Most of the other Valar have mansions in the city of the gods amid Valinor's plains. There, Manwe calls the other Valar to council. Mandos lives in gloomy halls in the North. Lorien lives in twilit gardens in Valinor's West. Ulmo lives in a mansion in the waters at the world's roots. All of the gods can wear human forms, male or female as the Vala's nature determines, but need no body for life or the use of their gifts.
The Maiar sang with the Valar in the Great Music and came with them to Arda. The Maiar, too, can wear human forms, and live in Valinor's bliss. Just a few of the Maiar enter Middle-Earth's tales by name. Of the Maiar the most important are:
Melian, a power of song, the companion of nightingales. She left her service in Lorien's dream-gardens to sing with her companions in a darkened world; and
Olorin, another of Lorien's servants and Nienna's pupil. He walked among the Elves as one of them and gave them strength. Someday he would come to Middle-Earth in the guise of an elderly wizard dressed in gray and leaning on a staff.
Such are the good Ainur. Now we come to the evil Ainur:
Melkor, known to the Elves as Morgoth, the Dark Enemy, was the greatest Ainu. He shared the gifts of all of the Valar, but was not counted among them. From arrogance he learned contempt of all but himself. From knowledge without wisdom he learned to control others with lies. From rage over his inability to control Iluvatar's Fire and Light, Melkor turned to darkness. First in the Timeless Halls, then in Arda, he seduced many Maiar to his service. Of these the most important were:
Sauron, one of Aule's servants. Him, Morgoth deceived with promises of power.
the Valaraukar, the God-Killers, powers of whip and flame. Later times would call them Balrogs.
Sauron, maybe the greatest Maia, was at first less evil than his master in that Sauron was evil's servant, not its cause. When the Valar cast Morgoth into the outer darkness at the end of Middle-Earth's First Age, Sauron refused to beg their forgiveness for his rebellion against them. He hid in Middle-Earth's East, where he tried to become a master of evil in Morgoth's image. There, Sauron would make rings...
The Parallels
The Ainur are to Iluvatar what the angels are to God. Still, the Ainur are different in many ways from the Bible's angels.
Tolkien at first took the Ainur from gods of the mythologies -- Celtic, Finnish, Greek, and Norse -- that he knew and loved. The Ainur's origin in pagan mythologies accounts for some of their features that contradict the nature of angels in Jewish and Christian Scriptures. For one thing, Scripture never speaks of angels as male and female. Angels get the pronoun "he," but most theologians teach that angels are sexless. Jesus Himself seems to say so: "For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels in heaven" (Matthew 22:30; Mark 12:25; Luke 20:34-36).
For another thing, the Ainur live in earthly mansions, not, like the Bible's angels, in heaven with God. The Ainur's mansions share much with Olympus of the Greek gods, or Asgard of the Norse gods. The Halls of Mandos share much with the Greek Hades and the Norse Valhalla.
Some of the Valar are clear analogs of Greek and Roman gods:
Manwe fills the role of Zeus or Jupiter, though Varda Elbereth, his spouse, is not Hera or Juno.
Ulmo is like Poseidon or Neptune;
Aule, like Hephaistos or Vulcan;
Yavanna, like Demeter or Ceres. (Demeter, though, was never married to Hephaistos, and there is no analog to Persephone in Yavanna's life).
Mandos is like Hades or Pluto;
Tulkas, like Ares or Mars.
Still, two of Tolkien's Valar share much with two of the Bible's angels:
Manwe, as leader of the forces at war with Morgoth, fills the role of the archangel Michael in fighting Satan for the salvation of God's children (Daniel 10:13,21; 12:1; Jude 1:9; Revelation 12:7-8).
Mandos, when, as we shall see, he speaks a prophecy of doom upon the rebel Elves of Valinor, fills the role of the archangel Gabriel as the announcer of God's will (Daniel 8:16-26; 9:20-27; Luke 1:11-20, 26-38).
The division of Ainur into Valar and Maiar reflects a Catholic teaching, shared by some Jews and non-Catholic Christians, that God created angels in a hierarchy of orders: cherubim, seraphim, thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, archangels, and angels. The concept of a hierarchy of angels comes mainly from Romans 8:38-39 and Colossians 1:16-17. Others, though, see finding and arranging a hierarchy of angels in these verses as reading into them more than the Spirit and the apostle put there.
To Tolkien, a devout Roman Catholic, Varda Elbereth, as the Queen of Heaven, was one of several of his female characters who draw on the Catholic concept of Blessed Mary Ever-Virgin Mother of God. As Mary's analog, Varda, from a Catholic viewpoint, is an appropriate person to hear prayers. Twice, in The Lord of the Rings, Elves or Elf-Friends pray to her as the Starmaker. The first time takes place in Rivendell, just after Frodo reaches it, when the Elvish singers sing the hymn A Elbereth Gilthoniel. (The song is absent from the movie.) The second time takes place in Cirith Ungol, the Spider's Pass, when Frodo calls on Elbereth as he uses the Phial of Galadriel against Shelob.
The Maia Olorin as one who walked among the Children of Iluvatar in their own guise to comfort and rescue them goes along with Biblical angels' walking among humans in human guise. (See Hebrews 13:2 and the account to which this verse refers, Genesis 18:1-15.) Angels as comforters and rescuers appear in Genesis 16:7-13; Judges 6:11-24; 13:2-22; Matthew 4:11; Luke 22:43; and Acts 5:19-20; 12:7-10. Olorin, in The Lord of the Rings, fills the role of comforter and rescuer as he walks among Elves and Men as the Wizard Gandalf.
Tolkien's scholars are unsure of which of his characters from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Ring are Maiar. Sauron and the Balrog certainly are, as are Gandalf, Saruman, Radagast, and the other two Wizards who appear at the Grey Havens in Middle Earth early in the Third Age. Many see Tom Bombadil of The Fellowship of the Ring as a free Maia like Melian. Goldberry, Tom's wife, though, is almost surely a Dark Elf. (I'll talk of Dark Elves in a later chapter.)
Tolkien pictures the Valar and Maiar as finishing the work of creation that Iluvatar starts. The concept of lesser gods finishing the work of the One True God is extra-Biblical, as the Scriptural account of creation shows God alone starting and finishing creation with ten Words in seven Days (Genesis 1:1-2:3). Although some Jewish and Christian writings ascribe a role in creation to angels, and speak of creation as an ongoing process, the role of the Valar and Maiar in creation in the present edition of The Silmarillion goes back to an original, clearly pagan account of creation.
Still, Tolkien says in The Silmarillion that an Ainu, even one as great as Melkor or Manwe, cannot truly create anything, and especially cannot give a body sentience. These limitations on Morgoth's power have important implications for the origins of the evil "speaking peoples" of Middle-Earth. Morgoth could not have created intelligent species on his own. Statements in The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings make it clear that Morgoth made Orcs by perverting the species of Elves, and Trolls by perverting the species of Ents.
I discussed the analogy between Morgoth and Satan in the first chapter. Tolkien divides Satan's roles between two masters of evil, Morgoth and Sauron. Morgoth fills the role of the Arch-Rebel against God, the one whose lies caused the Fall. Morgoth, through his lies, causes the fall of Maiar, Elves, and Men (though, again, as Tolkien carefully points out, the fall of Man never occurs onstage in his mythology).
Sauron, in the First Age, is just Morgoth's aide in carrying out his plans for dominion of Middle-Earth. In the Second and Third Ages, when Sauron is on his own, he becomes a tempter like Satan in his New Testament appearances. Only when Sauron's lies have borne fruit, yielding him power, does he show himself in his true colors as one who wants absolute dominion over all others. I'll say more of Sauron's role as it develops in later chapters.
Dark Matter
Tolkien at first saw the Valar as the Maiar's parents. He kept Melian's marriage to the Elf Thingol and bearing of the half-Maia, half-Elven Luthien Tinuviel, to the very end.
Gods bearing gods and mating with lesser intelligences is a pagan, not a Judeo-Christian, concept. Some, as I said in the last chapter, believe that angels are the sons of God who mated with the daughters of men to father the men of renown, as told in Genesis 6:1-2, 4. Those who believe so, I ask, "Why would angels, who are deathless ministering spirits of flaming fire (Psalm 104:1-5), be able to reproduce, or do so with man, whom God formed from the dust of the ground (Genesis 2:7)?" Oddly enough, though, the account of creation in Genesis 1-2 says nothing of man's bringing forth seed after his own kind.
Genesis 18:1-5 tells of Abraham's hospitality to three men who tell him of his son Isaac's coming birth. The traditional Jewish teaching on this account is that the three men whom Abraham entertained were the L-RD and the two angels who went on to Sodom (Genesis 18:16-22; 19:1-3). Many Christians see the L-RD in this account as the preincarnate Christ in a theophany, or divine appearance. Some, though, try to make the three persons in this account the three persons of the Trinity, though there are clear problems with making them so.
In an article called "The Istari" (Istari is an Elvish term for Wizards) in Unfinished Tales, Tolkien reveals the names that the five Wizards had as Maiar in Valinor. Gandalf, of course, was Olorin; Saruman, Curumo; Radagast, Aiwendil; and the two unnamed Wizards, Alatar and Pallando. Alatar and Pallando never show up in The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. When they first came to Middle-Earth, Saruman, who would later fall under Sauron's sway, took them on a trip to the East from which they never returned.
The Dragons formed by Morgoth are a problem. As their behavior in The Silmarillion and The Hobbit makes clear, Dragons are speaking, independently acting intelligences. The simplest explanation of their origin is that a Dragon is a fallen Maia's spirit in a magically empowered body. If so, Smaug, the Dragon of The Hobbit, is also a Maia.
In The Book of Lost Tales, Tolkien spoke of the Maiar as the Valar's children. In the published Silmarillion, though, there is no place for Children of the Valar. The Maiar are assumed to be spirits created by Iluvatar before the Great Music. Thus, we must assume that the following characters from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings sang in the Great Music: Gandalf, Smaug, Sauron, Tom Bombadil, Radagast, Saruman, and the Balrog.
(In later chapters I'll deal with the problems of the spider Ungoliant and of Manwe's race of talking Eagles.)
The Story
When Eru Iluvatar made the Song of the Holy Ones real, he gave the Ainur, the Holy Ones, the task of turning chaos into finished work. The Ainur who came to Arda, the earth, where the Children of Iluvatar, Elves and Men, would live, comprised greater spirits and lesser spirits. The Elves would call the greater spirits Valar, the Powers of the world; the lesser spirits, Maiar. Men, as far as they even knew of the Ainur, called them 'gods.' From ignorance Men often worshiped them instead of Eru Iluvatar.
The Valar consisted of seven great male spirits and seven great female spirits. The ones who will matter in Middle-Earth's story are:
Manwe, the power of sky and air, the king of Arda. His servants are eagles.
Varda, Manwe's consort. She makes the stars. Her the Elves revere as Elbereth, Star-Kindler.
Ulmo, the power of the ocean.
Aule, the power of metal and gem, the great craftsman and the maker of the Dwarves.
Yavanna, Aule's consort, the power of vegetation. She made the Ents.
Orome, the power of the hunt. He will find the Elves at the Water of Awakening.
Mandos, the power of judgment. He keeps in his dim halls the dead of Elves and Men.
Lorien, the power of dreams.
Tulkas, the power of combat. He is Morgoth's deadliest foe.
Nienna, the power of mourning. Her tears can revive the dead.
In Valinor, the Blessed Realm in the West, Manwe and Varda Elbereth live atop the tallest of the earth's mountains. Thence they can survey all of Arda at once. To their snow-white mansion the Elves send prayers to Elbereth, who gave them what they love best, the stars.
Most of the other Valar have mansions in the city of the gods amid Valinor's plains. There, Manwe calls the other Valar to council. Mandos lives in gloomy halls in the North. Lorien lives in twilit gardens in Valinor's West. Ulmo lives in a mansion in the waters at the world's roots. All of the gods can wear human forms, male or female as the Vala's nature determines, but need no body for life or the use of their gifts.
The Maiar sang with the Valar in the Great Music and came with them to Arda. The Maiar, too, can wear human forms, and live in Valinor's bliss. Just a few of the Maiar enter Middle-Earth's tales by name. Of the Maiar the most important are:
Melian, a power of song, the companion of nightingales. She left her service in Lorien's dream-gardens to sing with her companions in a darkened world; and
Olorin, another of Lorien's servants and Nienna's pupil. He walked among the Elves as one of them and gave them strength. Someday he would come to Middle-Earth in the guise of an elderly wizard dressed in gray and leaning on a staff.
Such are the good Ainur. Now we come to the evil Ainur:
Melkor, known to the Elves as Morgoth, the Dark Enemy, was the greatest Ainu. He shared the gifts of all of the Valar, but was not counted among them. From arrogance he learned contempt of all but himself. From knowledge without wisdom he learned to control others with lies. From rage over his inability to control Iluvatar's Fire and Light, Melkor turned to darkness. First in the Timeless Halls, then in Arda, he seduced many Maiar to his service. Of these the most important were:
Sauron, one of Aule's servants. Him, Morgoth deceived with promises of power.
the Valaraukar, the God-Killers, powers of whip and flame. Later times would call them Balrogs.
Sauron, maybe the greatest Maia, was at first less evil than his master in that Sauron was evil's servant, not its cause. When the Valar cast Morgoth into the outer darkness at the end of Middle-Earth's First Age, Sauron refused to beg their forgiveness for his rebellion against them. He hid in Middle-Earth's East, where he tried to become a master of evil in Morgoth's image. There, Sauron would make rings...
The Parallels
The Ainur are to Iluvatar what the angels are to God. Still, the Ainur are different in many ways from the Bible's angels.
Tolkien at first took the Ainur from gods of the mythologies -- Celtic, Finnish, Greek, and Norse -- that he knew and loved. The Ainur's origin in pagan mythologies accounts for some of their features that contradict the nature of angels in Jewish and Christian Scriptures. For one thing, Scripture never speaks of angels as male and female. Angels get the pronoun "he," but most theologians teach that angels are sexless. Jesus Himself seems to say so: "For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels in heaven" (Matthew 22:30; Mark 12:25; Luke 20:34-36).
For another thing, the Ainur live in earthly mansions, not, like the Bible's angels, in heaven with God. The Ainur's mansions share much with Olympus of the Greek gods, or Asgard of the Norse gods. The Halls of Mandos share much with the Greek Hades and the Norse Valhalla.
Some of the Valar are clear analogs of Greek and Roman gods:
Manwe fills the role of Zeus or Jupiter, though Varda Elbereth, his spouse, is not Hera or Juno.
Ulmo is like Poseidon or Neptune;
Aule, like Hephaistos or Vulcan;
Yavanna, like Demeter or Ceres. (Demeter, though, was never married to Hephaistos, and there is no analog to Persephone in Yavanna's life).
Mandos is like Hades or Pluto;
Tulkas, like Ares or Mars.
Still, two of Tolkien's Valar share much with two of the Bible's angels:
Manwe, as leader of the forces at war with Morgoth, fills the role of the archangel Michael in fighting Satan for the salvation of God's children (Daniel 10:13,21; 12:1; Jude 1:9; Revelation 12:7-8).
Mandos, when, as we shall see, he speaks a prophecy of doom upon the rebel Elves of Valinor, fills the role of the archangel Gabriel as the announcer of God's will (Daniel 8:16-26; 9:20-27; Luke 1:11-20, 26-38).
The division of Ainur into Valar and Maiar reflects a Catholic teaching, shared by some Jews and non-Catholic Christians, that God created angels in a hierarchy of orders: cherubim, seraphim, thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, archangels, and angels. The concept of a hierarchy of angels comes mainly from Romans 8:38-39 and Colossians 1:16-17. Others, though, see finding and arranging a hierarchy of angels in these verses as reading into them more than the Spirit and the apostle put there.
To Tolkien, a devout Roman Catholic, Varda Elbereth, as the Queen of Heaven, was one of several of his female characters who draw on the Catholic concept of Blessed Mary Ever-Virgin Mother of God. As Mary's analog, Varda, from a Catholic viewpoint, is an appropriate person to hear prayers. Twice, in The Lord of the Rings, Elves or Elf-Friends pray to her as the Starmaker. The first time takes place in Rivendell, just after Frodo reaches it, when the Elvish singers sing the hymn A Elbereth Gilthoniel. (The song is absent from the movie.) The second time takes place in Cirith Ungol, the Spider's Pass, when Frodo calls on Elbereth as he uses the Phial of Galadriel against Shelob.
The Maia Olorin as one who walked among the Children of Iluvatar in their own guise to comfort and rescue them goes along with Biblical angels' walking among humans in human guise. (See Hebrews 13:2 and the account to which this verse refers, Genesis 18:1-15.) Angels as comforters and rescuers appear in Genesis 16:7-13; Judges 6:11-24; 13:2-22; Matthew 4:11; Luke 22:43; and Acts 5:19-20; 12:7-10. Olorin, in The Lord of the Rings, fills the role of comforter and rescuer as he walks among Elves and Men as the Wizard Gandalf.
Tolkien's scholars are unsure of which of his characters from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Ring are Maiar. Sauron and the Balrog certainly are, as are Gandalf, Saruman, Radagast, and the other two Wizards who appear at the Grey Havens in Middle Earth early in the Third Age. Many see Tom Bombadil of The Fellowship of the Ring as a free Maia like Melian. Goldberry, Tom's wife, though, is almost surely a Dark Elf. (I'll talk of Dark Elves in a later chapter.)
Tolkien pictures the Valar and Maiar as finishing the work of creation that Iluvatar starts. The concept of lesser gods finishing the work of the One True God is extra-Biblical, as the Scriptural account of creation shows God alone starting and finishing creation with ten Words in seven Days (Genesis 1:1-2:3). Although some Jewish and Christian writings ascribe a role in creation to angels, and speak of creation as an ongoing process, the role of the Valar and Maiar in creation in the present edition of The Silmarillion goes back to an original, clearly pagan account of creation.
Still, Tolkien says in The Silmarillion that an Ainu, even one as great as Melkor or Manwe, cannot truly create anything, and especially cannot give a body sentience. These limitations on Morgoth's power have important implications for the origins of the evil "speaking peoples" of Middle-Earth. Morgoth could not have created intelligent species on his own. Statements in The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings make it clear that Morgoth made Orcs by perverting the species of Elves, and Trolls by perverting the species of Ents.
I discussed the analogy between Morgoth and Satan in the first chapter. Tolkien divides Satan's roles between two masters of evil, Morgoth and Sauron. Morgoth fills the role of the Arch-Rebel against God, the one whose lies caused the Fall. Morgoth, through his lies, causes the fall of Maiar, Elves, and Men (though, again, as Tolkien carefully points out, the fall of Man never occurs onstage in his mythology).
Sauron, in the First Age, is just Morgoth's aide in carrying out his plans for dominion of Middle-Earth. In the Second and Third Ages, when Sauron is on his own, he becomes a tempter like Satan in his New Testament appearances. Only when Sauron's lies have borne fruit, yielding him power, does he show himself in his true colors as one who wants absolute dominion over all others. I'll say more of Sauron's role as it develops in later chapters.
Dark Matter
Tolkien at first saw the Valar as the Maiar's parents. He kept Melian's marriage to the Elf Thingol and bearing of the half-Maia, half-Elven Luthien Tinuviel, to the very end.
Gods bearing gods and mating with lesser intelligences is a pagan, not a Judeo-Christian, concept. Some, as I said in the last chapter, believe that angels are the sons of God who mated with the daughters of men to father the men of renown, as told in Genesis 6:1-2, 4. Those who believe so, I ask, "Why would angels, who are deathless ministering spirits of flaming fire (Psalm 104:1-5), be able to reproduce, or do so with man, whom God formed from the dust of the ground (Genesis 2:7)?" Oddly enough, though, the account of creation in Genesis 1-2 says nothing of man's bringing forth seed after his own kind.
Genesis 18:1-5 tells of Abraham's hospitality to three men who tell him of his son Isaac's coming birth. The traditional Jewish teaching on this account is that the three men whom Abraham entertained were the L-RD and the two angels who went on to Sodom (Genesis 18:16-22; 19:1-3). Many Christians see the L-RD in this account as the preincarnate Christ in a theophany, or divine appearance. Some, though, try to make the three persons in this account the three persons of the Trinity, though there are clear problems with making them so.
In an article called "The Istari" (Istari is an Elvish term for Wizards) in Unfinished Tales, Tolkien reveals the names that the five Wizards had as Maiar in Valinor. Gandalf, of course, was Olorin; Saruman, Curumo; Radagast, Aiwendil; and the two unnamed Wizards, Alatar and Pallando. Alatar and Pallando never show up in The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. When they first came to Middle-Earth, Saruman, who would later fall under Sauron's sway, took them on a trip to the East from which they never returned.
The Dragons formed by Morgoth are a problem. As their behavior in The Silmarillion and The Hobbit makes clear, Dragons are speaking, independently acting intelligences. The simplest explanation of their origin is that a Dragon is a fallen Maia's spirit in a magically empowered body. If so, Smaug, the Dragon of The Hobbit, is also a Maia.
In The Book of Lost Tales, Tolkien spoke of the Maiar as the Valar's children. In the published Silmarillion, though, there is no place for Children of the Valar. The Maiar are assumed to be spirits created by Iluvatar before the Great Music. Thus, we must assume that the following characters from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings sang in the Great Music: Gandalf, Smaug, Sauron, Tom Bombadil, Radagast, Saruman, and the Balrog.
(In later chapters I'll deal with the problems of the spider Ungoliant and of Manwe's race of talking Eagles.)
posted by Alfred D. Byrd at 1:55 PM
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