Eru Ilúvatar

It's one of the things that has become very clear in doing Lord of the Year is getting a strong sense of kind of the romantic fantasy of hierarchy that operates in Tolkien, right? Because that's what this is, is that there is – and it's – to put this in a different way, right? It's straight up a way of refiguring a kind of Christian hierarchy, right? The kind of great chain of being that there is like God and everything kind of like moves down from God in regimented steps.

And so in the Middle Earth stuff, right, in Arda, we see this played out where there is a very specific and literal hierarchy to existence with Eru Iluvatar and then and the Valar and then the Maiar and then the elves under that.

And then like the elves then break down into kind of this weird hierarchy.

Right.

Eru Luvatar.

And then the other camp was the Kingsmen, who originally observed Eru Iluvatar, but gravitated to the worship of Melkor, or Lucifer, while Sauron was being held captive on Numenor.

Now, according to Tolkien's story, Sauron was killed on Atlantis when it was destroyed.

Now...

It says, But Maedhros answered that if they returned to Amon but the favor of the Valar were withheld from them, then their oath would still remain, but its fulfillment be beyond all hope.

And he said, Who can tell to what dreadful doom we shall come if we disobey the powers in their own land or purpose ever to bring war again into their holy realm? Yet Maglor held back, saying, If Monwe and Varda themselves deny the fulfillment of an oath to which we named them in witness, is it not made void? And Maedhros answered, But how shall our voices reach to Iluvatar beyond the circles of the world? And by Iluvatar we swore in our madness, and called the everlasting darkness upon us if we kept not our word.

Who shall release us? If none can release us, said Maglor, then indeed the everlasting darkness shall be our lot whether we keep our oath or break it, but less evil shall we do in the breaking.

But in the end, they did decide to steal the Silmarils while they were still in Middle-earth, and they snuck into the camp of Eonwe, killed his guards, and each of them took a Silmaril and ran.

His seven sons, Maedhros, Maglor, Celegorm, Caranthir, Curuthin, Amrod, and Amras.

They swear by God himself, Ilúvatar, capital G, along with Manwe and Varda and the holy mountain Taniquetl, which is the biggest mountain in the world, as their witness to hunt down with vengeance and hatred to the end of the world, anyone, valour, demon, elf, man not born yet, any creature good or evil that who takes or holds or keeps a Silmaril from them, That they will fuck them up.

And if they don't keep it.

The Everlasting Dark can have them.

Beyond his hope, she returned to him where he sat in darkness, and long ago in the hidden kingdom she laid her hand in his.

Thereafter, often she came to him, and they went in secret through the woods together from spring to summer, and no others of the children of Iluvatar have had joy so great, though the time was brief.

But Dairon, the minstrel, also loved Luthien, and he espied her meetings with Beren and betrayed them to Thingol.

Then the king was filled with anger, for Luthien he loved above all things, setting her above all the princes of the elves, whereas mortal men he did not even take into his service.

This place is impressive.

Thingol is impressive.

Remember, he's the tallest of the children of Iluvatar, flat out.

I mean, this guy's got to be eight and a half feet tall because we know that Elendil was something like eight foot one or seven foot 11 or some crazy number based on the height of Oranga or the length of Oranga.

Yeah.

And eventually, I mean, you know, it's strongly implied eventually, like, good will win out and even the evil things will be like... into the song of Iluvatar and everything will be fine, but it does mean some bad stuff's going to happen periodically.

Yeah,

yeah.

Wolves, bears and probably olifants alike are naturally occurring in Middle-earth, and though they may be used by evil forces for evil deeds, they themselves are not evil.

Tolkien's world has one true god, Eru, Iluvatar, who is perfectly good, and also the only being capable of wielding the flame imperishable, in other words, the only thing capable of creating something out of nothing.

Which means two very important things in Tolkien's theology.

First, nothing that exists is 100% evil, because everything that exists ultimately comes from Eru.

Nothing is, in Tolkien's words, irredeemable.

And second, when we talk about Morgoth's creations, they are sub-creations, really, made using substances that Oru had already made.

So, maybe not all trolls, but I think we have enough here to start to pull together some commonalities.

First, none of these creatures are really new or original.