Somebody somewhere knows a lot about the sort of angelic lore Tolkien may well have been familiar with as a medievalist. That's not me. But tryng to interpret the author's intent is one thing and explaining one's reaction to the work is another. Handily, I don't need to know all that theology to do the latter. So here goes.


Angels: I don't see the Valar as exactly equivalent to my ideas of angels. I can see or imagine that there is some angelicness in the 'recipie' if I can pu it that way. The Valar also remind me of a pagan pantheon - the Greco-Roman one or the Norse one being examples, where there are gods with different personalities and 'portfolios' in thegovernment of the world. Very distinct differences from that are, however that the Valar are managing Arada for someone else (Eru). So they tend not to behave as if it's ther eto have fun with (e.g. using humans for sex or scheming the way that the Greco-Roman or the Norse gods to). In fact, all the Valar (except Melkor) are tidily married, whether tht tells us something about Tolkien's attitudes, or whether it was just some after-the-pub fun that got into his notes and is thereafter taken very seriously. At least, as far as I recall, who is married to who has no or almost no significance in Tolkien's tales.



Fallen Angels: Well not fallen in the sense of being kicked out of heaven for rebellion like Milton's Satan. I'd agree with 'fallen' in a sense of 'lessened'; my idea being that by agreeing to 'come down' to an observable reality, maybe the Valar are limited now. Certainly I see their usual posture as one of caution - they don't seem to control everything or always know what to do. In fact, I see them usually taking the precautionary pronciple - waiting to see how things work out and maybe just a cautious nudge here and there (unless Feanor has finally exhausted their patience). Even the Numenorean invasion they stop by appealing for help - and the result is maybe a lot more drastic than they would have dared, even assuming they would have been capable of it.

In the cosmogony, there is a fall; a fall of Angels we should say. Though quite different in form, of course, to that of Christian myth... There cannot be any 'story' without a fall - all stories are ultimately about the fall - at least not for human minds as we know them and have them. So, proceeding, the Elves have a fall, before their 'history' can become storial.

They [the Istari] were also, for the same reason, thus involved in the peril of the incarnate: the possibility of 'fall', of sin, if you will.

I suppose a difference between this Myth and what may perhaps be called Christian mythology is this. In the latter the Fall of Man is subsequent to and a consequence (though not a necessary consequence) of the 'Fall of Angels': a rebellion of created free-will at a higher level than Man; but it is not clearly held (and in many versions is not held at all) that this affected the 'World' in its nature: evil was brought in from outside, by Satan. In this myth the rebellion that created free-will precedes the creation of the World (Eä); and Eä has in it, subcreatively introduced, evil, rebellions, discordant elements of its own nature already when the Let it Be was spoken. The Fall or corruption, therefore, of all things in it and all inhabitants of it, was a possibility if not inevitable. Trees may 'go bad' as in the Old Forest; Elvers may turn into Orcs, and if this required the special perversive malice of Morgoth, still Elves themselves could do evil deeds. Even the 'good' Valar as inhabiting the world could at least err; as the Great Valar did in their dealings with the Elves; or as the lesser of their kind (as the Istari or wizards) could in various ways become self-seeking. Aulë, for instance,one of the Great, in a sense 'fell'; for he so desired to see the Children, that he became impatient and tried to anticipate the will of the Creator.

Melkor could do nothing with Arda, which was not from his own mind and was interwoven with the work and thoughts of others; even left alone he could only go raging on till all was levelled again into a formless chaos.

Q1. What do you think about the changes to the Valar from the literary perspective?

Q2. What do you think about depictions of the Valar from the religious perspective (if that may be asked)? Could Tolkien have been influenced by the Book of Enoch?

Beneath the very floors of Ossë he caused the Earth to quake and split and his lower fires to mingle with the sea. Vaporous storms and a great roaring of uncontrolled sea-motions burst upon the world, and the forests groaned and snapped. The sea leapt upon the land and tore it, and wide regions sank beneath its rage or were hewn into scattered islets, and the coast was dug into-caverns. The mountains rocked and their hearts melted, and stone poured like liquid fire down their ashen sides and flowed even to the sea, and the noise of the great battles of the fiery beaches came roaring even through the Mountains of Valinor and drowned the singing of the Gods.

I think the stark good/evil division of the later Valar is implausible because it doesn't reflect how personalities work in the real world. Even Melkor is supposed to have been good once, so why the other Valar would be immune to falling the slightest bit into evil or developing character flaws when Melkor diverged from Eru's plan for him and became hardcore evil for the sake of evil with very little reason?

I suppose Tolkien might have wanted to make the division between good and evil so clear and without any nuance specifically to make the Valar more palatable to Christians, but as a believing Christian myself I don't think the universe works like that, even on the supernatural side.

Tolkien made use of unreliable narration, but it would be difficult to reconcile someone like Rúmil of Tol Eressëa giving two very contradictory accounts. Unless Tolkien was planning to shift sources around, I think the new Valar should be taken as obsoleting the old versions as far as Tolkien himself was concerned, and I find that regrettable.

The different textual versions themselves could exist quite nicely in the same world. The old versions could be Morgoth's lies. The new versions could be highly sanitized pro-Valar accounts that paper over the inconvenient details.

… the Ainur are not simply tools or extensions of God’s power, as puppets or zombies or machines would be: as independent minds, they have to learn gradually what to do and how to collaborate (hence the emphasis on the slow growth in understanding of their brethren). Though each of them is invested with native powers by lúvatar, their music is not a product of the aggregate of those powers, but of the synthesis of their powers which they achieve. Their function is therefore deliberately made to resemble human creativity, with its requirements of learning and discipline and intuition as well as direct divine inspiration', and its necessarily collective and traditional aspects. They are in fact 'sub-creators', to use Tolkien's own term for human artists.


One consequence of the use of intermediaries is that highly specific features of the world are conceived as the outcome of both intentional and unintentional collaboration among sub-creators.

And Ilúvatar spoke to Ulmo, and said: 'Seest thou not how here in this. little realm in the Deeps of Time Melkor hath made war upon thy province? He hath bethought him of bitter cold immoderate, and yet hath not destroyed the beauty of thy fountains, nor thy clear pools.
Behold the snow, and the cunning work of frost! Melkor hath devised heats and fire without restraint, and hath not dried up thy desire nor utterly quelled the music of the sea. Behold rather the height and glory of the clouds, and the everchanging mists; and listen to the fall of rain upon the Earth! And in these clouds thou art drawn nearer to Manwe, thy friend, whom thou lovest.'

The distinctive feature of Tolkien's myth here is that, from the point of view of Ulmo and Manwe, the first snowflake is at once a product of their own actions and a delightful surprise, and this is a deeply attractive picture of creation - more attractive, I think, than the production of the snowflake by God's immediate fiat would be.

Rosebury - Ch 5 of Tolkien, a Cultural Phenomenon. Palgrave Macmillan, 2003

Morgoth would no doubt, if he had been victorious, have ultimately have destroyed even his own 'creatures', such as the Orcs, when they had served his sole purpose in using them: the destruction of Elves and Men.