Cosmology of Tolkien's legendarium

Creation account

Eru Ilúvatar is the Elvish (Quenya) name of the monotheistic God of creation. Eru means "The One", or "He that is Alone" and Ilúvatar signifies "Father of All". The names appear in Tolkien's work both in isolation and paired (Eru Ilúvatar). He first created a group of angelic beings, called in Elvish the Ainur, and these holy spirits were co-actors in the creation of the universe through a holy music and chanting called the "Music of the Ainur", or Ainulindalë in Elvish.

Eru alone can create independent life or reality by giving it the Flame Imperishable. All beings not created directly by Eru, (e.g., Dwarves, Ents, Eagles), still need to be accepted by Eru to become more than mere puppets of their creator. Melkor desired the Flame Imperishable and long sought for it in vain, but he could only twist that which had already been given life.

The "Flame Imperishable" or "Secret Fire" represents the Holy Spirit in Christianity theology. It represents the creative activity of Eru, inseparable both from him and from his creation. In the interpretation of Christopher Tolkien, it represents "the mystery of authorship", the author both standing outside of his work and indwelling in it.

The abode of Eru and the Ainur outside of time or the physical universe is also called the "Timeless Halls" (Heaven). Tolkien made a point of keeping the ultimate fate of the souls of Men and the nature of their mortality open, and unknown to the Elves (who are tied to the physical world for the time of its duration, and Christian eschatology is not applicable to them). In the tale of Adanel it is suggested that Men return to Eru after death.

The account of the "events" predating creation is not presented from an omniscient perspective but presented as a fictional tradition, purportedly a record of the account given by the Valar to the Elves in Aman, and from there transmitted to Middle-earth, and translated from Valarin at first into Quenya and later into human languages. It is understood that the Valar, who were present at the moment of creation as Ainur, gave an honest account to the Elves, but were constrained by the limitations of language, the description of the "Music" or of the words "spoken" by Eru, or his "Halls" and the secret "Flame" etc. are to be taken as metaphors.

Fëa and hröa

Fëa and hröa are words for "soul" (or "spirit") and "body" of the Children of Ilúvatar, Elves and Men. Their hröa is made out of the matter of Arda (erma); for this reason hröar are Marred (or, using another expression by Tolkien himself, contain a "Melkor ingredient"). When an Elf dies, the fëa leaves the hröa, which then "dies". The fëa is summoned to the Halls of Mandos, where it is judged; however as with death their free-will is not taken away, they could refuse the summons. If allowed by Mandos, the fëa may be re-embodied into a new body that is identical to the previous hröa. (In earlier versions of the legendarium it may also re-enter the incarnate world through child-birth.) The situation of Men is different: a Mannish fëa is only a visitor to Arda, and when the hröa dies, the fëa, after a brief stay in Mandos, leaves Arda completely. Originally men could "surrender themselves: die of free will, and even of desire, in estel" but Melkor made Men fear death, instead of accept with joy the Gift of Eru.

Unseen world

In The Lord of the Rings Tolkien justifies the nature of the Ring by explaining that Elves and other immortal beings dwell in "both worlds" at once (the physical and the spiritual, or Unseen world) and have great power in both, especially those who have dwelt in the light of the Two Trees before the Sun and Moon; and that the powers associated with "magic" were spiritual in nature. Mortals on the other hand are chained to their bodies, have less influence upon them, and their fëa depart the world without them. This posed a problem for immortal beings whose spirits do not wane over time, but become increasingly dependent on their physical bodies.

The Elves who stayed in Middle-earth where Melkor once was dominant, being in bodies and surrounded by things that are themselves Marred and subject to decay by the influence of Melkor, created the Elven Rings out of a desire to preserve the physical world unchanged; as it were in the Undying Lands of Valinor, home of the Ainur. Without the rings they are destined to eventually "fade", eventually becoming shadows in the physical world, prefiguring the concept of Elves as dwelling in a separate and often-underground (or overseas) plane in historical European mythology. Mortals who wear a Ring of Power are destined to "fade" much more rapidly, as the rings unnaturally preserve their life-span turning them into wraiths. Invisibility is a side-effect of this, as the wearer is temporarily pulled into the spirit-world. Immortal beings, however, became trapped in their bodies over long periods of time, subject to reincarnation only if their bodies were destroyed.

Subcreation

Peter Hastings, manager of the Newman Bookshop (a Catholic bookshop in Oxford), had written to Tolkien (himself a Catholic) objecting to his description of the reincarnation as applicable to the Elves:

God has not used that device in any of the creations of which we have knowledge, and it seems to me to be stepping beyond the position of a sub-creator to produce it as an actual working thing, because a sub-creator, when dealing with the relations between creator and created, should use those channels which he knows the creator to have used already.

In a 1954 draft of a reply to Hastings, Tolkien defended his creative ideas as an exploration of the infinite "potential variety" of God: that it need not conform to the reality of our world so long as it does not misrepresent the essential nature of the divine:

We differ entirely about the nature of the relation of sub-creation to Creation. I should have said that liberation "from the channels the creator is known to have used already" is the fundamental function of "sub-creation", a tribute to the infinity of His potential variety [...] I am not a metaphysician; but I should have thought it a curious metaphysic — there is not one but many, indeed potentially innumerable ones — that declared the channels known (in such a finite corner as we have any inkling of) to have been used, are the only possible ones, or efficacious, or possibly acceptable to and by Him!

Evil in Middle-earth

Tolkien used the first part of The Silmarillion, the creation account, to describe his thoughts on the origin of evil in his fictional world, which he took pains to comport with his own beliefs on the subject, as accounted in Tolkien's Letters. These beliefs were elaborated on both early and late in life, and Tolkien sought to bring them consistently in line with his views on evil in the real world; in contrast to widespread critical reception of Tolkien's works as somehow depicting, or even fondly imagining, a binary clash between absolute good and evil.

In Tolkien's legendarium, evil represents a rebellion against the creative process set in motion by Eru. Evil is defined by its original actor, Melkor, a Luciferian figure who falls from grace in active rebellion against Eru, out of a desire to create and control things of his own that do not comport with the harmonies of the other angelic beings. As it originates with Melkor, whose ideas and conceptions are subservient to the will of Eru, his evil by definition constitutes a relative absence of good, in the Augustinian tradition, rather than an opposing force to the will of God in the Manichaean tradition. Eru explicitly denies Melkor's desire to be a demiurge, and his actions in defiance of the creative will of Eru are marked as evil in that sense; Tolkien rejected Gnosticism of the sort depicted in the mythopoeia of William Blake.

The "good" angels led by Melkor's "brother" Manwë are inspired directly by Eru's teachings, and seek to carry out his wishes directly, but lacking themselves the ability to create things not inspired by Eru, they do not necessarily understand the nature of evil; Manwë subsequently releases Melkor from imprisonment, seeking his redemption, as he is incapable of fully understanding Melkor's hatred. However, Eru takes one of the Ainur aside (Ulmo, the Vala of water) and shows him a vision of snow, ice and rain; things which Ulmo had not envisioned, which were made possible by the extremes of heat and cold imagined by Melkor. Thus, in describing the new Creation, Eru tells Melkor and the others that:

... no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined. [...] and each of you shall find contained [in the design of creation] all those things which it may seem that [you yourself] devised or added. And thou, Melkor, wilt discover all the secret thoughts of thy mind, [and] perceive that they are but a part of the whole and tributary to its glory.

Through Manwë, Tolkien suggests that the plot of the main story itself, the 500-year war of the Silmarils, is an example of this principle in action:

... when the messengers declared to Manwë the [words] of Fëanor... Manwë wept and bowed his head. But at that last word of Fëanor: that at the [very] least the Noldor [would] do deeds to live in song for ever, he raised his head, as one that hears a voice far off, and he said: ‘So shall it be! Dear-bought those songs shall be accounted, and yet shall be well-bought. For the price could be no other. Thus even as Eru spoke to us shall beauty not before conceived be brought into Eä, and evil yet be good to have been.’

This leads Melkor to envy the resulting creation and seek to destroy it, becoming the ultimate nihilist. Tolkien explains that Melkor would not be satisfied with control, for the very matter of creation would remain the vision of Eru, and thus, evil could not have the mastery in the end, even if the world were destroyed. Evil in Tolkien's world is thus, in and of itself, incapable of creative impulse:

Evil is fissiparous. But itself barren. Melkor could not "beget".... Out of the discords of the Music — sc. not directly out of either of the themes, Eru's or Melkor's, but of their dissonance with regard one to another — evil things appeared in Arda, which did not descend from any direct plan or vision of Melkor: they were not "his children"; and therefore, since all evil hates, hated him too.

However, Tolkien also emphasized that all beings with free will would be subject to a similar fall, due to being given the choice to reject the will of Eru or embrace the harmony of creation. In Morgoth's Ring and in his notes written late in life, Tolkien spent much time on issues of cosmology and theology within the fictional universe, and described how Melkor, as the original evil, represented the only "pure" evil in the story; all other beings were redeemable provided free will, and even Melkor himself was not evil in origin, being the creation of the fundamentally good supreme being. In an effort to subvert creation, Tolkien describes in these notes how Melkor poured his spiritual essence into the very fabric of matter, such that all of Middle-earth was the equivalent of Sauron's ring for Melkor, hence the title of the volume.

Eä

Eä (Quenya: [ea]) is the Quenya name for the universe as a realization of the vision of the Ainur. The word comes from the Quenya word for to be. Thus, Eä is the World that Is, as distinguished from the World that Is Not. It may thus be assumed that everything outside Eä, including the Timeless Halls, has no material form. The Ainur, angelic beings from the Timeless Halls beyond Eä, refer to it as "the Little Kingdom", because all creation that humans can perceive is tiny in comparison to the mind of Eru Ilúvatar (God). Eä was the word spoken by Eru Ilúvatar by which he brought the universe into actuality.

The Void

The Void (also known as Avakúma, Kúma, the Outer Dark, the Eldest Dark, and the Everlasting Dark) is the nothingness outside Arda. From Arda, it is accessible through the Doors of Night.

The Valar exiled Melkor to the Void after his defeat in the War of Wrath. Legend foretells that Melkor will return to Arda before the apocalyptic battle of Dagor Dagorath.

Avakúma is not to be confused with the state of non-being that preceded the creation of Eä.

Arda

Ilúvatar created Arda (Earth) according to a flat Earth cosmology. This disc-like Arda has continents and the seas, and the moon and the stars revolve around it. Arda was created to be the "Habitation" (Imbar or Ambar) for the Children of Ilúvatar (Elves and Men).

This world was, at first, not lit by a sun. Instead, the Valar created two lamps to illuminate it: Illuin ('Sky-blue') and Ormal ('High-gold'). To support the lamps, the Vala Aulë forged two enormous pillars of rock: Helcar in the furthest north, and Ringil in the deepest south. Illuin was set upon Helcar and Ormal upon Ringil. Between the columns, where the light of the lamps mingled, the Valar dwelt on the island of Almaren in the midst of a Great Lake.

When Melkor destroyed the Lamps, two vast inland seas (Helcar and Ringil) and two major seas (Belegaer and the Eastern Sea) were created, but Almaren and its lake were destroyed.

The Valar left the mainland, and went to the newly formed continent of Aman in the west, where they created their home called Valinor. To discourage Melkor from assailing Aman, they thrust the continent of Middle-earth to the east, thus widening Belegaer at its middle, and raising five major mountain ranges in Middle-earth: the Blue, Red, Grey, and Yellow Mountains, plus the Mountains of the Wind. This act disrupted the symmetrical shapes of the continents and seas.

Vaiya

Vaiya (also known as Ekkaia, the Enfolding Ocean, and the Encircling Sea) is a dark sea that surrounds the world before the cataclysm at the end of the Second Age. During this flat-Earth period, Vaiya flows completely around Arda, which floats on it like a ship on a sea. Above Vaiya is a layer of atmosphere.

Ulmo the Lord of Waters dwells in Vaiya, underneath Arda. Vaiya is extremely cold; where its waters meet the waters of the ocean Belegaer in the northwest of Middle-earth, a chasm of ice is formed: the Helcaraxë.

Vaiya cannot support any ships except the boats of Ulmo. The ships of the Númenóreans that tried to sail on it sank, drowning the sailors.

The Sun passes through Vaiya on its way around the world, warming it as it passes.

Ilmen

Ilmen is a region of clean air pervaded by light, before the cataclysm at the end of the Second Age. The stars and other celestial bodies are in this region. The Moon passes through Ilmen on its way around the world, plunging down the Chasm of Ilmen on its return.

Tolkien likely derived the name Ilmen from ilma, the Finnish word for air.

Spherical-earth cosmology

Tolkien's legendarium addresses the spherical Earth paradigm by depicting a catastrophic transition from a flat to a spherical world, in which Aman was removed "from the circles of the world".

This transition from a flat to a spherical Earth is at the center of Tolkien's "Atlantis" legend. His unfinished The Lost Road suggests a sketch of the idea of historical continuity connecting the Elvish mythology of the First Age with the classical Atlantis myth, the Germanic migrations, Anglo-Saxon England and the modern period, presenting the Atlantis legend in Plato and other deluge myths as a "confused" account of the story of Númenor. The cataclysmic re-shaping of the world would have left its imprint on the cultural memory and collective unconscious of humanity, and even on the genetic memory of individuals. The "Atlantis" part of the legendarium explores the theme of the memory of a 'straight road' into the West, which now only exists in memory or myth, because the physical world has been changed.

The Akallabêth says that the Númenóreans who survived the catastrophe sailed as far west as they could in search of their ancient home, but their travels only brought them around the world back to their starting points. Hence, before the end of the Second Age, the transition from "flat Earth" to "round Earth" had been completed. New lands were also created in the west, analogous to the New World. The same idea is expressed in The Lost Road, via an alliterating line in Primitive Germanic is revealed to one protagonist, Westra lage wegas rehtas, nu isti sa wraithas "Westward lay a straight way, but now it is bent." The same sentence is recorded in Adûnaic, the original language of "Atlantis" revealed to one of the protagonists in The Notion Club Papers (written 1945), reading adûn izindi batân tâidô ayadda: îdô kâtha batîna lôkhî; this is glossed (by the character who experienced the vision, within the fictional narrative, as: "west / [a] straight / road / once / went / now / all / roads / [are] crooked").

A few years after publishing The Lord of the Rings, in a note associated with the unique narrative story "Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth" (which is said to occur in Beleriand during the War of the Jewels), Tolkien equated Arda with the Solar System; because Arda by this point consisted of more than one heavenly body (Valinor being another planet and the Sun and Moon being celestial objects in their own right and not objects orbiting the Earth).

Planets and constellations

Concurrent with early versions of the mythology Tolkien developed a list of names and meanings called the Qenya Lexicon. Christopher Tolkien included extracts from this in an appendix to The Book of Lost Tales, including mentions of specific stars, planets, and constellations in the entries: Gong, Ingil, Mornië, Morwinyon, Nielluin, Silindrin, and Telimektar. In the introductory text for the index of Morgoth's Ring Christopher Tolkien notes several names which his father identified as planets, but speculates that this may have been passing thoughts rather than definitive conclusions.

Stars and planets