71 - The Ainulindalë

repeat for you. Now at the time that this is being posted, we're only in week two of the study, which takes us right up to Rivendell, but before anything actually happens there, and so there's still time for you to join if you have not already done so, just go to patreon dot com slash Mythic Mind and sign on at Tier three to get full access. But before we go any further, I want to thank all my

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slash Mythic Mind today. Now, I haven't decided for a certain but I think that starting next time, I might get back to my roots of the show where I started with Kirkeguard, and I might get back and start a series on Carikeguard's fear and trembling. But we'll see what happens. I haven't decided for sure. For now, I'm going to bring you a short video on the Inland Delay from the Wisdom of Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings. There was Eru, the one who in Arta is called

a louvtar. And he made first the Iinar, the holy ones that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made. And he spoke to them, propounding to them themes of music. And they sang before him, and he was glad. But for a long while they sang only each alone, or but a few together, while the rest hearkened, for each comprehended that only that part of the mind of a louvatar from which he came, and in the understanding of their brethren,

they grew but slowly. Yet ever as they listened, they came to deeper understanding, and increased in unison and harmony. Then a luvatar said to them, of the theme that I have declared to you, I will now that you make in harmony together a great music. And since I have kindled you with the flame imperishable, ye shall show forth your powers in adorning this theme, each with his own thoughts and devices, if he will, But I will sit and hearken, and be glad that through you great

beauty has been awakened into song. But now a luvitar sat hearkened, and for a great while it seemed good to him, for in the music there were no flaws. But as the theme progressed, it came to the heart of Melchor to interweave matters of his own imaginery that were not in the corps, with a theme of Alluviatad, for he sought therein to increase the power and glory

of the part assigned to himself to Melchor. Among the Einar had been given the greatest gifts of power and knowledge, and he had a share in all the gifts of his brethren. He had gone often alone into the void places, seeking the imperishable flame, for desire grew hot within him to bring into being things of his own. And it seemed to him that Aluvatar took no thought for the void, and he was impatient of its emptiness. Yet he found

not the fire, for it is with Louvatar. But being alone, he'd begun to conceive thoughts of his own, unlike those of his brethren. In the midst of this strife whereat, the halls of a Luatar shook, and its shredder ran out into the silences. Yet unmoved, a Louvatar erose a third time, and his face was terrible to behold. Then he raised up both his hands in one chord deeper than the abyss, higher than the fermat, piercing as the light of the eye of a Luvatar. The music had ceased.

Then Aluvatar spoke, and he said, mighty hear the ire, and mightiest among them is Melchor. But that he may know, and all the ire that I am a Luvitar. Those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see what ye have done. And thou Melchor, shalt see that no theme may be played hath not its uttermost source in me, Nor can any alter the music in my despite for he that attempteth this shall prove a mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful,

which he himself hath not imagined. Then there was unrest among the ininre, But a Louvatar called to them and said, I know the desire of your minds, that what ye have seen should verily be not only in your thought, but even as ye yourselves are, and yet other. Therefore I say, AA, let these things be, and I will send forth into the void the flame imperishable, and it shall be at the heart of the world, and the world shall be, and those of you that will may

go down into it. And suddenly the inar saw far off a light as it were, a cloud with a living heart of flame, and they knew that this was no vision only, but that Alluvatar had made a new thing aa the world that is now. Those are just a few snippets from the Island Today, which we find at the beginning of the Silmarillion. Now, if you've never read this before, or if you have, then I strongly

recommend that you give this a read. Honestly, just pick up the summarily into yourself a favor if you have not already done that. But if you don't have a copy, then I am providing a PDF of thelay itself, and so make sure that you take a read of that get the full context. It is just absolutely beautiful, one of my favorite sections of Tolkien's entire legendarium. But let's

talk about just a few elements here. There are literally books that I've been written on just this section on thelay that the Creation account, but we're just gonna look at some little snippets there laying out some foundational ideas for Tolkien's world. For talking story as we start off on the Lord of the Rings. So in the beginning we have Aero Aluvatar, the one God who created the

ininor from his thought. But what are the ininor? And this could be an important question because it's the kind of thing that gets some people to claim that Tolkien was promoting some kind of like polytheistic peganism, as if he has multiple creator gods. And in a certain sense he does, but not in the ultimate sense. And this is where we need to disentangle the ideas of creation and subcreation. It's very clear that there is one ultimate

creator God. There is one being that doesn't owe its being on anything else, but it independently exists, and this is Eru Eluvitar. The ininor who do play a part in creation. They play a kind of derivative role in creation, or they engage in subcreation. They themselves are creative beings and they work with creative realities, namely the creativity that's implicit in their own creation, and they use that to

go about fashioning the world. And so ultimately there's one creator God, despite the fact that he does make use of intermediaries, and so the ininor should best be understood as the heavenly court of God or the ranks of angels, which even Scripture sometimes refers to as gods with a lowercase gene. In fact, Tolkien himself of being a devout Roman Catholic, so that he wanted his mythology to be consonant with Christian theology. And so he's not writing allegory.

He's writing a prehistory for our world, which, as a Roman Catholic he sees as a Christian world. And so he's trying to write a mythology that is consonant with orthodox Christian theology. And so with Tolkien, in the way that his whole story, his whole legendarium is framed, we're dealing with legends that have been passed down from a very pre Christian people, but in a world that anticipates

Christian revelation. In a nineteen fifty one letter to Milson Waldman, Tolkien says, of the valor which are the leading Iinor that entered into the world of Arta, the material world in which we live. He writes the cycles begin with the cosmogonical myth the music of the iinor God, and the valor or powers English as gods are revealed x latter are as we should say, angelic powers, whose function is to exercise delegated authority in their spheres of rule

and government, not creation, making or remaking. They are divine, that is, were originally outside and existed before the making of the world. Their power and wisdom is derived from their knowledge of the cosmogonical drama, which they perceived first as a drama, that is, as in a fashion we perceive a story composed by someone else, and later as

a reality on the side of mere narrative device. This is of course, meant to provide beings of the same order of beauty, power, and majesty as the gods of higher mythology, which can yet be accepted well, shall we say, badly by a mind that believes in the blessed Trinity. And so Tolkien very much believed that his so called gods lowercase g gods or powers, or the holy ones were entirely consonant with Christian orthodoxy. Will not explicitly focused

on them alliance content. He famously said in a nineteen fifty three letter to Robert Murray. The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work, unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. Now for one more defense of Talkien's theological orthodoxy as even represented within his story, Let's check out this clip from a nineteen sixty five BBC interview.

upsetting of some tradition. Now, this seems to me to be somewhat like Tennyson's The Old Order changeth, yielding place to new and god fulfillms himself in many ways? Where is God in The Lord of the Rings?

to me. I would have thought a story of this sort was almost dependent upon an intense belief in some theocratic division, some hierarchy there is.

is that now exists. Those are the battle of the bar. It's a construction methodology in which a large part of the demiourgic I think has been has been handed over two bars who are created there in under the one. It's certainly like a much more elaborate and more thought out of the C. S. Lewis business when it is out of the side of the planet where you have a we have a demiogos who's acting command of the of the planet Mars. And the idea there was elusive.

It was originally the one in command of the world that he fell, So it was a silent planet, was it falled out of that was the idea.

they uniquely know about God. And by the way that this organization that we have here is very much in line with medieval angelology, and we take a look at you know, Pseudodionysius, for example, this idea that knowledge of God is passed on through the angels, and so we have an innumerable line of intermediaries as this knowledge of God flows down from the angel's closest to God's presence down to those who are most involved with the affairs

of men. And so it's all part of the great dance, as Lewis refers to it, or we could even refer to this as the great chain of being. And so this is a very traditional, very medieval Christian theology coming

out here. And by the way, for more on this topic, I encourage you to pick up The Flame Imperishable Tolkien Saint Thomas and the Metaphysics of Faery, in which Jonathan McIntosh really does a good job of laying out the connection between the theology and the philosophy of Saint Thomas, Aquietness and j. R. Tolkien found especially in the idolind Delay. So this is a great text if you want to

indelve more into this. Well, despite the majesty, the power, the beauty of this great harmony, Melchor, the greatest of the Ainore becomes discontent with his station and he attempts to usurp the authority of Eru by turning the song upon himself. Thus we have the primordial conflict in Tolkien's legendarium, which proceeds from the very beginning of the Cimarillian although at this point we're not actually in the Similarrillian proper,

but I guess that's not really relevant. So from the very beginning of his legendarium all the way up to the end of the Lord of the Rings, Melchor who's later dubbed Morgoth, is the first villain, but his servant Suron would follow in his footsteps, as would all who chose the villain's path. Now, what exactly is this conflict at the heart of it? Well, Tolkien tells us this in his nineteen fifty six notes on W. H. Auden's

review of The Lord of the Rings. He writes, in The Lord of the Rings, the conflict is not basically about freedom, though that is naturally involved. It is about God and his sole right to divine honor. The Eldar and the Newmanorians believed in the One, the True God, and held worship of any other person an abomination. Suran desired to be a god king and was held to be this by his servants. If he had been victorious, he would have demanded divine honor from all rational creatures

in absolute temporal power over the whole world. And so there it is. The Lord of the Rings is about God and his soul right to divine honor. Melchor sought this divine honor for himself. Sauron did the same. The heroes of tolkien Legendarium, however, are those who recognize their station, and they live for a reality that is above and beyond them. This is a world that is set before Christian revelation, and so such heroes may not always know

exactly what they're doing in clear dogmatic terms. Their spirits, however, were rightly oriented in this God honoring direction, and in the height of Numnorian spirituality, we actually get the closest in the Legendarium to an organized religion centered around worship of the One True God, and this is portrayed as the height of human civilization, which in a significant way is actually different than even the Glory of the elves, who at their best tend to relate to the Valor

rather than directly with Eru. That's actually uniquely a human gift. It's uniquely a human orientation. Now, this is an idea, and really we've laid out a number of ideas that we will return to and that we will expand throughout and especially at the end of the course. But I thought it was important at the beginning of our story to begin at the foundation of Tolkien's world building and some of the philosophy that lays at the bottom of his legendary on But that's it for our short video today.

I look forward to getting into the next action and reading with you until next time. God's been