[Mat_Heathertoes]

In response to Mithadan's earlier comment regarding the 'provinces' of the Valar. Melkors' was heat & cold.

..And of these Melkor was the chief. even as he was in the beginning the greatest of the Ainur, who took part in the Music. And he feigned, even to himself at first, that he desired to go thither and order all things for the good of the Children of Illúvatar, controlling the turmoils of the heat and the cold that had come to pass through him.

There are references to support this aplenty through the Ainulindalë, Valaquenta and Quenta. The lands behind the Ered Engrin, Dor Daiedelos or the Lands of Everlasting Cold, were attributed to the work of Melkor.

A truly great quote illustrating the awesome might of Melkor in those primeval times is mentioned at the end of the Ainulindalé

And he descended upon Arda in power and majesty greater than any other of the Valar, as a mountain that wades in the sea and has its head above the clouds and is clad in ice and crowned with smoke and fire; and the light of the eyes of Melkor was like a flame that withers with heat and pierces with a deadly cold.

But to add my twopennethworth to the debate..

Was Melkor evil from the start? Was he fated to be evil? Or is he of such creation that he has the power to do great good or great evil?

I'm of the opinion that he was not evil in origin but merely fated or created inevitably to be so to provide the 'balance' to the universe that Eru was to create. He seems, in a nutshell, to be an illustration of the Lord Acton philosophy, in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 1887. 'Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men'. In the Ainulindalë it also says of Melkor:

To Melkor among the Ainur 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 in Being things of his own, and it seemed to him that Illúvatar took no thought for the Void, and he was impatient of its emptiness. Yet he found not the Fire, for it is with Illúvatar. But being alone he had begun to conceive thoughts of his own unlike those of his kin.

Now I think this is probably one of most important passages in the Silmarillion and goes a long toward explaining the early mind and motives of this great being. There is no mention here of malice attributable to Melkor and neither is there any suggestion the Melkor is behaving in any way other than as a spirit of extreme might and skill desiring, as Aulë did in later ages, to bring things into being with his own innate gifts of sub-creation. It seems to me that Melkor only begins to hatch these 'thoughts of his own' which were incongruent to the rest of his brethren because of a sense of frustration, impatience and the solitude of his existence in the Void places. Maybe the "Devil makes work for idle hands" has some ring of truth in this scene.

During the Music of the Ainur these 'thoughts' are behind the creation of 'discord' and the tumult which ended with Illúvatar's rebuke to Melkor which has been posted elsewhere. But it is the paragraph afterward that I believe to be the first real indication of his "sub-creative Fall"

Then the Ainur were afraid, and they did not yet comprehend the words that were said to them; and Melkor was filled with shame, of which came secret anger.

Whereas Aulë accepted the rebuke of Illúvatar in later ages Melkor did not thus his pride conquered him and he became at that moment the tool that Eru destined him to be. He had to be the mightiest to be an adversary for the the other Valar. He had to have a share in all the others' gifts in order to undo or mar them and he had to turn to evil and order to accomplish both of the above. Eru works in mysterious ways.

Sauron and the Balrogs it seems were 'seduced by the dark side' either during the Music or later when Melkor descended to Arda in that vision of power and might.

For of the Maiar many were drawn to his splendour in the days of his greatness, and remained in that allegiance down into his darkness; and others he corrupted afterwards to his service with lies and treacherous gifts.

Valaquenta