Having learned about Aboriginal religion recently, I couldn’t help but think of it when I saw this thread. Though I’m still not exactly sure why…
In Aboriginal religion, creation itself is known as ‘dream time’ or ‘the dreaming,’ and the beginning of the physical world began with the beginning of dream time. Before there was a physical world, ‘waking time’ and ‘sleeping time’ were one in the same. Underneath the earth, everything that makes up everything in the physical world was asleep. Creation occurred when waking time and sleeping time were split, and dream time resulted.
The “Ancestors” were sort of supernatural beings that were asleep beneath the Earth, as well, and they awakened at creation, and gave shape to the landscape, formed living things, and the like. They created the first human beings, and organized them into different tribes, putting each tribe in the land where they should live, and giving them their traditions and customs.
The way they formed the land and life on the Earth was through music as they traveled all over the Earth. Afterwards, some of the Ancestors went back into the Earth to sleep, and left outlines of themselves in the landscape. Others stayed and became parts of the land themselves.
To me, the Ancestors seem a bit like the Ainur and Maiar. Really, the main striking resemblance is something that can be found in almost every religion: music.
Perhaps the Yoruba religion’s creation story shares some similarities, as well. The supreme being was Oldumare, and there was a creator of heaven and of earth: Oron and Aye, respectively. All of the other (a little) lesser spiritual deities are known as the Orishas. (There are also Ancestor spirits called the Egungun.)
The Orishas were created as sort of emissaries of Oldumare, and were formed because the god overflowed his boundaries with goodness and power and the like. They are essentially part of Oldumare, and each Orisha has a characteristic and “anti-characteristic” that they represent (essentially representing the entire spectrum of a characteristic). The Orishas were responsible for creating the land on earth.
I think the Orishas share a bit in common with the Maiar and Ainur, too, representing characteristics or ideas, and ‘created’ by Ilúvatar more as ideas than actual beings.
The connections are vague, at best, but these being two very old religions, it’s interesting to me to see just how easy it is to draw connections from any religion to another, and even (or maybe that should be ‘of course’) to a ‘fictional’ creation story. Music is a key part of pretty much all religions, which is curious. Perhaps that sort of unifying idea was what Tolkien had in mind. Of course, there’s no more distinct way to illustrate harmony than through music, I think.
And now I think perhaps it was a combination of the Aboriginal and Yoruba religions in my head that caused me to really think of the Ancestors as incredibly like the Ainur and/or Maiar. Ancestorishas, maybe.
I apologize for not really drawing any conclusions. Just wanted to toss ideas out there.
(Also, I apologize if any of my explanations concerning the religions are off. I am by no means an expert...)
And (I swear, this is the last disclaimer!), I am not beginning to declare that Tolkien was at all inspired by knowledge of these religions at all. Just pointing out interesting similarities, which are, in my opinion, inevitable, regardless of purpose (or lack thereof).