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Does it have something to do with Valinor being in the west?
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That's what I've always assumed. West is the Good direction in Tolkien's mythology, apparently because that's where the Valar chose to dwell after the destruction of the Lamps - a west wind is always a good thing, for example. It seems to me that this is simply a result of the geography of Europe. To a European, west is the direction of the Sea and of sea-longing - just as here on the east coast of the U.S. I've always thought of east as the good or special direction. A large part of the
feeling of the west in the Legendarium can be summed up in the image of a person standing on the shore, gazing westward toward Valinor.
Of course, in C.S. Lewis's Narnia books, east is the Good direction, which would seem to blow a hole in my theory.