[Aiwendil]

Re-reading the discussion here, I've had some further thoughts about Varda.

What is Varda the "god of", as it were? Obviously, she's the "Lady of the Stars" and the star-kindler, and hence a sort of patron god of the Elves, the Star-folk. But I've been thinking about the passage that Raynor quoted:

Too great is her beauty to be declared in the words of Men or of Elves; for the light of Iluvatar lives still in her face. In light is her power and her joy.

Perhaps, then, it would be more accurate to say that Varda is the god of light - not just star-light, but light in all its forms, both literal and "figurative". I put "figurative" in quotes because I like to read Tolkien with his admiration for Owen Barfield's theory of ancient semantic unity in mind. I summarized my understanding of this theory in one of the Hobbit discussions:

To put it briefly, Barfield's idea is that over the course of history and linguistic evolution, there has been a fragmentation of concepts in human thought. He claims that, for example, the word spiritus in Latin was not a single word with various meanings (breath, air, spirit), but rather that the various meanings that we now distinguish were not then distinguished - so to the Romans "breath" and "spirit" were the same concept. So certain uses of words that we now see as metaphorical were not originally so; language, he claims had a pre-metaphorical stage.

So I think that when Tolkien says that Varda's power and joy is in light, we must take "light" to mean not just physical light but all the qualities that we metaphorically associate with light or "illumination" - we speak of "enlightenment", "casting light" on a subject, etc., and it is over this whole sphere that Varda is queen.

If we look at Varda as the Lady of Light, and not just of Stars, then she takes on a whole new importance in the Legendarium. For the concept of light is central to Tolkien's creation. In a sense, the Silmarillion can be seen as a story about light (please don't read the following if this is your first time reading the Silmarillion): Iluvatar entrusts his pure, unadulterated light to Varda; that light is put into the Lamps, which are destroyed; to replace them, the Valar make the Trees; Feanor captures some of that light in the Silmarils; the Trees are destroyed and the Silmarils, in which alone the pure light still lives, are stolen; the Valar make the Sun and Moon with impure remnants of the original light; the remainder of the story concerns the fate of the Silmarils; eventually one of these finds its way into the heavens so that a small fraction of the pure light shines again upon the world.

I will confess that much of my thinking along these lines is not original, but comes from Verlyn Flieger's book Splintered Light, which examines the central role of light in the Silmarillion and ties it very convincingly to Barfield's notion of semantic unity.

What made me think about this in connection with this thread is the role of Varda. If we see the Silmarillion as a story about light, and if Varda is the Vala chiefly concerned with light, then doesn't Varda become the central figure of the mythology? In a sense, doesn't she become even more important than Manwe? For that matter, doesn't Ungoliant (a being associated with darkness) become more important as well? In a sense, one might come to see Varda and Ungoliant as the major adversaries of the story, instead of Manwe and Melkor.

The problem is that the events of the story don't seem to support this. Ungoliant ceases to be an important character after Morgoth's return to Middle-earth. And while Varda is venerated by the Elves throughout LotR, it is Manwe, Ulmo, Aule, and Mandos among the Valar who are featured prominently in the subsequent chapters.

Interesting, though, that it is Varda and Ungoliant, two female characters, who are the queens of Light and Darkness.

Another point to consider is how, and if, the light that Varda governs is related to the Secret Fire. Are the two to be equated? Did Iluvatar give the Flame to Varda, over and above the other Valar? I think that Saurreg's analysis of the Flame Imperishable is very insightful - but I wonder how it relates to the theme of light that is so important throughout the work.