The Valar and Illuvator's Children

[Groin Redbeard]

This is something that has always bothered me, and I don't know if Tolkien has ever expounded on it or not. Do the peoples of Arda worship the Valar as the gods of nature and Illuvator as the supreme god? I picture the everyone worshipping the Valar as the Greeks, or Romans, would worship their gods. This would explain why the dwarves worship Aule as their primal god, since they are both great smiths (besides the fact that it was Aule that created the dwarves). The Numenorean's were great sailors. If this would then be the case then Valarie that the Numenorean's worship would be Ulmo or Osse?

The other option, which I think is less favorable, is that everyone worships the true god of Illuvator with the Valar being sub-gods. This would give favor to Tolkien's Catholic background, with Jesus being their true savior (just like Illuvator) with dozens of saints that god blesses to do his holy work on earth (sort of like the Valar, or the Istari). Though I must warn you that I'm not Catholic, so I'm not an expert on any of this by a longshot, and I'm sure I am messing this point up somehow.

What do y'all think about this?

[Eönwë]

Well, it says in the Silmarillion that the Valar are thsoe who "men call the gods", or something like that, so I think that explains some.

But the Numenoreans worshipped Ilúvatar, before they were turned to Melkor-worship.

[Aganzir]

I have always imagined it in the Catholic sense - Ilúvatar () was the main god whereas the Ainur were more like angels or saints. I'm not Catholic either, but to my understanding they pray not only to God but saints as well? Just like mariners called upon Uinen on stormy seas.

edit cause I'm not going to double post because of this, but there's also just one L in Ilúvatar.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Aganzir

I have always imagined it in the Catholic sense - Ilúvatar () was the main god whereas the Ainur were more like angels or saints. I'm not Catholic either, but to my understanding they pray not only to God but saints as well? Just like mariners called upon Uinen on stormy seas.

Yes, I imagined it in that way too. I am not Catholic either (is that a compulsory sentence on this thread or what?), but as far as I know it's so that the saints represent the "victorious church", the ones who already have finished their mortal life, and fulfilled it in the best possible way, and whose intercessions from "back there" can help those who are still here. And most of the saints were given something to patronise, usually the thing they were connected to in their life. So, it's not exactly the thing about Valar, but it's similar in the basic way that you have someone who is close to the particular subject and so you can turn for him to help when it comes to that subject. From the in-ME-point of view, the Valar were actually even the ones who took the main part in making certain things, for example: Ulmo - water. This way, you could turn on Ulmo if you had any problems and requests concerning water, because he is the one who has the most insight into it, as he was the one making it. And maybe actually, from the in-ME-point of view, the Valar are the ones to ask for such things (at least these "material" things) rather than Eru himself. You would worship Eru as the supreme god and creator, but if you wish to pray for rain (or thank for rain) for your Haradian colony, you turn for example to Manwë and not to Eru. And when you have the rain and wish your plants to grow, you turn for example to Yavanna in turn. Always whoever is the one for the resort. I would actually compare the Valar to the government, to the "executive". Ministry of water, ministry of plants, and such. And each is responsible for his sector, with Eru above them all (with Manwë and Varda as the more prominent among the ministers).

[Morthoron]

As a lapsed-Catholic (or, as probably most ex-Catholics -- one who came to his senses once I actually gained some sense to come to), I honestly have never felt Tolkien's work had the catholicity some folk (and even Tolkien himself) implied. Certainly, the overarching modes of morality and ethics in Tolkien's cosmology have their roots in Catholicism (good works, mercy, redemption, ultimate Truths, etc.), but the manner in which the Numenoreans 'hallowed' Eru, and to a lesser extent the Valar, did not strike me as being necessarily Catholic. I say 'hallow' rather than 'worship', because what rites the Numenoreans had were simple (and held only three times per year), and there was not the sense (to me, anyway) of Sunday-cathedral-epistolary-incense censer divine worship, but more of, shall we say, respect and reverence for authority, and thanksgiving and remembrance rather than adoration and abject devotion -- more of a Celtic pagan rite than a dogmatic and ritualistically Catholic observance.

And that is what I think sets Tolkien's applicability apart from the intrusive allegory of C.S. Lewis. One doesn't feel they are being proselytized to. One is clearly given a creation theory in keeping with the Christian bible (right down to Milton's Lucifer mirrored in Melkor, save perhaps not so stuffily Puritan), but the manner in which it is written has such a wonderful patina of Old World mythology that the cosmogony of Tolkien lives and breathes with its own soul. We have Eden and arch-angels, the devil and the great flood, but it is told in such a manner that agnostics enamored of Odin rifle through the pages as readily as anyone wearing a scapular or counting the stations of the cross on the rosary.

Religion is relatively latent in Middle-earth; in fact, the use of the word 'worship' is more readily assigned to the seething masses who prostrated themselves before the images of the false Lord of the Earth in the Cult of Morgoth, and sacrifices and other religious facades are left to Sauron and his funerary pyre that scorched the golden dome of Morgoth's Temple.

[doug*platypus]

Following on from what Morthoron has said about religion being "relatively latent in Middle-earth", there is only one instance of religious ritual in LOTR - when Faramir and the Rangers of Ithilien turned and faced west in a moment of silence before eating:

'So we always do,' he said, as they sat down: 'we look towards Númenor that was, and beyond to Elvenhome that is, and to that which is beyond Elvenhome and will ever be.'

Before the fall of Númenor, I believe the Númenóreans had a place hallowed to Ilúvatar. But I cannot recall for example any instance where the Dwarves "worshipped" Aulë. The elves certainly reverenced the Valar, in particular Elbereth, but I don't believe this ever approached what one in today's terms would call worship.

In the existence of both an omnipotent, single creator as Ilúvatar, as well as that of lesser Valar, each with a realm so to speak of which they were in charge, Tolkien may have been trying to posit through his mythology how monotheism and polytheism could exist in the world. Imagine for a moment that his fiction was actually fact. It could account for why monotheist religions such as Christianity, Judaism or Islam pray to a single, omnipotent creator (as one exists in the form of Ilúvatar) as well as how polytheist forms of belief such as the Greeks and the Norse could have a pantheon of gods, each with their own realm (as Poseidon for the sea or Thor for thunder etc). The only beliefs which would not be encompassed by Tolkien's mythology would be certain eastern philosophies without god(s).

In Maori cosmology, there are atua who have different realms as for the Greeks, for example Tane for the forests. Atua is translated somewhat incorrectly as god; Maori do not "pray" to the atua as say a Christian or a Muslim would pray to God or Allah, but there do exist invocations or rituals when these atua are to be addressed or placated, for instance in pre-European times when a large tree was to be felled for the building of a waka (canoe). It seems to me the same relationship exists between the people of Arda and the Valar.