Part of the mind of Ilúvatar

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

How else does one explain the "coeval"="contemporary" situation then? All the Valar are brethren, but why would all necessarily have to have been thought into being at the same instance? I'm not saying that wasn't the case, but I don't think it's clear one way or the other.

Read what I just said in what you quoted. The point is, you cannot use the word "contemporary", because there is no *time* when the Valar are created (or "when" the Valar are created). Therefore, if we use the word that Manwë and Melkor are "first", we must use it in metaphorical sense. And that metaphore can mean, for instance, that they had the first place in Eru's mind (sort of, the most important, or whichever other way you could - again more metaphorically than not - express it). And lo - we are back again at the original thought: if both of them had the first place in Eru's mind, then they are "coeval" in this respect. Plain and simple.

In any case, it all comes down to that Eru thought them equally important - that would go along with what you are saying further about authority eventually deriving from the Creator simply because he is the Creator. To borrow words from elsewhere, "power resides where people believe it to reside", or in this case, not the people, but the Creator - even if all other Valar were equally "powerful" (in the sense of how much they can do, make, spawn, whatever), or if let's say one of our two was not in fact as powerful as the other, then because Eru sees them that way, he makes them that way. (In contrary to the quote I used above, this is sort of "real" way of giving them the power, not just "imaginary" like in the case of the people-power example; because Eru is the Creator and his mere thought in fact becomes reality - logically.) That is one way to approach it. Another one (and the simpler one) is to say that simply Manwë and Melkor were created with the most capabilities, the biggest potential. Trivially speaking, Ulmo could create only things related to water, while Melkor "shared the gifts of all his bretheren" - and so did Manwë, in a certain way (and slightly less than Melkor). That is how I have seen it, always.

I wonder if there is another way to put it so that I make myself clear. Okay, for example - this is going to be a really baaad example, but I think it might be sufficient enough. Do you know the Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying game? (Or anything sufficiently similar. Whoever has no idea what it is, better maybe skip the rest of this paragraph so that it does not confuse you.) That's a crude example at best, but let's say: each Vala is a character with one class and several levels in it. Tulkas is level 10 fighter, Oromë is level 10 ranger, Yavanna is level 10 druid. And now we suddenly have Melkor, who is a multiclass of level 20 fighter/ranger/druid... and we have Manwë, who is a multiclass of level 19 fighter/ranger/druid... See what I have in mind? Sharing all the gifts of their bretheren, being more "proficient" at them, being almost equal in this respect (in this way, they have much more in common with each other than with the rest), and yet at the same time, Melkor is the stronger.

That's the reason I favor the “Yin-Yang" approach. The two of them could be connected in the mind of Eru by being opposites; Manwe being the "anti-Melkor"', there to oversee and ensure the Creator's purposes are pursued, as opposed to Melkor seeking to tear down and rebuild to his own designs.

That's what I agree with completely as well. "Yin-Yang" is a good way to put it (or Form's equally good comparison to Lucifer-Michael, for that matter, which looks at it from different perspective, and both of those comparisons can make the view more "plastic"). But that is also why I say they had the same amount of (or same kind of) power, or potential. Or, in the terms of my Dungeons and Dragons example, we have two almost the same characters, only one is good and one evil.

[Galadriel55]

Originally Posted by Legate of Amon Lanc

The point is, you cannot use the word "contemporary", because there is no *time* when the Valar are created (or "when" the Valar are created).

I don't exactly agree with you here. Of course, I'm venturing into the theoretical world here, and therefore you can disagree back, but here's what I believe. Despite the name (Timeless Void), even that place has time. Maybe not in the same sense as we do, but time still passes. And here's why I think so:

Time does not exist only when nothing happened at any point before. And this "before" is wrong in this sentence, because there is no before ("before what," you may ask - and there's nothing), and therefore no time. In other words, nothing has happened at all - ever. But as soon as something happens - anything, anywhere, doesn't matter (could be something appeared out of thin air, could be a thought that occured, really anything) - right away there is a concept of time: it is divided into before and after the creation/appearance/birth/action of that thing/deed. And when a second thing happens, you can talk of actual values of time, because you have the passage of time in between the two occurances, you can measure time relative to something. You can now use concepts such as how much time before/after/between, difference in time, and etc.

Therefore, when the Valar were created, time was certainly in effect; it was probably in effect even before the Ainur, when only Eru was around.

There is a great but beautiful paradox in the name Timeless Void, since there is a sense of time and a sense of space.

(As an aside, it's something I've mantioned in one of my threads)




More on topic, I think that the "flip sides of the coin" and "Yin-Yang" theories might be on the mark.

Originally Posted by Zil

That being the case, I would think power would be trumped by authority, which should make Manwe the stronger of the two, in my opinion.

Depends. Without power, there is no authority. Authority is, in a sense, power. A powerless authority is an empty title.

I found some things about Manwe in The Sil that may be of interest:

Originally Posted by Ainulindale

...the noblest of the Ainur

Originally Posted by Ainulindale

...[Manwe] was the chief instrument of the second theme that Iluvatar had raised against the discord of Melkor

(This ties in with the Yin-Yang theory.)

Originally Posted by Valaquenta

Manwe and Melkor were brethren in the thought of Iluvatar. The mightiest of those Ainur who came into the world was in his beginning Melkor; but Manwe is dearest to Iluvatar and understands most clearly his purposes. He was appointed to be, in the fullness of time, the first of all Kings: lord of the realm of Arda and ruler of all that dwells therein.

(So firstly, Manwe is "closer" to Eru, and secondly, he is given authority as well as power.)



And since I already ventured into the philosophical and theoretical, I want to thow this idea out there. But it's hard to put into words so I'll use the cliche-ed metaphor. Let's say Eru takes all of Manwe's life and puts it on one side of the scale, and puts all of Melkor's life on the other side of the scale, and the scale would be equal. That doesn't mean that they were always on equal positions in life, but that the "total" is. If Eru determined that in the beginning, well, that's what would happen, unless he changes his mind. And Manwe, being the King of Arda, represents in one being all of Arda, while Morgoth represents all of evil; so you have a continuous battle of good vs evil that goes on for ever until the Dagor Dagorath. And even at that point, there's no guarantee that a new "Melkor" (under a different name and face, of course) wouldn't arise.......

But I guess that's just a variation of the Yin-Yang theory.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

I don't exactly agree with you here. Of course, I'm venturing into the theoretical world here, and therefore you can disagree back, but here's what I believe. Despite the name (Timeless Void), even that place has time. Maybe not in the same sense as we do, but time still passes. And here's why I think so:

Since it's really off topic, just a short clarification here When something is timeless, it is out of the time. We cannot imagine it with our human minds, but that changes nothing about the fact that it can "exist". (In these terms, even the words like "exist" become relative.) Ask the astrophysicists. It is perfectly plausible to imagine Valar coming into be before time, however the concept of "becoming" is closely connected to time in our thinking at least. Indeed, myself, I would say that once the creation comes into place, we have to be inside time. So Eru could be "outside the time", but at the moment of creation of the first Valar, the time would already have to exist (logically). That's what I would vote for, since that makes sense.

However, the mythos clearly states otherwise. So however I don't find it applying to my logic, if I want to keep true to the logic of the tale, I have to forget my logic. The creation of Valar happened before the time, that much is clear - time came into being when Eä was created. If we cannot imagine it, it is our problem So we just have to accept that somehow there was this creation before time, therefore every temporal expression used is a metaphore of the Elvish (and our) language in which the myth is written...