Ainur
The Holy Ones; the firstborn of Ilúvatar
The Ainur
Names and Etymology
Ainur — “the Holy Ones” — the name the Elves give to the order of beings who, alone among all that exists, were created before the world: “the first of all things made by Eru before the world was made”. They are the “offspring of his thought”; the Valaquenta hymns them as “the Holy Ones… the eldest of all beings”. Among the Ainur the two ranks are:
- The Valar — “the Powers”; the fourteen great lords and queens who entered the world to govern it within the designs of Eru.
- The Maiar — the lesser Ainur, their servants and companions, nearly countless.
Creation and Music
Eru made the Ainur with the
Secret Fire, “the Flame Imperishable”, in the Timeless Halls beyond the Void. He propounded to them themes and bade them make a great Music before him — the The Music of the Ainur — from whose weaving the World Eä was afterwards unfolded. Into that music Melkor, the mightiest of the Ainur, wove his own discordant theme, and Eru answered with two further themes; and from the last (the theme of the Children of Ilúvatar) the Ainur heard echoes “of things that had not yet been.” When Eru said “Eä!”, a part of the Ainur — “the greatest and the fairest” — “those that so desired” — entered the seen world to give it shape and being: the Valar and Maiar of Arda. Some few of the Ainur have never entered the world at all, and dwell ever beside Eru; and of the fate of the rest nothing certain is known to the Elves.
Nature and Powers
The Ainur are spirits without bodily form; they take shape “as it were garments” at their pleasure. Their number is unknown; their power is great but not equal
— Melkor “was gifted with a share of the light and knowledge and the desire of making”, yet dwelt below Eru who alone is without limit. They are immortal, subjecting themselves to the being of the world; the Valar especially are bound to Arda until its ending, “they are not the makers of it, but its lords”. Their loves and enmities, their marriages and lineages are the deep engine of all the legends.
The Fall and the Children The tragedy of the Ainur is
pride: Melkor’s envy of the Flame Imperishable and his lust to make and rule, which divided the kindred. Some, like Sauron and the Balrogs, fell with him; others, like Melian, bound themselves in marriage to the Children of Ilúvatar — the unique meeting of the divine with the mortal that runs from the eldar to the end of time.
In the Texts
The Ainur are the subject of the Ainulindalë and Valaquenta; their deeper history is traced through the History of Middle-earth (from the Book of Lost Tales onward) and Tolkien’s notes on the “Music of the Ainur” in Morgoth’s Ring, where he considers their mode of being, the “framing” of their spirits, and their relation to time.