Aman
the Blessed Realm; the Undying Lands
Names and Geography
Aman — “the Blessed Realm”, the “Undying Lands” — is the great western realm of the world, the continent of the Valar, set beyond the Great Sea west of Middle-earth. It is “the Hallowed Realm”, “the utmost West”; its inner region, the guarded land of fair Valinor, holds the mansions of the Powers and the courts of the Light. Its geography (per the elder Ambarkanta): the “Wall of the World” — fenced westward by the Ekor — the great ring — Aman is the westernmost land under the Valar, bounded about by the Encircling Sea; its eastern shore faces the waters that join (in the elder world) across the “Shadowy Seas” toward the coastlands of Beleriand.
The Blessed Realm
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Founded when the Valar, harried by Melkor’s ruin of the Lamps, withdrew at last to the uttermost West and shaped there their home — the fairest realm of Arda, “without flaw”.
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The Light of Aman: its glory is the light — first the new stars, then the two Trees, whose radiance was the aria of its age. The Elves who saw it are the Calaquendi; those who never came are the Moriquendi — the great division made ultimately by the gate of Aman.
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The dwellers: the Valar (in Valinor), the Maiar, the Vanyar and Noldor (in their cities), the Teleri (at Alqualondë); the dead and the waiting (in the Halls of Mandos); and — after the rebellion — none of the rebels returned until the great pardon, and the “Doom of the Valar” veiled Aman’s light from the west.
The Gate and the Hiding
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Pelóri, the great mountain-wall, rings Aman’s inner land: their highest peak, Taniquetil, is the throne of Manwë. Beyond the mountains lie the Shadowy Seas and the straits of the world’s edge.
- The Hiding of Valinor (after the rebellion of the Noldor and the death of the Trees): the Valar cast a chain of enchantment across the ways — the “Shadowy Seas” and the “Enchanted Isles” — so that no ship of the exiles could come to the Blessed Realm until the age was done (the real bar that Eärendil at last passed).
The Removal of Aman
In the Akallabêth: when Ar-Pharazôn assailed the West, the One, at the prayer of the Valar, took Aman out of the circles of the world — the world was made round, and the Blessed Realm lies ever after where only the Elves’ “straight road” can find it. Henceforth (in the flat-round cosmology shift) the expedition of the faithful to “find the Undying Lands” is impossible for mortals — the greatest loss and the greatest mercy of the later age.
Significance
Aman is the magnetic west of the whole mythology: the source of light and longing, the standard of beauty and the home of love — and the land whose loss (the sundering of the world) is the emblem of the Elves’ final diminishing. Its separation is Tolkien’s myth of the fall of the world into mortal geography.