Eru Ilúvatar
The One; the Allfather; the Creator
Names and Titles
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Eru — “the One” in Quenya; the name by which he is known among the Elves and the Faithful Dúnedain.
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Ilúvatar — “Allfather”; “his name is Ilúvatar” (Q. ilúvë “the whole”, atar “father”).
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The One, the Almighty, the maker of all there is. Men of the later Ages who did not fall away from him called him simply the One. In the Ainulindalë he is introduced by no genealogy and no explanation: he is simply “Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar” — he made the Ainur, who were “the offspring of his thought”. He has no true “birthday”: he is not born, not made, and dwells “without Time and for ever, and does not pass in and out of Time”. His nature, in Tolkien’s own words, is that of the God of Christian monotheism, whom Tolkien identified with Eru. He is spoken of as He and in Quenya generally by masculine phrasing, though he is beyond gender.
Creation
Before anything was made, "there was Eru, the
One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar." With the Flame Imperishable (the Secret Fire) he set the Ainur to life out of his thought. The Ainur — the Holy Ones — are thus his firstborn creations, older than the world, and they dwell with him in the Timeless Halls. He propounded to them themes of music, and bade them make great music together before him. The Music of the Ainur grew to fill the Void. Into it Melkor, the mightiest of the Ainur, wove discord — desire to bring things of his own devising into being, and envy of the Flame Imperishable. Eru listened; and when the discord rose he added a second and greater theme, and then a third, which the Ainur could not comprehend, for it was “deep and wide and beautiful, but slow and blended with an immeasurable sorrow.” The third theme was the theme of the Children of Ilúvatar; and with it “the thought of the One” re-wove Melkor’s discords so that they redounded to his own glory. Then Eru said the words of making: > “Eä! Let these things Be! And I will send forth into the Void the Flame Imperishable, and it shall be at the heart of the World, and the World shall Be.” And the Ainur saw “a new thing made before them”: the World Eä — “the World that Is” — set amid the Void, with Arda, the Kingdom, as its sphere. Some of the Ainur, the greatest, entered into the world to dwell within it and to shape it: these are the Valar and their servants the Maiar. These are his governors in Arda; but “Eru alone is without limit” — nothing the Valar fashion is outside his design, and no act of Melkor can silence a theme that has been sung.
The Children of Ilúvatar
Eliot’s “Children” are two races whom the Ainur never planned and could not have devised:
- The Eldar / Elves — “the Firstborn” (Quendi), older and fairer, who “shall have the greater power over the earth” yet are bound to it for as long as the world endures.
- The Atani / Men — “the Followers” (Hildor), who “shall perforce in the aftercomers be less… more frail, more fleeting”, but who alone of the Children may see the end of the world and, in the Valar’s thought, heal its marring. Eru also adopted the Dwarves as his Children when Aulë confessed their making, and permitted the Ents when Yavanna asked that the trees have shepherds. The Dwarves thus sleep before the Elves awake, “until the Firstborn are come and their hour is full.”
The World and Its Seasons
The story Eru sets in motion is the history of Arda — the Ainulindalë singing the world into being, the The Two Trees of Valinor paling and failing, the flight of the Noldor, the doom of the Silmarils, and the rising and drowning of Númenor. Throughout, “the evil of Melkor” is repeatedly turned to good: “that no tale may be told that is not a part of the One’s design, and nothing that he wills may be marred.” Even Melkor's cruelty is shown to be his own undoing, and the world’s pain is woven into a music that shall, at the The Dagor Dagorath, be sung anew in a greater key — the Ainulindalë of the end, when “the Children of Ilúvatar shall live and the Valar rejoiced” and Arda Healed.
Worship and the Later Ages
In the Second Age the Men of Númenor, alone of the kings of Men, had no temple, for the Faithful worshipped “the One” in the open air upon the Meneltarma, the Pillar of Heaven. When Ar-Pharazôn assailed Aman, the very men who had mocked Eru were answered — the One answered in the year 3319 of the Second Age, laying waste to Númenor and withdrawing Aman from the circles of the world. In the Third Age, “the One alone knows the secret of the will of all the Children,” and his designs work through the free will of hobbits and kings unawares.
The Secret Fire and Eä Eru is the possessor and giver of the
Secret Fire (the “Flame Imperishable”), the principle of life and being that lies at the heart of Eä — “the fire that gives Life and Reality to it.” No creature possesses it independently; Melkor “went often alone into the void places seeking the Imperishable Flame,” and finding it not, sought to create being in the Void by his own will — the root of all his evil. (Inspiration/commentary: Tolkien’s conception of Eru evolved from Lutheran-Catholic reserve to a fully developed monotheism; in the Letters he states plainly that “There is only one ‘God’ in the mythology, and that is Eru Ilúvatar.”)