Arda Kompendium

The Two Lamps

Illuin and Ormal; the first lights of the world

objectlampsilluinormalfirst light

Name and Making

The Two Lamps — Illuin (“sky-blue”) and Ormal (“high gold”) — were the first great lights made in Arda, before the Sun and Moon and the Two Trees: when the Valar, after the ruin of the first war, built their “great lamps” upon the twin pillars (the Helcar and the Ringil) in the north and south, the age of the world’s first morning under the “Year of the Lamps”.

The Age of the Lamps

  • The first spring: In their light Yavanna’s first trees and grasses grew, the “springtime of Arda” — the world in its brightness and harmony.
  • The ruin: But Melkor, unseen from Utumno, brought about the “fall of the lamps” and the great disaster: it made the great inland seas (the seas of Helkar and Ringil) and darkened the world into the “Years of the Trees” (the Valar then withdrew to Aman and made the Trees and Valinor).

Significance

The Two Lamps are the first “light of the world” — the morning light before the fall-of-darkening, whose breaking begins the pattern (light -> ruin -> new light) that the rest of the mythology repeats (Trees -> Sun/Moon; Silmarils -> stars); their loss is the first marring, and they set the stage for the Two Trees’ light in the Blessed Realm.

Verknüpfte Seiten

AulëThe Two Trees of ValinorMelkorUtumnoArdaYavannaRingilConcordance — A to ZThe Ages of ArdaThe AmbarkantaQuenta 1 — Of the Beginning of Days
Werke: die Quellen sind seitenübergreifend die Bücher von J.R.R. und Christopher Tolkien (Silmarillion, Hobbit, Herr der Ringe, Unfinished Tales, History of Middle-earth, Nature of Middle-earth u. a.) — eigene Zusammenfassung. Siehe die Concordance und den README der Quelle für die Einzelbelege.
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