Varda
Elentári; Elbereth; the Kindler of the Stars
Elentári
Names and Titles
- Varda — “the Exalted”, “the Sublime”; called Elentári (Quenya “Star-queen”) and Elbereth Githoniel (Sindarin “Queen of the Stars, star-kindling”).
The Elves also call her Tintallë, “the Kindler”.
- She is the Lady of the Stars, the one among the Valar whose radiance nothing can mirror — “too bright and too holy for men and even for the Eldar to see; her radiance blinds”. Her name is held in such awe that “the Elves say ‘A Elbereth Githoniel’ in peril” and she is the most beloved of the Valar after the world grew dark. Varda is the wife of Manwë and with him dwells on Taniquetil; she alone of the Valar loved the stars above all things, and the light of the stars is her very body and work. When the Darkness lies on the world, the star-light that fills the night is her work, “for the stars are the memory of Varda’s face in the heavens.”
Dominion and Deeds
Before the world was made, in the Music, Varda’s themes were of light and of the firmament; her joy is in the lamps of the sky. When the Valar entered Arda, one of her first works was to set the stars in the vault of heaven — a host beyond count, among them the great constellations:
- Valacirca, the Sickle of the Valar (the Plough), set as a sign to Melkor of the doom that awaited him;
- The Menelvagor (Orion) and other constellations of the Beleriandic and Númenórean skies.
- She it was who hallowed the Silmarils: “Varda sanctified the jewels, so that all who touched them that were evil or held unlawful dominion should be burnt and withered” — the quick death of the hand of Melkor and Carcharoth when they took them.
- At the creation of the The Two Trees of Valinor her light was mixed into their sap; when the Sun and Moon were devised after their destruction, the silvery light of Arien and Tilion came ultimately from branches of the Trees that Varda had blessed.
- In the War of Wrath and the days of the Shadow, “the stars of Varda” are invoked on every dark road; and at the end of all things she will kindle the stars anew when Arda is healed.
Character
Varda is pure light, and purity itself: her heed of Melkor’s evil was the surest sign of it, for she “knew the shadow in the heart of Melkor from the first” and never trusted the pardon he was granted.
Her opposition to him is cosmic rather than personal: he fears and hates her above all the Valar, because her starlight is the thing he can never possess or quench — “the Shadow cannot pierce the memory of light”. Twice the silver light of her stars darkens the tale: when the Sun and Moon rise and none but a few see them, and when the last star fades — but that time never comes: “even in the Black Years, ‘above all shadows rides the Sun’, and the stars endure.” Her handmaiden is the Maia Ilmarë, and her light is the particular devotion of the Elves of Beleriand — the Sindar who had never seen the Trees yet chant her name in the darkest places.
In the Texts
The earliest forms of the legend (Book of Lost Tales) give the star-making to Varda only in outline; by the Quenta Silmarillion she has become the central figure of light and hope. Her name Elbereth is the most consistently preserved of any Vala through Tolkien’s revisions, from the early tale through the Lord of the Rings. Christopher Tolkien’s commentary in The Shaping of Middle-earth and Morgoth’s Ring traces her growth from one Valar among many to the “Lady of the Stars” who outlasts the Dark.