Aratar

Aratar is a Quenya word, belonging to the speech of the Eldar who lived in Aman. It names a rank rather than a people in the ordinary sense: those it covers are not a separate kindred beside the Valar but the foremost among them, set apart by the measure of their power. The Valaquenta presents the term as the Elves' own way of naming these Powers, and English renderings gloss it as the Exalted or those who stand highest in Arda. The individual Aratar likewise appear there under the names the Eldar gave them. The account says little about how the Valar named themselves, and nothing of it should be read into the collective title.1

The appendix on the elements of Quenya and Sindarin names in the published Silmarillion files the word under the element ar(a)-, which carries the sense of high, noble or royal. It also notes an extended stem arat-, and Aratar is formed on that stem. The same element runs through many names of rank and lineage, among them Arnor. The title therefore describes standing and dignity, not descent. It points to eminence within an order that already exists, not to a separate line of origin.2

In origin the Aratar are what all the Valar are: Ainur, spirits made by Ilúvatar before the world, who took part in the Music and afterwards chose to enter Eä and be bound to it. The chief place was first reckoned as belonging to nine. Melkor, who had been among the mightiest, is no longer counted with them, and the Valaquenta names eight in his absence. The language of kinship used among them refers to the thought of Ilúvatar rather than to birth; Manwë and Melkor are called brethren in that sense. Within the eight stand two wedded pairs, Manwë with Varda and Aulë with Yavanna. Nienna is named as sister of the Fëanturi, the brothers known chiefly as Mandos and Lórien, so that Mandos and Nienna are counted among the Aratar together.3

The narratives of the Elder Days seldom use the collective title. The history of the Aratar has to be traced through the deeds of the eight, who repeatedly act together at the decisive turns of the world's story. Their earliest labours followed the first strife with Melkor, when the Valar dwelt on the isle of Almaren. There Aulë wrought two great lamps, Varda filled them with light, and Manwë hallowed them, so that Middle-earth lay illumined. Melkor came in secret and overthrew them, and the spring of Arda was marred. The Valar then withdrew into the uttermost West, fortified Aman with the Pelóri, and founded Valinor. There Yavanna sang the Two Trees into being while Nienna sat silent beside the mound and watered it with her tears.1

In the long age of the Trees, Middle-earth lay in darkness under Melkor's shadow. Oromë alone of the great still rode there often, hunting his creatures. Before the Firstborn awoke, Varda undertook her greatest work of stars. Oromë was the first of the Valar to come upon the newly woken Elves by Cuiviénen. Manwë then called the Powers to council in the Ring of Doom and resolved to make war on Melkor for the sake of the Quendi. Melkor was defeated, bound and held in the halls of Mandos. The Valar next summoned the Elves to Valinor. Mandos, breaking his long silence, declared that it was so decreed, and the account marks the summons as the source of many later griefs.2

After three ages Melkor was brought before the Valar and sued for pardon. Nienna supported his plea while Mandos said nothing, and Manwë, who could not fathom malice he did not share, granted it. The release led to the Darkening. With Ungoliant's help Melkor destroyed the Trees, and Yavanna declared before the assembled Powers that she could not remake them. Fëanor refused to yield the Silmarils for their healing. When the Noldor rebelled and departed, Mandos pronounced a doom upon them. In the aftermath Yavanna and Nienna drew a last flower and fruit from the dying Trees. These were made the vessels of the Moon and the Sun, and Varda set their courses. The Valar then raised the mountains higher and closed the approaches to Valinor.3

Through the wars of Beleriand the western Powers largely held aloof, but Ulmo never ceased to heed the lands and waters of Middle-earth. Through Turgon and later Tuor, his counsel reached the Exiles. When Eärendil at last came to Valinor to plead for Elves and Men, Manwë heard him and sent forth the host that overthrew Morgoth in the War of Wrath. In the Second Age the Valar gave Númenor to the Edain. When Ar-Pharazôn broke the Ban and landed upon Aman, Manwë and the Valar called upon Ilúvatar and set aside their governance of Arda. The world was changed, Númenor was drowned, and the Undying Lands were taken out of the circles of the world.4

Their last recorded common act concerns the Third Age. When the Valar in council resolved to send emissaries against the rising shadow, Manwë asked who would go. According to the essay on the Istari, Aulë chose Curumo and Oromë chose Alatar, while Yavanna asked that Aiwendil be taken. Manwë and Varda wished Olórin to go, though he at first held back. The Aratar thus acted in Middle-earth only through agents of lesser rank, as they had in the First Age. Nothing in the published accounts marks an end to the order: the eight remain in Aman while the ages of the world continue.5

Unlike the Children of Ilúvatar, the Aratar have no bodies of their own by nature. The Valaquenta explains that the forms in which they are seen are taken up the way one puts on clothing. They can set these forms aside and move unclad, and then even the Eldar cannot clearly perceive them. When they do take shape, some appear as male and some as female, and the text grounds this difference in their temper from the beginning, not in the shapes themselves. Their relation to time differs just as much. Having entered Eä at its beginning, they are bound within it until its completion, so their existence is measured by the life of Arda itself, and neither age nor death has any hold on them.1

Each of the eight is known by a province of the world and a manner of work. Manwë dwells with Varda on Taniquetil and is lord of the airs and winds, with the birds, above all the eagles, serving as his messengers. From that height the two together see and hear further than any other. Varda is the lady of light and of the stars, and the Elves revere her above the other Powers. Ulmo keeps no house in Valinor but lives in the Outer Sea and comes to the councils only in great need; his music is said to linger in the waters, where Elves and Men hear it without understanding it. Aulë, master of the substances of the earth, is a smith and maker who delights in the work of making rather than in possession, and the Noldor learned most from him, while Yavanna loves all things that grow and Oromë is the hunter who rides Nahar and sounds the horn Valaróma.2

Nothing in the published accounts marks an end to the order: the eight remain in Aman while the ages of the world continue.

Two of the eight are concerned chiefly with death and sorrow. The others govern elements and crafts, but these two deal with what lies at the end of lives and with the grief it leaves behind. Mandos keeps the Houses of the Dead and summons the spirits of the slain. He knows what is to come, except what Ilúvatar keeps within his own freedom, he forgets nothing, and he pronounces his judgments only when Manwë bids him. Nienna lives apart at the western edge of the world, and her concern is pity and mourning; the spirits waiting in Mandos cry out to her. Those who heed her learn endurance, and she turns sorrow into wisdom.3

The Valaquenta does not divide the Aratar into houses of their own. The only formal division it applies to them is the one it applies to all the Valar, between the Lords and the Valier, the Queens of the Valar. Measured against it, the eight are unevenly spread. Five of them, Manwë, Ulmo, Aulë, Mandos and Oromë, are reckoned among the Lords. Only three, Varda, Yavanna and Nienna, stand among the Valier. The title of the Aratar therefore cuts across this grouping rather than following it, and nothing in the text makes it hereditary.1

Several of the eight are tied by marriage or kinship to Valar who stand outside their number. Oromë is wedded to Vána, the younger sister of Yavanna, and Nessa, spouse of Tulkas, is his sister. Mandos has Vairë the Weaver as his spouse, and Nienna's brother Lórien is wedded to Estë. None of these partners is counted among the Aratar. The account also sets two of the eight apart as solitary. Ulmo keeps no fixed dwelling and has no spouse, and Nienna lives by herself in the far West.2

Around several of the Aratar the Valaquenta places followings of Maiar, the lesser spirits who serve them. Eönwë bears Manwë's banner and is his herald, and Ilmarë is the handmaid of Varda. Ossë and Uinen belong to Ulmo's following as masters of the seas near Middle-earth, and Salmar came into Arda with him. Sauron is said to have belonged in his beginning to the Maiar of Aulë, which ties the chief servant of Morgoth to the smith's own company. Olórin, though he dwelt in Lórien, often went to Nienna's house and learned pity and patience from her. These followings are loose households of service, not lineages, and the text names no leaders among them beyond the individual Maiar it singles out.3

Within the Silmarillion the Aratar work less as protagonists than as the fixed frame against which the tales unfold. The Valaquenta sets them out before the narrative begins, so that the reader meets the great Powers as a settled order, ranked and described, before any Elf or Man acts. That placement gives the later stories their scale. When Elves rebel, bargain or plead, they do so under a court whose members the reader already knows. The drama therefore rarely turns on what the Powers can do. It turns on what they choose to allow, refuse or leave undone, and on how the free choices of the Children answer them.1

Tolkien's own comments explain why the eight never become gods in the ordinary mythological sense. In his letters he describes the Valar as created spirits, angelic powers who fill the imaginative place that gods hold in other mythologies while remaining wholly subject to the One. The Aratar are the sharpest expression of that idea: they stand at the very top of the created order and are still not its source. Their greatness is shown as stewardship of particular regions of the world and not as ownership of them. Even the highest of them can misjudge, which keeps the moral weight of the story with the Children and not with the Powers.2

In The Lord of the Rings the collective title does not appear at all, and the Powers stay almost entirely offstage. Their presence reaches the story mainly through Elvish reverence for Varda under the name Elbereth. Gildor's company sings of her in the Shire woods, and in extremity Frodo and Sam call on her name. The effect is one of distance: a mythic order known to the reader of the older tales survives in the later book only as memory, song and invocation. Help from that quarter comes, if it comes at all, through small and indirect means, and the hobbits themselves carry the decisive action.3